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Title: China Revolutionized
Author: Thomson, John Stuart
Language: English
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CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913. The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Honorable Yuan Shih Kai, confirmed as president of China by the
National Assembly, January, 1913. A middle province type (Honan).
He is wearing the uniform of the General-in-Chief of the northern
army. A forceful progressive leader of the New China.
]
CHINA
REVOLUTIONIZED
_By_
JOHN STUART THOMSON
AUTHOR OF
The Chinese, Bud and Bamboo, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, APRIL, 1913
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
DEDICATED TO MOTHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION 1
II WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA 114
III INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA 137
IV FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA 161
V BUSINESS METHODS OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA 175
VI RAILWAYS IN CHINA 186
VII SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA 196
VIII AMERICA IN CHINA 206
IX THE NATIVE LEADERS 222
X CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 229
XI CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS 242
XII SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA 250
XIII THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN 259
XIV PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON CHINA 281
XV SOME FOREIGN TYPES IN CHINA, AND THEIR INFLUENCE 288
XVI THE MANCHU 305
XVII CHINA’S ARMY AND NAVY 317
XVIII MODERN EDUCATION IN CHINA 334
XIX LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 351
XX LIFE OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA 363
XXI FOREIGN CITIES OF CHINA 375
XXII NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA 433
XXIII RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY CHINA 450
XXIV LEGAL PRACTISE AND CRIME IN CHINA 472
XXV CHINESE DAILY LIFE 487
XXVI CLIMATE, DISEASE AND HYGIENE 499
XXVII CHINESE WOMANHOOD 519
XXVIII AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY IN CHINA 533
XXIX CHINESE ARCHITECTURE AND ART 541
XXX SOCIOLOGICAL CHINA 555
XXXI AWAKENED INTEREST IN AMERICA 567
INDEX 581
CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED
I
THE GENESIS OF THE REVOLUTION IN CHINA AND ITS HISTORY
FROM OCTOBER 10, 1911, TO YUAN SHIH KAI’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE PROVISIONAL
PRESIDENCY
A republic in place of the oldest monarchy! Preposterous. It would
involve making a yellow man think as a white man, and that had never
occurred, not even in the case of the prodigy, Japan. It would involve
free intercourse with the whole wide world, and China had opposed such
an innovation stubbornly for 400 years. It meant that the proudest
and most self-contained nation should treat others as equals and
interchange with them. It involved throwing 4,000 years of continuous
history and agglomerated pride and precedent to the winds, and humbly
beginning anew as a tyro for a while. It meant the dealing with
400,000,000 kings, instead of one, and asking: “My lord, what is your
will?” An educational system 2,000 years old to be forgotten at once!
A religion 5,000 years old at least, whereby every man had his own god
(his father), to be made as cheap as the paltry sacrifices of wine,
rice and the painted stick of Confucianism were in reality! The taking
up of individual and national responsibility for 400,000,000 people,
and entrance upon a wide path of world-influence, with its divided
shame and fame! The taking and giving of blows for wrong and right!
The giving up of the triple eternal Nirvana of father, self and son,
in exchange for an exciting rôle limited to fifty-five crowded years
in the individual! The scale of action! A land as large as all Europe,
and a people as numerous as the Caucasic race! The thunderous knock on
the long-locked doors of science and medicine by 400,000,000 people who
had bowed to idol and charm alone! It shook the world. It was pregnant
with paradisal possibilities for mankind, because of the vastness of
the movement and the depth of its well-spring. The launching of this
new leviathan ship of state could not but raise a wave that would
lift the already floating hulks of Europe and America, and give them
added impetus, though temporary alarm. The rearrangement of commerce,
manufacture, labor, finance, taxation, learning, agriculture, art and
possibly religion for the whole world. The adding of the most difficult
language to the tongues and pens of men, and the call on the English
speech to rise once more greater than the mighty stranger, or die.
The challenge to Palestine’s Bible to conquer by truth, or retreat
with half a world lost. The uprising again of the yellow ghosts of
Kublai Khan, Batu, Timurlane, and the Khans of the Golden Horde. What
would be the Caucasian’s answer to Emperor William’s question: “The
Yellow Peril”? It will be remembered that the kaiser once painted a
picture showing the nations of Europe gathering to defend the cross
and civilization against an incendiary Buddha lowering in the eastern
sky. Would the stranger within the gates be protected even while
republican and imperialist fought out their argument? Would leadership
arise, and would the great Mongolian mass be intellectualized now
that it was energized? Since the vast body was suddenly displaced,
would it henceforward move by mere gravity, or sympathetic volition?
Could it collectivize and not disintegrate? What would be the effect
on the scores of trembling thrones, where Rominoff, Hapsburg, Savoy,
Hohenzollern, Ottoman, Mikado, Billiken, etc., said they ruled by
“divine right”, which is quite a different thing from noble England’s
“constitutional right”? Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese republicans sent
out this challenge: “Tien ming wu chang” (the divine right lasts not
forever).
All these questions presented themselves when the reformers startled
the world with the announcement that there was to be a republic in
China. It was to be a republic--not a monarchy--said even those
Chinese who had been educated in Japan, where lately a Japanese editor
educated in America and ten others had been tried and executed in
secret, the papers sealed, and the press censored. They wanted pitiless
publicity in the new republican China. Had there been no abatement
of the opium habit through America’s leadership of sentiment, and
Britain’s sacrifice of revenue from 1909 to 1911, there could have
been no rebellion in 1911. The reform cleared the befogged heads of
the nation, added a million men to agitation, and furnished a hundred
million dollars directly and indirectly toward the independence of the
agitators. How great a stone America and Britain set rolling in that
Opium Conference of 1909 at Shanghai!
The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from
a clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home
and abroad did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the
imperial viceroy of Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new
Canton-Hongkong railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same
month troops under the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly
surrounded the office of the _Shat Pat Po_ newspaper, at Canton, and
arrested several reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province,
came down the Si Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat
_Po Pik_ to Canton and took back with him from the Canton arsenal,
machine guns and ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus
persistently called all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry
of Posts and Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes,
so as to censor messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret
sympathy with the reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for
gunboats, so as to disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the
revolution was to strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid _Hai
Chi_, well-known in New York, these viceroys suggested should be sent
to King George’s coronation review at Spithead. Even as far back as
July, 1907, the Chinese government approached the powers, requesting
that they make espionage on arms consigned to South China. Rather
to our amusement, they used to arrive at Hongkong as boxed pipes,
condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.--anything but guns, but that was
the humor of the freight classification which the shippers used! In
December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in Wuchow, Kwangsi
province, at the head of navigation on the West River, decided to cut
off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill and track
races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five years
before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of
the attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel
Wen, who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in
1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being
held, instead of circulated by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other
southern provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates
lack of faith as to the business and political future.
The celebrated Manchu, Tuan Fang, director-general of railways, was
ordered by the Ministry of Communications to proceed to Canton and
Kung Yik, the new town of the Americanized Chinese, in August, 1911,
to “pacify the people”. Tuan replied that he would not go, and gave
as his excuse: “Canton is infested with anarchism”. In the same month
the regent, Prince Chun, asked Prince Ching to recommend an energetic
general to be sent to quell disturbances in Kwangtung province, and
the Tartar general, Fung Shan, was sent. Spying was not uncommon,
impersonators going to a province ahead of new appointees and reciting
a record at the yamen which seemed to identify them. In August, 1911,
the cabinet at Peking decided to send photographs of new officials in a
sealed envelope, so as to prevent this impersonating.
As an indication of the new spirit which was moving among the Chinese
of Canton for better things at this time, take the inception of the
model town of Heungchow. Chinese returned from America, Singapore
and Hongkong could not bear the municipal restraint of the old city.
They chose a site ten miles up the inner harbor of Macao. Dredging
and a breakwater were begun for a harbor. Broad streets, drains, fine
stores, temples, police and fire stations and equipment, water-works,
libraries, parks, reforestation, chamber of commerce, tramways,
electricity and gas, hospitals, schools, theaters, detached homes with
gardens, launch and steamer lines, and a free port,--all were in the
scheme. When a government permits monopoly of food, and riots result
because of justice ineffectually exerted, history shows that the
government is about to fall. I instance the fierce Hangchow rice riots
of July, 1906, under the leadership of the Hung Pang (Red Association),
and the Changsha rice riots of 1910, when Yale College, in China, was
barely saved from the conflagration in the very district which in 1911
was swept by the high tide of the revolution. In 1906 text-books were
issued to the modern schools (Hok Tongs) which contained a caricature
of China, not as the “Middle Kingdom” of old, but as a morsel from
which all the nations took a bite. The intent, of course, was to arouse
resentful patriotism in place of the old inert pride. Many of these
schoolboys enlisted in the two bravest corps of the republicans, the
“Dare to Die” band, and the “Bomb Throwers” regiment. In April, 1911,
the rebels, under two of Sun Yat Sen’s lieutenants, Hu Wai Sang and Wu
Sum, operating in Kwangtung province, issued to the world almost the
identical manifesto that President Sun and Foreign Secretary Wu Ting
Fang issued in January, 1912, covering the following points:
1. Ousting the Manchu.
2. Friendly intercourse with foreigners and protection of foreign
property and person.
3. All foreign treaties now in force to be allowed to run their course.
4. Foreign loans and indemnities contracted by Manchus to date to be
paid.
5. Concessions contracted to date to be binding.
Desperate fighting took place, and had the rebels been sufficiently
supplied with money and arms, the republic would have been declared
at Canton in April instead of at Wuchang and Nanking in November. The
United States gunboat _Wilmington_ and British gunboats were rushed
to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect foreigners. Admiral Li, who was
killed in the October revolution, was barely able to conquer this
April revolution in Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. For centuries the
Chinese women would not associate with the Manchus, whom they called
“tent women”. All through Turkestan the Chinese walled off their
section of the city from the Mongolian settlements, though after the
conquest the Manchu troops displaced the Chinese.
Nearly all the missions were informed by students and friends
many months previous to the revolution that serious and continued
disturbances would occur. The Chinese saw that individualism had
arisen in America and England and was battling with the privileged.
Individualism arose at last in China and resented in this rebellion
the quietism taught by the superstition of Taoism, the resignation
of Buddhism and the obedience of Confucianism. “I am not a clan; I
am a man,” said the ambitious Chinese as he saw the new ray of hope.
American diplomacy was not altogether uninformed or unprepared. The
American fleet was made the largest foreign fleet in Chinese waters in
the first month of the revolution, Admiral Murdock having the cruisers
_Saratoga_ (the converted _New York_ of Spanish War fame), _Albany_,
_New Orleans_, _Wilmington_; the gunboats _Helena_, _El Cano_,
_Villalobos_, _Samar_; the monitor _Monterey_; and the destroyers
_Barry_ and _Decatur_.
As far back as June 3, 1910, a year and four months before the
revolution, the Shanghai _News_ printed the following article: “All
the legations and consuls have received anonymous letters from
friendly revolutionaries in Shanghai containing the warning that an
extensive anti-dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist
the Manchus, foreigners are not to be harmed.” In August, 1911, a
rebellion broke out at Sining, in far western Kansu province. The
stores were raided for every bolt of foreign cotton to make uniforms.
A boy of fifteen was named leader and he was given the significantly
fanciful name of “Savior of his country” (Chiu Shih Wang). Rich men
cornered the rice supply in the flooded Yangtze valley, and food
riots broke out all along the river in August, 1911. On August 23,
1911, rebels boarded a Chinese gunboat on the romantic Si Kiang (West
River) near Canton, shooting the commander and seizing the arms and
ammunition. On September first the Navy Department strengthened the
patrol of Kwangtung province waters so as to stop the smuggling of
arms, and the army board required miners to get permits to import
dynamite, as they feared that the “anarchists” were importing the
explosive. The awful floods and famines of 1910–11 in the basins of
the Yangtze River, the Hwei River and Grand Canal had created much
criticism of the government, which failed to alleviate suffering;
and the famine-stricken were willing to fight, because an army has a
commissariat, at least. “Every one that was in distress, and every
one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, escaped to
the cave of Adullam.” Newspapers, such as the oldest reform journal,
the _Shen Pao_, of Shanghai, related horrible illegal tortures of the
“third degree” used by Manchuized officials, which I have quoted in the
chapter on “Legal Practise.”
Tin was largely financing the propaganda, the 400,000 Chinese tin
merchants and miners of Singapore and Penang in the Straits Settlements
being the largest contributors. Following them came the 100,000
American Chinese and the 50,000 Australian Chinese. Even in 1898, Li
Hung Chang was known to declare, at Canton, that it was not impossible
that the spread of the proposed new education of the foreigners would
overturn the Manchu dynasty, of which he, a Chinese from Hofei, in
Nganhwei province, had been the strongest prop among the viceroys for
forty-five years. Superstition was not inactive. Halley’s comet flared
in the sky. It had shone when Cæsar fell; when Jerusalem fell; when
Italy fell before Attila; when English Harold fell before William the
Conqueror; when Rome fell in England; when Quebec fell before Wolfe;
and now its awful flame must surely prophesy the fall of the Manchu
dynasty. Omens were recited that red snow (snow and loess) had fallen
in Honan province, and that the Hangchow tidal bore had risen twenty
feet, broke over the bank and poured water into the first gallery of
the Haining pagoda. This always meant the fall of the dynasty, for
had it not happened on the night the beloved Mings fell, and when the
scholarly Sungs fell?
As with civil servants in some other countries, the Manchuized civil
service (mandarins) acted as though they were the governors and not
the servants of the people by allotting to themselves high salaries
and peculations. The year before the revolution the land tax yielded
about $150,000,000. Only $30,000,000 reached the government exchequer.
The Chinese held the Manchus responsible for this criminal neglect
of audit, for at least $100,000,000 should have reached the imperial
and provincial exchequers. That would have allowed $50,000,000 for
the expected peculation of that kind of office holders who believe
that “public office is a private graft”. In September, 1911, the
month preceding the great revolution, the _Chi Feng Po_, a native
paper of Peking, reported that all wages were in arrears and that
even the tea coolies had humorously pasted an anonymous sheet on the
imperial controller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our wages yet; WHY!
WHY!” Taxes were increased on long-suffering Kwangtung province in
the south, the brick kilns of Kochau, the silk sheds of Namhoi, the
tea houses, and even the temple keepers being assessed “all the taxed
would bear”. I shall instance a representative revolt. On September 6,
1911, the bonze at Shek Lung, near Canton, organized a revolt among the
worshipers at his temple. The mob demolished the municipal yamen, the
police station, the government distilleries, abattoir and fish market.
As far back as 1898 the emperor, Kwang Hsu, by edict declared that the
lottery at Canton should pay one-third of the upkeep of the far-away
Peking University. I have related in the chapter on “Chinese Daily
Life” the incident of a unique statue of a kneeling figure erected in
the Kwan clan temple at San Wui, near Canton, in August, 1911, which is
whipped by the worshipers to commemorate the defection of a member to
the government’s railway and tax program. There was always ill feeling
between Peking and Kwangtung provinces, the Manchu and Manchuized
viceroys joking at Peking when they were ordered to assume charge at
the yamen at Canton: “Well, I’m off to boss Miaotszes (barbarians),”
which the refined and commercial Cantonese certainly were not. This
superciliousness was deeply resented.
Repeated complaint had been made that an unrepresentative Manchu
government gave away concessions right and left to foreigners, and
that when these concessions were recalled or bought out, owing to
outraged patriotic feeling in the southern and central provinces,
the foreigner in instances charged immense sums for good will and
franchise in addition to his outlay and interest. I shall not recite
instances, as it is the system that I am denouncing, not the persons.
The Chinese rightly said, if we look at the matter with his eyes, that
he was not going to pay vast sums for the retrocession of his own
franchise, which was in some instances coerced from, or wheedled out
of, an effete, governing, unrepresentative clique, the members of which
never consulted the provinces that were concerned. “Taxation without
representation” again. It was not like the repudiation of the bonds
of the southern states, for no money had been paid. “Compensation”
and “indemnity” are two words the Chinese have learned to hate, and
some day they mean to build an immense navy and equip a large army to
interpret these words in the way the Occident interprets them, when
they are synonymous with injustice and “grab”. Bitter complaint has
continually been made since 1898 that Germany monopolized the mining
and railway franchises of the rich province of Shangtung.
On the subject of railways, concessions, etc., the following remarks
will be recalled in the American General J. H. Wilson’s book, _China_
(1887): “The Chinese will build railroads, open mines, etc., whenever
they can be shown that this can be done with their own money, obtained
at first by private subscription, and by their own labor, under the
direction of foreign experts who will treat them fairly and honestly.
They will not for the present grant concessions or subsidies to
foreigners. They will not even take money from any syndicate by
mortgage.” Complaint was also made that the Ming dynasty, 268 years
ago, left as a heritage to the Manchu dynasty, a land full of public
works, bridges, roads, temples, pagodas, canals, and that while the
Manchu collected large taxes, he seldom or never repaired a temple,
canal or road, so that China is now desolate. Objection was also made
that the government shipyards, like the Kiangnan, at Shanghai, were
building luxurious ocean steam yachts for Prince Tsui and others of the
imperial clan, an expense which the nation could not afford.
Two years before the famous revolution of October 10, 1911, the
author, in his book, _The Chinese_, picked out five men as the leaders
of changing China: Sun Yat Sen, as the anti-Manchu rebel, who would
take up arms in the endeavor to establish a republic; Kang Yu Wei,
who would go almost as far in reform, but would retain the Manchu
dynasty under a strict constitutional monarchy; Liang Chi Chao, as
the translator of reform books and a probable secretary of a reformed
state; Wu Ting Fang, as a secret reformer at heart, “who would bear
sympathetic watching”, and Yuan Shih Kai, to a degree an Occidentalized
opportunist of great ability, who was most favored by the Peking and
Tientsin foreigners, though distrusted by the Chinese and foreigners
in the south and Yangtze valley of China. The revolution was in full
sway by November, 1911, with Sun Yat Sen named as probable president
of a Chinese republic (Republic of Han); Kang in the exact place
prophesied; Liang as secretary of justice of Yuan’s first trial cabinet
of a constitutional monarchy; Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of a
provisional republic at Shanghai; and Yuan called from his two years’
exile at Chang Te in Honan province to be the first minister of the
reformed constitutional monarchy.
This most wonderful of revolutions seemed to break as a bolt from a
clear sky on October 10, 1911, at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, in the
center of the land, under the very guns of the United States gunboats
_Helena_ and _Villalobos_ which were steaming by. It was, as I have
attempted to show, rather a carefully planned matter, the propaganda
going on abroad and at home under bands and leaders, all of whose views
did not stop at the same place, but whose opinions had one source
in patriotic reform. Kang, the oldest and first of the reformers,
commenced in 1897 by winning with his book, _Japan’s Reform_, the
emotional Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu. But when the emperor fell in
1898 before the reactionary dowager, Tse Hsi, Kang, the Cantonese with
a Hongkong education, was driven to British Singapore and Penang,
from which places he has planned his travels and propaganda of the
“Pao Huang Hwei” (Empire Reform Association), which contemplated a
revolution of reform, but the retention of the Manchu dynasty as
constitutional monarchs for the time being. This association was quite
different from the Kao-lao-hwei, “Ko Ming” and “Sia Hwei” (reform
associations) of Sun Yat Sen, which aimed at a republic. In other words
Kang was a Taft “standpatter” medium reformer, and Sun a thorough-going
advanced reformer of the Roosevelt type. Kang’s associations grew up
in China, America and England, and Kang visited them, recommending the
drilling of companies to attack the troops of the reactionary literati
of the Hanlin academy.
Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits
Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the
reform Chinese papers, the _Hsi Pao_ (Western paper), and the _Ming
Pao_, and flooded his country with translations of parts of the great
books of British and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the
retention of the Manchu monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an
American missionary of Nanking had translated Henry George’s _Progress
and Poverty_ into Chinese, and this book was in the hands of the
reformers, and particularly appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan
Chi’s _Commercial Press_ of Honan Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been
translating a million dollars a year of Western text-books for Chinese
schools. The American Presbyterian Press at Suchow, and at 18 Peking
Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal Press, the presses of the other
American and British missions and Bible societies, had for years been
issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich compradores of foreign
houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented $1,000 to patriotic
lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s argument with his
father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ _Antigone_, brilliantly denouncing
absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was recited
by the foreign-trained students.
Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but from
his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch
with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with
his backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on
the style of Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew
so well. At Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909,
with instruction in Occidental organization, and the best troops of
the empire, as well as the best schools, and almost the best mills,
were organized by Yuan. The reformers who dare the most, however,
look upon Yuan by his past, as a temporizer, opportunist and dictator
largely under foreign influence; too much Occidentalized, and out
of touch with the spirit of “China for the Chinese”, and the “Sia
Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him as, in the past, a
Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a republican, but
must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some other head; great
as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great. They say
that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently sincere
in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too
much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for
Yuan, the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully.
Yuan is the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking, Tientsin,
Chifu, Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so
much in touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central
or Southern China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational
treaty ports of those sections, and of the brilliant British colony of
Hongkong in South China, which, with British and American Shanghai,
has done most for a reformed China. Yuan’s only experience outside
of China proper was when as a youth he served twelve years with the
army in Korea. Yuan’s temperament is cold. A noted southern statesman,
referring to him, said: “What can you expect of a man who is so cold
that he has to carry three braziers up his sleeve?” In the Korean
campaign of 1884 against Japan, Yuan is said to have objected to Red
Cross operations, jesting that the surgeons didn’t need to take the
trouble, for “while they had remade the man, they hadn’t remade the
soldier”. Yuan was a ruthless decapitator in that and other campaigns.
However, “to err is human, and to forgive, divine”, and if Yuan serves
a united republican China with full heart in the future, the mistakes
of the past will be forgotten in the joys of the glorious deeds that
are possible.
Doctor Sun Yat Sen (let us Latinize him as Sunyacius) is a Hongkong
product, and has been a revolutionist and a republican from the
beginning. As a boy he was fed on thrilling stories of the Taiping
rebellion by his uncle, who had served as an officer in that rebellion.
He was born at Fatshan, seven miles west of Canton, in 1866. From
1884–87 he was assisted by Doctor Kerr, of the Anglo-American Mission,
Canton, in whose office he studied medicine and English. He studied
medicine and surgery under Doctor Cantlie at Hongkong, of which colony
he became a citizen (that is, a British citizen), though of course,
he has now returned to his Chinese citizenship. Doctor Cantlie was
then teaching in the Hongkong School of Medicine, which is now a part
of the Hongkong University. In 1892 Sun became the first Chinese
practising physician at Macao, and met with great opposition from the
Portuguese doctors, who, in 1894, drove him to Canton. His father was
a Chinese Christian evangelist, a Congregationalist (London Mission)
by denomination, and Sunyacius looks upon the study of the Christian
Bible as the greatest necessity in China’s education. Even two years
before Kang’s work at Peking, Doctor Sunyacius, in 1895, smuggled
arms into Canton, got his revolutionary forces at work, and received
his first baptism of fire, in which he showed, as on subsequent
occasions, absolute fearlessness regarding his life. Sunyacius also
lived for a while with his brother and sympathizers in Honolulu, and
his studies in Hawaii and in America committed him to the republican
form of government. Owing to the Swatow men not meeting the Hongkong
men at Canton, Sunyacius’ plans collapsed in 1895. By the advice of
Mr. Dennis, a prominent solicitor of Hongkong, Sunyacius fled to Kobe,
Japan; to Honolulu and to San Francisco. This incisive, good-looking
little man of about five feet five inches in height, who dresses and
looks like an American or a Briton, has for years been traveling
incognito in America, England and Japan, organizing drill, educational
and contributing corps of the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the
money and men going to Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main
revolution broke out on that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General
Hwang Hing was Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this
aid. All of Sunyacius’ helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling
this money, except one, and of him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will
meet with his due reward.”
Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his
insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a
lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus,
to have his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a
thousand pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland
Street in London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation.
Sunyacius’ rescue came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong
teacher, Doctor Cantlie, was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave
to a British secretary in the Chinese Legation a note addressed to
Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was fortunately delivered in the British
spirit of fair play and through the pleas of a woman, the Briton’s
wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in “noble scorn
of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to Lord
Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened, surrounding
the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking). Sunyacius
was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese. Only for
Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the
tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the
mother and teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.
Sunyacius’ headquarters have been at British Singapore and at Hongkong,
but he is as well known at San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London,
Vancouver and Yokohama. He has walked into dormitories of Columbia
College, New York, and talked revolution and reform with some of the
students under the unconscious eye of so prominent a conservative as
President Butler. One of his student protégés was Wellington Koo, now
the Chinese secretary to Yuan Shih Kai. Sunyacius is a thorough-going
scholar, propagandist, organizer and republican, like the book he
carried, a man of “Progress and Poverty”. The world’s great bankers,
especially two London firms long connected with Chinese progress,
knew him, his disguises as a salesman, etc., and his careful plans
of government and finance, and he has not been timid in America, or
in London, Hongkong and the Straits Settlements in asking for loans
for his propaganda and revolution. He has handled a million dollars
honestly, and lived most frugally. The greatest luxury he ever allowed
himself was a “Prince Albert” coat and a rose-bouttonière, but that was
so that he might appear acceptably before an audience of Occidentals!
When in Singapore, Doctor Sun had his picture taken in white ducks
and a topey hat, so that he is a modern in tonsorial as well as other
matters! “This conference must be secret and our correspondence must
be anonymous, and upon receipt, burned,” said Sun to the bankers.
“Why?” they asked. “Because I am shadowed night and day. Look across
the way when I suddenly lift the curtain.” He raised the curtain, and
the bankers saw two “sleuths” in the cowardly shadow, one of them a
Chinese, lurking in a recess of a money capital of the Occident, many
thousand miles from the Manchu cabal in Peking, who had Oriental and
Occidental detective agencies in their blacklisting pay.
Dr. Sun is a brilliant and enthusiastic speaker in Chinese and in
English. His speeches to the Chinese often extend into hours. His
small copper-plate handwriting in English is better than his Chinese
chirography. He is a polished writer, having published in 1904 in
London a book on “The Chinese Question”. The Manchus have kept Doctor
Sun out of China, and he is therefore not yet thoroughly known to the
Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who fired the first successful shot,
but he is the pick of the southern and the alien Chinese, who are the
best educated of their race, and have largely financed reform: the
Chinese of Canton, Singapore, Penang, noble Hongkong, Macao, America,
England, Japan, Australia, and brilliant Shanghai. He has never held
office under the Manchus at home or abroad, and is therefore not well
known to foreigners in the salons of diplomats, in the capitals of the
Caucasic race, or to the masses of the Chinese in the north and west
provinces, but he is a coming man, and perhaps the most consistent
and steady of the reformers, as he is certainly the most promising,
intellectual and coolly daring. Sun Yat Sen’s name may some day be
Latinized into Sunyacius, just as Kung Fut Tse’s name became popular
as Confucius. Why not also Latinize Yuan Shih Kai’s name into the more
popular Yuanshius? The following incident will throw a light on Sun’s
character: On February 22nd his elder brother, Sun Mei, a man ordinary
in equipment, was almost elected governor of the great province of
Kwangtung as a popular tribute to Sun Yat Sen. The latter wired from
Nanking, disapproving of the choice for the province’s good, and urging
“brother Mei” to confine himself to business, for which he was more
fitted. Such frankness in family relations when public preferment is at
stake, is scarcely common.
Wu Ting Fang, a Cantonese trained at Hongkong, London and Washington,
blossomed out suddenly at Shanghai in November, 1911, as foreign
minister of the provisional Chinese republican government of the
fourteen central, eastern and southern rebel provinces. The western
world stopped its breath in tremendous astonishment. Wu! the brilliant,
fashionable and evasive Chinese minister at Washington, who would
put you off on politics to discuss vegetarianism, a rebel! He was
secretive beyond parallel, and had never talked revolution. The writer
tried to get him to talk reform in 1909 in connection with the reform
prophecies in his book, _The Chinese_, and though Wu had then fully
decided on the part he would take in the coming revolution, he would
only repeat what the writer said, and would express absolutely no
opinion of his own. I have known writers who have flayed him for this
abrupt evasion, calling him a “rice Christian” of yore, a temporizer,
etc., but I admire him for his calmness, fixed resolves, and patience
in waiting for the prodigious hour to strike. Wu knew what was coming,
and was heartily, though secretly, in favor of it. He was the first of
the rebels to insist on foreign acknowledgment of the rebel government,
and he formulated the most brilliant move of the revolution--the
announcement that if foreigners advanced money to the imperialists, and
the republicans won, the latter would repudiate such loans. This really
won the revolution, for numbers of the foreign syndicates, especially
the Russian, were at first heartily in favor of the Manchu _status
quo_. Wu has already codified the reform and penal laws of China, and
is prepared to enter upon that difficult question, extraterritoriality.
Watch Wu; he is not afraid to take the side of “China for the Chinese”,
although he is the most polished in western culture of all Chinese
officials. He aims to interpret the East to the West. Wu risked vast
preferment, and therefore he is a more sincere man than doughty Yuan,
and he will grow in power with the masses of the Chinese nation. His
brother-in-law is the exceedingly able Doctor Ho Kai, Commander of the
Order of Michael and George, the Chinese member of the Legislative
Council of the royal colony of Hongkong Island, a thorough legislator,
a lovable and brilliant man. Wu is a member of a worthy Canton family.
He is a graduate of the Middle Temple, London; has practised before
the Hongkong bar; and he served Li Hung Chang for many years as legal
adviser at Tientsin and Peking, in drawing up foreign treaties, etc.
There were other reformers in China and abroad at work from 1898 to
1911, although the western press gave no attention to the really
astonishing matter. The bitter Hunanese republican rebel, the
irrepressible Hwang Hing, was also exiled by the empress dowager,
Tse Hsi, in 1898. He fled to Japan, with a price on his head also,
and could hardly be restrained from calling the psychic moment for a
revolution into immediate declaration. He was a fast organizer, and
being nearer the ground, was in close enough touch with the Chinese of
the central provinces to be at Wuchang in October, 1911, shortly after
the first blow was struck. He had much to do with the gentry of the
Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who largely financed and precipitated
the main revolution. Hwang is considered by the extremists of his party
as presidential timber. He is a fervent talker, and like Sun, the last
man in the world to be an opportunist, which is the great Yuan’s one
fault in the minds of many of the Chinese people. Hwang Hing is the one
reformer who has some Japanese sympathies, on account of his education
in Japan. He was born at Changsha in Hunan, where Yale College has a
branch.
In America the editors of the _Chung Sai Yat Po_, the _Chinese World_,
and _Free Press_ in San Francisco; the Chinese Students’ Club in New
York (225 East Thirty-first Street), which publishes a journal, and
the _Chinese Reform News_ in New York, often visited by Sun Yat Sen’s
American representative, Wong Man Su, ably took up the propaganda,
which was carried on in their own way by a thousand newspapers which
arose throughout China from 1906 onward, first in the treaty ports,
and later in Chinese cities, especially Canton, Hankau and Shanghai.
Much reference was made to the fact that while China, the largest
Oriental country, was without a real parliament, other Oriental
countries had successfully overthrown despotism and oligarchism, and
had popular assemblies, which granted some representation in return
for the privilege of taxation. Japan had a Diet; even black Russia had
a Duma; the Filipinos had an Assembly; Turkey had an Assembly; little
Persia had a representative Mejliss; native members had at last been
admitted into the Viceroy’s Council in India; and Hongkong, with its
500,000 Chinese had long had two Chinese as brilliant members of the
Legislative Council.
Viceroy Seu Ki Yu’s essay of 1866, praising Washington and
republicanism as ideal, was reissued and distributed, and had great
influence. By 1909 and 1910 the reformers had compelled the Manchus
to heed the howling of the wind, and see the shadow of a cloud, at
least as big as a man’s hand, on the horizon of internal politics. The
dowager empress, Tse Hsi, and later, Prince Ching, and the regent,
Prince Chun--all Manchus--granted provincial and national assemblies;
but they were called and considered only “Tsecheng Yuan” (advice
boards), and not legislative bodies in the free and full sense of
the word. The pensions of the Manchus and bannermen in the various
Chinese cities were decreased, and land was offered them so that they
might enter the industrial body. Many Manchus rebelled, as at Chingtu
City in September, 1911. Argument increased. The cloud on the horizon
grew larger. Objection was made to the court’s monopoly of the rich
copper mines of Yunnan province, and complaint was reiterated that
while the southern provinces mainly supported the imperial authority
in taxes paid, these provinces were the least consulted, and the
weakest in representation in any governmental consultations that
were held at Peking. The government developed the armies and schools
of the three northern provinces of Pechili, Shangtung and Shansi with
taxes collected mainly in the southern provinces, where the government
neglected schools, police and army divisions. It was hard to get the
Stuart kings to call Parliaments, and when at a belated date they did,
complaint was louder than ever, for there was something to complain of,
and at last a constitutional place to complain in.
These Chinese assemblies gave little representation directly to the
masses, a high property or high tax qualification debarring them as
in Japan; but the gentry of the guilds, in many cases, espoused the
reform sentiment of the masses, exactly as the Stuart Parliaments did
to the disgust of the Stuarts who hoped for monarchic support, and as
the barons of the “Magna Charta” did at Runnymede to the disgust of
Plantagenet John. One provincial assembly president we must note at
this point. He is Tang Hua Lung, of the Hupeh Assembly. When Hankau was
taken on October 10, 1911, Tang jumped to the front as organizer of
the first rebel provincial government; the “province of Hupeh of the
Republic of Han”, with headquarters at Wuchang on the Yangtze River,
the ancient viceregal capital of the illustrious Chang Chih Tung. With
Tang Hua, Sun Yu, brother of Sun Yat Sen, came into prominence. In the
mother province of reform, the most progressive province politically
of all the twenty-one, Kwangtung, Wu Hon Man agitated in his assembly
for reform, and when the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming Chi, fled to
Hongkong, because he could find no other refuge, Wu Hon Man rushed into
the yamen at Canton with the rebelling Sixteenth, and other regiments,
and took charge of that great province for the republican rebels. In
its nationalization-of-railways scheme, the Manchus confiscated the
Kwangtung railways, promising to pay the owners only sixty per cent. of
their investment. Title deeds of mines in Kwangtung and other provinces
were also confiscated by the tyrannical Manchu government.
China’s army was a territorial one. Troops raised in this way are
hard to control in local emergencies, but they are easier to recruit,
mobilize, drill and discipline at the beginning than mixed corps. Among
the Generals of Divisions, transferred from the Navy Department, was Li
Yuan Heng, on whom the revolutionaries largely fixed their hopes as the
man trained and true for the real deeds of deadly arms, which make new
governments possible. Propaganda and patience are all right in their
places, but powder needs a special man of a stern mold, fit to deal
with merciless and terrible enemies. General Li was one of these men,
and General Hwang, Sun Yat Sen’s special representative at the Hankau
and Hanyang battles, was another. General Ling, on the rebels’ right
wing and the republican commander-in-chief, General Hsu Shao Ching,
at Shanghai, were others. General Li’s proclamation of the “Republic
of Han”, with military headquarters at Wuchang, covered the following
points:
1. Expulsion of the Manchu dynasty.
PROHIBITED ON PAIN OF DEATH
2. Injuring foreigners.
3. Injuring business by taking advantage of war.
4. Rapine, arson and adultery.
5. Mobbing.
6. Preventing recruiting.
7. Withstanding commissariat.
TO BE REWARDED HIGHLY
8. Supplying commissariat.
9. Supplying ammunition.
10. Protecting foreign concessions.
11. Protecting foreign missions.
12. Spreading republican and reform (Sia Hwei) propaganda.
13. Facilitating restoration of business and commerce.
General Li, a Hupeh man, was the Marlborough of the revolution, a
young, dashing, Christian soldier, used to courts, fine-looking, full
of humor, traveled, approachable. General Hsu, as the successful siege
of Nanking was later to prove, was the Grant of the revolution, steady,
reasonable, persistent, a spender of men, a strategist and a pounder.
General Li was educated at the Pei Yang naval colleges at Tientsin and
Chifu, and at Japanese military and naval schools at Tokio, Kure and
Yokosuka, where the name of China’s one naval hero of the China-Japan
War, Admiral Ting, of the famous battleships _Chen Yuen_ and _Ting
Yuen_, is held in considerable respect. Li passed through the terrific
fire of the naval engagements of the _Yalu_ and _Wei Hai Wei_ in 1894.
He is a Protestant Episcopalian. He traveled round the world with Li
Hung Chang in 1896, so that America and Britain were then entertaining
unawares one of the Washingtons of republican China.
As general of the Twentieth Division of the northern army, camped at
Lanchow, just east of Peking, was General Chang Shao Tsen (we shall
call him Chang the First to distinguish him from two other generals
Chang of the Manchu camp at Nanking and elsewhere in the northeastern
provinces). Chang the First was well trained by the revolutionists
in their doctrines of liberty, and was told to watch two camps, the
so-called People’s National Assembly at Peking and the Manchu Court
at Peking. Chang the First was trained in war by Yuan Shih Kai and
the Manchu general-in-chief, Yin Tchang, both of whom were effective
men, the former schooled by Tientsin and Peking foreigners, the latter
well trained in the Austrian ranks and before the line of guards at
Berlin. In old Canton, the mighty stanch Wu Hon Man was president of
the provincial assembly of Kwangtung province. He, too, was ready
to declare for rebellion, despite the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming,
and the loyal Tartar general, who were quartered on his province. In
the north, Governor Sun Hao Chi, of classic old Shangtung province
(the home of Confucius), was ready to go over. In the province where
Shanghai is located, the president of the assembly, Chang Chien, who
proposes to visit American chambers of commerce, and who is well known
as the host in China of visiting Pacific coast chambers of commerce,
was more than ready to declare for reform. He, with Wu Ting Fang, was
insistent on the abdication of the Manchu dynasty and the declaration
of a republic.
At Lhasa, in far-away Tibet, was an imperial resident who had been
trained in reform at Shanghai and in law at Yale College, in America.
He was the eminent Wen Tsung Yao, destined to be the assistant foreign
minister of the first rebel government, and whose son (a West Point
graduate) was slated to lead the most daring charges at Hankau and
Nanking. Even in the home of the Manchus, at Mukden, Wu Yun Lien, a
Chinese immigrant, president of the Manchuria Assembly, was filled with
the doctrine and ready to declare for reform. Great viceroys, who had
served China long in official positions under the Manchus, were ready
to go over, but for the most part the radical reformers were new men,
unknown to the world, as the Manchus had naturally never given office
to them.
Many causes, all important, helped to precipitate the crisis. Sheng
Kung Pao and others at Peking, Tientsin and Hankau, both Chinese and
Manchus whom foreigners know well, had, partly under foreign advice
and Japan’s example, planned to compel the provinces and the gentry
of the guilds to sell out their many little railroads, a number of
which were paying well, to the central government, which intended to
nationalize the railroads quickly under immense loans from the banking
nations of the Occident and Japan. These loans meant to the local
gentry the extinction of distributed small fortunes and opportunities;
concessions of mines to foreigners, such as the immense gifts of
franchises to the British “Peking Syndicate” in Shansi province, to
the London and China syndicate in Hupeh province, to Belgian, German,
French, Italian and other syndicates; heavy interest; continuation of
the unscientific Likin system of customs as a security, and payment
of obnoxious bonuses, as when Hupeh province, under Chang Chih Tung,
in 1904, had to pay a bonus to buy back a Chinese railway concession;
and in 1911, when China had to buy the bonds which represented by an
excess payment of $3,750,000 a Chinese railroad which existed only on
paper; and as Professor Ross points out in _The Changing Chinese_, when
Shansi province had to pay a syndicate over two millions to relinquish
an undeveloped concession in China which cost them almost nothing.
The bitter complaint, _written in blood_, of the Hunanese of Changsha
City on this subject is quoted in the New York _Railway-Age Gazette_
of October 13, 1911, and includes this sentence: “When a piece of meat
is in the traitorous railway thief’s mouth, it is hard to take it
out.” All may not agree with the Chinese position, but all should duly
consider the Chinese side of the question as expressed in their words.
“Peking has betrayed Wuchang,” cried the Hupeh men.
There were many more instances from the Sungari to the Yangtze basins,
yea, to the Mekong basin, through 2,500 miles of mine and men, traffic
and trade, of the hard bargain driven by the foreign lender, generally
under bad foreign advice.
No foreign house should ever send a representative to China unless it
is willing to send an enlightened and humane man, who intellectually
appreciates the able Chinese as much as he appreciates the foreigner,
and whose sympathies are equally divided between Cathay and his own
nation. Only such a man can deal fairly and give impartial advice,
which alone in the end will win for the foreigner what properly is
his of the profit and prestige. “Why should we, with the richest
mines on earth; the richest passenger, freight and labor field; with
lands plethoric of water power and grain; and the lowest debt, if
unjust coerced indemnities were wiped out, pay foreigners such immense
bonuses, interest and concessions, discounts and profits to go out of
our country”; rang the cry, not only in Hupeh, Hunan, Szechuen, Shansi
and Kwangtung provinces, but even in native papers printed under the
shadow of the foreign banks on the bund at Tientsin in the north.
There was one large meeting of protest held by the Chinese of British
Hongkong in the Chui Yin Hotel on September 3, 1911, delegates
attending even from distant Szechuen province. Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s
memorial was recalled: “The wealth of the country is being monopolized
by foreigners”. The Railroad Protective Association, of Chingtu City,
in August, 1911, issued a famous placard in which the four banking
nations in caricature were made to say: “The wealth of the four
provinces of Szechuen, Kwangtung, Hunan and Hupeh, all is given to
us four foreign nations to swallow down at one gulp”. Chinese men,
women and children, bound together before the ancestral graves, are
made to say: “Bound helplessly; it is unbearable. We are bound in one
bunch to be given to foreigners. Come quickly, friends of the Railroad
Protective Association, and deliver us.” The loot, lying ready for the
syndicates of the four nations to take away, is pictured as cash money,
bullion sycee, bank bills, and books of China’s Confucian classics and
history. Other caricatures were prepared so as to inflame patriotism
in the breasts of the new students, the foreigner being made to say
cynically: “The venal students only want their up-keep, purchased
diplomas, political office, four chair bearers, free theatricals and
they’ll hush up. The mask may be brave as a dragon’s head, but the tail
is cowardly as a crawling snake.”
Remembering that Russia and Japan, in 1896, etc., first sought for
railway control and then practically occupied the three Manchurian
provinces, we can understand the patriot’s side of the following
article objecting to the three nations’ railway loan, published in
Chinese in a Hankau paper: “The merchants of Hupeh urge the people to
take shares in the Szechuen, Canton and Hankau railways. The people of
China are in a sad plight. Why is China so poor that every foreigner
is eager to come to her aid? You Chinese say you have plenty of money,
but you are unwilling to loan it. Why do you not use your money to
construct these railway lines? If you do not, the foreigners will
come under false pretenses, destroy your nationality, and cut off
your supplies. England has used this diabolical system to obliterate
Egypt; otherwise how could she have got it?” Even if a foreign banker,
statesman or merchant does not fully agree with the local feeling of
the Chinese, it is wise to look frankly at their side of the argument
in making educational, financial and political plans in the future.
There was much complaint also of the private hoards of the Manchu
princes, both in strong-boxes and in foreign banks. The taxes levied
in the southern provinces mainly supported the empire, and these
taxes were increased. Something then was brewing, especially in the
southern and central provinces. The word went forth, “We are not Boxer
murderers if we cry China for the Chinese, and it is not fair to put a
stone around China’s neck with indemnities just because you are ahead
of us in possessing fleets. We love the American and British peoples,
and their glorious books on _Liberty_, even if we do not love some of
your unregulated trusts any more than you and your Supreme Court’s
decisions do! We are willing to pay a fair rate of interest. Not a
hair of a foreigner is to be touched. We appreciate the education and
lovable alienation of the missionaries, and especially the miracle of
Occidental medicine and surgery.”
Here is the guarantee of the “Sia Hwei” (reform association), of
Fuchau, to the Methodist and other missionaries of Fukien province. “We
have just heard that the missionaries, on account of the uprising of
the New China revolutionary associations, with their just cause, have
been requested by your foreign consuls to go to the provincial capital,
Fuchau, to be protected. The Chinese people have become very much
enlightened and their old customs have changed. The Chinese people and
the missionaries’ church are at peace, because your church has opened
schools, hospitals, orphanages and similar good institutions. Not one
of these but is held deep in the hearts of the Chinese people. Although
we are a humble folk, still we have seen and appreciated these things.
This reform association requests that you missionaries remain at your
posts throughout the province. Should anything unforeseen occur, we
should, of course, exert ourselves to protect you and your property.
We are quite sure that we can afford efficient protection from mobs
and imperialists.” These Fukien people were as good as their word,
for besides sending levies to the revolution, the “hsiang lao” (head
men) of the villages organized home guards for the protection of both
foreigners and natives. When the revolution broke out at Wuchang, the
soldiers of the thirtieth regiment escorted the American missionaries
out of the line of fire from Serpent Hill. The American Episcopal
missionaries crowded aboard the German freighter _Belgravia_, bound for
Shanghai, the American gunboat _Helena_, Commander Knepper, standing
by. The revolutionary soldiers of Generals Li and Hwang shouted a peace
message: “American republicans are brothers of ours; good-by!”
A cry went through the vast nation that the Manchu dynasty of usurpers
was signing away the land with hardly a struggle: Tonquin to France;
Formosa and vast Korea to Japan; rich Manchuria, and possibly Jungaria,
to Russia; Kiaochou to Germany; and so on, even little Portugal wanting
more of Heungshan Peninsula; the effete nations of Europe, with only
paper ships, “bluffing” like the monster nations, all demanding “your
provinces or your life”, and getting the provinces. The articles in the
independent press in America were translated in many instances into
Chinese, and the spirit of protest in America, Britain and Germany was
emulated in awakened China. The minority Manchus could not be trusted
to control the Chinese, and “pack” boards (Pus), ministries, and even
assemblies, to suit themselves. Government by “privileged minority”
was being called in question throughout the earth as unconstitutional;
why not in China? There must be true popular government, which the
Manchus postponed from month to month with “standpat” doctrines, and
while a deliberative body was formed at Peking, the ministries, boards
and the majority of the National Assembly were appointed in “machine”
style by the Manchus from their set, which, of course, included many
of the Manchuized Chinese, as well as Manchus and Mongols. The Chinese
officials--the old literati--are the viceroys, ministers and members of
the governing boards, whom we foreigners best know. Many of them are
very able, and some of them love reform, but few of them dared anything
for the revolution except Wu Ting Fang. Give him that credit as often
as possible.
The heavy indemnities, amounting to the awful sum of $250,000,000, for
the massacres of 1900, which the “Boxer” empress dowager, Tse Hsi, a
Manchu, approved, have been a heavy load upon the Chinese people of
the southern and central provinces, who had nothing to do with the
persecution of foreigners. The Chinese of the taxed south greatly
appreciated, therefore, American and British action in returning
part of their indemnities. But other nations should do likewise. The
_Westminster Gazette_, of London, now supports this position.
Histories of peoples, not dynasties and oligarchies, such as John
Richard Green’s _History of the English People_; books which helped
to bring about the American revolution; the American missionary,
Doctor Macklin’s, Chinese translation of Henry George’s _Progress and
Poverty_; great pæans of liberty and political pain the world over;
editorials from the progressive American press; chapters from American
and English books which sympathized with the Chinese, were translated
and read. The notable book _Service_ was re-read. It was written in
1897 by Tan Sze Tung, the son of a governor of Hupeh province. Tan
was one of the martyrs of 1898 who were beheaded by the dowager, Tse
Hsi. Tan’s book criticized absolute monarchy and recommended reform in
politics and commerce. Sin Chin Nan, by translating parts of Dickens,
had shown the Chinese people that the common man endured wrongs
that should be righted. Thomas Paine’s _The Crisis_, which was read
before the American regiments of 1776, was translated to be read to
revolutionary societies like Sun Yat Sen’s “Ka Ming Tang” and the “Sia
Hwei.” Special note was taken of the establishment of a Duma even in
oligarchic Russia; the success of the Young Turk party in even such a
terrific oligarchy as Turkey; the successful revolt in Mexico, where a
practical oligarchy gave lands to favorites and would not grant real
popular government; and the representation of the Oriental race in the
legislative bodies of Hongkong, India, Straits Settlements and the
Philippines.
The preliminary dance was opened in September, 1911, by far western
Szechuen province, Peking issuing this edict in the yellow _Peking
Gazette_: “Whoever shall serve us by killing rebels or by capturing and
binding members of the rebellion party, shall be rewarded regardless of
rules.” The Peking government had practically confiscated the railways
of the Szechuenese, as the paper which they were given in exchange bore
no guarantee of interest, and no reliance was put upon the value of the
security by the provincial gentry, bankers and farmers. When provinces
and states lose confidence in the sincerity of a fixed central
government that is not run by parties, that government totters to its
fall. A national anthem was given to the nation to sing:
“May China be preserved!
In this time of the Manchu dynasty,
We are fortunate to see real splendor;
May the heavens protect the imperial family.”
The south only sang it in parodies. The railway board (Yuchuan Pu) was
putting through its nationalization-of-railways scheme, in accordance
with the $50,000,000 gold loan from the syndicates of four of the
banking nations. To back up arguments, troops were increased under the
various generals, Tartar and Manchuized Chinese. Some of these troops
were from the federal army, northern divisions, and had been trained
by Yuan and General Yin Tchang. Some were provincial viceroys’ troops,
trained both under foreign and native systems, like the splendid army
of the Yunnan viceroy, Li Chin Hsi. The small railway owners, the small
mine owners, the contractors of man-transportation, the noted farmers
and river men of Szechuen province, were ordered to consent to the new
scheme of a national railway to break across Szechuen province from
Ichang to Chingtu, and for other railways in the province. The terms of
the foreign loan, the price at which the bankrupt federal government
would pretend to buy out the provincial gentry and guilds, the heavy
new taxes on the west and south, were all partly explained, and the men
of Szechuen (by blood largely Hupeh and Hunan provinces’ emigrants)
rebelled and “fired the shot that was heard around the world”.
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The Assembly Hall at Wuchang, where the Eighth Hupeh Division under
General Li Yuan Heng fired the volley that was heard round the
world, and ushered in republican China. In the background is
Serpent Hill.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The high tide of the revolution; Nanking’s walls; the crowded boat life
of China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Honorable Doctor Sun Yat Sen, founder of the Chinese republic,
Director-General of the National Railway development; leader
of the Tung Men Hwai, the advanced party in China. By birth, a
Southern Chinese (Kwangtung province), the type best known to
foreigners.
]
A noted, partially loyal Chinese general was shortly put in command
of the imperial troops in the ancient capital, Chingtu. His name was
General Chao Ehr Feng, the famous commander who did the astonishing
thing, both from a religious and military point of view, in 1910, of
driving the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and Tibet into Darjeeling, in
India, and thus putting Buddhism and its pope at the feet of Confucian
China. China also brought up her bloodiest general, Tsen Chun Hsuan,
infamous for putting out the last terrific Mohammedan rebellion in
mountainous Yunnan province of the clouds, in unnecessary rivers of
blood. Foreigners scowled at the employment of this man, and Manchu
China was a little uncertain. Promises meant nothing to Tsen. He was
a man-eating tiger, the bloodiest man in the world, who pretended and
looked to be nothing else, and was descended from as bloody generals.
Peking meant business, and the railway policy, which was as much a war
policy, seemed to be going through.
It was not long, however, before General Chao’s forces were cooped up
in Chingtu, which was besieged by the rebelling province of Szechuen
under the leadership of the president of assembly, Pu Tien Chun, and
in the engagements General Chao was captured and decapitated. The
strategic importance of the railways already built then appeared like
the flash of a saber at the bare neck of the victim. Modern troops were
hurried down to Hankau by rail in twenty-four hours and up the river
to Ichang by steamer, in the rear and on the flank of the besiegers.
Then something like thunder happened among the divisions which had
been mobilized at the triple cities of Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankau.
The Eighth Division, under General Li Yuan Heng, territorial troops of
the modern army, hoisted the rebel tri-color sun flag of red, white
and blue over the yellow dragon of the Manchus, put white bands on
their arms and rebelled for the new-born republic of Han. They captured
the leading arsenal, steel and coal plant at Hanyang, the populous
commercial city of Hankau, and the luxurious viceregal capital of
Wuchang on October 13, 1911. This put a high standard on the rebellion,
for Li was a young well-trained general of the new school, a diplomat,
a sturdy man in the field, a patriot who could not be bought and who
was organizer enough to see that his men were not bought. Admiral
Sah, with a fleet of gunboats and small cruisers, aided the imperial
divisions under the bloody general, Chang Piao Tuan, which tried to
retake the native city of Hankau. Li’s troops, especially his “Dare
to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) Brigade of shaven round-heads, fought bravely,
although their artillery was only equipped with percussion shells, as
compared with the time-fuse shells brought down from Peking, Tientsin
and Kiaochou to supply the imperial troops. When ammunition ran out,
the rebel troops used the bayonet charge with reckless daring. It was
a new era in fighting in China when yellow men would charge, with
only cold steel, across an area swept by machine guns. On October
21st, Generals Li and Hwang, with 15,000 ill-equipped rebels, won the
battle of Kwang Shili in Hupeh against General Yin Tchang, the Manchu
minister of war and commander-in-chief, with 20,000 finely equipped
loyalists. Part of General Li’s force was a section of an army division
which had gone over. Others of his new troops were recruited from the
most famous boatmen of the world, the Szechuen trackers of the wild
rapids and sublime gorges of the glorious Yangtze River, and from the
indefatigable, cheerful mountain coolies of Hupeh province, who are as
agile as a chamois.
The propaganda of the rebels now bore fruit in rapid succession. On
October 22nd the rebels, under the leadership of Tan Yen Kai, president
of the Hunan Assembly, took Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.
Yale College has a branch in this long forbidden city. Hunan has
always been notable for honest, sturdy, independent men. It is the
proudest province and the sternest in China. “What way Hunan goes,
that way goes China.” It was the last province to permit missionary
activity. Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi province, the land of
pottery, was taken on the same day, completing the occupation of the
four adjoining central Yangtze provinces, which was all that Sun
(Sunyacius) first planned to do, as a beginning and a basis on which
to solicit foreign loans. It was rebellion indeed, and not a riot. The
Tartars, Manchus and loyalists fled. New provincial governments were
set up, each with a popular assembly. Peking was desperate, for China
was almost split in half by the political earthquake. Peking felt sure
that she held the north, however, with a well-equipped army of about
twenty divisions. The reformers, however, had breathed into the ear of
the troops, and pay was overdue in the impoverished condition of the
central government.
On October 24th, ancient Singan, the capital of the north-western
province of Shensi, the original capital of China, where the empress
dowager, Tse Hsi, fled in 1900, went over to the rebels, despite the
threats of the bloody Mongol governor, General Sheng Yun. This really
meant a fifth seceding province, as far as the populace was concerned.
On the same day, Kowkiang on the Yangtze went over. Then Kweilin, the
capital of Kwangsi province, went over on October 25th. This was the
first of the southern provinces to join the movement openly. On October
25th noble Fuchau, the famous seaport capital of old Fukien province,
went over, and we have already quoted a wonderful message to the white
man from their “Sia Hwei” (reform association). On October 26th,
Ngan-king, capital of Nganhwei province, declared for the rebels, and
on the same day General Li was suggested as provisional president of
the forming republic of Han, with six of China’s twenty-one provinces
already seceding. Reform was as hot as a prairie fire, and almost as
hard to manage.
On October 29th a remarkable thing occurred among the divisions being
massed for an attack on the rebels’ capital at Wuchang. The Twentieth
Division was at Lanchow camp, east of Peking, under General Chang Shao
Teng. They formed the famous Army League, and made reform demands
on the packed National Assembly at Peking, just as Cæsar’s immortal
Thirteenth Legion, before the rebellion, sent demands to the Roman
Senate, whose orders they were supposed to take. In consternation, the
packed National Assembly granted the Nineteen Constitutional Articles,
and the Manchu regent, Prince Chun, an able and traveled man (he went
to Germany in 1901) daily issued edicts and yellow Peking Gazettes,
full of tearful promises, in which, however, the central and southern
rebellious provinces had no confidence. They said: “Edicts are like the
wings of day and night; it all depends on which side the sun is.” This
action of the Twentieth Division halted the government’s war measures,
and plans were laid to get loyal divisions near the Lanchow camp, and
get rid of General Chang the First. This general was not strong enough
to attack Peking on his own account, for there were imperial divisions
between him and Generals Li and Hwang of the revolutionists. But he was
strong enough to be stubborn, and not move forward. Peking was largely
in panic. The railroad station was piled high with household goods,
and excursion trains for the flight of the Manchus were running to
Tientsin as fast as they could be switched. The streets of Peking were
crowded with mule carts, bearing bullion sycee and coins to be stored
in the vaults of foreign banks in the legation quarter. No one half
guessed before the wealth which the pensioned and privileged Manchus
had in cache. Proud princes of the blood were even willing to stand
up all the way to Tientsin in open coal cars. Foreigners, legations,
railways and banks were popular as never before in the north, as a
very present refuge in time of trouble! Marvelous treasures of vases,
tapestries, and jade were entrusted to foreigners for safe-keeping,
and the treasures of the Mukden and Peking palaces were sacrificed,
foreign agents taking advantage of the opportunity. Where could a
Manchu take them: to Jehol, to Kalgan where the Russ waited, to Mukden
where the Japanese waited? That was only like running from the door
to be caught on the roof. Before long, treasures next in wonder to
those looted at Peking in 1900 will find their way into the palaces,
mansions and museums of the Occident, and artistic China will be robbed
bare as a bone; for Peking has long been robbing China of art. The
hotels and khans of Peking were crowded to the roofs, and the refugees
overflowed into the cellars and stables and moats. Merchantmen were
chartered, and held with steam up at Tientsin, ready to afford a refuge
for panic-stricken Manchu princes, or disgraced Chinese officials
like Sheng. Missionaries in the outskirts trusted the promises of the
“Sia Hwei”, and stayed at their posts. Alarmed consuls arrested them
in order to bring them into the capital, and the Chinese forgot the
dignity due to their arms and laughed at the humorously incongruous
situation!
On November 3rd, the Imperial Third Division under General Wong Chou
Yuen, with the assistance of Admiral Sah’s fleet, attacked the rebels
in native Hankau City. The vast flat city is not adapted for defense,
and the loyalists were infinitely better equipped. General Li was short
of ammunition. His troops, however, put up a brave fight, time and
again charging hopelessly with cold steel against machine guns, and
eliciting the unqualified admiration of the foreigners. On that day the
Imperial Third Division made a bloody name for itself in the respect
of massacre of non-combatants and arson. A prosperous city of nearly a
million was reduced to the appearance of nearly a wrecked village. Both
rebels and loyalists saved the foreign quarter along the Yangtze Bund,
with its palatial consulates and business houses, and the American
Episcopal St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Peter’s church, which were
turned into hospitals by Doctors Glenton and MacWillie, and nurse Miss
Clark of the Red Cross. Across the river at Wuchang, the buildings of
the American Episcopal Boone University were turned into a hospital by
Doctors Merrins, Paterson and others of the brave. Heroic missionaries
held up their hands against the Third Division, and pleaded the rules
of the Red Cross, but the Manchus, especially Prince Tsai Tao and
others of the Tsai princes, desired by a massacre to induce the rebels
to massacre the first time they had a victory, and thus bring on
foreign intervention to save the dynasty. A dynasty that can not stand
without foreign intervention will never stand, for true strength is
in the hearts of the people alone. It was the old Boxer trick of the
dowager empress, Tse Hsi, in 1900.
The rebels, however, meant to keep their heads, even under such
terrific provocation as that bloody Race Track field of Hankau, over
which the machine guns of the Imperial Third Division swept, and those
bloody streets, maloos and walls where non-combatants were butchered
if they wore a piece of white, or had their queues severed, both of
which were hated rebel signs. To and fro the tide of war surged. On
November 3rd, a great change occurred, for on that day the rebels’
great misfortune in having no fleet, was to a large degree nullified.
Shanghai arsenal, which supplied Admiral Sah’s fleet, and Shanghai’s
native walled city, went over to the revolutionists. This was the
second great step forward. The rebels secured the well-known Wu Ting
Fang as foreign minister of the republic of Han, and their organization
spread and strengthened in everything except money and a modern
equipped force.
On the same day, the far southwestern capital and province, Yunnan,
with its splendid army and police, declared for the red, white and
blue sun flag of the republic. Two days after, on November 5th, the
famous bore-city, Hangchow, the center of culture, and capital of the
coast province of Chekiang, was captured by assault, the Manchu general
putting up a strong defense in the Tartar walled section of the city.
Ningpo, in the same province, and Suchow, another ancient capital of
culture in Kiangsu province, went over on the same day.
On November 6th, Admiral Sah’s sailors handed part of the imperial
fleet over to the rebels at Shanghai, and the rebels were now able to
reform their center line. This also gave the republicans their first
nucleus of a navy. Admiral Sah Chen Ping received his baptism of fire
in the battle of the Yalu, under the brave Admiral Ting and Commander
Teng. He commanded in suppressing riots at Changsha in 1910, when Yale
College branch was barely saved, and he is well known as the host
of Admiral Emery’s American fleet at Amoy, when the white squadron
was girdling the world under the surprised eyes of Japan, whose
mixed-school and emigration “bluffs” were called by President Roosevelt
in this significant but quiet way. It was most important to win Kiangsu
province, and Chinkiang City was therefore talked over on November 6th.
The same day, in the far north, the coaling city and naval base of
Chifu in Shangtung province, declared for reform.
Up to this time the cultured old Ming capital of Nanking, the most
beloved city in China, had held out under a concentrated force of
12,000 imperialists, who were unusually well equipped. After Wuchang,
Hanyang and Shanghai, it was next in importance to capture Nanking
on the right wing of the rebels. The imperialists knew that to hold
Nanking was worth an army of 200,000 men, and General Chang Hsun (we
will call him Chang the Second) was in equipment and temper a man
to their minds. His second in command was General Chao, and it was
rumored that bloody General Chang Piao was within the walls. The civil
viceroy of Nanking was the well known Chang Jen Chung, who instituted
the first Chinese industrial exhibition at Nanking in 1910. On the
northeast of the walled city are the peaks of Purple Mountain, 1,400
feet high, dominating with its huge Armstrong and Krupp guns the north
gate, Ta Ping Men, and the east gate, Chao Yang Men, and the great
capital, around which the mighty Yangtze flows, yellow flooded to the
brim. This hill, and the Tartar section of the city, Chang the Second
fortified, so that it would take a hundred to one to drive him out.
On November 8th, the dauntless rebels, led by General Ling, under the
protection of fire from the Canton artillery, took the armory, arsenal
and powder mills outside the south wall, rushed the outworks, and held
part of the southern city with insufficient force. One of the cannon
balls went crashing through the “North Pole” pagoda in the Tartar City.
On November 9th, the imperialists at the strong south fort (Nan Men)
hoisted a white flag of apparent surrender, and as the republicans
came up, “near enough to see the white of their eyes,” they opened a
treacherous fire upon them. The Manchu troops, under General Tieh
Liang, looted their own fine military school in the city. There let us
leave the rebel lines and pickets for a few days, while General Li and
General Hwang on the far left wing were being appealed to for men, and
above all, for siege and machine guns and ammunition.
On November 9th, Fuchau had to be stormed again, for the imperialists
had been reinforced. On that same day, Canton, always stanch for a
modern China, and mother of nearly all the reformers, went over to
the rebels under President of Assembly Wu Hon Man, General Chan Kwang
Ming, and Wong Ching Wai, and drove the imperial viceroy to Hongkong
near by, where the British government pleaded with the great Chinese
body to spare their unwelcome hostage, who had fled in Chinese custom
“to a city of refuge”. All over China, as in the Palestine of the
Bible, are towers of refuge for this very purpose. The American cruiser
_New Orleans_, Captain Miller, had steamed up to Nanking and taken
on board hundreds of foreigners, including seventy-five Americans,
and records. On November 10th, bloody Chang the Second gave orders,
in the old “Boxer” trick plan, for the awful massacre of Nanking.
The aim was first to incite the imperial soldiery with the sight of
blood, as tigers baited. On the lovely bright afternoon, the prison was
opened and 200 prisoners were sent into the yamen courtyard, “to their
freedom,” as they thought. There they were made to kneel in a row,
while their necks were stretched out by the queue. An executioner, with
a mercury weighted Taifo shortsword, hurried along the long line, using
only one practised blow to sever each head. The heads were elevated on
bamboo poles. The Manchu troops then tasted the blood in the belief
that human blood would make them brave and invulnerable. They even
dipped their coarse biscuits in the gory pools. They were then ready
for anything that was merciless.
In force, Chang’s trained troops, with machine guns, swept down from
Purple Mountain, Tiger fort, Lion fort and the Tartar section of the
city, on the small force of republicans, and the innocent population
of Nanking the Refined. Shame on the Ninth Division of Shangtung
territorial troops and the old-style turbaned “braves”. Every man
who had no queue; every woman who had the rebel sign of white in her
apparel or hair; every man, woman or child who was a Nankingese was
slaughtered without opposition, and the odious Ninth Division waded
back to Tiger, Lion and Purple Hills through the bloody shambles.
This was not war; not even hell; this was an insane massacre of the
innocents. The few republican troops under the indomitable General Ling
fought until their ammunition was spent, and then with cold steel set,
they awaited the rain of bullets from machine guns across the lead
swept spaces of the immense, half-built-up city. It availed nothing.
Peking breathed with hope. Chang the Second was a general after the
“Boxer” Manchu heart. Manchu princes--yea, even those who had visited
America and England, like the dashing Prince Tsai Tao and Prince Tsai
Chun, and who should have known better--had been urging massacres, and
Chang the Second had apparently understood them. General Chang the
Second was heartily backed up by the merciless Tartar general, Tieh
Liang.
On November 11th, Amoy, the famous port of Fukien province, where
American officers have been so often entertained by Admiral Sah and
other Chinese admirals, was taken, the American cruiser _Saratoga_ (the
old _New York_ of Santiago fame) and the American gunboat _Quiros_
steaming out of the harbor so as to be non-combatants in fact and
in influence. The American monitor _Monterey_, so as to protect
foreigners, later steamed into the harbor, where she was often struck
by stray bullets. On November 13th, the most remarkable thing thus far
in the revolution occurred, though the impulse was not permanently
fixed. Mukden, the home capital of the Manchu race, the mausoleum of
their founder, and of many of their dead emperors, under the influence
of Chinese immigrants, declared its independence under General Wuh
Hsiang Chen, and the reform speaker of the Mukden Assembly, Wu Lun
Lien. During all this turmoil, Pechili, Shansi, and Honan provinces
were strongly held by Manchu and Mongol “banner” troops, but Foreign
Minister Wu Ting Fang of the republicans got a note through to the
American minister at Peking, asking him to deliver it to the Manchu
regent, Prince Chun. The note requested the Court to abdicate, and
retire to Jehol, 200 miles northeast of Peking, where they were
promised positive protection, and liberal pensions. In the meantime
Yuan Shih Kai returned from exile at Chang Te in Honan province to
Peking, and took up the reins of power as provisional premier of
a limited Manchu monarchy; began treating with the republicans,
solidifying the Manchu army, and soliciting foreign loans, as the
empress dowager’s strong-box no longer furnished funds. Only three out
of twenty-one provinces, and three territories, were now remitting to
Peking, but Peking had the mighty northern army.
On November 17th, the revolutionists under Generals Li and Hwang
attacked the imperial lines at Hankau, and despite their poor equipment
in machine guns and artillery, led by a regiment of Roundheads called
“Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) men, commanded by Colonel Wen, who graduated
from West Point in 1909, they took three of the four parallels by
cold steel charges, sapper work and bomb throwing. One of the rebel
shells from Wuchang punched a hole in a 2,000,000-gallon tank of oil in
Hankau, and the streets were flooded two feet deep with kerosene. It
was the first time that Chinese had met Chinese in scientific modern
war, and it marked the entrance of China into the modern arena, where
Might strikes for Right, instead of only arguing for it. China had
begun to find herself. Meanwhile there was distress in Singan in the
north, which city had declared for reform on October 24th. The Manchus
had retaken the suburbs of the city, for it was in their sphere of
control, and had begun, with their mobs, to massacre missionaries, as
was expected. The China Inland Mission outside the city was attacked,
and the English Baptist, Scandinavian and American missions throughout
the province were struck at. Blame was put on the Mohammedans wherever
possible.
Let us go down to Nanking for a moment, to see how the war is
progressing. To keep Nanking and Shanghai in touch, the Americans had
brought up their beautiful cruisers _New Orleans_ and _Albany_, for the
American Vice-consul Gilbert and the intrepid American missionaries,
Doctor Macklin, President Bowen, Mr. Blackstone, Mr. Garrett and
others were in the city. General Hsu of the imperialists, with the
Thirty-fifth Regiment of Infantry, on November 21st, hoisted the red,
white and blue flag and left the strong lines of Purple Mountain and
the Tartar city to join the rebel ranks, which were being reinforced
from Canton and other directions also. Bloody General Chang the Second,
the imperial commander, immediately had all General Hsu’s relatives in
Nanking murdered in revenge.
In far-away London, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, with an American adviser and
friend, “General” Homer Lea, set sail for Shanghai on the same day. He
first went to Paris, and then took the liner _Martha_ at Marseilles
for Hongkong, from which place he planned safely to reach Shanghai to
complete the rebel government. On November 22nd, when the imperialists
with all their foreign friendships were unable to consummate their
loans, the rebels at Shanghai opened a Republic of Han Central Bank,
with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The title of the bank was the “Chung
Hua”, and the first notes were dated in the 4609th year of Huang Ti
(august sovereign), he being the mythical first emperor of China,
and the inventor of the Chinese ideograph. The notes were printed in
English on one side and entitled “The Republican China Military Bank
Note”. Other notes were issued by the provincial rebels and read as
follows in English and Chinese: “The Chinese Revolutionary Government
promises to pay the bearer ---- dollars after one year of its
establishment in China on demand at the Treasury of the said government
in Canton, or its agents abroad. 1st January, 1911. For President
(sd.) Sun Wen.” It will be noted that the Christian calendar had now
come into effect. The shops immediately took the notes at a premium,
something unique in China, the land of financial discounts and chaotic
exchange. Enthusiasm grew. For the first time in the history of modern
China, a company of women took up arms and advanced with the lines.
There were also many Red Cross corps of women, from Canton, Fuchau,
Wuchang, Shanghai, etc.
We shall return to Nanking. On November 25th, by hard scraping at
Canton, the rebels under General Ling brought up twelve field guns for
six hours and fired on the imperial position on Tiger Hill and Lion
Hill on the northwest, near the famous Ming tombs, which are outside
the walls of Nanking (not to be confounded with the remainder of the
Ming dynasty tombs which are at Nankou, northwest of Peking). Then
1,500 troops, led as usual by companies of queueless “Dare to Die”
boys, many of whom were students in Nanking Protestant University
(American), charged, and drove twice their number of imperialists
from the strong lines, which were supplied with heavy Armstrong and
Krupp four-point-seven and six-inch guns. Unfortunately, many shots
struck the gate of the tombs, behind which the imperialists had also
fortified themselves. The rebel navy now came nearer, despite the fire
of Lion Hill, and prepared for the attack, as the rebel infantry drew
their lines closer around the largest walled city of China. Guns were
immediately brought up to breach the heavy walls and high gates and
train on the Lion Hill and Tiger forts, which were within the Tartar
city, and keeping the navy back.
On the left wing at Hankau the rebels were gaining successes. At an
armistice, on November 24th, Yuan Shih Kai’s representatives told
General Li (whom they met at the British consulate on the bund) that he
had better trust the Manchus, as they could secure the hated Russian
or Japanese intervention as in the old notorious days of 1896 and
1900. Li replied that the republicans had no trust any more in Manchu
promises of reform or real permanent constitutionalism; that the usual
relapse of the “Boxer sickness” would come! At Manila, Hongkong and
Singapore, the Americans and British were preparing troops to be ready,
as in 1900, to rush them to Tientsin to save the Peking legations
and missionaries, if the Manchus, or Hunghutz, or Mongol brigands
brought on a massacre to secure foreign intervention. Though America
and Britain emphatically stand for non-intervention and non-partition
of China, both these nations feared Russia and other powers which
were hard to restrain. Britain’s action at this time in restraining
ambitious Japan (greedy with the taste of Formosa, Korea and South
Manchuria) can not be praised too highly. Wu Ting Fang, Doctor Sun
and General Li of the republicans, from Shanghai, London and Wuchang
respectively, issued proclamations that foreigners and missionaries
were to be respected highly as the best friends of New China. In Shansi
province the republicans, separated from their base, were having a hard
time against the Imperial Sixth Division under General Sheng Yun, which
had every advantage of succor by railway from Peking and the junction
at Ching Ting. The imperialists bribed soldiers to assassinate General
Wu of the republican forces operating in these northwest provinces.
This was a terrible blow to reform.
On November 26th, the rebels, under General Ling Chang, attacked the
strong hill forts above Nanking with determination. There was much
firing of heavy guns from the river also, as the new navy of fifteen
small vessels came up. Dogged charges were made across the open and
up the zigzag of Purple Hill. The rebel losses were tremendous, and
Chang the Second, of the imperialists, proved himself as grim a defense
fighter as he was a ruthless leader of massacre. The rebel attack
under General Ling Chang was brilliant and reckless. Who will sing
the feats of the new Chinese arms,--yes, the Chinese, who the world
said would never make soldiers, even if they had a great cause at
heart. The fighting was not as magnificently solid and desperate as
Pickett’s gray charge at Gettysburg, the Cuirassiers’ wild ride into
the valley of death at Waterloo, Linievitch’s grim defense of Putiloff
Hill, the shouting sweep of Oku’s dwarf Japanese up Nanshan Heights,
or the silent plunge of Oyama’s ranks into the Liaoyang valley, or
against the black Mukden lines. It was as determined, daring and
brilliant, however, as any land engagement in the South African or
Spanish-American Wars, and far braver and stronger than the theatrical
engagements, with air-ship accessories, of the Italy-Tripoli War. The
world’s critics must now change their criterions. A strong cause WILL
make a strong battle anywhere the world over, no matter what the color
of the soldier, or the cut or tint of his battle flag. The fighting now
closed in on Nanking, the old capital of the Mings, the high-water city
of the Taiping rebellion, and the rebels had a great deal to avenge,
and a great deal to gain. To fail in the attack on Nanking meant a
tremendous setback to the rebellion. Few reinforcements could come, for
the fighting was in half a dozen provinces, and along a broken front
extending from Chingtu to Hankau and Nanking, 1,000 miles, with railway
transport service, foreign ammunition, money and sympathy, favoring
the imperialists; and sea and river transport, and the sympathy of the
British and American peoples favoring the rebels, who, of course, had
no navy worth counting as yet.
The alarmed Manchu regent, Prince Chun, at Peking, now gave out
his oath, in the name of the child emperor, Pu Yi (throne name,
Hsuan Tung), sworn before the open heaven to God (Tien), before the
Confucian ancestral tablets, and before Buddha’s image, as follows: “My
policy and choice of officials have not been wise; hence the recent
troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred Manchu dynasty, I accept
the advice of the National Assembly. I swear to uphold the Nineteen
Constitutional Articles (demanded by the 20th Army Division at Lanchow)
and organize a parliament, excluding the Manchu and Mongol nobles from
administrative posts. The heavenly spirits of your forefathers will see
and understand.” They understood! The educated Chinese of the central
and southern provinces laughed; they had heard the like before, and
besides, this oath was taken under compulsion of the Army League.
The new rebel government in Kwangtung province, under Wu Hon Man, its
president, was as yet unable to police the notorious pirate waters
of the Si Kiang (West River), running far up country from Canton,
and the large British tonnage, though armed, suffered. Chief Officer
Nicholson, of the steamer _Shui On_, was killed in a private attack at
Junction Creek on November 30th, which infuriated British Hongkong,
which was holding its gunboats in leash. The large Chinese tonnage in
fear tied up to the wharves and bund of Canton and the riverine ports.
A trick of the West River pirates was to anchor a deserted stoneboat
across the channel, and as the steamer slowed up, the snake boats and
motor launches of the pirates dashed alongside from the creeks and
cane-brakes. The most daring of these brigand chiefs was the notorious
Luk, from whom we shall hear later. Everywhere else, however, as we
have shown, for instance at Fuchau, the republicans were splendidly
protecting foreign traders and missionaries.
I have said that the revolutionists’ line was too long to defend, with
two principal sieges taking place three hundred miles apart. Peking
understood this, and while the rebels reinforced their attack on the
right flank at Nanking, the imperialists brought down reinforcements
by railway to General Feng Kwo Chang, at Hankau, who at once attacked
the rebel left flank in force, aiming to cripple the rebels by taking
back the essential Hanyang arsenal. Hei Shan, Meit Zu and Tortoise
forts were taken by machine and field gun fire and charges, and General
Li’s rebel ranks fell back under severe loss. The retreating ranks
didn’t carry their bird cages with them as the gentlemen soldiers of
Chifu did in the China-Japan War of 1894! General Feng’s and General
Wong’s imperialist troops, after breaking through the Tung Chi (East
Messenger) gate and looting, now put the torch to the rest of Hankau,
destroying the homes of a million people, and burning a hundred million
dollars’ worth of property. Such an uncalled for, accursed outrage,
such an unjustifiable act of wholesale arson against non-combatants has
never been known. What would history have said had the Germans burned
Paris, the British, Pretoria or the Americans, Manila? What should
be said when the Manchu imperialists burned Hankau? Why didn’t they
rather sell its tiles, its silk, its oils, its mountains of tea? They
admitted that they needed money. At least there would have been no
world’s loss of property. Hankau belonged to the world as much as to
China. The Manchu must yet answer for this arson, for arson and murder
are unjustifiable world crimes. Arson makes it harder and costlier for
an American, a Briton, a German, a Frenchman, to live, as the wave of
cost rolls on, as much as it makes it harder for the Chinese to live.
In these days of world conservation, no nation should be allowed to
put the firebrand to property because men are fighting or arguing over
an idea. Shame on the sack and burning of Hankau by the Manchus. The
British, Americans, volunteers and jackies, and other foreigners on
the long bund, heaped up breastworks of even rice bags, and swept the
riverside and race track on either flank in defense of the palatial
foreign concessions. Here a blue-jacket, there a marine, and between an
ununiformed volunteer clerk, the boys shouldered their Springfields,
Lee-Enfields and Mausers, and held brave guard at the thinnest part
of the long-stretched line of the white man’s empire of influence and
trade.
On the same day the rebels were doing better on the right flank at
Nanking, despite their long front of fifteen miles wide. The Ta Ping
Men (North) gate of the city, and Tiger Hill fort within the walls
were bombarded, and General Ling brought up the rebel guns to bombard
General Chang the Second, who had contracted his lines to Purple, Lion,
Tiger and Pei Che Kao forts in the northeast of the city, as far away
as possible from the rebel fleet, part of which had to be recalled to
Wuchang to assist General Li in his extremity. The imperialists held
the strong Nan Men gate in the south of the city, and the Chao Yang
fort at the east gate, which was fortified with two six-inch, two
four-point-seven, and two three-inch guns, as well as Maxims, surely a
deadly armament. In wise patience America and Britain still held their
troops at Manila and Hongkong, respectively, but Japan was allowed, on
the 26th of November, to rush 1,000 more legation and railway guards
to Tientsin, and the railway guards along the Japanese railways in
Manchuria were reinforced far beyond international conventions. Captain
Sowerby, with the newly organized Foreign Frontier Guards, started
from Peking to help the harassed missionaries who were being murdered
in Singan and Taiyuen in the north. This astonishing expedition
was remarkable for its intrepidity and its success. Within a month
and a half Captain Sowerby’s men had gone from Taiyuen to Singan,
gathered together forty missionaries, and following the course of
the Wei and Yellow Rivers through the famous Tongkwan pass, brought
his charges safely to Honan City on the Honan railway, from which
place they could easily reach Tientsin. Lies began to spread like
wildfire. Pirates committed atrocities along the West River section
of Kwangtung province, and the Manchus and their sympathizers blamed
it on the ineffective rebel organization of Canton. In the north,
Hunghutz, Mongol and Boxer brigands murdered missionaries, rebels
and non-combatants, and the republican sympathizers blamed it on the
ineffective Manchu government. This is certain: the rebels desperately
disliked foreign intervention, and only pleaded for time to win and
organize, while the Manchus saw that, if driven to the last wall,
massacre and lawlessness would help the retention of the dynasty by
causing foreign interventions; and the Manchus were willing to lose all
Manchuria to Japan and all Mongolia and Turkestan to Russia, to bring
this about. The reader will note that none of the many old generals
has appeared on the imperial side, as the battles narrowed down to
engagements with modern weapons of precision and power, requiring
generals trained in modern war. Generals Li and Hwang, of the rebels,
opposed Generals Feng and Wong at Hankau, and Generals Ling and Hsu
opposed Generals Chang and Tieh of the imperialists at Nanking. More
foreign officers, especially Japanese and Germans incognito, served
in the loyalist ranks than in the rebel ranks, and German ammunition
and guns were freely served to the imperialists. After the battle of
Hanyang, two Germans were found among the imperialists’ dead, and two
of the imperialists’ wounded were Germans, one of them a colonel in
the German army. The Japanese trusts, the princes of the Choshiu and
Satsuma clans, who control the House of Peers and the Genro Council,
and thus run the government by veto, did not want a republic in China.
They feared it would bring about the control of the budget by the House
of Representatives and real popular government in Japan, which country
is now absolutely controlled by the aristocracy; for the Japanese Diet
is no more representative of the overtaxed people than is the Russian
Duma. They feared also that if the Chinese pope-emperor could fall,
so could the Japanese pope-emperor who was no more holy. The German
syndicates were also anxious to maintain their confiscatory privileges
in Shangtung province, which were obtained from the Manchus. Dictator
Yuan always preferred German instructors in his Pechili, Honan and
Shangtung armies.
On November 27th, Yuan Shih Kai, the premier-dictator at Peking, had
poured out the treasures of the Manchu empress dowager’s private chest,
and well paid and well armed troops were rushed to Hankau. Generals
Feng and Wong Chou Yuen had 30,000 modern drilled and equipped men, and
the divisions were heavily supplied with precise artillery. Hankau City
and Hanyang arsenal across the river were bombarded mercilessly, and
the imperialists of Wong’s bloody third division, under cover of this
artillery practise, crossed the Han River thirty miles up and flanked
the left wing of the rebels, whose old Armstrong artillery, using
percussion shells, was no match for the modern three and four-inch
guns of the imperialists, who had the arsenals of the north and the
Germans at Kiaochou to draw on. Neither was the rebel infantry equal,
as half of their regiments had been drawn back to Nanking, 400 miles
away, by river. The best the rebels could do was to oppose 15,000 men,
with weak artillery, to 30,000 excellently equipped imperialists. The
result was that the all-important Hanyang arsenal and world-wide known
iron works were lost, and Generals Li and Hwang Hing had to retreat
to Wuchang, the rebel capital across the Yangtze River, which is a
difficult place to defend, as its flanks and rear are vulnerable. The
result of this great reverse was that the lukewarm viceroys in the
northern provinces, who had gone over to the rebels’ cause in the first
flush of success, began to declare again for the Manchus. Shangtung
province went back, and Yuan Shih Kai by the telegraph on this day got
his own province of Honan to return to the imperial fold. Both of these
are northern provinces. Premier Yuan now began rushing reinforcements
down the Grand Canal and railway to Yangchow and Pukow, nearly opposite
Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at
Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came
over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the
Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of
the revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the
rebellion in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign
men, money and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring
and enthusiasm favored the rebels, whose American-trained students
recited the dictum of Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when
governed by tyrants, were superior in war to none of their neighbors,
but when freed from tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows
that as long as they were oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as
laboring for a master, but when they were free every man was zealous to
labor for the State.”
There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they
destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what
would they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their
leaders, Doctor Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent
satisfaction with the rule of a native president and congress over
twenty-one provincial presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty
task,--the greatest the world has known,--and few of the old viceroys
and Manchuized Chinese literati of the Hanlin were at heart prepared
for its radical solution. True, the rebels could staff the twenty-one
provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu
province men, but that was not republican home rule.
The aim and difficulty of the rebels was to maintain the new ideas
against reverses in the provinces, which had developed few modern
thinkers among the officials, who, like the troops, were looking for
salary first and country afterward. Yuan, the premier-dictator, who had
weighed it all up in Honan, said to himself, according to some southern
critics: “Give me money enough for 100,000 splendid, modern-drilled
northern men, and give me trunk railways. I’ll find men who will fight
for whichever side pays their wages; we must have order, which is
civilization’s first law.” Yuan was a believer in that truism that the
radical reformers do all the work, and bear all the risk of reform, and
that the “standpatters”, the moderate progressives and reactionaries,
enjoy all the fruit and political offices. Differently from Sun, Yuan
wanted office first and influence afterward. He was now active in
soliciting foreign loans, securing $1,000,000 from Russia and Belgium,
and the promise of $30,000,000 from Russia, Belgium and Japan, these
being the pro-Manchu powers, while America and Britain represented
pro-Chinese sympathies. The rebels were just as active in soliciting
private subscriptions in America and the Straits Settlements, and 70
per cent. of the Chinese abroad sent a quarter of their fortunes to Sun
Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai for the republican cause.
However, it must be admitted that when the Manchus recruited Yuan Shih
Kai, the Honanese, they secured a tower of strength, another Li Hung
Chang, to a large degree a dictator, a believer in money, troops, quick
trial by drumhead, and decapitation, a good servant of any master who
would steadily employ him; a believer in dynasties more than peoples, a
modern progressive but not an idealist or natural republican, a man who
hated the words “turbulent liberty”, but who loved the word “order”; a
statesman more like Diaz, Bismarck or Richelieu than like Washington or
Lincoln. He had never traveled abroad like thousands of other Chinese
officials. He could not speak or read English, and so knew little of
the great documents of liberty and idealism in their first fire of the
original. He knew that he was smashing rapid progress for the second
time, just as he had gone against the reform Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu,
and the palace reformers from Canton: Kang Yu Wei, Liang Chi Choa,
etc., in 1898, and joined the reactionary “Boxer” dowager empress, Tse
Hsi. He feared the rebel sympathizers might assassinate him, and he
rode as dictator about Peking with a cavalry escort. His headquarters
were in the modern Wai Wu Pu Building, which is fitted with steam
heat, elevators, electric light, etc. There he gave regular interviews
to the foreign press representatives, in emulation of the methods
long practised by Sunyacius and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai. He made the
Manchus weak, too, for he matched their troops at Peking with his old
Shangtung and Honan territorial troops, man for man. He also sent the
turbulent, stubborn twentieth division, shorn of its commander, Chang,
far to the eastward. The majority of the National Assembly had fled,
and the Manchu princes would not come out of their bedrooms. If the
rebels were to win now, they must produce even a stronger man than
Yuan. Who was that man; where was he in the making?
It is quite orthodox not to despair ever of immemorial China, and
to expect a great man to arise when politics is at its worst, for
Confucius arose from the rivalry of sixteen states, and he formulated
his political philosophy when he was a persecuted exile from his own
state of Lu. When the republicans were most dejected, that great
republican, the American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai,
in season and out of season, unofficially beseeched them to quit
themselves like men. So large-hearted a man could not stand by and
see men who were fighting for liberty droop at their guns. He cheered
them; he talked to their students; he gave megaphone interviews to the
world press and supported the discouraged propaganda, fearing naught
the criticism which arose. He was a missionary, but more than that, he
was a man, and an American. Some British missionaries, too, came in for
criticism because they could not refrain from whispering in the ear of
liberty the Cromwellian encouragement: “Be of good cheer.”
By November 29th the lack of money was thinning the lines of the
rebel forces, and Dictator Yuan, at Peking, was growing in strength
with small foreign loans and arms from Russia, Japan and Germany.
The rebels, at Wu Ting Fang’s suggestion, in desperation, threatened
to boycott the commerce of any nation making loans to the Manchu
government, and a German compradore was shot down at Hankau as he was
in the act of delivering arms over to the imperialists. The Manchu
Tsai princes sold their art treasures for arms. The rebels melted the
idols of the nation to make coin. In accord with the protocol of 1901,
America now formally offered the Peking government 2,500 troops to
assist in keeping the railway from Peking to Tientsin open to the sea.
The Japanese had already landed their quota of this foreign force.
Naturally the rebels looked on this landing of foreign troops in the
Manchu section of the country as, to a degree, foreign aid to the
Manchus, as it increased their prestige and sources of advice in the
north. More subtle forces than those of arms began to work now on some
of the rebel leaders, and the cause lapsed into darker days because of
the lack of money. Dictator Yuan, in Peking, was exultant, and said to
one member of the legations: “I give the rebellion eight more days to
live; I expect to have 100,000 modern troops and a railway.” Professor
E. H. Parker, the eminent sinologue, now of Manchester University,
England, when a British consul in Korea, wrote of “Yuan’s Machiavellian
character” in his book, _John Chinaman_. Even some of the Manchus
agreed in the cry of the rebels: “Yuan is making himself dictator; he
may seek the throne; he may split off Northern China; Peking is too
near Russian Siberia.” He had sent the Manchu troops away from Peking,
and gathered his old divisions (like Cæsar with his Thirteenth Legion)
of Shangtung and Honan troops around him.
Yuan appealed to the provinces to send delegates to Peking to discuss
a constitution, but the rebel provinces replied: “No National
Assembly can discuss constitutional government with freedom while
your troops, pounding their rifle stocks, stand at the door; remember
the Parliaments of King Charles.” The rebels cried: “If Yuan and the
Manchus win now, it is foreign money that does it. Why can’t we get
foreign money; we’re the overwhelming majority of the people.” Some of
the foreign governments replied: “We are only interested in trade and
order; we can’t wait for you to fight this out, and possibly kill some
of our missionaries; you must win quickly or we’ll stand by the powers
that be.” The rebels replied: “Cromwell and Washington, Thiers and
Grant didn’t win quickly, and if you let us lose now, we’ll fight it
out again. You can’t withstand the constitutional rights of 400 million
people for the sake of a dynasty of raiders, who seized and entrenched
their throne with five million subsidized cavalrymen, who have now
grown effete by subsidy. We are opposed to entrenched privilege just as
much as you are. In Roosevelt’s words: ‘The land has got to be as good
for all of us as it is for some of us.’ These minority Manchus must
cease to usurp office, pensions, privileges and concession granting.
We of the south are taxed without representation. If America could go
to war with this as a cause, why can’t we?”
Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across
the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart
of the southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for
throwing his modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from
Peking to Hankau had won him the present turn in the tide of affairs
by enabling him to flank the long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some
cried, for an emperor warrior of the real Chinese, a descendant of the
Mings; a descendant of the house of Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a
Washington-like president of a Chinese republic, who could get foreign
loans. This was the cry that was arising against the return of the
Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a dictator. However, something
had been won. The agitation and the battles had taught the sweet themes
of deathless liberty and a new Chinese nationalism to thousands who
had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in their despair. It was
recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a Hupeh governor,
who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of execution:
“Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the first
martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes
her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and
rises again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her
victory in 1898, conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so
with her successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was
laid by some foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican
government was not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one
Kung, an American Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would
be backed for the throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock
to his banner.
On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and
Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they
had weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The
Canton bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing
this new hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit:
“Freedom will work on this earth,
Great as a giant rising to the skies,
Come, Liberty, because of the black hell of our slavery,
Come enlighten us with a ray of thy sun.
“Behold the woes of our fatherland.
Other men are becoming all kings.
Can we forget what our people are suffering?
China the Great is as an immense desert.
“We are working to open a new age in China;
All real men are calling for a new heaven and a new earth.
May the soul of the people rise as high as Kwangtung’s highest peak
(Nan Mountain);
Spirit of Freedom, lead, protect us.”
Nanking was attached in force. The American navy withdrew, while the
small rebel navy of fifteen vessels, under the protection of captured
forts holding back free play of the Lion fort guns, moved up within
range to support the wide rebel attack of fifteen miles frontage. It
will be remembered that General Chang the Second, of the imperialists,
held some of the peaks of Purple Hill outside the northeast walls, and
Yuwatei fort on the south, and nearly all the city. The rebels took
the Tiger Hill fort and four of the northwest gates and forts, after
bombardment by the Cantonese, sapping, and a spirited rush. Then Purple
Hill and Yuwatei forts were bombarded and rushed after a terrific
engagement, the imperialists, under Generals Chang and Tieh, making a
last stubborn stand behind the ninety-foot high and thirty-foot thick
walls of the vast city. The scene was terrible to view. Clouds of
cannon smoke, lighted by terrific flashes of gun fire, made the night
of November 30th memorable. The revolutionists, practising Wolfe’s
strategy before Quebec was taken, by a secret path, rushed up a peak of
Purple Mountain, above the imperial position, and shelled the imperial
park of guns. Then in the night a charge, led by Colonel Wen, was
made by the “Dare to Die” picked brigade, who carried hand bombs and
swords. A wild retreat followed down the mountain. Even boys fought
with the greatest bravery. The dying down of the terrific cannonade
in the south meant that the republicans had rushed the Nan Men fort,
and an explosion showed that they had successfully blown it up. Just
as daylight broke, the strong Chao Yang, Tiger and Lion forts were
again rushed and taken. The rebels were bitter, and there was great
slaughter of the imperialists in revenge for General Chang’s merciless
massacre of innocents when he declared a state of war at the beginning
of the month. Great lawlessness overspread the land, the rebels as
well as the imperialists being unable to establish a police force,
while they fought out the reform questions. Even in British Hongkong,
where 500,000 Chinese are ruled by 5,000 British, the authorities
had to institute the public whipping of offenders, so as to keep
disorder on the part of the lawless intimidated. Complaint increased
along the Yangtze valley that the Germans were supplying arms to the
imperialists at Hankau, as well as in the northern provinces, from
their colony base of Kiaochou. Bitter complaint was also made that
Baron Cottu was the go-between in asking Russia, France and Belgium for
a $30,000,000 loan for the Manchus and Yuan Shih Kai, which would give
the Russo-Asiatique Bank the same intrusive excuses that Russia availed
of in 1898. The rebels were weak in Shensi province, and American
missionaries were killed by the mob in Singan. Dictator Yuan threw the
Sixth Division from Honan into Shensi to take the province back.
On Saturday, December 2nd, at ten o’clock, a memorable scene occurred
at Nanking. General Chang the Second escaped across the Yangtze River
through the Ta Ping gate on the morning of December 1st to Pukow, the
northern railway terminus, after planting a mine under the Tartar
General’s yamen, which was to be blown when the rebel General Hsu was
caught in the trap at the capitulation. He also secreted eighteen
other mines in the Tartar city, which had therefore to be burned so
as to make the explosion safe. General Chao succeeded in command of
the imperialists. The investiture was complete, and the situation was
now hopeless for the defenders. Twelve brave Americans had remained
on the scene, the great missionaries, Doctor Macklin, Mr. Garrett,
Doctor Blackstone, President A. J. Bowen, of Nanking University, and
others, and the vice-consul, Mr. Gilbert, who dramatically, with
field glasses, watched the bombardment from a high graveyard within
the city. They believed in saving blood (“Chiu Ming,” as the Chinese
say), much provocation for revenge as there was on the side of General
Hsu’s victorious men. They pleaded with Hsu for the first humanitarian
surrender in Chinese civil war, as a thrilling example for all time
that Chinese revolutionists, like George Washington’s and Oliver
Cromwell’s men, were patriots and gentlemen at heart, and not mere
feudists fighting under the name of a great cause.
General Hsu, with the advice of Generals Ling, Li and Hwang, and
Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang, rose to the high level. He agreed to
a surrender with honors, even guaranteeing the life of the notorious
murderer of non-combatants, General Chang the Second. The negotiations
took place under the guns of historic Purple Hill, while the panting
troops held enthusiasm in control. Behind the walls the imperialists
breathed hard, and the great populace of shopkeepers eagerly waited
and watched the republican sun flags on Purple Mountain. Hurrah! a
shout went up that lives would be guaranteed (“Chiu Ming”); yes, honor,
too! Fling open the pounded, riddled iron “Great Peace” gate! The
steel muzzles of the hot Armstrongs, the deadly four-point-sevens, the
spitting Rexer rapid fire and three-inch Krupp guns on Purple, Lion and
Tiger Hills, held their smoky breath like good hounds in leash, but
straining. The generals and captains marked time; the troops craned
their heads; the Cantonese artillery hitched up the limbers to the gun
carriages. The American missionaries thanked God and led on the way
of peace for a China that would never forget the moving scene, where
forgiveness towered over revenge. Here they come, General Chao riding
ahead of the doughty Shangtung territorials with their yellow dragon
flags flying for the last time, and the bloody turbaned men of escaped
Chang’s army. Ground arms and mark time! The victorious rebels kept
their places, and under the fluttering red, white and blue sun flags of
the new republic, looked on at the impressive acts. The great column of
imperialists deployed with music playing, saluted and piled their arms
before the feet of the victors, General Hsu sitting on horseback where
the pacificators stood. Sun flags and white flags fluttered everywhere
as the sign of rebel dominance. Who are these who now come up with
reversed arms? They do not wear the German peaked caps, and the khaki
uniform of modern troops, but the old turban and slovenly blue uniform
of the ancient troops of China. They are Chang’s bloody old-style
warriors, 1,000 of them, wearing white bands in deep contrition and as
a seal of their lives from massacre. They, too, salute Hsu, the giver
of their lives, some of them giving the unmilitary kotow instead of
the modern salute. A cheer went up, the bands playing with greater
spirit. Hold open the “Great Peace” gate! Victorious Generals Hsu and
Ling, and their men, they of a hundred cold steel and bomb charges,
blowing hot the trumpets of victory, and led by the shaven heroes, the
“Dare to Die” regiment of immortal night charges, are on the ringing,
clanging march for the ancient Ming city, which they have conquered,
Nanking the cultured; Nanking the proud capital of capitals; Nanking
where was the yamen of the illustrious Viceroy Liu Kun Yih; Nanking of
the Taipings, and Nanking of the world’s widest republic! A friendly
hand had touched off the mine under the Tartar general’s yamen, and
the eighteen other dastardly mines, so that the victors should not be
blown up treacherously in the crowning hour of their rejoicing. White
flags flutter everywhere. Once the sign of death in China, they are
now the sign of peace in China, as well as in the rest of the world.
A shout of welcome goes up from the populace, who from the beginning,
like all the rest of the central and southern provinces, have been in
sympathy with the revolution. Generals Hsu, Ling and Hwang at Nanking
then have indeed balanced for the rebels the imperialist victory at
Hanyang won by General Feng. The rebels lost their left wing, which
was turned. The imperialists have also now lost their left wing, which
has been thus crumpled up at Nanking. New moves must now be made on the
checker-board by Dictator Yuan at Peking.
Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the Canton
Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers _Wu Ying_ and _Wupang_,
and with the British gunboats _Robin_, _Sandpiper_ and _Moorhen_ from
Hongkong, and the American gunboat _Callao_, attacked the West River
pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of
Wuchow Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches
and river peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their
wheel-houses sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred
hatches, which let air in but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on
the ’tween decks, a guard at each hatch and over each port, and double
quartermasters manning the wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval
conditions, and it was exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like
Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas, Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000
uniforms and outfits to equip a regiment of President Wu’s provincial
troops. Part of the rebel navy now made a four-hundred-mile dash at
forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang, from Shanghai, to try to keep
the successful right wing of the imperialists from crossing to the
rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep the loyalists
engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if greatly
reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’
supply railway in the rear.
On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun, the
regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne
name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai
Su, and the other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to
save the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the
three hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus
brought to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand
councilor in the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he
was put in as its president by Manchu power. Later he was president
of the Navy Board, and president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He
is a moderate progressive, a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the
emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former
minister to Russia and Germany, and the first president of the Chinese
Eastern Railway. He was a grand councilor in the old days, a viceroy of
Manchuria, and president of the Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge
of loans. He has visited America. The appointment of this republican
general-in-chief was, of course, mere flattery, and he did not serve.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Mortuary statues near tombs of the last native Chinese dynasty, the
Ming, near Nanking. The crowning battle of the revolution swept
over this hillside.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
American, French and British gunboats protecting foreigners
at Shameen Island, Canton, during revolution, 1911–12. In
foreground, wupan, or boat of “five boards.” Note wide awnings
required on gunboats. The awnings on second gunboat (British)
were riddled by bullets of contesting forces.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The famous gate giving entrance to the native city, Tientsin.
Reform in schools, industries and army really started in this
city under the viceroyships of Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai,
and the taotaiship of Tang Shao Yi.
]
These moves on the recommendation of Dictator Yuan, who was an old
enemy of Regent Chun, who exiled him, did not satisfy the rebels, who
named Nanking as their permanent capital, called for delegates from
all the rebel provinces, and pressed on the war. “The name is changed
at Peking, but it is the same old game,” they said. A republican loan
of ten million taels, bearing twelve per cent. interest, and sold at
about eighty per cent. of face value, was sought at Shanghai, Wu Ting
Fang seeking American subscriptions especially, for he kept reminding
Americans: “You are the mother of republics; the greatest republic, as
we will be the largest republic.” Wu also wired prominent American and
British financiers and their governments, pleading that loans should
not be made to the Manchu government, and respectfully warning that:
“The republican rebels would remember if loans were made to fight
their cause.” This really had a deterrent influence, for Americans and
Britons were able to influence France to suspend financial action for
a while. The American-educated Tang Shao Yi, Dictator Yuan’s chief
assistant, now went to the rebel headquarters at Wuchang and Shanghai
to interview General Li, Minister Wu and General Hsu regarding peace,
and the rebels held sessions of delegates from the Yangtze, southern
and western provinces. Kwangtung province began its republican
organization, and sent up another quota of 3,000 modern troops from
Canton, added to 10,000 previously sent, to reinforce General Li, who
stood marking time at Wuchang against General Feng of the imperialists
at Hanyang.
By this time the fine Tyne-built, gray Chinese cruiser _Hai Chi_, which
sailed from New York in October, arrived at Shanghai, and amid wild
rejoicing, such as only the southern Chinese can express, ran down the
triangular yellow dragon and hoisted the square tri-color sun flag of
the republican revolution. She was at once ordered to report at the
arsenal with her heavy load of ammunition, which was a godsend to the
revolutionists. This cruiser was the best known abroad of Chinese war
vessels, and at once became the flagship of the rebel navy. She is
armed with two eight-inch, and ten four-point-seven guns. On December
14th, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), with the American, Homer Lea,
arrived safely at Penang, Straits Settlements, a hotbed of Chinese
reform, which has from time to time sheltered all the reformers like
Sun, Kang, etc., since the coup d’état in 1898. The rich foreignized
Cantonese owners of tin mines have been loyal to reform from the
beginning. When Sun arrived at Singapore on December 16th, a band of
Chinese girls met him, each waving the tri-color of the revolution and
of the emancipation of Chinese womanhood, and singing the Chinese
Marseillaise, _Chung Kwan_. The Chinese wore no queues, and the
caricatures which they distributed showed the pig, the dog, the monkey
and the Manchu as all belonging to the races which wear queues! Who
will say that the Chinese are not distinguished for humor! I have for
years been trying to point out this quality in them.
The first wave of the revolution, which had died down somewhat by
the Hankau defeat, had rolled on even into far mountainous Tibet,
and Gyangze, a walled and fortified town on the trade route between
Lhasa and Darjeeling, fell before the revolutionists on December 14th.
Gyangze will be remembered for the stand it made against Sir Francis
Younghusband’s brilliant campaign in 1904 to open up the way from India
to Lhasa, and also for the operations in its neighborhood by General
Chao Ehr Feng, who drove the sacred plotting Dalai Lama for the first
time out of China into India in the startling campaign of 1910.
During this week the Yangtze River for six hundred miles presented
a remarkable scene, as Tang Shao Yi, the emissary of Dictator Yuan,
sailed down to Shanghai to discuss peace terms with the revolutionists
at the Town Hall at Shanghai, which was guarded by British, Sikh and
other troops of the international settlement. At Hankau the last yellow
dragon flag of the imperialists was seen, as the imperial legates, Tang
Shao Yi, Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chih, on the steamer _Tung Ting_,
sailed between the new navy of the rebels on patrol of the great river,
which was now their six hundred miles of front. The fine cruiser _Hai
Chi_, with New York Chinese among the crew, the companion cruisers _Hai
Yung_ and _Hai Sun_, the gunboats _Kwang Kang_, _Kwang Poa_, _On Nam_,
etc., headed the republican fleet, which flew the red, white and blue
sun flag. The armistice was not kept in Shansi or Shensi provinces by
the imperialist general, Sheng Yun. When the pourparler opened, the six
powers, at America’s suggestion, informed Wu and Tang that they would
appreciate a settlement, because neither side seemed to be able to
keep down piracy, it being as bad along the Liao River in the north as
along the Si valley in the distant south. It will be recalled that the
Manchus of Shansi province early in the campaign assassinated the great
rebel general, Wu Lu Cheng. It was now rumored that the Chinese had
induced Tuan Fang’s troops in the same province to murder that noble
Manchu, who was the greatest friend the foreigners had among the Manchu
officials in the dark “Boxer” days of 1900. Tuan had been governor of
Pechili and Szechuen provinces, head of the railway development in
the Yangtze basin, and above all head of the famous constitutional
committee (Hsien Cheng Pien Cha Kuan), which, in 1906, went abroad to
study foreign parliaments and congresses. He was the noblest of the
Manchus, a repetition in character of Prince Kung of Victorian days,
and he died like a modern hero. “Kneel and be decapitated,” his troops
demanded. “You’ll shoot or cut me down where I stand,” he declared.
Individual virtue does not belong exclusively to any organization.
The rebels went on with their work in calling up troops from Premier
Wu Hon Man at Canton, and in equipping aeroplanes, run by Americanized
Chinese, for a possible air attack on Peking, if the peace conference
should break up in failure, and Hankau could be won back. The
missionaries agreed to flee to the Methodist compound which adjoined
the legation quarter in the Tartar city of Peking, on a signal being
given by rocket. The foreigners in the northern provinces were dubious
that a republican government could be established, but it must be
remembered that many of these foreigners were more surprised than the
rest of the world that the reformers ever shouldered arms for reform
and declared for a republic on October 10, 1911. The foreigners of
the northern provinces were accordingly at first largely in sympathy
with the retention of the Manchu, under a limited monarchy system, and
the election of Yuan as premier. Many of the foreigners of Peking and
Tientsin tried to impose their views upon the foreigners of Shanghai
and Hongkong, who naturally knew more about the reform and republican
movement in China, for the initial reformers of China all came from
Canton, Penang, Manila and Shanghai, where they were influenced by
British Hongkong, Singapore and America. The income of the imperial
authority had been levied mainly on the southern provinces, which had
least representation on the Peking Boards (Pus) since the coup d’état
of 1898. Taxation again without representation! The doubt in the minds
of the reformers was that if the Manchu was retained, he might revert
to his old faults of by turns oppressing China, and by turns looting
it, for certain foreign concessionaires. True, said some, peace could
be fixed up now, and matters fought out again, if faith was not kept.
But, said others, by that time certain foreigners will have given Yuan
Shih Kai an army of forty divisions with a fortified base at Peking
in touch with the Russian railway, a navy of battleships, 2,500 miles
of new flanking railways down into the south, and a full exchequer
box, while the new parliaments may be without a Cromwell, a Pym, a
Hampden, a Jefferson, a Franklin, a Lincoln. It was a great question,
the largest any nation has ever handled, and the one answer was: “Well,
then, develop your Cromwells, Pyms, Hampdens, Jeffersons, Franklins,
Lincolns, out of such timber as you have in Sun, Wu, Kang, Li, etc.,
and let us have peace.”
There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.:
that China will remain a republic, and will become a republic
based on the worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s
Bible. Such a wonderful nation of four hundred millions, preserved
from the immemorial past as one people, must have been preserved
for some providential purpose, to put irresistible might behind
certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the giving of a
truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we have
exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and lamentable
mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is
not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional
wars notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the
Board of Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang
Hsu, in 1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion.
President Sun and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said
before, a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian.
As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and
revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion,
identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of
the belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to
obtain at Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to
fight if a republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the
Manchu hoards at Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan.
He needed two million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern
bannermen. Four of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but
the rebels said, if you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your
trade in the central and southern provinces, and you know that most of
the foreign trade emanates from Southern China, that is, your tea and
silk come from that section, and your exports go there in exchange. If
you want to know what a trade boycott by us means, ask the Japanese,
who will recall the “Tatsu Maru” incident. The rebels also threatened
that if loans were made by foreigners to the imperialists, and the
rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate these loans. This
was the most brilliant move to date of the republican diplomacy. The
rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move. They wanted to
save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been made out of a
stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their day stanch
“standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a republic,
with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible foreign
minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect
their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao
Yi, was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China
had no idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel
provinces. Tang, it will be remembered, is a graduate of an American
university, and he is even more progressive than his patron, Yuan. In
making overtures to Yuan, Sunyacius and Wu of the rebels were showing
that they were strong and calm diplomats, who could waive a detail to
win a general cause. Recent Occidental politics exhibit no such example
of the suppression of factiousness. Wu, however, did not hesitate a
minute to tell the six powers that if they loaned money to the north,
or interfered, they would only prolong the war indefinitely.
On December 21, 1911, the line-up was as follows. Yuan, three of
the powers and some of the world’s financial syndicates, in favor
of a monarchy or war, with a loan to the north, arrayed against the
republicans. Wu, ever persistent in demanding a republic, or renewing
the war, with a trade boycott in the southern and central provinces,
against any foreign nation that loaned the north money. Some of the
American journals, surprisingly, opposed the republic. For instance,
on the very day that Doctor Sunyacius was named president, the New
York _Outlook_ (December 30, 1911), with snap judgment, stated that a
Chinese republic could, would and should not be set up at present, and
further that “Americans would do well to throw all their influence on
the side of a constitutional monarchy”. Nine-tenths of the _Outlook’s_
readers doubtless thought that if Homer could sometimes nod, such
surprising retrogressive words as these might be forgiven the generally
progressive _Outlook_. Similarly in England, the large London house
of Montagu, which has been prominent in very profitable railway loans
to China under the Manchu régime, issued a circular stating its
“satisfaction” when the republicans lost Hankau to General Feng, under
atrocious circumstances of unforgivable massacre and unnecessary arson.
_Memoria longa, lingua brevis!_ Some of Britain’s diplomatic force,
arguing like the reactionaries of George the Third’s day, said that
they favored a monarchy because India might want a greater share in
self-government than she had, forgetting that a wide-awake and fully
developed India meant greater trade for Britain. Three monarchical
nations said that they would favor destroying the American doctrine of
the “non-partition of China” and splitting the four dependencies and
the eight provinces north of the Yellow River from the rebel provinces.
Now, if ever, was the time for America to act, to give the largest
and oldest nation on earth true freedom, and stop massacre and the
sowing of eternal hate between the yellow and the white races. If the
republican idea was decapitated by three of the monarchical nations
willingly, and two of the constitutional nations unwillingly, revulsion
would sweep through the camp of the republicans, and foreigners and
missionaries would be slain by the mobs, who always act before they
think the important second time. This was just what the plotting
Manchus had been endeavoring to bring about since October 10, 1911.
“Make the republicans, or the mob in their provinces, massacre;
that will bring in foreign interference, which will save the Manchu
dynasty.” In return, the Manchus promised certain foreign interests
almost any concessions which they might ask for. They could loot China,
the mineral Eldorado of the ages, and exploit the labor host of a new
Goshen. _Perfide!_ ye who are retroactive at this late day after all
the lessons of the crowded past, and who love Money more than Man.
Hail! American republic, the mother of republics, and hail, too, the
germinating Chinese republic! Even Count Okuma, the most liberal of the
Japanese, the founder of the enlightened Waseda University, of whom
most sympathy was expected with China’s effort for freedom, came out
with a pessimistic article at this time, prophesying the “failure of
the republic, years of degeneration, and an inevitable new dynasty”.
Did he mean that Japan would supply one, after first absorbing two
provinces of Manchuria?
Yuan, the dictator, began moving his divisions, the Twentieth, now rid
of its reform general, Chang Shao Tsen, being sent from the Lanchow
camp to a point north of Tientsin, to split the republicans of the
three provinces of Manchuria from joining the republicans of Shangtung.
Sunyacius, with Premier Wu Hon Man, of Canton, now left Hongkong for
Shanghai, and the world stood back and waited for the lightning to
come out of the clouds. The half million Chinese of British Hongkong
gave them a rousing send-off, which was at heart approved by the five
thousand British merchants and troops of Hongkong, for Hongkong knew
what a trade boycott in the southern provinces meant. Canton had now
struck a swinging pace, and Premier Wu had sent bodies of troops,
particularly his fine artillery and bomb-throwers, to strengthen the
two wings of the rebels under Generals Li, Ling and Hsu at Wuchang and
Nanking, respectively. Among these troops were one thousand students
recruited by the Fong Yuen College at Canton. God send great things to
earth! God save liberty for China, and keep progress from slipping back
a thousand years!
So far, the strongest move in the rebellion was the declaration
of Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang that if Britain joined the three
monarchical powers in loaning Yuan money, a trade boycott would be
instituted in the southern and central provinces against foreign
trade, of which Britain held the largest share. This won Hongkong, and
Hongkong was able to hold British diplomacy on Downing Street, London,
and indirectly on Legation Street, Peking. It was a master move, as
brilliantly effective as Napoleon’s Berlin Decree of November 21,
1806, blockading British commerce, and only for it the rebellion would
have been swamped by four of the six nations arming and provisioning
Yuan, the Manchu and the north. Whatever comes in the next few years,
this cry surely is forever in the heart of Lincoln’s and Washington’s
America: “Long live the republican idea of distributed wealth and
distributed liberty in good old China, America’s yellow brother
across the narrowing purple Pacific.” On Christmas day, 1911, the
steamship _Cleveland_, from New York and San Francisco, with five
hundred American world tourists, arrived at Hongkong. The republican
army immediately invited them to Canton to see their barracks at the
Five Hundred Genii Temple and elsewhere, the resolution saying: “as
America was the first country to become a republic.” Auspiciously on
December 26th, Sun Yat Sen arrived at Shanghai, two war-ships escorting
his launch up the river from the Wusung bar. He immediately took an
automobile at the bund wharf and proceeded to Wu’s residence, where
conferences were held, and Nanking decided on as the provisional
capital of the fighting republic. The republican Chinese were delighted
that the Americans had eleven war-ships at Shanghai.
On December 26th, Yuan and the Manchu princes wired Tang Shao Yi from
Peking that they would leave the decision as to a form of government
to a national convention of the twenty-one provinces, the delegates
to meet as soon as possible. The harmony which prevailed in the
conferences at Shanghai between Sun, Wu and Li’s representatives
was delightful to those interested in Chinese progress. The harmony
which prevailed between the missionaries and the revolutionists was
also inspiring. In a village of Hupeh province (Taiping) the people
insisted that Mr. Landahl, of the Netherlands Mission, should head
the local Safety League which was maintaining order, and they pushed
that astonished gentleman to the head in the successful pursuit of
notorious pirates who were injuring the causes of both revolutionists
and imperialists. One notorious brigand of Honan province, named Wang,
collected a band of 2,000 robbers, and at Harbin in Manchuria a band
of Hunghutz captured an imperial treasure train with half a million
of money. Vast preparations should now have been made to protect
Chinese and foreigners in the north from massacre, if the National
Assembly should on convening declare for a republic. There could not
but be bitterness when only 17 million Manchus abdicated the rule of
400 millions Chinese, and the widest and most absolute throne the
earth has known, wider than Pharaoh’s, Alexander’s, Xerxes’, Cæsar’s,
Charlemagne’s, Baber Mogul’s, or Tsar’s. The problem of ruling 17
million Manchu discontents was a greater one than the long dominion
which the subsidized Manchus had enjoyed over 400 millions of disunited
and supine Chinese. The republic of China has mighty problems before
it. Let all the world help her; above all, let education, hope and
creature comforts be bestowed as quickly as possible. There is glorious
altruistic work ahead of everybody for the whole of one’s life.
As the republicans solidified their government about Nanking, the
enemies of China--the land-grabbing nations--who forgot their old
antipathies and quarrels and acted in accord in their scheme of
aggrandizement, prepared to strip her of her vast dependencies,
Russia towering over Turkestan, Mongolia and Northern Manchuria, and
Japan gathering about Lower Manchuria, a secret treaty between the
two having been effected. No place was to be reserved for the great
Chinese people to accommodate their emigration, as the size of farms
should be necessarily increased throughout the land. The American and
British doctrine of the “non-partition of China” was to be struck
down. America, Britain and China will remember, for a Chinese republic
can yet gather an army of millions to take these provinces back, and
American and British naval forces, as a world’s altruistic police,
can, if necessary, stand at the doors of the Baltic and Black Seas and
remind Russia of her broken promises and greed. What a conflict there
will yet be, won either by a swamping emigration, or by an engulfing
army, as Russia, Japan and China come nearer together in the old
Chinese dependencies of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. Mongolia,
with her capital at Urga, and Turkestan, with her capital at Kashgar,
practically seceded on December 29th under Russian intrigue. Religious
Khans and Lamas, named by Russia, drove the Chinese ambans out and took
charge, a Russian railway policy to break across country and control
Peking being at once planned. The Manchu dynasty, with a following of
from ten to seventeen million Manchus, sheltered in either Mongolia,
Pechili province, Shangtung or Manchuria, under the egis of either
Russia, Japan, or other nations, will always be a covert weapon for
intrigue, which the bureaucrats of those nations can use against a
Chinese republic.
On December 29th, the military convention at Nanking--one vote to a
province--voted unanimously for Sun Yat Sen as the first president of
the provisional republic, until elective assemblies could meet. The
civil delegates from fourteen of the provinces, meeting at Shanghai,
also agreed on Sun Yat Sen as provisional president. The armistice
was now extended, President Sun calling upon the imperialists to
respect the neutral zone between the opposing armies. The rise of
President Sun was astounding and his task immense. From an impoverished
propagandist and exile, wandering over the earth for a whole lifetime,
with the Bible in one hand and _Progress and Poverty_ in the other, he
suddenly became the head of the largest nation upon the earth, and the
government of that nation he was expected to change from being the most
absolute monarchy into the freest of republics. His career is the most
inspiring example that was ever presented to reformers in the world’s
history. They say of typhoons and of troubles, that when things are at
their worst, only a change for the better can be looked for, and so it
has been with President Sun’s career.
At the peace conferences at Shanghai, the imperialists pressed for some
northern city as the venue of the convention of provincial delegates,
and the republicans pressed as strongly for Shanghai, because in
distinction from Peking, it was removed from Russian influence. Yuan
refused to disband his army and gave notice that if the republicans
advanced, he would order an attack. The imperialists then tried to get
the republicans to agree to pay the northern troops a sum of money
in return for laying down their arms, but the republicans wisely
refused to provision the imperialists in this way for a continuance
of the fighting. They did, however, offer to pay for the surrender of
artillery and ammunition. Yuan held many fruitless conferences with the
Manchu princes and dowager, offering to continue the war if they would
give up their hoards, but of the hundreds of millions of dollars of
their wealth, all he could get was a subscription of $100,000 from the
old lion, Prince Ching, who has been the mentor of the Manchus since
Prince Kung died in the 60’s. The whole of the south, in emulation
of the Christian president, Doctor Sun (Sunyacius), began cutting
off their queues and wearing khaki, as a sign that servility to the
Manchus was ended. Committees of persuasion, the members of which
carried shears, operated even in Yaumati and Kowloon (mainland sections
of Hongkong colony). The Chinese were approached and asked to go to
the barbers. If they refused, shears were drawn and the ancient badge
of servitude to the Manchu, the queue, was severed. The Chinese of
Bangkok, Siam, were humorous in their methods. The republican tri-color
was hoisted to the peak, and two hundred sheared queues were hoisted
under it, up the flagpole! Doctor Sun, president, named the following
as his provisional cabinet:
Vice-President, General Li Yuen Heng, commander of the republican left
wing;
Premier, Hwang Hing, organizer in Japan of the rebellion;
Minister of Justice, Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to the United
States, and reformer of the Chinese penal code;
Minister of Communications, Posts and Commerce, Wen Tsung Yao, American
educated, formerly Amban in Tibet, unusually able official;
Colonial Secretary, Fung Chi Yueh, represented Sun in the United States;
Secretary of State, Wu Hon Man, President Canton Assembly;
Ministers of Finance, Chin Tao Chen, and M. Y. Sung, Manager Chung Hua
rebel bank. I know both well.
Minister of Navy and Marine, General Hwang Hing, second in command
at Hankau, and Sun’s personal representative while he was absent in
America and England;
Foreign Minister, Wang Chung Wei, American educated;
Chief of Staff, General Hsu, the victor of Nanking.
The subject of adopting the Christian calendar was discussed and
decided on, though it was decided to please Chinese pride by letting
the republican bank-notes, issued in December, stand. These notes went
back to mythological times, and named 1911 as the 4609th year since the
first Emperor Huang Ti! The custom of dating the year with each Manchu
emperor’s succession was of course at once discarded in fourteen of
the rebelling provinces. President Sun assumed charge at Nanking and
immediately collected a strong garrison in the old capital of China.
In his former work, _The Chinese_, the author strongly recommended
the change of the capital of China farther south so as to be nearer
the center of China, closer in touch with the majority of the people
who popularly desire the change, and safely removed from Russian
influence and possibility of attack by Mongolian railway. Preparations
were at once made to bring finance, education, army, navy and a
federal government under the control of the coming parliament, the
provincial parliaments already being in tentative operation in half of
the provinces. We have already quoted the text of notes issued by the
republican government of Kwangtung province. Dictator Yuan, at Peking,
in a temporary huff, wired that he would not recognize Tang Shao Yi as
his representative any more at the Shanghai and Nanking conferences,
and that he would only confer by telegram. He demanded that Peking,
and not Nanking, should be named as the meeting place of the proposed
national assembly, which was to select the form of government. This
really broke up the peace conferences, and Wu Ting Fang so informed the
foreign governments.
Yuan then called upon the Manchu princes and royalty for money, saying
that if they would draw two millions a month for six months from their
foreign banks, he could carry on the war. Fearing that the republicans
would send an army by sea from Shanghai to Chin Wang Tao (where the
Great Wall and Peking railway meet the sea, and the only ice free
port in the north) to break Manchuria from the north, and march on
Peking, Yuan sent an army to Chin Wang Tao, but several of the Chinese
regiments rebelled. The republicans had arranged for such a transport
service, as they had seized the ships of the government steamship line,
the China Merchants’ Steamship Company. At the Lanchow camp east of
Peking, several Chinese regiments also rebelled, and there was much
bloodshed in putting down the riots. Yuan had five strong northern
armies, one under General Feng at Hanyang, one under Chang the Second
north of Nanking on the railway, one under Sheng Yun operating in
Shensi and Shansi provinces, and an army in both Shangtung and Honan
provinces. It looked as though the war would continue, the republican
strength being mainly in that they threatened, if successful, to
repudiate any loans made after January 1, 1912, by foreigners to the
Manchus. Hongkong now sent the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Indian
Regiment of Baluchis, a battalion of the Yorkshires and a battery
of English garrison artillery to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect
the famous foreign settlement and assist President Wu, of Canton, in
maintaining order. The island was fortified with sand-bags and barbed
wire entanglements. The Hongkong Chinese were enthusiastic for a
republic, and the British government did not prohibit their rejoicing.
Their processions included the use of automobiles and brass bands. What
a changed Hongkong, which used to hide its head in a monster dragon and
parade the streets!
President Sun now informed foreigners that while he could employ them
in all the remainder of China’s development, he could not do so in the
republican army, as the republicans desired to be free of suspicion,
and did not want to create foreign entanglements or embarrassments. The
foreign nations divided up the Tientsin-Peking railway, and foreign men
of war, independent of the republican navy, patrolled the whole rebel
front from Shanghai to Hankau. Germany despatched another full regiment
to Tsingtau in addition to the large garrison already there, America
alone up to January 7, 1912, had held her troops at Manila. When the
imperialists were evacuating Hanyang on January 4th, a regiment broke
parole, necessitating an attack by General Li’s republicans, which
attack was promptly and effectively sent in. On the right wing the
republicans advanced up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, forcing General
Chang the Second to withdraw to the north. President Sun was now active
in appeals to the foreigners for recognition of the republic, his
manifesto of January 5th, reading as follows:
1. Treaties of Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be observed.
2. Concessions granted by Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be
respected.
3. Foreign loans and indemnities incurred by Manchus up to October 13,
1911, will be recognized.
4. Foreigners and their property will be protected by the republic.
5. Manchus and their property will be protected by the republic.
6. We will remodel laws; revise civic, criminal, commercial and mining
codes; reform finances; abolish restrictions on trade and commerce;
insure religious toleration; and cultivate better relations with
foreign peoples and governments.
It will be noted that President Sun does not here take up that
difficult question, the nationalization of railways, the premature
forcing of which by the five banking nations on the Manchus largely
precipitated the preliminary revolution in Szechuen province in
September, 1911. When the republican finances will permit just
compensation of provincial owners of railways, the nationalization of
trunk railways will be a proper and opportune project, but confiscation
of railways by a promissory note at sixty per cent. of investment, as
was offered by the Manchus to the Kwangtung province owners, can only
bring revolt. By the end of the first week in January, 1912, certain
of the banking groups and powers, fearing that there would be a long
civil strife, attacked the American doctrine of the “non-partition
of China” and canvassed for two Chinas, the northern section to be
retained by the Manchu monarchy, or a republic with Yuan at the head.
Even this would bring its difficulties. To mention one of a thousand,
where would the dividing line be, the Yellow River or the Yangtze
River? The feeling of the republicans on this division can be gaged
by asking what was the feeling of the Americans on the subject of
secession. On January 8th the republicans approved a heavy bond issue,
based on internal revenue (the customs being already pledged by the
Manchus for foreign loans made before October 13, 1911, which loans
the republicans recognized), and bearing eight per cent. It was also
decided to put the currency on a gold basis, and though one-dollar,
fifty-cent and subsidiary silver coins would be issued, they were to be
only tokens, and their face value was to be secured by a gold reserve,
as in the case of America’s and Japan’s silver coinage, which is only a
token system.
On January 12, 1912, Major-General Franklin Bell despatched on the
transport _Logan_ from Manila the First Battalion of the Fifteenth
Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, to take care of that part of the
Peking-to-the-coast railway allotted to the Americans. This was a
confession of two things: first, that the Manchus might not be able
to restrain the “Boxer” mobs in the north, and second, that it was
expected that the republicans would be able to come north with their
three old and two new armies when hostilities should be opened. Part
of General Bell’s thrilling and characteristic American speech to the
troops should be quoted: “The Chinese are worthy of a square deal.
Treat them in a worthy way.” The expedition was a trying one, and was
provided with cords of fire-wood. The enervated troops left the hot
humid climate of Manila for the cold windy climate of North China. The
news that came from the Lanchow camp at this time was most distressing,
to the effect that Yuan’s imperialists were massacring and torturing
republicans by the fiendish lin chee (cutting into a thousand pieces,
the victim being placed in a cage). Men who had adopted the republican
badge of the New China by cutting off their queues were being slain.
Even the Red Cross attendants were attacked. Clearly the Manchu troops
at Lanchow had gone out of hand and become a mob. The American Bishop
Bashford now telegraphed from Shanghai to Dictator Yuan, urging the
Manchus to abdicate for humanity’s sake. General Hwang Hing, minister
of war, was now arranging for five republican armies to march north and
converge on Peking. These armies were:
General Li, with the left wing, from Hankau to Peking, through Honan
province.
Generals Hsu and Ling, with the right wing, from Nanking, through
Kiangsu and Shangtung provinces, along the railway.
A new army, by transport and cruisers, from Shanghai to Chifu, or some
northern port.
A new army of Canton and Hupeh troops to march north in General Li’s
rear.
The combined republican forces of Shensi and Shansi provinces to march
northeast.
The Chinese are exceedingly excitable when aroused from their usually
placid state. This is because their experience is limited, and they
have not yet learned to adapt themselves rapidly to new conditions.
They therefore commit suicide in surprising numbers under the sudden
pressure of anger, shame, poverty, trouble, uncertainty and fear.
At this time of revolution, especially in the northern provinces
of Shensi and Shansi where the republicans were strongly opposed,
many officials, widows of soldiers and the poor, jumped into wells,
swallowed balls of opium, or begged their friends to strangle them.
On January 15th, the republicans sent three cruisers and three
transports, with three battalions, machine and mountain guns, from
Shanghai to Chifu, in preparation for a converging attack on Peking,
America sent in the cruiser _Cincinnati_, and the Japanese sent in two
cruisers to watch proceedings and protect the foreign colony, which,
however, was not menaced. On January 19th, Foreign Minister Wang
Chung Wei sent a despatch to the powers, requesting recognition of
the republic “to avoid a disastrous interregnum”. On the same day the
republic from Shanghai sent the following drastic demand to Yuan and
the Manchus:
1. Abdicate.
2. No Manchu to participate in the provisional government until the
country is quiet.
3. The provisional capital can not be Peking.
4. Yuan can not participate in the provisional government until the
republic has been recognized.
President Sun gave the Associated Press this statement:
1. I have taken an oath to oust the Manchu rulers and restore peace to
the country before resigning.
2. I have taken an oath to establish a republic in China, and if I
consented to the proposal laid down by Yuan (to resign and put him in
charge) I would be foresworn. I am convinced that a republic is not
only practicable, but that it would be the best thing for China. Those
(monarchical nations and syndicates) asserting otherwise know nothing
about the Chinese. This republic is now an established fact. Nothing
can swerve me from what I consider my duty to my fellow countrymen.
Undoubtedly the best thought unanimously supports the republic.
3. China can not allow outsiders to dictate as to her form of
government.
4. There is no question of North and South China; it must be One China.
5. We are confident of the righteousness of our cause and the
superiority of the military strength of the republicans. If Yuan Shih
Kai persists in obstructing, our armies will be instructed to march
northward.
On January 21st the Manchus persisted in not abdicating, and
contemplated appointing the minister of war, Yin Tchang, and the
president of the War Board, Tieh Liang, both Manchus of the ultra type,
as dictators over Yuan. This was in contravention of the agreement
of Nineteen Constitutional Articles between the Manchus and the old
National Assembly, pressed by the soldiers of the Lanchow camp in
October, 1911, that no Manchus were to be placed in authority until a
constitutional government was established.
While the world was watching the camps of war, where the men stamped
eager for blood, two million women and children, in three other parts
of the land were starving from flood, famine and the absence of their
bread providers. Look on the map at the old bed of the Yellow River
across the middle of Kiangsu province; the valley of the Hwei River
across northern Nganhwei province, emptying into Lake Hangsu; and Wuhu,
on the Yangtze, where the flooded river tried to break east across
the flat country to Shanghai, instead of arching north to Nanking.
Not since 1906 have crops or homes been long above water in these
crowded districts. What the missionaries mainly, and others (native
and foreign) of the Central China Relief Committee, with headquarters
at Shanghai, have done, a library of books could not adequately tell.
Part of the story would be the relief trains of gift flour which left
Minneapolis and was transported free across the Pacific by the United
States army transport _Buford_; and more of the story would be the work
of the American Red Cross; the grand missionary periodicals of America;
and the Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce, which put business aside
for philanthropy. Their altruism, their manly effectiveness, their
human kindness that has been so deeply Christian and Confucian (as you
look at it from both an Occidental and an Oriental standpoint) has been
moving beyond words, and it is largely owing to this action on the part
of America that the hand of the war-inflamed Chinese was stayed against
foreigners in this campaign. Their women said: “Don’t strike the white
physicians and bread-givers; the men who speak in mercy and are clothed
in altruism.” The soldiers of the Eighth Division of Hupeh men, under
General Li, at Wuchang, in bidding the American Episcopal missionaries
good-by, cheered them with these words: “Americans are our brothers.”
Never had such a scene of suppressed emotion and earnestness occurred
in China. I have already recited General Li’s manifesto to his men
concerning the treatment of missionaries. None was more surprised than
the good missionaries themselves. From their experience in the “Boxer”
campaign of 1900, the missionaries expected unflinching loyalty from
their converts, but they did not look for the highest Geneva Convention
amenities from the new levies of the revolutionary soldiers. It was
really astonishingly delightful. But on second thought, it might have
been seen that it was only the first fruits of the seed sown long ago
by the missionaries themselves, and now being garnered after many days
when the sowing had been almost forgotten.
Reports came from Peking that the boy emperor, Pu Yi, was utterly
unconscious of trouble and the tottering of the oldest and widest
throne on earth, in all this ebb and flow of war and intrigue. Deserted
by his guardians, parent and tutors, he was left most of the time in
the Forbidden City with eunuchs, who humored his every whim, with
the result that his temper took on true Manchu characteristics. When
opposed, he threw the first thing at hand at those near him. When
the food displeased him, he cracked the dishes over the heads of his
kneeling servitors. The _Break-Up of China_ indeed, but by another
author than Lord Charles Beresford!
On January 26, 1912, the armies got in motion again, one corps leaving
Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican
expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway,
General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in
an engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former
was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with
Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists
up the Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag
rifles and ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the
imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way
to Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional
republican Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel
provinces) convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues.
A remarkably enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President
Sun’s address, which address urged unity. The members all rose and
cheered for the republic, while a modern band played martial music. The
republicans for the first time in modern history instituted the use of
a remarkable regiment of bomb-throwers. They went to the front with
large canvas bags of dynamite bombs hanging from their shoulders. It
required exceptional bravery to enlist in such a corps, as when a bag
was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion not only shattered
the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows if they were
near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked cap, and
they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.
By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It
was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained,
thus continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor
worship among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to
a Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the
Shoguns, and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi
province, and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa,
in Tibet. The Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles
should remain. This was a foolish move, as it removed them more than
ever from participation and influence in the social body, just as the
private retention of titles keeps the descendants of the old French
nobility hopelessly divorced from power in republican France. The
republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the presidency, with Sun Yat
Sen as premier, this being a union of the democratic principles in the
American and British systems. Yuan was inclined to insist on a dual
republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted that Yuan should come
to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu and Ling now advanced
their right wing, striking General Chung Fung of the imperialists, at
Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a great victory.
I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans
was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any
foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans,
if successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant
strategic move of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when
General Li induced Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause.
This enabled the republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the
China Merchants’ Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet
that the republicans were able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, when they were at their
wits’ end where to find money to balance the subscriptions which the
Manchus had made from their hoards, and the money which they were
drawing from the cash tills of the rich imperial railways of North
China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to buy out the China Merchants’
Steamship Company so as to give Japan dominance in the China coastal
trade, but Britain interposed. The republicans had only one little
railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104 miles, whose surplus earnings
could help them, as compared with the 4,000 miles of successful railway
in the territory controlled by the Manchus.
As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now advanced a
battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and controversy
in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism,
Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a
note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should
restrain their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with
arms in China. The powers which were inclined to break leash were
Japan, Russia and Belgium. The southern republican navy found the
international forces and legations a bar in the way of the capture
of Peking. The navy was off Chin-wang-tao, the only open port on the
Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and was ready to transfer the fifth
republican army from Chifu. As long as Peking was dignified with the
legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of the foreigner supported
to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the imperial
north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account
of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked
for recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America
only gave any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the
Peking legation staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial
inspection of the republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia
closed their fists tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively,
lending money right and left to industrials and mines and thus
establishing a mortgage and excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.
Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control,
whatever style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible
that the free China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts
and rows than the England, America or France of history. Liberty goes
through about the same birth pangs whether she is born white, brown,
black or yellow! On February 11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private
suggestion), forty-eight generals of the imperial army wired Yuan
that they would fight no more for the Manchus, so that the seed of
the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a whole forest. The official
birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s birthday (think of it,
America!), February 12, 1912, the abdication decree of the Manchus
including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the full the
powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great
republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and
Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to
accept Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad
to adopt foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize
unofficially both the northern and southern provisional Chinese
republics under Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national
assembly could form a united government.
On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat
Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for
republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able
to induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan.
Doctor Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The
National Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of
purity of purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your
magnanimity and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over
to republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism,
laying by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most
powerfully withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy.
Yuan and his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at
Chifu, Shanghai and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and
the Chinese legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag.
With the least bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved
the greatest revolution ever known, and had established a republic
of twenty-one republics, four times the population of America. They
will be managed by a combination of the British and American systems,
as their bulk is too great for the strong centralization which is now
becoming popular in America to correct certain corporation evils.
The provincial republics will develop largely as units, until the
individual is educated sufficiently for greater cohesion. Sun Yat Sen
will go down to history as the greatest dreamer, prophet, organizer,
altruist and political philosopher the modern world has known, not
that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man, he
has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception,
certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be
enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters
of his cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now
take hold. Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and
Yuan converted the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is
at the head of affairs for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun?
They are both Chinese and both republicans. China now has the center
of the world’s stage, and America has built the Panama canal to reach
quickly a front seat at the stage. The actors will have long and
strenuous parts, and the house is filling up rapidly to hear, and see,
and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be. Doctor Sun has done
the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it, and he has been
persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When the assemblies
succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will doubtless
come.
Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these
strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely
(allow the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in
Manchuria. Yuan he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling
governor, Chao Ehr Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in
Manchuria? Why did not this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why
did not Yuan and Sun repress themselves somewhat and win him? _A bas_,
personal jealousies, antipathies or overleaping ambitions! Surely
there is room for all in twenty-one republics, which are to be bound
as one commonwealth. The Chinese are intense in feeling and clannish
in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on one another; their Tong
wars in New York and San Francisco for instance. Thus Yuan might hate
Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas, according to Macaulay, “both
should serve the state”. It is this repression of individual resentment
and ambition which has made England and America so governable, and it
is something China will learn as the years of stress surge about the
ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to very little
in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning the
pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that
blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders
and their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all
have to learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not
a tug against each other because of personal greed, low ambition or
unruliness. In hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the
republicans held up two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing
successful protest against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword
by the minute statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to
advance himself and crush every will except his own; the way of an
egotist. If China needs a foreign model to look at occasionally, let
it be that of Washington, with his moderation, his unselfishness, his
charity, his honor, his true republicanism, which sees in every citizen
(man or woman) a king equal to himself, for the ballot and tax receipt
have made all men equal kings!
I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang.
They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be
recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform
edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the
composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run
at foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote
books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and
the compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day,
in the land which had always declared that any man could perform all
religious rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most
affable of men when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions
visited England and America in recent years, were the irreconcilable
Ruperts who insisted on the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants
in the northern provinces during the rebellion. The venerable and
cultured viceroy of Nanking, Chang, who was the first official to open
a modern exposition in China, was the very man who helped to hurl
that awful slaughter on the innocents, with the ruthless division of
Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at Nanking. The reform emperor,
Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal progressive edicts of 1898 in the
_Peking Gazette_, the possessor of the sweetest face that ever graced a
Chinese, was known to beat his waiters over the head with dishes, and
his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi, whose private ambition was to be
the best painter of plum blossoms in the land, was known, according to
Ching Shan, the comptroller of her household, to dance in rage that was
awful to behold, and which left its wake in broken crockery and clocks.
They have not as yet “lunacy commissions of three” in China, whose
infallible tests are walking the chalk-line without a corkscrew motion,
record of screaming and throwing vases, talking to one’s self and
having wigglety eyes at times, or men of tawny color might have been
incarcerated long before fame came to them! In the same inconsistent
way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist when a student
in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and Korea.
With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the
flag I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism
will doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more
enduring sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a
good republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of
the speaker’s desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America
or England, and China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to
Timothy regarding manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”
Owing to deferred pay, some of General Li’s republican troops at
Wuchang, and General Wu’s republican troops at Canton mutinied in
the middle of February, and on February 29, 1912, regiments of the
notorious Third Division of Yuan’s northern troops mutinied at Peking,
partly for the same reason, partly because they did not want Yuan
to go to Nanking; but mainly all this was a recrudescence of the
tricks of the Manchus to bring in foreign interference. The Manchus
had received part of their pension from the foreign loans and were
illegally using it to stir up sedition. The mutineers burned a mile of
houses, stretching from the Manchu’s Forbidden City to the new Wai Wu
Pu Building, which is Yuan’s headquarters, and millions of dollars of
treasures were destroyed, including the historic Wu Men gate leading to
the imperial purple and yellow city. Many shopkeepers hung out signs,
“Already looted; now empty” in an effort to save their buildings. The
houses occupied by Mr. Straight, the representative of the Morgan
Syndicate, and by Mr. Menocal, of the American International Bank,
were looted, as were other foreign houses, but personal affront was
not offered to foreigners. The quarters occupied by the delegates from
the Union Assemblies of the south, who came from Nanking, were fired.
The reactionary troops of Yuan showed their hate of the southerners on
every possible occasion. This was his punishment for raising an army
mainly in the two Manchu provinces, instead of generally enrolling it
throughout the country. These troops wanted to support the rule of the
nation by an unconstitutional Privileged Minority. It would be folly
to agree with their politics, and it would mean terrible bloodshed to
disagree with them.
The question they have raised is far from settled. One shell was
dropped into the American legation compound. For strategic purposes,
American soldiers took possession of the Chien Men gate and pagoda
tower, and the German troops occupied the Hatamen gate and pagoda
tower, both of which overlooked the legation and Methodist Mission
quarters. One thousand more foreign troops were brought up from
Tientsin to guard the legations. During the burning the Manchu eunuchs,
who had witnessed the 1900 siege, could be seen in the moonlight
gathered on the glistening yellow roofs of the imperial palaces. It
will be recalled that this Imperial Third Division under General Feng,
committed the uncalled-for and awful arson of Hankau in November, 1911.
The _Muse of History_ will in vain turn the pages of her index to find
a record in her volumes of incendiaries who surpass the reactionary
Third Division, whom Yuan now locked up in their barracks. He then
called upon the old-style Chang Ku turbaned troops to defend the city.
Yuan was continually showing distrust and fear of his troops; neither
would he permit the southern delegates to bring up southern troops to
defend the constitution and their liberty, nor would he permit the
empress dowager and the emperor to retire from the imperial city to
the summer palace, some twelve miles distant, or to Jehol:--he said he
feared to arouse the northern troops. The southern delegates replied:
“It is too bad that we deferred thoroughly whipping these northerners
while we were at it.”
On February 29, 1912, the first partial recognition of the republican
government was made by the American House of Representatives,
unanimously passing the Sulzer resolution congratulating the “people”
of China on assuming the responsibilities of self-government. All
throughout Pechili, at Paoting, where the Anglican missionary, Mr. F.
Day, was killed by a mob which was looting with the Sixth Division,
at Tientsin, and throughout Shangtung province, the revolt spread, as
a recrudescence of the Manchuized anti-foreign or “Boxer” movement.
Native Christians were assassinated or had their eyes put out. Doctor
Sun, at Nanking was distressed, and promised to stand by Yuan and
republicanism. He sent telegrams to all the assemblies requesting them
to be steady, and generously saying that Yuan had rendered a service
by inducing the Manchus to abdicate. The situation reminded one of
Burke’s description of the French revolution: “The National Assembly
is surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their
crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve
itself, would instantly dissolve them.” The new Tientsin mint was
looted. Doctor Schreyer, an eminent German physician of Tientsin, was
assassinated. The American legation guard got through to Peking to
the delight of the foreigners. Foolishly none of the foreign guards
brought artillery, and the legations were therefore at the mercy of any
artillery attack that the northern troops might direct against them. At
Fengtai, the British Somerset regiment was on guard when 1,500 Chinese
modern soldiers stopped the eastbound train. The Somersets, with the
traditional bravery of the British, gave the Chinese troops one hour
to clear out. By that time the 700 British Inniskilling Fusiliers,
under command of the soldierly Colonel Hancock, were brought west,
detrained quickly, and with the Somersets, marched at once on the
positions of the obstructionist Chinese troops, who found discretion to
be the better part of valor. Then the freed train started for Tientsin.
There were now 3,000 foreign troops in Peking, and on March 3rd the
Fifteenth American Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, led a grand march
of the quarter to show Yuan’s rebelling troops that order at last
could be sustained, and Japan was called upon, as in 1900, for 5,000
troops. Hongkong and Manila were also wired to send reinforcements.
The troops of the north who had fought against the republic for four
months, were now showing themselves to be a disgusting set of “Boxer”
looters, incendiaries, murderers and “_agents provocateurs_” for
intervention. The outcome of the whole matter might be the bringing of
the remobilized southern forces north and the immediate unification
of nationalism at Peking under Sun, Yuan and General Li; although the
south at heart desires Nanking to be the capital, as it is removed from
Russian influence and northern sectionalism.
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
Military company of St. John’s American Episcopal University,
Shanghai. Numbers of these young men took part in the revolution,
and they are leaders in the New China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The bund, Tientsin, where the Legation Guards disembarked during the
revolution of 1911–12.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The heart of religious China, the only reservation made by the
abdicating Manchu emperor; the chaste, blue-roofed Temple of
Heaven, Peking. The beautiful proportions of this building have
been widely praised by foreigners. The three galleries are of
marble.
]
Amid all the disturbance, another cloud, the size of a man’s hand,
loomed up on the horizon. The Marquis Chu Cheng Yu, a lineal descendant
of the Chinese Ming kings, began to canvass the rioting army for
adherents. Two hundred American marines were rushed from Shanghai
to Tientsin on the collier _Abarenda_, and the American fleet left the
southern ports for Taku. The transport _Warren_ sailed from Manila
with another battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry and marines. The
four-nation bankers, with the approval of six powers, came to Yuan’s
help with $1,000,000 loans on nine months’ warrants, to aid him in
putting down mobbing and mutiny by paying off soldiers, who, however,
used the money as fuel for more mutiny. It was decided to loan the dual
republican governments at Peking and Nanking about $5,000,000 a month.
Some of the old-style troops were more loyal to Yuan than were the
notorious Third Division at Peking, the Sixth Division at Paoting, in
Pechili province, the Second Division in Honan, and the Fifth Division,
in Shangtung province, which were loyal to no cause or person. At the
same time the preliminary contract of February twenty-first, by which
the Russo-Asiatic Bank independently was to advance Sun and the Nanking
republican organization $7,000,000, was canceled, and the four banking
powers advanced Sun, at Nanking, $1,500,000 to pay off Cantonese troops
and hire police. The rebellion of Yuan’s troops made many confess that
the southern republicans had probably made a mistake in not following
Chang the Second’s imperial forces of northern troops north in January,
1912, and giving the northern army several sound thrashings until the
organization was broken up.
On March 9, 1912, the irreconcilable imperial governor of Shansi and
Shensi provinces, General Sheng Yun, a Mongol by blood, still had
15,000 troops (many of them Mohammedans) fomenting Manchu propaganda
and slaying everywhere, while General Yin Tchang, at Japanese Dalny,
Governor Chao Ehr Hsun, at Mukden, and Prince Su, at Jehol and Kalgan,
were doing the same thing. What a confused state of affairs existed
in the mutinous army, of the north, which was divided into five corps.
General Sheng’s Mohammedans were setting Shansi and Shensi provinces on
fire. The corps of Imperial Guards and Manchu divisions at Peking were
at heart of course for the deposed Manchu dynasty. The Mongol divisions
in northern Pechili looted and decapitated and laughed at President
Yuan’s orders. The old-style turbaned troops of Yuan’s were loyal one
day and disloyal another, and the same thing was true of divisions of
territorial Shangtung, Pechili and Honan troops of Yuan’s modern army.
In the southern provinces the republicans had a little more cohesion
in the five armies of their recruited corps and their two territorial
armies. In Yunnan province an entirely isolated army was marking time
and had done nothing for either southern or northern cause of late. Oh!
for a strong hand to weave and hold all these cords in one cable of
some strength.
On March 10th, amid the crashing of walls and institutions, a pathetic
but inspiring scene occurred in the modern Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office)
at Peking. Yuan Shih Kai, dressed in military uniform, was formally
inaugurated provisional president of the republic of China, in the
presence of the Nanking assembly delegates, military and naval
officers, provincial envoys, and many foreigners. Of course, legation
staffs and missionary bodies did not attend officially. Yuan read a
declaration promising progress, to observe the constitution, and retire
when the National Assembly appointed a permanent president for the
decided term, if he himself was not chosen. Two yellow robed Lamas
from the Buddhist temple stepped up, presented Yuan with two honorary
scarfs and called him, in Pekingese, “Da Dsoong Toong” (in Cantonese,
Ta Tsung Tung),--the great president. It was a businesslike military
scene, there being very little of Oriental display or the gorgeous
robes of old. Tang Shao Yi was named premier. President Yuan signalized
his assumption of office by pardoning all prisoners, except murderers
and robbers, remitting all overdue land taxes and announcing that for
the present the old laws would stand, except where they were obviously
contrary to the spirit of republicanism.
The new constitution provided that the supreme power was in the hands
of the National Assembly; that all acts of the president required
the approval of the assembly, that the cabinet was answerable to
the assembly; and that the assembly was to elect the president and
vice-president, and have power to pass laws over the executive veto.
This was vastly different from Japan’s stultified parliamentarism,
and was a union of the American system of the lower house being
supreme, and of the British executive efficiency obtainable from a
small cabinet. Doctor Sun promised to turn over the great seal of his
office. Disorder ruled throughout the armed north, where a republic
was unpopular with the mercenary troops. Republican flags were torn
down wherever the merchants of Peking put them up. The rebelling
troops decapitated the crowd by thousands at Peking, Tientsin, Kalgan,
Paoting, and throughout Shansi, Shensi and Pechili provinces. So many
heads and bodies lay on the street that the donkeys and mules refused
to pass the heaps. Yuan himself had to add the head of the headtaker
to the pile. He sent the tall, venerable General Chiang Kwei Tai with
old-style turbaned Nganhwei troops, who mowed off heads right and left
through the streets of old Peking. The famous Tongkwan pass, at the
heel of the Yellow River, commanding Shensi and Honan provinces, was
seized by the reactionary troops of General Sheng Yun, who compelled
the merchant guilds to pay blackmail or have their stores looted.
Clearly Pechili province, with its hosts of irreconcilable mercenary
troops, was the rock on which the ship of republicanism was now
stranded. Yuan had to change his body-guard from day to day, one day
old-style troops, another day Manchu troops, and again the champion
looters of the Third Division, but the real hand which afforded what
little steadiness there was, was the magnificent body of foreign troops
which amounted to 3,000 picked men.
On March 12th, Provincial President Wu Hon Man and Governor Chan
Kwang Ming, at Canton, were harassed by the notorious pirate chief,
Luk, who was remarkably successful. Luk, through the mutiny of the
soldiers, gained the historic Bogue, Yuchu, Whampoa and Fumen forts,
and the arsenal and admiralty buildings. All the foreign navies, led
by the United States gunboat _Wilmington_ and the British fleet under
Commander Eyres, anchored off Shameen Island, cleared for action,
and the passenger steamers, on which probably every world tourist
has probably been, the _Fatshan_ and _Honan_, sailed from Canton for
Hongkong with two thousand passengers each. The famous old shallow
draft British gunboat _Moorhen_, the hero of a thousand pirate chases
in intricate Kwangtung province waters, had her awnings and spars torn
by bullets during the night, as she protected the electric station,
so that the pirates could not strike Canton into midnight, and in the
dark massacre along the narrow streets, the maloos and the bund. Eight
hundred British and French troops patrolled the little foreign island
of Shameen.
Before the days of direct primary nominations in America we suffered
from the machine system, which advanced the incompetent and debarred
the eminent and efficient from service in the state. A saloon-keeper
who brought 2,000 votes would demand, for instance, the position of
secretary of state. “But you’re not fitted for it; you’re a hoodlum.”
The ward-heeler would answer: “I must have it; I have to pay my 2,000
brigands the ‘graft’ which we claim is ours; otherwise, remember our
revenge next election.” One Shek Kam Chuen, a young stone-cutter and
human hair hawker of Canton, was very successful in smuggling arms
for the revolution, and on the declaration of independence, he led a
following of 2,000 nondescript men, who did effective work in fighting.
They were men who loved a fight more than liberty, not liberty more
than life. When the republic was victorious and his troops, after being
paid, were disbanded, Shek was unsatisfied. He, a hawker, wanted high
office, when even President Sun turned his brother down from politics
to business in Canton because he was not eminent for political ability.
Shek made demands for his men that the state could not consistently
grant. He smuggled arms to take up piracy in reprisal on the harassed
state. The way the governor of Canton treated Shek and his legal
adviser, Chang Han Hing, was, under the constitutional pressure of
public opinion, to capture them at their headquarters, and under
military law, or the application of the popular “recall”, have them
both shot, to the great rejoicing of good citizens and taxpayers. That
ended one instance of heelerism, bossism, packed primary, professional
office holding, “public office a private graft”, piracy, or whatever
you like to call it, in modern China! The “Popular Recall” was a
success, despite the cynicism of the standpatters in Canton, and one of
those standpatters was Shek’s lawyer, Chang, who shared his client’s
fate, much to his disgusted surprise. I am sorry William Dean Howells
was not in Canton at that time to write _A Modern Instance_!
General Wu Sum, with 2,000 republican provincial troops, left Canton
for Swatow to put down pirates operating around that noted old city,
and the famous General Ling, and General Ho came down from Nanking to
assist. On March 14th the irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu leader, Prince
Tuan, exiled in Kansu province, raised the standard of revolt, with
his son Ku Kwei, as a pretender to the throne. He had not the moral
support of all of the imperial clan, because he had in 1900 plotted to
displace Prince Chun’s emperor son, “Pu Yi”. Tuan is a shrewd, able and
persistent leader. If he had not been a reactionary in 1900, he might
have preserved to the Manchus a longer lease of power.
The battles of the international financiers still went on at
Peking, Premier Tang Shao Yi’s action in raising $5,000,000 from a
Russian-Belgian syndicate on the Chinese-built Peking-Kalgan railway,
incensing the international group. Tang gave a laconic interview,
merely saying: “China need not necessarily put herself forever in the
hands of four nations; we can deal with independents where we are
able to find any. The loan was first offered to American bankers,
but those American bankers who are now in the Far East would not act
independently of the four nations.” Russian, Japanese and Belgian
bankers seemed to fall in with Russia’s plans, as in 1896, to put
China under a financial thraldom. Russia did not want a loan given to
China for her army, as Russia and Japan both desire a weak army in
China. The four-nation bankers now offered China $300,000,000, of which
$60,000,000 was to be for army purposes. If Japan joins in this loan,
it will be because she does not want to be shut out of a share in
controlling China’s finances, and an apportionment of the concessions.
The _National Review_ of Shanghai published at this time a caricature,
showing Russia pushing old China, and “Foreign Grafter” pushing New
China, out of the way, while North China, a clam, had shut its shell
on the beak of South China, a heron. The Chinese fable of the bird and
the shellfish was quoted as follows: “A bird attacked an open shellfish
on the beach; but the shellfish closed his shell with a snap, and the
bird was caught. Both were then helpless, and fell an easy prey to
some covetous fishermen.” Nearly all the Japanese papers, including
the influential Tokio _Nichi_ and _Jiji_, and the Osaka _Mainichi_,
came out attacking Yuan, and endeavoring to stir up differences between
North and South China. If Japan could prove that Chinese conditions
were unstable, there evidently would be more plausibility for Japan’s
possible intervention in Manchuria! On March 16th, Premier Tang Shao Yi
announced a provisional northern cabinet as follows, until the National
Assembly of seven delegates to a province could meet. None of the
appointees is a Manchu.
President, Yuan Shih Kai, a Honan man.
Premier, Tang Shao Yi, Cantonese, educated at Yale University, America.
Army, General Tuan Chi Jui, Nganhwei man, once viceroy of Hunan, active
in revolution.
Navy, Admiral Lin Kwan Hsung, a man of considerable experience in the
old and new navies, at Canton, along the Yangtze, etc.
Foreign Affairs, Lou Tseng Tsiang, Minister to Russia, Netherlands,
etc. In this appointment Yuan shows how natural it is for him to favor
Russia, whom he fears.
Interior, Cheo Ping Chun, a native of Hunan.
Education, Tsai Yuan Pei.
Railways, Posts, etc., Liang Ju Hao, Cantonese.
Commerce and Labor, Chen Chi Mei.
Agriculture, Sung Chiao Fen.
Justice, Wong Chun Hui, American educated, very able.
Finance, Hsiung Hsi Ling, Hunan man, once in Exterior Department of
Hupeh province.
Most of these are southern men, some of whom replied that they did
not see how they could come without a southern army to protect their
lives from the loosely-held northern troops, who had no idea what
constitutional honor or promises meant. The whole of the American
Pacific Navy, including the fine cruisers _California_, _South Dakota_
and _Colorado_, left Honolulu for the Far East, and the United States
steamer _Monterey_, on the same day, landed one hundred men at Swatow
to preserve order and the tanks of the Standard Oil Company. On March
19th the republican troops at Canton and Swatow gained back after
severe engagements the forts that the mutinous troops and pirates had
taken. The government at Canton bought up all the food in the shops so
as to starve out Luk’s pirates. Amid all the conflict of accusation and
denial, it is fitting that Yuan Shih Kai should speak for himself, and
therefore I quote parts from his long address to the old conservatives
and to the provincial governors shortly after the abdication of the
dynasty, which abdication he adroitly and successfully urged when, to
use his own words, “it was well nigh impossible to make stand against
the republicans.”
“From the time when I again led the troops and later when I came to
court, I was animated with the purpose of establishing a constitutional
monarchy, but the state of the country changed. The National Assembly
and the provincial assemblies all fathered the policy of not using
military force to put down the disturbances. When Hankau was regained,
the naval forces were lost. The moment Hanyang was reconquered, Nanking
fell. The power of the government over the waterways and the sea was
gone, and the sources of revenue were cut off. Although in various ways
I encouraged the military to greater effort, secured the revocation
of Shangtung’s declaration of independence, subdued the capitals of
Shansi and Manchuria, and did all in my power to prop up the North,
yet the tide was too strong and swept every locality. Revolutionary
societies among the people were scattered everywhere. At this time
there was international intervention and it was requested that in the
interests of humanity a truce be declared and negotiations undertaken.
Foreigners continually uttered reproof on the scores of commercial
interests and the indemnity. Because the country was in such a chaotic
state politically, it was difficult to restore order. Within there
was ruin; without there was furnished the possibility of foreign
intervention. The revolutionary forces were coming by various routes
to attack the North. The spirit of the army was shaken. Had the strife
been continued, in a very short time the revolutionary army would have
come north, and in that case it would have been impossible either to
fight or to negotiate for peace. What of the imperial family and the
livelihood of the bannermen? Recently the ministers of foreign nations,
the commercial associations at the ports, the different conferences,
the various troops and the provincial viceroys and governors have
sent telegrams, all stating that the will of the people is bent on
a republic, and that it would be well-nigh impossible to make stand
against it. Should the enemy arrive at the walls of the capital, the
disasters resulting would be unimaginable. How much better for the
throne, of its own grace, to proclaim the republic at an early date.
There was condemnation of the policy of staking the fate of their
imperial majesties and the lives and property of the North on a single
throw, trusting to luck in a single battle. An edict was issued by her
Imperial Majesty directing me first to settle with the revolutionary
army regarding the especial consideration to be accorded the imperial
family and the treatment of the Manchus, Mongolians, Mohammedans, and
Tibetans. If an agreement could be reached by the two sides, then
the imperial family might enjoy glory, and the hereditary nobility
among the Manchus, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans, as well as the
allowances of the bannermen, might continue without interruption. An
agreement was made, resulting in the present state of affairs.”
Neither Yuan nor the north has yet explained to the world the reason
why the nobility of the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, etc., expect
titles and pensions, unless it be the argument that is now wearing
out over the world, in nation after nation, that it is constitutional
to maintain rule by a Privileged Minority over a taxed majority!
Yuan says: “An agreement was made resulting in the present state
of affairs,” but the “present state of affairs” is not entirely
satisfactory. At times, it seems in China that Confucius has abdicated
to Confusion. The solution lies in three things: railways, education,
and a real republican congress, none of the three to be interfered
with by either a riotous or office-greedy army, but rather dutifully
served by a patriotic army. There can be no doubt that the action
of the ninety generals of the northern army in forcing the National
Assembly at Peking, in July, 1912, at the sword’s point, to accept
against their will the second cabinet which Yuan Shih Kai had selected,
and some of his foreign-advised measures, was inimical to the vitality
of constitutionalism in China. The result was the forming of a
constitutional party in the Yangtze and southern provinces by Doctor
Sun Yat Sen and his friends, called the Tung Men Hwei (Sworn Brother
Society), some of whose measures were the supervision of Chinese
finances, and railway and industrial development, largely by Chinese,
and the discharge of more regiments of northern troops. The National
Assembly and cabinet have recently put in Sunyacius’ charge the
formation of a central railway board to arrange for the extension of
railways.
II
WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA
In his book _Alone in China_, Julian Ralph, the New Yorker, wrote in
1898 the following sentence:
“The men and women of China will live in my mind forever, here and in
heaven, as the jolliest, kindest, most sympathetic and generous souls I
ever found in such profusion anywhere in my roving.”
I have lived and traveled three years in China, and have found that
the Chinese influence the foreigners and that the foreigners influence
the Chinese, sharpening each other’s wit, and smoothing each other’s
kindly humor. The jewel has many facets of view, depending on the angle
of vision, and in the following I shall attempt to recall many of the
angles.
Regarding the foreign custom, written of by Kipling and others, of the
troubled or exiled ones of the treaty ports taking copiously to liquor
for consolation, a wit remarked: “A corkscrew will never pull a man out
of sorrow.”
The Manchu soldiers read little, and have been under the impression
that others are like them. The “braves” on guard at the Ta Ping gate
of Canton had been in the habit of extorting many a “cumshaw” from
humble-looking citizens before they were allowed to go on their
business. They caught a Tartar in 1910, when they seized a modern
editor, who aired his complaint in his newspaper, which was read in
due time by the Military Prefect Lo. What occurred between Lo and his
old-fashioned braves was not reported, but the braves for many months
before the revolution of 1911 saw in every passer-by an editor. Up to
the time of free types, complaint had been smothered at the yamens.
Revolutionary spies had gone ahead of new appointees to distant
provinces and impersonated them with a recitation of their record. In
August, 1911, the Peking _Gazette_ recited that the cabinet would in
future despatch a photograph in a sealed envelope to the governors, so
that “they could pick out the man who fitted the record by physiognomy
as well as memory”.
Back in the 80’s the famous Szechuen pioneer, Archibald Little, dunned
the ears of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) at Peking for permission
to open the whole Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking to steamer
service. “Yes,” said the humorously evasive board at last, “you may
run your steamer, but you know that a modern steamer will cut the
unwieldy junks down. Therefore all sailing craft will tie up to the
bank of the great river two days of each week, and give the terrible
Fung-kwei (foreign) steamer full reign on the Yangtze, but on those two
days of the week only. For five days of the week the steam craft must
in reciprocation, tie up to the bank.” This would require weeks longer
to ascend the river than could be done by tracking and sail, and Mr.
Little’s plan for fast steamer service was effectually disposed of by
the wily Manchu Board, which boasted that it “never denied a foreign
request”.
Two trains of coolies meet, and words or a jostle precipitate a combat.
After it is all over, and your men take up again the arms of your
chair, you remark that although your leader’s clothes are nearly ripped
off, he is laughing about it. In astonishment, you ask him why, and he
replies: “You should see the fellow I tackled; he hasn’t any left.”
In the country parts, if you hand a cigar to a man at an inn, he thinks
it is proper manners to pass it to every one, to take a puff, just as
he would do with a pipe.
The _Chi Feng Pao_, a native paper of Peking, reported that in the
month preceding the great 1911 revolution, even the house servants of
the Court had not received their wages for months, and that one morning
this anonymous placard was found placed on the comptroller’s door: “Not
even a shadow of our pay to be seen yet. Why?”
A Chinese merchant, who was disgusted that all his heirs died upon
birth, called at a life insurance office at Tientsin, and asked if
“they could insure a well and proper birth”, for if so, he would gladly
take out a policy. He supposed that was what the new American life
insurance meant.
A Hakka woman of the south was seldom given chicken by her husband,
who complained of the expense. She obtained his permission, however,
to purchase a fowl for the god in the Taoist temple. The husband came
home, found his wife eagerly eating the bird, and shrieked out: “How is
this? I bought it for the god, not for you.” She replied: “I offered it
to the god, who ate all he could of it. I am only eating the remainder,
thanks to the god, and not to you, for that.”
It is the custom for the mandarins who go into a country inn, to hang
out a red card, stating that “This inn is full”. A rejected guide
replied: “Rather the mandarin is full.”
I have seen a humorous drawing on a screen, which shows a cat chasing
a mouse. The cat has only been able to catch a hind foot of the mouse,
which keeps running, the foot lengthening in a most comical way,
judging by the disgust on the face of the cat, and the laugh on the
face of the mouse, which says: “That is all you get, anyway.”
“How is it that there are no one-legged men to be seen in China; do
you have no accidents?” an intelligent official was asked, and he
replied humorously: “Oh, yes, but as we know nothing of surgery, when a
man’s leg gets in trouble, we bury the whole man.”
Some of their merry proverbs are:
“If you must beat the priest, wait till he has ended the prayer for
you.”
“It’s all very well to tell the priest that you are penitent, but prove
it by pennies.”
“A wheelbarrow ahead means a trail behind.”
“Man’s mouth is wider than a volcano when it comes to words.”
A sick man, sleeping fitfully, is said to be having a “raw sleep”, and
correspondingly a tired or a drunken man, enjoying deep rest, is said
to be having a “ripe sleep”.
It has been the custom of the French and Germans, when a missionary
or an ambassador has been unfortunately assassinated, to compel the
Chinese government to erect a stone arch or pailoo, with the intent
of warning the nation of the wrath of the foreigner. When you ask
the common people, who can not read, if the arch is “in memory of
Ambassador So-and-So” they generally reply: “Oh, no, it’s to the other
fellow. It’s in memory of patriot So-and-So who was executed by a
coerced government for killing a forward foreigner.”
Beheading, outside of Kwangtung province, which has recently adopted
modern methods, is the punishment for far too many crimes. Scores
of prisoners are often beheaded together, as they kneel in a row.
The Chinese loathe this method of punishment, as no good Confucian
can appear in the next world with a headless body to be worshiped
as a god by his descendants. They overcome the difficulty by having
the head sewed on the body before it is buried. There is little to
identify the almost unclothed bodies, and the Doms or coolies who
are hired to perform the gruesome task sometimes get the bodies and
heads mixed up, delivering the right body but the wrong head to the
surprised though mourning family, which stands ready with the coffin
and the identifiers. The Chinese are so possessed of humor that it is
not unknown for retainers to burst out laughing at the incongruous
spectacle.
“The American cost of living is nothing compared to the Chinese cost of
loving,” said the demure mandarin, as he pointed to his five wives, et
cetera!
Here is a story that went the rounds of Peking, regarding the equipping
of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by
the Ping Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of
his ancestors to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without
giving the tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much
not to give them a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or
commission, patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second
prince would be quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed
to copy the elder first prince, and so the money dwindled down the
line, until the Ordnance Department was supplying wooden shells to
field guns and wooden cannon to ramparts. The First Division personnel
was on the list all right, but there was no money to uniform or arm
them. By and by a beggar was found in tatters by the wall. An orderly
hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First Division, go and sew some of
your patches together, and defend Peking from the enemy; here’s your
ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last penny of the appropriation.
The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the first cake stand, and
as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the enemy, and I’m
going to buy him off, for did not Confucius teach that diplomacy
always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping of the
First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about your
American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you foreigners
make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the Tammany ring
of old New York, when you supplied your courts with everything but
justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures, and
quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that
story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official
taking his perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary
lamplighter, that worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he
would go in a saloon opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money,
letting nature furnish daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her
children of the West?”
Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin
got the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he
reached his inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting
to walk into the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him,
strenuously objected, explaining that the room was reserved for “the
Old Devil himself”, and woe betide them all if the engagement was not
respected. When his escort came up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper
flogged for daring to speak disrespectfully of a judge who was a
dignified “father and mother” of the people, and at the same time
handed the man a handful of coins as a reward for keeping faith with
the said mandarin.
The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a
fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or
“a flea has found his brain.”
A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton had his
difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain
English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in
his coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee
men, no can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better
die, and go freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”
Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In
Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the
proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how
long it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty
days. When he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he
asked with a grimace, half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my
men and I do with the other nineteen days?”
Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first
city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect
a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan,
though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that
the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and
are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray
chiefs. Now that the comparatively palatial prison has been erected,
there is a rush to commit life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders
may be sure of a fine bed, good food, medical care, personal security,
and interesting work in the various workshops for the rest of their
happy lives, as compared with the unbearable penury and danger of their
lives among the hills. The Miaos, Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan
know a good thing when they see it, and penology is a fad which is
spreading like a fire among their mountain terraces at present.
Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation ladies had
informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager
Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and
dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted.
The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time
to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she
was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign
branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great
flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance
it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified
missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: _Waltz Me
Around Again, Willie_.
“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen
in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out,
and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the
precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last
American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three
cents a dozen for his eggs.
The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that
the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man
among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it
is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.
Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised
that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations
until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him
short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not
know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland
were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for
the tariff, and its progeny.
The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near
Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of
escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of
the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies
its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah,
a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing
junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened
them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling
at their aptitude in carpentry.
It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures
and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to
see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in
another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a
consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember,
however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched
high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and
maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest
enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you,
so good-by.”
There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in
all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character,
Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never
called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of
the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper
accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by
appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it
should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies
were tenants, and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I
returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for
himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and
rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly
their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the
godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and
silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy
with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and
noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted
as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty
bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied.
I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or
unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again,
they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under
the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match
the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move
in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind
in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the
clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse
of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese
Mak’s direction.
The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful
manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father,
who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered
coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to
see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event”
(that is, his father’s death).
The North China _Herald_ gives the following as a sample of a Chinese
boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been
discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the
services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and
makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts
as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you
lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request
of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am
unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come
to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to
bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please
you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to
grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much
obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain,
Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”
For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and
a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you
do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief,
or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you
from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that
he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know
where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner
has not taken out the usual insurance.
A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the
foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who
stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him
the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of
going to the inferior regions. _In ignorantia salus!_
On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s
fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said
the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and
they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in
a retreat before many claimants?”
There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets.
The Hongkong _Telegraph_ writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel
door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper,
with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer
into the fakir’s immediate future!
The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we
have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need
them.”
A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can
stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied
the punnist Choi.
The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite
on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s
smile like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s
barrel-stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor,
or what-not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed
before many a footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the
shrines of eclecticism in both Taoist and Buddhist China.
To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is
so anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a
coast-wise steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who
had been modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush
in the morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY
tooth-brush,” exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for
pardons; me thought it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.
The witty Hongkong _Mail_ (was the veteran Murray Bain or the scholarly
Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an
ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault
of the Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.
A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry which
proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with the
local _Press_ shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable
Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on
the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose
field-glass is a wine glass.”
The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over the
prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by
saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the
luxury of a high-priced grave.”
The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an
infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,”
replied the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of
the thieves?” remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!
Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic
wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to
scratch his hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the
little-brained hog who has to button his vest away out here.”
The Chinese poor sleep in the open--the Great Unroofed--generally on
their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new
mission hospital gathered in the sick, the lame and the blind, who
were sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to
their lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight.
Every patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried
and true, good old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they
would say was: “Me no sabee new fashion.”
The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to
eat rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a
little card which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor
as well as a benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My
venerable Rev.: Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in
worshipping and offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you
like if I am right in making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”
Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the
Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was
showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his
automobile, possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his
bowling alley, etc., to the Solon from Canton. “You see that when we
British devote ourselves to pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.”
“Rather,” replied the Chinese, whose relaxation was of a gentler kind,
such as walking in gardens, and flying birds and kites, “I should say
you devote yourself to expense regardless of pleasure.”
Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings brought
their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim humor
in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war against
Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s
staff at his new station thought they would embarrass him by applying
for promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced
one grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time
owing to retrenchments needed.
A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir Matthew
Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died
from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.”
He, however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic
governor’s fame was common to all.
Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and
stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student
satirist, who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus
described in an essay his former American mistress and her daughters:
“The Americaness is open air breather, consequently her meat is
harder than Chinese (he meant her muscle). In a dangerous melancholy
acting, the young Americaness quickly traps her sorrow husband who
comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in divorce when loving voice
of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of romance early frosted
makes scandal column of paper, which is best advertising much sought
and read like dog in manger by all actress without job. Cold ethics of
Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick ruin, consequently
wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-air theater for
all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next birthday,
consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but American
poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each day.’ I
think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and
fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese
man believe womans should go slow; consequently Americaness wear
hobble skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both
mens take no chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman
and Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk--when once begun then
heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where
mans sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”
Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels
who have frequently to answer calls for a B. & S. after a bath, another
wit said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”
Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding
mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate
our maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these
characters: “Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another
boy wrote it: “The angels are crazy.”
At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow
the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste
slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he
related the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic
missionary, daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put
wonder upon wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious
virtues of the Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap
in China. I knew a man there who made his living by selling himself to
the executioners to take the place of those condemned to death.’”
Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance
was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the
clerk: “Is the mandarin in?” “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the
jailer in?” “No.” “Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the
prisoners in, Mr. No-No-No?”
One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal
press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”
The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel
Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and
he explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet
as is your Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me
that they call the administration papers which say that “everything is
lovely and the goose hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only
know one note, and one sets the others going on the same old thing.
Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One
wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched
his fist at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face
exclaimed, “I don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he
got it.” The other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar,
and pointing to a banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I
don’t know how he got it, but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”
A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”, and
the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at
her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated
expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to
this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does
not afford.
The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and
clinging to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside
clothes in old-style China), said: “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour
I’d l-l-like to h-have a m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”
Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s
best technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used
for all lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of
establishing a debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a
professor who defended the former said that “he preferred a man who
could stand on his feet and make his head work to one who could stand
on his head and make his feet work”.
A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He
jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My!
what a come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the
never-say-die man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but
you should see me on ordinary days.”
The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story
of the Portuguese Sé Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and
the fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to
look into. The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the
devil this time being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the
superstitious women as they searched high up for the soothing blessing.
The naming of the Chinese servants on board ship, in mess, hong, office
or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more
inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help
changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names
are generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if
you desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is
what your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber
boy called. There are no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she
serves only as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the
irreverent messes and barracks, some of the men name their servants
after some personal distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”;
“One Eye”; “Melica”, because he told you that he had once sailed on a
ship for America; “Jesus man”, because he told you he got converted at
a mission school and preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was
once a servant in the governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen
their servants according to their favorite political leaders in America
or England: “Loosy Velly” is, of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan;
“Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd
George, and one boy rejoiced in the name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine).
Hundreds of these silent servants are moving about the dining-room
of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin (lunch) time, yet you will
not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes. Perhaps they are
as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names, in Chinese.
Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist
friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always
Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red
beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea
Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag”
(American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.
Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written
that some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself
in a former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A. M. Cocktail
Brotherhood in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights
of the pen took him to tournament to break a lance because of it.
One witty evening an old hand on the club veranda admitted the soft
impeachment, and gave himself and some others medals for the dangers he
had passed in these words of Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration:
“If Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a
praise-worthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived
temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had weathered many a storm, sighed,
and in bravery ordered one more, drinking not to the habit, but to the
wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said, the tea-tasting
season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!
A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry
store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he
could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those
expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do
men, to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk
back to to-day.”
“We have come here to stay,” boasted a corps of the enemy, which took
up an advanced position. “Yes, they stayed,” replied doughty General Li
Yuen after the battle, and his grim smile explained that they stayed as
dead bodies.
Yen Tsz, an eminent premier of the Tsi principality, and a contemporary
wit with Confucius, referring to the increase of crime which called for
the punishment of the amputation of feet, used this ironical phrase:
“False feet are cheaper than shoes these days in our market-place.”
The humor of war is grim. Shortly before Confucius’ day the prince of
Tsu State had overcome the army of Tsin State. The dead lay in heaps.
The Tsu prince was asked if he would not order a tablet raised over
the brave enemy. “Not much,” said he, “I will have a tablet to my own
ancestors raised over them, giving thanks that we do the crowing
instead of them this time.”
A fireman on the new Canton-Hankau railway made out his report of a
regrettable fatality in a collision as follows: “The engineer was died
without senses.”
A consolidation of three formerly independent samshu liquor dealers of
Canton advertised as follows: “This three rice bier dealers, before
separate, is now amalgamated for quite economic, and glad with much
public order for oblige soled more cheap to foreign friends.”
On a landing in a curio store, popular with foreigners, was the
following sign: “Peoples alighted here go down stairs if curious
wishing.”
A penitent convert wrote his mission school teacher as follows: “Many
thoughts of unpleasant come into my mind. Many tears drop my spiritual
soul not to speak of outside eyes. I break my beautiful promise. I
contemps the difficults but was mistake. I was failed that time to
finish the very good of God which begunned. Deep repents of my throat
is blocked thickly in bearing regrets for everlasting, but I standing
for your forgive and excuse of God like poor Peter in three times with
handkerchief on shame face and water eyes.”
Just as humorously confused is the attempt of nine-tenths of the
foreigners to make themselves understood in Chinese. Sometimes the
efforts of our missionaries and translators reach the old book-shops,
and are promptly thrown with a smile, which is more humorous than
cynical in these days of humor and enlightenment, into the compartment
entitled: “Second Hand Religion.”
I asked my Chinese friend why their ideograph for two friends was two
pearls, and he explained: “Because each is equally precious, without
the possibility or necessity of being exactly alike.” Let this answer
for a picture of America and China as the new days dawn on each side
of the Pacific. A Tientsin shop seems to have grasped satisfactorily
the situation, its sign reading: “All languages spoken: American
understood.”
The many thousand ideograms of the Chinese language are memorized, and
words are often tabulated for the pupil by rhyme. They have no alphabet
and therefore can never use a linotype or typewriter. The Chinese,
accordingly, have wonderful memories, but their memory-method sometimes
places them in humorous situations. English is now required in nearly
all the new Chinese schools, though the Chinese mandarin examiners
know little about the language as yet. A confident Chinese candidate
appeared before the board of a Kwangtung province school as an
applicant for the position of “Professor of English”. “How much English
do you know?” profoundly inquired the mandarin from behind his heavy,
tortoise-rimmed glasses. The amusing reply was: “Numbers, one to ten;
a hundred words beginning with ‘A’, and ten words rhyming with sing.”
The Chinese board accepted the Chinese teacher of English for want
of a better man. The new Chinese are eminently a business race, and
therefore, in their excellent business judgment, the day will come when
they will be compelled to throw away their ideographs so as to avail of
the business facilities of our alphabet-typewriter and linotype. The
present Chinese ideograph case in a printing office has thousands of
ideograph types, and it is a sadly humorous sight on a hot day in humid
South China to see a Chinese typesetter darting about the room like a
dragon-fly, trying to meet the editor’s demand for an “extra.”
The carriages of a funeral procession rolled along the maloo of
modernized Shanghai. The mourners in the first carriage played cards
and laughed. Every one else in the procession joked and smiled. I
asked my Chinese humorist to explain the astonishing incongruity and
he replied: “Why shouldn’t everybody be happy when everybody is deeply
satisfied? Hop Long’s enemies believe that he has descended below to
get at last the many punishments that are coming to him, and Hop Long’s
friends just as confidently believe that he has ascended on high to
receive his richly merited rewards; therefore, you see, all are joyful.”
The landlord made an agreement with the tenant that when the rice was
harvested, he should receive one-third. Harvest was long past in its
pale and sickle moon, and the landlord, receiving nothing, accosted
the tenant: “Look here, thou Choi, didn’t we make an agreement that I
should receive one-third of that rice?” Choi, nothing daunted, replied:
“Yes, Laoye, but there was no third; there were only two baskets of
rice and they are both mine.”
Two Chinese youths were discussing their ambitions. One said: “When I
grow up I want to belong to a theatrical company.” His brother replied:
“Humph, not I. I want the theatrical company to belong to me.”
The Chinese do not raise milch cows or goats. The following aged milk
joke accordingly has been trotted out before every mess table of Treaty
Port China, and been made to blush as a novice for the entertainment
of every griffin. It seems that the new China hands insisted on having
fresh milk in their tea. For the sake of peace the Number One boy at
last procured it. The new hands said: “Of course it’s not like the June
grass milk at home, but it will do in a pinch.” The Number One boy
smiled blandly. At last the milk ceased and the new hands demanded an
explanation, which the Number One boy gave as follows: “No molo milkee;
that piecee olo pig have now got litter of lil pigs; that piecee bucket
whitewash now makee finish.”
III
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA.
The eastern states of America and Great Britain have a new slogan:
“Get ready for the Panama Canal.” The western states of America,
and indeed all America, should have another slogan: “Get ready for
the China trade.” It is not far off; it is already on the horizon,
“arising a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”. It may
come with a rush any year and thousands of companies will have their
headquarters at New York. There are many things to arrange, internally
and externally, in currency, in a tariff of twelve per cent. instead
of five per cent., in provincial, inter-provincial and international
politics, in loans and finances, in education, in nationalization
of trunk railways, in harbor, canal and river conservancy, in
reforestation, in patent, copyright and mining laws, in commercial
law, in army matters, in a revenue navy, in police, in municipal
organization, in hygiene, in paternalization as far as famine, flood
and seed grain are concerned, in collection of taxes, in civil service,
etc., but none of these difficulties is insuperable. Then comes the
great trade.
On my travels and life of three years in China, I have listened, and I
have glanced about for signs of the new times; and I shall relate just
a few of the indications of progress, indications as different from
the old manifestations as day is from night. Three years ago, yes, one
year ago, few thought that these things were possible. Twenty recent
books and five thousand newspaper articles prophesied that they were
not possible. Thirty recent authors and ten thousand newspaper writers
were Laodicean in attitude. Alas, ye Manchuized scribes! A few books, a
few articles, many missionaries, and the October, 1911, revolution said
they were possible, and the fall of Nanking proved it.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Industrial China. The government, foreign and native capital are
vieing with one another in developing industries of all kinds.
Wages are rising, so that the West need not be alarmed.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Modern road (bund); electric light; telegraph; buildings; trees on
border; at Canton, South China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The grandest river gorges in the world, on the Yangtze. These
difficult rapids have separated Eastern and Western China, but
a railway is now under construction. A modern road skirts the
cliffs.
]
Agricultural machinery will before long be required on the great plains
of Pechili, Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, whence America
will draw much grain, meat, oil, lumber and coal. Nail, needle and
glass factories are going up on a small scale. China has the iron in
the mine, but she will need our machinery. Paper mills are largely
increasing, and we need their pulp. Some mills use bamboo, which the
Japanese successfully experimented on in Formosa. Factories for making
soap, the most glaringly deficient thing in dirty China hitherto, have
been erected, even in far western Chingtu City. China, like Japan, has
concluded to adopt wool in the northern provinces instead of padded
cotton and sheepskin. Woolen mills have been erected at Shanghai,
Peking, Lanchow, Hankau, Kalgan, etc., to work up to the vast supplies
of Mongolian and Pechili shearings. The old method of making winter
clothing was to pad cotton and silk with cotton batting and silk waste,
the wearer being transformed into a comical Falstaffian size. Modern
tanneries have been erected by Mohammedan Chinese at Hankau, Lanchow,
Singan, etc. Hardware and enameled ware factories have been erected at
Tientsin, Canton, etc., but China can not for years take care of her
needs in hardware. Flour mills abound at Harbin, Shanghai and Hongkong,
and will be rapidly extended throughout the north. Cement is being
heavily produced, and will increase, great factories now being run
at Tongshan in Pechili, Canton and Macao in Kwangtung, and Tayeh in
Hupeh provinces. All of these industries will need machinery. Of all
municipal improvements, China has needed modern water-works the most.
They are now in operation in the cities of Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin,
Canton, Peking, Mukden, Chingtu, Nanking, Hangchow, Chinkiang, Swatow,
Tsinan, Newchwang, etc. Electric cars are run at Canton, Shanghai,
Peking, Hongkong, Hankau, Tientsin, Tsingtau, etc. Hongkong has a
wonderful cable railway up 1,500 feet of mountain, which will be
copied at Kiukiang, and other hill resorts from the heat. Telephone
service is installed at Hongkong, Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin,
Tsingtau, Chingtu, Wuhu, Hangchow, Ningpo, Nanking, etc. Electric
light is furnished at Nanking, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Hankau,
Swatow, Mukden, Newchwang, Shanghai, Hangchow, etc. In little of this
have the Americans entered as yet, though they will on a vast scale
as American finance and industry extends its agencies. The financing
and the contracting often go together, and it is not unknown for the
British and Germans to combine, though the British would be glad to
join with the Americans, if there were Americans on the ground. Often
the suppliers divide on a plant, the British furnishing the engines
and boilers, and the Germans the dynamos. Gas works are also being
erected, and the incandescent mantle lamps are very popular. As China
has untold riches in coal, her development in gas lighting will be
extensive. There is a great field for American machinery here. Her pipe
foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as coal. For many years,
however, her industrial, municipal and railway supplies, and certainly
her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is a great field
for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it with
recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd
Steamship Company from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and
more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be
compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality.
Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the world
to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in
China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates
concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and
desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the
bitterest complaint in the _Ching Wei Pao_, an able native paper of
Tientsin, that too many franchises are given free to foreigners, who
pay small wages and take the profits out of the country. Can you blame
them for desiring municipal ownership, if they are willing to buy our
machinery and hire our instructors?
China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and
marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West
River of Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs
and launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the
blaze.
The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the
British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying
foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand
tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter
of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats,
manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery
in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and
Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of
steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River--the brainiest
men of modern China--have been quick to adopt machinery, possibly
because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and
an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at
Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is
British.
The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and
municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven
dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of
this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn
from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast
wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world
arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.
In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in
producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel
and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in
buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern
industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.
At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and
salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the
latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in
the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government
monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some
features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead
of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal
government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.
Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province
has the most beautiful, many of them being black. The Mongolian pony
of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper.
Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise,
when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as
to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to
the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for
fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end
for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for
compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.
The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription
and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms,
restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the
same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New
York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders
erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It
was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese
that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the
foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s
representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical
proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:
“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump
the highest mountain.”
“When there’s fire a distant lake is not so good as a near bucketful.”
“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last
penny and got his first pound.”
“You don’t need to thrash a fast horse, or yell at a wise man.”
“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a
shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”
“A smiling salesman enhances his wares.”
“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only
a little attention to the striking end.”
The inland Chinese are sometimes clever in working themselves into the
foreigner’s personnel of staff. First the father brings his boy, and
the boy brings his cousin, imploring the foreigner to let them wait
around the office to pick up a little English. They insist on doing
or pretending to do chores; they whisper to the staff to halve their
work with them, and then they beg for or demand a wage “while they are
learning English.” Seldom does the kind-hearted foreigner refuse it,
and he is really spreading the commercial and literary gospel of the
West by doing so.
In some of the Yangtze provinces designs are even yet stamped into the
dyed cotton and silk, by stencil with lime, which takes out the color,
as compared with our system of rolling the inked design on plain goods.
The old will be rung out by the new, as Tennyson prophesied.
Man as a beast of burden must depart in patient earnest China, which
is associated with such unique sights of physical slavery as dozens
of coolies harnessed to a wagon-load of teak in Hongkong, or several
hundred trackers tied to long bamboo hawsers, while they pull junks
through the terrific rapids of the noble Yangtze gorges between Ichang
and Wan Hsien. Men for thousands of years have also supplied with their
legs the motive power of irrigation wheels for raising water, and of
tread wheels for turning paddles. Billions of tons of freight have been
carried on the backs and from the shoulders of men, women and children
over the hundreds of mountain passes on the great trade routes of
mountainous China, such as the steep Mei Ling pass of Kwangtung, the
Tangyueh pass of Yunnan, the Tachien pass into Tibet, etc. Hongkong’s
thousand palatial villas and châteaux eighteen hundred feet above the
clouds were carried up brick by brick and stone by stone in baskets and
on bamboos balanced on the bare shoulders of human beings, who panted
piteously in a stifling hot and humid atmosphere in the equator region.
Men have pumped the brine from the deepest brine wells in the world.
Their arms have lifted the weights that have driven the wells for gas
and brine. A pulley, a rope, an endless chain, have been unknown, and
hearts and feet have strained up the thirteen stories of the pagodas
with the coping stone and upcurled eaves. The day of labor-saving
devices dawns for a China whose population is going to decrease
within reason, not with the intent to starve labor, but so that labor
may devote itself to better-paying work. Government officials only
can supervise this condition in China or in America, government’s
work being to govern the big as well as the small, as we are just
discovering in the West.
Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending over
days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained),
which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.”
Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of
saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will
bring this about.
Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of sending
letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong
has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining
those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong
permits private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the
city.
China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she will
soon import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a
sample of five factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and
Kwangtung province has many more, not to speak of the immense number
of hand-knitting machines which the Japanese and the Germans are
supplying. Tientsin and Shanghai have several knitting factories, and
much foreign machinery will be needed throughout the land, especially
in the Yangtze valley.
Up to Viceroy Chang Chih Tung’s régime in Hupeh in 1906, China scraped
and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron scrap,
but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is
doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as
rich as her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are
at Phing Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh
province. The Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and
also ship pig iron to the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan;
40,000 tons of pig to the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to
the eastern seaboard of America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions.
There is iron ore in more than half of the provinces, notably in
Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei and Kiangsi, besides the provinces
mentioned. China is already turning out 400,000 tons of iron ore a
year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal
Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three German blast furnaces,
eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a rolling-mill of one
thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The cranes are run
by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at Tayeh eighty
miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of hills is full
of hematite ore. A railway of fifteen miles brings the ore to the
Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches
up to Hanyang.
Among the Chinese companies (stock held by Chinese and foreigners)
which have been managed successfully are the Taku (Tientsin) Tug
and Lighter Company; Shanghai Tug and Lighter; Shanghai Dock and
Engineering; Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company; China Oil Company;
Tientsin Iron Works; Union, Yangtze, North China and Canton Marine
Insurance Company; Hongkong, Canton, Yangtze, North China and China
Fire Insurance Companies; China Merchants’ Steamship Company; Ewo,
Shanghai and Soy Chee Cotton Mills; Hai Ho Conservancy (Tientsin);
Ching Ching Mining Company; Kiangnan Dock and Ship-building at
Shanghai; Yangtzepoo Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Vulcan
Iron and Car Works; Han Yeh Ping steel plant at Hanyang; colliery
at Pinghsiang; iron mines at Tayeh; Commercial Press of Shanghai in
publishing; Chee Hsin Cement Company (at Tayeh, Hupeh).
In joint stock organization, China will for a while suffer from two
things, nepotism and graft. We have ourselves not yet emerged from
staffing companies with inexperienced and dummy relatives, and from
plundering the corporation exchequer. The Shanghai taotai who decamped
during the rubber panic of 1910, having given several million dollars
of fiduciary funds to friends, will never be forgotten in the Paris
of the East. No more however will the “squeezing” Manchu mandarin
come down “like a wolf on the fold” on struggling concerns or private
business.
China mines only 15,000,000 tons of coal yearly, mainly at the
following mines:
Kaiping (near Tientsin), in Pechili province; Wei Hsien, in Honan
(anthracite).
Pingsiang, in Kiangsi province; Lin Cheng, in Pechili (anthracite).
Fangtsze (near Tsinan), in Shangtung province.
Lung Wang (near Chungking), in Szechuen province.
Tse Chow, in Shansi province.
Ching-Ching, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Pao Chin, in Shansi province (anthracite).
Fushun (near Mukden), in Manchuria (owned and operated by Japanese).
Heijo (near Chemulpo), in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Ping Yang, in Korea (owned and operated by Japanese).
Hungay and Kebao, in Tonquin (owned and operated by French and Hongkong
capitalists).
This of course is only a beginning. On account of poor transportation
by rail and canal, China imports about 2,000,000 tons of Japanese
coal, and Hongkong and Shanghai import Australian and Welsh coal,
some of it for admiralty purposes. The largest anthracite mines now
open are, in their order, in Shansi, Honan, Pechili and Shangtung
provinces; the bituminous as far as mined, in their order, in Pechili,
Kiangsi, Shensi, Kansu, Shangtung, Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichou, Hunan
and Kwangsi provinces. Over a million tons of lignite are mined yearly
in Manchuria. England has a coal supply for only one hundred and fifty
years, and America’s supply will not last much longer. This means
that China will step full-panoplied into the coal and iron arena with
plethoric supplies which, with her population, will make her probably
the world’s richest nation, in material resources, if not in brains.
The first shipment of Chinese coal for America occurred in July,
1910, when the steamer _Inverkip_ called at Ching Wang Tao on the Gulf
of Pechili and loaded the famous Kaiping coal for San Francisco. The
British Peking Syndicate, mining anthracite coal in Shansi province,
purposes to build colliers to take coal to America. Coal costs at
the mines only seventy-five cents a ton, and with machinery opulent
China could reduce this cost. It is a knowledge of the potentiality of
this great wealth that kindled some of the fire of the October, 1911,
revolution, and led the provincial assemblies of Szechuen and Hupeh to
say: “China’s mines and transportation franchises shall not be passed
over to foreigners.” The Peking Syndicate, mainly British, operating
hard coal and iron mines in Shansi, is capitalized at $6,000,000. The
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company has a capital of $5,000,000.
It has for many years operated the famous Kaiping coal mines north of
Tientsin. This is the company which employed Mr. Kinder, the British
engineer, who surreptitiously built the “Rocket,” the first locomotive
used continuously in China.
A wonderful tin mine has been worked for many years at Kuo Chao, in the
southeast corner of Yunnan province, the tin being exported through
Mengtsu. It used to seek Hongkong via the Red River and Haiphong and
sometimes via Nanning, the West River and Canton. The costly narrow
gage railway which the French have run from Haiphong to Yunnan now
catches nearly all of this product. There is much complaint regarding
rates, which are based “on all the traffic will bear,” and it is
proposed by the Chinese to build a railway to Nanning, and send the tin
the remainder of the way by junk and launch. This rich mine produces
about 15,000,000 pounds a year, valued at nearly $6,000,000, and now
that German machinery and German experts have been introduced by
the Chinese miners, a greater and a purer product will result. Until
recently the product had to be resmelted at Hongkong. Of course,
great as this product is, the Straits Settlements still lead in tin
mining. There are 30,000 miners (mostly boys, on account of the narrow
unhealthy shafts) at Kuo Chao, and owners, miners, smelters, porters
and the government representatives all have their compulsory labor
unions. This protection of labor must be copied in all countries, the
government forcing the laborer to protect himself, and making the
industry share in the cost of government supervision. Charcoal is used
as fuel at the clay smelters, and the bellows are hand-worked.
As is well known, Southern China is cursed with white ants and
humidity. The former eat the wooden beams, and the latter rusts iron
beams. Ceilings have to be perforated to admit air and light between
the floors so as to keep down the ravages of the white ant. However,
Southern China is copying Hongkong’s example and risking metal beams
and ceilings, the trouble being to find a suitable protective paint.
China has graphite, lead for oxides, carbon, silica, and oils in
abundance, and she will in time manufacture her own protective paints,
but we shall supply the machinery. Brass hardware is used instead of
iron on account of the humidity.
The important copper mines of Yunnan were worked as a Manchu monopoly.
Hunan is perhaps the next richest province, with Szechuen, Shansi and
Kweichou following, although every province has copper. Nickel mines
exist in Yunnan, Kwangsi and other southern provinces.
The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries
(Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of
Formosa has been won by the latter, which were helped until recently
by indirect Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the
government fine and municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound,
in 1911, if America had a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce
Congress to act as was done in the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong
sugar could have flooded the country until the price was restored
to the five cents rate, or about that rate. The immense Hongkong
refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw sugar. The Formosa
refineries use their local raw. They not only supply Japan under a
protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa produces
600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount. America
has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it is
true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail,
the insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars,
might be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going
to heed the new cry that food, clothing and building material must be
duty-free, or nearly so.
Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of
northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture
of crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint.
China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle,
reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean
and seed oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set
up at Hankau, Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin
would eventually come into use, with the idea of conserving wood.
The earthenware and bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a
conservation point of view, but they are too tender and risky for
movement abroad. The Hanyang plant will probably have the first tinware
factory.
The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government is
thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five
per cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case
of precious stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver
mines; five per cent. in coal and iron; and export duty of five per
cent., and likin (inland customs and provincial transportation tax,
literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As China’s mines are more
lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the comparison would seem
to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under the new government.
The ship-building and dock facilities of the Far East have fully risen
to the demands. The three largest are at Hongkong, all British owned.
The Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company on the China mainland of Hongkong
(Kowloon), and at Aberdeen on Hongkong Island, over the mountains
from the city of Victoria, has six docks, one of them seven hundred
feet long on the keel blocks. The company builds ships, locomotives,
cars, bridges, engines, motor-boats, boilers, machinery, and, indeed,
anything after the steel is furnished to them, by Britain chiefly.
The Taikoo Dock (Butterfield & Swire) on the eastern end of Hongkong
Island has a dock 787 feet long, and is also equipped to turn out the
largest ships.
The Admiralty Dock of the British Navy on Hongkong Island was built
from shore in the center of the city of Victoria, into the water by
reclamation, instead of being cut out of the rock, as was done with the
other docks. It is equipped to handle large battleships, and can be
used by the mercantile marine in an emergency.
The Tanjong Pagar Dock at Singapore is equipped to handle battleships
and maritime vessels. It is controlled by the Crown Colony.
The Mitsu Bishi Dock, cut out of the high rock at Nagasaki, has one
dock 722 feet long. This company built the new 19,000 tons displacement
ships, oil burners, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha for the San Francisco
route, and like the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock it always has large
salvage steamers ready to go to the rescue of wrecks, now that wireless
has been established in the Orient. There have been some wonderful
expeditions of help recently on the romantic seas of the Far East.
The Kawasaki Dock Company at Dairen, South Manchuria, has a dock 380
feet long, together with the usual machine and boiler shops. There is
a commercial dock at Kobe, the Harima Dock at Oh, and large government
docks and arsenals at Yokosuka (near Yokohama), Kure and Sasebo. The
last named dock, 777 feet long, built the dreadnought battleship
_Kawachi_, 21,000 tons.
The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai (Chinese), built the
imperial yacht once owned by Prince Tsui, and small cruisers which the
republicans seized. It has a dock 575 feet long on the blocks, and has
the usual machine and boiler shops. The Yangtzepoo Dock at Shanghai
(Chinese and foreign owned) has a dock 455 feet long on the blocks.
The Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company (Chinese and foreign) has
docks 560 feet long, where some of the vessels for the Philippine
government were built in 1912.
The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at
Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long,
and there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy,
at Cavite, Manila, which does not refuse to do a friendly act for
maritime commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet
long.
The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen
that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain
and Japan have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily
in the lead. America has only one dock, and that a floating one.
It could not lift a dreadnought, and therefore America has in the
meantime wisely moved her first defense line, as I think the writer,
Thomas Millard, a Shanghai American, recommended in his books, back
to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket
post. Germany at Kiaochou, and Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of
the running, with inferior docking accommodations. The Russians are
spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok on a floating dock, ice-breakers
and a wharf. As far as America is concerned, she can count on Britain.
Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay, Hongkong, despite all conventions. As
Commander Tatnall said at Taku in China, “Blood is thicker than water,”
which was reciprocated by Admiral Seymour at Manila. When Admiral
Diedrichs asked what the British would do if the Germans fired on the
Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better ask Admiral Dewey, who is
informed.” That is the story that goes the rounds in the East, and if
it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.
There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops and
ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and
Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost
anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been
already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do
creditable work, especially the North China railway at Tongshan; the
Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai
construct railway and street-cars.
The immense cement works which are already in operation are the
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in
Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near
Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and Hongkong
(British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being erected
for the immense transportation development throughout China and the
Philippines are made of this new concrete.
The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong
and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the
native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be
seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and
in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized
teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and
the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and
strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can
take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence
of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our
machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to
be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics
surrender to utility here also!
The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan
in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control
the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are
powerful in the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the
Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai
and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the
aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank,
to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung
province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe
that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s
coming prodigious development.
The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws
a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the
pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This
changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color
to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic
flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green
tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom
dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American
government has done a world service in improving the quality of the
ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will
insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers
per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made
“ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit
of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China,
“If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May
1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same,
saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got
used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law
gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers
never got used to our laws.
China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but
it has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that
the states’ rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government
movement up to date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai
will, upon application of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation
prohibiting all Chinese within his jurisdiction from manufacturing,
selling or consuming property which is pirated; and such theft and
infringement are considered unpardonable by the great body of highly
moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the lack of similar
honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan. Prosecutions
have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign consuls
and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods made
in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American
marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or
not, have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able
to establish an efficient patent department the method that should
be followed is to register the mark or patent at the consul’s and
taotai’s office in each province and port where the goods are to be
sold. This will answer very satisfactorily until the growth of trade,
transportation and machinery of government make the central government
more familiar with modern business methods and international law. It is
important in China and absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner
to register his patent promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause
irrevocable loss, in Japan at least.
I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and
powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah
Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese
about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of
his parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the
days before the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he
did not fear to strike. His race were the men who had set in motion
the greatest rebellion ever known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic
and legal duty was to obey the law in spirit and in letter, and in
addition, under no circumstances to lose temper, but to treat Chuk
with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only Chinese whom I ever knew who
disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery courtesy (Li). He hated me,
as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood him, and he showed his
feelings on every occasion. His gods were not Buddha, but money and
power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a Chinese slave girl for
four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me, Chuk.” He hissed, “I
meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the letter of the law and
not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental corporation employé,
like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to orders. He
said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of
expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact
is the discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”
He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor the
rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when
forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton
viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of
Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had
signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into
that Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more
than he would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father,
his relatives in Kwangtung, who were on the bond also, for the payment
of the $1,000, and it took the son in America twenty years to pay the
money and the heavy interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his
grandfather he held the grandson in America in constant fear.
He was lord of the underground routes which ran to South Africa,
America, Australia, Mexico, Canada and wherever Chinese laborers are
not received free. He seldom dressed well; it did not do in those days
to look opulent in China, and besides American inspectors might suspect
a well-dressed dealer in contract slaves. His voice, unlike the usual
pliable voice of his race, was deep in his raucous throat. He would
not fear to take life if he had a chance in the lonely walks of his
province, if his opponent was a strong obstacle to his worship of his
two gods, money and power. He could not get in as many as he wanted
by the direct route, so he determined to institute the first Chinese
trans-Pacific steamship company, crossing the Pacific to Mexico. I
told him that he never could get the money, as Queen’s Road, Hongkong,
was a long way from Wall Street; that he would sink a million of the
money of his beloved countrymen. He got the money from the Chinese,
intensely conservative as they were, which proved the power of his
persuasion, and he sank it all in two years. He could not be drawn into
much expression by me, though he could speak English well. I heard him,
however, speaking like a Rooseveltian tornado of storm and lightning
unto his own, and once to two foreigners in whom he trusted, because
they had obeyed him at their risk, and he owned them by the bribes they
had accepted. His will was of iron, unyielding. His persistency was as
tireless as Napoleon’s, and his swift victories were many. He could
live without sleep when he planned his campaigns. He would go anywhere
and to anybody to accomplish his aims. He loved whispering. He cast
looks which wielded men. He swept like a vulture on lambs. He struck at
his opponents like a tiger. He was not a Manchu, but he was Manchuized
in his confidence that the Oriental was superior to the foreigner. I
shall never forget the time when he told me that he had “a white man
working for him.” That white man was descended in the third generation
from a brother of a president of America.
Chuk was not uncomfortable when he thus wore the crown. He ruled over
his subject races of the West with all the assurance which Xerxes or
Kublai Khan did. He could plot; he could bribe; he could threat; he
could spend with a lavish hand. One time he would travel in state at
home and abroad, and on another occasion incognito like a spy. He felt
he was abler than any white man because he added the easier conscience
of the Orient, which he called wisdom, to an ability equal to the white
man’s, and a will just as imperious. He despised all religions as he
said “conscience makes faint-hearts of us all.” He had no pity for his
dupes or victims. He was a Cantonese Tippo Tib. I never know, when I
am speaking to an American or Cuban Chinese, if he is not a slave of
Chuk’s, remitting to his old father in Kwangtung province, who will in
turn remit to Chuk or Chuk’s heirs, to pay off that $1,000 and usurious
interest added. Chuk is a Cantonese example of the power which may
come to a money lord who has decapitalized labor, which will never
catch up with the principal. His profits on the real cost were 1,500
per cent. Not even a surveillance of communications could probe Chuk’s
underground methods. Three insurmountable barriers interposed, the
extent of the territory, the Chinese language, and the changing codes
which he used. It would be as difficult as ferreting out a criminal
in the Trastevere section of Rome, if for one reason alone, because
the Trasteverans will not turn informers. Neither will the Chinese.
Therefore, with espionage of communications and informing for bribes
eliminated, a secret service on Chinese law breakers, as far as we are
concerned, is as yet in many respects ineffective.
IV
FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA
With a reformed system of tax collection the following budget is quite
feasible, and will, without any greater pressure on the individual than
at present, lift China out of the slough of despond.
REVENUE GOLD DOLLARS
Land tax, 400,000,000 acres cultivated, at 50c
a year $200,000,000
Salt monopoly 10,000,000
Maritime customs 50,000,000
Railway surplus, nationalized trunk lines 10,000,000
Fisheries, tobacco, samshu, mining, steamship,
bank, incorporation, telegraph and
other fees 50,000,000
Income tax 10,000,000
------------
$330,000,000
EXPENDITURE
Interest on foreign loans,--past, $200,000,000;
and in prospect, $200,000,000; total,
$400,000,000, at 4 per cent. $16,000,000
Civil service salaries, etc. 30,000,000
Army, a full division for each province,
100,000 men at $100 a year 10,000,000
Conservation, public works, repairing national
architecture, famine relief, etc 50,000,000
Navy for revenue purposes mainly, with one
dreadnought a year added 24,000,000
Education and crafts schools 100,000,000
Canals, railways, steamships, telegraph,
telephone, etc., extensions 100,000,000
------------
$330,000,000
This proposes $330,000,000 a year for 400,000,000 people, against
Japan’s $350,000,000 a year for only 55,000,000 population. This plan
wipes out the obnoxious opium and likin taxes. The taxes proposed are
less than half per capita what poorer India is paying, and one-tenth of
what Japan is paying, and so China would remain the lowest taxed nation
on the earth. The outstanding government debt of China, even including
the proposed four-nation loans of $50,000,000 gold for currency reform,
and $50,000,000 for new Szechuen and Hunan province railways, is, as
I have detailed elsewhere in this article, only £113,000,000, whereas
the present government debt of Japan, with infinitely less resources
and population, is £300,000,000, not to speak of Japan’s private
industrial loans abroad, which would add another £60,000,000. India’s
debt is £170,000,000. The tax proposed in China is so small that room
is left for each province to charge a door and head tax of 25c each
a year, bringing in an additional $100,000,000 gold for provincial
revenues to take care of justice, provincial public works, etc.
Municipalities could then raise their ordinary taxes in the usual way.
All that is wanted in China is an honest audit, the end of nepotism,
and a cessation of “shaking the pagoda tree” by peculating officials.
The whole central and provincial tax would not amount to much over
$1 a head a year, and the municipal taxes would not be any larger
than $1 per capita. This would not be a burden to cause complaint or
revolution. With the immense sum collected China would almost at once
take her place as one of the mightiest of nations. Her credit would
be enormous, and her opportunity for good the greatest in the world
because of her wider ethnic connections. She would not need to raise
her customs much above the present five per cent. ad valorem, and thus
oppressive monopolies could not grow up in the land. Free trade would
flow to her with its riches, as it flowed to Britain, and every man
would have enough, and no man too much; certainly an ideal condition.
This budget would provide a splendid army of well-paid men ($8 gold
per man per month is abundant); 100,000 strong, able to throw back
any invasion at once, and always ready to keep down piracy. Riot and
strikes are not unpatriotic piracy; they are the localized suppuration
of an economic distress that can be cured or forestalled in a democracy
by other means than a soldiery, which we have found a failure in
America and Britain. The new Chinese navy could add a new dreadnought
battleship each year, and provide crews, yards, and a full revenue
marine. Above all, education and transportation would be taken care of
lavishly, and China would not need to beg at any one’s door for a loan.
She would be a land of peace, because a total tax of $2 gold a year per
capita can raise not the slightest discontent in any land.
The debt of the Chinese government, contracted before October 13, 1911,
which debt the republicans recognize, is as follows:
AMOUNT AMOUNT
LOANS in £ Interest in £ DUE
7% silver loan, ’94 £490,500 1924
6% gold loan, ’95 800,000 1924
6% gold loan, ’95 333,400 1915
5% gold loan, ’96, from
France and Russia
for Chinese-Eastern
Railway 12,397,425 1933
4½% gold, ’98, Britain
and Germany
for railways 14,022,625 1933
5% gold railway loan 1,955,000 1933
5% gold (Boxer
indemnities, etc.) 52,500,000 1940
5% Shanghai-Nanking
railway 2,900,000 1915
5% Canton-Kowloon
railway 1,500,000 1920
5% Tientsin-Pukow
railway (British) 1,850,000 1918
5% Tientsin-Pukow
railway (German) 1,100,000 1918
5% Shanghai-Ningpo
railway 1,500,000 1918
5% Hukuang railways 1,500,000 1921
----------
Total gov’t debts--
China £92,848,950 £4,642,000
Japan 300,000,000 12,000,000
India 170,000,000
Italy 1,000,000,000
France 1,200,000,000
Britain 1,000,000,000
United States 200,000,000
If Japan returned to China the £35,000,000 indemnity coerced from her
by the Shimonoseki treaty, the Chinese debt would be greatly reduced.
This is Japan’s moral duty, especially if she is allowed by the nations
to retain Formosa, Korea, and possibly part of Manchuria, all of which
she plans to retain. Several of the European nations should follow
America’s example and return the excess in the Boxer indemnities. The
banking nations, as long as America and Britain retain their present
high standard of altruism, will never again permit any power to wheedle
an indemnity out of China.
The foreign and local banks operating in China are the following. I use
gold dollars for the table:
CAPITAL
BANK PAID UP RESERVE
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking
Corporation $5,000,000 $15,000,000
International Banking Company
of America 3,250,000 3,250,000
Deutsche Asiatische Bank 5,500,000 3,000,000
Yokohama Specie Bank (Japan) 10,000,000 7,000,000
Lloyd’s Bank (British) 20,000,000 15,000,000
Chartered Bank of India, Australia
and China (British) 4,000,000 5,000,000
Netherlands Trading Society 18,000,000 2,000,000
Netherlands-India Commercial
Bank 6,000,000 700,000
Russo-Asiatic Bank (Russia-France) 19,000,000 4,000,000
National Bank of China 1,500,000 400,000
Banque L’Indo-Chine (French) 6,000,000 3,000,000
Bank of Taiwan (Formosan Japan) 1,800,000 300,000
Mercantile Bank of India (British) 5,500,000 800,000
Eastern Bank (British) 2,000,000
Chino-Belgian Bank (Belgian) 2,000,000
It will be noted that with one exception all of these banks are strong
institutions. The hoary patriarch among them, endowed with exhaustless
strength still, is the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which
has been operating in China since 1865.
There is a movement in Canton to establish an “Industrial Encouragement
Bank”. The merchants are anxious for currency reform throughout the
kingdom and the establishing of coins of fixed value on the American
decimal plan, but going to a lower decimal to accommodate small trade
and the lower values of China.
It is also proposed by prominent members of the Nanking Assembly to
establish a Sino-American bank, plans for which were laid just before
the October, 1911, revolution.
At the height of the revolution in November, 1911, the rebels did a
remarkable thing successfully at Shanghai. The loyalists at Peking were
unable either with their own imperial Ta-Ching bank, foreign loans, or
the immense ramifications of the Shansi Bank guilds, to uphold their
credit, and the chief fighter of the Manchus, General Chang Hsun Chung,
could not pay his troops. The republicans at Shanghai under Sheng
Wan Yung, minister of finance, and Wu Ting Fang, foreign secretary,
organized the “Chung Hua” Bank at Shanghai with a capital of 5,000,000
taels. The shops immediately took the money at a high premium,
doubtless to give an impetus to confidence. “Chung Hua” is the Chinese
name for China. It means “central glory”.
Nothing hampers China’s interprovincial trade more than the absence
of a national credit system and commercial paper. Treaty-port China
gets long enough loans from the foreign manufacturer. The trouble is
that the importer can not collect quickly from his customer, and when
he does, the medium is coin, bullion and barter, unnecessarily and
clumsily handled, whereas coin, bullion and barter should only be used
for the balances. China needs a modern currency system, and a modern
credit system as well.
It is in accord with manners and business accuracy when at a fair
you are informed that an article will cost you a thousand coins
(cash) to say: “I’ll pay you 500 _good_ coins.” If you had a thousand
counterfeits you could elect to pay with them, but never be so bucolic
as to pay a thousand good coins when a thousand coins are asked.
As suggested by America, China’s new coinage will have a silver
dollar, half, quarter, dime, nickel, two cents, cent, half a cent,
and one-tenth of a cent, all minted in government mints, and alone
accepted as legal tender in taxes, telegraph, railway, telephone,
customs, likin, stamp and other charges. Very slowly the old system of
using provincial coinage of debased value, bullion (sycee) exchange,
private bank notes, etc., will pass away. A central bank, like the Ta
Ching, helped by a four-nations foreign loan, backed 40 per cent. by
the government, and 60 per cent. by private subscriptions, with about
$6,000,000 capital, could make a good beginning in taking care of the
new system. Although a silver coinage, the government, like Japan’s,
stands to guarantee the fixed value of the coinage as equal to half
its face in gold; that is to say, the central bank will hold reserves
so as to redeem or guarantee a silver dollar at fifty cents gold. The
silver is to have a fixed purity standard, like the Philippine peso,
or the American dollar. Japan stepped into Korea and refused to accept
the old coinage. It immediately became copper bullion, and had no
other value. For safety’s sake, the Japanese insisted that the coins,
worth nominally one-tenth of a cent, should be broken at the square
hole in the center. The steamer _Seneca_, in 1912, brought 1,400 tons
of these broken Korean coins to New York, whence they were shipped to
Chrome, New Jersey, to be smelted. China can not be so rigid, as she
has not the police or army, but if she could safely be rigid, nothing
would clear up the coinage question better than copying this Japanese
example. Since the adoption of the gold standard in Mexico, the
government has to accept the old Mexican dollar as legal tender for one
dollar gold, which gives a profit of 100 per cent. to the lucky holders
of these silver dollars. There are many of them in China; indeed the
Mexican dollar was for many years the monetary standard in China, and
the thrifty Chinese are smuggling the unchopped coins into Mexico as
fast as they can be gathered up from the Shansi, Kwangtung and other
bankers. The Mexican government anticipated this move, and placed a
duty on Mexican dollars returned from abroad. The honors are even along
the Rio Grande boundary; Mexican dollars are smuggled southward, and
Mexican Chinese are smuggled northward! Most of the Mexican dollars
in China, however, have been chopped in the banks and fan-tan houses,
and the thrifty Chinese shroffs groan when they contemplate that by
egotistically sinking their chop into the face of the Aztec eagle and
the Texoco snake, they have now lost 100 per cent. profit. Moral: never
mutilate the coin of a realm, whether it is your own country or not.
As illustrating the irregularity of the currency, let us cite the
situation at Newchwang in 1912 for instance. National taxes are paid
in Kuping taels; provincial taxes in Manchurian dollars. Customs
duties are paid in the usual Haikwan taels; local octroi in small
silver. The national post-office will only accept Mexican dollars. The
national telegraph office will only accept Manchurian dollars. The
national Chinese railway cashiers must receive payment of freight
bills in either Peiyang or Kiauchou (German) dollars. The pursers of
the national China Merchants’ Steamship Company demand payment of fares
in either Mexican dollars or Newchwang taels. The Japanese, who run a
railway, a concession, public utility works and a hotel here, demand
payment of their bills in the Japanese silver yen (dollar). On their
railway line they demand payment in the Japanese gold yen. The Russian
demands payment in his paper ruble note. The Americans and the English
demand payment respectively in eagles and sovereigns. All of these
concerns will discount other moneys at a heavy profit, so that they,
and the money changers, in the multiplicity of standards, soon shave
the dollar down till its pride and distinction of stamp are humble and
thin enough! A tael, the old monetary system, is a Chinese ounce equal
to 1⅓ ounces avoirdupois. The Haikwan tael, the standard of fineness
accepted by the Custom House, is rated at 100, in comparison with which
are the Tientsin tael at 105; the Hankau and Newchwang at 108, and the
Shanghai at 111. When new silver arrived at the old provincial mints,
it was refined or adulterated to conform with these grades. The edict
of October 5, 1908, suggested that if the standardization of silver was
successful, a gold standard might be looked for. This would probably
slightly raise wages and costs in China, and slightly decrease them
elsewhere.
The national customs, heretofore called the “Imperial Customs”, managed
from Peking in succession by the British knights, Robert Hart, Bredon
and Aglen, continue to be the financial pillar of China, the basis of
foreign loans, the payer of the hated indemnities, the provider of
armies, pensions, and nearly all the machinery of government and even
“graft”. Until a reorganization of the taxes is effected, the customs
might be raised to double what they now are so as to get China on her
feet. The department has been honestly managed, and is a monument
to the late Sir Robert Hart, the sinologue. Where a missionary or a
Buddhist monk is not at hand to take care of a needy traveler, there
will be found a national customs cadet, generally a Briton, an American
or a German.
How China is neglected by London, the world’s banker, is illustrated
by the following investments of new capital in a normal year, 1910.
China was given only $3,500,000 in 1909, and $8,000,000 in 1910,
whereas to nearly a billion already loaned, Japan was given $30,000,000
more in 1910; Mexico a like amount; Argentine, $112,000,000; Russia,
$20,000,000; and even little Denmark, Greece, Turkey and Cuba each
received as much as dormantly opulent and vast China. The neglect of
China by America reveals a similarly regrettable situation. Trade
follows the loan as much as it follows the flag and the missionary, as
England’s trade relation with Argentine proves.
The famous Russo-Chinese Bank, which was the catspaw for the Russians
in securing from the Chinese the troublesome concession for the
Chinese-Eastern railway, which largely led to the war with Japan, was
absorbed in a new institution in October, 1910, called the Banque
Russo-Asiatique, which is largely financed by the Banque du Nord and
the _Société Générale_ of Paris. The old Russo-Chinese Bank had a
capitalization of 21,000,000 rubles, one-third of which was subscribed
by China. The capitalization of the new bank is double that of the old.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The oldest and strongest bank operating in China; the Hongkong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation. It has branches throughout China,
on the British banking plan. The building in the background is
the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The abundant use of street advertising by the new commercial China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Court of the splendid Swatow guild house at Canton. These are their
chambers of commerce and clubs combined, and are a power in the
new commercial China, almost equal to the new assemblies. The
heir of a tea magnate rides the statue of a griffin.
]
China is suspicious regarding foreign loans, and many of the new China
party which precipitated the October, 1911, revolution are opposed
to even railway loans. Objection has been made to one American loan
that it included, besides proper interest, a bonus of millions to
take up bonds of a previous American syndicate which never performed
railway work in China for those bonds; that is, they were organization
paper, not property paper. Objection is also made that our loans
name as security the perpetuation of the odious likin system which
disjoints the trade, politics and transportation of the provinces. The
Chinese of the south have constructed many short railroads, which are
run at a profit without foreign loans, and it is this system which
the “states’ rights” people wish to spread. Political and economical
education in the provincial assemblies will in time teach them the
wisdom of the nationalization of trunk railways at least. There is
the same conflict in China between the states, or provinces, and the
federal power, as there is in other countries. In the matter of foreign
loans, the provincial papers complain that the central government has
sold the nation by paying bonuses and heavy interest. The trouble with
provincial loans for railways will be the mixed security offered, one
province providing for the continuation of the objectionable likin,
and another province withstanding it. It is a perfect curse along the
magnificent Shanghai-Nanking railway built by British contractors. The
strong desire of the provinces, in the first ebullition of patriotism,
is to build and operate their railways without foreign aid or federal
intervention.
In times of political trouble, the Chinese place vast sums in the
trust, not only of foreign banks at Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong,
but valuables and money are placed implicitly in the care of
missionaries, whose fiduciary honesty is esteemed by the Chinese, who,
if they do not understand the text, understand the living example!
The missionary is not only a tower of “doctrine”, to use the Chinese
idiom; he is a tower of finance also. It is a remarkable thing that
when the white man’s honesty at home in certain scandals exposed by
government prosecutions, is rocking like a wooden steeple in the grasp
of a tornado, the white man’s honesty in China is standing steadfast as
a rock, and unmoved in the typhoon of local and international distress,
and political, religious and educational change. It seems that it is a
wholesome time to send some of our monopolists to China, and bring some
of our missionaries back to reform things at home!
The licensed pawnshops are called Tang Po Tien and Chi Tien. The “Yah”
pawnshop corresponds to our “fence” shop, to which thieves bring their
plunder. The regular pawnshops are an embryo trust company. They loan
on land, crops, jewels, rent, bills receivable, possessions, houses.
They change money and sell notes of credit. The pawnshops of Mukden
and the north loan on crops, such as beans, millet, etc. The visible
grain, and not a warehouse receipt, is the security, and therefore the
pawnshops of the north have yards and sheds in connection with the
plant. The towering square pawnshops of Kwangtung province in the south
are higher than in the other provinces, showing that capital circulates
more among the active Cantonese merchants. The Chinese of America are
mainly Cantonese, or Kwangtungese; that is, if they are not of the
provincial capital, they are from the province.
Trained carrier pigeons are still used by the Shansi Bankers’ Guilds in
carrying secret code messages stating the exchange prices of silver.
This is quicker than the post, and more secret than the telegraph.
Regarding salaries that will be paid in China’s reconstruction, the
following may give some indication. The salary of advisers to the privy
council has been $90 per month in a nation of 400,000,000, compared to
the salary of an American attorney-general of $1,500 a month.
It is often said that the Chinese are absolutely honest, but when an
exception occurs it is as startling as a bolt from a clear sky. As an
aftermath of the rubber speculation at Shanghai, the taotai, Tsai Nai
Huong, absconded in August, 1911, owing several million dollars to the
government, which sum had been loaned him to assist the local banks.
Some of their proverbs hung up as texts in their guild houses are:
“Don’t wait till you are thirsty to dig your well.”
“Don’t wait for the battle before you sharpen your sword.”
“The higher up, the deeper down when the tumble comes.”
“Fish and fools are the same; neither sees the string on every bait.”
“The fish is measured by your bait.”
“He who buys luxuries soon sells his necessities.”
“A debtor never remembers as long as a creditor.”
“Conscience grows heavier as store weights grow secretly lighter.”
“Hot broth and a time loan both require deliberation.”
“If you are rich and live in a desert, it’s never too far for your poor
relatives to come.”
“If you have money, even your enemy will slave for you.”
“There’s such a thing as drawing the line somewhere; I don’t lend my
umbrella in the dog-days.”
“Some men’s faces are as good as a credit slip.”
It will be perceived that they had a Franklin in China!
The idiom for a lunar eclipse is: “The moon has suffered a deficit,”
but the other expression of the Chinese astronomers: “All round
again”, indicates that losses have been underwritten and solvency
reestablished! May the international financial astrologers in and out
of China soon bring in this happy state. Then a “cycle of Cathay” will
be as good as any other cycle, despite Tennyson’s dictum, and this will
redound to the good of every nation, particularly America and Britain.
V
BUSINESS METHODS OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA
The British national board of trade, partly on the advice in Admiral
Lord Beresford’s book, has appointed commercial attachés separate
from the diplomatic and consular bodies to work as specialists and
free lances in China. In contrast with the diplomatic and consular
departments, they are free to use the helpful publicity of the home
newspapers in order to correct and create interest. Canada in a small
way has followed Britain’s example. A consular officer is fixed to his
post on account of his daily relationship with shipping, courts, visits
of nationals, emigration and health inspection. A commercial attaché
has more of a roving and special commission, and it is important in
the nature of his office that his advice should be followed promptly
in China and at home. He is in a position to strike quickly and bring
trade to his flag. He is not necessarily that loathsome being which
flourished in China previous to the Russo-Japanese War, a concession
hunter and a looter of weak countries. His aim is to strengthen weak
countries, as he knows that only a rich and contented people can trade
richly with his flag. The more he is of a scholar, gentleman and
Christian the better, for such a person in the long run makes an ideal
trader and patriot, as the American reformers are insisting. He should
be a statistician, an economist, and also an idealist, so that he may
be able to formulate a policy amid the present confused conditions. He
is not in any sense a historian, for he is not to follow his country.
He is to lead it, and, moreover, he must also sympathize with the
Chinese point of view to a sufficient degree.
Europe and America have been trading in China on an extended scale
since in 1842 the Nanking Treaty opened up Canton and four other ports.
Surprisingly few traders have learned the language. The home-rule
principle has been recognized, and the Chinese have been allowed to run
the trade in their own way on the compradore and shroff system. The
foreign firm takes into its employ at a percentage, with a guaranteed
minimum, a Chinese compradore, who speaks English, and who is bonded
by the Chinese, and the compradore takes into his employ a shroff
cashier, who is bonded to him by Chinese. The compradore pays the wages
of his Chinese staff. The foreigner (Si Yang Jin--West Sea people)
must deal with the Chinese customers only through the compradore, and
the compradore must under no circumstances appeal to the head of the
foreign firm in London, San Francisco, etc. He must deal with the
agent or branch in the China port, in whose office he is located on
the first floor, with a Chinese staff as large as the foreign staff
up-stairs. One who enters the offices of the Pacific Mail, American
(International) Bank, Standard Oil, P. & O., Butterfield and Swire,
Jardine’s, Fearon’s, and other companies in China, might think at
first that the concern was Chinese. No one but Celestials is to be
seen. This system is an approximation of two views. The Chinese might
desire to handle his own trade, in which case the compradore would set
up for himself, and buy sewing-machines, oils, machinery, tobacco,
cotton, etc., direct from the foreign agent at the treaty port, or he
could ignore the foreign agent and send his Chinese buyer across to
San Francisco, or over to London. Or the foreigner might learn the
language, dismiss his compradore, and try to sell direct to the Chinese
consumer and Chinese merchant.
It is a world-trade question, a terrific struggle in economics, this
getting rid of the middleman, the drone, and it is therefore still
an unsettled question in China. The compradore and shroff exist,
although many foreign commercial travelers, especially Germans and
Japanese, are selling direct to the Chinese in small lots. Many of
these compradores have become notable and able men, especially those
employed by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Again, some
compradores have tricked the foreign agent and company with all the
legerdemain of a conjurer. That is, instead of inducing the foreign
agent to bring out large quantities of oil, flour, etc., we shall say,
in time for a high market, the compradore, with his Chinese alliances
(or conspirators, shall we say!) induces the agent to get stocked in
godown when a low market suddenly drops on him. The compradore shifts
and says the market will drop lower still, and the agent authorizes
the compradore to sell quickly. The compradore sells to himself by
dummy, and the oil or flour suddenly rises. The agent is mad clear
through, but if he changed compradores every time this happened he
would change so frequently that his concern would lose prestige with
the Chinese. The Chinese compradore will bleed you, but he will not
knowingly bleed you to death. Of all ornithologists of trade, he does
not believe in killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. He only
plucks the goose occasionally! I have heard tales which, if they are
true, would indicate that the Chinese compradore is not alone expert
in legerdemain, but that the foreign agent sometimes “stands in” with
him. There certainly are some mountain palaces and a princely ménage on
the hills of the sumptuous Far East that the savings from an agent’s
salary, or an unexpected legacy never bought. In trade and in politics,
as well as in religion, “by their fruits ye shall know” compradores,
agents, and every one else!
Successful companies operating in China, with foreign managers and with
the majority stock in foreign hands, but using Chinese money also, are
the following incorporated or joint-stock registered companies:
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (British and German).
Indo-China Steam Navigation (British).
Peking Syndicate (British), Shansi and Honan anthracite coal.
Anglo-French Syndicate (Yunnan mines).
Anglo-French Land Investment Company.
Hongkong Land Investment Company.
Hongkong and Whompoa Dock Company.
Hongkong and Kowloon Wharf and Dock Company.
Green Island Cement Company (Hongkong and Macao).
Société Anonyme du Luhan (Belgian), s. e. Shansi coal.
Tientsin Land Investment Company.
Tientsin Gas and Electric Company.
Tientsin Water-works.
Hongkong, Canton and Macao Steamboat Company.
Hongkong Cotton Company.
Hongkong Rope Company.
Hongkong Dairy Company.
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company (British), Kaiping coal mines.
The immense Taikoo Company (Butterfield & Swire), operating docks,
shipyards, sugar refineries, steamship lines, etc.; China Sugar
Refinery; Bank of Australia; Eastern and Australia Cable Company, etc.,
are owned mainly by British capitalists, who operate an extensive
apprentice system or school in maintaining their personnel in the
Far East. The Banque l’Indo-China is, of course, mainly French, as
is the Anglo-French Syndicate. The Russo-Asiatique Banque is French
and Russian. The Cathay Trust Company is British and Chinese. The
Shell Transport (oil and shipping) is Dutch, largely. Humphreys’ Land
Company is British, mainly. There are scores of rubber companies whose
plantations are in Malaysia, but whose shares are actively dealt in by
the Chinese and foreigners of Shanghai, Hongkong and Tientsin. Large
department stores of Hongkong and Shanghai are incorporated, and their
shares are actively dealt in. I refer to Lane-Crawford, Watson, Central
Stores, Weeks, Moultrie, Hall & Holtz, etc.
The largest foreign commission houses, banks and agencies, with offices
in the various treaty ports, are the following:
United States Steel Products Export Company (American).
Standard Oil Company (American).
American Tobacco Company.
Singer Sewing-Machine Company (American).
International Banking Company (American).
Yokohama Specie Bank (Japanese).
Deutsche-Asiatique Bank (German).
Mitsui & Co. (Japanese), Fushun coal, machinery, cotton, etc.
Mitsu Bishi (ship-building at Nagasaki).
Kawasaki Dock Company (ship-building at Dairen).
American Trading Company.
Sassoon & Co. (German).
Reiss & Co. (British).
Melchers & Co. (German), machinery, shipping, etc.
Arnhold, Karberg & Co. (German).
Henley’s Telegraph Works (British).
Shewan, Tomes & Co. (British and American).
Fearon, Daniel & Co. (American).
Andersen, Meyer & Co. (German).
Carlowitz & Co. (German), smelting, matting, machinery, etc.
J. G. White & Co. (American), engineering.
Punchard, Lowther (British), engineering.
Pearson (British), engineering.
Tsingtau Dock Company (German), ship-building.
Rose, Downs & Thomson (British), oil, machinery.
Priestman Brothers (British), dredgers, excavators.
Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong (French).
Bohler Brothers (British), hardware.
Siemssen & Co. (German).
Kelly, Walsh & Co., Brewer & Co., _North China Herald_ (British),
publishers and booksellers.
Brunner Brothers (German), gas lighting.
Hohenzollern Company (German), locomotives.
Konigs Company (German), bridges.
Reinecker Company (German), machinery, tools.
Hurst-Nelson Company (British), railway equipment.
Glasgow Rolling Stock Company.
Mellowes & Co. (British), station roofs.
Hunt & Co. (British), machine shops.
Leeds Forge Company (British), steel cars.
Cassella & Co. (British), engineering instruments.
Tangye & Co. (British), oil engines.
Yorkshire Copper Works, Union Electric Company (British), electric
plants.
Wilkinson-Heywood Company (British), paint.
Dudgeon, Ltd. (British), excavators.
Waygood & Co. (British), elevators.
Nasymth Wilson Company (British), locomotives.
Vickers, Ltd. (British), railway equipment.
Hawthorne-Leslie Company (British), mining equipment.
Arts and Crafts Company (British), decorators.
Sun Life of Canada, insurance.
Royce, Ltd. (British), cranes.
Herring, Hall, Marvin (American), safes.
The Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, opened a branch in
Hongkong in 1903, but it was closed in 1904, insurance companies
preferring, as a rule, to act through general commission houses at
present.
Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in immense
numbers throughout the land. An example is _Hallock’s Miscellany_,
printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission
Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong
and Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground.
Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of
a train, and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their
cartoons and advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some
of the Chinese can not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or
cartoon, which accordingly is more important than in any land, and
should therefore be registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese
taotai. The Asiatic Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British),
uses a cartoon of three square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on
the top. The Standard Oil Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and
some paraffin candles. Scott’s Emulsion Company shows the familiar
codfish on the back of the man. Green Island Cement Company shows
the famous mountain island of Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement
chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas Company, of Moline, Illinois, use
a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et Cie, of Frankfort on Main,
use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man and woman. The New
Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine and a greyhound. The
Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-terrier listening to
“His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention by quoting an
epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-Machine insists
that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English letters and
not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they have
had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company shows
Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to wake
up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a
vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of
time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits
over trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong.
The Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which
appeals to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.
The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are
teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements
constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known
“chop”, rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing
else than their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton bolt, flour
bag and everything else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer
in China than anywhere else in the world, but it is harder there than
anywhere else to get that customer the necessary “once”, as he has
probably linked up with a “chop” that preceded yours. The Harrison
Knitting Machine Company, of Manchester, England, merely show cuts of
their machines, and a competitor could do the same, and thus confuse
the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the
man in the moon and a cock. J. H. Birch, of Library Street, Burlington,
New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his rickshaws, which compete with the
Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of Britain cease neither day nor
night in the attempt to give China something Occidental to take the
place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt different shaped bottles
to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles are now blown
almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps Milk Company,
of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby bear forced
lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the “cow
that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a Chinese boy
bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films show the
crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company use the
crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s Manila
Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon volcano in
the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan, Pechili
province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This
is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical
Chinese are familiar and which they like.
The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the
Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh, use a seventeen-storied
pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas
tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement
Company uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three
medals in the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a
nautch girl pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more
luxuriously Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective
Paint has adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the
Philippines, use a hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo
Kisen Kaisha uses a red circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are
becoming popular chops. Shields are also used by the British and the
Spanish, but they are rather intricate for the Chinese to understand.
There is not much competition yet, and most of the foreign firms, in
their desire to educate the Chinese, are merely using photographs of
their machinery and product, but as soon as John Chinaman has to choose
between two dynamos, two gas engines, two pumps, etc., each of them
must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil, the flour, the ham,
the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be chopped to
maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada and
Britain of “what we have we hold.”
The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc.,
show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and
dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The
share list shows active trading in the following companies among
others: railway, steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire
insurance; oil, refineries, sugar, mining, engineering and contracting,
ship-building, car building; docks, wharves and warehouse (godown);
lands, hotels, clubs, buildings, cotton mills and plantations, cement,
power, light, water, trams, millinery, telephone, telegraph, cable,
tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water, distilleries, flour mills,
iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper, booksellers,
conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export firms,
jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations,
furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men
to get rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more
than at Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as
speculatively feverous as Wall Street.
British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state
land, and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds,
American style. The British government has gone extensively into the
land business at Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys
in the mountains, and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point
and East Point, Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on
the mainland section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable
sites are then put up at auction, bringing about twice the rental
that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey City, or the outlying districts
of London. In the same way the foreign concession municipalities of
Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau, Newchwang, Harbin, etc.,
prepare land for long leases. These will in time all be strenuous
questions with the new republican government of China. When the
foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese
never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese
citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been
formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions.
I do not believe that republican China desires to acquire these
leaseholds for many years, and if she did she would purchase them. The
foreign navies would see to that.
VI
RAILWAYS IN CHINA
In the third book of _Paradise Lost_, Milton humorously discussed
transportation in China as follows:
“On the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany waggons light,”
but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed
seriously.
China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main
lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German
and British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British
contractors, so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and
go through to Calais, France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German
colony of Kiaochou and Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so
that a German may go straight through from his Crown colony in cars
to Berlin. Before long, when the Canton-Hankau section is completed,
Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be able to leave Government House,
facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on the hill of Hongkong, take
a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the mile of harbor, then
take his railway carriage and be whisked through to Downing Street,
London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for the Crown
colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not only
a northern railway route is available, but a southern railway route
will soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short
railway from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay,
it will be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave
the palatial Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare
on the palm-lined boulevard, going straight through to the Ministré
on the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople
and the Gates of the Danube, all the way without seeing salt water.
Likewise the governor of Singapore will soon be able to entrain
opposite Government House for Calais and London, and cross the teeming
continents, passing through the site of the Garden of Eden, on his
way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He can also pick up
his traveled friend (since the _entente cordiale_), the Gouverneur at
L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du Nord, Paris,
on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.
The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and Chinese
Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be completed. The
Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming emperors)
has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao
(educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and
French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking
two thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance
in reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will
soon be ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the
Yellow River (Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the
railway through to Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on
to the historic Tarim valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It
is also proposed to open a new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen
River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of
land running between Northern Korea and the Vladivostok district of
Siberia. From Hunshan a road would be run to Kirin, two hundred miles
over difficult forest-covered country. From Kirin China has independent
lines running between the Russian and Japanese lines. Hunshan would be
an excellent port whence to attack commercially the two rich northern
provinces of Manchuria. The road planned by America from Chin Wang Tao
to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly more of a postponed than a dead road
despite Russia and Japan.
The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends and
helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These
roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by
obstacles to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the
free trade and transportation of the southern part of the country. The
Hanyang iron mills can supply rails at one-third the American cost,
viz., nine dollars as compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so
that China can afford to build four miles of railway to America’s one
mile, and reduce rates accordingly because of the lower capital cost.
The cars can be erected at Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center,
and at Tongshan in the north of China. The locomotives and trucks
will be imported from America, Germany and England. The necessary
coast railway from Hongkong to Ningpo has only been constructed in
the neighborhood of Amoy. Something has been done on the railways
from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from Hongkong to Chungking, and
from Yunnan to Chungking. American engineers have made the surveys.
The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu (Great North Road) post road
from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been begun. A road, too, will break
across west from Chingtu to the Tibet gateway at Tachien. Mention
should be made of the railway from Kidalova, following the north bank
of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka, which Russia is building
so as to have an all-Russian railway to Vladivostok. This railway
is under way, although the debt of the Russo-Japan War has almost
destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed Russia’s commercial
(and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been for that
debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to Peking,
to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British
imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.
Hongkong has at last beat out Shanghai for the trade of the great
western provinces of China. Transshipment is made at Hongkong for
Haiphong, where the new French railway takes merchandise five hundred
miles northwest to Yunnan as a distributing center. Hongkong also has
the West (Si Kiang), Yu, Hong Chu, Eta and Peh Rivers as arteries into
the west. Until two hundred miles of Yangtze gorges and rapids are
flanked by a railway, Shanghai must lose more and more of the vast
western trade which she used to control before the French railway
was built. The French finished in 1910 this remarkable railway from
Haiphong to Yunnan, five hundred miles, and have thus beat out the
British, who, because of Colquhoun’s books, were approaching Yunnan
from three points in Burma. This railway attack on Yunnan has been
a battle of two imperial minds of the Kipling imperialistic type,
Colquhoun and Doumer. Colquhoun, the British governor and author, began
urging the construction of British railways in 1881, and followed
up his arguments with a further book in 1898. In 1897, the famous
Paul Doumer, once a printer, went to French China as governor. In
1898 he began his railway to Yunnan. The line, though narrow gage,
has cost $50,000 a mile, even with cheap Oriental labor. Near the
coast of Tonquin the country is that of flat rice fields and only
requires trestling and banking. From Hung Hoa (Bed River) to Lao Kai no
fewer than 180 bridges had to be erected (a fine contract for French
structural firms) to cross the wild broken country of stream, marsh,
gorge and mountain pass. The line rises from sea level to a pass of
5,000 feet altitude. Much of the Yunnan tin and other exports, which,
by pack saddle and shoulder load, formerly went down to Nanning and
took the Yu and Si Rivers to Hongkong, are now diverted to Haiphong,
from which port the French run branch ship lines to Hongkong and
Saigon, connecting with the great subsidized Messageries Maritimes line
to Marseilles. The French need subsidies because the foreign trade
which their bankers control is not so heavy as is that of Britain and
America.
The Hongkong and Canton Railway, 106 miles, has been completed and
marks a new lease of life for Hongkong as the emporium of South, West
and Central China, when the railways from Canton are extended. The
Hongkong Railway starts from Kowloon, across the narrow harbor, running
through 19 miles of British territory, and the remainder through
Chinese territory. The British section, on account of the many tunnels
through mountains, cost almost as much as the entire Chinese section.
The fine steamers of the Hongkong and Canton Steamboat Company, which
are well known to world tourists, and many Chinese steamers and junks
compete, but there is traffic for all, and when there isn’t there will
be pooling for all. The Hongkong government, through the Hongkong and
Shanghai Banking Corporation, loaned the Kwangtung province government
the money for the Chinese section. (This is an illustration of a few
loans which have not been made to the national government at Peking,
and represents provincial as against the nationalized trunk railway
scheme which helped to bring on the revolution.) The road runs through
a part of the country requiring much trestle work, and bridging on
account of waterways. The long Chinese section of the road cost less
with one exception than any standard gage railway in the world, $35,000
per mile, the nearest approach to this in America being sections
of the Great Northern Railway built years ago at $40,000 per mile.
Nearly all the freight and passenger cars were made at Hongkong. The
best built railway in China is the Shanghai-Nanking. In easy country
it cost $55,000 per mile. It was built by British contractors on the
elaborate, permanent English plan, whose maxim is, “a stitch in time
saves nine”. What spoiled the Chinese in hiring foreign contractors was
their experience with a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow railway. The
Kiangsu and Chekiang provincial governments, hiring native contractors
and engineers (who were trained in America) built a satisfactory
road of 125 miles at $25,000 per mile, as compared with the British
continuation north, of $55,000 per mile. The Chinese have never
ceased talking of this economy, although they admit that the English
road is better and worth $35,000 per mile, but not $55,000. Another
objection they make is that foreign syndicates charge five per cent.
commission on their purchases. In the railway from Pukow (opposite
Nanking) to Tientsin, the foreign syndicate was not allowed commission
on purchases, so that the “Pukow plan” is favored. In reference to the
low cost, $35,000 per mile, of the difficult Peking-Kalgan railway,
140 miles, which was built by the Chinese exclusively, the _Chinese
Students’ Journal_ says: “In the construction of the railway, economy,
which must not be confounded with cheapness, must always be kept in
view. All railways built in China must be paid for by our people,
and our people are poor. A railway is not a club-house on which to
expend millions. The redemption of bonds must not be forgotten for a
moment. On the Peking-Kalgan railway there was no temptation to spend
money recklessly, as no five per cent. commission was needed to enrich
the coffers of the foreign corporation. There were no foreign style
residences, cement tennis-courts, ice machines, palatial house-boats,
and princely salaries; no interpreters to make a fortune (_i. e._,
compradores); no graft. There were no unpleasantnesses through the
interference of foreign consuls, and no reference of insignificant
incidents to ministers at Peking.”
The Siberian Railway cost $150,000 a mile through flat country, but
$100,000 of that amount was for nepotism, graft, bureaucracy, boodle
and sweet Roederer champagne.
The revolution and the argument over the nationalization of railways of
course delayed the great Gorge Railway which runs from Ichang to Wan
Hsien on the Yangtze, thus surmounting the almost impassable rapids
of the gorges, which heretofore have split populous Szechuen province
from Hupeh. It would be hard to say how many books have been written
about these difficult rapids and the sublime scenery. The most notable
are by Archibald Little, the trade pioneer of the Yangtze, and then
there are interesting works by Dingle, Geil, Mrs. Kemp, Mr. Bird,
Mr. Blakiston, Mr. Hart and Mrs. Bishop. The road could not possibly
parallel the river along the parapets of the gorges. It breaks inland
through great tunnels, some 6,000 feet long. This gorge railway was the
most necessary in the whole world; it should have been the first begun
in China. When it is running, however, the finest scenery in the world
will be shut out from the wondering eyes of man, as the famous gorge
boatmen and trackers will give up their work, and, as it is, many of
them have been killed in the recent war of the revolution, Szechuen
and Hupeh provinces being the first to recruit armies. From Wan Hsien
railways will go across country to Chingtu, and up the Yangtze to
Chungking, thus linking the great west with India, French China and the
populous eastern and northern provinces.
General Kuroki’s military railway from Antung to Mukden has now been
turned into a standard-gage road, and a bridge has been thrown across
the Yalu River (famous for its great naval engagement) to Wiju. It is
now possible to take a sleeping-car from Tokio to Shinonoseki, cross
the strait by ferry, take another sleeper at Fusan, and go all the way
through Mukden to Kuang Chang Tsu, connecting there with the Russian
line for Moscow and St. Petersburg. For fast service, however, the
Russians are able to favor the all-Russian line to Vladivostok, whence
steamers can be taken for Hakodate, etc. Passengers from Shanghai can
take two routes, one by steamer to Dalny, and thence via the South
Manchurian (Japanese) railway, or via Tientsin, Newchang, etc. (Chinese
railways). The Korean-Yalu route, however, is infinitely the more
scenic. Most of the bridges of this route were brought from America.
The German railway of 271 miles in Shangtung province shows the
effects of the iron hand in paying small wages, the working expenses
in 1910 being only thirty-five per cent. of the gross earnings. The
gross earnings were $8,000 a mile. In a bare country, where mining
is undeveloped, the average receipts were only seventy-one cents per
passenger mile, and ninety cents per ton mile. Over 90 per cent. of the
traffic is third class. The average mixed trainload is 150 tons of
freight and sixty passengers. The famous beans, straw braid, grain and
petroleum predominated in the traffic, but in 1912 coal was beginning
to be a growing factor. The German railway in Shangtung province has
set the example of planting trees. It was copied by the Pennsylvania
railway. Nearly all the railways of China are copying the reforestation
methods.
At Tongshan, eighty miles northeast of Tientsin, are the modern shops,
engineering college and town of the national railways of North China.
Here the first Chinese locomotive, the “Rocket”, was built in stealth
by the British mechanical, railway and mining engineer, Mr. C. W.
Kinder, who has done so much for the railways and mines of North China.
The college turns out railway engineers, and some of the instructors
are American, like Mr. F. A. Foster. Other lecturers are British, like
Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope.
Railway cars can now be built in the Tongshan shops, the Hanyang works,
the Shanghai works and the Kowloon (Hongkong) works, as well as at
Dalny. The Tongshan works can and have built locomotives.
In 1910 the Department of Communications established at Peking a
railway school. Three hundred of the six hundred students were under
twenty-five years of age. There were eight foreign and thirty-five
foreign-trained Chinese teachers. The course was three years. English,
mainly, and French, German and Chinese were taught. There is no
military drill, and the curriculum includes history, economics, railway
bookkeeping and law, engineering, management of traffic, shops and
stations, physics, chemistry, drawing, mathematics, geography, etc.
Electric tramways have been established at Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai,
Canton and the Manchurian cities, the example having been taken
from Hongkong’s tramway, built in 1905. Recent photographs show the
remarkable change in the bunds and roads of the treaty ports, where the
automobile, electric car, rickshaw, wheelbarrow, chair and litter all
have their fight for the passenger and his nimble coin.
On new lines it is necessary to use blue instead of white glass in the
coaches, as the coolies in their excitement over the scenery forget
and put their heads through the white glass, to which they are not
accustomed.
The old system of transportation has not altogether departed, and even
if it had, its memory would linger long. Neither the Peking cart, nor
the mule litter of Shansi, in which one rides between two tandem mules,
is on springs. They are padded so that the passenger, who is not made
of rubber, may be somewhat protected. If the conveyances were not
padded, only a man dressed up for American football could survive the
jolting. These are the vehicles in which dignified (on other occasions)
ambassadors have ridden at Peking in all the years since foreigners
were granted the legation privileges.
VII
SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA
The larger steamship lines now supplying the China ports are the
following:
AMERICAN
Pacific Mail--Trans-Pacific.
Standard Oil--Trans-Pacific and Suez route.
Dollar Steamship Company--Trans-Pacific.
Northern Pacific Railway--Trans-Pacific.
American and Asiatic--To America via Suez (agency, American; flag,
British).
Barber Line--To America via Suez (agency, American; flag, British).
Shewan, Tomes & Co.--To Philippines.
BRITISH
Canadian Pacific Railway--Trans-Pacific.
Peninsular and Oriental--Suez route to Europe, and coastal.
Ben Line--Suez route to Europe.
Shire Line--Suez route to Europe.
Sassoon Line--To India.
Jardine, Matheson & Co.--To India, coastwise and Philippines.
Butterfield and Swire--Australia, India, coastwise, etc.
Gibb, Livingston & Co.--Australia and Africa.
Blue and White Funnel Lines--Europe, trans-Pacific, coastwise.
British-India--India, trans-Pacific, etc.
JAPANESE
Toyo Kisen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific to America and South America.
Nippon Yusen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific, Europe, coastwise and riverine.
Osaka Shosen Kaisha--Trans-Pacific, coastwise and riverine.
Nippon Kisen Kaisha--Coastwise.
Mitsui Bussan Kaisha--Coastwise.
GERMAN
North German Lloyd--Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hamburg-America--Europe, coastwise and probably trans-Pacific.
Hansa Steamship Company--Europe.
AUSTRIAN
Austrian Lloyd--Europe and coastwise.
CHINESE
China Merchants’ Steamship Company--Coastwise and possibly
trans-Pacific.
BRITISH AND CHINESE
Chinese Engineering and Mining Company--Coastwise and trans-Pacific
planned.
Peking Syndicate--Coastwise and trans-Pacific planned.
FRENCH
Messageries Maritimes--Europe, Indo-China and coastwise.
RUSSIA
Russian Volunteer Fleet--Europe and coastwise.
Chinese Eastern Railway Steamers--Coastwise.
SPAIN
Spanish Royal Mail--Europe via Suez.
HOLLAND
Shell Transport and Trading--Coastwise and Europe.
When the Panama Canal opens, many more Atlantic lines, such as the
Royal Mail, International Marine, German lines, etc., will probably
extend their service in time to China, and many trans-Pacific lines,
especially Japanese and the Pacific Mail, will extend to America’s
eastern coast, not to speak of new lines which may be formed. The
British-India Steamship Company intends to extend its Calcutta line
across the Pacific and to New York. The American railroads could, at
small cost, by a generous pro rata of division rates, have covered
the Pacific and Atlantic with American steamship lines, but they have
held off, expecting the really unnecessary government subsidies. The
subsidy argument would possibly have a different complexion if it were
assured that the steamship lines would remain forever independent,
and permit no dummy holdings of stock. In the meantime, Japanese and
British vessels have been employed on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans
on account of the lower cost of officers’ wages only, the crews’ wages
being the same on a Pacific mailer and a Nippon Yusen Kaisha mailer,
for instance. Both hire Chinese mainly, who are good and cheap
sailors. The American railroad, controlling the west-bound freight, and
the American banker, controlling the heavier east-bound freight, could
make American steamship lines on the Pacific profitable; indeed, the
Pacific Mail already pays its way. The government could, of course,
pay a just amount for mails on an increasing ratio for time made,
but if the American railroad, American banker, American shipper and
American globe-trotter will come to the aid of the American ship, we
can, without subsidy, except to independent smaller owners, cover the
Pacific with our starry flag.
All the large lines are building new ships for the China trade. The
Osaka Shosen Kaisha, running to America in connection with the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, has ordered steamships from Armstrong,
in England, and from the Japan shipyards. The Canadian Pacific Railway
Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail are having twenty-knot ships
built. The Hansa Steamship Company, running from Bremen, has ordered
ships from the Weser Ship-building Company, of Bremen. The Russian
Volunteer Fleet has ordered new ships from the Alexander-Nevski works.
Wireless is to be used generally, the first shore station having
been fitted at Hongkong. The Chinese Merchants and the Sino-American
companies (both Chinese) intend to run ships to America, as their plans
enlarge. We may yet see the Chinese flag regularly in New York. The
Japanese are to run a line into the Black Sea in competition with the
Russian Volunteer Fleet; they have already sent boats into Trieste in
competition with the Austrians, and they have before now humbled the
Germans in the Bangkok-Shanghai service. To show that the Japanese
are not the least timid in declaring their maritime ambitions on the
Pacific, I shall quote the following circular signed by Manager Iwanaga
of the subsidized Nippon Yusen Kaisha (the steamship line in which the
Mikado is a large shareholder) at the time of the competition with the
long-established British firm of Butterfield and Swire, a firm which
had been very friendly to the Japanese during the Russian War. Mr.
Iwanaga says: “These foreign firms must be induced to pay respect to
the Japanese mercantile flag. It is the duty of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha
to check the arrogance of foreign steamers east of Suez.”
The history of China’s greatest steamship line, the China Merchants’
Steamship Company, is as follows: When Li Hung Chang was viceroy of
Pechili province at Tientsin in 1871, on advice of Americans and
British who were in his employ, he formed this government-controlled
line, partly to carry tribute grain from the south; because the Grand
Canal was allowed by the various governors to collect silt, while their
pockets collected gilt (and guilt)! Merchants and guilds were invited
or coerced to subscribe to some of the stock. In 1877 the company
bought the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company and its dock for 2,000,000
taels silver. In 1878 Li diverted from the Grand Canal to the steamship
company the Yunnan copper destined to the Peking and provincial mints.
The great government university at Peking, with provincial branches,
created by Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts of 1898, was to be financed
partly by the revenues of this steamship company. The republicans
used its revenues to aid the 1911 revolution because the imperialists
used the railway revenues. The head office of the company is in
Shanghai, and it has branches at Newchwang, Chifu, Tientsin, Chinkiang,
Kowkiang, Hankau, Ningpo, Fuchau, Hongkong and Canton. The ships are
distinguishable at the Chinese ports both by the yellow funnel, and
by the immense Chinese characters which, in Austrian fashion, are not
always borne on the bow, but midships. The fine vessels of this company
were once put under the American flag in 1884 to save them from the
French, who were at war with China.
One of the great movements of the future in the reforming Far East
will be the Malay Peninsular Canal, about fifty miles long, which will
save 1,500 miles in the voyage from Saigon to Calcutta, Madras, etc.
It will not cut off and make useless the expensive garrison port of
Singapore, which holds the five equatorial seas for Britain, as the
Singapore-Rangoon railway will run along the entire peninsula. All
these probabilities in the Far East should be considered in full by the
student of world politics, finance, commerce and ethnology. A dozen
Chinas, Americas, Britains and Germanies could well work many centuries
before the world is restored to the economic Eden state, where each
man will be free, and have enough to support him and his in peace.
Every work of commerce is then a world-work, claiming the altruist’s
enthusiasm, and while we often use the phrase, “war of the ports of
the Far East,” we mean that joyful exhibition of strength which the
wrestler, rather than the warrior, puts forth.
A movement is growing in Japan to deprive foreign ships of the right
to trade between Japanese ports, which is similar to a regulation now
in operation in America and Canada. Japanese vessels, of course, trade
between British and China ports. Another plan that is advocated is to
place on ships not built in Japan such a high duty that Japanese owners
will be compelled to build in Japan, which would include a personal
penalty if Japanese owners owned steamship stock under a foreign flag.
All this involves considerable conflict with British interests that
have loaned immense sums in Japan, and it is certain that the British
foreign office, now so friendly to Japan, will hear from the British
Board of Trade, as it is hearing every day from the consular service
and such writers as Beresford, Colquhoun and Gilbert Parker.
Whampoa, the first port in China where Europeans traded, is to be
opened by the Chinese as a treaty port for deep-sea trading. It is
about six miles below Canton. The port will, of course, compete with
Hongkong; but Hongkong opened up a railway to Canton to protect
herself, and she will see that fast and cheap handling maintains her
leadership. The taotai, and Chang Iu Hin who was educated and enriched
at British Singapore, are representative republicans of Canton who are
interested in Whampoa port. It is proposed to do dredging and make free
grants of land for godowns, wharves, etc.
Portuguese Macao, the second port in China where Europeans traded,
forty miles from Hongkong, is dredging her silted harbor preparatory
to bidding for some of the great oversea trade that is expected.
China, which has ambitions for native ports in the vicinity of Canton,
frequently sends her warships into Macao waters. The natives of the
Macao district (Heung Shan) do not like Portugal’s ambition, and much
bitterness is shown.
The Whang Poo Conservancy Board has deepened the river from Wusung up
to Shanghai, and larger ocean steamers are now able to ascend to the
bund. For a long time the largest vessels must lie at Wusung bar, the
“heaven sent barrier” against foreign intrusion, as the Manchus called
it years ago. The Tientsin Conservancy is deepening the river up from
Taku. Both of these boards are controlled by the foreign settlements,
although the Chinese share in the expense. Foreign engineers are hired.
Other trans-oceanic ports planned by China are at Chin Wang Tao in
Pechili province; Hunchun, near Vladivostok on the Japan Sea, and
Haochow, near the junction of Shangtung and Kiangsu provinces. The
British may also develop the port of Wei Hai Wei, now that connection
with the trunk railways of China is in sight.
Few of the great Chinese ports look after the foreign seamen, but
Hongkong has established a sailors’ club and seamen’s institute on a
liberal scale. This idea should be copied along the long yellow coast,
for the devil’s whisper is loudest and his traps are most numerous in
China.
The Grand Canal as a shipping factor is grand no more, for three
reasons: it has silted up; it has been paralleled by the railway from
Hangchow to Peking, 1,000 miles; and it has also been paralleled by the
China Merchants and other steamship services from Shanghai to Tientsin.
This once noble work, with its beautiful bridges, pagodas, embankments,
sluices, aqueducts and picturesque junks, passes into history, so far
as its transportation feature is concerned. It may be continued in
parts as an aqueduct, for conservancy purposes in relieving the water
pressure on the flood districts of the Whei and Yangtze valleys, or
for water power for a vast scheme of manufacturing, but that is for
engineers, and not economists, to decide. Marco Polo first made this
famous work known to the western world. The southern section from
Hangchow, the bore city and capital of the Sung dynasty, to the Yangtze
River at Chingkiang, was dug about 610 A. D. The oldest, and most
important section from a conservancy point of view, from Chinkiang to
the Whei River, 130 miles, was built about 485 B. C. Kublai Khan is
credited with being the dreamer of the idea, the digger of the ditch,
the De Lesseps of China, and the fact is that he built the northern
section of about 650 miles from the Whei River to Peking in 1289 A. D.
in order to bring the tribute rice and copper of the southern provinces
to Peking. Those who are interested in the canal in its last days of
picturesque use should read the works of Sir John Francis Davis, who
was governor of Hongkong, and whose experience in China covered the
crowded years from 1820 to 1846. The American general, J. M. Wilson,
has also written a book covering his inspection of parts of the canal.
On sections of the Yellow River and on the Kia Ling River in Szechuen
province, lumber boats are made up to carry produce to market, the
boats being broken up at Chungking. Return freight which can not be
tracked through the rapids is portaged. Although the Yellow River is
2,500 miles long, it is only navigable 150 miles from its mouth to
Tsinan City, and in short broken sections in Mongolia and Honan. The
loess silt which it carries, and the porous loess bed through which it
flows, make it only a roaring unmanageable spring and summer drain,
China’s sorrow of flood and famine. Its memorable changing of bed to
mouths 300 miles apart, from Kiangsu to Shangtung province in 1854, and
from banks 100 miles apart in the Gobi Desert, are well known.
Most of the riverine and coast, junk and sanpan sails are square or
oblong, but at Ichang there are strange wupan boats which use the
towering peaked sails seen on the Arab dahabiyehs of Aden and the
Nile, the object being to coax down the high breezes of the difficult
gorges of the Yangtze. This is not the only instance in China of Arab
influence in crafts, arts and blood.
Chinese riverine shipping is growing heavily. All flags are seen on
the Yangtze, and several flags in the lower parts of the Kan and Siang
Rivers. The British and Chinese, and some French flags go up the
West and Yu Rivers to Nanning. Chinese shipping on the Liao River to
Newchwang is heavy in the ice-free season. There are scores of other
rivers which will be dredged so that they may feed the steamship and
railroad lines.
The Chinese have an amusing word for captain. “Lao ta” is literally
“old fellow”; because the captain of the old Yangtze rapids boats was
generally the oldest man on board. The captain of the Hakka sanpans of
Canton is often a woman, but she is humorously called “lao ta” with the
rest! China led in all inventions, including woman’s rights!
In the coming great development of Western China, the one name to
inscribe on the tablets is that of the pioneer merchant writer,
Archibald Little, who, after twenty years of effort, broke the veil
of the Yangtze gorges and took the first steamer to open up the ports
of Ichang and Chungking in 1898. This brought him within beckoning
distance of British Burma and Archibald Colquhoun’s propaganda, and
split China in two with the wedge of commerce, despite the obstructive
Tsung Li Yamen at Manchu Peking. Mr. Little’s three books on Western
China are: _Through the Yangtze Gorges_, _To Omi Mount in Szechuen_,
and _Across Yunnan_; and he wrote, moreover, a very important
geological work which places him high as a prospector and explorer.
VIII
AMERICA IN CHINA
Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the
Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European
cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where
Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which
has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is
a prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The
monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the
Far Eastern seas in lonely days as follows:
_Erected by the officers and crews of the
United States steam frigate Powhatan
and
H. B. M. steam sloop Rattler,
in memory of
their shipmates who fell in a combined attack on a
fleet of piratical junks off Kuhlan (Kowloon)
August 4, 1855.
Killed in the action:
Powhatan.
John Pepper, seaman.
James A. Halsey, landsman.
Isaac Coe, landsman.
S. Mullard, marine.
B. F. Addamson, marine._
The first American treaty is dated 1844 when Caleb Cushing and Daniel
Webster’s son, Fletcher, went to Hongkong, Canton, Macao, etc.,
but American trade began at a still earlier date, when the _Empress
of China_, Captain Green, Purser Samuel Shaw, sailed from New York
on Washington’s birthday, 1784. The ship _Alliance_ sailed from
Philadelphia in 1788 without charts. The ship _Massachusetts_ sailed
from Boston in 1789, armed with twenty six-pound guns, and half the
cargo being useless furs for the southern Chinese! The old Philadelphia
merchants interested in the China trade were of the Archer, Girard and
Rulon families. The Boston merchants who despatched regular packet
ships to Canton were of the Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell,
Cushing and Coolidge families. The first American consuls lived at
beautiful Macao. Major Shaw, purser of the _Empress of China_ was
consul in 1786, Samuel Snow in 1794, and Edward Carrington in 1804. On
November 16, 1856, just before the “Arrow” war, Captain Armstrong, U.
S. S. _Portsmouth_, attacked the Canton (Bogue) forts. This was the
only time America attacked China, except at Peking in 1900. When all
Europe hesitated to befriend the northern states, China issued this
edict to viceroys in 1863: “Keep a careful and close oversight, and if
the Confederate steamer _Alabama_, or any other vessel of war, scheming
how it can injure American property, shall approach that part of the
coast of China under your jurisdiction, you are to prevent all such
vessels entering our ports.”
The American representatives in China were first trade commissioners,
and afterward diplomats, and the tendency now, at least with the
British and Germans, is to have both commissioners and diplomats. The
American officials were the following:
Caleb Cushing, commissioner, 1844 (first treaty).
Alex. H. Everett, commissioner, 1846 (died, Canton, 1847).
John W. Davis, commissioner, 1847.
Humphrey Marshall, commissioner, 1852.
Robert M. McLane, commissioner, 1853.
Doctor Parker, commissioner, 1856.
William B. Reed, minister, 1857 (first minister).
John E. Ward, minister, 1859.
Anson Burlingame, minister, 1861 (remarkably brilliant).
Mr. Low, minister, 1870.
J. B. Angell, minister, 1882 (later president University of Michigan).
Charles Denby, minister, 1885.
Mr. E. H. Conger, minister, 1900.
W. W. Rockhill, minister, 1905.
Mr. Calhoun, minister, 1909.
The most famous secretary of the American legation was Samuel Wells
Williams, the author of the _Middle Kingdom_, etc., and editor of the
_Chinese Repository_. His son serves at present in the Peking legation.
It would take a volume to cover Mr. S. W. Williams’ brilliant work as
interpreter of missions and legations, printer at Canton and Macao,
translator, author, lecturer, secretary, dictionary compiler, professor
at Yale, sinologue, money raiser for the causes of missions and
letters, and diplomat.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Note the use of English signs. These balconied shops and homes have a
Spanish effect.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Modern buildings; wider streets. Note woman with deformed feet
being carried on shoulders of servant; also the healthy alert
boyhood of China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Where the first treaty between America and China was signed. The
Porta Cerco gate between Portuguese and native China. The treaty
was signed by Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher,
on July 3d, 1844, the tablets on the gate being of a later date,
and commemorating a Portuguese victory.
]
Daniel Webster had not a little to do with America’s relations with
China. He studied the subject deeply. He suggested the first mission
that secured a treaty, and wrote the president’s message of December
30, 1842, to Congress suggesting the mission. Cushing’s letter of
instructions was signed by Webster, and showed deep knowledge of
Chinese affairs. The treaty was signed in a temple at Wanghai, outside
the Porta Cerco stone gate at Macao; and I would recommend the
pilgrimage to the many tourists who visit the picturesque settlement in
South China.
In 1861 an American, Frederick G. Ward, formed the nucleus of the
Manchu imperialist army which finally overcame the Taiping rebels.
Another American took service with Li Hung Chang as secretary. His
name was W. N. Pethick. He had served in the Civil War in America. Mr.
Pethick had considerable influence with Li, assisting him in treaty
making, reading to him reform and economical books, and taking a
part in urging the crusade against opium. Mr. Pethick died from the
hardships of the siege of Peking in 1900.
When John Hay and Philander Knox secured the assent of the nations to
the American and British doctrine of the non-partition of China, they
were repeating the “square deal” terms of the famous treaty of 1868,
which the brilliant American, Anson Burlingame, on behalf of China,
which nation he was then serving as commissioner, secured from America,
stipulating the “territorial integrity of China, and disavowing any
right to interfere with China’s eminent domain”.
In 1900 the American troops found a great store of silver at Tientsin,
but gave it up, as America returned the Boxer indemnity of 1908, and
the abstention of the American troops from looting in Peking in 1900
set the usual high standard of altruism and soldierly honor which Sun
Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang say China connects with the name America.
In 1901 Mrs. Conger and the other ladies of the American legation began
the work which threw down the zenana bars which held Manchu and Chinese
women in repressive exclusiveness.
Years ago prominent Chinese made some study of American leaders. Seu Ki
Yu, governor of Amoy and member of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board
at Peking) in 1866, to whom Secretary W. H. Seward sent a picture of
Washington, composed the following essay:
“Washington was a very remarkable man. In advising plans he was more
daring than our heroes, Chin Shing or Han Kwang. In winning a country
he was braver than Tsau or Lin Pi. Wielding his four-foot falchion he
enlarged the frontier myriads of miles, and yet he refused to usurp
regal dignity or even to transmit it to his posterity; but, on the
contrary, first proposed the plan of electing men to office. Where in
the world can be found a mode more equitable? It is the same idea, in
fact, that has been handed down to us from the three reigns of Yau,
Shun and Yu (the immortal reigns of China). In ruling the state he
honored and fostered good usages, and did not exalt military merit, a
principle totally unlike what is found in other kingdoms. I have seen
his portrait. His mien and countenance are grand and impressing in the
highest degree. Who is there that does not call him a hero?” This essay
was reissued by the republicans in 1911 and had a wide influence in
their propaganda.
The American exports to China, including Hongkong, consisting chiefly
of cotton, machinery, oil, flour and tobacco, were as follows: 1908,
$34,000,000; 1909, $28,000,000; 1910, $23,000,000 (exports to China
from all countries, $305,580,000); 1911, $25,000,000.
The American imports were, in their order, chiefly silk, tea, hides,
wool, straw braid, pig iron, musk, hair, raw cotton, albumen, bristles,
and amounted as follows: 1908, $24,000,000; 1909, $31,000,000; 1910,
$38,000,000 (exports by China to all countries, $251,460,000); 1911,
$32,000,000.
This is but a beginning, as it were, “a little cloud out of the sea,
like a man’s hand”.
America should keep stocks in Manila to attack the Chinese market,
where “time is of the essence of importance”. This applies to iron,
hardware, tinware, structural beams, cottons, woolens, yarn, shoes,
machinery, educational and military apparatus, foods, utensils,
pipes, and everything necessary in municipal, industrial and domestic
development. A Cantonese or Shanghai Chinese does not mind the trip
to Manila to inspect, though he would prefer seeing what America has
to offer in Hongkong, Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Mukden, Chingtu and
Yunnan, if America shortly concludes to take advantage of these seven
strategic trade centers. In the meantime full stocks at Manila would
be a good beginning. Even in disturbed years, such as 1911, America’s
imports from China were $32,000,000, and exports $25,000,000. These
figures are small compared to those that will soon obtain, and, of
course, America desires first to increase her exports of machinery,
drugs, novelties, utensils, loom products, tools, etc.
American food and harvester companies will doubtless yet take up land
directly or indirectly in fertile Manchuria, where America must look
for supplies of vegetable oil, wheat, fertilizer, oil cake for milch
cows, lumber and coal, and a market for machinery and manufactures.
There is a virgin territory seven hundred miles by seven hundred miles,
inviting the agriculturist. The American-Chinese Railway planned in
1910, from Chin Wang Tao, the only ice-free port on the Liaotung Gulf,
to Tsitsikar and on to Aigun on the Amur River, was an excellent scheme
and one which may eventually be accomplished.
The Western Electric Company, of America, installed Peking’s telephone
system. The American Banknote Company set up China’s central bank
engraving department. American companies furnished the stamping
machinery for the new mints. American bridges and locomotives are
frequently seen throughout China. American sewing machines, oil cans
and tobacco papers are on view everywhere throughout the twenty-one
provinces, and the American flour bag, when empty, patches the sails
of the southern junks. Some American presses have come over, but they
do not as yet compete strongly with the British and German presses.
American hotel and kitchen utensils would compete were it not that
the palatial treaty port hotels are controlled as yet by British and
German shareholders. American mining, gas, electric, cranes, sawmill,
cement, flourmill and pumping machinery are coming in, excepting where
foreign contractors and bankers interpose. British shipyard machinery
is still ahead. American protective paints for steel are holding their
own in competition with the British and German paints, especially in
the Yangtze valley. American turbines are slightly ahead, but American
pipes, dynamos, stationary engines, winches, heating plants, dredgers,
condensers, cables, electric fans, bleaching and cotton machinery,
refrigerating machinery, wood-working machinery, water meters, hauling
plants, lamps, etc., are still behind the British and German article,
the British trade exceeding the American four to one. American
machinery, with its generally nicer finish and greater adaptation and
efficiency, has a vast field. In sugar machinery, Japan leads, but
America will pass her. In car wheels, rails, and in simple foundry and
rolling mill output, China can not be competed with for any length
of time. In shovels, ballast unloaders, coal and ore hoists, America
will lead, as she leads in locomotives. In the immense telegraph
development, Britain leads. In water-tube boilers, America leads.
In couplers, roofing, steam hammers and drilling machinery, America
has a fair chance. In military supplies, Germany and Japan lead. In
motor-boats, America will lead, although if time is not important, the
Chinese dockyards can not be competed with in steam launches, which are
now used very largely to tow the cargo junks. In automobiles, America
leads. In family hardware, America and Britain lead. In lubricating
oils, America meets some competition from the Dutch and Russians, but
in illuminating oils, America leads. In fuel oils, the Dutch probably
lead at present, the Shell Company having tanks of Sumatra oil at the
ports. One of them was dramatically punctured with a shell in the
recent revolution. In brakes, Britain and America share the field. In
elevators, America will win. In reinforcing steel, America will lead.
In typewriters, she long ago won the field. In sanitary hardware,
scales, safes, rubber goods, America has an excellent chance. In
phonographs, she has won, but in amusement films, France is ahead. In
milks, Switzerland leads, and France leads in candies. In extensive
systems of harbor improvements, sewerage, water supply, municipal
improvements, power and light plants, institutions, mill erecting,
etc., America will win as soon as the banking department is attached
to the erecting and contracting department. At present the British
and Germans lead, as they have done in South America, because of the
banking department being attached to the constructive and diplomatic.
In sporting goods, drugs, book supplies and school furniture, America
will soon close up on Britain’s lead. In jewelry and fancy goods,
France, Japan, Britain, Germany and America divide the field, in which
there is a fighting chance, with the Chinese themselves as apt pupils
in the competition. In brewery machinery, Japan and Germany lead. In
canning equipment, America could easily seize the kingdom, and give the
world added table necessities and delights from a new realm of sunshine
and warmth. In leather, felt and underwear, America could lead. In
special pianos for the moist climate, Britain leads, but she could be
outplayed. In types, America could win. The field is not for war, but
tournament, and the most efficient should and will win the joust! There
are enough events to provide honors and rewards for each and all. Those
nations which have had high tariffs will suffer most at the beginning
of the competition, because while a high tariff may be the mother
of the trusts, it is seldom the mother of a prodigy in competitive
efficiency.
America’s and Britain’s recognition of the Chinese republic might
naturally raise a temporary discontent in the Philippines, India
and Egypt, but in homogeneity and responsibility these patronized
people can not compare with the Chinese. If it should turn out that
China, like Russia and Japan, is not yet ready for republican or
constitutional self-government, much less is the non-fusible muddle
of Viscayan, Tagalog, Ilocano and Moro, in the lovely summer islands;
Mohammedan and Bengalese and Copt, Fellahin and Sudanese. Altruism is a
sane creature, walking steadily on two legs, and is not going to lose
its head and permit anarchy anywhere just to humor sentimentalism.
Theodore Roosevelt made this plain in his Guildhall speech at London,
which landed Kitchener in Egypt again to finish his work, and it
would apply as well to-day when certain overanxious Filipinos compare
their organization, temperament and constitution with the superior
Chinese. America, like Britain, can strike with the same hand with
which she shakes hands. The civil service and a host of foreign
school-teachers in the Philippines and India is the shaking of hands.
Let the Philippines and India appreciate it in that way. It would
be quite different for them if monarchical Germany, Japan or Russia
controlled. We shall recognize the republican trial in China because
we believe China is homogeneous, educated and patient enough to make
that trial safely, but neither America nor Britain will for a long
time yet permit the trial in the Philippines, India or Egypt. If those
countries ask the Anglo-Saxon why, we have but one answer; “Look at
your history until we managed your interests, and look at our history.”
In recognition of Japan’s power, America has dropped her first line
of defense back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In a new understanding of
Britain’s oneness with us; of the Philippines linking Australia, India
and Canada; of China’s welcome of our style of government and altruism,
let us, when we have the docks, move our advance line back to the
Philippines; for we mean to have as much to say in protecting China as
any other power, which policy does not involve annoying illustrious
Japan. But we are going to be on the ground, for as far as Russia
and Japan and some others are concerned, they have a land-grabbing
appetite and tendency which is not calculated to give China fair
play in bringing out the great possibilities which are in her, if we
respect her most majestic history. If the complaint is listened to,
and America and Britain should withdraw, consider the kind of liberty
our successors would deal out: the oligarchic rule of Russia, and the
Satsuma and Choshiu nepotism of Japan.
Japan, in traditional Oriental style, has been on occasions alert to
play one nation against another, with the view of gaining an advantage
of slow prodigious China. When the treaty with America was to expire
one year ahead of the termination of treaties with other nations,
Japan extended the latter treaties one year, so that her treaties
with all the powers might expire together. The obnoxious emigration
clause in all these treaties would mainly be taken advantage of,
however, in America’s case, and we should have, if the treaty was
insisted on by a sudden opposition which gained power, the constant
strife of the Japanese labor question in Hawaii, the Philippines and
the Pacific coast states, which strife served the deep purpose that
America, being technically in the wrong, might neglect to press Japan
on greater matters where Japan was taking advantage of treaties, as in
Manchuria and Korea. Some of the adroit Japanese statesmen, instead
of being wounded at our attitude, really enjoy it in secret. Certain
Jingo Japanese, however, would have liked, with this excuse, to have
tried America’s naval strength on the Pacific in 1908, and attempted
the capture of Manchuria, Fukien province, the Philippines and Hawaii,
which test was probably avoided by the dramatic master stroke in
sending America’s great fleet of battleships across the Pacific as
an object lesson to the Nipponite chauvinist. Japan should for the
future be reasonable enough to assent sincerely to an interpretative
emendation of the “most favored nation clause”, so that it will really
mean the “most favored Oriental nation”, as far as the emigration of
laborers is concerned. This will put Japan on a par with China. America
sends no laborers to Japan; Japan has discharged American professors
in Japan and Korea the very moment the Oriental understudy reported
that he was ready to assume charge; America has bought from Japan
vastly more than she has sold to her; the timely loans of America to
Japan, as Mr. Jacob H. Schiff has said in his notable speech of 1910,
enabled Japan to continue the war with Russia until victory was won;
American friendship for Japan enabled that nation to secure larger
treaty stipulations from Russia at Portsmouth than any other host of
the negotiators would have encouraged, and above all, the tactful
American, Perry, opened up Japan to modernity in 1854. Japan’s vaunted
Confucian and Shinto manners should teach her to protect the blood
of her historic friend in his own house, and to respect the greater
expense the American laborer nobly goes to in providing, under greater
difficulties, for the living and education of his family. There should
be no more emigration to the American mainland or Hawaii of Japanese
labor than there is of Chinese. Let the Japanese laborers go to Formosa
and Korea, where there are wide enough opportunities and where their
own government, customs and language rule.
Particularly as America has loaned Japan money, there should be an
unequivocal “open door” policy in Manchuria, where Japan is operating
already one double-track and one single-track trunk railway, with
branches, and has intruded many bands of colonizers on old China, which
bands live in settlements where Japan collects taxes against agreement
and in practical contravention of China’s sovereignty. This “open door”
policy should end the brigandage against foreign traders of directly or
indirectly rebating to Japanese shippers on the monopolistic railway
privilege to which America never agreed. Cotton and other goods for the
Japanese trade colonies should not be entered free at Dalny as “railway
supplies”! The Japanese government through the Yokohama Specie Bank
should not lend at the ridiculous rate of two per cent. to Japanese
importers and common carriers the money that came largely from America,
if it affects American trade. This is interpreting an “open door”
policy as it is understood at Tokio and Dalny, not as it is written
at Tokio and Washington. Since generous America buys vastly more from
Japan than she sells to her, Japan should lower her tariff instead
of raising it. Japan wants to raise her tariff to sixty per cent. in
some cases while we of the august righteous Occident only permit vast
good-natured China a tariff of five per cent. ad valorem.
The railroads of our Pacific coast, controlling the eastern shipments,
should not invite over Japanese steamship lines, and lay off American
lines as was done with the Boston Steamship Company at Seattle in 1909.
As it is now, our railroads have made contracts with five Japanese
steamship lines, so as to force our government, many critics say, to
grant a ship subsidy, which is unnecessary, as the traffic is great
enough to pay, with a mail payment, the lines on the Pacific running
cheaper than those on the Atlantic on account of the crews being all
Chinese. Japanese merchants in Manchuria have petitioned the Japanese
government for state assistance to be given Japanese manufacturers in
Manchuria.
Despite Japan’s and Russia’s rejection of America’s suggestion in 1910,
there will remain only one course eventually to be taken as the result
of Secretary Hay’s announcement in 1899 of the “open door” policy for
all time in China and Manchuria, and that is for a revivified China to
secure an international five-nation loan, or preferably a four-nation
loan, to take over from Russia and Japan all the railways held by those
two nations in Manchuria, and clean those three provinces of Japanese
and Russian troops and Achranie Straja (railway guards), Manchuria
thereafter acting as a buffer Chinese state between those really
irreconcilable contestants, who under present conditions promise to
throw the whole world into warlike turmoil every decade. The Japanese
and Russians, by blocking, in 1910, the American railway concession
from Chin Wang Tao to Aigun (which America did not intend to occupy
with troops) really confessed that they considered, since it so suited
them, that the secret agreement which Russia forced from China in 1899
was of superior power to the Japan-Russia Treaty made at Portsmouth,
which avowed the “open door” policy. Britain, under pressure from
Russia, agreed in 1899 that the former was not to interfere north of
Peking, and the latter agreed not to interfere in the Yangtze valley
(as though she ever could!). In that same year John Hay secured the
assent of the nations, including Russia and Britain, to the policies
for all time of the “non-partition of China” and the “open door”, which
policies were confirmed by the Portsmouth Treaty, and therefore Japan
and Russia, in blocking the Chin Wang to Aigun railway, Chin Wang to
Kailar, or any other northern or Manchurian railway, were acting _ultra
vires_, and negotiations in the interest of China, and the development
of America’s trade, might well come up again. Certainly the South
Manchurian railway has all the traffic it can handle, and it can no
more serve great Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia than could a railway
confined to Florida serve the eastern and central states as far north
as Philadelphia.
Had this Chin Wang to Aigun railway been laid, besides the vast
grazing, agricultural, mineral, lumber and mining territory which
would have been developed, several important centers would have been
made known to the world. Hulutao and Chin Wang are new ports which are
ice free longer than Newchang, which should be made the advance post,
instead of Shanghai, seven hundred miles away, for America’s attack on
the rich Manchurian trade. Some day we shall run steamers across the
Pacific to Hulutao and Chin Wang, and thus be independent of Japan’s
port of Dalny. Tsitsikar on the Nonni River is a great stock, lumber,
mining and railroad center. Aigun, on the great Amur River, is the
proposed northern terminus of this seven hundred and fifty miles of
railway. Up to 1900 Aigun was the largest city in Manchuria, but during
the Boxer troubles Russian troops in revenge razed it to the ground.
Here, in May, 1858, was signed the famous Chinese treaty with Russia,
delimiting the present bounds of Manchuria. Aigun is a most important
fur, lumber, agricultural, flour, gold and general mining center, and
has all the great Amur, Sungari and Shilka Rivers to draw cargoes to
its docks.
Across the Amur River on Siberian soil (I can hear George Kennan
revive his reminiscences) lies Blagovestchensk. This city was the
scene, in 1900, of one of the most cruel massacres of the ages, which
should reveal fully to the world the real heart of the oligarchal
Russian army and government with which we have had to deal, afar off
as yet. Thousands of unarmed Chinese shopkeepers and gold miners
(who had absolutely nothing to do with Boxerism one thousand miles
away) were led to the riverside, and at the word of command from
General Chitchegoff the Russian troops at the point of the bayonet
drove the innocent victims into the swift Amur, where many were
drowned. Blagovestchensk is a thriving modern city. It is the center
of the opulent Siberian gold industry, and has many live American
advance agents who would welcome the American railway by a bridge
over from Aigun! It is lighted by electric light, has clubs, hotels,
libraries, docks, river steamers when the river is open (!), theaters,
colleges, factories, flour and sawmills, splendid churches, fine brick
residences, roads and horses.
Besides its exceedingly rich mines, Manchuria produces in the south,
oak-leaf silk which we in America call Shangtung because it is like the
silk of Shangtung, which was the first known of the wild silks; cotton,
jade, maize, barley, pulse, the very valuable soy-bean, wheat, oats,
the very valuable kaoliang (tall millet), the grain of which produces
spirits and the stalk of which produces paper; hsiao mi (short millet),
poppy, polygonum, used for blue dye; castor oil bean, sesamum, ginseng,
paper spruce, fine fruit and flowers, salt, bean oil, famous vermicelli
from loutou beans, the best tobacco produced in China, hemp (abutilon
avicennæ), true hemp, charcoal, peas, fine reed matting, indigo, etc.
Northern Manchuria, besides much of the foregoing, produces the famous
black pigs of Kirin; soda bricks, cattle, leather, bear and deer skins;
a vast amount of the world’s finest furs, including squirrels, tiger
and dog skins, which last are produced on dog farms largely for the
American market; gray bricks, tamara salmon, sturgeon, etc. The land
is a future granary to feed the manufacturing hundreds of millions
in America, who, despite intensive farming, will have exhausted the
natural productiveness of their country.
IX
THE NATIVE LEADERS
In the revolution chapter of this book we have given many names of the
new leaders. Others who have attained prominence are the following.
Most of them have seen foreign service, or been educated in America,
Britain, Germany or Japan. In March, 1912, a descendant of the Ming
emperors came forward at Peking to add to the complexity of the
situation. He endeavored to obtain the allegiance of Yuan’s rebelling
northern troops, who seemed loyal to no cause or person. He was the
so-called “Marquis” Chu Cheng Yu. A Ming claimant would more naturally
make his appeal at the old Ming capital, Nanking, but Nanking was now
all for the republic.
Tang Shao Yi, Yuan’s assistant, educated in America, visited America on
many commissions; a superior man, worthy of special mark in the coming
China; Yuan’s representative at the Shanghai peace conferences.
Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chi, assistants of Tang at the Shanghai peace
conferences; Board of Finance and Railways, Peking, 1911.
M. Y. Sung, manager of the “Chung Hua” republican bank at Shanghai, and
manager of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company.
Shih Shao Chi, known as “Alfred Sze”, American educated; served on
American embassies; very popular and able.
Chang Chih Yen, republican Board of Commerce, Shanghai.
Tang Wen Chai, Hupeh Provincial Assembly; Board of Commerce, Shanghai;
head of Changsha University.
Sun Hao Chi, Shangtung Provincial Assembly.
Chang Chien, Kiangsu Assembly; Board of Commerce, Shanghai; great and
progressive.
Wang Jen Wen, Szechuen Provincial Assembly.
Wang Shao Liang, head Pei Yang Technical University; established
English as official language in science.
Li Chin Hsi, Yunnan Assembly; as Viceroy established modern army,
police, industrial schools.
Wuh Hsiang Chen, Manchuria Assembly.
Wu Yun Lien, Manchuria Assembly.
Wong Chung Wai, represented republicans at Shanghai peace conferences.
Tsai Chu Ting, represented republicans at Shanghai peace conferences.
Cheng Teh Chuan, Kiangsu Assembly; once Governor.
Li Ping Hsu, Mayor Shanghai; Civil Administrator Kiangsu Assembly.
Shen Wan Yung, Financial Department; Kiangsu Assembly.
Wang Yi Ting, Trade Department; Kiangsu Assembly.
Li Chia Chu, President first Parliament at Peking, 1911.
Tang Hua Lung, President Hupeh Assembly; a mighty man.
Chen Chun Tao, educated at Hongkong and Yale; first President Ta Ching
Government Bank, 1910; one of the ablest financiers in China.
Chau Tien You (popularly “Jeme”); educated Yale; builder of
Peking-Kalgan Railway; ablest engineer in China.
Kwang Sun Mao, able builder of Canton and northern railways.
Doctor Wu Lien Teh, educated Cambridge University; hero of 1910 plague
in Manchuria; one of the ablest modern Chinese doctors.
Chun Tao Tsai, President Chamber of Commerce, Canton.
Lu Hung Chang, President Chamber of Commerce, Hankau.
Admiral Chin Pih, visited New York on cruiser _Hai Chi_; joined
republicans at Shanghai, December, 1911.
C. T. Wong, graduated from Yale University, 1909.
Admiral Chin Yao Huan, visited New York on _Hai Chi_; became republican
December, 1911.
General Lau Tien Wei, republican general in Manchuria, 1911; visited
West Point, 1912.
Wu Chung Lin, progressive Chinese minister at Rome, 1912.
E. M. Sah, American educated; authority on municipal government; son of
Admiral Sah.
Hsuing Hsi Ling, Finance Board.
Chow Tsze Chi, Finance Board.
General Chang Cho Lin, Manchuria, victor over Mongols, 1912.
The old leaders who go down to defeat are the following, and of the
many who are called in the reorganization, some of the following will
be found worthy, and some of the disappointed ones may possibly be
found leading the discontented at times.
Chang Ming Chi, imperial Viceroy at Canton; fled to Hongkong, 1911.
Chao Ehr Hsun, Viceroy Mukden, strong but uncertain.
General Wong Yin Chat, imperialist leader Fourth Brigade at Hankau,
1911.
General Tsen Chun Hsuan, Viceroy and stern imperial leader; enlightened.
Wei Kuang Tao, Viceroy Hupeh, Canton, etc.; modern.
Prince Ching, elderly dean of Manchus; long head of Privy Council;
modern.
Na Tung, Vice-President of old Manchu Council; modern.
Hsu Shih Chang, progressive Chinese member of Manchu Council; turned
General-in-chief of republicans.
Chao Ping Chun, progressive Minister of Peking Police, and Department
of Interior.
Shih Tao, progressive Mongol Prince; Vice-President of National
Assembly, Peking, 1911.
Admiral Sah Chen Ping, imperial Admiral who joined republicans;
entertained American fleet at Amoy, in 1908.
Admiral Jui Cheng, imperial Admiral.
Luk Yuk Lim, Minister to Britain, 1911; progressive.
Prince Kung, able Mongol leader, Peking, 1911.
Liang Tun Yen, American educated; head Foreign Board (Wai Wu Pu),
Peking, 1911; protégé of famous Chang Chi Tung, of Wuchang.
Hu Wei Teh, progressive Vice-President of Foreign Board, 1911; Minister
to Russia, etc.
Liang Ju Hao, Vice-President Railway Board, Peking, 1911.
Nang Shih Cheng, Board of War, Peking, 1911.
Tien Wen Tih, Board of War, Peking, 1911.
Shen Chih Pen, Board of Justice, Peking, 1911.
Liang Chih Chiao, famous old reformer of 1898 coup d’état.
Tang Ching Chung, Board of Education, Peking, 1911; literary chancellor
Kiangsu province, 1904; learned in old and new.
Prince Chun, deposed Manchu Regent, 1911; brother of Emperor Kwang Hsu.
Lu Chuan Ling, Privy Councilor, Peking, 1911; modern.
Prince Pu Lun, first President Peking Parliament, 1911; visited St.
Louis Exposition; a most dignified progressive; familiar with Hongkong.
Prince Tsai Tse, Manchu head Finance Board, Peking, 1911; visited
America, Britain, etc., 1905.
Prince Tsai Tao, Manchu head of Army; visited America; brother of
Emperor Kwang Hsu.
Prince Tsai Su, Manchu head of Navy; visited America; Interior Board
also.
Prince Tsai Hsun, Manchu head of Navy; visited America, 1909; brother
of famous Manchu Emperor Kwang Hsu, first reform Emperor of China.
Chang Jen Chung, Viceroy defense of Nanking; stubborn; enlightened;
holder of first exposition in China; well known to Americans.
General Yin Chang, Manchu General-in-chief; director Nobles College;
Minister to Germany, 1901–5; a superior theoretical man, but not a
brave leader in battle.
Liu Ju Lin, Secretary to Washington Legation; Vice-President Foreign
Board.
Chang Yin Tang, Minister to America, 1910.
Sheng Kung Pao, leading defender of nationalization of railways,
Peking, 1910.
Sheng Tah Jen, leading defender of nationalization of railways, Peking,
1910.
Liang Shih Yi, manager Northern Railways of China.
Chen Tung Liang, Minister to Britain, 1904; educated in America.
Li Ching Mai, grandson of illustrious Li Hung Chang; visited America,
1909; a bright man.
Chen Kwein Lung, Governor Pechili, 1910.
Tong Kai Son, President Ambassadors’ College, Peking, 1910; educated at
Yale.
Hu Wei To, Minister to Hague, Russia, Japan, etc.
Liu Shih Hsun, Minister to France, etc.
Ku Hung Ming, able editor of “standpats”.
Chow Chang Ling, manager North China Railways, 1909.
Chen Chao Chang, Governor of Kirin, Manchuria, 1909.
Hsu Chen Pang, educated at Hartford, America; Naval Board, 1910.
Chang Yu Chuan, Foreign Office, 1910; educated at Yale.
Tan Tien Chih, University of California; Superintendent Railway
College, Peking, 1910.
Wu Kwei Lin, Cornell; Railway Board, 1910.
Tsai Ting Kan, Yale; Supreme Court, Tientsin.
Chien Shao Cheng, visited America; Department of Prisons, Peking, 1910.
Wen Tsung Yao, Amban at Lhasa; helped to drive out Dalai Lama, the Pope
of Buddhism.
Tam Hao Heng, Cantonese; Navy Board, Peking, 1910.
Prince Yu Lang, Grand Councilor; Board of Police; organizer of Imperial
Guard; Army Board, Peking, 1911.
Chou Chi Lai, Assistant Foreign Minister, Peking, 1911; progressive.
Shao Chang, Minister Justice, Peking, 1911; Secretary Foreign Board,
1901.
Shou Chi, Minister Dependencies, Peking, 1911; Minister of Mongolia,
1900; Captain of Hatamen Octroi (Customs) Gate, Peking, 1909; an
amusing type of old-style effective revenue man.
Lu Jun Hsiang, Grand Secretary, Peking, 1910; head of Opium Suppression
Board, 1911: a really effective man, representing the best traditions
of old China.
Jung Ching, President Board of Ceremonies, Peking, 1911; remarkable
type of thorough-going conservative.
Sheng Yun, irreconcilable imperial Governor of Shensi and Shansi
provinces, 1911–12.
Prince Tuan, irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu; exiled in Kansu, and father
of Pretender to Throne, “Ku Kwei”, 1912.
Hsun Pao Oi, Governor of Shangtung province, 1912.
Tong Chao Chuen, progressive; Railway and Finance Boards.
Shum Chun Hsun, experienced Viceroy of various provinces.
King Yu Yuet, Principal Law College, Nanking.
Chan Ki Me, Governor of Shanghai.
Chan Kwang Ming, experienced; progressive Governor.
X
CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.
The treaties and international notes which hold China in obligations
to the outside world (Wai Ih, outside foreigners), and which the
republicans promise to observe, are in part as follows. The “most
favored nation” clause admits nations which did not participate in the
original treaty.
1842. Nanking Treaty--Nanking, Canton, Amoy, Fuchau, Ningpo and
Shanghai opened.
1858. Tientsin-British--Newchwang, Chifu, Swatow, Kiangchow
opened.
1860. Tientsin-French Treaty--Tientsin opened.
1861. German Treaty--Chinkiang, Hankau opened.
1876. Chifu Convention--Ichang, Wuhu, Wenchow, Pakhoi opened.
1881. Russia-China--Russian commercial influence in Ili,
Mongolia, Manchuria; consulates and extraterritoriality
provided for.
1890. Chungking Convention--Chungking opened.
1895. Japan Treaty--Suchow, Hangchow opened.
1896. Russia-China Treaty--Russia given railway and other
privileges in Manchuria; this brought on the war with Japan in
1904.
1897. West River Ports--Samshui, Wuchow, etc., opened.
1899. Russia-China--China not to build railways north of Peking
without Russia’s consent.
1902. British Commercial Treaty (Mackay)--Changsha, Ngan-king,
Wan Hsien, Waichou opened. Likin to be abolished and customs
possibly raised from five per cent. to twelve per cent. ad
valorem.
1905. Japan-China--Grants to Japan by treaty what war with
Russia won for Japan; i. e., military, commercial, mining and
railway dominance in South Manchuria, and Japan to have power
to nullify Chinese or other foreign railway schemes.
TREATIES AFFECTING CHINA
1899. Britain-Russia--Britain not to interfere with Russia
north of great wall, and Russia not to interfere in Yangtze
valley.
1899. America to Powers (John Hay’s Note)--“Open door” for all
in China, and preservation of territorial integrity.
1905. Portsmouth Treaty (Russia-Japan)--Japan takes Korea and
part of Manchuria.
1905. Britain-Japan--Alliance and assuring integrity of China.
1907. Russia-Japan--Recognize territorial integrity of China.
1907. Britain-Russia--Britain to support China in Tibet.
1908. America-Japan--Open door in China; integrity of China.
1910. America to Powers--Internationalize Manchurian railways;
rejected by Russia and Japan.
1910. Russia-Japan--Secret convention to reject America’s
financial and commercial plans in Manchuria; Russia and Japan
to divide Manchuria in spheres of influence and trade.
These treaties sound very well, but mean very little, excepting
this, that if Japan or Russia persistently breaks them and invades
China, Britain and America have a cause before the world, to thrash,
if it is necessary, the offender’s navy, and cut Japan off from Korea
and Manchuria. The treaties are a confusion. They all specify that
the “open-door” theory is acknowledged, but Russia and Japan have
forced China to assent to their visé on any proposed railway schemes
in Manchuria and Pechili. Despite the Britain-Japan Treaty of 1905,
wherein the “integrity of China” is specified as a promise to the
nations, the London _Times_ confesses as follows: “The grim facts of
the economic gravitation of Manchuria toward Russian and Japanese
control are beyond remedy, treaties and agreements notwithstanding.”
Yet at one time the thunderer would bring on a war for the sake of
a straw! If Russia continues to offend there is no way to stop her
except that America and Britain shall send their navies to pound her
Baltic gates until she behaves in Manchuria, Mongolia, etc., which she
soon would do in fear of her Duma on the inside of the Baltic gates.
Britain never again can use Japan to pound Russia, for Japan and Russia
have agreed to take the Manchurian spoil, as Japan did in the case
of Korea, whenever the opportunity offers through dissension among
the powers. Japan and Russia are high-tariff countries, and wherever
they establish themselves, Britain, America, Germany and France will
knock in vain for trade entry. China, like Britain, is a low-tariff
country (at present five per cent., and even the proposed twelve per
cent. would be low), and the manufacturing nations therefore desire
the “open door” maintained, which can only be done on America’s and
Britain’s reiterated treaty stipulations of the “integrity of China”.
America must always keep a Pacific fleet stronger than Japan’s. A
fight is unnecessary, for Japan is checkmated at once by this policy.
Britain and America, and, if possible, Germany, must work together in
the Far East to watch both Russia and Japan, and see that China gets
the “square deal” in having reserved for her expansion her immemorial
preserves of Manchuria, Mongolia and Turkestan. In Premier Yuan’s
difficulties, the irreconcilable former Manchu major general, Yin
Tchang, fled to Dalny, where he ran a bureau which plotted for the
overthrow of the republic.
China made a beginning in 1911 in the agitation for the retrocession
of some of the foreign colonies. Prince Ching then suggested that
commissioners should be appointed by the Cabinet to discuss with
Britain the retrocession of Wei-Hai-Wei. There are other nations
which hold vastly more territory than do America and Britain, whether
in concessions, settlements or colonies. The other nations have
done comparatively little for China as compared with America and
Britain, and Prince Ching might have approached this worthy subject in
proportionate order. Until China is on her feet, foreign concessions at
all her ports are the best object lesson she could have in municipal
government and improvements, but foreign colonies, as large as
Germany’s Kiaochou and Japan’s and Russia’s spheres of occupation in
Manchuria, are unjust to her.
The New China party bears as a thorn in its flesh the awful burden of
1900, the old Russian and the Japanese indemnities. America alone,
under President Roosevelt’s administration, remitted her share of the
1900 (Boxer) indemnity. These punitive indemnity payments prevented
China from offering relief in the terrible pneumonic plague epidemic in
Manchuria in 1911, and in the famines which followed the floods in 1911
and 1912 in the central and eastern provinces. Half a million people
starved to death, and China has not forgotten that the funds which
the starving people needed were taken by the rich European nations as
indemnity payments. Britain, however, did return part of her indemnity
on condition that it should be applied to the Shansi University at
Taiyuan, of which Doctor Timothy Richards was president.
China’s helpless position without a navy could not be more eloquently
shown than by the following case: In the Mexican revolution of 1911,
Chinese lives and property were destroyed to the estimated amount of
$33,000,000. China put in a claim to satisfy the heirs and claimants,
but no attention has been paid to it. How different it was when Germany
and Britain held Venezuelan claims only a short time previously!
In the interim, before the establishment of an effective diplomacy and
parliaments or congresses in China, the guilds, with their boycott,
have to a degree acted as the foreign office of the people in obtaining
concessions which armies, navies and courtiers were not yet powerful
enough to obtain. Their effective boycotts are a proof that the people
really ruled in China, and without the expense of armies and navies.
They, moreover, proved that the Chinese people can think together,
and keep their word of faith so fixedly that it is seldom necessary
for the central committee of the guilds to put in effect the heavy
money penalties involved. There is this conclusion among others to be
drawn from the interesting history of guilds and boycotts in China,
especially in the last fifteen years, that the provincial and central
parliaments, or congresses, which began work in 1909 and 1910, will
remain, and with some improvement each year reach ever higher toward
the standards of liberty and righteousness, or, in expressive American
slang, the “square deal”.
Who will gainsay that the Chinese is a long-suffering being even in
his own land? I quote the following from the Hongkong _Telegraph_
of September 1, 1911: “At 6.00 P. M., on August 25, a German in the
employ of a British company, and an Italian priest went into a shop at
Shek Ki (near Canton). The German, who disliked the demeanor of the
shop employé, dealt the man a nasty cut on the head. The foreigners
afterward left the shop and went to a money changer’s. As the changer
was slow, the German snatched a lamp from a table, and smashed it on
the ground. The German assaulted two chair coolies. A riot developed.
The two foreigners rushed into the dwelling of a missionary lady
doctor.” Such abuse as this leads to international troubles, and the
consuls at the ports, to whom the patient Chinese turn over foreign
offenders, should be more severe than they are. These foreign offenders
should really be brought back to the village where they create a
disturbance, and in the presence of the consul, and Chinese taotais
and mandarins, should pay to the headman of the village sufficient
damages. Then the Chinese would know that the foreigner is sincere in
his legal measures. Thoughtless or drunken action, like that of the
German, often leads to missionary and other riots before the resentment
of the indignant natives cools. One brutal fool of this kind, _violens
in vino_, can place at jeopardy the lives of thousands of foreigners
and the peace of the nations. We must scrupulously show China that
we are sincere. She has some cause to feel that when we established
our extraterritorial courts we meant to cheat her of justice. We
shall later hear from Wu Ting Fang on this subject, as he is making a
specialty of codifying the laws.
The British government introduced to the foreign office (Tsung Li Yamen
and Wai Wu Pu) for many years, Sir Walter Hillier, as adviser, but
since his appointment was to a degree forced he had less influence than
in the case of the voluntary appointments of the Americans, Dennison
and Stevens, as advisers in the foreign offices of Japan and Korea,
respectively. The four-nations bankers will have foreign advisers on
the Chinese Finance and Foreign Boards, and great tact and patience
with China’s difficulties will at all times be required.
Long before the revolution, as well as after it, the masses of the
Chinese had commenced to think of national and international politics.
Whenever missionaries opened new “tan” (preaching or “talk” halls,
as the Chinese call churches) the auditors listened respectfully for
a while to the “doctrine” or “tao” (way). When the missionary came
down from the platform, and joined the audience on the benches for a
familiar “tan” (chat), religious subjects were not the first spoken of,
the following questioning being common:
“Our first question is, what is your name, age and number of children?”
“Did you come from your country by railway or steamship?”
“How far is it and what was the cost?”
“What is your real business outside of your kindly avocation of
achieving merit by temporarily talking about Jesus?”
“How long have you been in this province of China?”
“Were your clothes made in a China port, or in America, and at what
cost?”
“You do not shave your head and face or change your outer clothes
often, so we suppose you do not bathe often.”
“What do you think of this talk of republics, foreign loans,
centralized government, armies and railways?”
There is no sycamore tree for Zacchæus to climb; he must come down.
They know you are peaceful as an amateur, but they insist on your
professional opinion, and they believe your profession is something
more practical than talking religion. Are you a doctor, a government
employé, a farmer, a soldier, a spy, an artisan, a merchant? If so, you
must know about these practical things, and can answer the questions
propounded.
The emigration treaties now stand in almost a humorous attitude in
one respect. To save Japan’s “face” (the Oriental idiom for pride),
Japan is granted permission to land coolies, but Japan by a secret
postscriptum agrees not to let her coolies make the slightest use of
this permission, as she has room for them in Korea, Manchuria, the
navy, etc., at present. China is not permitted to land her coolies, but
land some of them she does by the “underground”, which runs via Canada,
Mexico, Central America, Cuba, etc. Our Pacific coast is correct,
notwithstanding the exigencies of diplomacy, that she can not and will
not absorb Oriental labor, any more than we foist Occidental labor
on the Orient. The Pacific coast is quite consistent for the “square
deal”, though it took her some time to trust the signing of the 1911
Japan Treaty, the immigration clause of which it is secretly understood
is not to be taken advantage of. America can not welcome too many
Chinese students and travelers, and a certain number of specialized
merchants, agriculturalists, agents, artisans and artists, whom we can
well accept as our tutors in their specialties.
On the subject of Asiatic immigration, the authority on American
naval and foreign affairs, Admiral Mahan, writes as follows: “A large
preponderance of Asiatics in a given region is a real annexation, more
effective than the political annexations against which the Monroe
doctrine was formulated. Free Asiatic immigration to the Pacific
coast in its present condition of sparse population would mean
Asiatic occupation--Asia colonized in America. This the United States
government can not accept because of the violent resistance of the
Pacific states, if for no other reason.”
In a former book I have recommended the immigration of a number of
Chinese into the Philippines. The Straits Settlements cover only a
small area. Their population is 300,000 Malays, who are akin to the
Filipino. Four hundred thousand Chinese were brought in, and the
little colony in 1911 exported $200,000,000 of tin and other products.
Sir Frank Swettenham, the famous governor of the settlement in its
formative period up to 1904, says of the Chinese: “The industrial
development of the country is entirely due to the Chinese. They are the
only people in the peninsula who can be depended upon. They tolerate
no interruptions in the performance of their daily labor, and save
their money to make prudent investments. Without the Chinese nothing
would have been done in the Malay states. No progress would have been
made, and the enormous natural resources of the country would still be
lying dormant.” A remarkable instance of the orderliness of the Chinese
was exhibited in the deportation in 1908 of 60,000 Chinese emigrants
from the Transvaal gold mines to China. Such a body of any other
labor would have shown many signs of rebellion against their removal
from the scenes to which they had grown attached, and where they were
prospering, and against the hot journey of 8,000 miles, made the more
unpleasant because of the crowded quarters on shipboard. No friction or
disturbance marked this unusual industrial event. Coolies though they
were, they kept their word like statesmen, and said: “We promised the
colony that we would only substitute black labor for four years, and as
the blacks now are ready to return to the field, we are going.”
The nations should get together, and permit China to levy a provisional
import duty of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., and not
keep her government helpless because of starvation. If she had an
army and navy like Japan, she would not need to ask the permission of
others to allow her own government to live. Advice should be given
to her, as in the Mackay Treaty, to strike away the inter-provincial
and inter-district fetters of likin (transit taxes) and export tax,
by which method the provinces raise much of their revenue; and the
government should divide up the customs receipts between the provinces,
or permit the provinces to keep all their land tax.
France, which owns the only railway to Yunnan at present, is imposing
an unjust transit tax of ten per cent. on American, British and German
goods, shipped from Hongkong to Yunnan, or vice versa, and which must
cross French China. Canada in the same situation bids for American
freights by making no transit tax, and indeed quoting lower freight
rates; this is intelligent modernism. China and the three commercial
nations should have this Indo-Chinese tax removed, and demand equal
rates on French railways. This rate equalization is what America has
demanded of Japan and Russia on railways in Manchuria. It is the same
thing that Germany, at the point of the _Panther’s_ cannon, demanded of
France in the Agadir incident in Morocco. In other words, the “square
deal”, and it must be put in effect, say the Chinese people and the
nations which advocate the “open door”.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Gothic type of architecture introduced by the French; the
Catholic cathedral on Caine Road, on the slope of Hongkong.
Chinese contractors erect these buildings.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Nan-Tang cathedral (French) towering over native roofs at Canton.
Up to the revolution, this offended the feng-shui superstition of
old China, and was a constant source of difficulty.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Cement hill roads, South China, Kwangtung province. Bamboo
water-buckets. Note luxuriant vegetation, in a moist hot climate;
fern, rubber, tamarind, banyan, mulberry trees.
]
The political economists of Japan are beginning to denounce the
exportation of coal, and recommend the reservation of the fields as a
war supply. The proposition is to use foreign coal in manufacturing.
Accordingly, measures have been taken to develop the Manchurian,
Korean, Saghalien and Formosan fields, as well as purchasing from the
rich Chinese supplies. This conservation method will certainly be
followed by Australia, England, Germany and America, as the years go
by. The export of coal is not a benefit; it is an impoverishment. The
Japanese make into briquettes the anthracite coal of Ping Yang, Korea,
so as to produce a smokeless navy coal.
An interesting aftermath of the Boxer massacres in 1900 was the strange
disappearance of the Manchu prince, Liang Chow, who was condemned to
be strangled in private with the silver cord, which two unseen friends
were to tighten behind two holes bored in a wall. Prince Liang fled
to America, where he became a pauper, and was buried in the Alamosa,
Colorado, cemetery. At the request of the Manchu throne his body was
exhumed on November 25, 1910, and started on its way to China to the
tombs of the Manchu emperors west of Peking (not the Ming tombs, which
are northwest). A splendid, dragon-gilded coffin was furnished, and
the Manchus sent magnificent mandarin robes, a yellow jacket, peacock
feather and pearl button of honor. The Chinese whom Prince Liang found
in America were not Manchus, but republican Cantonese of southern
Kwangtung province.
Hongkong, the dean of foreign settlements, Shanghai, Tientsin,
Singapore, Hankau, Harbin, etc., all have volunteer military companies
and inter-port rifle matches. Every man in a settlement can be
impressed for the protection of life and property. All these uniformed
companies have seen hard active service in the taking of Kowloon,
the various riots at Shanghai, the Peking Relief Expedition and the
revolution which broke out at Hankau in October, 1911. The companies
cover infantry, machine and field gun, bicycle and garrison corps
trained in the use of cannon. Hongkong’s uniformed contingent at
King George’s coronation in London attracted much attention for the
smartness of their swinging march. “We didn’t think the jaded tropics
could turn out such ambition,” was the remark of many onlookers.
The English historian, Creasy, who lived in the Far East, in writing
his book, _Decisive Battles of the World_, as early as 1852 recognized
the importance of America’s mission across the Pacific. These are his
words: “The conquests of China and Japan by the fleets and armies
of the United States are events which many now living are likely to
witness. Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion
of the old world, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over
central and southern America seems a matter of secondary importance.”
If we change Creasy’s favorite idea of physical conquest to that of
moral, educational and commercial, with physical power only as an
auxiliary in the case of the heinous jealousy of those not concerned,
we shall agree with him as to America’s advance across the Pacific.
It was nevertheless a wonderful prophecy, made as long ago as 1852,
when the tide of America’s western advance, with the exception of one
meager settlement, had not yet risen over the Rockies. All the Chinese
leaders, republican and conservative, look for the growing evidence
of America’s interests across the Pacific, and American affairs and
history are keenly studied.
Some of the Chinese proverbs on international politics are the
following:
“He who doesn’t follow up his words with deeds is no more terrible than
the wind on painted water.”
“If you have to guess at roads, the middle one will average up best.”
“Go slow; only the turtle is equipped to draw his head in suddenly.”
“Don’t cross a river with your feet in two boats.”
XI
CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS
Almost the oldest book in China, the _Chou Li_, provided for village
management at the same time that sacrifices were instituted, thousands
of years before the Christian era. The oldest man of the clan-village,
bearing the title of “hsiang lao” (village old-one) takes charge at
a salary of about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and hires
say twenty police in the smaller villages. This “hsiang lao”, when
necessary, deals with the district “siunkian”, who is the government’s
lowest mandarin. The people express their views in an open “hsiang”
meeting, which is the same as the old town meeting of New England, on
which present democratic institutions in America are based; an “open
primary”, for that matter.
In the guild councils of the cities, the more experienced tradesmen
have had political experience in their dealings with the “taotai”,
a higher class of mandarin. From “hsiang” and guild meetings, the
next step was to send delegates to viceroys, or even delegates to the
Board of Censors at Peking, accusing viceroys. China, therefore, had
some experience in politics before the reformers of 1898 induced the
impressionable young Emperor Kwang Hsu to issue his famous edicts,
which started a wave that rolled on, lifting provincial assemblies,
parliaments, and revolutionists into view; and the wave is rolling
onward still. Kwang Hsu as early as 1891 issued an edict praising
and protecting missionaries. He was never permitted to travel, but
learned from books, brought to him by Kang Yu Wei and the other new
spirits, what was going on in the outside world. In 1894 Kwang Hsu sent
to the American Bible Society at Peking a request for copies of the
two Testaments, “such as are sold to THE PEOPLE”. His immortal edicts
began to appear in the Peking _Gazette_ on June 23, 1898, and ended in
September of that year, when he was imprisoned by the empress dowager
and Yuan Shih Kai. During the issuance of the edicts the dowager was
at the summer palace, eight miles northwest of Peking, where she was
preparing her reactionary plans. The edicts covered the following:
1. New learning for much of the old classical essays. This
reform is in force.
2. Modern army, navy, railways, telephone, telegraph. The slow
progress of the Lu-Han (Peking to Hankau) Railway was commented
on. These reforms are under way, and full of promise.
3. Publicity of national and provincial figures of receipt
and expenditure; i. e., a budget. This reform was instituted
by the National Assembly in 1911, and will be adopted by the
republicans.
4. All citizens to have the privilege of memorializing the
Throne independent of the Censor Board.
5. Extension of mail service. This is being brought about by
the extension of the railway service, and the government taking
over private post routes of guilds.
6. Prince Ching to secure assistance from foreigners in
establishing a national university, with branches in provincial
capitals. Departments of universities at Peking, Canton,
Shanghai, Nanking, Paoting, Tientsin, Hankau, etc., have been
established. The English universities, acting under the
suggestions of Sir Robert Hart and Lord Cecil, will assist,
as will also America. This is secular education. The mission
schools are, of course, extending to many new cities.
Let us step into one of the meetings of the first partially formed
Parliament, which opened in 1910. We would call it a Senate. They
called it Tzu Cheng Yuan; that is, Property Laws Assembly, or Taxing
Assembly. The Parliament buildings at Peking, not being completed,
the Congress met in the law hall of the Peking University. This hall
is a two-story western style building, the only Chinese feature being
the heavy tiled roof. The windows are square and have modern sashes.
The door is Roman and not Chinese in curve. The Lower House was not
yet formed. In the front row of two hundred members were Mongol
princes, Manchu princes, viceroys, governors, mandarins, appointed
by the Crown, and farther back were men sent up by the provincial
assemblies. The great Prince Pu Lun of the royal blood, whom I had
the pleasure of meeting at Hongkong, and who was commissioner to the
St. Louis Exposition in 1904, most affable, stout and progressive,
opens the assembly with bland dignity. Shen Chia Pan, the temporary
vice-president, sits on his left. The debate at once opens like the
small fire of machine guns. It takes up appeals by the provincial
assemblies on the actions of the provincial governors. Education,
foreign loans, provincial versus nationalized railways, pensions to
Manchus, suppression of opium, acts of departmental secretariates,
the leakage in tax collection, the corruption of courts, the police
to serve the people and not against the people, high tax rate
against the poor and low tax rate against the rich, taxation without
representation, foreign aggression in Manchuria and Turkestan,
insults to the flag abroad, nepotism, etc., are discussed, and the
secretariates have a lively time defending themselves from the
critical, eloquent pure Chinese Cantonese; the independent Hunanese
who have many Cromwells among them, and who are foremost for running
Chinese mines and railways without foreign money; the tradition-loving
Szechuen men; the literati and capitalists from Kiangsu; the traveled
bankers from Shansi province; the cosmopolitan men from the imperial
province of Pechili and Shangtung; the rough-rider Mongols from far
west Shensi and Kansu provinces; and the Patrick Henrys from turbulent
Fukien province. The Throne is compelled to promise a Lower House in
1913 instead of 1915, and at last, in its edict, gives all credit
to the crushed reformer, Emperor Kwang Hsu, who learned reform from
the Bible and other western books surreptitiously introduced despite
the eunuch spies of the reactionary Empress Dowager Tse Hsi. This
preliminary Senate stormily sends a suggestion to the oligarchic Grand
Council of the Regent that reform shall be evidenced by the regent and
the infant Emperor Pu Yi having their queues cut off. Thus the spirited
debate rolled back and forth between the old Grand Council and the new
Congress or Parliament, until the guns of the impatient revolution
thundered at Hankau, like Cromwell on the doors of the Long Parliament.
Confucius himself was a politician. He lived in an age of able prime
ministers of some ten highly civilized, equal states, fighting
generally by diplomacy for mastery, on the pretext of the right to
monopolize the succession to perform the sacred rites of the parent
Chou state, which alone was weak. These prime ministers were all abler
men than were the titular rulers of the states. Confucius studied
diplomacy in the writings of Kwan Tsz, premier-philosopher of the
adjoining Tsi state. Kwan Tsz’ writings are sometimes published with
Lao Tsz’ works, but should not be confounded with them. Confucius was
also influenced by his friend, the great diplomat, Shuh Hiang, prime
minister of the Tsin state, which was situated far to the northwest of
his native state of Lu; also by the very able minister Tsz Chan of the
state of Cheng, which lay west of Lu. He had to keep his wits awake
to save the small and weaker Lu state from succumbing to the policies
of the ambitious Yen Tsz, prime minister of the Tsi state, which was
situated immediately north of Lu, and from falling before the intrigue
of Kupeh Yu, prime minister of Wei state, lying to the northwest.
This last state afforded Confucius a long exile, when his vicious,
ungrateful, new prince hounded him for fourteen years by an ancient
system of “Black List” out of his positions with some thirty states,
content neither to use his eminent services, nor to let him live that
other states might avail of them. He knew too much about law-breaking
by those who occupied the “seats of the mighty”; and “such men are
dangerous”! Devoted as they are to the study of Confucius’ life, the
Chinese thereby imbibed politics.
History throws light on some of the insidiousness of ancient
Chinese intrigue. As long ago as 626 B. C. the ruler of the Chinese
principality of Ts’in, which state was oppressed by the manly Tartars,
sent to the Tartar chief two companies of singing girls “that he might
be too weak to ride the saddle at the head of his cavalry”. In 486
B. C. the prince of Tsi state, lying to the north of Lu state, sent
to the prince of Lu state, Confucius’ master, a company of singing
girls to ensnare manliness in the lap of debauchery, with the result
that Confucius in disgust left the service of his prince and became a
hounded exile, laughed out of his court by the powerful who for the
time were above the law. Where have been that most venerable family on
earth, the Kungs of Shangtung province, who have lived at Kufu near
Yenchow, in all the recent turbulence in China? We have heard of Manchu
princes, of leaders of the Chinese like Kang and Sun, Yuan, General Li,
and Wu Ting Fang; of descendants of the old Ming emperors, etc., but
why have not the lineal descendants of Confucius put forward a man able
to handle politics, war and literature as did their great ancestor?
What an opportunity they have had recently. What an opportunity they
have yet to put forward a man for the presidency, whom all China and
all the world will be delighted to accept if he is only one-twentieth
as able as his immortal ancestor.
The secret society, too, has played a great part in internal politics.
It is not so necessary now as it was. The pitiless publicity of
a democracy or constitutional monarchy makes secret duplicity
unnecessary. The Kao Ming Tang was Yuan Shih Kai’s and Prince
Ching’s society. At the other extreme was the Kao-lao-Hwei and other
anti-Manchu secret societies. It was the union of the Triad secret
society with the Taiping rebels that made that revolution powerful
enough to spread from Canton to Nanking. In the Boxer days of 1900 the
Buddhist secret society, Tsai Li Hwei, extended its scope to cover
the new movement. Their watchword was: “Store grain for war; collect
forage; revolt”. The Sia Hwei (reform association), Tung Men Hwei
(sworn brother), and other secret societies established in China and
throughout the world by Sun Yat Sen, had much to do with the successful
preliminary work that made the revolution possible.
The old lines of political demarcation are passing away, and new lines
will be drawn in some instances. The powerful viceroys of the fourteen
main provinces were located and named as follows:
“Viceroy of Pechili” province, at Tientsin.
“Viceroy of Shen Kan” (i. e. Shensi and Kansu provinces), at Singan.
“Viceroy of Kiangnan” (i. e. Kiangsu, Nganhwei and Kiangsi provinces),
at Nanking.
“Viceroy of Hu Kwang”, or “Viceroy of Liang Hu” (i. e. Hunan and Hupeh
provinces), at Wuchang.
“Viceroy of Min Che” (i. e. Chekiang and Fukien provinces), at Fuchau.
“Viceroy of Liang Kwang” (i. e. Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces), at
Canton.
“Viceroy of Yun Kwei” (i. e. Yunnan and Kweichou provinces), at Yunnan.
The favorite retreats for these retired officials are the five cities
of cultured Kiangsu province: Shanghai, Suchow, Chinkiang, Yangchow
and Nanking; and one city in adjoining Chekiang province, Hangchow. If
the clubs of these cities could by a dictograph breathe what they have
heard, volumes of wonderful interest would keep a score of publishers
busy. China has entered the world arena because of her human interest
on a vast scale.
The Manchu may try to come back, as the irreconcilable Major General
Yin Tchang has been plotting from Japanese Dalny. The doctrine of
sacred right, as strongly as the Hohenzollern has enunciated it, has
been preached before in China. The Manchu, with this in view, would
not abdicate until he was assured that in him would lie the ancient
right to pay the sacred Chou sacrifices, which are 4,000 years old.
The builder of the Great Wall, the Emperor Tsin, 200 B. C., said “Shao
Ming Yu Tien” (Heaven gives me my decree to reign). Sunyacius and the
republicans of 1911 said: “Tien Ming Wu Chang” (The divine right lasts
not forever).
Some of the political proverbs of the people are the following:
“An oligarchic government bites harder than a tiger.”
“A good hearer knows twice as much as a foolish talker, for he knows
himself and he knows the talker, too.”
“The great statesman makes public opinion his opinion.”
“When the whale gets out of his element, even minnows can safely laugh.”
“In the rise and decline of his country, each man has his share.”
Chang Chih Tung, the famous viceroy of Wuchang in 1909, used to say,
“Treachery can turn fame to everlasting stench.” May the New China not
be a traitor to progress. Chang was the progressive who established,
among many other modern plants, the wonderfully successful Hanyang
steel plant, whose products are used in Europe, both coasts of America,
Japan and in China on the roadbed from Canton to Harbin, 2,000 miles of
shining steel, in that “Celestial” land that is beginning to find that
it has a grand terrestrial future.
XII
SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA
Will the spirit which instituted the ancient notable public works of
China revive again? That is the question. The greatest irrigation work
in the world, 2,100 years old, is in China at Chingtu. It was invented
by Li Ping, the engineer-governor, B. C. 250. A plain seventy-five
miles by forty miles is irrigated. It supports nearly 4,000,000 people.
The water is taken from the Min River at Kwan Hien above Chingtu in
April, and is permitted to run in the thousands of channels until
November. Then the great banks of the Min are restored, as the rains
are sufficient, and the river runs in its old bed to join the “father
of waters”, the Yangtze River, at Sui Fu. The dikes are made of iron,
cement, stone, timber and bamboo cradles. Li left this message, which
is cut in the stones of his tomb outside the walls of Chingtu: “Shen
Tao Tan Ti Tso Yen” (Dig deep the bars, keep low the dikes). The
Chinese are going to use these works to produce power and light as well
as irrigation.
At Li Ling, over the Lu Ho River in southeast Hunan province, is a
high wooden cantilever bridge of six spans, four hundred and eighty
feet long and twenty feet wide, paved with cobbles, and covered with
an awning. The substructure is masonry, and the cantilever principle
is obtained by increasing the length of the pier timbers as they are
laid on one another. I want to describe a beautiful suspension bridge
over the Yang Ti River near Tali in Yunnan province, which shows that
engineering ability was generally spread throughout the provinces to
reach thus far in the extreme southwest. The double piers on each
side of the stream rise in great strength, and the arch is joined and
roofed over most artistically in characteristic Chinese style, like
a temple. Eight suspended iron chains make the floor of the bridge,
which is anchored half-way up the stone piers, under the arch. From
the chains arises a bamboo fence, which is kept from spreading by
stanchions, under which you must stoop at regular distances. There is
a commemoration statue of a recumbent water buffalo at the foot of one
of the pairs of piers. It and the bridge are all that remain of the
forgotten assemblage of orators, patrons, troops and society which ages
ago graced the occasion, another triumph of the doers over the talkers.
The engineer and the architect alone build their own monuments. As in
the case of Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s, “_Si monumentum requiris,
circumspice_.”
China thinks more of the engineer than we credit her with thinking;
otherwise she would not have criticized the Manchu so much of late.
Between high banks over the River Lou, in west Szechuen province, is
the famous Lou Ting Haio bridge, built in 1700. It is one hundred and
ninety-two feet long and has nine suspended iron chains, with loose
planks laid across. At Chow Chu, near Swatow, there is a beautiful
stone pier bridge over the Han River. Shops are established at each
pier, and the floor of the shop protrudes, and is supported with great
poles that retreat back to the piers. A daily fair is held upon the
bridge, because it is the most central point for the travelers from
many villages. Each village of the district has its own day for its
fair. At Changchow, near Amoy, is a wonderful bridge, from engineering
and artistic points of view. The great Chah Siang built it eight
hundred years ago from voluntary subscriptions. It is one thousand
yards long. There are one hundred and twenty piers, and the height
above the water is forty feet. Five stones of one hundred tons each,
twenty feet long, compose the roadway, each stone being several feet
wide. The piers up-stream are made with a cutwater bow. At Kweiyang,
the capital of Kweichau province, a massive stone bridge of ten piers,
with cutwaters, shows what ancient China could execute in masonry.
Near the rich coal mines at Ping Hsiang, in Kiangsi province, there
is a high five-arched, pier-pinnacled, balustraded bridge, which is
singularly beautiful. There are shrines on the piers, which also
have cutwaters. Chinese engineers discovered the principles of
the true arch; that is, a complete ring of voussoirs, and not the
succession of protruding corbels invented by the Hindus. The Chinese
are just discovering western industry and inventions, but we are just
discovering Chinese engineering, with engineers like their Yu and Chah
Siang, and the modern “Jeme”, which will cause not a little surprise
and enthusiasm in the practical Occidental world.
At Yangchow, on the Yangtze River, there is a remarkable pavilion
bridge. The heaviest part of the stone bridge is in the middle of
the stream, which is let through the masonry in a number of half and
full arch tunnels. Over these tunnels rises the heavy masonry pile,
topped with an artistic balustrade. On this is a superstructure of
five beautiful pavilions, with prominent up-curling eaves. The bridge
descends on each side to the banks along a sloping abutment. It is an
exceptional structure even for varied China, both from an artistic and
engineering standpoint. The ancient Liu Ko stone bridge over the Hun
River north of Peking is famous for its lion-pier terminals, its carved
stone balustrade which is in the ornate style. After leaving Szechuen
province, on the road into Yunnan, over the Niu Lan River, at Kiang Ti,
is a noted suspension bridge, hung between two heavy piers in a gorge,
the piers being surmounted with curve-roofed pavilions. The carvings of
monkeys, lions, etc., are very fine. The bridge, which is one hundred
and fifty feet by twelve feet, is made of iron chains, pulled very
taut, showing the unusual strength of the anchorage. There is also a
hand chain. The pavilions are, as usual, used as a restaurant and an
inn for travelers.
The two most famous suspension bridges are over the Mekong River in
Yunnan province, between Tali and Yungchang, and over the Salween River
on the main road to Burma. These chain bridges are hung from heavy
piers deep down in the vast gorges, and show that men were mighty
enough in those old days to tackle so mighty a problem. The Ban Chiao
bridge at Yungchang is worthy of the famous engineers of that province.
Strong stone piers are sunk down into the swift stream and anchored to
the high banks. A secure bridge has been laid down over this support.
The abutments are raised and roofed with a glorious double pagoda,
the ridge, curling eaves, flying supports and ornaments all being
splendidly carved. The bridge itself is protected with a balustrade,
and is roofed with tiles throughout. It is both an artistic and a
substantial structure. So much for the beautiful bridges of the old
régime, nearly all it will be noted in the native Chinese section of
the country. Herr Dorpmuller and other German engineers are teaching
the Chinese the revival of stone bridges by the massive structures
which they have erected on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway.
A beginning has been made in erecting iron truss bridges. The very
long pier bridge carrying the Peking-Hankau (Belgian built) railway
across the Yellow River is well known, and has stood longer than it was
thought it would because of the shifting foundation. The eight-pier
steel bridge over the Hwei River on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow
railway was erected by the Wright-Headson Company, of Motherwell,
Scotland. At Shanghai there is the wide Garden bridge. A steel bridge
has been erected over the Yellow River at Lanchow, the capital of
remote Kansu province, and at Tientsin is the Chin Kung truss bridge.
At Chungking a structure has been erected across the Yalung River.
The Hongkong-Canton, Tientsin-Nanking, Peking-Hankau, North China and
Kiachou-Tsinan railways of course have many steel culvert bridges.
There are already a considerable number of remarkable steel truss
bridges of eighteen to twenty-four spans over Liao, Nu Erh, Hsiao,
Taling, Sha, Tawen, Yellow and other great rivers of China. The French
railway, from Haiphong to Yunnan City, is built over one hundred small
bridges in the crossing of the Red River, Namti and Song River valleys.
From Peking to Tungchow, at the head of navigation from the coast,
about twenty miles, runs a broad road paved five hundred years ago
by the Ming kings with immense blocks, three feet square by two feet
thick. The road sadly needs resetting, but one can readily imagine
what a splendidly substantial road it once was in those spacious days
of the last of the pure Chinese kings. The Ming thought of art and
public works. The Manchu has thought more of intrigue and private
dinners since he gave up riding horses and living in tents. One of the
strongest charges against the Manchu was that he threw the great public
works which he inherited into ruin. This Tungchow Road is the road over
which commerce, invasion and many a dignified embassy have gone during
the recent strenuous centuries.
The Che Ling Road runs from Chinchow, in Hunan province, to Canton.
This is the road the new railway will take. The foot road is fifteen
feet wide and composed of great stone blocks one foot thick. Before
traffic was gathered at Hankau and Canton by steamships, the traffic on
the Che Ling foot road was very heavy, and shops lined the long stone
highway. Another famous road, the Mei Ling, also composed of stone
blocks, climbs the great Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) and connects
Nangan in Kiansi province and Canton. This is the road that Abbé Huc
took in 1849 when he made his daring journey from Tibet to Chingtu,
Chungking, Hankau, Kowkiang, Nanchang, up the Kan River to Canton and
Macao. There is a famous imperial road from Peking to Jehol, through
Kupikan pass, where the Manchus may finally be segregated. The road
from Peking to the Ming tombs is paved with a course of large stones.
The “Great Road” runs from Peking to Canton along the coast, and
answers to the old Japanese “Tokkaido”, which runs from Tokio to Kioto.
It was a Mongol road, dating back to the Great Wall. The best Chinese
roads, however, were made in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries
A. D., during the Sung dynasty, whose capital was Hangchow.
In 1890 the province of Szechuen built sixty-five miles of a mountain
river road in the gorges of the Yangtze River, starting from Kwei-chow
and running eastward. The road is from one hundred to five hundred feet
above high water and is cut six feet wide and eight feet high into the
limestone cliffs, truly a splendid revival of the noble works of the
Ming kings, and in a sublime situation not to be equaled anywhere.
The Szechuen people boast that their “road goes where a monkey
couldn’t hang”. The road was planned and executed entirely on Chinese
initiative. The best known road in China, and considering its length,
the best conditioned road in the empire, runs for four hundred miles
in Szechuen province from Wan Hsien on the Yangtze River, overland to
Chingtu City, the capital. It is called the Siao Pen Lu (smaller north
road), and is paved to the width of six feet. It has many wonderful
staircases cut up mountain faces. The road could be shortened one
hundred miles if bridges were built at the gorges. An internationally
owned railway was planned for this route. From Chungking to Chingtu in
Szechuen province, up hill and down, and across fields and marshes,
runs a traveled road paved much of the way with large stone slabs. From
Chungking to Sui Fu, along the Yangtze River for two hundred miles
runs a notable stone road five feet wide. Along all these old roads
the freight of 400,000,000 people has been carried on the backs of
men and women, and even children, whether by barrow or shoulder load,
during the long quiet centuries, at an awful cost of money; for too
large a proportion of the nation has been engaged in the transportation
as compared with the producing department, and this is one reason why
China has been poor so long.
Wells have been sunk by contractors, with whom the mayor of the village
(hsiang lao) dealt. A brick caisson, fitted on a bamboo frame, is dug
under and sunk. On this caisson the upper wall is built. Sometimes
iron-pointed bamboo pipes are driven through the bottom of the well.
These old methods will give way to the new, and windmills will begin to
hum in old China.
The modern water-works of Peking take the water from the Sha Ho, a
clear stream in the Western Hills. There are settling tanks, pumping
stations, stand-pipes, etc. One hundred and thirty thousand families
are supplied from the mains. The same concession to labor has been made
as at Hongkong, in that the cleaning of the filter sand and gravel is
done by hand instead of by machine. Nearly all the treaty ports are
putting in modern water-works, which have been sorely needed. China’s
death rate is decreasing, and it is not necessary, even from a Chinese
point of view, that there should be so many births or dual wives any
more.
Electric light plants are in operation at nearly all the coast treaty
ports, as well as at some of the Yangtze treaty ports and West River
ports inland. In the Occident, intellectual and spiritual light
preceded lighted roads and the light of science, but as everything is
opposite in China, it seems that science is preceding intellectual and
spiritual light. But “these twain shall meet in one equator round the
globe”.
The Lighthouse Department of the National Customs is employing foreign
engineers in harbor and channel work, and some improvements have been
made on the coast and along the rivers, the provincial authorities
making a special tax wherever possible to foot the bills. Often the
boatmen, merchants’ and bankers’ guilds are required to subscribe.
The first systematized attempt to handle public works scientifically
was undertaken by the provincial assemblies of Nganhwei and Kiangsu
provinces in the summer of 1911, during the awful famines, which
followed the great floods. America has sent large contributions of
flour and money for rice. The assemblies put the men, whom the floods
withheld from their fields, on railway building, canal dredging, bridge
building, and road making. It was along these roads that the triumphant
right wing of the republicans marched, headed by Generals Hsu and
Ling, in the memorable attack on Nanking, which broke the imperial
resistance, and threw the Manchu over the yamen wall!
Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have found that with
these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the
Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press
that lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings,
are given to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local
firms. The signs, taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have
enough to interchange without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments
will have to be made in some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy
and altruism will in the end overcome any misunderstandings that may
arise.
XIII
THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN
In 1911 Japan’s tariff agreements expired and a new high tariff
was put into effect in the effort to raise $300,000,000 a year
as the state’s revenue. The same result was experienced as in
India. Home manufacturers operated in the smaller industries, and
many larger foreign capitalists opened Japanese branches. For
instance, the Lever Soap Company, of England, came to Osaka, and
the Armstrong-Vickers-Maxim Company, of Newcastle, the gun-founders
and warship builders, came to Muroran in Ezo Island, to be near the
coal mines, the iron ore being imported largely from Tayeh, China,
and much of the pig iron from Hanyang, China. Prices of living have
advanced beyond wages, and in 1912 the municipalities of Tokio, etc.,
had to open free rice kitchens to feed crowds of the impoverished and
unemployed. The poor bear the heaviest share of the new taxes and the
increased prices levied by the trusts. The profits of some of the large
trusts go out of the country. There is the same complaint as in China,
that foreign capital and home monopoly are exploiting franchises,
subsidy chests and tariffs. The new high tariff is a success for the
monopolists, just as the American tariff was from 1865 to 1911. The
complaint among the people of the privilege-made-wealth running the
government and burdening the taxpayer is as bitter as in some other
countries. The suffrage being limited in Japan to five millions out
of sixty million people, this discontent does not yet show itself so
quickly as in America and Britain. American and British newspapers,
magazines and books which voice reform, and real and not deputized
representation of the taxed, are translated, and widely read, not only
in Japan, but in China.
The world knows the effective work of the Japanese press bureau,
organized with the aid of foreign advisers, before the Japan-Russia
War. This included the publication of Professor Nitobe’s book on
_Bushido_ in Philadelphia, glorifying to the highest pitch of the
warm Oriental imagination everything Japanese. This had much to do
with preparing the way for the Japanese advance in Manchuria. That
press bureau has been strengthened, and has its inspired organs in
some of the large cities of the Occident. No other country is able to
color the news on occasions as Japan is able. With the cry of _lèse
majesté_, Japan, Germany and Russia seem to be successful in stamping
out much of the independent criticism of the taxed, or those to whom
equal opportunity has been denied. There seems to be only one hope for
real liberty in Japan and elsewhere, the rise again, as in Bunyan’s,
Milton’s and Franklin’s time, of the independent pamphlet and book,
whose one motto shall be, “No taxation without real representation.”
The Japanese have appointed the Koreans, Count Yi and Viscount Cho, to
represent the absorbed Korean people, and these two men are expected
to sign every document praising the rule of the Japanese, which
document is then wired over the world by the thoroughly organized
press agency. The former immense missionary influence of the Americans
among the common people is slowly being choked out, and the large
foreign gold and other mining industries of Korea, which promised so
well, are also now under strict watch. In other words, the system of
dummification has been applied to Korean politics, and the famous
American teachers and political advisers have found it well to leave
the peninsula. I would instance the long articles in the New York
_Times_ of June 6, 1912, and the New York _Herald_ of September 1,
1912, in which the American Presbyterian and other churches charge
the Japanese bureaucracy with wholesale persecution, “planting” of
evidence, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Korean political
prisoners as late as 1912. Two methods of colonization face each other
in contrast at the threshold of China--the Japanese method in Korea,
and the American method in the Philippines. Both are progressing
commercially, but the latter alone is progressing educationally and
altruistically, so far. It is noticeable in Korea that the Japanese are
breaking down many beautiful walls and temples to build in their place
ugly utilitarian houses. They pay very little respect to those whom
they have conquered. They are obliterators of art, where art detains
utility. The name of the land has been changed to Chosen. In Manchuria,
despite conventions, the Japanese maintain ten times the railway guard
of soldiers agreed upon. Japan will bear friendly watching everywhere,
as the American writers, Millard and Homer Lea, are constantly urging.
Her armaments cost her a heavy taxation and she is searching for ways
to recoup herself. If Manchuria is to be saved to China, it will be
owing more to America’s insistence than to Britain, for Britain at
present is tied up to Japan, and Britain in India has given a hostage
to the East. Perhaps the best way to save Manchuria is to encourage
Chinese emigration, and this plan is now working out, tens of thousands
of Shangtungese leaving yearly for the three rich Manchurian provinces.
The American suggestion that the Russian and Japanese railways in
Manchuria should be made international is possibly not so good a plan
as to sell those roads to China with money loaned for the purpose,
and clean Manchuria of Russian and Japanese troops. There seems no
permanent reason why China should not run Manchurian railways and
mines as well and as profitably as she has run the North China Railway
and the Kaiping mine of Pechili province. To illustrate how Chinese
officialdom looks upon the general subject, I quote from Viceroy Liu
Ming Chuan’s memorial, approved by Li Hung Chang, written in 1893:
“Japan attempts now and again to be arrogant--like a mantis when it
assumes an air of defiance--and to despise China, and gives us no small
amount of trouble on the smallest pretext.”
The advance party has its critics in Japan. The Tokio _Nichi_, the
Osaka _Mainichi_, the Tokio _Jiji_ and the Tokio _Yorodzu_ take the
nation to task for attempting to compete with America’s navy. They
cry out against the expansionists’ slogan of “Japan’s supremacy on
the Pacific”. Here is the _Yorodzu’s_ plaint against the heavy taxes
involved: “Go to the hamlets and villages, and you find the sons of our
soil wearing the sad and worn appearance of the ‘man with the hoe’.
Ask the shopkeepers and merchants, and they tell you that they are at
a loss to know how to make ends meet. So do small manufacturers and
men of moderate salaries, and in fact all who come under the general
term of the middle class. Why? What else but that their taxes are too
heavy, and because the price of commodities has risen too high since
the war? The war has increased the wealth only of the contractors,
speculators, and a small group of millionaires, which accounts for the
sudden rise of the prices of the necessaries of life. Thus the chasm
between the poor and the rich is widening every day. What will become
of the country if the government does not bend all its energies to
the recuperation of our national strength, which has been overtaxed
during and since the late war? The only course which the government
should follow at this critical moment is to curtail all the unnecessary
expenses of administration, most of all, those of the army and navy.”
This succinctly covers what volumes could not cover better. The average
Japanese income is twenty-three dollars gold a year, out of which
one-fifth goes to taxes.
Freight rates and tariffs are in some places as powerful as battleships
and battalions in keeping out the commerce of a rival. When Japan and
Russia rejected America’s proposition for an international control
of Manchurian railways, so that the commerce of all nations would
pay the same duty and receive the same car supply in Manchuria,
Japan and Russia made a secret treaty regarding Manchuria on July 4,
1910, and another agreement in 1912. Among other points, it covered
interchange rates. The Russian railways can by high rates keep out
competitive Japanese goods, and the Japanese railways can retaliate.
On non-competitive goods needed for local consumption, low through
rates are accorded, Japan favoring the famous Harbin flour, timber,
kaoliang spirits from the Harbin distilleries, and Amur salmon and
fish. Russia accords low rates northward to Japanese (i. e., Fushun
and Yentai) coal, cement, fresh food, etc. On export competitive
soybeans, for instance, by low rates Japan tries to coax Russian
shipments southward via Dairen, and Russia makes a similar effort to
route Japanese-controlled beans via Vladivostok, but should a Russian
shipper try to send ten miles in the direction of Japanese-owned Dairen
he would find the soy rate higher than all the five hundred miles to
Vladivostok.
By indirect methods, such as loans at low interest, rebated godown
charges, rebated rates, and what not (for where there’s a will there’s
a way) Japan can militate against the competition of American and
British cottons, woolens, machinery, etc., in Manchuria. When the
Chinese junks on the Liao River compete in the open season for the
soy-bean traffic for Newchwang, the Japanese railways quote as low
a rate as five mills per ton mile to Dalny, as compared with the
lowest rate in America of eight mills. Japan is a David when she
goes out to slay! Japan was the whole cause of the denial by China
of an American-financed and constructed railway from Chin Wang Tao
through Manchuria northward to Aigun. Yet she says she doesn’t mean
to stay in Manchuria! She did not broad-gage Kuroki’s difficult
Antung-Mukden railway recently in such a permanent way as to suggest
that she ever intended to retire or sell out, “treaties and conventions
notwithstanding,” to use the apt phrase of the London _Times_. Though
America would under no circumstances accept a square foot of land in
China or Manchuria, except on lease in an international municipal
settlement, America must protect her growing and potential trade in
Manchuria and in China, and that trade will always be withstood in one
way or another by Japan. There is nothing now to go to war about, but
there will always be a good deal to argue about, and Japan, as well
as the Manchus, knows a dozen ways of presenting a smiling evasion.
Have you ever proposed a difficult question to a Japanese at a curio
auction, and watched his face! We have all voted that he was a success
in making language hide thought; a born diplomat.
The Japanese government debt outstanding is £300,000,000, as compared
with China’s debt of £93,000,000, and Japan’s industrials have borrowed
privately abroad an added £60,000,000.
Japan’s Debt Annual
in £. Interest. Due.
4% sterling £10,000,000
4½% sterling 29,750,000
4½% second series 29,750,000
4% 1905 Russia
war 25,000,000 After 1921
5% 1906 Russia
war, railways,
ships, Manchuria,
Korea, Formosa,
Saghalien,
etc. 183,000,000
5% 1907 11,500,000 After 1922
4% 1910 11,000,000 After 1920
------------
Total Japan’s debt £300,000,000 £12,000,000
Total China’s debt 93,000,000 4,642,000
Total India’s debt 170,000,000
Great as is Japan’s debt, she can make heavy payments on it because
she owns her railways, and can allot the railway surplus to the
diminishing of the debt, which China and India can also do because of
the nationalization of most of the railways.
In April, 1912, the Lodge Resolution in the American Senate brought
out the fact that a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship company, acting
doubtless on behalf of the Japan forward party, had long been
endeavoring to obtain from Mexico a strategic base on Magdalena Bay,
which could, as a coaling station, threaten the whole Pacific coast.
How would Japan like it if America obtained a coaling station in
Manchuria? She and Russia compelled China to refuse America a railway
franchise in Pechili in 1910.
What is the comparative strength of the American and Japanese
navies? The German specialist, Count von Reventlow, and the American,
Homer Lea, who accompanied Sun Yat Sen to China as military adviser,
though he is not a military man, have in several books prophesied
that Japan will and can defeat America. Japan has four dreadnoughts,
the _Settsu_, _Kawachi_, _Aki_ and _Satsuma_, completed since the
Russia War, but they have only half the gun-power of the ten American
superdreadnoughts. Japan has eight battleships of the 15,000-ton
_Mikasa_ type, including the salvaged and repaired Russian ships,
against America’s thirty battleships of the first class. America can
therefore patrol the Pacific from a Philippine base as soon as she has
docks enough, and if America and Britain ever approximate on world
questions, the British navy can be drawn to the Atlantic and waters
west of Ceylon. Two things are sure: first, that America and Britain
will never fight each other; and second, that Britain’s and America’s
commercial and political policies in the East are identical in destiny.
As long as America maintains a two-power standard on the Pacific,
that is, two ships to one of Japan’s she need fear no opposition
from Japan, and Japan has certainly nothing to fear from America,
as China ceaselessly praises the altruistic and non-land-grabbing
policy of America over the world. It is true that Japan has an almost
irresistible army, but sea power dictates, as Admiral Mahan’s brilliant
books show. Japan whipped Russia because she controlled the sea. If
America controls the Pacific, the Japanese army could do nothing in
Korea or Manchuria.
Now, as to Russia, the navies of America and Britain pounding on the
Baltic door, if necessary, as a last resort, could make Russia behave
in Manchuria; but if this did not prove wholly effective, a reformed
Chinese army, trained by American and British officers, could in time
do to the Russian battalions that were left what Oyama’s, Nogi’s and
Kuroki’s regiments did. China should not yet be called upon to waste
her money on a navy, as she has no interests for a century beyond the
great countries of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria, which America and
Britain, with their navies, desire to enable her to retain. Britain and
America should have a persistent, consistent policy, and there will be
no naval war, the whole world over; and Germany can reduce her navy
and army charges, which are a curse to her people. If Germany wants
to do a noble work, let her use her army to influence parliamentary
and sociological reforms in tyrannical Russia, where men are blighted
by the curses of opinion-paralyzing detectivism and oligarchism. If a
consistent, persistent policy is maintained there need no more be an
Anglo-German feud on the Atlantic than an American-Japanese feud on the
Pacific.
England needs a two-power navy because she has Africa, India and
Atlantic Canada to defend. America needs a two-power Pacific navy
because she has, as a foster mother of civilization, to help defend
Australia, South America, the Philippines, Pacific Canada and
republican China. Looked upon in this way, a navy becomes a policeman,
and not a swashbuckler. Money is going to be invested to develop all
these countries, and property should be protected, not looted. Those
nations which have the most efficient naval police, and the most
altruistic policies, are the nations which should patrol, and they are
America, Britain and possibly Germany, if the last nation advances, as
it seems now to be doing, in parliamentarism to real representation.
America and Lloyd George’s Britain alone are essentially democracies,
and therefore qualify in international altruism. With Britain’s control
of the Suez Canal, and America’s ownership of the Panama Canal,
efficiency is assured in these two nations effectively standing by
to protect political progress and world commerce on a fuller and
freer basis than it has ever been. In amenability and high mechanical
intelligence, Britain, America and Germany alone have qualified in the
management of navies.
Japan and America will not fight on the Pacific, as Count von Reventlow
and Homer Lea prophesy, but America will overbuild Japan instead. Japan
has been more carefully reading the new lesson taught by America and
Britain that there must be no absorption of old China, and she is now
thinking of a possible new rôle, as the interpreter of the East to the
West, and the West to the East. The head of the First Imperial College,
Doctor Nitobe, the coiner of “Bushido”, is foremost in propagating this
idea. Japanese school-teachers are most numerous in Chinese government
schools, especially as teachers of English, in learning which, however,
they are not half so expert as the Chinese themselves. Doctor Nitobe is
a Christian.
At the time of the Japanese War, Professor Nitobe, then with the Tokio
University, wrote a fanciful book on the theme, _Bushido_ (Japanese
pronunciation of “Wu Shih Tao”--way of warrior). It was quite on the
style of Lafcadio Hearn’s apotheosis of the Japanese. Its effect in
Japan was to produce some hysteria and not a little conceit. Foreigners
were led to believe that the Japanese must be right because they were
reckless. The Japanese bureaucracy of the Choshiu, Satsuma and other
clans used the fetish to entrench themselves. No one can say that
Japan has real representative government. Her government is exactly
the government that Russia has. Her Diet is no more representative
than is the Duma. The ministry decides on the budget, and it is put
through by steam-roller when necessary, and ready-made opinion is
given to the press. There is no such thing as the British parliamentary
system of the commons absolutely controlling supply bills, or the
American principle of the Lower House being finally supreme. The
extensive press bureau which was established to popularize the Japan
side of the Japan-Russia War, encouraged hara-kiri and telegraphed
over the world in exaggerated terms the details of every hysterical
and self-advertising suicide. For instance, if the warriors could not
take the fort, instead of trying again, they were to march up and blow
their brains out before the moving-picture film, so to speak, leaving
a letter for the Mikado as follows: “We could not do what you asked
us; it is our fault. Therefore in shame we hara-kiri. Bushido! Banzai,
etc.” This thing is being kept up to a degree, and as long as it is
encouraged by the bureaucracy, constitutional government in Japan will
be postponed, the emperor being worshiped in his old office of pope of
Kioto instead of constitutional emperor at Tokio.
I quote the following of many press despatches which constantly appear
in the Japanese and world press: “To give his life as an atonement
because the emperor of Japan had to spend an hour in a common
waiting-room, Moji Shijiro Shimidzu, a trainmaster, threw himself under
a train. Shimidzu had been in charge of arrangements for a journey
the emperor made from Kyushu, after witnessing the army maneuvers.
The imperial train was delayed by a derailment at a misplaced switch.
Shimidzu left a letter saying that he considered it his duty to pay for
the emperor’s embarrassment with his life.” The spectacular suicide
of the immortal captor of Port Arthur, General Nogi, and his wife at
the time of the funeral of the Mikado Mutsuhito on September 13, 1912,
comes under the same category of godless savagery forbidden mankind by
the Sixth Commandment of Sinai. It is time for Japan to cease posing
through her press bureau. We all admire her for many sane and grand
things done, and to tell the truth, we admire the Japanese people more
than their present system of a privileged government where only five
millions out of sixty millions enjoy the franchise. It is a government
of the people, but not sufficiently a government for the people, and
certainly not a government by all the people, all of which conditions
Lincoln said should obtain if liberty was to be assured. That is the
aim of the whole world, and it has been accomplished now in England,
America, France, China, Portugal and Switzerland. The Shimidzus, who
commit suicide, do not exhibit patriotism but hysterical conceit,
and the thoroughly organized Japanese press bureau, and the Choshiu,
Satsuma, and other privileged clans, in their own best interests,
should discourage the nonsense; and instead of elevating the man as
a god in the Shinto shrine, they should exhibit him in the foyer of
fools. Christianity teaches that there is only one being for whom we
should give our lives, and that anything else is idolatry. It is not
the emperor or the president whom we are to serve, but the emperor’s
men and women; the president’s men and women; that is, the state, and
a real emperor and a real president must, too, serve the state, which
is all the people. Such is the modern logic Japan should teach her
people, and not the hysteria of Bushido. Japan is not ignorant of her
disabilities, and each of the Seiyukei, Kokuminto and Yushinkai parties
are endeavoring to extend the educational system which Guido Verbeck
fashioned for the favored Satsuma, Choshiu, Fujiwara, Gen, Tosa, Hizen,
Kago and other clans of five millions, to the forty-eight millions of
agriculturalists, miners, factorymen and fishermen, and twelve million
Koreans and Formosans. Success to Japan’s educational extension,
is America’s and Britain’s hearty wish, for it “will calm a sea of
troubles”.
Japan has been the first nation in the world to attack the land
taxation question, and Germany and Britain have followed recently,
a long way off, however, and America will probably also follow
the example. Until recently the large estates held by barons and
corporations have been taxed on the old feudal medieval system of an
infinitesimal valuation, while the small holder has been taxed on the
full selling value. This has now been changed, and large owners in
Japan can not hold at little cost to await unearned increment. They
must work the land or sell it. Until this system is adopted the poor of
the nations will be decapitalized by tariff, food, clothing, building
material, head, war, permit, excise, export, subsidy, educational and
other high taxes. Land values are about one-tenth what they are in
America, and the land tax is about eight per cent. on selling value. As
in China under the Manchus, land in Japan is nominally the property of
the emperor. Perpetual leases can only be owned outright by Japanese
subjects, or by a company which is incorporated only in Japan. A
foreigner in Japan can not own land, but his Japanese incorporated
company can, as the land would then be at Japan’s command, Japan having
no extraterritoriality exemption law favoring the foreigner, as has
China, in civil and criminal matters.
As is well known, the police are an arm of the central government
and not of the municipality, which savors of despotism and Russia’s
example. There is therefore no really free press in Japan, for state
trials may not be reported or commented on. The police exercise a
censorship of news under their Marunouchi Club of Tokio. There could
be no Roosevelts, Wilsons, Bryans and Lloyd Georges in Japan as in
America and England!
They have their money trust question in Japan, for while there are
thousands of small gathering banks, they all deposit in the trust
banks, which thus control the use of “other people’s money”, i. e.,
credit. These large banks, whose presidents confer in the meetings
of the “Eel Society”, are the Bank of Japan, Yokohama Specie Bank,
Hypothec Bank, Japan Credit Mobilier, Hokkaido Colonial Bank, Bank of
Formosa, Bank of Korea, and Mitsui’s Bank.
Japan must have its Gifford Pinchot somewhere. She has taken quick
action against states’ rights when conservation was endangered. It
was found that the provinces were selling water-power concessions to
speculators and dummies of the monopolies. The central government in
January, 1911, immediately suspended all provincial and colonial grants
until a national survey could be made, and applicants looked into. It
is proposed to harness several million horsepower of waterfalls on the
Switzerland, and not the Niagara plan (so as not to mar the scenery),
which, with cheap labor, will be a great asset of industrial Japan.
[Illustration: CHINESE REPUBLIC]
That Japan has taken up officially the correction of complaints which
have been made in scores of books and hundreds of magazines on her
trickiness and lack of commercial honor is shown in the following
article by Minister of Commerce Oura, in the _Jitsugyo no Nihon_
(Industrial Japan), written after his world tour, in which he praises
the sturdy honesty of old free-trade England. “I could not help
regretting to find that in commercial morality Japan was too young and
weak to be classed among the world’s foremost countries. Everywhere I
went I heard denunciations of and complaints against Japan. Japanese
business men not being particular about commercial morality,
people could not carry on business with our merchants with confidence.
I soon felt ashamed on reflecting upon the fact that we Japanese had
defects, subject to attacks and complaints in the matter of commercial
morality. Our merchandise can not pass the customs authorities on a
mere invoice, but is subjected to a rigorous examination. British
merchandise is always more substantial than is advertised. In short,
British-made goods never fail to justify their advertised description.
Quite the opposite is the case with Japanese goods. Complaints are
raised against Japanese manufactures that they are not up to sample.
It is usual, for instance, for a layer of larger-sized fruit to be
arranged on top of the box. Instances of overcharging, and tricky
inferior imitations of standard goods are common, and damage our
reputation.” Confession and contrition are the parents of reform, and
Japan is waking up.
Japan worked her mines in 1911 to the following extent: Coal,
16,000,000 tons, value, $30,000,000; copper, 120,000,000 pounds,
value $15,000,000; pig iron, 60,000 tons, value, $1,500,000 (Kamishi
and Sennin mines); zinc ore, 22,000 pounds, value, $300,000; lead,
8,000,000 pounds, value, $250,000. The coal came from Japan mines only,
and does not include the great product of the Fushun and Yentai mines
in Manchuria. The copper was mined principally at the Kune, Kosaka,
Ashio and Besshi mines at a cost of nine cents, which is lower than
the American cost. Japan is exhausting the ore in the islands, and is,
therefore, looking to rich Korea and China for her supply of this war
and industrial necessity. Her need of copper is another incentive to
expand politically.
Japan is building a railway along the western length of the main
island, and will need $18,000,000 of railway equipment for it. She
will probably go abroad for half of this. Small as Japan is, this
railway will open up scenic and productive districts and add vastly to
the riches and strategic resources of the country.
The method by which Japan built the Kobe harbor piers out into deep
water was most modern. Cement boats, or caissons, one hundred and
nineteen feet long, thirty-five feet high and thirty-four feet wide
were built on a floating dock (planned by a Westminster, England,
concern) at the shore. They were then conveyed to sea, the dock
being sunk from under the cement boat. This latter was floated into
position, and gradually sunk with cement, rubble and sand in the
comparatively cheap but massive piers. A tonnage of 135,000 tons can
be warped alongside the dredged sea walls at one time. It is not so
long ago that everything had to be lightered out to the steamers in
the wind-swept roadstead of Kobe, and many days were lost waiting for
smooth water. The writer recalls being held at Kobe for eighteen hours
during a typhonic blow because no launch or sanpan could bring off
the passengers who had gone ashore during a calm. There are now no
delays. There are power-driven cranes and travelers, godowns, and every
facility for the quick handling of cargo. As at Montreal, Hamburg,
Liverpool, Hongkong, etc., the government directly or indirectly
assists, advances, or guarantees in securing the necessary harbor
works, railway connection and dock machinery at Kobe. Kobe is Japan’s
great import harbor, as Yokohama is her export harbor. Tokio is to be
an export harbor, as a long canal for 10,000-ton ships is now being
dredged to Yokohama Bay.
Japan’s petroleum is found in the Echigo district, straight across
Hondo Island from Tokio. The oil is excellent for illuminating and
lubricating, and the industry, which is highly protected, employs 3,300
people, and pays twenty-five per cent. to the Nippon Oil Company. Fuel
oils and crude oils are brought from Sumatra, America and Mexico.
Much complaint was heard in England when the Grimsby steam trawlers,
owned by syndicates, drove the small owner and the hardy fisherman from
the seas, affecting the recruiting of the navy, as well as driving a
hardy independent class into a condition of economical and political
servitude. Japan has copied this unfortunate example, and steam
trawlers have been introduced in her fishing waters. The government
promises to control it before it seriously affects recruiting for the
navy.
The Japanese have gone into shirt-making, the duty on raw material
being rebated when the shirts are exported. Foreign designs are copied.
The men receive nine dollars a month and the women six dollars. The
hours are nine and one-half a day. The companies, like many of the
Japanese industrials, grant a few holidays, and provide theatrical
entertainments, moving-picture shows, baths and tea, none of which is
costly, but seem to keep the workers from realizing that their wages
should be three times what they are, even in Japan, for taxes amount to
one-third of the income.
Winter clothing for the masses in general, and service clothing for
the navy, army, artisans, etc., under modern conditions of hard wear,
has become a stern problem in both Japan and China. Silk will not
do. Cotton will not answer in this field. Wool has been adopted, and
the gorgeous colors and texture of the Orient begin to vanish before
the requirements of a practical age. Two of the largest woolen mills
in Japan are the Mousseline (Boshuku) Weaving Company, at Osaka, and
the Japan Woolen Company, at Kobe. Eighty per cent. of the total area
of rocky Japan is not under cultivation, being ruined with tough
bamboo grass, which seems impossible to eradicate, and which destroys
the delicate mouths and throats of sheep. Japan has, therefore, to
import her wool from Mongolia, Manchuria, England, France, Germany and
Australia. Not having a full supply of yarn mills, she imports yarn
also from England, France and Germany. Goat’s and camel’s hair is also
imported from South America and Mongolia.
The movement for the conservation of timber has taken hold in Japan,
reinforced cement poles, as well as creosoted poles, being used. The
largest creosote works are at Osaka, and the preserved wood is now used
for Japan’s famous light buildings, railroad trestling, ties, bridges,
etc. Japan has an exceedingly rich treasure forest (one of the world’s
last) east of the South Manchurian Railway, and also bordering the
Fusan-Mukden line. Much of the hard wood of Japan and her colonies is
being brought to America for furniture-making at present.
Japanese steamers will doubtless run to the east coast of America
through the Panama Canal. Micki Shonzo talks of sending twenty of his
vessels through. A Japanese line now carries nitrates, hides, salt,
horses, beef, wool, fish, grain, etc., from Chile, and coal, rice, tea,
silk, oils, bean cake, manufactures, matting, etc., to Chile. Japanese
shipping in 1912 amounted to the enormous tonnage of 1,000,000, as
compared with 170,000 tons on the day before the Chinese indemnity was
paid to Japan in 1895.
Perhaps the rich dividends made by the Oriental Consolidated (gold)
Mining Company, at Unsan, in the Yalu district of Korea, made Japan as
anxious commercially as diplomatically to secure Korea. This American
company, with which Leigh Hunt was connected, and whose concession was
obtained through the offices of United States Minister Allen, has
made in a concession 500 miles square 4,000 per cent. in ten years.
One hundred thousand dollars was put into the gold mining plant, and
$4,000,000 has been paid in dividends, the mines themselves, instead
of added capital, paying for their own development. The Unsan plant is
largely self-contained, having crushers, a foundry, machine shops, a
fleet, a railway and lumbering plant, hospital and barracks. The mining
costs only one dollar and forty cents per ton, hand labor, the Koreans
being the best miners in the Far East, owing to their docile patience.
Some of the mines are one thousand feet deep. The Korean Exploration
Company (half American and half Japanese) has a gold mining concession
at Chicksan, south of Seoul. The new terms that will probably be
imposed on foreign mining by Japan will be at least twenty-five per
cent. royalty on the net profits, machinery imported and ore exported
to be duty and loti taxes remitted, respectively. If Japan can do the
smelting, of course ores must go there for treatment.
In Formosa the three largest Japanese sugar companies are the Niitaka,
the Taihoku and the Minami Seito (Southern Sugar Company), capitalized
at about $2,000,000 gold each, with an output of 300,000 tons a year.
Japan can increase this, and supply the world. The government grants
subsidies to the cane growers for fertilizer, and money prizes for
model plantations, the high tariff against Hongkong, of course, being
a subsidy for the Formosan sugar mills, as far as supplying Japan is
concerned.
Japan has opened an electric-driven cotton mill, the Naigai Wata, at
Suchow Creek, Shanghai, sending to America for the boilers, to Germany
for the dynamos, and to England (Oldham) for the spinning machinery.
The owners and foremen are Japanese, the workers Chinese. Eighty-five
per cent. of the material is local grown, and fifteen per cent. comes
from India in Japanese steamers. The finished product, mainly yarns,
is sent up the Yangtze River and along the coast in Japanese steamers,
and is admitted into Japan preferentially as far as foreign products
are concerned. The Japanese are extending their ownership of cotton
mills erected in China, for the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha has bought the Hua
Hsuan, the Shanghai and the San Tai mills at Shanghai, and the Wuchang
Spinning Mill at Wuchang. The Mitsui Bishi Kaisha has bought the Chen
Hua mill at Shanghai, and the Nippon Mill Company has bought the Jih
Hsin mill in China. There is much food for thought in this situation.
The Japanese also own one-third of the largest translating press in
China, the Commercial Press of Shanghai.
The Japanese firm of Mitsui has established a refinery at Hankau to
handle the famous nuts of Szechuen province, which produce the oil
known as China wood oil. The Mitsui firm also handles the production
of soy-bean oil in Manchuria, shipping the oil and the cake in great
quantities in their own steamers to Europe and America. The Mitsuis do
their own banking. The soy-oil is used for cooking, soap making, and as
a substitute in paints for linseed oil, which is becoming scarce. The
cake is used as a milk food and a fertilizer in Europe and America. To
what proportions the industry has grown can be judged by the following
figures: Newchwang (Chinese) shipped 230,000 tons of beans and 400,000
tons of bean cake in 1911. Dairen (Japanese) shipped 450,000 tons of
beans and 300,000 tons of bean cake. Vladivostok (Russian) shipped
250,000 tons of each. The soy-bean oil amounted to about 700,000
hundredweight. This immense crop speaks eloquently of the richness of
the black soil of the three provinces of vast Manchuria. The bean
is also now being planted in Szechuen province in the rows where the
nefarious poppy once bloomed, and America is using quantities of seed
in the southern states in connection with enriching land which has
been impoverished by cotton. The soy-bean, being nitrogenous, adds to,
instead of taking from, the life of the soil. One ton of beans, besides
two tons of soy hay, can be produced per acre.
Canadian and South African railways may own hotels, express, telegraph,
telephone and land companies, but here is what the charter of the
South Manchuria (Japan owned) Railway Company permits them to do:
operate railways, cities, steamships, hotels, mines, electric light
and gas plants, tramways, laboratories, laundries, shops, dormitories,
go-downs (warehouses), hospitals, Y. M. C. A.’s, schools, libraries,
mills, selling agencies, stockyards, forests, sawmills, farms, kaoliang
distilleries, etc. This reminds one of the ancient East India Company’s
powers before Warren Hastings was impeached, or of the ambition of
Incoporator Dill in the palmy days of the incorporation laws of New
Jersey State before the Interstate Commerce Commission got into its
stride.
The pernicious influence of the yoshiwara and the demi-monde in Japan
and the Japanese settlements and colonies throughout the Far East, is
fully covered in the tenth chapter of Price Collier’s _The West in the
East_. If the fire which destroyed the extensive, obtrusive yoshiwara
quarter in the Susaki section of Tokio in 1911 had swept the whole
institution away, womanhood throughout the world would not have the
grievance against Japanese society which it now has. Neither China
nor India ever sank this low in morals, despite all the talk about
concubinage and slavery. The fault lies in the inherent weakness of
religion in Japan. The Buddhism and Confucianism (Shintoism) which
Japan imported, have degenerated and lost soul in the exotic state.
If China needs Christianity, Japan needs it more. The Japanese women
are delightfully vivacious; it is a pity so many should lose their
self-respect. Possibly some of it substantiates the eternal teaching
that no nation can persistently ignore poverty and not suffer in
morals. The Japanese government is now doing something to remedy
conditions and raise the moral tone. The fault lies largely with the
people themselves; too great a love of money and too little a love of
real religion, with the usual result that sacred womanhood is the first
to be driven down at the wall.
XIV
PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON CHINA
Many books have been written on the Russian advance to the Pacific,
and they eventually induced Britain to hurl Japan on the aggressor.
These volumes include Putnam Weale’s fervid volumes, works by Lord
Beresford, Senator Beveridge, Norman, Chirol, Colquhoun, Alexandria
Hosie, Younghusband, Krausse, Lord Curzon and others. That advance has
been pushed back as far as the borders of Shingking, the southernmost
of Manchuria’s three provinces, and out of the Korean Peninsula, but
it is marking time in the other two Manchurian provinces of Kirin
and Helung-Kiang, and in vast Mongolia, Jungaria and Turkestan. Some
critics have said that in having Russia pushed back from the Pacific,
the wave has backed up on Persia. The American one-time treasurer of
Persia, Mr. Shuster, believes Britain has recently lost to Russia in
the buffer states of the Indian border. Certainly a new party has
risen in British diplomacy, whose writers are Maurice Baring, Hardinge
and others, which is not at all Russophobic. Many believe that Russia
intends to try again in Manchuria, and others believe that Japan will
concede to Russia the two northern Manchurian provinces; or again,
that Japan will occupy all Manchuria, and support Russia’s occupation
of Mongolia and part of the Pechili province. As long as there is
oligarchic rule in Russia, there will be danger of the Russian advance,
as the aristocracy wishes to keep an army employed, so as to use
it when necessary on an ambitious Duma, or a people who demand real
representation in return for the tax privilege. Therefore Russia will
for many years press China at one spot or another, and how to checkmate
this pressure is one of Britain’s hardest problems, in which America is
involved because of the Hay doctrine of the “non-partition of China,”
which is the Monroe doctrine of the Far East.
Early in 1911 Russia disturbed the diplomats by sending a note to the
powers that she intended to make a military demonstration against
Sungaria and reoccupy, as from 1871 to 1881, trade routes and frontier
cities like Kuldja and Kobdo. Gullible China was induced to include in
the treaty with Russia at that time permission for Russian caravaners
to cross Western China under Russian arms; to trade without paying
duty, and to establish Russian “_imperium in imperio_” settlements.
The _Novi Krai_ of Harbin admitted that these extraterritorial
demonstrations in Far Western China aimed not so much at aggression
in Turkestan as cajoling further privileges in Manchuria, such as
navigation on the Sungari, Russian settlements, mining and railway
rights, etc. On another occasion, Russia is party to the rejection of
America’s proposal of the internationalization of Manchurian railways;
or again Russia cites some secret coerced treaty and compels China to
refuse a franchise for an American railway from Chin-Wang to Aigun,
or Chin-Wang to Kailar. Yet at the same time Russia is arranging with
China to drop a railway on Peking down from Irkutsk, and a railway from
Semipalatinsk down on Jungaria and the headwaters of the great Tarim
River. The Russian advance is not an extinct volcano; one never knows
when it will be recrudescent somewhere. The party of Admiral Alexeyev,
General Spiridovitch, State Secretary Bezobrazov and Count Bobrinsky,
is not dead at St. Petersburg. Russia is to-day moving 100,000
colonists a year into Siberia. She is double-tracking the Siberian
railway eastward to Lake Baikal.
The following memorial to the throne, written by Viceroy Liu Ming
Chuan, and approved by Li Hung Chang in 1893, reveals China’s knowledge
of Russia’s deep designs: “We feel Russia’s grip on our throat, and her
fist upon our back, and our contact with her is a source of perpetual
uneasiness to our minds. When a quarrel occurs, we have to yield to her
demands.”
Though no one can show why, land-rich Russia considers Mongolia,
Turkestan, Ili, Jungaria, and two provinces of Manchuria, and even
Tibet, as her sphere. In the troubles of the revolution, during the
last months of 1911, harassed China felt Mongolia dragged from under
her feet. The Chinese amban at Koren (Urga) was discountenanced, and
Russia set up the Buddhist Lama as an independent ruler. Plans were
also laid to run a railway down from Kiakhta. The Mongolian princes
frequently receive presents to retain their sympathy and increase their
obligations. Russia even made demands that China should withdraw her
troops from the outposts and discontinue colonization, for China is
beginning to learn the strategy of emigration. The building of the
all-Russian link on the north side of the Amur River from Stretyinsk to
Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, is going on apace at great cost, because
the Russians, in trying to settle the district, refuse to employ
Chinese, and have brought out 15,000 Russian railway laborers. The
river has too many shallows for successful transportation, and it would
not pay yet to dredge it. The _Chun Kuo Pao_, a native paper of Peking,
was so pusillanimous in its fear of Russia and Japan, as to recommend
in 1910 the abandonment of Manchuria to save Mongolia. I have said
pusillanimous, but I might have said venal, as an illustration that
Russian money may not neglect to seek power with some Chinese editors
in the northern provinces.
America desired to keep Japan and Russia separated in Manchurian
aggrandisement, and instead Russia came to a secret amicable agreement
with her old enemy, Japan, in June, 1912. The American, Mr. Shuster,
at the desire of Persia, was satisfactorily managing the customs of
Persia, but Russia successfully intrigued for his retirement. On
February 22, 1912, in the Hall of the Nobility, St. Petersburg, the
Nationalist Party held a meeting to denounce treaties with America.
Count Bobrinsky, the president of the Constitutional Conservative
Party, stood up and called Ex-president Roosevelt the “enemy of
Russia,” referring to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty. Plans were laid
before the meeting showing how Chinese Turkestan could supply America’s
place in growing cotton for Russia. Several reasons were given why
Russia opposed America. The real reason was that Russia does not
like America’s and Britain’s policy of the “non-partition of China.”
The aristocracy of Russia also hate the influence upon the Duma of
America’s and Britain’s system of budgets and armies controlled by
the lower house of the people. The oligarchy of Russia hate America’s
altruism that would secure to growing China her ancient fields, mines
and forests of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. The Chinese rely on
America’s altruism. There was possibly more than humor in the Tientsin
shopkeeper’s sign: “All languages spoken; American understood.”
The Chinese bitterly remember the massacre at Blagovestchensk on the
Amur River in 1900. When the Europeans were besieged in Peking, the
Russians drove the innocent and unarmed Chinese inhabitants into
the river at the point of the bayonet. Many were drowned, and their
bodies choked the landing wharves as they floated down-stream. Yet some
inquirers ask why there should be an anti-foreign feeling in China!
The name of General Chitchegoff, who gave the murderous order, would
live in history yoked to Nero’s if we had writers to-day as able and
patriotic as fearless Seneca and Lucan. If you are an American and
ask Chitchegoff in the place of his retirement why he did it, he will
answer: “Ask the Bureau, and blame the oligarchical system, not the
miserable agent.”
There was a time, too, when Prince Henri d’Orleans, Paul Doumer,
Garnier, Leroy Beaulieu, Riviere, Loti, Petit, Bert, Imbere and
Bonheur wrote, when France, as Russia’s ally, had her aggressive
designs on China. Hongkong, when I lived there, was haunted by
continual nightmares after France took possession of Kwangchou Bay in
Kwangtung province. Since the French ran their railway from Haiphong
to Yunnan City, French influence is strong in Yunnan province, and
the Szechuenese are looking for France’s hand at the headwaters of
the Yangtze River. In a sense this puts a barrier against the British
attack on Western China from Burma, and the American attack from the
Philippines. While France at home and in Tonquin is a high tariff
country, there is more confidence in the republican people of France
on the part of America and Britain than there is in the reliability of
the other mighty diplomatic competitors. Still French aggression is
potential and not to be ignored, especially as France has in Indo-China
a colony of 735,000 square miles with a population of 34,000,000 people
at the southern gates of old China. The heavily subsidized Messageries
Maritimes mail line plies between Marseilles, Saigon and the ports as
far as Japan. I once sailed half around the world on one of their
white boats and know their service to be excellent. At present the
French monopolize the Yunnan traffic with their railway, charging in
addition to the rates a high transit fee on bonded traffic. This is
internationally illegal, and is exactly what incensed Germany blew
out of French diplomacy in Morocco at the muzzle of the _Panther’s_
guns, when that vessel dropped anchor at Agidir one eventful morning.
In desperation, the Chinese tin miners of Kuo Chia (some of whom are
citizens of Hongkong) contemplate an opposition railway to Nanning, and
the old water route to Hongkong. The division of Siam between France
and Britain is slowly going on, France having recently taken over one
of the Shan States. To protect Singapore as a world equator gate,
Britain must connect the Malay states with Burma, and in time take
part of Siam. At one time France had a design of pressing her Tonquin
influence through Western China, and meeting the Russian advance at
Peking, but by the “entente-cordiale” France is now nearer to Britain
than Russia, and this is for the good of the world, including potential
American trade in the Far East. The Supreme Council of Indo-China
has recently raised a loan of $40,000,000 in France for irrigation,
drainage, agricultural and mining development, and extended railways
and roads in Annam and Tonquin.
Chinese imperial influence in the last few centuries has not extended
far south of the Yangtze River. All through French China, that is,
Annam, Tonquin, Cambodia, etc., and in Siam and the Shan states (now
partly absorbed by British Burma), in the old days there were hundreds
of petty kings and princes (a king to a hill in that land of hills),
who themselves, with the exception of the brave and intelligent Black
Flag Leader, Liu Jung, were really adventurers, or descendants from
Chinese adventurers from Kwangtung, Kwangsi and Yunnan provinces. Send
a Chinese to America, and he tries to become a monopolist because of
the ambitious example set before him; send him to British Singapore,
and he strives to become a contractor with designs on knighthood;
send him to Annam or Tonquin, and in the merry old days he became a
swashbuckler king, and strutted upon his ant hill. The French had to
pension or dethrone a hundred of these “royal” fellows from the Si
Kiang valley. The dethroned one said: “As for me now, back to the
pirate waters of the West River, and the admiralty of a snake-boat
fleet.” They have all recently turned up in the pirate waters of
Kwangtung province, and during the revolution of 1911–12 made endless
trouble for the gunboat fleet of Britain, America and China, operating
in the interests of civilization and trade, from Hongkong and Canton.
One brigand named Luk captured the famous Bogue forts of Canton on
March 12, 1912.
The Frenchman takes Paris with him wherever he goes, and as one
indication I found him in all the cafés that lined the red streets
of Indo-China, dropping his absinthe on ice in a long glass, though
a physician would shudder at the risk taken in such a terrifically
hot and humid climate. To balance “pidgin English” he has taught
the Annamese “petit negre.” He has brought his costly Parisian
architecture, as in the Palais, the Opera, the Cathedrals of Saigon,
Hanoi and Haiphong. Since 1873 the five provinces of Indo-China, with
an area larger than Texas, have cost the French $150,000,000 for
military expenses. The trade last year was $50,000,000 imports and
$30,000,000 exports. The colony is only beginning to exploit its great
wealth, especially in coal at Hongay, Kebao and Laokai in Tonquin.
XV
SOME FOREIGN TYPES IN CHINA, AND THEIR INFLUENCE
The mainstay of Chinese revenue, and the main security as yet for
foreign loans, is the National (formerly Imperial) Customs of five per
cent. duty ad valorem. The organization was started at Canton in 1859
by Sir Robert Hart, an Armagh Irishman who was transferred from the
British consular service. He served as head from that year until his
retirement with a fortune of $500,000 in 1910. Sir Robert Hart lived
in princely style at Peking and managed the service honestly. He has
been criticized for taking so large a reward from straitened China by
members of the India civil service, who are satisfied to retire on
$1,000 a year after even more arduous service. In 1901 Sir Robert Hart
wrote his book, _These from the Land of Sinim_. He was a brilliant
propagandist for things Chinese, the most popular Occidental who ever
served China, though he was not so heroic a figure as “Chinese” Gordon.
Sir Robert Bredon was next in office, and in 1911 Sir Francis Aglen
was put in charge. The son of an English clergyman, a well equipped
sinologue, trained under Sir Robert Hart, Mr. Aglen is a thorough
leader of this great work, which includes loan departments, lighthouse
service, a cadet school, a pension bureau, and an internal revenue
organization to a degree. As British commerce is the largest in China,
being nearly four times as large as America’s trade, the British name
the head of the customs service. Many Americans, Germans and French are
also employed, and a thorough knowledge of Chinese and its dialects is
insisted upon by Sir Francis Aglen.
In the region about Shanghai and Nanking, the name of “Chinese” Gordon
(General Charles) still lives for his victorious leadership of Li Hung
Chang’s army, which crushed the Taiping rebellion, and saved the Manchu
throne for the time. General Gordon had many bitter quarrels with Li
Hung Chang, insisting that assassination and murder must not follow a
victory. That the rebels of 1911 in this same region did not forget
Gordon’s precepts was shown by their leniency under great provocation,
after capturing Nanking from the Manchus. No foreigner who has aided
in forming the ten divisions of China’s Northern army has had the
personality or exercised the influence that Gordon did, and in the
great trial of the revolution and the mutinies of 1911–12 the army
showed frequently that no strong personality had inspired the men with
a fixed purpose, honor or patriotism.
About 1869 a nephew of President Van Buren, John Sheffield Van Buren,
went out to Yokohama as an assistant in the consular office of his
uncle. He was soon in Hongkong as agent of the Pacific Mail, Occidental
and Oriental, and Toyo Kisen Kaisha trans-Pacific steamship companies,
and was in touch with the Chinese of that great crown colony for
thirty-three years. He had an intimate knowledge of China, and trained
many of its commercial men who have risen high in the commercial and
diplomatic affairs of the new republic. In Hongkong he was looked
upon as one of the ablest minds that linked the West and the East.
He was devoted to Southern China, developed its trade, dry docks
and shipping, and formulated China’s first trans-Pacific steamship
line, the Chinese Merchants’ Steamship Company of 1903. The famous
Chinese guilds of Kwangtung province looked upon him as a sage, and
sought his aerie retreat over Robinson Road on the cliff for many a
conference under the swaying punkahs. He was a very tall thin man,
with a long countenance, great eyes, and a slow, full, round voice. It
was impossible to irritate him to heated expression. Like the mills
of the gods, he ground slow but exceedingly fine. He used to bemoan
the fact that Americans who managed Oriental companies generally do so
from America, before being first experienced in the Orient, and he was
a strong advocate of the British system of moving partners who would
serve their seven-years term in the Orient, seven at home and then back
to the Orient again. He was decidedly in an inferior field in commerce.
If American diplomacy had been steadier in the East, freed from the
spoils system, his mentality and training were perfectly fitted for a
great American minister at Peking, or a great consul-general at Canton.
He was a deep student of the Filipino, as well as the Chinese, but was
altogether in favor of the latter. He was more pessimistic perhaps
than was justified regarding what America will be able to do with the
Filipino and the Philippines. A thorough student of the Far East, and
the representatives of all nations who gathered there, smiling like
Buddha in his vast but reserved knowledge, nothing irritated him so
much in his official duties as listening to the conversation of the
official American globe-trotter, who dropped into Hongkong for a week,
and then drove contrary opinions down the throats of such sinologues
as he was, and wrote books, most of the prophecies of which remain as
a joke when compared with events. There was one American senator and
another American official who wrote books of Far East prophecies whose
“cocksureness”, like that of the Kanaka surf-rider, used to strike to
the core of the resentment of this usually placid Solon of the East,
who died in the terrific heat of the Red Sea in 1910, worn out with his
long life near the equator, and never having written the books that
were within him, and which he really owed the world. His sister married
an Austrian nobleman. The family homestead was at Englewood, New
Jersey, and on his mother’s side he was connected with the Sheffields
and Phelpses, of Yale College memory.
There have been other notable Americans who served in China. Colonel
John S. Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla leader, was consul-general at
Hongkong from 1878–85, and General E. S. Bragg, of the Wisconsin Iron
Brigade of the Civil War, was consul-general at Hongkong from 1902–4.
The general had a sharp wit and tongue, and is known world wide for
these two phrases which got into domestic and international politics:
“We love Cleveland for the enemies he has made;” and, “You can as
easily make a citizen of a Cuban as a whistle out of a pig’s tail.” The
contretemps can be understood when it is explained that the general was
at the time consul at Havana. Like the Arabs of Longfellow, after this
incident and the receipt of some mail from Washington, he “folded his
tent and silently stole away” for Hongkong! General Bragg, at Antietam,
was approached by General Gibbon’s aide, with orders to push the enemy
as long as it was safe, and the former’s famous reply was: “It has been
d---- unsafe here for the last half hour. Forward again, Wisconsin.”
Mr. Rounsevelle Wildman, author of _China’s Open Door_, and editor of
_Overland Monthly_, consul-general at Hongkong, where he amused the
staid Britons by his energetic efforts to sell his worthy book, lost
his life aboard the Pacific Mail steamer _Rio_, which sank with all on
board just outside the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Daniel Webster sent
his son Fletcher as secretary of the famous Cushing Commission, which
visited Hongkong, Canton and Macao. Secretary William H. Seward later
passed over the same waters, and I have seen Admiral Greeley, of Polar
fame, picking out the great war secretary’s steps at Wanchi, Hongkong.
The Tibet traveler and author, A. H. Savage Landor, I knew at Hongkong.
Some of us believed his thrilling tales of escape after torture and
some of us were cynical. He was a worn man then, grateful for favors
that are usually accorded to the traveler, an enthusiast, a student of
the Western Chinese, and a courageous fellow.
In 1911, America, Britain, Germany and France arranged to loan China
about $100,000,000 for railways and new currency. A neutral financial
adviser was found to be necessary, and President Vissering, of the
Dutch Java Bank, was agreed upon by the four nations, with Japan
favorably impressed. If the loan agreements go through, and when
affairs assume their normal course in China, Doctor Vissering will have
opportunity to leave his mark in a wider sphere in the Far East. Mr.
Hillier has long represented the British financial interests in Peking;
Mr. Straight, the American; and Doctor George E. Morrison, of the
London _Times_ staff, has been adviser to both imperial and republican
governments at Peking.
One of the most remarkable imperialists who ever came to China was
Paul Doumer. He was a French newspaper man, and came East as consul,
later becoming governor of Indo-China, which he sealed to France with
an iron hand. He made Haiphong, Hanoi and Saigon remarkable centers
of civilization, sanitation, music, art, architecture, commerce and
French imperialism. Cost was nothing to him. He seemed to make or
hypnotize money after he had hypnotized governments and financiers
with his eloquence and ambition. He formed Legionary troops and held
a strong navy in the East. He brought the great Messageries Maritimes
steamship line from Marseilles to Saigon. He grasped Kwangchou Bay in
Kwangtung province, and made Hongkong tremble for her prestige over
Canton and the southwest, her old imperial sphere. Then he dreamed
great visions of imperialism, as Rhodes was dreaming in Africa, Curzon
in India, A. Colquhoun in Burma, Kitchener in the Soudan, and some
Americans like Roosevelt and Taft in Panama and the Philippines. He,
“_le petit_ Paul Doumer,” would build a six hundred-mile railway, much
of the right of way where men had never been before, from Haiphong
to Yunnan, in the heart of Southwest China, turn the British flank
at the headwaters of the Yangtze River, and link Yunnan, and some
day Chingtu, with Marseilles and Paris. What if fever, one hundred
bridges in fifty miles, a cost of $100,000 a mile of road, and a little
traffic had to be conquered, he would build to the center of China,
dividends or no dividends. By 1910 he and his men had done it. The
British, fired by Colquhoun and Curzon, raced him from Burma, but he
has beat them by fifteen years. The Chinese do not love the French,
and they are building from Yunnan to Nanning to reach Hongkong; but
it is largely French for the present at Yunnan. Hongkong and Mandalay
have been flanked. The Chinese would have preferred the Americans, or
the British, who do not covet Oriental land. The French aim to push
that railway up to Chingtu, and cut China in half. Yunnan City, on its
high plateau, once the farthest from Peking and civilization, is now
a center of remarkable modernity, the Chinese emulating the French
in lighted streets, water-works, factories, modern prisons, trade
schools, uniformed police, and a provincial army and arsenal of modern
type. If you ask how has Paul Doumer influenced China, _circumspice_
at Yunnan City. Before Paul Doumer came East, following the dream of
empire, if you had been asked which was the last city of China that
would adopt progress, you would have said “inaccessible Yunnan,”
whereas it has been almost the first. Doumer’s most notable book on
China is _L’Indo Chine Française_, with the emphasis on the _Française_!
For two decades the name of Mr. Rumor (I shall call him that for
the purposes of this sketch), of Hongkong, was synonymous with the
rocket which seemed to have become a fixed star. He was a Canadian,
born in the little riverine town of Belleville on the St. Lawrence.
Adventure found him in Hongkong, a clerk in the Public Works Department
of the Colonial Government, at a child’s salary in a land costly
for the foreigner. The Chinese were beginning to use wheat flour in
place of rice, which had become valuable for export. Rumor acted as
their adviser during lunch hours, when the fervid sun of the Orient
burned up the tamarind’s shade and fried the papaw’s thick leaves. In
time he himself quietly imported consignments of Oregon flour. His
Chinese compradore was honest and divided the profits, though the
compradore did all the work. Rumor grew richer, and became an agent
for Northern Pacific American mills. As the years passed, the able and
honest Chinese compradore brought him orders sufficient to load many
full ships that breasted the slow waves of the Pacific. The Chinese
compradore lived plainly, and saved enough money to become a financial
power in the great imperial colony. Rumor then went into military,
naval and diplomatic society, built one of the finest aerie mansions
in the Far East on Hongkong’s peak of palaces near the unique tram on
Barker Road, where a thousand feet of picturesque cliff fell from its
foundation. He imported Kentucky saddle horses and racers, and at great
expense put Canadian sheep on the foothills of old China to see if they
could conquer the bamboo grass. He owned a steam yacht and a sailing
yacht, gave musicales to the military of the garrison station at both
his down-town chambers on the Praya and at his mountain château, and
entertained an American governor of the East who became a president.
He was a handsome man, the mirror of fashion and manners in the
cosmopolitan colony. His was the easy bearing of those who associate
with princes and know their standing. Like Beau Brummel, of Piccadilly,
he could make a griffin’s social fortune by being seen walking with him
down the Praya. Stories were told of his recklessness in hours of play.
He was a dashing character, altogether. He made annual trips to the
great cities that line the equatorial belt of the world and to capitals
of the North. He seemed to have tapped the mines of Eldorado.
At last, he would add fame to riches. Hongkong was about to enter
the great educational arena in the awakening of the Far East with
a splendid university. Hormusjee Mody, the Prince of Parsees, gave
the land. Who would give the endowment and thus perhaps secure a
knighthood? Why, Rumor, who at last was truly popular and not envied
alone, for he was now about to do something for others than himself. In
the meantime he had started a Chinese flour mill at Junk Bay, Hongkong.
He would startle the whole economic world, as Harbin did, by grinding
Chinese grain on the spot, and he would import less Australian and
Oregon flour. There seemed to be no end to Rumor’s extension or the
glamour which he cast over his compradore and the Chinese bankers, as
well as the American mills. Many tried to emulate him and steal his
trade, or imitate his “chops” on the flour bags; but the Chinese, “olo
custom”, clung to Rumor, who alone expanded, came, saw and conquered.
San Francisco was shaken by an earthquake, and New York by a financial
panic. The twin waves went round the world, and met in Hongkong harbor
one dark night, just as Rumor, purposely unaccompanied by a white
man, was returning in his yacht _Canada_ from his flour mill at Junk
Bay, all the long miles of the famous harbor to the landing under his
mountain palace and the university site. No one knows much about it,
except that the crew at last missed him overboard. The tidal financial
wave had swamped him. He could ride its crest no more in splendor.
The great university will bear many names, but probably not the name
of Rumor as its endower when the accounts of the estate are balanced.
Three Chinese, of Singapore, stepped forward and endowed the university
with nearly $500,000 gold, although they were at the same time holding
up the hands of the exhausted Chinese republican revolution.
Sir Matthew Nathan came to Hongkong as governor from hot and feverish
Nigeria. Hongkong is a moist hot place, very near the direct sun of the
equator, and men who wish to live long go slow in the luxuries of work,
liquor, etc. It is a good place to send your victim, as David disposed
of Uriah “in the forefront of the hottest battle”. Sir Matthew’s
enthusiasm was to be every inch a “knower” (mandarin) of the people,
and a governor. He wore his staff out. He was up at unseasonable hours
in addition to his regular duties. He worked as hard on the hot Praya
as another man would on cool Piccadilly in March. Every emergency and
occasion found him at hand, whether an awful fire, a new railway, or
the launching of a great ship. The memorable typhoon of September,
1906, struck the unprepared colony which has been visited so often
with these circular hurricanes. Sir Matthew seemed to superintend the
rescuers at every spot of the long beach and harbor. When the steamboat
_Hankow_ holocaust occurred in October he worked, axe and arm, with the
firemen. Little wonder that he died, really of exhaustion. He was a
typical example of the grand old British civil service in China. He was
heroic, unselfish, tireless, sympathetic, a man whose example lives to
fire China with zeal and altruism.
Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the
American Peking legation and has served on many American political
missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s
government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with
Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin,
and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his
guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin,
the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has
done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese
Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is
a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of
the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father
wrote that noble basic work, _The Middle Kingdom_, but for his own work
as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The
American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely
explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the
debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.
Doctor H. H. Lowry, for many years president of the Methodist
College at the Hata Men gate, Peking, has long exercised a strong
influence upon Chinese officials and students. He is a man of great
tact, enthusiasm, wisdom and scholarship, and is known both to have
enlisted Yuan Shih Kai on the side of religious tolerance, and to have
confirmed him in modern educational methods. The American Methodist
bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, is a mighty militant man with the
southern republicans. The students adore him. The patriots of young
China worship him. Fiery zeal, idealism, and the courage of a lion
are characteristics of this influential, learned and sacrificing man.
Doctor F. D. Gamewell, of Peking, is a Methodist missionary who has
been in China for thirty years. He is world-famous for his engineering
skill in directing the fortification of the legations in the awful
siege of 1900. He is a man of great physical courage, calmness of mind,
and sanity of judgment, and is a tower of influence among the Chinese
officials. He hails from Hackensack, New Jersey.
C. W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first
locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of
North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the
Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in
mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity
in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston.
The British engineers who have established China’s great railway
development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in
charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans,
Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the
northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the
Australian at Peking who represents the London _Times_, has long held
the world bound to his prompt despatches regarding Chinese politics,
of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been
dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship
of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master
hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, _An
Australian in China_, speaks for itself.
The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long
terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they
have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester
University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books
reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language.
Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul
at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His
books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat
for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old
harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a
pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have
taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in
Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc.
His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and
among others his book, _Things Chinese_, is an encyclopedic authority.
The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong,
where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let
the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai,
too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote _China in
Law and Commerce_, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field
which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon Moule
wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai
men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who
for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority,
the _North China News and Herald_. Mr. Little was succeeded by the
eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The _National Review_,
a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter
Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous _Far
Eastern Review_, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University,
a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written
interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong,
married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous
type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary
officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer
in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church,
does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology
for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable
Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous
days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the
guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, _Three
Years in Western China_; _Manchuria, Its People and Resources_. Chester
Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in
the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, _The Real Chinese
Question_. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.
Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose
works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M.
Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his
Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai
Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years
and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial
secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult
language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the
name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of
_Lion and Dragon in North China_, who was one of our Hongkong cadets,
Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and
scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West
in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting
China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy,
their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of
a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai,
the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million
dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the
fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan
by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning
to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates
that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were
admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders
in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture,
building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of
progress and government.
Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian
University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps
best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern
(Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great
Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields
a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials of Middle
China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian
College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power
to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business
men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and
hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university
where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the
educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese,
teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western
trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes
to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed
to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the
protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H.
Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful
cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials
and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and
interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There
are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and
Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in
the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination.
Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great
college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St.
John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants,
travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their
interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East,
and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching
every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different
sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for
good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo arch,
before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are
weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their
emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of
reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books
devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various
types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The
traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they
seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the
sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women
who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least
4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in
Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and
women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one
must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality
for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many
types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.
No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming
political events and massacres as the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Peking, Monsieur Favier, who recently died. This was partially owing
to his remarkable judgment, and partially owing to his wide sources
of information, as Catholic converts are four times as numerous as
Protestant converts. Monsieur Favier, ahead of events, was the best
informed foreigner in China regarding the “Boxer” movement of 1900,
and if his advice had been followed by the legations, the foreigners
would have left Peking for the coast before the siege was instituted.
He did not intend to leave himself, as he felt it to be his duty to die
if necessary with his converts. Every one has admired his successful
defense of the Pei Tang cathedral.
The following prominent American educationalists in China visited
America in November, 1912, and spoke for China at the World’s Oriental
Congress at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts: Vice-president
Williams, of Nanking University; President Edmunds, of Canton Christian
College; President Goucher, of the University of Chingtu, and Professor
C. W. Young, of Union Medical College, Peking. It was regretted that
President Sheffield and Doctor Arthur H. Smith, the eminent author, of
the American Congregational College of North China, were not present.
Late advices state that the Chinese government at the close of 1912 has
taken into its employ in the administration of the salt gabelle, J. F.
Oiesen, a Dane of Tientsin; and as legal adviser, Monsieur Recouse, a
prominent Belgian. Wherever Belgians are used, it is generally for the
purpose of hiding the hands of France, and sometimes of Russia.
XVI
THE MANCHU
When the republicans rebelled against the dynasty, the following was
the indictment issued to the world’s press, and signed by Foreign
Minister Wu Ting Fang and Assistant Foreign Secretary Wen Tsung Yao,
at Shanghai. Wu, all the world knows as the Jefferson of the new
republican China. Wen is a very able modern lawyer, who made his name
as a resourceful amban at Lhasa.
1. Incapacity.
2. Reactionary.
3. Benighted and barbaric.
4. Opposes modern knowledge, science and industry.
5. Favors a closed door; stultified national service.
6. Opposes government by the people; favors Manchus who are
only one in about one hundred of the population.
7. Pensions a vast horde of non-working Manchus.
8. Barbaric against life and property, when opposed.
9. Constitutional promise insincere.
10. Manchus hold back world-progress.
11. Gave away Chinese territory.
12. Despised the Chinese and prohibited intermarriage.
13. Taxation without representation.
14. Haughtily refused to adopt Chinese system of three names,
thus maintaining a separate society.
15. The Manchu has no literature, and, therefore, is a
barbarian.
This Chinese Declaration of Independence first appeared at length
in the _North China Daily News_, of Shanghai, on November 15, 1911.
Similar complaints had been brought against the Manchu when the Taiping
rebellion opened in 1850. The Manchus were a hunting tribe whose
preserves lay along the wooded foothills of the Long White Mountain
(Chang Pai Shan) northeast of Mukden. The region is well described by
James in his _Long White Mountain_ (1888). The chieftain who whipped
the Manchus into shape for conquest was Nurha-Chu. He drilled their
cavalrymen from 1559 to 1626. From scattered tribes, dwelling in felt
michung-tents, he organized them as a Manchu horde with an ambition.
The Great Wall was not erected against the Manchus, but against the
ancient ancestors of Tartar cousins of theirs. The Manchus themselves
erected a palisade-barricade against their cousins, the Khitans, on the
west. It ran from Shan Hai Kwan, on the Pechili Gulf, where the Great
Wall meets the sea, northward five hundred miles until it reached the
Sungari River and encircled Kirin. I think it is difficult now to find
any part of the stockade, but I believe that James and Younghusband
found evidences of it in their exploration of Manchuria about 1886.
The North China Railway embankment west of Mukden absorbed part of the
historic mounds. The Manchus had no script. Nurha-Chu gave them one
based upon the Mongolian, which in turn was copied from the vertical
Syriac. This showed that Nurha-Chu talked with traveling priests who
had come down the Tarim valley. You will note the character on the
back of any Chinese cash coin, which has a square hole in the middle.
Obtain one of these coins, for they will be minted no more, and they
are historic; in fact, the oldest coin known. They are the oldest as
far as the Chinese face is concerned; the Manchu merely put the name of
the reign in Manchu on one side of the Chinese coin, ten of which
exchange for one American cent.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
A splendid view of the Great Wall, at its most picturesque angle.
Note tree-denuded mountains, the cause of the awful floods and
consequent famines. To pierce the wall was formerly a religious
sacrilege and a political folly.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Mule carts of North China: note serrated wheels, which are a commentary
on the muddy or sandy roads.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Pailoo memorial arch, a splendid type of the Chinese roof and screen
carving.]
The Manchus had learned that the host of Chinese people, one hundred
to his one, had no transport service (ponies); that they, therefore,
were not cohesive or mobile; that their capital could be held by any
bold clan which would at the beginning not exact too heavy a tribute,
and which would allow the people practically to rule themselves by
the classical examination and democratic civil service. The Manchus
informed this civil service that they could hold their places if they
adopted the Manchu style of hair-dressing, which was done, and in time
Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue became the official dress of
honor. The Chinese women were unconquerable. They never adopted the
Manchu style of dressing the hair over the ears, or of not compressing
the feet. The Manchus refused to adopt the Chinese system of using
family names first, making a three-named system, as Li Hung-Chang. The
Manchus used merely their double names, as Na-Tung, but their family
names were entered on the roster of one of the eight military banners.
Gradually the Manchu garrisons bullied the Chinese out of their walled
cities, and the Chinese had to build a second wall around the suburbs.
The events and dates of Manchu history, as it affects their own Ta
Ching (Great Pure) and foreign (Fung Kwei) civilizations, are told
shortly, as follows:
The Manchu Tien-Tsung overthrows the Ming King
Hwai Tsung and occupies Peking 1643
Tea brought to Europe in English ships from Canton 1660
Kang-Hi, greatest and most artistic Manchu Emperor,
ascends throne, Christianity almost established 1661
Galdan, Prince of Jungaria, conquers Kashgaria and
becomes supreme in Central Asia 1678
First treaty with European power (Russia) 1689
Commerce with East India Company begins at Canton 1680
Yung-Ching ascends throne; anti-Christian 1722
Jesuits expelled 1724
English send first man-of-war, _Centurion_, to China,
English being active at Canton, Ningpo, etc. 1742
First American vessel, _Empress of China_, from New
York, Captain Green, reaches Canton, China 1784
First American Consul, Major Shaw, at Macao,
China 1786
Philadelphia opens China trade with ship _Alliance_ 1788
Boston opens China trade with ship _Massachusetts_ 1789
Earl Macartney’s mission arrives at Peking, throwing
light on the Empire, which appeared to contain
4,402 walled cities, population 333,000,000,
the Tartar and Manchu army being 1,000,000 infantry
and 800,000 cavalry. Government absolute 1793
Macartney ordered to depart, the Chinese deciding to
seal the country against foreigners October 7, 1793
Sir G. L. Staunton, at London, in three volumes reveals
the heart of China and the capital to the
world, fixing the nations in their determination to
open China to modernity 1798
First English Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison,
arrives, and in American factory of Milner &
Bull at Canton translates Bible and compiles Chinese-English
dictionary 1808
Edict against Christianity 1812
Lord Amherst’s embassy, which failed because he
would not make “kotow” to Emperor as a
bearer of tribute from an inferior nation 1816
Exclusive rights of East India Company cease 1834
Lord Napier arrives at Macao to superintend British
commerce 1834
Opium dispute begins; the trade prohibited by
Emperor November, 1834
Opium burned at Canton by famous Chinese Commissioner
Lin February, 1835
Captain Elliot and British merchants leave Canton May, 1839
British and American seamen fight Chinese at Canton July 7, 1839
Hongkong taken by British August 23, 1839
British retire from Macao August 26, 1839
American frigate _Powhatan_ and British sloop _Rattler_
fight Chinese pirates in Kowloon Bay, opposite
Hongkong September 4, 1839
British trade with China ceases by edict of
Emperor December 6, 1839
Opium war between England and China, in which
old China received the soundest thrashing she ever
received from any foreign nation; many engagements;
many ports taken 1840
Treaty of peace signed before Nanking on board
ship _Cornwallis_, Sir Henry Pottinger for England
and Ki-Ying and Neu-Kien for China, China
paying indemnity of $21,000,000, throwing
open as treaty ports Canton, Amoy, Fuchau,
Ningpo and Shanghai, and ceding Hongkong
Island to Britain August 29, 1842
American Commissioner Cushing, Daniel Webster’s
son Fletcher, etc., arrive at Canton 1844
Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue adopted as
official color 1855
Famous Empress Dowager Tse Hsi and Viceroy Li
Hung Chang arise to power 1856
Non-fulfilment of Nanking treaty with Britain causes
war again 1856
Coolie slave trade for Peru, Cuba, California, etc.,
opens at Macao 1860
Britain and France war with China 1860
Taiping rebellion, beginning at Canton, sweeps to
Nanking; opposed by the American, Ward;
Chinese Gordon, etc., on behalf of Manchus 1863
Yung Wing brings first Chinese students to America
(Hartford) 1872
Terrific Mohammedan rebellion in Shensi, Kansu,
Yunnan provinces and Turkestan, suppressed by
ferocious General Tso Tsung-tang, Mohammedan
leader, Yakub Beg, being assassinated in Turkestan May, 1877
Sir Robert Hart establishes Chinese national customs,
first guarantee for foreign loans 1886
China-Japan war over Korea; Formosa lost; indemnity
also paid 1894
Emperor Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts, influenced by
Kang Yu Wei 1898
Siege of Peking by allies 1900
Russia-Japan war over Manchuria 1904
America, Britain and China at Shanghai agree to end
opium curse 1909
Death of Emperor Kwang Hsu and Empress Dowager
Tse Hsi together 1909
Republican rebellion, led by Generals Li and Hsu,
and planned by Sun Yat Sen 1911
Abdication of Manchus 1912
One serious charge against the Manchu is that he has been continually
signing away China: Formosa and Korea to Japan, Manchuria to Russia,
Kwangchou Bay and Tonquin to France, Kiaochou to Germany, and
Wei-Hai-Wei to Britain. The Manchus themselves are to blame for the
lack of respect shown the throne and dynasty in the last fifty years.
Prince Chun might have taken the throne himself, but in fear of the
cabal of jealous princes he named his child Pu Yi. This system of
a long regency had several times been put in force by the Manchu
intriguer, especially by the Dowager Tse Hsi with Kwang Hsu. When the
latter grew up and asserted himself, he was destroyed, and another
child, this Pu Yi, named as his successor. The same murderous and
unstable system has been followed in putting up a new child Dalai
Lama at Lhasa every few years, the old Dalai being informed that “it
is time for him to pass his soul on to a new incarnation”. He can
commit hara-kiri or be murdered. The Chinese people felt that there
was no emperor to worship and obey, but rather a cabal in usurpation
at Peking, and an irreligious cabal at that. From the time of the Chou
founders, 1200 B. C., to make light of the sacrifices by letting a
child do a man’s duties, was a cardinal sin.
Moreover, the Manchu in his long rule at Peking debased the idea of
government by women and eunuch favorites. No one concerned will ever
forget the power of the notorious eunuch Li Lien Ying at Peking in the
years which led to the coup d’état of 1898, when reformers and emperor
were crushed to the ground. This notorious “grafter” really shared the
throne power with the Dowager Tse Hsi, and the Emperor Kwang Hsu was in
continual disgrace. The Manchus knew that it was unconstitutional to
honor eunuchs. During the minority of Kang-Hi, the greatest emperor of
the Manchus, the regents degraded the eunuchs and had the law engraved
on iron plates of one thousand pounds each. Why did not Tse Hsi observe
this law during her long regency? Did she think the people would not
remember and that her successor, Prince Chun, and the dynasty would
not suffer? Because of her hospitality when at the close of her life
she permitted her portrait to be painted for the St. Louis Exposition
by a talented American woman, and when she entertained several of the
charming legation ladies at Peking, books have been written by her
guests, in their womanly kindness of heart, and one book by a talented
editor friend of mine at Hongkong, palliating her offenses as a tyrant,
a reactionary and a murderess. The long cold history of British and
American diplomacy; the domestic history of China during her period,
the Boxer siege, the written testimony of the Emperor Kwang Hsu, her
“dummy” policy, the experiences of the great reformers, including
Yuan; her persecution over the whole world of Kang Yu Wei and Sun Yat
Sen by her spy system; the national newspapers, the publications of
Ching-Shan, her household controller; the statements of the American
secretaries of her chief viceroy, Li Hung Chang; the republican
revolution and Declaration of Independence of 1911, are all insistent
that egotism and reaction sat closest to the heart of this powerful
woman; that she belonged to the class of Catherine and not to the class
of Elizabeth or Victoria. If this was the character for seventy years
of the leader of the Manchus, what was the character of the followers!
Owing to the Manchu’s lack of an art sense, he has neglected the
beautiful bridges and broad roads left by the Sung dynasty; the
artistic towers left by the Tang dynasty; the gorgeous pagodas left
by the artistically incomparable Ming dynasty; and the fine canals
left by the Mongols. There should, perhaps, be less surprise over the
difference in the intellectual powers of the Manchu and the Chinese.
Three hundred and fifty years ago the Manchu was only a hunter, a
warrior and fisherman, like his cousins, the Buriats and Tungus up
in Siberia to-day; whereas for immemorial centuries the Chinese has
been a merchant, a scientific agriculturalist, and a scholar, and has
always earned his own living without benefit of government subsidy or
class privilege in any way, which have enervated the Manchus of to-day
and yesterday. The reaction of the patient Chinese in the October,
1911, rebellion against the Manchu conqueror was natural. The surprise
is that it was withheld for three centuries. The Manchus have never
mingled with the Chinese. All the large cities, even to distant Canton
and Yunnan, 1,200 and 1,400 miles away from the center of power, have
separate walled Manchu cities, or Tartar cities as they are generally
called, which were taken from the original Chinese. In an effort to
appease the complaints of insurgents, the Regent Prince Chun in 1909
recalled the edict which until that late year prohibited Manchus from
marrying Chinese.
Like all minorities that try to intrench their privileges, the Manchu
is much of a “snob”. It is not uncommon to hear this sneer at Peking
regarding the Chinese women of the south: “Oh, she’s a woman from
the southern provinces; you can’t expect manners from her.” The fact
is that the Chinese women of Nanking, Hangchow, Soochow, Canton and
other southern cities have more refined manners than the rough-riding
Manchus, the daughters of raiders. The wearing of the queue and the
skull cap is a Manchu custom, imposed in the seventeenth century upon
the conquered Chinese. One of the first things the Han republicans did
in the October, 1911, revolution was to cut off the queue which they
declared was a sign of servitude to the dynasty which they were trying
to displace. The head-dress of the Manchu women shows the bunching of
the hair over each ear instead of behind the head and on the neck, as
is the Chinese custom. The Manchus do not deform the feet, nor paint,
both of which have been Chinese customs. The gown of the Manchu women
is longer than that of the Chinese women, the latter showing the
divided skirt, or rather wide trousers. Other distinctive Manchu styles
are the jewel-buttons, denoting rank, worn on the peak of the conical
official hat; the peacock’s feather worn at the back of the hat; the
peacock design in embroidery; the yellow riding jacket.
Manchus drink kaoliang spirits in place of rice samshu. Their battle
flags have been triangular instead of oblong. The peculiar daylight
audiences given by the throne to the grand councilors and viceroys
showed the fear of publicity, and a recognition of estrangement from
the people. They seemed to think that a throne that was surrounded
with a good deal of mystery, exclusiveness, smoke of incense and
darkness was stronger than a throne that was clearly outlined in the
love of the people. A curious worship of the Manchu leaders, who are
more superstitious than religious, is that of the fox. The great Fox
Temple at Mukden, the ancestral temple of the dynasty, is famous. The
Chinese leaders have never been as crude as this in their grossest
superstition. The Chinese, especially the hard-working southerners who
pay most of the taxes, have objected to the pensions accorded to a
million Manchus gathered under the eight banners, and quartered, with
the privilege to bear arms, in walled cities, barracks and arsenals
throughout the land. In the fall of the Manchus, intrenched so long
behind a spy system, control of taxation, trade routes and judicial
appointees, all oppressive systems and tyrants should take notice
that however intrenched they may seem to be against the people, the
people will in the end become supreme, with a long, long memory of the
wrongs that they have endured against their will, and the theme of
“Restitution” on their tongues. To quote the words of Wu Ting Fang, the
Jefferson of China, well known to Americans and Britons: “The hand of
the people is now at the plough, and they must of necessity push on to
the uttermost end of the furrow.”
The books written on Manchuria include James’ _Long White Mountain_;
Sir Francis Younghusband’s _Narrative of Travels in Manchuria_, 1896;
Hosie’s _Manchuria, Its People, Etc._; Howarth’s _Origin of the
Manchus_; Doctor J. Ross’ _Manchus or the Reigning Dynasty_; E. H.
Parker’s _Manchus in China_. Doctor A. Wylie translated the Manchu
grammar and the _Tsing Wen Keung_. These are all British writers.
Professor I. Zacharoff compiled a Russian-Manchu dictionary and wrote
on the Manchus in 1875, and Von Mollendorff composed a Manchu grammar.
It is possible that in exile from the throne the Manchus may revive
the little literature and language that they possess; or, champion
intriguers that they and their race are, Prince Tuan, Prince Su, the
Tsai Princes, General Yin Tchang and others may continue to plot from
Jehol, Kalgan, Urga, Mukden, Dalny and other places of exile. Manchu
literature consists of only two hundred and fifty works, nearly all of
which are translations of the Chinese classics.
What greater proof was ever given of the irreconcilable differences
between the Manchus and Chinese, than the ominous silence of the
Chinese members of the momentous meeting of the Grand Council called
by the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi at Peking on June 16, 1900, to decide
on the final attitude toward the “Boxers”. When the Manchus showed an
insane determination to destroy their dynasty, the Chinese members by
silence assented, and the republican rebellion of 1911 was only the
outward manifestation of the spirit of the silence of 1900.
XVII
CHINA’S ARMY AND NAVY
The revolution of 1911 made known to the world the Chinese generals
on the northern and southern sides, who were really able to command a
modern army in action as well as in field maneuvers. Generals Li, Ling,
Ho, Hwang, Hsu, etc., were the leading southerners. Generals Feng,
Chang, Chao and Sheng were among the leading northerners in active
service. All of these are Chinese. The much-heralded Manchu generals
proved a failure, and few of the old-style Tartar generals, like Chiang
and Chen of Pechili province; Na Yen, of Kalgan; Tuan, of the Red
Banner Corps; Prince Su, of the Peking Gendarmerie, etc., were called
upon to serve in the field. The latter decidedly had the ferocious
temperament, but they lacked the knowledge of modern tactics. General
Chao Ehr Feng, conqueror of the Tibet mutiny and the Dalai Lama in
1910, an effective old-style general, was cooped up in Chingtu City at
the opening of the rebellion in September, 1911. General Yin Tchang,
the Manchu general-in-chief; Brigadiers-General Ha and Liang, who
visited America in 1910; Major General Ho; Prince Tsai Tao, the Manchu
minister of war; Prince Yu Lang, of the dapper gray Imperial Guards,
etc., never got much nearer the war than the point of mobilization, and
their private car on the Hankau-Peking railway, with the engine pointed
northward! The military princes of the royal blood, Tsai Pu, Tsai Jin,
Duke Ling, Prince Pu, etc., all kept their dress uniforms innocent
of the dust of field and the grime of powder. Prince Tsai Hsu, royal
admiral of the navy, kept aboard his luxurious steam yacht which the
Kiangnan Dock Company of Shanghai built for him, and sulked away from
Admiral Sah’s service fleet, which was making a last dash to cut the
rebel’s left flank between Wuchang and Hankau.
The modern Chinese army dates back to 1894 and the defeat in the
China-Japan War over Korea. Viceroys Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai
were bent on drilling an effective service. Chiefly German and Japanese
instructors were hired, though there were a few other foreigners also.
General Upton (U. S. A.), of Civil War fame, once made a trip to China
and planned with Viceroy Li Hung Chang the establishment of a Chinese
West Point in the north, which has been begun in the Pei Yang Military
College at Tientsin. Emperor William personally instructed General Yin
Tchang in Germany. An army of Imperial Guards and ten divisions, mostly
territorial for facility in recruiting and mobilizing, was whipped into
shape chiefly in the northern provinces, and twenty other divisions
were partly formed as provided for by the famous Army Edict of April
16, 1906. Modern arsenals, headquarters offices, field maneuvers, Red
Cross, foreign instructors, the Pei Yang Military College, etc., were
all provided for. The old-style provincial turbaned troops allotted to
each viceroy, and the pensioned soldiers of the eight Manchu banners
were not all disbanded. They were quartered among the 4,000 walled
cities. No conscription was necessary, as the men seemed anxious to
serve for the wage, or the promise of six dollars a month. The plan
was to keep the men three years with the colors, three years with the
reserve, and thereafter for ten years with a landwehr on the German
plan. By 1900 the new army was not cohesive, or the reactionary
empress dowager, Prince Tuan, General Tung Fu of Kansu, and Yu Hsien,
of Shangtung, would have wiped out the foreigners in the legations and
Admiral Seymour’s international relief expedition at Tientsin. When
the 1911 rebellion opened, the Eighth Division joined the republicans
at Wuchang, and earned immortal glory. Their brothers of the Third
Division opposed them at Hankau. The Ninth Division of Shangtung and
Kiangsu territorials held Nanking for the imperialists, but the Kiangsu
Brigade of that division later deserted. The Twentieth Division of
Manchurian territorials at Lanchow Camp near Peking earned immortal
glory by sending up to the National Assembly and the throne nineteen
constitutional articles which they said had to be signed before they
would war for the throne. This was _lèse majesté_ with a vengeance! The
Guards Division was at Peking, where it stayed, watching the hoards of
bullion and sycee more than constitutional articles! The Sixth Division
was in Shansi province. The First Division of Manchu troops, and the
Second and Fourth Divisions at times shuttlecocked along the railway
between Hankau and Peking. The Fifth Division was at Tsinan, capital of
Shangtung province.
Had China’s army not been territorial, the rebellion might never
have got into swing, because it would have been impossible to have
intrigued with a mixed Eighth Division. Again, had China’s army not
been territorial, President Yuan could have used the Third, Fourth,
Sixth and Twentieth Divisions at Peking in March, 1912, to suppress
the mutiny, whereas these divisions remained in sympathy with the
First Manchu Division and the Imperial Guards Division, and refused to
obey the constitutional head of the government at a climacteric time.
A mixed army is not easily mobilized, but when mobilized it is more
amenable to discipline, and the ignoring of local feeling in view of
the larger aims of statesmanship. England’s, Germany’s and France’s
armies are territorial. Italy’s and America’s regular armies are not.
America’s vast militia army, however, on which she mainly depends, is,
of course, territorial.
General Yin Tchang, who had much to do with organizing the effective
ten divisions of the northern army, is a graduate of Peking University.
He served five years in the Austrian infantry, and as minister to
Germany, at Emperor William’s request, he enjoyed that unusually able
and enthusiastic monarch’s private instruction in army matters. In 1900
General Yin Tchang came in contact with the allied forces at Tientsin,
and held his retreat together well enough to elicit much admiration.
General Yin and the regent, Prince Chun, both visited Hongkong in 1901
and there gained sympathy from us all for the great promise which
they showed in guiding the New China. Yin Tchang’s excellent idea was
to take the provincial armies away from the viceroys, and make the
new divisions answerable to the Board of War (Ping Pu) at Peking.
Prince Tsai Tse’s, the finance minister’s plan, was to inform each
governor what amount he was to send to Peking as the province’s share
in maintaining a central army. There was considerable conflict over
this issue, many southern governors saying that they paid for two
armies, one modern army which was held in the north, of which they
never received their allotted division or brigade, and the old-style
provincial troops which they had to maintain to preserve order. General
Ha Han-Chang, a Chinese by blood, came next to Yin in drilling the new
army. He is also a Pei Yang graduate, and trained with the Japanese
army. General Liang-Pi, a Manchu, had an experience similar to that
of General Ha, before accepting command of the First Brigade. None
of these men is like Tieh-Liang and the other well-known old-style
generals, strong in classics but weak in tactics. They reversed the
order. General Li Chin Hsi at remote Yunnan City raised and drilled an
excellent division. The division at Canton went all to pieces before
the republican troops of General Wu Sum, but the Shansi divisions were
effectually held together by General Sheng Yun, a Mongol, who later
captured the Tongkwan pass, which commands the road from the west to
Peking. Many soldiers of the southern divisions, in the first few
weeks of the revolution, fired from the hip, as they were not used to
the recoil on the shoulder. They, of course, soon did better. One of
the best and most popular marksmen of the Singapore Rifle Team which
competed at Bisley in 1910 was Sergeant Tan Chow Kim, a Cantonese
Chinese.
The name of Frederick T. Ward should be linked with “Chinese” Gordon’s
in connection with Chinese military records. General Ward, born at
Salem, Massachusetts, lost his life in the service of China. He
organized and led the only great army that China ever had before
1906. His name stands linked with Gordon’s as the maker of the “Ever
Victorious Army,” the conqueror of the Taiping horde.
A modern rage for dull-colored new uniforms has struck gorgeously
gowned old China. I shall recite an amusing instance. In the fall
of 1911 a band of rebels organized in Sining, in far-western Kansu
province. They chose a boy of fifteen as their prophet leader because
he bore peculiar birthmarks. He was given the fanciful name of Savior
of the Land (Chu Shih Waang). The generals reported that the new force
should wear modern uniforms of cotton. The stores were swamped with
orders, and every bolt of foreign cotton was immediately bought up, no
matter what its design. The Imperial Guards wear gray, and the other
divisions wear blue and khaki.
Aviation was introduced in China (really Indo-China) at Saigon on
December 1, 1910, by the Holland-Frenchman, Vanderborn. He was followed
later in the year at Shanghai by the American, “Bud” Mars. The first
Chinese aviator was Fug-Yu, who was trained in America, and who
experimented at the Lanchow (east of Peking) camp in 1911. During the
revolution a number of Chinese students took lessons in aviation in
America and left for the rebel front. Had the war continued it was the
intention to destroy Peking by dynamite dropped from air-ships. Both
Sun and Yuan are to be congratulated that this necessity was obviated
by diplomacy.
China’s antiquity, vast population and warlikeness have been brought in
question by some writers. That she had a vast population as far back
as the third century before the Christian era is proved by the army
records. The Ts’in clan, operating under their celebrated General Peh
Ki, slew and beheaded in 293 B. C. 240,000 Hans; in 275 B. C. 40,000
Ngwheis; in 264 B. C. 50,000 Hans; in 260 B. C. 400,000 Chows, and in
256 B. C. 90,000 more Chows, thus exterminating the imperial ancestral
clan which instituted the sacrifices and held the sacred tripods. Szma
Tsien, the historian, writing at 100 B. C., says the allies lost a
million men in fighting this Ts’in clan. After the Christian era the
Chinese took fewer plural wives and fought fewer wars. Twenty years
ago, an emperor who raised the despised military class to the equal of
scholars, farmers and merchants, would have been decapitated. Compare
one of the military edicts of the regent, Prince Chun, dated Peking,
April, 1911: “We are of the opinion that militarism is the first thing
necessary to the upbuilding and preservation of a nation.”
Some of the military proverbs of the old Chinese are:
“The best general thinks of wise strategy before blind courage.”
“A mob does not make a regiment, for a trained man is as effective as a
score untrained, and much easier to save in a retreat.”
“A good general can’t blame defeat on bad soldiers, for a good general
has no poor regiments.”
“The pike only grabs the duck’s lame leg that can’t kick.”
“The battle may not be for a cycle of years, but the soldier must awake
for it every day.”
“A dog that bites the hardest shows his teeth the least.”
“A whisper can bring on a war.”
“Keep your good cannon masked, and your bad guns on brave parade.”
“If the enemy doesn’t know your weakness, you are not weak.”
“It’s the man behind the gun more than the gun, and the man inside the
fort more than the wall.”
Chinese literature is not without its stirring war songs, which
breathe not only the pathos of the suffering of those at home, but
the sacrificing patriotism of the ranks. The following is quoted from
Confucius’ Odes, B. C. 551:
THE SOLDIER
I climbed the barren mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the red-lit eaves of my father’s home,
And I fancied that he sighed.
I climbed the grass-clad mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the rosy light of a little room,
Where I thought my mother sighed.
I climbed the topmost summit,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the garden roof where my brother stood,
And I fancied that he sighed.
My brother serves as a soldier
With his comrades night and day,
But my brother is filial and may return,
Though the dead lie far away.
The following far older poem was written in 800 B. C. by Li Hua to
commemorate a battle between the ancient Chinese tribe of Wei and the
Northern Mongols:
THE BATTLEFIELD
Many men with but one heart;
Many lives to sell as one.
Foes and Nature interlock;
Sands arise; hills join the shock.
Rivers, death fills like a flood;
Red, Wei’s Great Wall too with blood.
Slaves ye shall be if ye yield;
Dead men if ye fight the field!
Fled no warrior; name on name,
Ghosts approach me, starred with fame.
With such Spartan poetry the early Chinese were able to fire the race
with militarism. The ideograph is virile and laconic in the highest
degree, just as the Anglo-Saxon of “Beowulf” is more condensed than our
later Latinized speech.
Confucius believed in revenge upon a murderous enemy of one’s family.
He replied to a question of a pupil on this matter: “Have only your
weapons for a pillow.”
Two of the promising colonels in the southern republican army are
graduates (1909 class) of the American West Point Academy. They were
admitted on the personal recommendations of President Roosevelt. One
is Colonel Wen Ying Hsing, a nephew of Wen Tsung Yao, who is assistant
minister of foreign affairs of the Nanking Republican Assembly. Colonel
Wen has seen hard service as military adviser of the Canton Provincial
Assembly. The other “West Pointer” is Colonel Chen Ting, brother of
Doctor Chen Shin Tao, minister of finance of the Nanking Republican
Assembly.
On one of my rambles through the narrow streets of Canton I dropped
into an artist’s shop on Yuck Tsze Street and selected some treasured,
delightful opal-colored paintings, full of spirit, of the old
picturesque three-masted Manchu war-junks which in the early days one
saw sometimes beating into the reaches and broads of the flooded waters
of Kwangtung province. The yellow shields, emblazoned with ideographs,
hang over the midship bulwarks of the ship. The latticed red rudder is
high above the water so that it may drag the unwieldy keelless boat
around. The great blue sweeps, with yellow eyes, stretch from the
galley-ports. The ship itself has eyes on the bow. The overhanging
cabin in the high stern is crowded with men, stores and bronze cannon.
The low red prow cuts the olive green sea into white foam. The red
triangular flags flaunt challenge from all the masts. The great square
brown matting sails spread like clouds above the blue-gowned leadsman
in the bow. Dipping under the horizon are the fleeing black banners of
the enemy, and the sea-gulls scatter in terror. Only the serrated blue
hills are brave along the iron shores.
The first important names in connection with the building and drilling
of China’s modern navy are Captain Lang, R. N. (British), and Captain
Siebelin (U. S. N. and H. S. M.). These men prepared the fleet for the
war with Japan in 1894, which developed Admiral Ting and Captain Teng
as China’s sole naval heroes, who, however, could do little with an
inefficient war board (Ping Pu) behind them. The captured battleships
_Chen Yuen_ and _Ting Yuen_ are in Japan’s retired list. They were very
fine ships for their day, and resisted heavy punishment in the battles
of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei. The navy training schools are at Tientsin,
Chifu, Nanking, Fuchau, Shanghai, Amoy, and there will be another at
Nimrod Bay, south of Ningpo. Admiral Beresford, on his visit to China
in 1898, advised with the Chinese officials, especially Li Hung Chang,
regarding navy matters, and some cruisers were built in England, though
the two best battleships were built in Germany. Captain Bradley Osbon,
an American, served for years in developing the Chinese navy.
The Chinese cruiser _Hai Chi_, painted the regulation gray, and
spreading the gorgeous yellow dragon flag, took part in King George
the Fifth’s coronation festivities at Spithead in July, 1911, and in
September, 1911, she came to New York and anchored beneath Grant’s
tomb. Conspicuous friendliness on both occasions was shown to the
officers and crew as a mark of the new interest in China which has
arisen in Britain and America especially. Similar cruisers, the _Hai
Chow_ and the _Hai Yung_; gunboats of the _Po Pik_ class; and torpedo
boats of the _Wu Pang_ class, were in constant use in China in the
ante-republican days. One day they were watching that Portugal did not
encroach at Macao; a week later shelling rebels around the great cities
which line the Yangtze River or making a dash to the Gulf of Pechili to
be ready to take on board the infant emperor. The cruiser _Fei Hung_,
the first Chinese warship built in America, was launched at Camden, New
Jersey, on April 24, 1912. Larger cruisers are building in England, and
when Chinese politics and finances are more settled, it is proposed to
order battleships from both Britain and America, and form three fleets,
the Northern, Yangtze Central and Southern fleets. Shanghai can dock
the smaller vessels, but British Hongkong alone has up to this time
been able to dock battleships in Chinese waters. China has as yet no
submarines. The British navy maintains several submarine torpedo boats
at Hongkong, and in that land-locked harbor, of all others in the
world, the moral effect upon an enemy would be terrifying.
In recent years the naval policy of China has been developed by Prince
Tsai Hsu. Admiral Sah Chen Ping, who commanded the Yangtze fleet which
operated against the republicans in October, 1911, and against the
pirates who attacked Yale College, at Changsha, in 1910, has visited
America, and entertained the American round-the-world fleet at Amoy
in 1908. He has a son in a western American college. General Li Yuen
Heng, one of the two greatest republican generals, was really trained
for the navy at Pei Yang and Chifu Colleges, and in Japan. Admirals
Jiu Cheng, Li Chun, of the Canton riots of April, 1911; Tan; Ching,
who entertained the American fleet at Amoy; Commander Hsu Chen Pang,
who was educated at Hartford, America; Admirals Liu and Hai Chun;
Admiral Chin Yao Huan and Commander Wu Chung Lin, both of whom visited
New York on the cruiser _Hai Chi_, are all well known. Commanders
Chen, Yang and Wong represented China when the cruiser _Fei Hung_ was
built at Camden, New Jersey, in 1912. When the republican troops took
the Shanghai arsenal it discouraged the navy, which could not secure
ammunition in time for effective work. The fleet then went over to the
red, white and blue sun flag, and later landed a republican army in
Shangtung province at Chifu to flank the imperial left wing operating
at Tsinan. The fleet also made a demonstration against Chin Wang Tao
on the gulf of Pechili, thus forcing the imperialists to hold several
divisions in the north to protect Peking. This enabled the republicans
to follow up the Nanking victory, drive General Chang out of Nganhwei
province, and made the Whei River instead of the Yangtze River the
republican front. If America undertakes with a Pacific fleet to back
up for all time the “non-partition of China” policy, the writer is
not a believer in a Chinese navy at present, outside of possibly one
dreadnought a year when the finances are revised. Of course a strong
revenue and police fleet for the rivers should be provided. Attention
should rather be given to China’s army, so that she may be able to do
her own police work as far as Russian or other intruders are concerned.
Having no oversea colonies, she really has no use for a navy at
present, excepting that one dreadnought a year would, if necessary,
lend a little more than moral support to America’s altruistic and
non-land-grabbing policy in the Far East.
The Chinese are splendid sailors, and as is well known, they invented
the water-tight compartment in their junks, sanpans and wupans
forgotten centuries ago. I have had much intercourse with the watermen
of the southern provinces and can speak well of their seamanship. They
compose the crews of the mercantile fleets which cross the Pacific,
and have brought their ships through those awful circular typhoons
which rage for days. They have also developed modern yacht designers
like Ah King at Hongkong, and they are quick at the tiller and boom. I
have, in writing of the Chinese, given perhaps a hundred instances of
things which they do oppositely to the Occidental manner. Here is the
one hundred and first: Holding their nostrils, they dive feet foremost,
like the pearl fishermen of the Manaar Gulf of Ceylon! When our launch
screws would get tangled with the many ropes of Blake Wharf, Hongkong,
I have often seen half of the crew merrily jump overboard with knives
in their teeth, and work under water for an extraordinary length of
time; and though some writers call the Chinese stolid and humorless, I
have always seen them highly appreciative of applause and good-natured
laughter over the unexpected incidents that arise in an Oriental day’s
work. On one occasion the writer, who was exhausted with the tide, was
saved from drowning at Junk Bay, Hongkong, by the quick-witted efforts
of a native laota (coxswain) who deftly swung his launch within reach,
and whose ready arms reached out to “chiu ming” (save life).
The short story of China’s navy would not be complete without a word
on the naval engagements of the China-Japan War of 1894–5 over Korea,
when the whole world breathlessly watched the first trial of modern
ironclads, and when the Chinese on several occasions really showed
fearlessness under hopeless conditions. At the end of July, 1894,
Chinese troops arrived at the Yalu River (which divides Korea and
Manchuria) to reinforce General Yeh and Yuan Shih Kai, under cover of
the cruiser _Chi Yuen_ (2,300 tons, 17.5 knots), the _Kuang Yi_ (1,030
tons, 16 knots), etc. On July 25th this fleet was met by the much
superior Japanese fleet consisting of the _Yoshino_ (4,100 tons, 23
knots), _Akitsushima_ (3,150 tons, 19 knots), and _Naniwa_ (19 knots).
After a hot exchange the _Chi Yuen_ escaped from the faster _Yoshino_
by superior work in the stokehold. The _Kuang Yi_ ran aground. Admiral
Ting, the one big name in China’s navy, with a weak squadron, daringly
sailed from Pechili Gulf on September 14th for the Yalu, landed stores,
and skilfully evaded Admiral Ito’s and Rear-Admiral Tsuboi’s squadrons.
On September 17th, Admiral Ting led the way with the _Chen Yuen_ (7,400
tons, 15-knot German-built battleship) and the _Ting Yuen_, a twin
battleship, in the center, the other vessels on the wings, to meet the
Japanese fleets which were advancing in column. Ito passed wide of
the right wing of the Chinese. At 6,000 yards the Chinese opened fire
ineffectively, but the Japanese reserved their fire until 3,000 yards’
range was reached. The Japanese passed through to the rear, and drove
off the smaller Chinese warships. The larger Chinese vessels swung to
starboard to keep their bows toward the circling Japanese. The Japanese
armored cruiser _Fuso_ (3,700 tons, 13 knots), built in England,
steamed in close to the Chinese line. The _Hi Yei_, protected Japanese
cruiser (2,250 tons, 14 knots), crossed between the Chinese battleships
_Chen Yuen_ and _Ting Yuen_, and as could be expected, both were so
damaged that they had to seek the Japanese rear. The slow Japanese
_Akagi_, gunboat (614 tons, 13 knots), was hit by the Chinese left
wing. The second Japanese squadron now came up, and at once attacked
the Chinese front, the first Japanese squadron having completed the
circle, attacking the Chinese rear. The Japanese then withdrew and
reformed, but the Chinese were not able to reform their line. The
Chinese _Yuen Wei_ (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) on fire, headed for
the Yalu, where she sank with the brave Captain Teng. The Chinese
_Chao Yuen_ (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) was accidentally rammed
by the unmanageable Chinese _Chi Yuen_ (coast defense, 2,300 tons, 17
knots), and both sank, leaving only the two Chinese battleships, which
kept fighting and following the Japanese as best they were able. The
second Japanese squadron sank the Chinese _King Yuen_ (coast defense,
2,900 tons, 15 knots), while the first Japanese squadron circled
around the two Chinese battleships, which could not be maneuvered to
advantage. The Chinese _Ting Yuen_ cleverly planted a shell into the
Japanese _Matsushima_ (coast defense, 4,277 tons, 16 knots, French
built). At 5:30 P. M., after seven and one-half hours’ fighting, the
Japanese withdrew for repairs, although they had three armored coast
defense, 4,200-ton, 16-knot ships in good condition, two armored and
six protected cruisers, all of which answered their helms.
On October 18th, the Chinese battleship _Chen Yuen_ struck at Wei Hai
Wei and was seriously injured. On February 5, 1895, at 2 A. M., by a
bold move, the first of its kind in naval war, the Japanese torpedo
boats raced for an entrance to narrow Wei Hai Wei harbor. Eight boats
got in under the high-pointed guns of the fort and fired eleven
torpedoes. One torpedo from boat “9” struck the Chinese battleship
_Ting Yuen_, which steamed for shallow water, where the Chinese blew
her up (this is the battleship which the Japanese later raised and used
against the Russians in 1904). The Japanese lost torpedo boats “9” and
“22”.
On the morning of February 6th, five more Japanese torpedo boats headed
for the harbor, and four entered, torpedoing the Chinese _Lai Yuen_
(coast defense, 2,900 tons, 15 knots) German built; the _Wei Yuen_
(corvette, 1,300) and tender _Pan Fah_. The Chinese torpedo fleet
attempted to escape from the western entrance, but were captured or
destroyed by the first Japanese squadron. The Japanese towed mortar
platforms near the western entrance, and pounded the remaining Chinese
battleship _Chen Yuen_, which sank, as her deck was not armored (later
raised by Japanese and used against the Russians in 1904). On February
17th, Admiral Ito steamed in, and China’s one fighting naval hero,
Admiral Ting, brave but unfortunate, committed suicide. The Japanese
secured as prizes the _Kang Chi_, third-class cruiser (1,030 tons,
16 knots), built at Shanghai; the _Ping Yuen_ (coast defense, 2,600
tons, 10 knots), built at Shanghai, and the _Kuang Ping_ (third-class
cruiser, 1,030 tons, 16 knots), built at Shanghai. The battle showed
the world that a large, fast mosquito fleet, with longer-range guns,
can whip even a few bulldog battleships, if the maneuvering of the
latter is crippled by lucky shots early in the engagement. In other
words, a fleet of faster unarmored cruisers, converted _Lusitanias_,
for instance, whose full gun and engine power is effectively
maintained, by choosing and keeping their favored range, could in the
open sea finally whip poorly handled units of slower battleships.
On one other occasion the crew of a Chinese warship quitted themselves
like men. That was when the gunboat _Chen Wei_ alone engaged the whole
French fleet of armor-clads at Foochow, August 23, 1884. I quote the
report of an independent eye-witness, Commissioner Carrall of Sir
Robert Hart’s Imperial Customs Service: “Exposed to the broadsides of
the _Villars_ and the _D’Estaing_, and riddled by a terrific discharge
from the heavy guns of the _Triomphante_, the little _Chen Wei_ fought
to the last. In flames fore and aft, drifting helplessly down the
stream and sinking, she plied her guns again and again, till one of
the French torpedo boats, the Volta, dashing in through the smoke,
completed the work of destruction with a well-placed torpedo.”
The successful rush of an unsupported republican torpedo boat at Hankau
on November 19, 1911, past the whole line of blazing imperial shore
batteries, in broad daylight, is considered by the foreigners of Hankau
as dangerous and courageous a piece of work as the recent revolution
exhibited.
XVIII
MODERN EDUCATION IN CHINA
There are twelve modern universities available for the education of
the four hundred millions of people in China, located respectively at
Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanking, Changsha, Wei Hsien (Shangtung province),
Tientsin, Suchow, Tai Yuan, Peking, Hangchow, Wuchang and Canton.
One of these is British, nine Mission, one Chinese, and one American
Collegiate.
Hongkong University counts among its former law students Wu Ting Fang,
foreign minister of the Nanking republicans; among its medical students
Doctor Sun Yat Sen, president of the Nanking republican government; and
Kang Yu Wei, the original reformer of China, who inspired the imperial
reform edicts of 1898. The university is a growth of Queen’s College,
Anglican (London Mission), and other foundations. Part of the land was
given by a generous Parsee, Mr. Mody, and part of the endowment by Sir
Paul Chater, both residents of the colony. One gift of $1,000 came from
Chang Ming Chi, at the time viceroy of Canton (Kwangtung province).
The Hongkong and Cantonese Chinese are generous contributors. The
colonial government and other private founders intend to put the
university on a broad basis worthy of the great colony, and equipped
for the vast opportunity offered to influence China in the ways of
permanent progress. The Cantonese are, and have always been, leaders
of republicanism and modernity, and most of their advanced students
will avail of the superior advantages offered by the new Hongkong
University. There are nearly half a million Chinese in the crown colony
itself. Chinese pupils of the London Mission Girls’ School on Bonham
Road, Hongkong, have recently won high honors in the art examinations
of the Royal Drawing Society, London.
The splendidly housed and equipped St John’s University at Shanghai is
American Episcopal. The tourist should take a rickshaw out to Jessfield
suburb, five miles from the River Bund, and see its modern buildings,
with adapted Chinese roofs. Its leading spirit has for years been a
New Yorker by birth, Doctor Francis Pott, son of the noted publisher.
Its theological school is, of course, Episcopalian. Most important is
its famous medical school, headed by Doctors Boone, Lincoln, Jefferys,
Tucker, Myers, and Fullerton, whom all Central China loves. Chinese
doctors, such as Tyau, Waung and Koo, assist. The school of arts is
equally famous and brilliant, though perhaps not so imperative. I
hope the day will soon come when this model university will have a
larger science school, not of mediocre equipment, but endowed by some
American at least half as richly as a standard American college would
be endowed in science. The library, museum, dormitories and teachers’
school all need endowments. The university has a full-fledged modern
athletic department, and it is thrilling to see the Chinese boys
“play up, play up, and play the game” of American football, baseball,
etc. The football team has mowed down the Municipal Police team on
many occasions. Track teams and rowing teams from St. John’s are yet
going to make China famous at Olympics and Henleys. Military drill is
exceedingly popular, and many of the four hundred boys, who represent
every province, jumped into the front rank in winning China’s
republican revolution, though St. John’s has not yet taught politics.
It should and will perhaps add a strong branch in political economy.
The debating society is popular, as one could expect in the New China,
and the dramatic society is successful, for the Chinese are born
actors. The students also have a modern orchestra. The university is
not a “griffin”, for it dates back to 1879. Five large buildings stand
on the twenty acres of campus.
The Chinese pay in fees $20,000 a year, which is the record for “self
help” in China. The college does a work free that it should not be
compelled to do, and that is to instruct the families of missionaries.
Soon schools for this purpose will be opened at Shanghai, Kowkiang
(Kuling mount), and elsewhere in the Far East. Even the poor of foreign
families are instructed free at St. John’s whose bowels of compassion
so move for the whole East that verily she would exhaust herself in her
altruistic zeal. One hundred dollars a year keeps a medical, science,
art, political, pedagogical or theological student at St. John’s.
St. John’s asks what added American tourists and others will take a
“share”, as they call it a Jessfield. The answer is that thousands
will. Six hundred dollars keeps one of the best students in America a
year to finish. St. John’s asks who will thus enable America to teach
the leaders of China, and forever sit closest to their hearts, as they
rule the widest political and economical opportunity on earth. America
and England should remember that if good does not sit on the bench in
the New China, evil will. Japan coerced China out of that immense 1895
indemnity. She should morally pay part of it back, and part should go
to the famous St. John’s University of Shanghai, where America has
stood so long as a lighthouse amidst the dark waters of remote places.
The University of Nanking (New York State charter) is a union work
of the American Methodists, the American Presbyterians, and the
Disciples of Christ. Its strategic situation at the cultured capital
of the imperial Mings, the high-water mark of the Taiping rebellion,
and the capital of southern republicanism, is at once apparent. The
leaders of the University took a dramatic part in bringing about the
bloodless surrender of Nanking to the victorious republicans, who
might have avenged the imperialist Chang’s atrocities. Doctor A. J.
Bowen is president, and the following noted educational and medical
leaders assist: J. E. Williams, J. W. Drummond, E. C. Lobenstine,
Doctor Garritt, Alexander Paul, Frank Garrett, C. S. Settlemyer, Doctor
E. Osgood, the noted Doctor J. C. Ferguson, Doctor Henke, Mr. Martin,
Mr. Millward, Mr. Bailie, Doctor R. Beebe, and W. F. Wilson. This
university does its immense work with only $44,000 a year, because
every one works for a pittance, the salary of the president being
only $1,500 in a land where life for the foreigner is expensive. That
is to say, the president of the University of Nanking altruistically
accepts in salary less than would the shorthand writer in the railway
office at Nanking, both of whom come from America; the one a cultured
gentleman of power, the other probably only a machine mind. The five
hundred Chinese students themselves contribute the remarkably large
sum of $13,000 a year in fees. The departments include science, arts,
theology, pedagogy, athletics, and practically the all-important
medical department, because the East China Medical Association (dean,
Doctor Shields) works in connection with the University. Nanking will
always be a political, naval, military, scientific and cultured center,
and therefore the university will have a great influence in teaching
the coming leaders of the New China.
There is nothing narrow-minded about the college, for it teaches
the Chinese language, literature and philosophy. The extensive
grounds cover in the aggregate forty-three acres. There are several
dormitories, chapels, residences for staff, and a Y. M. C. A. The
best building is the large science hall. The university, surely run
economically, needs larger funds for an endowment from America, because
it has not the heart to turn away many promising but poor students who
must be accommodated practically free. Thirty dollars boards a worthy
student for a year, and the college is always glad to hear from those
who will support scholarships, increase the buildings and equipment,
or add to the library and endowment. Athletes of the university are
making their mark, and may extend their triumphs to the Olympic games.
Football and track athletics are popular. There is a library, museum,
students’ magazine, press, and of course a debating society. The
college band, the largest in China, numbers seventy pieces. The boys
showed their mettle in benevolent activities when they contributed
five hundred dollars for the famine and flood victims, and besides
volunteered for work in the stricken districts of Nganhwei province.
Model farm colonies in the distressed sections have been undertaken
by the university. The university now makes a special appeal for a
larger library and reading room building, or institute, to throw open
to the great metropolis, and in Chinese fashion, they propose to have
a self-supporting tea-room which will be a college club and city
institute; a people’s institute in other words. This would be a very
popular move in a city which politically will remain either as the
first or second city in China. The Chinese themselves prefer it for the
capital; the foreigners in North China are using their influence to
have Peking retained as the national capital. While hot Nanking is not
so healthy as Peking, the writer believes that the foreigners should
bow to the wish of the Chinese, and have Nanking named as capital. The
higher classes of Chinese are timid as yet of the religious hall, but
they are enthusiastic attendants at lecture halls, libraries and clubs.
Nanking University intelligently proposes to miss no opportunity.
Yale University (Missionary Society) has its collegiate school and
splendid medical school and hospital at Changsha, the capital of
conservative inland Hunan province, the former center of “Darkest
China.” The staff, in addition to the Chinese members, are Dean
Brownell, W. J. Hail, D. H. Leavens, K. S. Latourette, Doctor E. H.
Hume, Nurse Nina Gage, and the wives of the staff. All the men are
from Yale University, New Haven. As might be expected, wherever a Yale
man goes, there is to be found the manly athletic temperament, and
Yale at Changsha has its champion football team which is repeating the
Camp round-the-end runs, the Heffelfinger plunges, etc.! Yale in China
agrees with the Nanking plan of including Chinese in the curriculum.
While Yale College mainly supports the work, help for the hospital
has come from such churches as the Broadway Tabernacle, of New York,
and private donors. Chinese physicians, fully equipped from a western
standpoint, like Doctors Yen and Hou, assist. This is the intelligent
educational, medical and mission plan throughout all China: “Help the
Chinese to help themselves.” Yale College took a leading part in curing
opium habitués, and in this astonishing reform in China Yale has been
prominent. That the Chinese are not parsimonious or unappreciative is
proved by the following facts. Among many others, the governor of Hunan
province sent his check for seven hundred dollars, covering his own
and the subscriptions of the officials under him, though he felt free
to criticize foreign intervention in financial and railway matters in
his province. The governor of Chekiang province subscribed one hundred
dollars, Ex-grand Councilor Chu gave one hundred dollars, Colonel Niu
gave two hundred dollars.
The University of Pennsylvania has a similarly popular medical
department at Canton, and Harvard University plans shortly to have a
medical branch at Shanghai. Their choice of effort is perfect in wisdom.
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The splendid military company of St. John’s University, Shanghai.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Presbyterian Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
Shangtung University, at Wei, leading Presbyterian University. Located
in Confucius’ province, and influential in the new intellectual China.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
The largest foreign University in China, St. John’s American Episcopal,
at Shanghai. Very influential in the New China.]
The Shangtung Union University, now located at Wei, will probably be
moved to Tsinan, the capital of the province in which Confucius and
Mencius were born. It is a union of the American Presbyterian and the
British Baptists, and later the Anglicans, the American Baptists,
Congregationalists and Methodists will join. The total endowment of
this effective university is only $35,000. There are five hundred
students. There are collegiate, science, pedagogical, medical, Chinese,
athletic and women’s departments. There is an attractive, towered,
large main building, science hall, dormitories, museum and a unique
observatory. The chief members of the faculty are the well-known
Messrs. Bergen, Hayes, Bruce, Burt, Luce and Whitcher, and the college
is able to draw upon the many foreign notables at Peking and Tientsin
for popular lectures. China urgently needed advanced education. The
individual missions, brilliant in parts, were in general endowed so
poorly that they could not furnish it. Therefore they united all over
China, and better results are being obtained in specialization by this
intelligent method, which has established an example for the western
world to follow. Subscriptions should as usual be sent to the mission
favored by one’s early training or allegiance, and when they reach
China they are applied in some needy department of the union work.
In union, there is no lapping over or duplication, and the result
is efficiency. When any member of the union lags, a united appeal is
addressed to the home board. The high aim of this extensive University
of Shangtung is to have an income of $150,000 a year. In all these
universities the preparatory and pedagogical departments are not
neglected. The need is urged of a large assembly hall, library, science
hall, dormitories, scientific equipment, Y. M. C. A., etc., at Tsinan
for this university, which stands where four great roads of influence
meet and its opportunity is therefore inspiring. China, Britain,
Germany and Japan come together closely in Shangtung province, and
the university’s sphere is so wide a one that the present constricted
income is insufficient. The students contribute nearly $2,000 in
fees, though many students must necessarily be taught free. Shangtung
University has always stood high for its special work in translating
and printing important books into Mandarin Chinese. It is interesting
that the students have developed choral work perhaps more than most of
the colleges. China has neglected music in the recent centuries, but
St. John’s, Nanking and Shangtung Universities are teaching it to her
again.
The Pei Yang University, of Tientsin, is the leading engineering and
technical institute of China. Its teachers are Americans, British
and Germans. English is taught. It aims to be the Stevens Institute,
or Boston Tech. of China. The Chinese board has been sometimes
obstructive, depending on the intelligence of the directors. However,
the school does wonderful and will do better work when affairs become
settled in China. Its hope, as in every other institute, is in its
graduates even more than in its professors, and certainly more than its
native directors of the old type! It will soon have the fine German
technical schools of Tsingtau to emulate. The Pei Yang University
has sent out many notable graduates who have at once advanced to
leadership in China. One is now vice-president of China.
The Shansi University at Tai Yuan, the provincial capital, was
established in 1901 by the English Baptists with “Boxer” indemnity
funds restored to China at the request of Doctor Timothy Richard, the
promoter of the Red Cross in China, and president of the university
for ten years. It is English and Chinese in personnel, and has passed
through bloody waters in the many disturbances which have surged around
it.
Peking University is also a union in educational work of the American
Congregationalists, American Presbyterians and London Mission, and in
medical work, of the Methodists and Anglicans in addition. This is
decidedly the leading medical college in China, and includes a women’s
medical college, nurses’ training school, hospital and dispensaries.
World famous names in connection with the university are Doctor
W. A. P. Martin, Doctor J. W. Lowrie, Doctor Smith, Doctor Wherry,
Doctor Fenn, Doctor Leonard, Doctor Hall, Doctor Mackey, Doctor Young,
and Doctor Lewis. The medical school led in the heroic efforts to stamp
out the virulent pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1911.
At beautiful Hangchow, the “bore city,” the American Presbyterians are
erecting a full college equipment on a lovely site outside the city
wall, on a hill near the water. The students run the grounds, gardens,
roads, etc., on a “self-help” plan. The famous mission press, which
is doing wonderful work in translating and publishing, is retained,
however, at cultured Soochow for the present. At Soochow the American
Methodists have established a large university. It has a prominent
clock tower, an unusual feature, which is highly appreciated by the
modernized Chinese.
At Wuchang, where the republican revolution broke out in October, 1911,
the American Episcopals have Boone University, and Oxford and Cambridge
will establish here the extensive university on which Lord Salisbury’s
son, Lord Cecil, after his visit to China, wrote a charming book in
1910. At Canton is the Canton Christian College.
These are the leading universities. The Chinese themselves intended
to establish government universities, high and preparatory schools,
at all the twenty-one provincial capitals, but to date only those at
Peking, Paoting, Tsinan, Tai Yuen, Nanking, Shanghai, Chingtu, Yunnan,
Tientsin, Hangchow, Fuchau and Canton have been established, and they
have drawn mainly on the mission universities and foreign-trained
students for professors. The new education was naturally organized
by the government first in the metropolitan province of Pechili. It
included a university at Tientsin, a provincial college at Paoting,
seventeen industrial schools, three high, forty-nine elementary
normal, two medical, three foreign language, eight commercial, five
agricultural, thirty middle, one hundred and seventy-four upper,
one hundred and one mixed, eight thousand six hundred primary, one
hundred and thirty-one girls’ schools and one hundred and seventy-four
night schools in the industrial cities. Is this not an inspiringly
comprehensive program? Both the Board of Education and Yuan Shih Kai
deserve credit for largely taking the suggestions of the foreigners at
Peking and Tientsin in establishing in Pechili province this system
of modern education, which stands as a model for the other twenty
provinces and territories. Many modern buildings have been erected,
but where sufficient money was not available, the fine old temples and
barracks have been impressed, and the surprised sad gods overthrown.
In many cases the gentry and guilds have donated buildings. The
government finds its greatest difficulty in securing teachers, and
they are exhausting the supply that the mission universities are able
to certificate. This new proof of the friendliness of missions had
much to do with the disinclination of the republicans and imperialists
to take the lives of foreigners during the recent revolution. In
preparing pupils to go abroad for further training, the government
has maintained at Peking a special school. At Chingtu, the capital
of Szechuen province, the provincial government established railway,
medical, normal, mining, engineering, agricultural, foreign language
and military schools, and owing to its success Szechuen led in the
agitation for provincialism versus nationalization in railway and
other matters, and this really opened the revolution in September,
1911, a month before the outbreak in Hupeh province. The students in
the universities at the provincial capitals are clothed and boarded at
government expense, the student signing for three years and promising
to answer a draft for government service.
Japan has lost her grip to a degree, and America particularly and
Britain have taken her place in educating China. The Chinese complain
of the “enormous” cost of a foreign teacher, but have him or her
they will! The American educational advance has been astonishingly
brilliant. What America is doing for Chinese education can be judged
by the statement that the American Presbyterian Church alone has three
hundred and fifty-nine institutions of learning in China, and I believe
the Methodist denomination has even more, for that church leads in
world missions, as is well known. America does not pay for all of
this, for no race surpasses the Chinese in generosity and “self-help.”
The Hackett Presbyterian Women’s Medical College of Canton, under the
charge of the celebrated Doctor Mary Fulton, aims “to supply each
city with two modern physicians.” What a brave contract! Charities
and orphanages are the special field of the Roman church; there is no
work that can equal theirs in China in this regard. The Protestants
and Chinese prefer to train the more advanced mind. The American
Presbyterians have a beautiful high school at Fati, Canton; an academy
at Ningpo, a high school at the south gate of Shanghai, and an academy
at Peking. The list is too long to enumerate. The annual reports of
the various Foreign Mission Boards make illuminating reading and give
the names of the heroic educational pioneers. The brilliant work of
the presses, like those at Shanghai, Peking, Wei Hsien (Shangtung) and
Soochow, the ten thousand little rills of income, the contributions of
the broad-minded Chinese officials and students, are all surprising.
How much they are doing with so little money! How much they could do
for American and British educational influence in China with only a
little more money! It is “up to” the American and British business man,
if he decides to be both kind and “wise in his generation.”
The women of America and Britain are doing their share, especially in
hospitals and nurses’ and girls’ schools. The American Presbyterian
women have at Canton and elsewhere model institutions, similar to many
throughout the crowded land, which land is going to heal itself, with
foreign help, of all its diseases: bodily, mental, economical and
international. I have known several people of late who have inherited
legacies, and happening to read a China book, they were curious to see
what a little money, that came so easily, altruistically “invested”
there, would do. They have erected a few hospitals and schools, and
their joy has not ceased when they saw the wonderful results in the
able hands to which the philanthropy was committed. The impetus they
thus gave to the progress of the world was greater than the same amount
would have caused anywhere else.
For the girls and women of China, St. Hilda’s School, at Wuchang, where
the revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, does a great work under
the auspices of the American Episcopal women of Philadelphia, a few of
whom bought land outside the east gate of that old capital, where the
famous Chang Chih Tung was for many years viceroy. The girls’ college
sprang up under the watchful eye of Bishop Roots, who has made a noble
name among the Chinese. The opportunity of this school is to be yet the
Barnard College or the Girton College of China, and of the need of it,
by women for women, all this volume could not say enough. No land is
sure of its progressive condition until the women are freed, educated
and progressive. The enjoyment of continued progress by the men is not
certain until the girls and women are swinging alongside of them on the
great road of life at the same pace, and with equal opportunity. There
can not be real companionship between inferior and superior; women and
men must be equal. Therefore the eyes of all China and America and
Britain are on such institutions as St. Hilda’s. It, too, is run on the
share principle, fifty dollars per girl per year, to put a modern woman
as a lighthouse in China to advance the world cause of womanhood.
The Yangtze valley, in particular, is the sphere of America’s
influence, and where the high tide of rebellion swept, America’s
educational influence will now follow, since fate has launched her
there in the colleges mentioned, and others not mentioned for want of
space. Lord Cecil plans to have the vast English foundation of Oxford
and Cambridge Colleges at Wuchang (see his enthusiastic book), and
if America has its equal at the other end of the brimming Yangtze at
Shanghai, honors will be equal. Germany is not going to neglect the
opportunity, as she has plans for Nanking and Hankau. Much luck to her.
_Contentia in bona!_ America and England have won a vast advantage,
however, over Germany and France, in that China, on recommendation of
the Board of Education, has adopted English as the official language
for the study of science, geography, travel and international politics
in all Chinese universities, technical colleges and high schools. This
victory was brought about through the influence of the Chinese students
who had studied in Britain and America, and a comparison of the
technical and educational books issued by the different countries, the
report being that the English language had three to one in its favor.
When the nations wish to study about China or any foreign country, they
have to take up or translate books written in English, for the American
and Briton are the most curious concerning the world’s countries and
naturally the authorities on comparative ethnology and international
economics.
The Y. M. C. A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school
as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial
schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering
China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government
industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and
almost lost cloisonné, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are
memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The
schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of
the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.”
In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The
pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier, viz:
“Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding
that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”
That the Chinese can become linguists has seldom been more uniquely
illustrated than in the following experience related by Prince Henri
d’Orleans. He was about to travel through the territories of the
aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan province. The difficulty was to find
an interpreter. The general interpreter who only knew the Mandarin
pronunciation of the north, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the
south, would not do. The prince found at the Mission d’Etrangeres at
Tali, in remote Yunnan, an interpreter who knew the Lolo dialects, and
though he could not converse with the prince in French or English, he
could converse fairly well in Latin, and they got along splendidly. It
appears that the Catholic fathers had taught the convert from the Latin
Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc!
Eager as the Chinese are to learn from text-books, they more eagerly
cry for exhibits which appeal to the eye, and the establishment of
museums, heretofore neglected, except in the few universities already
mentioned, should be undertaken. Take one week’s records at the
Hongkong Museum, for instance. Four hundred and sixteen non-Chinese and
163 Chinese used the library, but 193 non-Chinese and 3,100 Chinese
studied in the museum. The resourceful Canadian government sent a
traveling exhibit through China. It is what the Chinese call for. We
shall yet see floating and wheeled museums, _in parvo_, throughout the
empire, as educational bodies and merchants appreciate this as the
quickest way to approach the Chinese mind.
When the revolution of 1911 had developed strength, the Chinese
government found itself unable to remit to the thousands of students
who were studying in foreign countries. The American and British
universities, without exception, nobly offered to aid any needy Chinese
student. The move was brilliant and humane, and will be bread scattered
upon returning waters of appreciation some day.
The new representative assemblies have necessitated the introduction of
shorthand in China. The Tsze Chen Yuan (National Assembly) in session
at Peking as early as August, 1911, ordered night classes to be opened
for learning the art, so that the civil service clerks might attend.
I know that missionaries, helpless in committing to paper accurately
the sounds of the scores of Lolo, Miaotsze, and other dialects in
Yunnan, Szechuen and Kweichou provinces (where aborigines abound) have
had recourse effectually to phonography. If the brilliant Dickens,
John Hay, the American secretary of state, who founded the policy of
“non-partition of China,” and many others, were phonographers, why
might a missionary not be one also!
Some of the educational proverbs of the Chinese are the following:
“A lion breeds lions, and a brave father has brave sons.”
“Learn easy, forget easy; learn hard, forget hard.”
“Life is a river; if you are not going forward on it, you are falling
behind.”
“Youth jumps and slips; age picks its steps and crosses safely.”
“Measure words by the height of the brain, not the height of the body.”
“A loose rein for a good head; a tight rein for a loose heart.”
“Faces are alike, but minds are myriad.”
“It takes longer to determine than to do.”
“Fate doesn’t plan the lot of a fool.”
“The mind chisels the face.”
“It isn’t far at the turn of two roads, but they end far apart.”
“With weeds, and with learning, get at the root.”
“Nothing that is human is alien to a good man’s interest.”
“He who has no ambition is like an ax without edge.”
“Moments are more precious than jewels, for the first can not be
recovered if lost; the second may be found.”
“A right beginning makes a proper ending.”
“A tight mouth keeps back much mischief.”
“Heaven never put a bar against resource.”
“When you know yourself thoroughly, you know everyone else.”
“Prejudice is the thief of persuasion.”
“Two things strangle, the tongue and the cord.”
“Be as cross to yourself as you are to others; be as sweet to others as
you are to yourself.”
“Never too great to learn.”
“The last step must be as steady as the first in climbing a hill.”
“The downy chin goes over it; the bristly chin goes round it; or, the
young head for the long jump, and the old head for the long thought.”
“Good gives the tangible, evil but the shadows.”
“If you insist on every one being like you, look nowhere but in your
mirror.”
XIX
NOTES ON CHINESE LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Among the treasures of Buddhist monasteries are the stone tablets
called “Pei Tze.” It used to be the custom of celebrated visitors to
write an epigram, a witticism, a poem, or a sentence of philosophy,
which the monks had a stone-cutter engrave as near the beautiful
chirography as possible on these tablets, which constitute through the
empire a great literary treasure which is not likely now to be renewed.
Not a little of the sententiousness is humorous. A sign hanging up in a
celebrated Buddhist monastery in the Chingtu plain, Szechuen province,
makes this merry reference to fleas, which constitute the largest
part of the present immense population of China: “There are animals
with more legs than ponies at Inns _other_ than this Inn.” Another
popular humorous motto is: “One can carry kindness too far, such as the
fisherman who had such pity for fish that he would only go fishing with
straight hooks.” The idiom for inaction is: “keeping one’s hands in
one’s sleeves.” For “eating crow” the Chinese say: “eating a dumb man’s
bitterness.” More of their wisdom follows:
“Meekness and gentleness are the boat and the sail for crossing the
rough stream of this world.”
“The truths that we least wish to hear are those which it is most to
our advantage to know.”
“The way to glory lies through a palace; to riches through a market; to
virtue through a desert.”
“The Manchu court is like the sea, where everything depends on the
wind.”
“He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his
own.”
“The prison is shut night and day, yet is always full; the temples are
always open, yet you find no one in them.”
“He who lets things be given to him is not good at taking.”
“The dog in the kennel barks at his fleas, but the dog who is hunting
does not feel them.”
“The finest roads are the shortest ones.”
“Man may bend to virtue, but virtue can not bend to man.”
“The wise man does not speak of all he does, but he does nothing that
can not be spoken of.”
The Occidental manner of emphasizing a plea is: “If you don’t follow
this advice, look out for the consequences.” Here is the Chinese
phrase, as concluding Wu Ting Fang’s plea, in December, 1911, to the
Prince Regent Chun to abdicate: “Our voice is hoarse and our tears
are exhausted; no more can be said.” Their idiom for: “I’m not my own
boss” is: “I eat another’s bread; I watch at the door.” More of their
proverbs are:
“Who is he, though he never goes out, yet has seen all that is under
the sky? The scholar among his books.”
“If the ruby is unpolished, it is not a gem.”
“Age for a sharp chin, and a sharp tongue.”
“It is with human nature as with wines: age sweetens some and sours
others.”
“Happiness and misery both come in doubles.”
“Going through college doesn’t mean that the college has gone through
you.”
“You can lead a boy to the right book, the rest depends on himself.”
“The deeper the water, the slower the stream.”
“It is easier to escape a splinter that you see, than a beam that you
don’t see.”
“Familiarity takes the height off a mountain.”
“Wit may purchase wealth, but wealth can not purchase wit.”
“Originality can go so far back that it becomes aboriginality.”
“Your parents died when you were a child,” is the bitterly sarcastic
way in which the Chinese express that one has no manners, or
up-bringing. The following repartee is credited to almost every
traveled Chinese official, but it originated in the imagination of an
Occidental wit, because the Chinese consider manners and forgiveness
the first rule of public conduct. Official Bu was asked by an
impertinent Occidental why he wore such a ludicrous appendage as a
queue. “Why do you wear a mustache?” asked the Oriental, “Because I’ve
such an awful mouth.” “I thought so, from your first question,” was the
Oriental’s rejoinder.
Yu Yuen, a satirist of 400 B. C., when China was divided into many
states, ruled by inferior princes, wrote in defense of the able prime
ministers who were trying to save the states: “I, too, am glad I can
not fall to the intellect and moral level of princes.”
Chang Jo Hu, A. D. 800, with Isaiah-like emphasis reminds even
long-lived proud China that
“There’s no rock of empire man shall make,
But tooth and tide of time shall shake.”
He also wrote:
“The waves of the Yangtze that pass to the sea,
Nevermore shall return to me;
So, friend of my soul, ’tis with me and with thee.”
Po Chuh Ih, A. D. 772, once president of the Board of War, and later an
exile, wrote some Scott-like lays, including the _Never Ending Wrong_,
and the famous _Lute Girl_, which is full of silver music coming over
a moon-lit lake. At the lake he meets the lute-girl, once a court
favorite, but now old and deserted. The poet does not try to disguise
the truth. He says:
“The eye of Beauty wins a monarch’s soul,
And wrecks an Empire, too.”
Tai Chen, a poet, speaking for the Emperor Ming Huang, who is pursued
to Mount Omi, in Szechuen, by the rebel, An Lu Shen, writes: “The star
of empire pales before the morning beams of conquering foes.” Some of
his lyrics show pretty conceits like: “The pansies are faces of loves
that have died.” His _Ruined Home_ reads like parts of Solomon’s wisdom.
Tai Chen was preceded by the most famous poet of China, Li Po (A. D.
702). He was born in Szechuen province. His patron was the Emperor Ming
Huang, then a wanderer, as we have stated. A Browning-like poet of the
world, he talks of the Tang emperors of Nanking, patrons of sculptors,
“calling down the dreams of the gods and imprisoning them in stone.”
In an ode to Nanking, he tells about: “a woman asleep by a loom, and
a beautiful dream guiding her fingers along a glorious pattern that
is known only to the gods.” He believes in the high mission of the
poet, for he sings of “the fadeless lines of fire, running back to the
births of immortal poets, who now walk amidst the stars.” Like others
of the Chinese, and many of the new race of American poets, he has a
strong sympathy with trade unions. He addressed an ode _To the Golden
Presence of Guild Brothers_. He sings mightily of war in a song _To my
Fatherland_, and then lapses thus into a sadder note when he reflects
upon whom the sorrows of war come: “The pensive washwoman sends her
heart to the Tartar war in far Kansu province to find her conscript
soldier husband who suffers in the snows.”
Kao Shih, a contemporary poet, was a tremendous believer in the
personal soul. He wrote striking verse because of his love of the
occult, and his tendency to give to natural phenomena dramatic
personalities.
Ou Yang Hsiu, of the following dynasty, the Sung, 1007 A. D., himself
a governor, and historian of the Tang dynasty, wrote a famous “Autumn”
poem, which is truly a march of Elizabethan metaphors. He showed, too,
a cynicism which was like the Elizabethan:
“Fame, after all, is such a little thing!
Behold the fox and weasel’s young now play
Where lie the ashes of the great Man-Ching.”
Abbé Huc’s servant, Wei Chau, picked up in the book stores of Nanchang,
in Kiangsi province, pamphlets with the following brilliant epigrams,
which are not surpassed in any literature, and which might have been
written by Wilde:
“My books speak to my mind; my friends to my heart; all the rest speak
to my ears only.”
“One needs his wits most when dealing with a fool.”
“One forgives anything to him who forgives himself nothing.”
We call our printed Bible the “Word of God.” The Chinese have
an expression somewhat similar. Their beautiful ideographs are
delightfully called “Eyes of God.” The following is an effort of the
Manchus in literature, translated idiomatically, and it shows the
literary feebleness of the relapsed old conquerors. It is the national
anthem which the dynasty gave by edict to the Chinese to sing at the
opening of the rebellion in October, 1911:
“May the Golden Round be kept intact;
May Heaven help us;
Let the people and Nature live as quietly as ducks among lilies;
Both peoples (Chinese and Manchu) now dress alike; therefore be alike;
In this time of the Manchu (Ta Ching--Great Pure) dynasty we are
fortunate to see true splendor and greatness;
May Heaven protect the Emperor and his line;
For Heaven is greatest,
And Nature is infinite” (the suggestion being to fear God, or Nature’s
god).
The omnivorous Goethe made some investigation of Chinese literature,
and here is his opinion of what he had read: “The people think, act
and feel almost entirely as we do, although with them everything is
clearer, calmer and more moral. In their arrangements everything is
sensible, bourgeois, without great passion or poetry. What is moral,
proper and in strict moderation is considered.” Now and then more or
less distinct evidences of Chinese influence on the Greeks come to
view, though the thread west of the headwaters of the Tarim is now
lost. Many of the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato are similar to
those of Chinese Lao Tse, and therefore they may have been instructed
by the Chinese sage, whose book could have gone overland to Greece with
the caravans of silk.
The advent of the many newspapers has made a great difference in
the nerves and consciousness of the Chinese. From being the most
stolid of peoples, indifferent to famine, flood, war, persecution by
the officials or by the favored, poverty, pain, hardships physical
and mental, they have become as restive, impatient, nervous and
self-conscious as other races. Famine and flood used to sweep down
and destroy millions. What was the use of complaining, since no one
knew, nobody cared, and the victim might as well not care? Now, if
disaster takes off not a million men, but one man, it is important,
the newspapers chronicle it, and show how the lot of others may be
the lot of the individual. The sufferer himself cries: “Woe is to me;
isn’t this unendurable; help me; I can not, I WILL not bear it.” The
newspaper has developed the ego. The Chinese has become self-conscious
and nervous. He can not, he will not hereafter bear anything more than
other peoples. In the August, 1911, floods and the October, 1911,
revolution more fuss was made over the loss of a thousand men and women
than over the loss of hundreds of thousands in the Taiping rebellion in
the same region in 1853.
Not long ago, a weekly at Hongkong appealed to its public for a new
name. I quote some of the names to reveal what the Far East thinks of
itself in a humorous or serious light: “Bird of Freedom”; “Bubbles”;
“China Answers”; “Cathay’s Looking Glass”; “Chop Sticks”; “East
of East”; “Fragrant Waters” (the translation of Hongkong); “Fire
Crackers”; “Murmurs and Funnosities”; “Mixed Pickles”; “Peak and
Praya”; “Topical Tropical Times”; “The Griffin” (a beginner in the
Orient); “The Gong”; “The Hit”; “Humming Top”; “Imperial Outpost”;
“The Lantern”; “Merry-Go-Round”; “The Palm”; “The Pearl”; “Sun of
Cathay”; “The Typhoon”; “The Ferret”; “The Colonel”; “Maskee” (the
Chinese way of saying “never mind”); “Puckee” (the Oriental way of
saying “O.K.”). The Chinese newspaper is a success, commercially,
patriotically and educationally. Millions now read it every day. It
gave the best and earliest news of the October, 1911, revolution.
There are Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver,
Singapore, Penang, Hongkong, Sydney, Paris and London.
Chinese plays recite the history of the clans and early states. Even
the boatman and laborer are familiar with them. Every hill, valley,
and reach and fall of a river north of the Yangtze has its hero and
story. This would seem to prove that the race first came through the
Tarim and Kansu gates to the new land. The rich, who aim to control
trade routes and privileges depending upon popular tolerance, in
Roman fashion give free theatricals to the village folk. The acting
is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the
costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding
the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling
troupes. Guild halls and some monasteries have theaters in connection
with the compound. A restaurant is run during the long series of plays.
You hurry out to dine when the play you are least interested in is rung
in by cymbal. Bets and lawsuits between the guilds and villages are
often settled by the loser paying for the visit of a theatrical troupe.
Beautiful specimens of the blue and gold gowns of the emperor-actor can
be secured at the silk shops of the treaty ports, and in some of the
Oriental shops of New York, San Francisco and London.
The American and British college graduate wears a hood; the Chinese
wears a yellow panel on his breast and back (it may be changed under
the republicans to blue). When Yuan Shih recently took the oath of
office as provisional president, two bonzes of the famous Lama Temple
at Peking stepped up, and presented him with honorary panels of yellow
silk.
The incident will be recalled in Judges, Chapter 12, where the
Gileadites slew the Ephraimites who could only pronounce the word
“shibboleth” as “sibboleth”. The Manchus are thicker of tongue than
the Chinese. An ingenious story got about in October, 1911, that the
rebels of General Li’s army were testing some disguised Manchus with
the pronunciation of the numeral six, “Liu”, before killing them in
retaliation for a massacre, the Manchus being unable to get the sound
far enough back in their mouths and around their tongue in the proper
Chinese fashion. The proper tone, lisp and aspirate makes all the
difference, for the same written word “ho” means river and fire; the
word “shui” means water and sleep; “chih” means gas and red, and so on.
English, and not German, has been prescribed as the language to be
used in the study of science and world politics. The Chinese idiom
and ideograph could not come near enough to distinct expression. For
instance, the best they could do with fire-engine, steam-roller,
Elijah’s chariot of fire, and automobile, was to call them all “fire
carriage”; and electricity, globe, and flash-light were all three
“lightning breath”. Geography, the world, and panorama were all called
“All Under Heaven” (Tien Hsia). “Heavenly Literature” (Tien Wen)
represented the words theology and astronomy. Lacking pronouns, the
language adopts peculiar expedients. Thus an affix meaning “near”
answers to “my”, and “that side” answers to “your”. That is, “near
house” is my house; “that side house” is obviously your house. If this
does not clearly convey the idea, the arbitrary ideographic affix of
“honorable” and “despisable” will; that is, the “honorable house” is
your house of course, and the “despisable house” with so effusively
mannerly a people could only be my house. On account of their
experience with the difficult and beautiful Chinese character which
requires accuracy, the Chinese penman who learns to write English,
does it in the most beautiful Spencerian copper-plate. The same care
and skill is shown in copying drawings from our modern text-books,
which have been translated for their new schools. The Chinese think in
pictures. The characters for “many stars, clouds wait” means a clear
night, as “clouds many, stars wait” means a gathering storm. This is
why they have chosen English for its exactness, as they can not well
express the word gathering. “It is bad walking” is rendered by “Walk
not attain” (Tsou puh te). Passenger boats or skiffs are not so named.
Those in use at Hongkong are called “san pans” (meaning three boards),
and the famous light boats of the Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan
Hsien are called “wu pans” (five boards). The forcible etymology of
some Chinese words is illustrated by the words for “fan tan” gambling,
which literally means “turn and part”. The cup is turned over a lot
of coins, and the rest of the heap is brushed aside. Then the cup is
raised, and the croupier, with his separator-stick, parts four coins
at a time from the lot, until four or a particle are left, this being
the winning number of the game. That the old southern Chinese, as
contrasted with the succeeding northern Mongol invaders, invented the
language is shown in many of the words. For instance, the word for
road or path is called throughout China a “dry way”, and not a road or
street. Only the central and southern provinces flood the fields for
rice culture, leaving the raised dry paths.
Samuel Pollard, a missionary working in Yunnan, is compiling an
alphabet and reducing to writing the speech of the hitherto unrecorded
aboriginal tribes, the Miao and Lolos. He plans then to give them some
western literature in return for the ethnological riches which they
give us. They are the most unique people in the world, older even than
the Chinese. Their fortresses are in Szechuen, Yunnan and Kweichow
provinces, and there are, perhaps, two millions of this fearless
fighting race. From dimmest history they have been pressed back to the
mountain tops by the Chinese, who have spread out from their original
home in the Yellow River valley with four hundred million people. That
the Chinese have impressed some of their language, as far as necessary
trade goes, on the aborigines can be seen from the following table,
there remaining only two (two and five) sounds in these eight, which
have not been somewhat influenced:
MIAO ABORIGINE CHINESE
1 Ah Ee
2 Ow Erh
3 Tsz San
4 Peu Su
5 Peh Wu
6 Glow Liu
7 Ya Pah
8 Chow Chiu
The writer in the Antiquity chapter of a former book adopted the
Biblical account of the creation, that the original Chinese (Chou
clan’s ancestors) spread through Turkestan, along the Tarim valley, to
their first known home in Shensi province. Doctor Stein has found on
the site of the ruined temple of Hangayi Tuti at Khoten, in Chinese
Turkestan, birchbark and other manuscript in an unknown language. These
point the way to a further search. The Asiatic Society, of Bengal,
Calcutta, has acquired from a Montenegrin gentleman, who traveled in
Turkestan, five leaves of brownish yellow manuscripts eight by six
inches, in an unknown language, which wait to reveal possible wonders
of China’s prehistoric story. The pages show that they were one part
of an extensive work now lost in the sands and camp ashes of central
Asia. There is room for emulation by America, Britain and China of
Russia’s archeological research in Chinese Turkestan, for the world
wants to know more of ancient China, now that the New China has
become important. The professors of the American colleges in China
are sufficiently learned to make a beginning in preserving China’s
antiquities, which are now in great danger of being lost forever. The
rage, as far as the Chinese themselves are concerned, is altogether for
the new and utilitarian. The modernized Chinese have already forgotten
their conservative Hanlin Academy.
XX
LIFE OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA
I know of no place where music, lanterns, romantic mountain scenery,
seascapes far below and delightful society in an alien setting combine
more pleasantly than at the Peak Club, Hongkong. Above the passing
clouds which now and then whirl around as in Rubens’ pictures, over the
purple Pacific Ocean which foams around hilly islands, over the high
hills as you ascend from the royal colony of Victoria, on a terrace,
they have graded a velvet lawn. Here the military and naval bands are
brought for a promenade concert in the soft night of the fragrant
Orient, beneath Bowring’s “wide Cathayan tree”. The band of the Royal
Welsh Fusiliers, from Mt. Austin barracks, plays the stirring Welsh
national march, _The Men of Harlech_. The men sing the chorus:
“See! the bonfire light before ye,
How its fiery tongues do call ye,
Come as one to death or glory,
Heroes of the fight.
“Lest by fire they kill and plunder,
Harlech! Harlech! make them wonder
At thy power that none can sunder;
Freedom thou wilt give.”
Flowering plants in large colored Chinese kongs are set out everywhere.
The stars and moon shine. The pictured lanterns gently swing, and the
horn lanterns of Ningpo are opal soft. The light flashes from swords,
uniforms and jewels. The blue-gowned Oriental servants noiselessly pass
refreshments. Not a Chinese house is in view, though half a million
Chinese live hidden in the foothills. On the hundred peaks of Hongkong
Island, the lights of a hundred palaces and villas of the merchant
princes shine out. Down the winding cement paths, chairs bearing
lanterns and carrying guests are borne with their rhythmic swing.
Every lady and every man present has come from far, and knows much
of life and geography. The conversation tires not, for there is
something of great interest to tell. Kitchener’s brother (Kitchener
himself would not come--he never moves in “society”); General Wood,
of the United States Army; Commander Greeley, United States Navy, of
North Polar fame; Admiral Scott, of the British Navy, who invented
the large gun “dotter” that made the heavy marksmanship possible,
and whose 4.7 gun saved Ladysmith; Nathan, the hero governor of the
typhoon and _Hankow_ holocaust; the governor of the Philippines at
the far stretched-out line of America’s new fame and empire; Kipling
himself full of his colored phrases; authors of books on China, many
of whom live in Hongkong; German, French and Russian commanders, whose
impetuous ambition has made many moves that have nearly started world
wars; ordnance and commissariat colonels, who, without a hitch, have
provisioned famous international military relief expeditions; prince
and pauper explorers who are one in the camaraderie of adventure for
science; curio collectors who are raking the world to enrich western
museums with enravishing art; Ponting, the photographer who went with
the intrepid Commander Scott to the South Pole; seven-year indentured
“griffins” who are second sons of noble houses and whose inheritance
of style is a millstone around the necks of their impoverished
incomes; subalterns who are chafing at the bit to be let make a mark
like Kitchener; visiting lieutenants from Manila who would emulate
Funston in the Philippines; Japanese doctors who have beat the world in
discovering Bacillariaceæ; Parsees who have founded universities and
have, therefore, dined with “my friend, the king”; the merchant princes
and the missionary apostles of China, whose knowledge would fill books;
women of grace, beauty and learning, nibbling at sweet cinnamon,
musk and lotus; international spies of both sexes from the notorious
Brussels headquarters; all move over the quiet grass, listening to the
haunting strains of the bewitching music, which makes the heathen hills
unalien under the swinging lanterns and the white-riding moon.
When you lift your glass to say “_prosit_”, “here’s how”, “_à bon
santé_”, or “here’s to you, old man”, with no national reservations,
and a feeling that all traveled men are brothers; and some fraternally
wider day possibly you will not shiver when John Celestial, Friend
Nippon, and Aryan Bengal are admitted to the delightful company
gathered under the whispering bamboos and floating sandal scent of the
Peak Club of Hongkong.
It is the same interesting story on ladies’ night at the Bund Club of
Canton; the Jockey Club of Shanghai; the Hankau Club; the Tientsin
Club; the delightful conversazioni at Sir Francis Aglen’s on Customs
Street, Peking, when the National Customs Band plays; the Gouverneur’s
“Palais” at Saigon and Hué; the International Club at Harbin;
Government House at Wei-Hai-Wei; or the consulate at Chifu. It whets
the imagination to be dancing within sight of the stacked rifles at
the front, and you reverse Tennyson and say in Locksley Hall: “Better
one night in Cathay than a cycle of Park Lane” (or Fifth Avenue)! You
recite the thrilling incidents, such as the ball which Wellington
attended on the eve before Waterloo, etc.! Certainly the foreigner in
recent years has never known when he would be called upon at Hongkong,
Canton, Hankau, Shanghai, Tientsin, Amoy, Macao, Fuchau, etc., to rush
out, in either his dress or his business suit, or possibly his night
pajamas, with his gun, to defend property, some kind of government,
and the white man’s rights and habits of trade and international
civilization. Not only white men have suffered and borne, but the
foreign heroines of diplomacy, missions and trade of Wuchang, Hankau,
Canton, Peking, Tientsin, Chingtu, Chungking, Amoy, Fuchau, etc., are
numbered in hundreds.
The foreigner in China enters upon his sporting and social enjoyment
keenly, because his sufferings from climate, alienation and danger
are also keen. Taking his life altogether, he deserves more than he
receives as a reward for his work, and he and his wife are unusually
interesting people to meet, as I know from three years’ life in their
honored midst.
The human beasts of burden--the rickshaw coolies of Hongkong, Shanghai,
and the treaty ports--are directed by little of their own language.
Only a few of the mercantile men on station learn the language.
The foreign tourist generally learns two words, “kwai se” (go) and
“man-man” (stop-stop), and the coolies, like beasts, therefore depend
for directions as they race along in the heat, on a tap on the left
or right shaft to indicate which street the “fare” desires to turn
up. Hongkong proposes to have printed on a large bill-board at every
chair and rickshaw stand a list of fares. Hongkong and Shanghai have
become great tourist centers, whole shiploads landing there from New
York and San Francisco, and the tourist’s generosity or lack of local
information permits him to pay so large a fare that the expenses of the
resident are raised beyond endurance. The example of Hongkong might
well be copied at every tourist center over the world. “A fair price,
but not a foolish price” is the watchword in these new days of economy
and efficiency, because world-waste can be tolerated no longer.
The regiments which from time to time come to garrison Hongkong
reveal many interesting traits in their customs and uniform. The
Royal Welsh Fusiliers, fresh from the Boer War, wore three silk
ribbons down their backs. They are the only British regiment which is
permitted thus to mourn the deprivation of the old “pig tail” of the
bewigged regiments of the Georges, which custom they were the last
regiment to discontinue. The Lincolnshires wear a band of green to
show that they are foresters recruited in Robin Hood’s country. The
Inneskilling Fusiliers and the Somersets at Tientsin retain their
traditional territorial peculiarities. The Cameronians are the only
British regiment which is allowed to bear arms into church service,
as a reminder of the old strenuous days of surprise when the clans
might leap like a wolf from behind even the pulpit. There are so many
branches of the historic British service in Hongkong’s, Tientsin’s,
etc., garrison life that American tourists are delightfully entertained
and instructed in tradition that is far from uninteresting. The British
have found that to recruit and fight a man as a number is not a
success, as compared with the picturesque traditions in a territorial
army of uniform, customs, names, fetish, romance, glory, flags,
distinctive rights, etc. In other words, they humor Tommy Atkins as a
boy, and he fights for them like a man, every time it is necessary.
This was shown when the swagger regiments of the Guards of London,
under Generals French, Paget and Roberts hit the Boer lines as hard
as the Royal Welsh, who are recruited from sturdy fearless miners.
Bret Harte’s “Caucasian showed that he was no more played out” on
those occasions than he was when he rushed El Caney and San Juan Hill
led by Roosevelt, Lawton, Chaffee and Wheeler. The Chinese of Peking
and Tientsin in 1900 had a chance to see the brilliant performance
of the American Fourteenth Infantry, Sixth Cavalry, and the marines
under Captain McCalla of the cruiser _Newark_, and recently the
fine Fifteenth Infantry, U. S. A., has renewed the very favorable
gentlemanly impression at Tientsin and along the railway line to Peking.
When the military weddings take place at St. John’s Cathedral,
Hongkong, and the cathedrals at Shanghai and Tientsin, it is customary
for the brother officers of the groom to unsheath their swords and make
an arch of steel over Mars and Venus as they make their exit from the
church. This old custom is not often seen elsewhere than in India and
China, and would be a pretty one to adopt for military weddings the
world over. The Germans particularly would take to it with zest; in
fact, they have just adopted it in their “kirche” at Tsingtau, North
China, and the Americans may adopt it in the smart military life of
Manila.
Important newspapers published in English are the _Times_, at Tientsin;
the _Mail_, _Telegraph_, _Press_ and _Post_, of Hongkong; the _Herald_,
_News_, _Mercury_, _Press_, _Far Eastern Review_ and _Times_, of
Shanghai; the _Post_, of Hankau; the _Gazette_ and _Times_, of Amoy,
and the _Echo_, of Fuchau. The _Times_ and the _Cable News_, of Manila;
the _Free Press_ and _Echo_, of Singapore; and the _Englishman_, of
Calcutta, may be included, together with the _Chronicle_, of Japan,
because they circulate in China ports, “nothing that is Oriental
being alien” to their fascinating news columns. Their editorials are
illuminating, and often exhibit in their cultured English positive
genius. They are an authoritative source of information on the
absorbing theme of golden Cathay, and the interest of the brave
Occidental pioneer in her awakening.
Water polo, swimming, launch, golf, cricket, tennis, yacht, dramatic,
polo, etc., clubs are established at nearly all the treaty ports, and
inter-Hong, inter-service, international and inter-regimental contests
are constantly going on to take the edge off ennui in the long day
of Oriental exile in a seven-year indenture. For those inclined to
literature, science and ethnology, there are notable library and
Asiatic associations, and some of them superintend an indispensable
press. Royalty visits Hongkong frequently and encourages every phase of
life in the premier colony. On the occasion of the Duke of Connaught’s
last visit with his family they received the military at the landing
pier and the populace at the City Hall; unveiled statues to the late
King Edward and King George; lunched with the governor and council;
attended a meeting of the Scottish Rite Masons, lunched with the mess
of the Indian frontier regiment camped out on the foothills of China;
attended a Chinese theater; ate at a Chinese restaurant; attended a
daylight try-out of the racing ponies, Indian-breds and Walers at the
Wong-Nei-Chong Jockey Club; and went with “Hoi-Polloi” on a week-end
trip on the steamer _Fat Shan_ to see Canton’s sights, and “tiffin”,
as does the whole world of globe-trotters, on the third veranda of the
five-storied pagoda. German royalty is just as active at Tsingtau,
French nobility at Saigon and Haiphong, Portugese nobility at lovely
Macao, and the cosmopolitan world at the “Paris of the East”,
Shanghai. Of Macao, the famous poet, Sir John Bowring, wrote:
“Gem of the Orient earth and open sea,
Macao! that in thy lap and on thy breast
Hast gathered beauties all the loveliest,
Which the sun smiles on in his majesty.
The very clouds that top each mountain crest,
Seem to repose there, lingering lovingly.
How full of grace the green Cathayan tree
Bends to the breeze--and now thy sands are pressed
With gentle waves which ever and anon
Break their awakened furies on thy shore.
Were these the scenes that Camoens looked upon,
Whose lyre, though known to fame, knew misery more?”
In a former book, _The Chinese_, I have referred to the high cost of
living at Hongkong, Shanghai, etc., as far as rent is concerned. This
is because a navy and army have to be maintained. It is well known
that Hongkong contributes to the British Budget more pro rata than
any part of the long red line of British empire. The man who goes to
the hot damp East to advance the cause of imperialism, and who reads
Kipling and Gilbert Parker, pays high for it in money as well as
health, and he deserves more than he receives. Land values are twice
what they are in the suburban cities of New York, such as Brooklyn and
Jersey City, and twice what they are in the outlying wards of London.
Yaumati is a section of Hongkong’s colony on the China mainland, and
values there are not so high as on hilly Hongkong Island. Yet a plot
of land 150 by 140 feet, recently sold in Yaumati for $8,700 gold. No
American or European should be sent to the treaty ports of the Far East
to support any cause, diplomatic, military, commercial, scientific,
academic, religious, or international customs, who is not given twice
the emolument that he would receive at home. Yet the mission leaders
in particular generously accept far less than they would receive as
workers in America.
The foreigner has a larger list of supplies to pick from than was the
case before modern roads were opened and the Chinese were taught to
farm for the foreigner’s table. Ice houses, ice machinery, inspected
markets, and water tanks for fish all have aided. Not so long ago we
in the Far East were benzoate of soda and salicylic acid fiends, the
men Doctor Wiley bemoaned; that is to say, our gun was a can-opener,
and our game was tinned foods. We could go out into the jungle of
Queens Road or the praya, Hongkong; Nanking Road, Shanghai; Kaiser
Road, or the Chien Men Fair, Peking; or the bunds at Tientsin, Canton
or Hankau, on our way home from office, and with our weapon bring down
the foods of Europe, America and Australia, running, of course, not
a little risk of ptomaine poisoning, positively ruining our stomachs
forever, and becoming a permanent dyspeptic charge upon the nerves of
the long-suffering community! Now things are better. Here is a list
of fresh foods procurable in the larger ports. In the plague, typhoid
or cholera season, some eschew fresh vegetables, and again, when
they recall that the farmer is the town scavenger, some eschew fresh
vegetables at all seasons! I quote the prices in gold, and give the
Chinese word your lordly cook calls out to the obsequious stallsman,
so that the stranger may gain an idea that Chinese does not sound
unmusical:
MEAT
Beef sirloin, Mei Lung Pa, 10 cents a pound.
Beef steak, Ngan Yuk Pa, 10 cents a pound.
Mutton chop, Yeung Pai Kwat, 12 cents a pound.
Pork chops, Chi Pai Kwat, 10 cents a pound.
Chicken, Chu Yau, 8 cents a pound.
Duck, Ap, 15 cents a pound.
Doves, Pan Kau, 7 cents each.
Geese, Ngoi, 13 cents a pound.
Turkeys, cock, Phor Kai Kung, 20 cents a pound.
FISH
Barbel, Ka Yu, 5 cents a pound.
Carp, Li Yu, 9 cents a pound.
Cod, Mun, 7 cents a pound.
Crabs, Hai, 9 cents a pound.
Cuttlefish, Muk, 6 cents a pound.
Eels, Conger, Hai Mann, 7 cents a pound.
Frogs, Tien Kai, 20 cents a pound.
Garoupa, Sek Pan, 28 cents a pound.
Halibut, Cheung Kwan Kup, 12 cents a pound.
Lobster, Lung Ha, 18 cents a pound.
Mackerel, Chi, 16 cents a pound.
Mullet, Chai, 10 cents a pound.
Parrotfish, Kai Kung, 8 cents a pound.
Pomfret, white, Pak Chong, 13 cents a pound.
Salmon, Ma Yau Yu, 16 cents a pound.
Shrimps, Ha, 12 cents a pound.
Soles, Tat Sa, 12 cents a pound.
South China is rich in fish, and I could quote scores more.
FRUIT
Almonds, Hung Yan, 9 cents a pound.
Apples, Chifu, Tin Chun Ping Khor, 7 cents a pound.
Bananas, fragrant Canton, San Shing Heung Chiu, 1½ cents a pound.
Carambola, Yeung Tuo, 4 cents a pound.
Cocoanuts, Yeh Tsz, 5 cents each.
Lemons, Ning Moong, 4 cents a pound.
Lichees, Lai Chi, 5 cents a pound (called “Chinese nuts”).
Lily roots, Lin Ngan, 3 cents a pound.
Limes from Saigon, Sai Kung Ning Moong, 3 cents a pound.
Pears, Canton, Sa Li, 4 cents a pound.
Peanuts, Fa Sang, 5 cents a pound.
Persimmons, Hung Chie, 10 cents a pound.
Pineapples, Sheung Poon Ti Pau Lau, 5 cents each.
Plantains, Tai Chen, 1 cent each.
Plums, Swatow, Hung Lai, 5 cents a pound.
Pumelo, Siam, Chim Lo Yau (grapefruit), 5 cents each.
Walnuts, Hop Tuo, 6 cents a pound.
Watermelon, Sai Kwa, 1½ cents a pound.
VEGETABLES
Beans, sprouted, Ah Choi, 2 cents a pound.
Beets, Hung Choi, 1 cent each.
Brinjal, Ching Yuen, 2 cents a pound.
Cabbage, Kai Choy, 2 cents a pound.
Carrots, Kam Shun, 3 cents a pound.
Chilies, Red Hung Fa, 3 cents a pound.
Cucumbers, Ching Kwa, 1 cent each.
Garlic, Suen Tau, 3 cents a pound.
Ginger, young, Sun Tsz Keung, 3 cents a pound.
Corn, Suk Mai, 2 cents each.
Lettuce, Yeung San Choi, ½ cent each.
Onions, Sang Chung, 2 cents a pound.
Papaw, Tai Man, 5 cents each.
Potato, sweet, Fan Shu, 1½ cents a pound.
Spinach, Yin Choi, 2 cents a pound.
Tomatoes, Kan Ker, 3 cents a pound.
Vegetable marrow, Chit Kwa, 1 cent a pound.
Water cress, Sai Yeung Choi, 5 cents a pound.
The table is justly famous at the following, among other hotels and
clubs, and the wines are as cheap as in Europe, because no duty is
charged at Hongkong, and only five per cent. in China. In Japan,
however, and in French China there is a heavy duty on foreign liquor.
The Grand Hotel and the club, at Yokohama; the club, Kobe; Wagon Lits
and club, Peking; Imperial Hotel and club, Tientsin; Astor House and
club, Shanghai; Peak, Grand, Craigieburn, Hongkong and Astor Hotels and
club, at Hongkong; Victoria Hotel and club, Canton; Boa Vista, Hing
Kee and club, at Macao. When you go there, next time, tourist, ask
for broiled samli or Sek Pan at Macao; toasted rice birds or Ap ducks
at Shanghai; Mongolian mutton at Peking; roasted imperial pheasant at
Tientsin; preserved comquats in ginger syrup, Hungyan almonds, and Sai
Kwa watermelons at Canton; Hung Lai plums at Swatow; Tin Chun Khor
apples at Chifu; fresh lichees or Phor Kai turkey at Hongkong, and ruby
red persimmons at Yokohama. It is not well to be a gourmand always, but
it is well to be an epicure on eminent occasions, so as to remember
them forever, from fear that, as in Senator Ingalls’ poem, “Opportunity
knocks but once.”
XXI
FOREIGN CITIES OF CHINA
At all the great treaty port cities and colonies, such as Hongkong,
Shanghai, Canton, Macao, Tientsin, etc., the stranger is accosted by
crowds of rickshaw coolies, venders, fortune-tellers, flower sellers,
etc., urging his patronage. Efforts are being made to limit this noise,
which is at present like the reception that a football hero gets when
he wins a game. The Chinese think we like the attention, because so
many of us smile, and if one looks cross, a native wit will call out:
“Don’t ask Honorable Sad-Face to ride; he has just lost his white
mother-in-law, and must demurely walk behind her ghost.”
The first motor-car used in China was brought to Hongkong by an
American dentist in 1900. It was a storage electric vehicle, as the
authorities prohibited for a while the use of gasoline on account of
the fire risk. Gasoline cars and launches are now used throughout
the treaty ports, but kerosene engines are preferred in motor-boats.
Kerosene can be procured anywhere in China, but gasoline is procurable
only within a limited area.
As a foreign steamer enters a port, a fleet of sanpans throw out hooks
and grapple with the ship. This picturesque nuisance the authorities
are trying to stop, on account of the danger to life which is involved.
The hotel runners, gamblers, and venders desire to be over the rail
before any passengers leave. The health authorities desire to stop the
irrepressible boarders as much as the harbor masters do. The boarders
shout out to their countrymen: “You there! Throw over a fastened rope;
we want to kotow to you on board, and leave you some of our money in a
little game.” Over the rope goes, despite the frantic mate, who is a
white man, and like ants, the agile Chinese clamber up the sides of the
big trans-Pacific or Suez liner.
Peking, Haukau, Tientsin, Shanghai, Ningpo, Hongkong and other cities
of China all have fine race courses, club-houses and stables. In hot
Hongkong the racing, gymkana and polo meets occur from September to
April. Szechuen and Mongolian ponies, Australian and Indian horses are
used, but few American or British, the cost and insurance risk for
the latter being too great. Every white man, singly or in clubs, goes
in for the “king of sports”, and from a military point of view this
interest in racing is very advantageous. The betting is generally on
the French method of Paris Mutuels, where those who bet on the winning
animal divide the pool, less eight per cent. for club expenses. The
Chinese are beginning to understand the horse, and mafoo-jockeys and
trainers are being developed. Up and down the China coast the owners
ship their champion racers, and the interport rivalries are keen in
this, and every other sport. The main ambition is for the owner to
ride his horse as a “gentleman-jockey” in the crowning Derby event,
and quite a few Hebrew and Parsee owners enter their horses in a
widening sporting fraternity, which not long ago was limited to Saxons,
and which may yet include Chinese gentry. The stocky Mongolian pony,
weighing fifteen hundred pounds, only covers the mile in two minutes
and eight seconds, and being hard of mouth and stubborn, he is as
likely as not to cover the mile the opposite way to that which has been
prescribed by the stewards! Not only has Hongkong two very fine
golf courses, but Canton, Macao, Hankau, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin,
and other treaty ports have excellent courses famous for their novel
bunkers of tombstones, etc., and club-houses. During most of the year
at Hongkong the game is played on the Wong Nei Chong course shortly
after daylight, as after eight o’clock the overhead sun is too hot for
that exercise which is essential if one expects to keep “fit” in the
Orient.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The mountain palaces of Hongkong; clouds almost cover the great
peaks. Note gate house, covered chairs; extensive verandas.
Hongkong’s architecture dominates the New China; it is a heavy
adaptation of the Renaissance, with massive verandas added.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Race meet at the Jockey Club, Wong Nei Chong Valley, Hongkong.
The cosmopolitan crowd: Hindus, Portuguese, Britons, Americans,
Japanese, Chinese, Parsees, etc. Note the famous mat-shed for
the “Hoi Polloi” in the background. These immense structures are
erected overnight, with matting and bamboo.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The railway breaking through the wall of Peking. The immense new
railway development of China has been put under the direction of
the Honorable Sun Yat Sen.
]
Many have asked what was the organization of the crown colony of
Hongkong Island, where 3,000 white troops, a navy, 2,000 Indian troops,
and 500 British, Indian and Chinese police guard and rule 3,000 white
men and 500,000 Chinese so successfully that after paying her own
expenses, Hongkong continues, what she was the first colony to offer,
to pay to the British government a large sum for military and naval
expenses. The government is organized under the Home Colonial Office,
as follows: a governor, the general of British troops in China, a
local colonial secretary, an attorney-general, a colonial treasurer,
a director of public works, a registrar-general, a superintendent of
police, a clerk of councils, four white civilians, and two Chinese
civilians, the six latter serving mainly for the honor. The famous
Sanitary Board serves as a separate commission. Almost every one will
admit that this is a compact, graftless, powerful and very economical
organization, and it has more than answered expectations in a worldwide
fame, both for Britain and China. The able newspapers of the ports are
the Opposition, and keep the government up to efficiency. There is
only one flaw, which may soon be remedied. There should be a director
of education, for the purpose of honoring education, and not because
education is backward in the progressive colony, which has had so
many hero governors and cultured heads of department. Their great
deeds would fill volumes as yet unwritten, for the many authors who
have lived and served at Hongkong have not written of themselves.
_In modestia magnus!_ Hongkong has had some famous regiments in its
garrison, musical and sporting life. After the South African War the
Royal Welsh, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire regiments came. In 1911 the
noted Yorkshire Light Infantry were in garrison. Their fine bands,
often massed with the Indian regiments’ bands, are the feature in the
musical life of the royal colony. The Yorkshires served in garrisoning
the foreign settlement on Shameen Island, Canton, when, following
the revolution of 1911, the pirate chief Luk seized the forts around
Canton. Over at Kowloon, the mainland section of the colony in 1860,
was mobilized the army of Sir Hope Grant’s 13,000 British troops and
Baron Gros’ 6,000 French troops for the Taku-Peking campaign, and
though the existence of their nation was at stake, the southern Chinese
did not make a protest against this mobilization on what was then
China’s territory.
The municipal organization at Amoy is seven councilmen, two of whom are
a clergyman and a physician. They employ a captain-superintendent, and
a judge who sits in a “Mixed Court” with a Chinese mandarin. American
naval officers were given warm receptions by the Chinese of Amoy when
the battleship fleet went round the world in 1908. The island-dotted
and hill-surrounded harbor is one of the finest and most beautiful in
China, and there is a great future before the port. At one time it was
the largest tea port in China. The foreign settlement is on the hilly
Kulangsu Island. The streets to see are Likin, Temple, Bootmaker, etc.
The native Chamber of Commerce entertained the visiting members of the
American Chambers of Commerce in 1910 in the Nan Pu Tu Temple. There
are notable clubs and theaters; the Kwan Tai and other temples. The
scenery is famous for the Valley of 10,000 Boulders, a sort of “Garden
of the Gods”, in which the Deified Rock is worshiped. Many of the
boulders are engraved by nature-worshipers. Note should be taken of
the dainty architecture of the White Stag Temple and gates. The London
Mission at the boat landing has partially adopted the Chinese style of
architecture in the up-curling cornices. Forts which have seen hard
service are placed on the hills. The foreign race course and jockey
club is under the hill where the noted Lampotah Temple stands. Amoy
is particularly famous for the best oysters, coolie oranges, pumeloes
(grapefruit), fish, game, sugar, ginger and grasscloth in China. At
Amoy stone buildings are seen everywhere, and extend southward through
Fukien and Kwangtung provinces. The natives, who have a little Arab
blood, and who often wear turbans as well as hats, are tall, turbulent,
humorous and curious. There is much infanticide, because the small
farms are only able to support sons. Amoy is connected by railway with
Changchow on the Lung (Dragon) River, and it is planned to have a coast
railway connecting all these cities from Shanghai to Canton. There is
almost daily steamship connection with Hongkong. Native Amoy City is on
a large island. The walls, which climb straight up the hills, are about
eight miles around. The city was taken by the republicans on November
12, 1911, and there were many subsequent engagements with pirates when
American marines from the _Monterey_ had to be landed. Centuries ago
the people of this province offered the most stubborn resistance to
the Manchus when that dynasty conquered China. The dialect is the most
isolated in China, showing that the northern ruling Chinese influenced
the people very slightly. To instance:
In Fukien In Mandarin
---------- -----------
Hokchiu Fuchau
Amoy Hsia-men
Quemoy Chinmen
Though the port was formally opened to foreign trade in 1842, the East
India Company had hongs here as early as 1661 and up to 1730.
There is much for the antiquarian to trace as he follows the
traditions of Arab visits in centuries preceding the Portugese
discovery, at Canton. We hear reports that St. Thomas, the disciple,
and Mohammed’s uncle journeyed here, taking the route none ever has
since, across Persia, India and Burma. The tourist should not fail
to visit the noble park of thousands of examination stalls, where
the old classical learning held rule from Confucius’ time until
recently. There is evidence enough that the state has grasped the new
educational conditions recommended by the great Emperor Kwang Hsu, and
the Cantonese reformers, in the splendid Kwangtung normal college,
which consists of two wings and a tower building in the style of the
University of New York. A noble stucco wall, pierced with portholes,
surrounds the college. There is also the Canton Christian College,
established in the fine Martin Hall. It is supported by Americans.
American statesmanship and philanthropy will miss their glorious
opportunity if they do not soon erect at Canton the preparatory
department of a comprehensive American-Chinese university, the higher
classes to be at Peking or Nanking. Trace should also be made of
the factory of Milner & Bull, of New York, which sheltered Robert
Morrison in 1807, when he was preparing for his immortal translations
and dictionary. This was the time when American tradesmen of New
York, Philadelphia and Boston showed keen sympathy with statesmanship
and learning. Olyphant & Company, of New York and Canton, backed the
printing of the priceless _Chinese Repository_, and brought fifty
missionaries free from New York in their famous clipper ships. The
Boston merchants who ran regular lines in those days to Canton, and had
factories there, were Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing
and Coolidge.
The morbid will want to see the execution ground in the Thirteen
Factories section. It has no rival as the bloodiest spot on this earth.
Governor Yeh, of Kwangtung, during the Taiping rebellion in October,
1856, beheaded 100,000 rebels here, and during the pirates’ attack
under Luk, at Canton, in March, 1912, executions were part of each
day’s work here. The ground is small and insignificant looking, and
when not legally in use is used for spreading pottery in the sun. This
Thirteen Factories section is in rather bad odor as an entertainer
of opium smugglers and counterfeiters. Confucius’ temple near the
Examination Park should not be missed, not for its beauty, but for
its significance in the national ethics of so many centuries of one
uninterrupted idea. The Parade Ground, under the eastern wall of the
old city, should be visited, for here the nucleus of China’s new army,
which we will some day hear much of, is training. China must learn
to marry martial force and productive mechanics to, what through the
long ages she has been preeminent in, literature, agriculture and art.
In the western suburbs, the looms of the silk weavers, the native
hospital, the Temple of Longevity, and the Temple of Five Hundred Genii
are of exceeding interest, and if one can go as far as the White Cloud
Hills there is the historic spot to see, where Morrison baptized, in
1804, Tsai Ah Ko, the first Protestant convert in China.
Various other places of interest are Tsiang Lan Kiai (Physic Street),
which is protected from the sun with matting; Ma An Street, where the
shoe shops are; Book Store and Jade Streets, with their tea saloons;
the Hall of Green Tea Merchants radiant in porcelain; the Pok Chai
native hospital; and the public gardens which were confiscated from
the rich salt merchant, Pun Shih Cheng, because he evaded the law by
smuggling, etc. China first prophesied that restitutionary besides
prohibitive laws will yet be adopted world-wide to straighten out the
economic tangle. Many modern improvements have come to Canton, such as
a wide modern bund, electric cars and light, water, sanitary buildings,
hospitals, etc. The University of Pennsylvania and the American
Presbyterian Women have notable medical establishments at Canton,
which city is connected with the early life of Doctor Sun Yat Sen, who
has become immortal by formulating the republican Chinese rebellion
and nation. Canton is already a railroad center, having rails east to
Hongkong, south to medieval Macao, and north toward Hankau, and she
proposes to link up west by running a railroad to Nanning and Yunnan.
There is a vast steamer and launch traffic to Hongkong and up the West
(Si) and North (Pe) Rivers, and along the iron-bound coast. Canton is
the largest and most representative city of ethnical, republican and
commercial China. Its stores and small factories are decidedly the most
notable, efficient and varied in the wide land. The foreign settlement
on Shameen Island in the Pearl River has every luxury in the way of
modern clubs, hotels and residences, and in the native city there are
clubs where the foreigner and native gentleman are trying to approach
nearer to each other. Canton has two dialects, the Cantonese and the
Hakka, and I know of no better authority on them than my old friend,
Dyer Ball, the veteran author and linguist of Hongkong, though Canton
has had many famous foreign students among her foreign residents in
exile. The curious Hakka tribe composes one-third of the inhabitants
of Canton. They can be distinguished by vivacity, by the flat hat with
valance, worn by the women, and by their love of jewelry. The sanpan,
junk, slipper boat and launch people, the most distinctive feature of
Canton’s life, are largely Hakka. For further information regarding
this tribe, which is also largely in evidence at Hongkong, Amoy and
Swatow, I would recommend Dyer Ball’s authoritative books. _Dutch Folly
Island_ commemorates an early settlement of trading Hollanders.
The writer in his book, _The Chinese_, dealt at length with the oldest
foreign settlement in China, the Portugese city of Macao, and its
famous author, Camoens, who wrote _The Lusiads_. Authors who have
written on quaint medieval Macao are Doctor Eitel, Norton Kyshe,
Montalto de Jesus, Kutschera, Ljungstedt, the famous Sir John Bowring
and the immortal Camoens himself. The largest library on the subject
is to be found in the National Libraries of Lisbon, Coimbra, and other
educational centers of old Portugal. The first American consuls lived
at Macao, as did also the noted Jesuit explorer Abbé Huc, in 1840, in
the seminary here. The British artist, Chinnery, lived and painted at
Macao, as did the lovely Chinese colorist, Nam Cheong. Edmund Roberts,
the first American ambassador of the United States “to Siam, Cochin and
Muscat” died of bubonic plague here on June 12, 1836. In a study of
Macao the old volume of the _Chinese Repository_ should not be left
unsearched. In a temple at Wang Hiya, beyond the quaint Porto Cerco
gate, the first commercial treaty between America and China was signed
respectively by Cushing, Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher, and Ki Ying.
The remarkable miniature garden at the governor’s summer palace on the
Monte Road should be seen, and rather amusing miniature photo statues
are to be seen in the cemeteries. The largest cement factory in China
(British owned) is on Green Island, which is connected by a causeway
with Macao. The silted up harbor is being dredged in an effort to
bring the long lost shipping back to old Macao. There is to be railway
connection with Canton, and there is palatial steamer connection with
Hongkong and Canton. The modern hotels, such as the Boa Vista and the
Hing Kee, are excellent, the former occupying an unusually scenic
site. The drives and Praya Grande are delightful. Macao is famous for
its medieval carnivals and processions. It has an ambitious Chinese
population whose leading spirits are the progressive Ho Sui Tin
and Fong families. Its gambling houses are possibly notorious, and
its opium farm, now somewhat restricted, was once a great thorn in
international and hygienic matters.
Off the three-mile limit at Kowhowyang anchorage, the smuggling
steamers occasionally lie. The trouble between Japan and China over the
“Tatsu Maru” incident, and the subsequent severe trade boycott, which
nearly bankrupted a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship and coastal line,
will be recalled. The Chinese and Portuguese are constantly at swords’
points over harbor questions and the inclusion of the large islands of
Lapa, Joao and Taipa in the beautiful colony, which would have been
rushed long ago by the Chinese but for fear of Britain which supports
Portugal “for auld acquaintance’ sake” and the memories of Wellington’s
peninsular campaign when Portugal assisted Britain in her need. Chinese
and Portuguese gunboats are always watching each other in the rather
turbulent waters.
Lovely flowery Macao, of fast and festival, is the favorite health
resort of Hongkong, because of its sou-west monsoon in the summer
months. The wave of the Portuguese republican revolution took a month
to reach Indian Goa and Cathayan Macao. The newspapers were read by the
soldiers in the two beautiful barracks which stand high over Cape Sao
Francisco and beneath Monte Fort. They were then loaned to the sailors
on the gunboat _Patria_ which rose and fell on the yellow tide in the
offing. On November 29, 1910, the sailors of the _Patria_ landed,
marched to the square where the Senato Leal stands on high ground
on Rua Central in the center of the closely built city. There three
volleys were fired as a signal to the troops who, a mile away, broke
into the armories and armed with ball cartridge ready for liberty’s
business! The Legionaires Regiment first proceeded to the Santa Clara
Convent, drove the nuns to the steamboats lying in the inner harbor,
and forced them to sail for Hongkong, forty miles away, the objection
to the long intrenched religious orders being that they successfully
compete with business by not paying taxes. Then the revolutionists,
dragging cannon, marched to the artistic government “Palais” on the
picturesque Praya Grande, where the governor and representatives of
the Senato Leal were forced at the bayonet’s point to agree to the
expulsion of favored religious orders, the establishment of a republic
in Portugal and her colonies, the suppression of the oligarchic and
religious organ, _Vida Nova_, and similar reforms obtained by the
republicans in Portugal. Most wonderful to relate, as a new sign
on the horizon of the twentieth century, the Chinese viceroy of
Kwangtung province brought up his Chinese army to stand by and see
that order elsewhere was maintained while European revolutionists,
European monarchists and reactionary Catholics fought out questions of
representative and popular government in a corner of the sacred soil of
old China. Correctly speaking then, it was little historic Portugal,
and not ancient China, that first established a republic on Chinese
soil, and Portugal’s republican influence, _multum in parvo_, as well
as America’s and France’s, has been influential with Chinese reformers.
Fuchau, the capital of turbulent Fukien province, is situated
twenty-five miles from the coast on one of the most romantic rivers
of China, the Min. “Fu” means happy, and is the most used word in
superstitious China, if we except perhaps a “strange oath” or two,
and the family name Chang, which almost half of the Chinese carry.
This city lies in a river plain surrounded by a glorious amphitheater
of hills. With Hongkong, Fuchau joins as the two most scenic ports
of China. The wide walls are thirty feet high, ten miles around, and
up a mountain on one side, and there are seven fort gates, the most
notable being the North Tower, with its curious spirit shrines. The
most noted temples are those to the goddess Kwan Yun, the God of War,
and Ching Hwang Temple. The seven-storied White Pagoda is famous. It
has Romanesque doors and stunted galleries with railings. It is more
ponderous than beautiful, and is remarkable for its great antiquity.
The city is a noted educational center, missionary and native, It was
a reform center even back into the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi’s day in
1897 and 1898, and produced its martyr, young Lin, who fell a victim
of that reactionary Jezebel. Six miles south of the city on Ku-Shan,
1,700 feet high, is the noted Bubbling Well Monastery. The chair ride
there affords a wonderful view. Fuchau is a health resort, as it has
many hot springs. The Pacific Coast Chamber of Commerce was entertained
by the city guilds at the Nan Pu Tu Temple in October, 1910. The valley
of boulders is notable, as are also the rich pumelo groves. Fuchau used
to be a great tea port. The trade declined from 1898 to 1907, but it
is picking up again with the increased demand for China teas. Pagoda
Island exhibits a severely plain and ancient pagoda and some remarkable
Pai Piku (white stern) junks of the olden time. An ancient bridge nine
centuries old, with sixty arches, on which are many overhanging shops,
propped from the piers, connects one of the islands.
Fuchau went over to the rebel provisional government in October, 1911,
but the Manchu city was not captured until a month later. There is a
naval arsenal here, a dock, navy school, mint and a foreign settlement
on Nan Tai Island. The climate is extremely trying.
Many unique costumes and turbans are to be seen. Fukien province people
have some Arab blood in them, though the Mohammedan religion has been
lost. They boast that they have never been conquered, and that many of
the notorious pirates are Fuchau men. Their women wear a head-dress
that looks like the model of an air-ship. There are excellent Methodist
and Congregational schools, an American hospital, and a fine London
mission which has done what missions should do in architecture. It has
adopted to a degree the characteristic and beautiful Chinese style.
All the missions and foreign trade buildings should strive to retain
this wonderful art instead of daring to bring square ugliness or Greek
coldness of column to artistic China, where it does not fit well in
so warm a land. Down at the seaside bamboos are placed in the beds so
that the oysters may cling to them. There are factories for glass
filigree lamps. Trips should be made to the Yuan Fu Monastery, built
on props on Wu Hu (Five Tiger) range, and up to which five hundred
steps have been cut; the Paeling tea hills, fifteen miles north; the
olive and orange groves; and the hot mineral springs. Fuchau is to have
railway connection north and south. With Soochow, Fuchau is the center
of the lacquer art, and old specimens are highly prized. In 1885 the
French fleet under Admiral Courbet sailed into Fuchau and battered
at the forts and the city, virtually compelling the Chinese for the
time to cede the great province to Tonquin. This is what the Chinese
call the “Sacrilege of Fuchau”. The city is also the center of tinfoil
workers, their product being used in great quantities in making the
gold and silver models which are burned at the graves. Beautiful heavy
wall paper is also made. The noted sinologue, Professor Parker, of
Manchester University, the witty author of _John Chinaman_, etc., was
once British consul at Fuchau.
Ningpo (Peaceful Wave) in friendly Buddhist Chekiang province, could
be called the Azalea City, and is one of the most delightful and
picturesque cities of China. It is the second oldest in its relations
with Europe, the Portuguese having founded a trading settlement here
in 1522. The city is moated, and the walls are broken with six gates.
Old Krupp cannons lie about on the parapet. The best wood carvers,
masons, and varnish makers of the kingdom work here, and their services
are sought for all over China. Its artists also are famous. Ningpo
lies twelve miles from the sea at the head of the Tatsieh River.
Three streams branch out into the hills, which lie spread around in
a most picturesque panorama, including valleys, canals and lakes. It
is a great fishing center, and its sailors are venturesome. The fast
river slipper boats of Ningpo are noted far and wide. The inhabitants
do not disdain the use of such a modern thing as ice, as the many
straw-covered, peaked ice houses show. Much tea and silk are produced.
Excellent stone carving is done, as witness that gem of architecture,
the Fukien men’s Guild Hall, with its carved dragon-entwined columns,
comical stone lions, and splendid, up-curving tiled roofs. The screens
and bronze urns at the many temples are also a delight in this center
of culture, the new rights of women, engineering and commerce. There
are successfully run native cotton mills, and the district produces
fine matting, rice, oils, varnish, sepia, bamboo, lumber, tea, game,
flowers, rape, barley, tallow trees, etc. There is a curious street
covered with pailoo arches to widows who would not remarry, to
scholars, children, etc. There is a foreign quarter with its splendid
bund, race course, house boats, clubs, churches, hill bungalows, etc.
No Chinese city affords more delightful excursions to the hills,
waterfalls, rapids like the Wenchow, and the wonderful Buddhist
monasteries like the noted Tien Dong and the Shih To. The trips to the
Ta Lang and Snowy Valleys are exceedingly beautiful. Outside the city
the temple to the sailor’s patron goddess, Ma Tsu Pu, at the east gate,
is particularly fine in lines, proportion, dignity and rich detail. It
was erected in 1680 by sailors of Fukien, the neighboring province.
These precious old temples are the last precious gems of a great age
in art. The new times in learning, religion, politics and commerce
are bringing in an ugly architecture. Ningpo is strongly influenced
in Buddhism by the nearness of Phu Tho Island of the Chusan group.
There is a quaint pontoon bridge over one of the streams. It has shops
upon it, and is the center of a fair. The women of Ningpo are known
for their fine needlework, and the old schools were celebrated for
their men of letters among the literati officials. The old Tien Fung
pentagonal pagoda is perhaps the oldest in China, dating back 1,200
years. Its gold and white tiles have fallen, and the brick and mortar
work of the seven stories is exposed.
Politically, Ningpo is progressive. It went over to the “Han Republic”
rebels on November 5, 1911. In the early days of the Portuguese at this
port, the Ningpo men rose up, destroyed thirty-five Portuguese ships,
and slaughtered eight hundred of the crews, because they claimed the
foreigners had gone inland and captured Chinese women on the Sabine
plan. The city was captured by the Taiping rebels in 1862. Off Ningpo
a fierce engagement between the Chinese and English fleets took place
in October, 1841. Nimrod Bay, near Ningpo, is to be the central base
for the new Chinese navy. In the turmoil of 1898, when the nations
of Europe were striving to partition China, despite the protests of
America and Britain, the French, on July 16th, landed marines at Ningpo
and tried to take a temple graveyard for a settlement, incidentally
adding twenty Chinese to the number to be buried in the graveyard!
Ningpo is soon to have a railway connection with the west and south.
Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang province, is famous as the city of
the Roaring Tidal Bore. The walls are twelve miles around. The bore
is best seen at Haining pagoda, east of the city. The tourist should
go at moonlight to see the unforgettable white specter riding in on
the wheels of the night. The legend is that the Wu prince, Tse Hsu,
committed suicide, and the Chinese go to the bore to see him sweeping
by in his fury. The stone-faced river wall has stone cradles built for
junks to outride the terrific main bore. The city has railway and canal
connection, and launch tows are now much used instead of sail. The
Golden King Hill is in the center of the city by the lake side. It is
crowned with a Buddhist temple. The lake has a causeway, lake temples
and pagodas. The city is famous for its beautiful waterscapes, like the
view of Western Lake (Si Hu), and the view from Thundering Peak Tower
(Lui Fung Tah). This tower is without the usual ornate galleries, and
shows the Arab influence which crept up the coast in the old days, and
established itself at Hangchow in mosques, etc. Three separate attempts
were made to capture China for Mohammedanism; they were made in Kansu,
Yunnan and Chekiang provinces. The Red Imperial Palace at the lake side
was once the center of the cultured Sung dynasty, thirteenth century.
Marco Polo visited and praised the beautiful ancient city as follows:
“Beyond dispute, it is the finest and noblest city in the world.” It is
now a center of the silk, wine, fan, lantern, tea, tinfoil, camphor,
hardware, book, vegetable oil, etc., trade. The city was captured
by the republicans on November 5, 1911, the Tartar city strongly
resisting. With Soochow, it is called the most fashionable city, and
the home of the best dressed women of China. Doctor Main’s model leper
hospital is here. The American Presbyterians have erected on a lovely
hillside over the water a number of buildings of the important new
Hangchow University. The Tartar walled city is on the northwest. There
are a governor’s yamen, many pailoo honorary arches, the massive Great
Peace Bridge, canals, famous temples, shops and fine residences, for
the Chinese of this section seem to have a civic pride. The rolling
suburbs of Hangchow are the most beautiful in China, reminding one
perhaps of England’s lake country. The modern parliament buildings
of the province of Chekiang are erected at Hangchow. There is also a
native university and normal school.
Nanking, the largest walled city of the Ming emperors and Taiping
rebels, and the first republican capital and assembly headquarters, is
very dear to the hearts of the Chinese race. It is the center of the
classic Mandarin pronunciation used by the north and the cultivated
of all China. The name translated means southern capital. The great
Yangtze River sweeps beneath the walls, and the city has canal and
railway connection of the finest. The city, as was discovered when
General Chang defended it, is commanded by the peaks of Purple Mountain
on the north. There are fortified hills within the city, and great
avenues down which run modern electric cars. Ruins of the last pure
Chinese dynasty remain: the Ming palace, the picturesque tombs, and
an avenue lined with wonderful gigantic camels, lions, elephants,
etc., similar to the Ming Avenue at Nankow on the Great Wall above
Peking. Emperor Hung Wu’s monument is a stone monolith, erected on
a gigantic turtle’s back. The tomb itself is square. In the same
manner that the Japanese and Russians unavoidably pounded the Manchu
tombs at Mukden with shot, the imperialists and republicans pounded
these revered Ming tombs in 1911. Bloody General Chang’s slaughter
of the republicans and non-combatants at Nanking in November, 1911,
will be hissed at in history forever. Viceroy Chang Jen held the
first Chinese exhibition at Nanking in 1910. He established water,
electric and gas works, and broad roads, and was in many ways a most
enlightened leader. The foreign settlement is in part on Siakwan
Island. Across the river on the north at Pukow, a British railway goes
to Tientsin and Kiaochou, and south to Shanghai runs the splendid
Shanghai-Nanking British railway, the best built road in China. As
usual, the city is divided into Tartar and Chinese sections. There are
military and naval colleges, a native provincial university and an
arsenal. Nanking Union University of the Methodists and Presbyterians
is famous, and is discussed in another chapter. The students have
adopted athletics and propose to send a team to Olympic games. The
city has famous pagodas and temples, like the Pi-Che-Ko, the Buddhist
Temple of Ten Thousand Gilded Gods, the White Star Temple, etc. The
Taipings burned the famous yellow and white porcelain pagoda which
once stood here, and which was the most ornate pagoda in China. Some
of the tiles are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. American firms
have established themselves, and consulates, churches, clubs and all
that goes with foreign life will now come up to the favorite city of
republican China, whose ancient culture hangs like a golden cloud
over its memories. There are newspapers, paper mills, silk and satin
filatures, fan and cotton factories, shoemakers, tailors, porcelain
kilns, etc. The city gave its name to the shiny cotton, “Nankeen”,
used throughout China and Europe. Ink, flower, bath, vase, tile, book
and jewel makers abound. Its artists are skilled. In the days of the
old-style examinations, thousands of candidates used to gather in the
great park of brick stalls. Nanking became a viceregal city when it
ceased to be the southern capital. Its guilds and boards of trade are
famous and progressive; each has its fine hall. Industry, learning,
politics, foreign trade and medicine will henceforward take a mighty
hold at Nanking, where the first provisional president of China, the
world-wanderer, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, bowed to a modern representative
assembly on January 1, 1912.
Shanghai is the queen of middle China, the ruler of the Yangtze River,
at whose gates she sits. It is often called the “Paris of the Far
East”, which remark refers to its social life, for it is not nearly so
picturesque as its rival, Hongkong, or that queen of beauty, Fuchau.
The fine black sand, once yellow loess, and saturated clay bed under
Shanghai is four hundred and fifty feet thick. For the large modern
buildings, it is necessary to sink a heavy girder-reinforced concrete
raft, and build the structures on that. Even these buildings sink five
inches as compared with the foot that ordinary pile and brick buildings
sink. Life is in a whirl at Shanghai. The river bund is crowded,
and so is the long, winding Bubbling Well Road. The concessions are
splendidly managed from a foreign point of view, and vie with each
other in public spirit. The Chinese, however, feel greater warmth for
Hongkong, which gives them representation on the council. In Shanghai
there are mixed courts, consular courts, an American Superior Court,
and Chinese courts. The Chinese are planning for the day when they
will try all Chinese offenders. There is an imposing cathedral, and
a modern Venetian style railway station. Good libraries, magnificent
clubs, theaters, hotels of all nations, taxicabs, electric trams and
rickshaws are among the conveniences. The separate post-offices of
all nations are somewhat confusing. All the sports,--racing, golf,
tennis, shooting, house-boating, swimming, etc.,--may be enjoyed, and
the military enthusiast has almost the same opportunity that he has at
proud brave Hongkong. The Shanghai settlements protect themselves with
the Municipal Volunteer Guard, in which a special corps of Europeanized
Chinese can be enrolled. Secret societies, both foreign and native,
have their temples. Shanghai has been the chief center of the native
reform newspapers which agitated from the time of the coup d’état of
1898 to the rebellion of October 10, 1911, and at Shanghai the peace
conferences between the south and the north were held in January,
1912. Outside of iron and coal, one can see here almost all of China’s
efforts to equal the Occidental in industrial activity in modern
mills. The Japanese are in strong evidence at Shanghai in ownership
of Chinese cotton manufacturing. In speculating, no city can approach
Shanghai. The awful rubber collapse of 1910 mowed down Chinese as well
as foreigners. A military band plays in the public gardens and in the
hotels. The musical and literary life of the colony is well developed.
On North Honan Road is the immense plant of the Commercial Press which
translated a million dollars’ worth of text-books last year for China’s
schools. Its president is Chang Yuan Chi. The English newspapers of
the port are known world wide for their scholarliness, and the Chinese
press is making a mark for its patriotism and progress. The Bubbling
Well Road cemetery and the Pahsien (Catholic) cemetery contain many
melancholy monuments of famous foreign pioneers. In meteorological
science, the Sicawei Observatory, under the control of the Jesuits, is
_facile princeps_; indeed in this field this order has led in China
and in the Philippines since the eighteenth century. Shanghai shares
with Hankau the title of head of the railway system; that is to say
one is the New York and the other the Chicago of the land. There is no
computing what the future trade will be at Shanghai. The climate is not
much improved on the damp sea-level misery which one experiences at
Hongkong, Canton, and Amoy, but there are brave hearts in Shanghai, and
the noblest of women who will endure any physical torture so long as
they know that they are doing their duty in not deserting the advanced
firing line of civilization and philanthropy.
The leading educational institution is St. John’s University, managed
by the American Episcopalians. Nothing but praise can be accorded
to it, and its future will be great. Already great men in China,
such as Alfred S. K. Sze, once named as minister to Washington, and
Doctor W. W. Yen, once secretary of the Foreign Board, are saying:
“I am a St. John’s alumnus.” The university is five miles from the
bund landing. Other missionary and native educational and medical
institutions, like the Nan Yang University, are of a high order.
The intellectual life is advanced, for at Shanghai live most of the
Occidentalized Chinese and retired officials.
A great arsenal is located here. There is some abandon in the French
quarter, which tolerates perhaps the lowest opium joints in the world,
and the Foochow Road exhibits its brothel life the most brazenly of any
street in the world. The dives of native Shanghai have been notorious
the world over for disappearance of victims.
There are wonderful silk shops on Nanking and Foochow Roads; luxurious
tea gardens, fine temples like the Pan Tuck Ih and the Kwang Sang Kee;
splendid furniture shops; guild halls like that of the Shansi Bankers;
the Yu Yuen gardens, etc. The Hong Ku market should be visited early in
the morning, and the wonderful products of a rich district, intensively
farmed, will surprise a stranger. The place is famous for its houseboat
trips. The boat people are called Tankas, the tribe coming from Kiangsu
province. They are related to the old Hongkong Hakka tribe. Wonderful
farms can be studied on Tsun Ming Island. Interesting pagodas, like
the Ta Kong, are to be seen. It is the theatric custom of the Germans
to erect over the earth monuments to their dead who have fallen when
in conflict with other races; this explains the “Iltis” monument.
Shanghai, soon to be the center of a vast railway development, was
the first apostle of railways for China, the noted old Jardine firm
building a railway to Woosung, twelve miles away, as far back as
the 60’s. The Manchus, who have always been reactionaries at heart,
promptly tore it up and stacked it to rust out in distant Formosa
Island. The native city is not large, nor are the moated walls
substantial, brick instead of stone being used. There are six double
gates of iron. Manila was the first city of the Far East to tear down
part of its walls and Shanghai will probably be the second. The Taiping
rebels of the 60’s captured the city, and the population went over to
the revolution in November, 1911, thus depriving the effective Admiral
Sah of the Manchu navy of his ammunition, which Shanghai arsenal had
furnished up to that time. As Shanghai grows she will probably extend
toward her port, Woosung, twelve miles away, and a Conservancy Board
must arrange for vast expenditures to prepare for a large steamship
tonnage now that the Pacific ocean is narrowing because of faster
steamers being put on the route. Imported goods for China are mainly
stacked in Shanghai’s godowns, not even subsidiary stocks being held at
ports as far away as Newchwang. This practise must change somewhat and
Shanghai take particular care of the Yangtze valley, which is a kingdom
of 150,000,000 people in itself.
The quaint Kiangsu junks are disappearing, and vast fleets of launches
and mere cargo junks have come into use. To see the picturesque old
life on the waters, one must now go farther inland. Shanghai is famous
for its peony, chrysanthemum and lily gardens. It is a florist’s
paradise, because it lies in the valley of the sun. Its dress show on
the bund and Bubbling Well Road, Hong Kew Park, Public Gardens and
Jockey Club grounds, almost rivals in silk the floral creations of
nature. Some of the costumes are amusing. A tall Sikh, “bearded like
the pard”, and wearing an immense red turban, comes along the road
with never a look to right nor left and never a smile on his eager
face. His gown looks like a loose white nightshirt, over which he has
forced a small tight vest of bright colors and flashy buttons. The
nightshirt is gathered in about his legs, which are bare below the
knee. On his feet he wears Punjab slippers, which curve up at the
points like a gondola. So he fareth forth into the perpetual comedy of
the Shanghai streets and maloos! The London “bobby” looks at him but
does not arrest him, because on official occasions this same Sikh is
the bobby’s partner on police duty, when, however, he buttons himself
within a decent blue tunic and dons long trousers, though the turban is
maintained to him for tradition’s sake.
All the foreign banks, the Hongkong bank, and the Chinese National and
Shansi banks, have branches here, and it is proposed to have branches
of large Chinese-American banks and steamship companies. Fault must be
found with the modern native as well as the European architecture of
Shanghai, that they are not perpetuating and adapting the extremely
beautiful Chinese style in roof, screen, portals, columns, terminal
ornaments, panels, pavilions and approaches. We of the Occident
are barbarians to intrude in any land and debauch its beautiful
architecture in the way we are universally doing. All praise to some
of the missionary societies, that as usual they are the first to do
right in a beautiful way by building in the Chinese manner in China. A
Grecian building like Boone University, at Wuchang; a top-heavy German
building like those at Kiaochou; a New York cave building like some
at Tientsin; a British barn like some on the praya at Hongkong, even
an Italian Renaissance like some on the Shanghai bund, are a trespass
unto architectural sacrilege in artistic China. Let us keep to the
galleries, the curved lines, the rich roof, the colored panels, the
enameled tiles of pagoda and temple as we raise stone on stone in
glorious old China, for she is the mother of the arts, and has sat
longest at the fountain of beauty, if not at the anvil of arms.
The extension of the American post-office to Shanghai, whereby a
letter can be sent from Shanghai to New York for two cents gold is
a remarkable achievement, and speaks much for the generosity of the
Chinese Revenue Board in permitting this heavy competition. Many of
the other nations have post-offices, but the rates are higher. The
great international Opium Commission, its chairman the American,
Bishop Brent, which did the impossible by disenthralling a hundred
million habitués from the pythonic toils of opium in two years, sat in
Shanghai in February, 1909, in its most memorable conference. The chief
credit is due to America for leadership in the altruistic sentiment,
and to China, Britain, India and Hongkong for the immense altruistic
sacrifice of revenue. Now that the pipe and the poppy fields have been
wiped nearly out, it remains for the nations to stamp out morphia, the
hypodermic syringe and the drugged cigarette. And poor China is not the
maker of these infernal tools. Shanghai has a modern water, an electric
and street making plants, which are being copied through China as fast
as funds can be collected by the municipalities.
For a long time it was impossible to escape quickly from the deadly
summer climate, but railways and steamships have placed the inland
mountain resorts of Kuling, at Kowkiang, 3,000 feet high, and at Mokan
Mountain within easy reach. Phutho, the famous Buddhist mountain
island, is also near enough for quick steamship service. Every
debilitated Shanghai dweller used to go to far Japan at great cost to
recuperate, but this expense will be less necessary, as these nearer
resorts are opened up by a fast developing transportation service.
Kuling Mountain is a missionary resort. Before it was discovered
broken-down workers had to be sent to Japan or home on a furlough if
they were able to stand the long voyage and the boards were able to
stand the expense. The work of missionaries is the hardest under
dangerous pioneer conditions, and Kuling Mountain is enabling the
missionary quickly to restore herself or himself to efficiency without
leaving China. The waters around Shanghai, including Seven Mile Lake,
afford excellent facilities for house-boating. The municipality uses
tall, red-turbanned Sikh police from India, as well as native Chinese
lukongs, all under foreign officers. The docks, ways and engine shops
of Shanghai, both foreign and native owned, are equipping the waters
of Central China with small steamboats, though there is a strong
competition from Hongkong, Japan and Britain, and some competition from
Manila. Shanghai can not set out thousands of lanterns on a dozen hills
1,800 feet up in the night skies, as gorgeous Hongkong can, yet her
more intimate garden and house illuminations are famous in China. The
poet may justly rave and sigh:
“Oh! give me an eve in that fairy Cathay,
When a thousand near moons change the night into day.”
Even the shop signs are lanterns. China is the home of that
nonsputtering, cold vegetable tallow that makes the only perfect
lantern candles. The silver shops rival those of Hongkong, Nanking and
Soochow, but beware of the German and Japanese machine-made imitation.
The artist only can put his soul and a luck message for you into what
he makes slowly by hand; anything else is not an _objet d’art_. There
are very fine bronze statues in Shanghai, and the pottery stores are
a delight. The market stalls are a mine of yellow, red and pink in
all shades, for these sub-tropics are a hothouse of fruit: pumeloes,
persimmons, mangostines, lichees, oranges, bananas and nuts. The grape
and pear country is much farther north, even to Shangtung province.
There have been famous consuls at Shanghai, like Sir Harry Parkes,
whose statue is erected on the bund. He became British minister, and
did much for British diplomacy and world trade in Chinese wars. The
first government of the rebellion of October, 1911, opened in Shanghai,
with Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister. Shanghai, like Tientsin and
other river ports, has its great conservancy question in the matter
of keeping the channel free from loess and sand silt. Dredging is
infinitely too expensive, and the wit of man has to be matched against
the will of tide and stream. At Shanghai the course seems to be to keep
an immense tidal basin above the port, as at Seven Mile Reach, ready to
assist the ebb tide with a flushing flow. A Department of Rivers and
Harbors will yet be the busiest and have the largest budget in China.
At present, Conservancy Boards, assisted by loans and government help,
take care of the expensive and difficult work as best they are able.
The foreign engineers employed are exceedingly able men.
Suchow, a walled city of ten miles in circumference, the Venice of
China, lies on the Grand Canal, northwest of Shanghai. It is the
center of a population of several millions. The city is intersected
with canals, and has, among its gates, six unique water gates. Hills
surround the wide plain, which is picturesquely marked also with
canals and camel’s-back bridges. The city has long been famous for its
culture, the beauty of its women, the rich designs of its imperial
silk looms, its artists, its luxurious gardens and its boat life.
Foreign settlements are both within the walls and in the suburbs.
The shops on Kwei Tsze, Dragon, Peach and other streets, manufacture
paper, wall-paper, lacquer, horn, glass, porcelain, furniture, ivory,
cotton, linen, iron, copper, etc. The city has launch connection
with the Yangtze ports and railway connection west to Nanking, north
to Tientsin, and south to Shanghai and Hangchow. In addition to the
wonderful sunken gardens in Shu Park, there are also public gardens,
libraries, modern schools, a governor’s palace, a famous monster
octagonal pagoda overlooking a picturesque, sinuous, bridged canal, a
massive customs bridge, the South Horse bridge, twin Burmese pagodas,
and in contrast with their richness, near by, a square Ink pagoda, a
provincial university, a Confucian temple, the very artistic South
Gate pagoda, statues in Tsang Lang pavilion, Mohammedan and Buddhist
cemeteries. Modern architecture is represented by the American
Methodist University, which has what the new Chinese particularly
appreciate, a fine clock tower. It is a sign of the times in China,
for the old Chinese ignored exact time. The American Presbyterians
have a most important publishing and translating department in Suchow,
which had much to do with germinating the wonderful New China, which
in Suchow particularly was ready for the seed. Modern medicine is
represented by Blake Hospital. The city was sacked by the Taipings and
captured by General Gordon, whose victorious legions thundered through
the east gate. So great an authority as the Japanese Marquis Ito
declared that the West never should have supported the Manchu against
the Taiping revolution; that the reforms of 1911 could have been
effected in 1863. I humbly differ with this opinion, as Hung and Yang
were very different leaders from Sun Yat Sen and General Li Yuan Heng
of the immortal revolution of October 10, 1911.
At Hankau, the first battlefield of the October, 1911, revolution, the
finest-developed foreign concession, running along the Yangtze River,
is owned by Britain, but many of the lessees of the palatial homes are
Russian tea merchants. All nationalities are admitted to the municipal
council of these model British settlements. Next to the British comes
a Russian settlement, with French, German and Japanese settlements
following. The Americans, as usual, club with the British settlement,
which is generally called “The Settlement”. These concessions were
granted by the treaty of Peking and following treaties. Hankau has
railway connection with Peking, and it will be linked up with the other
great centers west and south. The river connects it with the east,
and a riverine railroad will eventually be run from Nanking, which is
already railed up with Shanghai. The burned native city of Hankau is to
be reconstructed as the model city of China. Wide parallel avenues are
to run north and south and wide boulevards east and west. All blocks
and squares are to be geometrical. This is an astonishing departure
from the pig-path streets of the other native cities. The three cities
at the junction of the Han and Yangtze Rivers, Hankau, Hanyang and
Wuchang, are one metropolitan district, as are Brooklyn, New York and
Jersey City. At Wuchang, in the barracks of the Eighth Division, the
revolution actually broke out in force, as far as the regular army was
concerned, on October 10, 1911, before it extended to Hankau. Wuchang
was the headquarters of the famous Viceroy Chang Chih Tung, the first
of the conservative progressives, and one of the three viceroy props
of the Dowager Tse Hsi’s throne for thirty-five years. He was the most
honorable old-style mandarin that ever ruled the provinces of China.
The city is walled and is divided by Serpent Hill, which will be
tunneled. It has long been an educational center, the provincial native
university and modern schools being located here. Bishop Roots, of the
Ohio Episcopalians, founded the noted Boone University at Wuchang, and
the New York Episcopalians have St. Hilda’s Girls’ School. Stokes and
Thomas Hall, of Boone University, have Ionic Greek porticoes, which
look out of place in ornate warm China. The university draws its pay
pupils from the rich merchants and officials of Hankau. There is also
the Griffith John College of the London Mission, a normal school of
the American Baptists, a Swedish college; and Lord Cecil and Oxford
and Cambridge Universities propose to start their great university
here. It is a garrison and arsenal city, and is famous for its bronzes
and pagodas. On Flower Hill stands the famous three-story pagoda. The
German firm of Carlowitz has established an antimony smelter, and there
are extensive cotton mills, some of them now owned by Japanese bankers.
This red earth province is famous for its minerals, silk, tea, cotton,
paper, wax and particularly for the political independence of its
inhabitants, as the Eighth Division has immortally recorded in history.
Hanyang, a mile across the river, has the famous steel plant
established by Chang Chih Tung. It is becoming one of the most
important steel plants in the world, and Japan and Western America will
not call upon it in vain, as they are indeed now doing. Dock yards
will doubtless be established also. The American Baptists have a large
hospital at Hanyang. Hanyang has an arms manufactory, a cannon foundry
and a powder mill.
Much of Hankau was burned by those firebrands, the Imperial Third
Division, under General Feng, in November, 1911, a deed which the
south will never forget, if they ever forgive, as it was entirely
unnecessary. Many millions of property were destroyed in a land which
economically can not well afford the loss of one cent. The great city,
which numbered over a million inhabitants, will be rebuilt on the high
banks sixty feet above winter level of the two rivers. The river rises
over forty feet in summer. The Anglicans have established the church of
St. John the Evangelist, and the American Episcopalians have St. Paul’s
and St. Peter’s churches. There are fine clubs, a race and a golf
course, a foreign volunteer organization which has seen much active
service. There is also an English newspaper, the _Central China Post_,
and many native papers. The Russians are prominent because of their
tea trade. The steamship service is steadily growing, Hankau being at
the head of steamship navigation. Lighter boats are taken for Ichang.
The railway connects with Peking, and soon railways will run south,
east and west, and a bridge will cross the Yangtze River on the road to
Canton and Singapore. The Deutsche-Asiatische Bank, the Russo-Asiatique
Bank, other foreign banks, consulates and foreign traders, are housed
palatially. The great walled city is the most famous in China for its
trade and provincial guilds. As in old London, the trades have gathered
on one street, or in one district. Hankau is and will be the trade and
industrial hub, the Chicago of China, and here foreign firms should
locate without delay. The pioneer names connected with Hankau are
Bishop Ingle, whose splendid tomb can be seen in the foreign cemetery,
and Archibald Little, the explorer, author, tea trader, and the first
foreigner to run a steamer from Hankau to Chungking through the
terrific rapids of the glorious gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien.
Ichang is the advance post on the Yangtze for the commercial attack
on the Chingtu, Chungking and far western trade. It is at the head
of navigation, and is sending out its railway to conquer the gorges
and rapids. There is a walled riverine city up seventy feet of
stairs; a foreign settlement; golf course, to be sure; Episcopal trade
schools; clubs; consulates; Established Church of Scotland Mission;
interesting temples and pagodas. Ichang has for immemorial years been
the headquarters of perhaps the bravest boatmen in the world, the Hupeh
trackers and sailors of the gorges. Read a hundred books of travel and
you have their story. Here also is the headquarters of China’s red
life-boat service, an effective and daring company of men. Hupeh can
point with pride to such material in brawn and courage, on which to
build a provincial parliament or assembly. There are notable guilds in
Ichang.
Chifu, on the gulf of Pechili, is a noted bathing resort for foreigners
from all over the Far East. There is a splendid foreign quarter, with
a well-appointed club, churches and hotels. The view of the many
cone-shaped purple hills, the bluest of seas and yellowest of sands,
will not quickly be forgotten. There are islands which invite boating,
such as Temple and Lighthouse Islands. The finest fruit in China,
such as grapes, pears and apples, is grown at Chifu. The stock was
brought from America by Doctor Nevius and other missionaries in the
80’s. There is also a tree-cranberry, the Red Fruit (Hung Kwo). Worms,
fed on oak leaves, produce the famous tough Chifu silk, which is as
popular in China as abroad. Chifu was known for its blockade runners in
the Russian-Japan War of 1904–5. In the famous engagement of August,
1904, several Russian warships from Port Arthur broke through Admiral
Togo’s iron-bound investiture, and reached Chifu, but the Japanese
broke in, and despite international law, abducted the Russian torpedo
boat destroyer _Reshitelni_. The other Russian vessels they torpedoed
in the Chinese harbor. Chifu has a naval college of modern equipment.
The district produces straw braid in great quantities for the hats of
the fashionable women of the world, and her other products of beans,
peanuts and vegetable oils are well known. Gold and coal are found
near by, and many vessels call for coaling. Missionary societies are
active, and have a wide opportunity, for this is the home province of
Confucius and Mencius, and the inhabitants have a literary, political
and inquiring turn of mind. The Chinese of Chifu are noted for their
height, as compared with the busy little men of the southern provinces,
whom we know in America and Britain. Many of them emigrated to South
Africa in 1904 for a six years’ indenture, when they were all returned.
Chifu is to have railway connection with the German and Chinese roads
to the south and west. The city went over to the revolutionists
on November 10, 1911, and a republican column, reinforced by the
republican navy, operated from here against the imperialists at the
capital, Tsinan. Not far from Chifu, at Wei Hai Wei, the British keep a
strong garrison on China’s soil.
Tsingtau, in Shangtung province, is a German port, and a colonial
experiment which has attracted much attention because of the experiment
of Henry George’s “single-tax-on-land” plan, in its effort to attract
improvers of land, and spread out, instead of congest cities. In 1898
the Germans forced a lease of it at the same time that Russia occupied
Manchuria. The Japanese drove the Russians out of Manchuria, which
they have largely occupied themselves, treaties notwithstanding,
but no one has driven the Germans out of Shangtung, the most sacred
of the provinces of China. It was largely this German seizure that
precipitated the “Boxer” massacres in 1900 under the secret instigation
of the Empress Tse Hsi. The port and main colony is two hundred square
miles in area, but the most remarkable (the only one of its kind
except that of the Japanese in southern Manchuria) concession is that
of sixty miles wide and two hundred and fifty miles long from the
port back inland to Tsinan, the illustrious capital of the province,
which dates back to 1100 B. C. Through this land the Germans have
built a strategic railway, by which they could cut off communication
between the northern and southern provinces. The Chinese have never
forgiven and will never forgive this affront. It is therefore one of
China’s many unsettled questions. The bay is fifteen miles long by
fifteen miles wide, surrounded by hills from 1,500 to 3,000 feet high,
on which the Germans have planted forests in fine style. The ocean
boulevard is one of the five most scenic roads in the East, the others
being Hongkong’s Jubilee Road, Macao’s Cacilhas Bay Boulevard and the
Manila Luneta and Baguio Roads in the Philippines. The entrance to
the commercial harbor at Ta Pu Tao is two miles wide. Fortifications,
docks, godowns, railways with patented iron sleepers, hotels, banks,
hospitals, statues, magnificent homes, educational institutions for
both Germans and Chinese, have all been set out in characteristic
German methods. It was by this railway that the imperial troops were
provisioned in November, 1911, when the revolutionists had cut off
their ammunition at Shanghai, Hanyang and Nanking arsenals, and the
Chinese have not forgotten this, claiming that with all their criticism
of the “Yellow Peril” the German foreign office, at the beginning of
the revolution, was at heart pro-Manchu. The port was made a free port
on the pattern of Hongkong, and while a larger trade has developed,
Tientsin (with her port, Taku) holds her place in the competition.
Without the railway to Tsinan, Tsingtau could not hold her own as a
shipping center.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Spirited photograph of the turning tide, Pearl River, Canton.
Speedy slipper boats, sanpans, junks; modern steam launch. These
launches are rapidly transforming China’s transportation in the
south.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Wider maloos, or roads, are being broken through the cities by tearing
down the shops on one side of the way.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, American Episcopal Church, Foreign Board, N. Y.
A vigorous game of Association football at Boone (American) University,
Wuchang, Central China. Note the interested crowds.]
The sympathy between the natives and the foreigner which exists
at Newchwang, Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, is lacking at stern,
military, exotic Tsingtau. Yet the Germans have set a splendid object
lesson in the precision and strength of the Tsingtau municipal
establishment. The fine German navy is always in evidence, and the
finer German army is everywhere. Many German industries have been
established, and are run with as grim a determination, being backed by
the “syndicates”, when they are losing money as when they are making
it. German merchants seem to thrive better, and prefer to keep their
stocks at the many international settlements, where trade has followed
natural channels. The coal wealth at Poshan and elsewhere, which the
German railway has developed, is enormous, but the Chinese are bitter
that the profits, on the principle of “all the traffic will bear”, all
go to Germany and not to China. It is noticeable, in contrast with the
British occupation of Hongkong and other colonies, that the Germans
have not kept the Chinese names for the hills and bays. Tsingtau has
splendid rail and ship connection north and south. Among the exports
to Europe are the famous silk and straw braid of the province, egg
products, black pigs, coal, wheat, millet, sorghum, maize, beans in
particular, peas, hemp, copper, iron, antimony, asbestos, silver,
sulphur, gold, rugs, the famous liu-li vitreous crockery of wonderful
colors, castor oil, peanuts, fruit of excellent quality, etc. Years ago
the German gunboat _Iltis_ was lost in a typhoon while trying to make
this port, where the Germans were later to establish themselves in a
rivalry with Russia’s aggression in Manchuria.
Tientsin, the great port of Peking, is another concession city, where
the various nations keep their civilizations and military and naval
forces bright for the inspection of the Chinese, who live contiguous
in a walled city, where Li Hung Chang and his protégé, Yuan Shi
Kai, made their names famous as viceroys and intermediaries between
Orient and Occident. The city is at the head of the historic Grand
Canal. Its river, the Pei Ho, runs up toward Peking. It has splendid
railway connection west, south and north. The national railways of
North China are managed here under the direction of Jeme Tien, Doctor
Wang and Chang Kee, with foreign advisers like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope
available. Rich coal mines, especially the famous old Kaiping, are
near, and there is a vast export of this product, as well as of carpet
wool, camel’s hair, camel’s-hair rugs, jujube preserves, etc., for the
world. As it is a most important banking center, a great amount of gold
is handled. Concessionaires have flocked here, eager for privileges,
and the game has opened anew. Foreign troops have grounded their arms
here more than at any international port in China.
On account of its flat surroundings, Tientsin is the least picturesque
city of China. There is a recreation ground, Victoria Gardens, native
gardens, a race course around a graveyard, a jockey club, much
society, naval and military life, theatricals, and facilities for the
many athletic, swimming, boating and skating clubs. Except in summer
the climate is charmingly dry; the wind and sand storms are greatly
feared, however. The loess dust is as penetrating as the alkali dust
of Arizona. A British military cemetery has many melancholy monuments
of the foreigner’s occupation of an alien land, where disease and
the casualties of many famous bombardments have mowed down their
costly toll. There are electric cars, electric light, gas and water
plants, fine clubs, churches, consulates, missions, a Y. M. C. A.,
the magnificent Gordon Hall, science and military colleges of the
best, hospitals, native and foreign schools of all grades, excellent
roads like the bund and Tai Ku, fine fur, silk and pottery shops. The
English newspapers like the _Times_ and _China Critic_ are important,
and many Chinese papers like the _Ching Wei Po_ are very influential
in the coming New China. There is much foreign military music, and the
natives are learning the delightful art, the viceroy’s band already
being clever. Many Chinese have made their names here under foreign
tutorship, Yuan Shih Kai and Tang Shao Yi, for instance; and Li Hung
Chang held forth here in his yamen on the river bank in his most
influential days. The Pei Yang University is the best native modern
university in China. The medical school trains with foreign help,
what China needs most at the moment, native physicians and nurses.
The port, more than any other, has for many years had a restraining
influence on the Manchus. Without it, no one knows what the reactionary
dynasty would have promulgated in the way of edicts. Tientsin is
interesting for its wonderful colored clay images, its excellent rugs,
its salt heaps, its fish-pies and hot potato pedlers, who shout their
goods along “Eternal Prosperity” and other native streets. There is
interesting French life on the Tai Ku Road in the French settlement.
The native walled city is a model in Chinese municipal government, as
far as activity and order, but not so far as beauty is concerned. Among
the many steamship lines, the native China Merchants (a government
line) has a branch here. A Conservancy Board has much work cut out for
it by the Pei Ho bar which hampers the growing shipping. The National
Chinese Posts and Telegraphs have branches. There are native temples,
and mosques for the Mohammedan Chinese, who have absorbed the old
Honan Jewish Chinese. Tientsin is very hot, and the summer resort for
bathing is up the coast of Pechili Gulf at Pei-Tai-Ho, where the Great
Wall meets the sea. This is the water resort also for the Pekingese
foreigner and foreignized native.
There is much industrial activity, and Tientsin, with its million of
inhabitants, will be a great center for the import of machinery for
the rich provinces of Pechili and Shansi and the vast territory of
Mongolia, as it will also be the port for the mining and agricultural
wealth of those rich provinces, including chilled meats, millet,
sugar, flour, wheat, beans, fruit, nuts, skins, furs, vegetable oils,
ores, etc. In some respects the possible new ports of Chin Wang Tao,
Chung How So, and Jinkow, on the Gulf of Pechili, could compete with
Tientsin. The Peking (British) Syndicate, of Shansi, and the Chinese
Engineering and Mining Company, of Pechili, with their immense
capitalization of $6,000,000 and $5,000,000, respectively, operate and
make loans from Tientsin, and, as in all the ports, there are many
land, coal, iron and milling companies, in which Chinese have shares.
The tendency is to grant fewer franchises to foreigners, and let the
Chinese exploit their own wealth in mines, transportation and public
service, buying only from the foreigner the necessary machinery, and
paying only to the foreigner a proper interest for loans, instead of
the immense bonuses and concessions that have often been obtained.
The tendency to water the stock of public service corporations and
monopolies so as to hide the immense earnings from an overcharged
public is creeping into China, and will be attacked by a courageous and
indefatigable government. Tientsin is one of the two places (Peking
being the other) from which it is most convenient for tourists to set
out to see the Great Wall of China, the world’s grandest monument. The
railway takes the tourist about one hundred and twenty miles along
the Pechili coast to Shan Hai Kwan, where the wall meets the sea,
and turning back climbs the vast mountain ranges, to the speechless
wonder of the sightseer. One of the Chinese proverbs on this subject
is: “Those who have seen least, stare most!” There are more Jews (not
the lost colonies of Chinese Jews absorbed by the Chinese Mohammedans
of Honan, Kwangtung and Kansu provinces) in business at Tientsin than
at any port in China, not excepting Hongkong. In the warehouse of the
American Trading Company, at Tientsin, six hundred men of the Fifteenth
United States Infantry were quartered in the stormy days of the first
months of 1912.
Peking stands at the end of the great seacoast plain as you go
up from Tientsin by railway or by boat. Beyond rise the Hsi Shan
(Western Mountains) and the Mongolian plateau and mountains. It is
the most expansive city in the republic, because it is more built
up than spacious Nanking; a court, a legation, a trading, an art,
an educational, a health center in autumn, a military, but not a
manufacturing center as yet, though it will be. It is more Mongolian
and Manchu, perhaps, than pure Han Chinese. It is splendidly laid out,
and with drainage and paved roads will attract fine equipages and even
greater wealth than now resorts there. It has a water system, electric
light, telephone, telegraph and railway service, wireless connection
with the coast, a modern railway station at the famous Chien Men gate.
Its fine Gothic Pe-Tang Cathedral, strangely within the purple imperial
city, with its spires, looks as though it had been transported from
France. Its porcelain temples are centers of wealth, if not of zeal
and history. Its monuments, especially the city wall and gates, are
the noblest. Its pavilions, like those in the late emperor’s garden,
are the most artistic in the land. It is comparatively modern among
the cities and capitals of China, going back only to 1150 A. D. as
a provincial and national center. Coleridge has sung of the city.
Kublai Khan, Marco Polo’s protector, was its first great emperor. The
creator of Ming monuments, the artistic Yung Lo, is its next greatest
emperor, and it was he who gave the present stamp to Peking. Its most
illustrious Manchu emperor was Kang Hi, the potter, to whom Louis XIV.
of France, signed himself as “your most dear and good friend, Louis.”
The city is laid out on the plan of an immense Mongol camp of the
plains, defense line within defense line three times, and not unlike
Cæsar’s plans when on the march. The trading section of the city is
filled with an immense gathering of camel, mule and pony trains, and
the new railways bring coal from east and south. A master hand could
turn the great camp into a hive of modern industry. Some day, perhaps
soon, that will occur. The Peking market is well supplied by the
Mongols of the plateau and the farmers of the Pechili plain, not to
speak of what railways, canals and roads bring in from all points. More
races and varied costumes are seen at Peking than at any other city,
and the teak-barred shops are treasure houses. The Tartar city faces
the north and in its center is the Forbidden, or Purple City, of the
old Manchu court. Between the wall of the latter and the south wall of
the Tartar city are the Wai Wu (Foreign Office), legations, hotels,
railway station, banks, churches, missions, universities, hospitals,
clubs, newspaper offices, shops, etc., all saying, according to the
conservative Hanlin Chinese, in the words of our _Belle of New York_,
“Of course you can never be like me, but be as like me as you’re able
to be”. The union of Protestant medical missions at Peking, so as to
form a hospital, medical college and nurses’ school of wide scope, has
attracted nation-wide and world-wide attention. The beginning of the
unifying of Protestants thus takes place effectively in the capital of
oldest China, instead of at Geneva, Berlin, London or New York.
How much of the modern and the old, the Oriental and the Occidental,
are mixed up in this wonderful city? There are modern steam rollers;
donkey and camel trains, blue-turbaned couriers on Mongol ponies;
springless, hooded Peking carts, the mule wearing a velvet cloth;
bouncing mule litters; camel trains swaying up and down like the
billows of the Yellow Sea; modern water tanks borne by steel towers;
a modern zoo with a dragon-carved gate; automobiles; victorias drawn
by swift Mongol or black Szechuen ponies; Russian droshkes drawn by
three ponies going different paces; men tugging single-axle carts by
long ropes and harness; coolies with baskets and boxes balanced from
the bamboos on their sweating shoulders; wheelbarrow men transporting
huge bags of millet or salt; men throwing water on the streets with
big wooden spoons; rickshaws, and passenger chairs with ventilators
and windows. There is a great military camp outside the walls. In the
Portuguese cemetery outside of the west gate lie the famous Jesuits
who nearly made the Manchu dynasty Catholic in Kang Hi’s day. In the
revered British cemetery lie the bodies of the famous pioneers of
our race, who, during the centuries, have fought forward the most
advanced line of our civilization. Many of the graves and memorials,
the trees and walls were desecrated in the “Boxer” outrages of 1900.
There is a cemetery for that notorious tribe of palace eunuchs in the
northwest of the Tartar city, and sons had to be bought, or “forged”
for them so as to pay the necessary grave worship of Confucianism.
There is the new Peking Club, the second in cost in the Far East; the
Tsung Hua College, which trains students who are to go to America and
England; and where the old examination stalls and the Hanlin College
stood under the ancient “literati” system, are the modern parliament
buildings (Tzu Cheng Yuan); also National University, and the Wai Wu
Pu (Foreign Office) halls, where Yuan Shih Kai had his headquarters in
the exciting days of 1911–12. Towering over the Tartar city are the
Gothic towers of the French Pe Tang Cathedral, which was successfully
defended by Bishop Favier during the 1900 siege. The white marble
pailoo arch to the German ambassador, who was assassinated in 1900,
is notable, as are also numerous other marble, porcelain and painted
arches, and marble bridges, balustrades and statues of lions. The
statue to the German was erected under foreign compulsion and is hated.
The wonderful street bazaars of Chien Men gate, Lung Fu Temple Street,
wide Kaiser Street; the important Methodist and Union Hospitals of
Hatamen Street; Legation, Tsung Pu, Tung Tan, Liu Li, Koulan, Butcher,
Fan Tan, Lantern, Jadestone, Bamboo, Meridian and other leading streets
should be visited. There is a Peking Tiffany; the firm name is Hsing
Lung Tien. The city’s kilns and weavers are famous for their porcelain,
cloisonné and tapestries. Pedlers, however, bring almost everything,
from the cheapest to the costliest, to one’s door. There are many
native papers like the influential _Chun Kuo Pao_.
Some of the legations have been rebuilt since the 1900 siege, the
Americans in particular occupying near the Chien Men gate a series
of costly, but not architecturally proper buildings for artistic
China. The British legation near the Wu Men gate is notable for two
reasons: because it occupies Duke Liang’s Chinese palace, and because
its compound was the center of the foreigners’ quarters in the Peking
siege of 1900. The French legation rented Duke Tsin’s palace. In the
sacred urns in the Temple Park in the south of the Chinese city, the
bodies of the Sikh soldiers, who died or were killed in the 1900 siege,
were cremated. The Art Gallery in the imperial city is of particular
interest. The Lama (Tibet Buddhist) Temple, with its ornate pailoo
arch, should be seen. The priests wear orthodox yellow robes and hats,
and a red cloak with squares, which represent the rags of poverty as
realistically as art cares to go. There is an immense statue of Buddha,
and some small obscene statues which have been draped by the request
of the legations, to the great and joyful surprise of the priests, who
have discovered that they are now able to make more money in fees than
when the statues were undraped, so perverse is tourist curiosity! A
walk on the walls should not be neglected, especially where, between
the Chien Men and Hata Men gates the American, British and other
foreigners made their long stand in 1900. The ponderous fort-temples on
the walls, with their interesting exhibit of columns and galleries, are
characteristic. Red is the color of the Chinese, yellow and green the
color of the Manchus, and the tiling of the roofs indicates where each
predominates.
Peking has its many military memories. In 1900 the Ninth and Fourteenth
Infantry, the Sixth Cavalry and the Marines of the cruiser _Newark_ of
the Americans fought their way here from the coast in General Gaselee’s
union column of relief. The Wei-Hai-Wei Regiment of British Chinese
in blue and white, came, too, with quotas from the forces of France,
Germany, Russia and Japan. The Sun Wui Club brings leading Chinese and
Occidentals together; that is, those Occidentals who have a maximum of
good sense and national ambition and a minimum of out-of-date, insular
“snobbery”. We once had a similar international club in Canton, which
did good work in destroying difference and welding approximation.
The Russian Mission in the Pei Kwan section of Peking is almost the
only effort of the vast Greek Church to missionize China. Good music
is now available, for both the National Customs and native armies,
and all the foreign legations have trained bands, and there are some
orchestras. The Union Medical College and Hospital on Hatamen Street
is most notable, not only because of its effectiveness, but because
the various evangelical denominations have first united in far away
China. Some writers, like Lord Salisbury’s son, Lord Cecil, think this
is the forerunner of union elsewhere. The example has been copied
generally in China, as at Nanking, Tsinan, Canton, etc., and before
long all medical, hospital and teaching work will be on the union plan
in all the large centers. The Chinese are eager to assist, and join in
with a whole heart. Reform started in Peking in 1898, when Kang Yu Wei
and other Cantonese, trained at Hongkong, got the ear of the Manchu
emperor, Kwang Hsu, and induced him to issue the famous reform edicts.
The peony gardens are notable, and the courts and gardens of the many
temples, inside and outside of the walls, exhibit many horticultural
treasures, but Northern China in general is more notable for wild
flowers than hothouse products. There are Manchu tombs, and the Manchu
palaces and gardens of Yuan Ming, Wan Shou and Ih Ho to the northwest
to visit, and temples in the western hills, where the foreigners
resort during the blazing summer of the plains, if they do not care to
take the railway down to the bathing resort of Pei Tai Ho, or Chifu.
The scenic railway running north takes one to the glorious Nankou
pass in the Great Wall and to the Ming tombs. The station is at Liu
Tsin outside the walls. To the northwest are the villages where
the Manchu pensioners or bannermen were kept in idleness, which was
one cause of the 1911 rebellion. As in many of the Chinese cities,
there is a clepsydra water clock to be seen. Mints, banks, engraving
plants, printing presses, electricity, modern water-works; primary,
intermediate, trade and high schools, have all come to the reforming
capital. There have been large hoards of bullion in the imperial city.
The empress dowager, Tse Hsi, left many millions of silver, which were
used to run the government for weeks during the rebellion in 1911–12.
This money was collected by the eunuchs, compelling every official to
pay for his daylight audience and honors, and crimes were “planted”
on officials so as to have the excuse of fining them and thus adding
to the Manchus’ imperial reserve. Great granaries exist where the
tribute rice from the southern provinces was stored for a million or
more subsidized Manchu soldiers and hangers-on. This rice formerly
came to Tientsin and Peking by the Grand Canal and Pei Ho River.
It was later brought north, through Li Hung Chang’s intervention,
by the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, in which the government
held the majority of the shares. The history of spying, intriguing,
concession-hunting and diplomatic contests swells its largest at
Peking, and old Legation Street and the Wai Wu Pu have heard perhaps
more secret stories than any other diplomatic quarter of the world. Men
of all nations, Manchus and Chinese, eunuchs, women, human parrots,
dictographs secretly placed, waste-paper baskets, keys to private
codes, the kitchen cabinet, keyhole sentinels, tapped telephone wires,
field-glasses masked behind curtains, letter sweaters and those adders
in the bosom, society detectives, have all had their part in the old
Peking game of intrigue. Foreign trusts have come over the water to
battle with local distrusts! Understanding has not always honestly
wooed misunderstanding. Evasion has alternately successfully and
unsuccessfully battled with invasion. “When is a promise not a promise”
has been answered by, “At Peking, on both sides of the ethnological
pale”.
Culture, learning, fashion and fools have often mixed in the
drawing-rooms which face Legation, Meridian and Great Wall Streets. In
dignity, the National Customs Service, managed by foreigners, takes its
way somewhat apart on Koulan Street. With the British Legal, it is the
best civil service in the Far East, the other legations depending in
various degrees upon missionaries for their knowledge of Chinese. The
American legation in recent years has equipped its staff with student
interpreters. Foreigners learn attachment for the life, as their wits
are kept at work. It has been a wonderful capital in exciting life, as
it is in physical appearance. Foreign press bureaus have vied with one
another in sending out men fitted to obtain privileged information. In
summer, the working Pekingese throws away all the clothes that the law
will allow; in winter, he puts on so many cotton-wadded coats that he
looks like a balloon ready to ascend, if he were not weighted with a
charcoal brazier tucked under his coat or up his sleeve. He has a stone
or brick kang (stove), but he must lie close to it to get its meager
warmth. He, therefore, uses it for a bed, and so does the whole insect
race, who make it warm for him, even if the brick stove does not. When
the schoolboy wrote his ambiguous essay that “crowded China is too
thickly populated to be comfortable”, he may, therefore, have referred
to other inhabitants than the men and women. The furs of Peking are
famous, and many black chow-dog farms have been started in Mongolia to
supply the foreign fur markets. Peking has been so looted by war and
by collectors of its ceramic prizes that the shops and potteries of Liu
Li Street contain less that is valuable than the museums of America
and Europe. For the ordinary traveler who wants something beautiful,
even if it is not old, there are thousands of shops and bazaar tables
that display their tempting wares. As China reforms, and art is not
sweated out of the provinces by grasping officials and courtiers, the
traveler will be able to follow his quest back to the many old centers
of production in the central and southern provinces; and this will be
better for art, and better for the traveler. The whole nation used to
tremble when an official, dowager, baby emperor, prince, regent, etc.,
had a birthday or one of their various anniversaries, because it meant
that jade, jewels, costly furniture, tapestries, porcelain, etc., must
prove the sincerity of congratulations, and as we fill the papier-mâché
rabbit with candies on Easter Day the vase had to be filled with coins
of worth. These presents were no sooner received than they were pawned
by the indigent Manchus to the shopkeepers of Peking, or they were
stolen and sold by the palace eunuchs. The Chinese system of keeping
art in drawers instead of in glassed cabinets, in view, aided this
thievery, for the rascally eunuchs were not soon found out.
Many wonderful stories are told of the mysterious ceremonies of the
Manchu court at night; how soldiers suddenly lined Meridian Street,
and no Chinese could leave his house but on pain of death. Then the
Wu Men gate of the Forbidden City was thrown open under the smoking
torches, and the pale Emperor Kwang Hsu was carried forth, robed in
yellow, and his courtiers in red, gold and blue. Down Meridian Street
they noiselessly marched southward, the soldiers turning _volte-face_
along the street. The Chien Men gate into the Chinese city was thrown
open, and through its Meridian Street the procession continued south
for two miles to the temples and the open altar of Heaven, where
midnight sacrifices of a black bullock, burned silk, grain and wine
were made; a worship as old and as simple as that of the patriarchial
days of Abraham. It was the worship of the ancestral Chou clan, which
Confucius chronicled and the Manchu adopted so as to keep himself
in veneration; and this right of sacrifice he has maintained in his
abdication. The Pope Mikado has also retained his right to make
similar sacrifices. Surely if the main hold on eastern peoples is to
be a superstitious one, it is not so strong a hold as the republicans
of China intend to set up in the minds and hearts of the new nation.
God’s name was simply called “Tien”; i. e., heaven or sky. Then the
procession hurried back long before the non-Manchus were awake. Other
mysterious things happened in the night. The Wu Men gate was opened,
and all courtiers and ministers then alone had their audience with the
screened crown head. During the long regency of the Dowager Empress
Tse Hsi and her predecessors, China was a land ruled by midnight
decisions, and justice was as dark as the muffled and mysterious hour.
Executions of the prominent were held at night on the common Meridian
Road, which had been blocked off by soldiers. You never know at Peking
when your passenger cart is standing over the altar of a life which
was persecuted and sacrificed for opinion’s sake. No wonder that the
Chinese, like other long-suffering reformers, are saying under their
breath: “We have had enough of ‘plants’ and deeds done in darkness; let
there be light.”
This wonderful walled capital of Mongol, Ming and Manchu dynasties, is
not so old as the Great Wall of China, for it has been rebuilt several
times, the imperial portion being about 1,000 years older than the
inferior Chinese section to the south. It was as though the Chinese
traders camped before the southern Chien Men gate to supply the Manchu
court, and the Emperor Kia Tsing rose up and said: “Let us now take
thought, and throw a wide wall around our purveyors’ bazaars also.”
There is only one good thing about absolutism; i. e., to say is to do,
and it was done. Peking has had many rivals as the capital of China:
Nanking, the southern capital of the Mings, in particular; Hangchow,
of the Sungs; and Canton, Wuchang, Chingtu and Shanghai have all put
in their claims and maintained their flag in the breeze for a regal
season. Geographically and strategically, Chingtu would be the proper
capital of a united nation, and Wuchang would be almost as central and
afford better trading facilities, a London of China, but it would not
be so strong a strategic center. From a Chinese republican point of
view, Canton, Nanking and Shanghai are foremost in their claims. Peking
is weak because it is always within striking distance of Russia’s and
Japan’s mighty armies. Almost alone of the world’s capitals, it is not
at the water’s edge.
There are temples to nearly everything in Peking, a “Brooklyn of
Churches”, but most of the altars this time are heathen: temples
to Buddhas, sleeping in Nirvana, recumbent in Cingalese style; a
splendid Lama Temple with wonderful carvings in wood and stone; God
of War; Confucian; Taoist; Catholic Cathedral; Evangelical of every
denomination of the three Protestant nations; Mohammedan mosques; God
of Literature; God of Fox; Russian Greek Church; Portuguese Church;
shrines over Buddha’s skin, teeth and a score of other things;
Ancestral temples; Altars of the Sun, Moon, and Gods of Grain and Rain;
temples to Buddha’s mother, and Gods of Success, and “World Peace”
(not the recent invention of an armed peace!); Gods of Title Deeds,
Dragons, Wind and Water, the North Star; Gods of Dead Elephants and
Strong Tigers, etc. When the jolly men of Canton and another southern
city heard of all this, glorious humorists that they are, they said
they could “go it one better”. They erected with a rush a “Temple to
Ten Thousand Gods”, all of whom look alike, even the images named for
Marco Polo and “Chinese” Gordon. Chided with all this, a humorous
Cantonese retorted: “Well, haven’t you Occidentals an Eden Musée and
Madame Tussaud’s wax works; don’t take our idols as seriously as you do
the Indian ones.” There are superbly carved marble dagobas in the Lama
and Pi-Un-Se Temples. The Peking Lama is second in authority in the
Buddhist world, and since General Chao Ehr Feng drove the Dalai Lama
out of Tibet into India, the Peking Lama has now probably most power
in the Buddhist world. The Pali Chuan pagoda outside the west wall is
the most ornate in China. Burmese Buddhists brought their art influence
thus far north, and under patronage of the Ming emperors cast it up
like a pearl wrecked upon a barren shore; for the Manchu, who succeeded
in the dynasty, is not an architect nor an artist. He has had to call
in Chinese, Indian, Persian, Mohammedan and Jesuit architects from time
to time to adorn his capitals and his graveyards at Mukden and Peking.
There are towering, priceless bronze censers; stone and metal tablets;
delightful octagonal marble mausoleums with circular second stories,
topped with conic fluted roof, which is copied from the perfect act
of the incomparable blue Temple of Heaven, and like the second story
of the divinely beautiful choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens.
In his book, _The Chinese_, the author has referred to many other
similarities between Greek and Chinese art and architecture, which are
as wonderful as the dissimilarities. The ponderous gate forts, Manchu
Drum and Ming Bell towers, with the largest bells in the world, sixteen
feet high and nine inches thick, and the delightful compound or palace
gates, are notable. The Buddhists have bell and statue foundries in
the Tartar city, and there are potteries for dainty cloisonné. There
are said to be some lost Jewish Chinese at Peking, as at Kaifong. They
are now butchers, and worship with the Mohammedans, having lost nearly
all their religious, if not their phrenological distinction long ago.
What proof is stronger that the phylacteries of any conviction should
be worn day and night on the forehead, as well as engraven on the
heart, “lest we forget”. The trees and lakes of the city and suburbs
are conspicuous, because all Chinese buildings, except pagodas, are not
over two stories in height, and do not dwarf the lovely landscape.
There is one dead foreign city in China, Cathay’s “Deserted Village”,
immortal Port Arthur. Where are now the streets of palatial Renaissance
palaces which eight years ago nestled under Golden Hill and lined
the bund of the Eastern Port? Where are the massed battalions of
Alexeieff’s troops, white-capped, white-tunicated and high-booted,
which used to dress ranks on the broad parade ground behind Golden
Hill? What stilled forever the music of the ringing glasses, drained of
their sweet Roederer by gold-braided arms that lifted them quickly to
harsh lips in Saratoff’s gay restaurant on the sunny bund? What hushed
the song of the musée and Odessa ballet girls on the small stage in
smoky Nicobadza’s Café in the New Town? Over the breakers that lash
the Tiger’s Tail Peninsula do the ghosts of Admiral Makharov, the
court painter, Verestchagin, and seven hundred and fifty others of the
mine-sunk _Petropavlovsk_ battleship still whisper their mournful
names like a dirge of St. Andrew, as on that sad gray morning of
April 4, 1904? Where are the battleships _Sevastopol_, _Peresviet_,
_Poltava_ and _Nicolai_, which used to lie safely under Golden Hill,
while terrific war harmlessly hurled fire and shell from Kikwan Hill,
Pigeon Bay, where we used to shoot snipe, and Wolf’s Hill? Surely they
are not the salvaged and transformed _Sagami_, _Tango_, _Iki_, etc.,
flying now the rayed, red sun instead of the white, blue and red flag
of St. Andrew. On second view, they certainly are; there are the high
freeboard of a Baltic-built vessel of the Kronstadt navy-yard.
We search in vain for the newspaper office of Alexeieff’s official
organ, the _Novo Krai_, and we miss from the gay bund the dashing team
of the richest Chinese compradore army-purveyor, Chih Fun Tai, Esquire.
The naval dockyard across the harbor from Golden Hill is, however,
developed better than ever, though you can not get near it because of
the watchful Japanese picket, unless you wish to be incarcerated under
the international spy act! The fine white hospital buildings to the
west of the inner harbor are also improved. The wrecking crews are
still working with derricks and drags at the narrow harbor entrance
only two hundred yards wide upon the rock-filled hulls which Captain
Hirose, the Hobson of Japan, sank there at the cost of his life, under
the fire of Golden Hill on a hazy morning in April, 1904, so as to
cork up the navy of Russia and allow Togo to scour the seas with his
British naval preceptor at his side on the bridge, instead of being
held in blockading leash. Around the harbor tower the great forts of
strategically essential 203 Metre Hill, stubborn North Hill, Kikwan
Hill, Ehr Lung (Two Dragons) Hill, Sun Shu Hill, “H” fort, Palung
Hill, and Wan Tai. Not a large tree waves on them, though some stubby
firs for masking purposes are being set out stealthily. Everywhere is
desolation; choked tunnels and saps underground, filled war galleries
above ground, broken gun carriages, burst Krupp and Armstrong guns
piled up in titanic wreckage. Heroic Kondrachenko and gallant Stoessel
on one side, and Grant-like Nogi on the other, sowed the hundred
valleys and hillsides hereabout with rusting bayonets, belt buckles,
medals of glory and skulls of death. Thousands and thousands of men,
known not by their names but by their number tag, like prisoners,
dropped before the ruthless and fame-obliterating fire of range-fixed
guns operating behind searchlights. It was the steady mowing of the
grim reaper himself, until Nogi determined to reach Kondrachenko, and
North and 203 Metre forts, underground instead of by bombardment and
assault. Nickel-nosed bullets, soft-nosed spreaders, broken sabers,
rusted buttons, bleaching bones, water cans, leather knapsack bottles,
slowly rotting walnut rifle stocks, four-inch and eight-inch shells,
camp-fire equipments, pots, match-boxes, frames that held sweetheart’s
picture next the heart, star orders of the heathen emperor and cross
decorations of the Holy Tsar of Peace (!), numbers that were tagged
on the neck to take the place of the name of a man, breeches of
quick-firing guns, barrels of Gatlings and Nordenfeldts, cartridge
cases, porcelain saki bottles, metal clasps of Y. M. C. A. Bibles, all
fill up these powder-upheaved furrows of Death, where not a Chinese
building stands of the once beautiful Chinese suburbs.
Out of the historical hills and valleys wind the long parallel ribbons
of the railway around the horseshoe bend of the Kwang Tung Peninsula,
but no commercial traffic is now brought lower down than Dalny. A
destroyed city indeed, a precious ice-free port of commerce and a
sunny bund of society, deserted by force of arms, a secret base and a
masked fort yet being silently strengthened. The fleet that holds the
Pacific holds Port Arthur at its will, and the hand that holds Port
Arthur can hold all China north of the Yangtze and up to the Amur River
in its iron grasp, if there is a will and an exchequer to launch the
force. Russia allowed commerce, travel and society to come with war to
Port Arthur. Japan only allows war to mark time here. True, the Yamato
Hotel is there yet, but it is exclusively for the garrison artillery
life of the little brown men who by edict of government have given up
sitting on mats that their legs may grow as tall as their minds and
ambitions, despite Matthew 6:27. Whether there are Anglo-Japanese,
Anglo-American, Sino-American, American-Japanese, Russo-Germanic,
Anglo-French, or Four-Nation alliances or entente cordiales, this
question will always come up: “Well, what about the deserted,
shell-swept city of the Far East, the masked and granite fort, Port
Arthur?”
What happened to Port Arthur can happen to any city of China north of
Hongkong, unless China is put on her feet and has an army of defense.
Under whose tutelage shall that force arise? Not a true man lives who
wants to see another Dead City of the East. There this one stands,
terrible to-day as eight years ago, the most terrific, oppressively
silent, shell-blown, mine-scarred, tunnel-cut, war-cursed, sap-seared,
skeleton-grinning, warped, agonized, Luciferian monument of bloody war
that the world exhibits. Tuck it away in the toe of the Tiger’s Tail
in far-away China, and let busy altruistic mankind, yellow and white,
forget it. Forget it! Yes! but I hear the hammering and riveting, the
cranking of the siege guns, the piling of the ammunition, the digging
and blasting of the deep docks still going on. In the midst of peace
and life we are yet in the midst of war and death. Yet the Dead City
of the Far East, in dying, won something for progress; it checked the
Russianization of China and the obliteration of China’s best son,
Japan; it prevented the clash of Britain and Russia, and the eventual
clash of America and Russia perhaps in the Philippines and Manchuria.
It loosened a little the ruthless hand of the Russian oligarchy upon
the neck of Dumas, and the Ochrana detectivization of the people.
In dying, it brought some dangers, too, that a not sufficiently
representative Japan would take the place of Russia in greed, and
bring altruistic America upon her fleet; for the American people,
loving freedom for all, and now writing text-books on that subject,
are committed by John Hay’s “non-partition of China” policy to seeing
that Japan stops her imperialistic expansion with the absorption of
Korea, and that China, the Mother of the East, is left to pursue her
new glorious destiny in peace, with no more of her sacred territory
imperiled, until she can put liberty in free stride from the hot
Tonquin border to the Amur’s ice-fringed rapids.
Newchwang, which means “ox depot”, is on the Liao River fifteen miles
from the sea, Jinkow being its port. The bar permits of eighteen-foot
draught, but could be dredged deeper. The river is icebound from
November till April. The exports are beans, bean cake, bean oil, gold,
silver, silk, black oxen, mutton, wool, wheat, kaoliang, little millet,
pulse, spirits, tobacco, paper, lumber, furs. Coal and iron would be
a heavy export if there was not railway discrimination on the part of
the Japanese. The imports are flour, machinery, cotton, etc. There is
an important foreign settlement, and foreign hongs should move their
advance posts here for the attack on Manchurian trade. The city was
invested by the Russians in 1898 and 1900, and the Japanese to-day are
almost as active, having linked the city by railway with their Dalny
line. They have established a Japanese settlement on the water-front,
with hotels, hospitals, tea-houses, banks, etc. The Chinese national
railways give a direct service north and south via Kinchow. Newchwang’s
commerce is fed by the immense fleet of 20,000 junks of the Liao River,
which gather cargo even north of Mukden. Perhaps the most celebrated
British consul and diplomatist who has been stationed here is the
author, A. H. Hosie. In the Japan-China War of 1894 a great battle was
fought at Newchwang.
Mukden, the home city of the Manchu race, lies one hundred miles
northeast of Newchang on the Shin River, a branch of the Liao River.
It has connection with the Japanese and Chinese railway systems,
and northward it connects with the Russian system. The stone and
brick-walled inner city is one mile across; the outer wall, with
eight double gates, is fourteen miles around, and there are important
suburbs. It is a smaller Peking in plan. East of Mukden there are
walled tombs of the Manchu emperors, and of Shun Chih and Narachu,
the founders of the dynasty, which tombs suffered in the Russo-Japan
War. A plain mound, with a growing tree upon it, covers the founder’s
tomb. Winged griffins guard the southern gateway, which is so stern
in architecture as hardly to suggest the Orient. There are the usual
pailoo memorial arches, rising on the backs of tortoises, and two
unique pillars with lions on top, which design is copied from the Ming
emperors, whose throne the Manchus ravaged. The north gate oddly is
single, and not triple in Chinese style, and is guarded by a plain,
two-roofed pagoda. The court is stone laid. The main avenue of the tomb
is guarded by monster statues of lions, camels, horses, elephants and
warriors. The ancestral temple contains a tortoise which bears the
tablets. Mourning houses, temples, stone screens and vases add to the
ensemble.
The old Chung Cheng yellow-tiled palace is at the south gate of the
city, and has been tenanted by notable and progressive viceroys, one
of whom attempted to reconcile the Eastern and Western religions. The
imperial palace, Wen So Ko, has the imperial library of 7,000 cases.
Its rich museum of priceless bronzes, vases, tapestries, etc., was
largely looted by the Manchu princes, who sold the treasures to the
curio collectors who flocked like vultures to Peking in the financial
troubles of the revolution. The Fei Lung Ko treasury is on the east
side and the Hsiang Feng Ko treasury is on the west side. There is a
modern Chinese commercial museum; the Yamato Hotel in the extensive
Japanese section; a Japanese railway medical college; an Astor Hotel;
a Chinese medical college; and the medical college of the Scotch
Presbyterians outside the east gate, with which the noted author,
Doctor J. Ross, is connected. Doctor Christie, of Mukden, was another
hero of the terrific pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1910–11. The
usual favorite Fox Temple of the Manchu race is to be seen. There is
a Taoist Temple of Hell, with horrible statues. The Temple to the God
of Literature is the most beautiful in bare Manchuria, because of the
artistic proportion of its walls, galleries, roofs and stairs; but
the temple has little independent meaning, because the Manchus have
absolutely no original literature, possessing in their perpendicular
Syriac-like script only copies of Chinese literature.
Not only the Japanese are conspicuously in evidence; Russian droshkes
are pulled at the gallop and trot along the Meridian Street of the
Drum Tower. The unique tall shop signs are carved on pole and capital
not unlike Alaskan totem poles. Differently from the cities of South
China, many ponies and mules are seen on the street, and man is not
here, as in Middle and South China, the beast of burden. The best
frozen game, pork and mutton, and fish shops of China are in Mukden.
Outside each angle of the walls is a Lama monument. Mukden is famous
for its black pigs, many of which, frozen, are shipped to Liverpool and
London markets. The Japanese have erected fine railway, administration,
bank, school, etc., buildings in their settlement. The city has
telephone, telegraph, electric light, mail and water service. Wen
Hsiang, the most enlightened Manchu prince connected with international
dealings with China at Peking in the Victorian age, was a Mukden man,
and is buried near the east gate. The foreign settlement has the usual
clubs and churches, a brewery, and a large modern concrete factory
of the British-American Tobacco Company, for when opium went out the
cigarette came in, in disgusted Cathay! The Chinese hotel is the Hai
Tien Chun, near the entrance to the west gate. There are horse-tram
railways, electric trams, a Chinese provincial mint, and great fur,
skin and coal markets. Mukden will yet be a leading center for land,
mine, agricultural, machinery, food and clothing interchange of the
world, for rich, black-earth Manchuria is destined to be the granary of
more soil-impoverished countries of the Pacific than China.
XXII
NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA
Singan or Sian (meaning “Chinese”), the capital of Shensi province,
dates back to the twelfth century, B.C. The whole valley is full of
the monuments, mounds and relics of kings of many ancient dynasties.
As its name appropriately shows, Singan was the original capital of
China, when the tribes first united in mutual recognition of kinship,
and it is a shrine, therefore, appealing to antiquarians. Out on the
plain the Emperor Tsin, builder of the Great Wall, “burned the books”
of China, and buried the scholars under mounds of contumely. The most
remarkable pyramidal pagoda in China lies beyond the south wall. It
has seven stories, surmounted with a turban, and temple buildings with
rich screens are attached. To this city the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi
retreated from Peking in a springless cart over sunken loess roads
before the march of the European allies and the American column in
1900. Its walls and large forts, filled with ports, are the oldest and
best preserved of all Chinese cities.
The Bankers’ Guild building is famous for its many-pinnacled roof and
ornate tiling. Its monuments relate the intellectual communion of China
and India in the seventh century A. D. Very old buildings exhibit a
four-leaf clover design in stone screens, and the fish-scale design
in wooden and bamboo balustrades. There are wonderful gardens with
pavilions and wavy stone bridges. Pailoos, bearing legends, are built
over the entrance stairs to temples and guild houses. The square space
within the walls is six miles long each way. One reason for its strong
fortification is that it is in the Mohammedan section of China, and the
Mohammedans are always rebelling. It withstood a Mohammedan siege of
two years in 1870–1.
If Russia aimed to cut off eastern from western China, she would strike
at Singan, as it is the strategic base which holds Turkestan, Tibet and
Szechuen to the empire. Its trade is vast and various. From a religious
and antiquarian point of view, hardly any Chinese city equals it in the
interest of Occidentals, for here the famous Nestorian Tablet, dated
781 A.D., stands in the park of a heathen temple. This tablet records
the communion of the earliest Chinese Christians. A copy of this
supremely venerable and artistic stone was placed in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, in 1909. The National Library, Paris, has
had a replica since 1850. The Pei Lin Park contains a library cut in
1,300 stone tablets; the “Stone Forest”, it is called. The city lies
in a plain, and presents a striking appearance from the limestone
and loess hills which surround it. In these hills, to the northwest,
are cut the cave dwellings, temples and statues of prehistoric and
early civilizations. In one cave temple is the sandstone and gilt
colossal Ta-Fu-Tsze Buddha, fifty-six feet high, the largest statue
in China, showing the tremendous zeal of the Buddhist movement in the
brilliant Tang dynasty in the seventh century, when our Europe was in
intellectual darkness. Two colossal statues of Buddha’s pupils are also
in this temple.
The city presents a brilliant kaleidoscope of nationalities:
Mohammedans with red turbans, Tartars wearing red panels; Mongols with
blue turbans; high-booted, bewhiskered Russians; booted Tibetans;
blue-gowned Chinese; yellow-robed Lamas; now and then a top-knotted
aborigine; robed Manchus; and descendants of the original Tsin and
Chou tribes of Chinese who came east to China from the cradle of
the race, seated in the saddle of pioneer conquerors; and with the
Hebrews, these Singan men can probably boast that they bring down the
purest blood from the dispersion of Ararat. Descendants of kings and
generals of many a dynasty now plough farms on the plain, and they
will tell you: “Yes, I am the son of a king.” Near here the builder of
the Great Wall, infinitely the greatest mason and military commander
of history, the Emperor Tsin, 220 B. C., had his capital at Hsien
Yang. His huge pyramidal mound, and other burial mounds, are among the
world’s greatest curiosities. On the plain are the two unique marble
arches, with four roofs, erected by Governor Lu to the memory of his
mother and wife, in the China where some writers say women meet with no
honor. A stone bridge of seventy arches over the Pa River, and the hot
sulphur springs of Lin Tung, are notable. The round, instead of square
stone piers, are unique in China, and show Moslem influence. Not all
Chinese cities were without attention from the sanitary engineer. Old
culverts and drains constructed by the ancient kings of the north exist
in Singan and elsewhere, and some of the southern cities have drainage
canals, sewage canals not being considered necessary, as the night-soil
is collected for fertilization. China, however, is going to drain her
cities so as to carry off expectoration and decaying matter. The smells
which the tourist revolts at are not as dangerous as they seem, as
opium, peculiar incense, and vegetable cooking oils, such as sesamum,
peanut, bean, etc., contribute the most malodorous portion.
Chingtu stands in a wide plain in the heart of the vast empire. The
walls are fifteen miles around, and the gates of these walls are
never opened at night, except to the “chi” (government messengers).
Either Chingtu or the Hankau cities will be the capital of the nation
eventually. It is an intellectual center, and there are many publishing
shops. Two rivers, the Min and To, border the plain, and are broken up
into the widest system of irrigation canals that the world shows. No
garden of the earth is so rich as this warm moist Eden. Every tree,
herb and plant of the tropics and sub-tropics is raised, and more men
are supported here to the acre than anywhere else in the world. It
is the earth’s model school of intensive farming, and would delight
the professors of the specializing University of Wisconsin! In the
sandstone and loess hills are the cliff dwellings of prehistoric man.
There are hundreds of bridges and ferries, many temples, arches,
cemeteries and villages, the latter often populated by one family clan.
The great walled city of a million inhabitants has the widest streets
of any native city except Peking. There is a Tartar walled city within
the Chinese city. The forts over the gates are of three stories. The
loyal General Chao Ehr Feng, the hero of the Tibet campaign in 1910,
held Chingtu for many months against the republicans in the fall of
1911.
The Provincial Assembly proclaimed reform in September, 1911, from
a wonderful, circular, double-roofed temple in Chingtu. There is a
large Mohammedan population, and mosques are therefore conspicuous.
Marco Polo was a traveler here. There are wide Tartar parade grounds
and rifle butts. The markets and fairs held in the temple grounds
(religion and business being partners in China as in that Boston church
that uses its basement for stores!) are the best in the empire. It is
the splendid capital of the largest and richest province; a center
of independent provincials who are crying “China for the Chinese.”
It has a modern union university, which teaches English, science and
Chinese; trade, military and girls’ schools; musk, silk, brass, salt,
horn-lantern, oil, fur, spice, lace, porcelain, cotton and wool shops;
a few iron shops; decorated yamen and guild halls. Its traveling
kitchens, its porters and wheelbarrow brotherhoods are unique. One
temple, erected to the Sheep-god in particular, is remarkable for two
reasons: first, that it is a Taoist and not a Buddhist monastery: and
second, that it is one of the finest examples of architecture in the
empire. It is the beautiful Ching Yang Kung (Temple of the Golden
Sheep) monastery outside the south gate. The Chu Ko Liang monastery,
with its circular doors, is another chef-d’œuvre.
Many nations and faiths have missions here, and their medical schools
and hospitals have won the hearts of the Chinese even ahead of their
excellent schools. Chingtu is one of the centers that the Canadian
missions have selected for special work. One meets many foreign
engineers, and there are also native engineers. The climate is far more
endurable for foreigners than that of South China at the seacoast.
Many Lolo and Miaotse aborigine mountaineers, with their hair worn
in a top-knot, are seen on the busy streets. Rice and wheat mills
are being erected, and furniture, florist, book, bronze and picture
stores abound. Chingtu will be the center of the commercial attack on
rich Southeast Tibet, as the main pass of Ta Chien is not far away.
Britain plans to link Chingtu to her Burmese and Indian railways by
loaning the Chinese the necessary money. The Chingtu gentry started a
railway to Ichang on the Yangtze River, and differences with the Peking
authorities over the nationalization of this railway in September
precipitated the October, 1911, rebellion at the Hankau cities. There
is an arsenal, a mint, a military school and police barracks, the
police being uniformed in modern style, with the addition of arms.
The French are also in evidence at Chingtu, as they would like to run
their railway up from Yunnan City. Railways are planned to run north to
Singan, east to Ichang through exceedingly difficult country, south to
Chungking, and west to Batang and Burma. Politically the Chingtu people
are progressive and fearless like the men of Hupeh province, whence
they came, as in 1644 Chang Hsien Chang depopulated Chingtu.
Chungking, the second city of vast Szechuen province, is a riverine
port with a great future as a railway, boat, trading and manufacturing
center; a future Pittsburgh, perhaps. It is built on a rocky peninsula
just like Macao, the Yangtze and Kialing Rivers forming two sides,
and a wall the third side of a triangle. From the hills outside the
wall, the graves of the ages look down on the busy scene, as the
carriers set out on the long stone road toward the capital, Chingtu.
Chungking is famous for its water-gates, overhanging buildings propped
over the rock with long poles. Some of its streets are exceptionally
clean, wide and well paved. It is called the “piled-up” city, like the
lower part of rocky Hongkong, the roof of one row of buildings being
part of the street of the tier of buildings above. There is a great
parade ground, and a military school by the land wall. The city is a
center for fitting up expeditions which are bound for the prosperous
capital in the north, the rich hilly south, or the wild west. Drugs,
vegetable and mineral oils, water-proof paper, salt, coal, furs, iron,
tea, lanterns, cement, agricultural products including sugar, bamboo,
silk in particular, boat builders’ and chandlers’ supplies, placer
and quartz gold, are all specialties of the district. Fine pagodas,
with beautiful, up-curling galleries, overlook the river, and there
are excellent “Li Pais” or mission compounds, and modern educational
institutions. There are fine guilds, as one could expect of the Hupeh
and Hunan province merchants, and the Ho Gai Monastery reveals a
delightful touch of the old times. Beautiful pailoo arches span the
roads. The Guild of Benevolence is famous for its extremely beautiful
pavilions and terraces. As at all the riverine ports of the Yangtze,
the great flights of wet stone stairs are characteristic. Chungking was
once the second worst opium hell in the kingdom, but the people awoke
to their danger in a wonderfully surprising way, and in the years from
1908–11 largely threw off the curse.
In Chungking the rebels of 1911 recruited many of their first
patriots, and the first attacks were planned from here. The people
are an earnest-looking set, yet the place for centuries, like its
great winter mists which float down from Tibet, was the center of
sorcery, superstition, fortune-telling and folk-lore. It was just the
place to raise soothsayers, poets and astrologers. The only man who
had a stronger wand like Aaron’s which swallowed up all the rest,
was the American or British medical missionary, who by 1910 grew to
be heartily beloved, so much so that every foreigner was welcomed by
rich and poor, and implored to “come in here, see my art treasures,
and (incidentally!) before you go won’t you please heal my child, my
beloved and my old parent?” It was enough to make every traveler swear
that if he returned home safely he would at once study medicine and
come back to China as a physician of the body first, and the soul and
economic state afterward. The boat people of the port are famous for
their courage and skill, and the mountain coolies are noted for their
endurance. Much of the blood of the race is from Hupeh, which means a
strong strain of “China for the Chinese”. The city is surrounded with
hills and ranges, and there are many mountain health resorts used by
natives and foreigners, which are exceedingly welcome in the moist hot
summer. There is the Golden Buddha range to the south, with its fine
temples and many aborigine dwellers. Ho Ih Shan Mountain is to the
north. The Gong Gorge is a scenic spot of great beauty. The British
have a palatial consulate at Chungking, with a bungalow adjunct in
the hills so as to afford escape from the terrific summer. This is
the policy that the Hongkong Bank long ago instituted in China; mess
quarters over the bank for winter occupancy, and airy bungalow quarters
on Hongkong peak for summer occupancy. There are many Mohammedans in
Chungking, and four of the industries which they control are bakeries,
butcher shops, inns and common carrying.
Wuhu, on the Yangtze, half-way up to Hankau, is recovering from the
blow dealt it by the Taipings in the 60’s. It will take a prominent
place in the coming industrial China because of riches in land, mine,
silk, tea and bamboo near it. It is one of the new strongholds in
education and medicine under American and European auspices. It has
a foreign colony in the hills. The Hwangchi River brings grain and
produce down to its marts, and the great Yangtze sweeps by its harbor
bund. Game, such as pheasant, quail and duck, abounds. There are very
fine pagodas, and in particular a Buddhist rock temple with the figures
of men, animals and birds cut solidly out of, or in relief on the solid
rock, the shrubbery and grass serving for hair and beard in a startling
way. Excursions can be made to the Chin Shan and San Shan hills,
temples, lily lakes and flowery restaurants. The town is full of the
festival spirit, and the beauty of lanterns, arches, flags and matting
shelter is often delightfully exhibited. Wuhu early went over to the
rebel movement of October, 1911. Wuhu is a great sufferer from floods.
They were so deep in August, 1911, that Lion Hill became an island. The
Yangtze, instead of mounting willingly up to Nanking, tries at Wuhu to
break across country for Shanghai. The result is deplorable flood and
resultant famine, involving millions of people.
Tai Yuen is the walled capital of the great coal, iron and loess
province of Shansi, which is as large as England. It is the richest
in minerals of all the provinces. The famous Ping Ting coal and iron
mines are near. The city lies in a great plain 3,000 feet above the
sea on the Fen River, and has railway connection with Peking and all
the east and south. It is to have connection with the capital of Kansu
province, and all the great northwest for thousands of miles. Mills
will arise, for stone, clay, iron and coal are available in this
province as nowhere else. Though the air of the city is exhilarating
and there is little consumption, skin diseases and diseases due to poor
water are prevalent. With irrigation in operation, fertilization of
this loess province would be unnecessary, so that Tai Yuen will yet be
a great wheat and millet center. Her grain, stock and wool merchants
will be taking contracts to feed and clothe America and Britain when
our fields are impoverished and overrun with people. It will be a
financial center, for Shansi’s wealth in China’s new industrial era can
not be computed. Even now the Shansi bankers are the best known, their
guild houses being in every city of the land. The railway, electric
light, post, telegraph and telephone have arrived, and so has the
printing press, raying out reform. The railway has brought progress
to quaint Tai Yuen. There are match factories, police department, a
public band, modern schools of all sorts, an agricultural and military
school, modern roads and a street-cleaning department, a modern jail
which aims to teach instead of confirming in despair. Confucius fled
here to the Wei State, when his own state persecuted him, and this
province is the home of the original clan of Chinese, the Chou, who
instituted ancestor worship and the rule of princes at the beginning
of history. The great Shansi University was established here in 1901
by the British with indemnity funds restored to the Chinese at the
request of British missions, which was a singularly Samaritan act; for
on July 9, 1900, at the yamen in Tai Yuen, all the missionaries, their
wives and children, were put to a brutal death by the infamous “Boxer,”
the Luciferian brute, Governor Yu Hsien, whose name is hated by the
progressive Chinese as much as we hate it, and the Manchu officials
who took their “tip” from the dowager empress, Tse Hsi. Doctor Timothy
Richard, promoter of the successful Red Cross in China, was the first
president of this institution, and W. E. Soothill was its second
president. Both these gentlemen lead in Britain’s educational influence
in China. English, of course, is taught. Like all the northern cities,
Tai Yuen is cursed in fall with the penetrating loess and sand-storms.
The blue-roofed and blue-walled Temple of Heaven is beautiful, with its
magnificent eaves, carved terminals, colored frieze, columns, statues,
scrolls, paintings and theater. There are also Confucian, Manchu-Fox,
Buddhist and Taoist temples and pagodas, and a Mohammedan mosque, for
this is the first city, going west, where we meet this last sect,
whose sphere extends right on to the far northwest. There is a notable
four-storied fort over the Romanesque south gate.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Treeless mountains of South China, Kwangtung province. Modern road
broken down from the disintegrated granite; stone houses of
farmers; rice cultivation with water-buffalo.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Sport in South China, Kwangtung province. Dragon-boat racing in
June. Crews sometimes number a hundred paddlers to a boat. There
is frequently great loss of life. This photograph disproves two
statements: that the Chinese are phlegmatic and dislike sport.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Pechili province merchants ready for a trip into cold Mongolia.
They are the class which is calling for more railways. Woolen
clothing is taking the place of the padded cotton garments shown,
and leather shoes are rapidly coming into use.
]
The Manchus have their own Tartar or military city, which will now
become the administrative headquarters. Many furs are brought
down from the Mohammedan and Mongolian plains in the west and north.
There are mission schools and hospitals, a military parade ground,
and an arsenal. The twin pagodas of thirteen stories, with narrow
galleries, are famous. The pailoo memorial arches are distinct from
the open southern type, the Shansi type being a solid top-heavy tower.
More ponies are to be seen here than in most of the cities, and the
horsemanship of the Mongols is daring, as we should expect from the
descendants of Kublai Khan’s hordes, whom Marco Polo praised in that
famous memorial that was dictated in a prison of Europe more terrible
to him than all the dangers of Far Cathay.
Yunnan, the capital of the great copper and tin province, is five
hundred miles from the Gulf of Tonquin, with which a French narrow
gage railway, completed at awful cost of men and money, now connects
it. The city is in a plain five thousand feet high, at the foot of the
Tibetan Mountains. A great lake, the Tanklu, near by, is connected by
canal with the city. It is the center of a warmer art than the other
provinces, the architecture showing the elaborate Burmese influence,
which relies on ornament and color more than line and proportion.
Some of the pagodas are square, peculiar to Yunnan, and have nine to
thirteen stories, and galleries, as compared with seven to nine stories
elsewhere. The gate forts are ornate, though the roofs do not curl
up as fantastically and richly as in the east of China. The British
and French are fighting it out for chief foreign influence, with the
latter ahead as yet, because the railway from Mandalay has not been
run through. There are fine French stores where you can purchase
madame’s millinery, confection or perfumery, a French hospital and a
palatial French consulate; but the Chinese have far greater trust in
the Americans and British, for French designs on Chinese territory
are feared. Yunnan does not want to follow Tonquin. There are many
Mohammedans, and their round mosque towers are in evidence.
Great rebellions and massacres have occurred, as in those bloody years
1857–73 when General Tsen made a name for ruthlessness which still
strikes terror throughout China. The city, with a splendid division of
the modern army, went over to the rebels on November 3, 1911. Outside
the walls are two interesting temples. The Golden Heaven Temple is in
the northeastern hills. Part of it is made of gilt copper, and shows
Burmese influence. The stairs, terraces, openwork balustrades, tiling,
roofs and scrolls are very fine. The Buddhist temple cut in the rock
over the lake is a noble work, even extra niches being cut for the
statues. It is not likely that this costly work will ever again be done
in China, for “the god has lost his grip,” the devotee having found
out that he was hollow! The bald monks are scratching their heads and
thinking what new thing they can devise to bolster up the system. Many
of them have gone in the hotel and teaching business! The flags of
the temples have bells attached to them, and bells are hung under the
eaves. Every breeze in Yunnan is laden with silver and gold, therefore.
There are temples and shrines to the goddess Kwan Yun, who is said to
give good luck to travelers. It is proper ritual to roll the prayer
paper on your tongue, and in a ball shoot it toward the statue, where,
if it sticks, it means fortune for you, as the goddess will certainly
be unable to forget you. There are beautiful pavilions at the lake, and
Yunnan can now be considered a health resort for Southern and French
China. It is a center of engineering, and the headquarters of the
inventors of the stone-and-chain suspension bridges which are peculiar
to this province of gorges. The piers and pier houses are very
artistic, and stand unique in the world’s architecture.
Yunnan has modern schools, colleges, hotels, hospitals; a mint,
post-office and telegraph station; splendid modern barracks, a fine
parade ground, etc. The university is a modern domed brick building
on a hill in the center of the city. Its dormitories are lighted by
electricity and the equipment is wonderful compared to what used to
be. There is a museum, and English, Japanese, French, science, music,
agriculture and sericulture are among the branches taught. The best
trade school, however, is the modern jail, which is very popular! When
you hire a mechanic in Yunnan you are reasonably sure that you have a
former jailbird, just as in Peking, if you have a good clerk you are
sure he is a Manchu prince incognito, for pensions have been stopped
of late! One sees here the famous Yunnan yellow pigs, and peculiar
white and black fowl, whose bones and skin are black, probably on
account of iron and copper in what they eat. Boys are driving water
buffaloes to the rice and maize fields, which have superseded the poppy
plantations. The stores exhibit the famous jade and the Yunnan (Tali)
landscape-veined marble which is used in the tops of tables, the seats
of chairs and panels of cabinets and screens. Peculiar bamboo and paper
toys in which the figures move by the heat of a candle, are made, which
is another proof that the Chinese love children more than they are said
to do in many books of travel! The city is famous for its copper and
bronze work. The copper smelting by charcoal up to 1911 was an imperial
government monopoly, the ingots being sent overland to Peking by pack
animals, which took the route via Sui-fu and Chungking. At the Peking
mint it was used in the heavy “cash” coinage. Yunnan is noted for its
cloth dyers, who as yet use the famous indigo of the province, instead
of analine dye. The tin, iron, pewter and furniture shops are noted,
and foreign models are being copied with success.
The city is noted for its modern prison, with model workshops, the best
in China. The police corps, uniformed in knee boots, tight tunics and
German caps, and wearing swords, is a model gendarmerie. Yunnan, the
farthest removed city of the empire from the capital, Peking, has been
the foremost in these startling reforms since the French railway came
through from the coast in 1910. Many Hongkong Chinese, who at once
visited the place, are largely responsible for this reform leaven, but
the chief credit is due to the progressive governor, Li Chin Hsi, who,
remote as he was from headquarters, preserved order during the exciting
months of 1911–12. In the streets the chair coolies rush along, with
the right of way, shouting “Pei Ha” (We’ll poke you in the back). It
was once the king town of opium, where a whole city walked for years
in a sleep, but the government has largely stamped out both poppy
field and opium joint. On the parade ground on a fall day of 1909,
with military honors, the governor amusingly burned in public hundreds
of thousands of dollars worth of opium and ivory pipes. On account of
magnesian limestone and minerals in the water, awful-looking victims
of goitre are constantly met. The poppy fields are now being used by a
wide-awake people for the cultivation of mustard, rice, maize, sugar,
banana, orange, pomegranates, bamboo, walnuts, etc.
Many peculiar races and varied costumes are to be seen in this Museum
of Languages: Shans with high black head-dress and a red band across
their foreheads; Mohammedans with green turbans; Lolos without queues
and hair piled on the head like men who have a perpetual nightmare;
Tibetan women driving their pack trains to their mountain home,
the “Roof of the World,” and driving their husbands, too! Burmese
with combs in their hair, though they are not women! Kilted Kachins,
carrying their long, two-handed dha-swords on their shoulders, and
their women wearing bamboo sticks through their ears and chains of
river shells and colored stones on their necks; Annamese in gorgeous
gold silk, embroidered as though they were on their way to claim a
throne; daring, dirty Bhamo muleteers, who dare to be full of polyglot
oaths, for they wear nothing worth throwing mud at; women riding
ponies, donkeys and mules, and trying to evade the thrust of one
another’s pin-filled hair as though they were on tourney; aboriginal
Miaos and Lolos with figured yellow cloaks like circus clowns, and wide
hats whose rims are stayed down to their shoulders with strings; French
surveyors in white duck and kettle helmets, and exhausting themselves
with the vivacious volubility that you listen to on Marseilles’
Cannabiere; British in khaki, Calcutta topey-helmets and putties, and
as “cool as cucumbers” both in tongue and temperature, men who “get
there”; yellow-gowned bonzes wondering where their religion has flown
of late; black-gowned Roman priests and flat-hatted _frères_ of the
Missions d’Etrangeres, wearing Chinese soutanes; gray-gowned Taoists
who are satisfied with their incomes, because while religion has flown
in China, superstition still sticks; blue-gowned Chinese; flame-robed
Tibetan lamas; pink-gowned Buddhists, who are thinking of opening
hotels instead of temples, in which latter there has been a “slump”;
and occasionally an American in a Sabutan hat and a Shangtung silk
suit, ready for anything, and showing the mood in his eyes and laughter.
The district is gorgeous with flowers, camellias, mustard, poppies,
magnolia, indigo, olive, jasmine, and every kind of fern, bush
and vine. Yunnan is rich in animals, including the tiger and black
panther, and fine skins, and some ivory are to be obtained. Beautiful
cranes and duck are to be seen on the lake. It is also rich in
valuable lumber, and therefore its furniture stores are notable. Coal,
iron, zinc, copper and salt are produced in abundance, and there
is much gold, silver, nickel and quicksilver. The tin mines of Kuo
Chia produce 13,000,000 pounds of tin a year. There are also beds
of precious stones, rubies, garnets, sapphires, amethysts, etc. No
district of the empire has so many varied metals as Yunnan. The many
races keep the province more disjointed than any other. An authority
on these aboriginal races is the British consul at Tongyueh, Yunnan,
whose exhaustive articles have appeared in the London _Geographical
Magazine_. In natural scenery Yunnan presents the most sublime panorama
in the world.
Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, goes back to 1100 B. C.,
and ethnologically is very interesting, as these are the people of
Confucius and Mencius, the descendants of the Tsi State of original
China. The city, which is walled and moated, is quite beautiful with
trees, springs, mosques, theaters and temples. There are hills all
about, and inside the walls on the north a lake dotted with islands,
on which memorial arches and temples have been erected. Communication
with the sea is had by the famous Yellow River (“China’s Sorrow” of
flood), and the Grand Canal is also in touch. The German railway gives
connection with the east, and national railways are to run north,
south and west. Fine glass and the famous colored vitreous crockery,
called liu-li, are made here. The guild halls and jewelry shops on Kuan
Ti and Fu Run Boulevards are very interesting. The mineral springs
will doubtless gather sanatorium hotels. There is a girls’ school,
a military school, an arsenal, and a modern native university in the
suburbs, where English preferably and German are used in scientific
studies, and peculiarly music is also studied. The markets are well
supplied by a province rich in agriculture. Missions, colleges and
medical schools, like those of the Baptists and Presbyterians, have
a strategic center at Tsinan, as millions of Confucian and Mencian
pilgrims come here on their way to the shrine of Taishan Mountain, and
the birthplaces at Kufow (Yenchow), and Tsou, respectively.
It is to be hoped that the Duke Kung and other members of the Kung
family will take their places in China’s government, intellectual and
religious life. They are the oldest family on earth, older than the
Mikado’s ancestry, and China could with genuine and lasting pride
gather around real leaders of the Kung family for noble causes. A plan
has been drawn up by which, if the Chinese republic is a failure, an
experiment will be made to enthrone one of the Kungs (Confucius), who
happens to be a Christian He would be in somewhat of a quandary, as his
appeal to the Chinese would have to be that he was born a Confucian,
and his appeal to the five nations would be that he was a Christian.
Still a little thing as that might not bother a Chinese diplomat! It
never did in the Manchu days of twist and turn, _volte-face_, and come
back again, smiling ever! The proposed Union University of all the
American and British denominations in Shangtung will be brought from
Wai Hsien and other cities to Tsinan, and this move will be fraught
with great success, for “in union is strength.” Tsinan, with the
province of Shangtung, under the rebel governor, Sun Hao Chi, went over
to the revolution on November 13, 1911.
XXIII
RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY CHINA
Buddhism, the religion of China which owns most of the finer pagodas
and temples, celebrated in 1912 the 2500th anniversary of Buddha.
They do not celebrate Buddha’s birth in the body, but rather birth
in the mind or soul, the celebration being called “the anniversary
of Buddha’s enlightenment.” Despite the troubles that Buddhism has
encountered at the instigation of the government’s amban in Tibet, the
celebration occurred there with avidity, as it did also in Mongolia,
at Kuren, etc. Throughout the rest of the land, despite the prominence
of Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity, the Buddhists made their
anniversary well known. Every one was interested in those who once
taught that man should be clean, and sincere in good works, and should
love his fellow man disinterestedly. The thousand little rules for
purchasing a specific pardon in the next world have, however, confused
the Chinese mind, and many of those who looked on called the ritual
now merely a mass of superstition. No one can deny that this is the
world’s most picturesque religion which the Chinese imported from India
so long ago, and of which they are now the leading exponents. There
are temples in San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and London also. If
Buddhism were purified from its accretion of rites, and took up again
vigorous sermons on the virtues, responsibility and self-sacrifice, as
in the days when Asoka’s preachers started out to convert the world
to doctrines of service, it would not be a long step from Buddhism to
Christianity.
Architecturally, the world enthuses over Buddhism, and now that travel
to China is increasing, a cry is going up over the artistic world:
“Save the incomparable pagodas and temples for art’s sake, for they can
never be repeated, the spirit having departed.” Many of the temples
are dropping to pieces, as in the break-up of old faiths the bonzes
have been unable to collect the money which is necessary for upkeep.
The government is maintaining some of the temples, but it uses them as
schools, and the monks themselves have turned some of the temples into
inns. The nation, rich merchants and interested foreigners might take
part in preserving these beautiful monuments, and Christianity, which
is spreading in China, is wide enough in its charity to appreciate
and wish to preserve the beautiful architecture of Buddhism. Let
experiments be tried; let the government, with its supreme authority,
buy out some beautiful Buddhist temples and pagodas and turn them over
as headquarters to Christian schools or medical missions. The Buddhist
monks are a forlorn-looking set, their parishioners contributing too
little for their support. This parsimony has induced the monks to
invent the system of superstitious credit indulgences and absolutions,
which, by working on their fears regarding the future life, they compel
the Chinese--particularly the women--to buy.
As a rule the statues of Buddha are solemn or gentle-faced, as in the
Temple of the Five Hundred Genii at Canton. But there is one hilarious
exception, the laughing gilded Buddha of the Ming Hong Temple, near
Shanghai. The god’s eyebrows, nose, eyes, mouth and chin all curve
into great bows of mirth, like the irresistible Coquelin’s face in a
full-blooded comedy, or DeWolf Hopper’s face in _Wang!_ The Buddhist
priests who run inns keep a guests’ literary book, in which one will
find sentiments written by many of the world’s noted travelers. The
priests wear a yellow gown. Over the left shoulder hangs an over-gown,
made of square red patches, sewed together, typifying the vow and rags
of poverty. On the walls of the famous Lung Chang Buddhist Monastery,
near Chingtu, in Szechuen province, hangs a celebrated text reconciling
Buddhist and Christian teachings on the doctrine of peace. The Chinese
hang a popular text on the walls, which corresponds with “God bless our
home.” It is “Tien Kun Kong Fuk” (May Heaven send happiness).
Disfiguring by branding, just as the Romanists used to flagellate
themselves, has not died out in China, for some of the Buddhist and
Taoist monks of Soochow and elsewhere bear regular scars on their
shaven heads and on their limbs, placed there to show penance during
fasts, and to gain a reputation for holiness, or to use the Chinese
phrase, “attain virtue.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi liked to
assume the character of the Buddhist goddess Kwan Yun, and have herself
painted with bare feet riding on a lotus leaf; in her hand a rosary;
and wearing a blue veil, gray robes, a gold, garnet and pearl crown,
earrings and necklaces. The eunuchs and friends of the empress always
referred to her as the “Old Buddha,” which was the nickname that she
liked the best. It is worthy of note that the Taiping rebels in the
60’s destroyed Buddhist temples and slew the bonzes, largely because
the Buddhists of that time were opposed to progress and oppressed the
poor with their “privileged orders.” On account of his not marrying,
the Chinese call a bonze a “Chek Ke” (forsake family). They are,
therefore, despised by Chinese men, but have a stronger hold on the
women, with their picturesque religion, and good omens whenever they
are paid for them.
On the first and fifteenth of each month, a musical service is held
before dawn in the two thousand Confucian temples scattered throughout
China. These temples all contribute a little toward the support of
Confucius’s seventy-seventh direct descendant, Prince Kung Fut Tsze
(which Latinized is Confucius), of Shangtung, though some of the Kungs
are Christians. The Confucian temples contain red and gold tablets
of Confucius and his disciples instead of the statues appearing in
the Buddhist, Taoist and War temples of the land. When Kwang Hsu, the
reform emperor, issued an edict in 1898 that modern schools should
be formed, he ordered that some of the Confucian temples should be
impressed. Confucius did not institute ancestor worship in 550 B. C.
He found that it existed in his own state of Lu (present Shangtung
province) and in the adjoining states of Tsi on the north and Wei and
Sung on the west, all of whom had taken it, with the sacred tripods,
from the parent Chou clan, which brought them from misty prehistoric
days thousands of years back. To Confucius, credit should be given for
adopting ancestor worship as an indispensable rite in the organization
of the growing Tsu clan and of the future conqueror and federator of
China, the Tsin clan, which latter eventually ended feudalism, which
was then, however, adopted by Japan and carried forward to our own
day. Let us quote here the stern Carlyle’s sympathetic tribute to the
ancestor worship of the Chinese: “The emperor and his millions visit
yearly the tombs of their fathers; each man the tomb of his father and
his mother; alone there, in silence, with what of worship or of other
thought there may be, pauses solemnly each man; the divine skies all
silent over, the divine graves--and this divinest grave--all silent
under him; the pulsings of his own soul alone audible. Truly it may be
a kind of worship. Truly if a man can not get some glimpse into the
Eternities, looking through this portal, through what other need he
try it?” Attempts have been, and doubtless will continue to be made to
revivify or modernize Confucianism. The most notable of the viceroys,
Chang Chih Tung, of Wuchang, wrote a book called _China’s Only Hope_
with this in view. Confucius was averse to liquor. One of the odes of
the _Book of Odes_, written 1100 B. C., and edited by Confucius, rails
against drunkenness. The ode realistically describes a riotous banquet
which might have taken place in hilarious Vladivostok in 1904, previous
to the war, when sweet Roederer ran like water.
The Pope of Taoism dwells on Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province.
Taoism’s book, the _Tao Teh King_, written in 604 B. C. by Lao Tsz,
speaks of the Triune God of reason, nature and virtue. The sect is now
one of astrologers and nature worshipers, and is strong in the southern
and eastern provinces. It builds temples and teaches the nature
superstition of Feng Shui (Wind and Water), which until recently held
the land in thrall against mining, industry and railways. The Taoists
have been bitterly anti-foreign. Bows and arrows are sometimes hung up
in the green Taoist temples as votive or thank offerings, the sentiment
being that they are to kill one’s unpropitious influence or adverse
Feng-shui. Taoist priests sometimes wear gorgeous gowns completely
covered with embroidery of flowers, insects, birds, animals and the
exorcised devil himself. They make a pretty penny by publishing or
interpreting an almanac, the day selected possibly reading as follows:
June 10th
LUCKY:
To set sail to-day.
To begin a land journey to-day.
To begin a suit to-day.
UNLUCKY:
To bury your father to-day.
To begin a new well to-day.
To bargain for a wife for your son to-day.
To buy oil to-day.
To sweep your shop to-day.
To hire a cook to-day.
The traveler who has everything ready at Ichang to start on the long
journey through the glorious Yangtze gorges and rapids often wonders
why his men can not be induced to start. The reason is that they are
wading through the Luck Book, thus wasting an unnecessary week. Oil
is needed, but it can not be bought on June 5th. Fish are needed, but
can not be bought on June 6th. Rope can not be bought on June 7th, and
when June 9th comes along it is unlucky to sail on that day. The Taoist
priest makes his money by selling your laota (captain) an indulgence to
sail on June 9th, for which you have to pay handsomely about ten cents,
and the kinshan incense and firecrackers extra! The tiger and the
dragon represent the early gods of the terrified aboriginal Chinese,
and predate the ancestor worship of the first Chou clan of the north.
These emblems have been adopted by the Taoist priests. The grotesque
shrines are found among the mountains, a dominating view being
necessary for the casting of the “influence.”
Among the aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan an animal represents
each day of the month. Accordingly the body of a caravaner is kept
for burial until the lucky day of the horse arrives. A coin is put
between the lips to pay the way, which shows that the rites are
Taoist, and quite similar to old Grecian and Egyptian rites. When the
revolutionists were fortifying Hanyang, in October, 1911, they did not
hesitate to use a Taoist monastery as a fort in the hills. This marks a
step forward against old superstitions, which were once insurmountable.
The Chinese declare that a positive omen of a coming conflagration is
the crowing of a cock during the night. Of course, all the cooks of
Hankau recited this to their masters on the day when the imperialists
burned the native city. Statues are many in the temples, monasteries,
guild halls, pagodas and road shrines. Although Confucius is generally
represented by a tablet merely, there are some temples which have
statues of him and his disciples. Buddha is represented by three
statues of the Past, Present and Future Buddha. Emperors of popular
dynasties have statues erected to them in the temples. Then the Taoists
have innumerable gods, including the famous gods of the War Temples.
The guilds of the three hundred trades and twenty-one provinces all
have patron gods, and it is orthodox to rub your finger on the god’s
body in the place that corresponds with your sore spot, if you feel
ill! You touch his back if you have lumbago (and find out that he is
hollow!); his nose if you have asthma, and so on.
There are household gods; a god “Tsan” of the kitchen; pictures of gods
to paste on the gates of the compound, and the God of Literature, who
is very popular and has many temples. All over the north the Manchus
have erected temples to the Fox, their wily patron god. This dependence
on idols is not so dense as in India. The Chinese do it more as a good
luck omen, just as we wear an opal or a turquoise, and not always as
an essential religious rite. They have too much humor really to be as
foolish as they may look when in the god’s presence. A god who doesn’t
do his business well is as quickly dragged out by a rope and burned
in times of stress as a human being would be treated with contumely
whose prophecies always failed. In the south, religious edifices are
being occupied for educational and civic purposes. When in 1908 the
new learning broke over China like the full burst of a tropical day,
the schools at first had to be housed in temples and monasteries.
Recently, at Canton, the Wah Lum Monastery was used to entertain
a public-spirited Chinese of Singapore, Chang U. Him, who brought
both new learning and new wealth. “All interested in industries,
self-government, charities and new education” were invited by circular
to come up and see him “at the temple!”
Some of their religious proverbs, often touched with humor, are:
“If you must thrash a priest, wait until he has finished praying for
you.”
“Man’s myriad schemes are not equal to a thought of God.”
“God gives birth and death to every man, but honors only to the few who
deserve them.”
“The deeper your cave, the smaller is your heaven.”
“Man’s blow hits everything but heaven.”
“Do no wrong by light, and you’ll see no devil at night.”
“Penitence is good, but it should be proved by pennies.”
“Though the face is paler, the sin isn’t any whiter.”
“When things go well, we are so hungry that we eat all the meal; when
trouble comes, we are glad to give it all to the idol.”
“Forget the priest on a fair day, but hug his idol on a foul.”
“A maker of idols never goes to a temple.”
“Fire for gold and trial for the soul.”
“Sorrow for the saint, and chisel for the statue.”
“Sorrow ends where sin begins.”
“Speak of the devil and he drops in.”
“Kind words outlive much frost.”
“Heaven calls the good soon, but doesn’t want the bad till the last.”
“The devil disguises himself less than his followers do.”
“When you forgive your enemy, the wrong pains less.”
“The silver whisper is loudest in the idol’s ear.”
“The whole earth is a coffin; only for the living the lid is not yet
hammered down.”
“A lie is like burying the dead in the snow; the secrecy doesn’t last
long.”
“The brows of the saints prop the pillars of heaven.”
Says a northern pessimist: “Oh! the hypocrisy of religion; sacrifice a
bullock once a year, and steal bullocks all the rest of the year.”
The supercilious man threw this sarcastic shaft at his accoster: “_I_
pick _my_ company.” The mission school man heaped coals of fire on his
head with this bland reply: “And your company is proud to pick you.”
The Chinese love to contrast life and death, as is shown in their
paintings of pear trees in bloom and willows in bud, while snow lies on
mountain peak and hillside.
The Americans at home have established a beautiful custom of casting
wreaths into the sea on Decoration Day in commemoration of the dead who
were buried or lost at sea, and there is a similar custom at Venice
and elsewhere. The Chinese, too, have a Decoration or All Souls’ Day,
which is observed by the adherents of the three religions in the first
week of September. Red boats and lanterns are set afloat, and the
priests burn paper clothing, money and food, and set off firecrackers.
Where the ceremony takes place on land, it is customary to throw
copper money to the street gamins. The festival is also observed at
the magisterial yamens and temples, and Wing Lok Street, Hongkong,
is noted for the characteristic observance of the ceremony. The rise
of republicanism is going to strike a hard blow at one of the main
teachings of Confucianism, “serving the prince,” because there will be
no prince to serve and also at “li,” the rule of blind obedience to
those in power; following the trade of the parent; destroying children;
self-disfigurement; concubinage; expensive funerals and priest-craft;
abuse of women; blind worship of the past; suicide of purchased wives;
exaggeration of man and minimizing of God; neglect of organized
charities and of science and comparative history. This change will make
the introduction of Christianity more hopeful. It is to be expected
that the worship of ancestors will also weaken, and with it will weaken
the custom of early marriages. The Chinese have too many children to
educate properly, as the Americans and French have probably too few. A
somewhat smaller China would mean a richer and better China.
Catholic missions began in China when by caravan Corvina visited Kublai
Khan, at Peking, in 1292 A. D. Ricci arrived at Canton in 1582 and
worked in many of the provincial capitals and at Macao and Peking.
Schaal worked from 1622 to 1664 and had influence with the greatest and
most artistic Manchu emperor, Kang Hi. Abbé Huc covered the country
from Peking and Tibet to Macao from 1844 onward. The chief educational
centers of the Romanists are at Peking, Tientsin, Canton, Macao,
Saigon and Hongkong. The large press and college of the Missiones
d’Etrangeres is at Hongkong (Aberdeen side of the island). At Peking
is their extensive Pei Tang press. They have large, two-spired Gothic
cathedrals at Canton, Peking, etc. The square towered cathedral on
Caine Road, Hongkong, is the architectural crown of the lovely colony.
The Catholics number 1,500,000, their work being strong in orphanages,
among women, etc., and in comparison with Protestant missions very weak
in higher education and the distributed Bible itself. They consider
it expedient to train the child rather than to make the expensive
experiment of reasoning with and educating the man. Therefore most
of the modernized Chinese officials are Protestants. Naturally the
Catholic method brings more converts than does the Protestant.
The American missions almost dominate in the expensive higher education
of the land, and it now seems certain that American educational
methods, thoroughly tried in China, will be adopted over the world
because of their efficiency and altruism. The Protestant missions
of Europe, working in China, are as follows: The Scandinavians work
in Hupeh and the northern provinces, and while not rich, they have
developed effective fearless men of great resource. The German
Lutherans are active at Kiaochou, and in the north and the Yangtze
valley. The English Baptists, dating back to 1792, have many missions,
notably in Shangtung province. The London Missionary Society (mainly
Congregational), dating back to 1795, operates largely along the coast,
in the south, and at Peking. The Church of Scotland (both Free and
Established), which is strong in medical missions, operates notably in
Manchuria. The Presbyterian and Methodist Churches of England have
many missions throughout the land. The Anglican Church operates chiefly
in the great ports; is now strong in higher education, and has erected
many fine cathedrals. It has taken under its wing the foreigner in
China, who, Kipling charged, did many reckless things “east of Suez!”
Even the Friends’ Society of England has missions in China. The China
Inland Mission, founded by the noted Doctor Hudson Taylor in 1862,
has eight hundred missionaries who altruistically accept the smallest
salaries paid in China. Many of them live on the land, in the “faith”
method. The method of the organization is by personal contact rather
than by expensive, highly organized education. For years this was the
most dramatic and heroic mission in the darker provinces of the land.
The Salvation Army has also come to China through the world-binding
love of that extraordinary man, “General” Booth. American missions
dominate in Protestant China, British and Colonial missions being
one-half as strong, which means an equal zeal when the population of
the two countries is considered.
American missions are stronger in educational, political and medical
activities; the British make a specialty of preaching, charities
and personal work. The Americans develop more native preachers and
translators than any of the other missions, and their confidence in
the Chinese is producing wonderful results in reaching toward the
establishment of a self-sustaining church some day. No work, except
the medical missions, has, however, ever surpassed the aim of the
British and Foreign and American Bible Societies to put a translated
Bible in the hands of every Chinese. China, foremost of all lands,
ranks learning above everything else. By its attitude in specializing
in education, the American church has attracted the sympathy of the
leaders of the nation. No nation has a monopoly of mission heroes, but
the wisdom of the American decision has been at once apparent.
The Roman missions work largely on the medieval plan of: “Give me the
child till he is thirteen and I don’t care who gets it after that.” The
American Protestants and some of the British say: “Give him to me from
thirteen to twenty-three, so that he can understand.” One proselytizes
possibly by prejudice and association. The other, imparting all the
knowledge possible, trusts to the mind and sense of cultivated justice
in the pupil. The Roman orphanages in China outnumber the Protestants
five to one. The high-grade schools and colleges of the Americans are
almost alone in the field, though the British propose now to follow
vigorously. The difference is in attitude. There is no difference
between Romanist and Protestant missionary in China in braving death
from the hands of pirates, persecution from “Boxers” and others,
misery, disease and alienation. The heroes are numberless; their lives
are thrilling; their aims are the most altruistic the world has known,
and the orchard is in such a flower of fruitage now as to dazzle the
altruist’s eye.
It was a matter of great interest to foreigners when the October,
1911, revolution opened, that the chief leader and organizer of the
movement, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius) was a Christian, the son of a
Cantonese (Fatshan) evangelist. It will be remembered that Siu Tsuen,
the leader of the 1848 Taiping rebellion, which marched from Canton
to Nanking via the Mei Ling pass, was also a Cantonese Christian, but
infinitely inferior to Doctor Sun in education and experience, as well
as in character. Eventually Siu fell away from the faith, under the
influence of bad advisers, into savagery. The missions were all given
advance information previous to the October, 1911, revolution, showing
that the Chinese esteem missionaries ahead of diplomats. This is a
very precious compliment, and marks the vast advance of Christianity
in the hearts of the Chinese “Hoi Polloi.” Even before the October,
1911, rebellion, officials of the old class were throwing away their
prejudices against missionaries and welcoming them as angels of light
in a way that would have delighted Paul and Barnabas. General Tsen Chun
Hsuan, a bloody enough loyalist leader in war, when viceroy of Szechuen
province, made this address: “My hope is that the missionary teachers
and medical missionaries of America and Britain will spread their
gospel more widely than ever, and that the influence of the gospel may
bring boundless happiness for our people of China. I shall not be the
only one to thank you for your good work. Long live your Gospel.”
The literal name by which the Roman church goes in China is “Tien Chu”
(Heaven Lord church), and the Protestants are generally called by the
Catholics and by the Chinese “Jesus church,” or “Shangti” (Supreme
Ruler church). The American Episcopalians and the British Anglicans
in April, 1912, decided to call themselves the “Holy Public church”
(Sheng Kung Hwei). The Roman missionaries had much to do with the
annexation of vast Tonquin (population twenty-two millions) by France,
and their activity is similarly ambitious in Yunnan province, lower
Szechuen, and in Kwangsi and Kweichou provinces. As long ago as 1844,
so brave a traveler and learned a priest as Abbé Huc insisted on
wearing the yellow robe of the privileged mandarin class. Not only at
one station or in one province did he do this, but on his journey of
1849 through Tibet, Szechuen, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Kwangtung provinces,
he wore the robe and demanded the reception of a mandarin, the thinly
veiled implication being that if he was interfered with, there were
French guns that could pound the Taku and Bogue forts on the way to
Tientsin and Canton, respectively, which they really did ten years
later. As late as 1899, when China was torn by dissensions between the
reformers and the reactionaries, and while the wounds of her defeat by
Japan were still open, the Roman church, with the diplomatic aid of
France, forced from the then Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) an imperial
rescript granting Roman priests the rank and insignia of a Chinese
perfect (mandarin), and Roman bishops the astoundingly high title and
insignia of a viceroy, which honors affected eleven hundred priests
and forty-six bishops. It was not until 1909 that China resolved to
throw off this incubus. The rescript was rescinded by the new Wai Wu Pu
(Foreign Board) and Li Pu (Board of Rites). Enlightened Romanists in
America of course do not uphold such militant Romanism, which smacks
rather much of the bizarre days of Cortez. Let it be said too that the
French Romanist abroad is more medieval than the French Romanist in
France. While sailing in the Red Sea, talking with French clerics from
Tajoora, which faces the hot Gulf of Aden, and while walking along
the red banks of the Saigon River in Indo-China, I have heard bitter
criticisms from French priests which would have been deemed _lèse
majesté_ in the home republic itself.
A traveler can not pass through China without being mobbed by the sick
to be cured. “You are a foreigner, you _must_ be a doctor; cure me and
mine; I have heard that the foreigners can cure any ill; cure me, man
of Jesus.” It is agonizing. I knew a man who only carried a caustic
stick and two drugs (quinine and salts). Wherever he was mobbed with
appeals he administered these drugs to those whom he thought they would
benefit. Almost better if he had not done so. The cured who leaped
about with new life were enough proof that he was “lying” when he said
that he could not heal the wounded, the seriously ill, the leprous and
the ulcered. He was almost torn apart. Were I a billionaire, I am a
thousand times sure that I would send a thousand medical missionaries
to China for five years, each man to hire a Chinese understudy, and
carry a full surgical and medical chest, and the Bible and medical text
books only. Then I would leave the Chinese pupils to carry on the work;
they would be stationed as radiating centers at proper distances apart
throughout the land. I would then spend the rest of my life listening
to the marvelous stories which my five thousand friends had to tell
of what they had seen and done. No man who ever lived--not even Paul
when he wrote the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians; not even the
beloved John when he saw the Heavenly City in seraphic dreams--would
have experienced such real and wide happiness as I. No man could pass
away with more ecstatic memories, such a delirium of too much joy.
I want to write a word of commendation of the missionary, for
detraction by some in high places, and by some authors who write as
they fly and flit at the ports, is not uncommon. The attacks upon
missions in Henry Norman’s _Peoples and Politics of the Far East_,
and in Pumpelly’s _Across America and Asia_, are well known, and have
been repeated by others. One may be a cynic at home, and with reason
sometimes criticize some pulpits because they fear the magnate at the
end of some pews, and color their sermons accordingly. One may in
a supercilious way sneer at the seeming lack of personality in the
missionary candidate, who in a gentle faith stands up in her or his
church to answer the call: “Go ye into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature.” But follow the worker into the China field,
and see what that call and the altruistic opportunity has done by its
very immensity. The gentle missionary has soon become many things: a
brave pioneer in exile; a scholar and linguist; an organizer of great
power and tact; a local foreign minister of great ability in adapting
the West to the East; a scientist, housekeeper, traveler, physician,
explorer, ethnologist, nurse, orator; the only host of explorers; the
most generous of mankind; an ideal example of what the West should
be; the most inspired of human beings in self-sacrifice and wonderful
accomplishment under difficulties. Their expenses are many; their
resources few. Many have to live on the slimmest of contributions
from home, such as the missionaries of the China Inland Mission, the
Scandinavian Mission, and the Scottish Missions, which are not rich.
Many, like the American and English missionaries, receive fair help
from home, but spend on their equipment, and educational and hospital
buildings the money that was due to themselves and their families
as salaries. The highly cultured, brave president of the Nanking
University accepts only $1,500 as salary, whereas if he were in
America, on a purely business basis he would be expected to demand
$15,000 for the same services and expenses of his high position. The
writer does not mean to select one board as doing better than another.
All have done marvelously, and China can never forget. In the Yangtze
valley at Shanghai and Wuchang, along the whole front of the rebellion
of 1911, the American Episcopalians have universities and training
schools, which were especially noted by the republicans. The missionary
does not always desire money. Such a simple thing as a magazine, or
a new book of travel, or a standard work of fiction, or a weekly
newspaper from some metropolis, is a god-send to the missionaries at
the outposts, under the idol’s hills, who like to feel that though
they are thousands of miles from a treaty port, they are yet in touch
with civilization. Any one can get from the Mission Boards the names of
missionaries who are off the beaten track from Yunnan province up to
the Amur River in China, and send them now and then at trifling cost
this cheering literature, which will shine upon them like the beloved
sun of the far-away home land. Treat them as American and British men
and women, and not only in the high light of missionaries, for they are
the ambassadors from the West to the East, and there is no form of our
civilization in which they are not active, efficient and heroic.
England and America contribute the same sum to missions, but as England
is the smaller, the statistics reveal that America is doing only half
what she should do in the China mission field. Of the denominations,
the American Methodists easily lead the world, followed in order by the
Anglican Church of England, the Presbyterian Church of America, the
Baptist Church of America, and the old Congregational Church of America
with many heroes on its old roster, which dates back to 1812. If you
ask what the Chinese think of missionaries I will quote the following
prayer spoken by the Confucian viceroy, Hsi Liang, in the Scotch
chapel at Mukden for the hero physician, Doctor Jackson, who died as a
voluntary martyr in the pneumonic plague in 1910, and you can answer
whether you do not think it eloquently pathetic: “Doctor Jackson, with
the heart of your Christ, who died to save the world, came to our aid
when we besought him to help our country in its hour of distress.
Daily, where the plague lay thickest, amidst the groans of the dying,
he struggled to help the stricken to find medicine. Worn out by his
efforts the pest seized and took him long before his time. Our sorrow
is beyond all measure; our grief too deep for words. Oh! Spirit of
Doctor Jackson, we pray you to intercede for the twenty million people
in Manchuria, and ask the Lord of Heaven to take away this plague so
that we may once more lay our heads in peace upon our pillows. In life
you were brave; you, therefore, now are a spirit. Noble Spirit, who
gave up your life for us, help us still, look down with sympathy upon
us all.”
Y. M. C. A’s. are being built in the treaty ports, largely through
American endeavor. The Japanese sphere, Tientsin, etc., are provided
for, and the Chicago Y. M. C. A. raised a large sum of money for a
Y. M. C. A. in Hongkong. The sailors in Hongkong contribute the third
largest amount to their missions (being exceeded only by Wellington
and Liverpool) of any port in the world. I am not referring to amounts
collected from passengers on steamers, but the support given by the
sailors themselves. This shows that Jack Tar and John Celestial
recognize the manly and godly worth of the “sky pilot”, even if they
pivot many of their jokes on his solemn patience.
Since Morrison’s translation, there have been quite a number of
translations into the official Mandarin, and even into Romanized
letters expressing the dialects of the southern provinces. This latter
Bible can only be understood by mission school pupils. In 1890 the
missionary bodies met at Peking and determined to translate the whole
Bible into approved characters which idiomatized better certain words
which had been improperly understood in former translations. The
committee meets once a year at different cities in China. By 1910 the
New Testament and the Psalms had been completed, and the whole Bible
will probably be completed by 1918. The head translator is the American
Presbyterian educator, Doctor Mateer, the founder of Shangtung Union
University at Wei Hsien and Tsinan, and the noted Doctor W. A. P.
Martin, the author and educator of Peking, is another translator.
Shintoism (the Japanese adaptation of Confucianism) has been found
lacking in Japan, as it raises no positive God-fearing sentiment in
the masses, no national morality, no individual conscientiousness
which can be relied on when the letter of the law fails. This is the
rock strength which Christianity has given the West, and the Chinese
republicans see what they have missed in not adopting Christianity.
On February 9, 1912, the Japanese home minister called a conference
of the Buddhist, Confucian (Shinto), and Christian religions, to see
what could be done to strengthen Japan’s creeds, so that the state
would benefit in that moral and God-fearing power which Christianity
has given to the western masses. Christianity makes but one answer to
China, and that is to take Christianity and the Bible as a religion
and a revelation, and reduce Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism to the
ethical and literary place which Socrates, Plato, Homer, Virgil, etc.,
occupy in western thought and practise. President Sun Yat Sen, of the
Nanking Confederated Assemblies of South China, appreciates this, and
has promised the Chinese Christians that he will do all he can in time
to form a Chinese Christian church; not a Roman or Greek or American
or British church, but a free Chinese Christian church. When China
takes the Bible nearest of all books to her heart, and has her own
head bishop in each denomination absolutely free, she will then have
achieved greatness and glory, and found joy and truth.
The troublesome temperance question of the military canteen has been
solved, I think, under severest tropical conditions at Hongkong,
where there is a large garrison, and despite well meaning W. C. T.
U’s. at home under different conditions, the canteen, where “vice is
regulated”, has, I believe, come to stay for a while. At one time the
soldier drifted into the slums. He sighed for company as only an alien
among the heathen can sigh. He drank bad liquor and was robbed when
drugged thereby. That he will drink liquor must be accepted, as he is
the rougher sort of man, although worthy for all that. He committed
offenses before the tender eye of the public, brought the service into
ill repute, and cost the municipality money for trials and police. He
endangered international peace, for in his “cups” he was always seeing
differences instead of amenities when he met a soldier of another
nation. He made himself unfit for real war. The Army and Navy Canteen,
or Club, was adopted, I think, largely on Lord Roberts’ suggestion (and
who will question “Bob’s” wisdom). The soldier was put on his honor
and he rose fully to his opportunity. The sergeants on guard permitted
sufficient indulgence, but regulated rows. Most of the men drank less,
because they felt that they were drinking in “their own home”, but
if they over-drank, their fellows were on hand to see that they were
taken to barracks without being dragged through the public streets.
Good liquor was supplied. Disease decreased, as the men were contented
in barracks. Authority was respected, for it comes as second nature
for even a drunken soldier to obey a soldier. The soldier is now never
robbed; his life is safe; he saves money, and he drinks less because
he drinks “as a gentleman what ’as ’is Club wi’ the best on ’em.” The
W. C. T. U. is a necessary theory; the Soldiers’ Canteen of Hongkong,
Manila, and Delhi, is a brilliant compromise which should be accepted
as a solution until the world is so good that the brave and perhaps
rough soldier is needed no more. Candy is sold to the soldiers, as it
is found that the absorption of carbohydrates greatly decreases the
appetite for alcohol. The Officers’ Army and Navy Cooperative Stores
sell goods to men and their families at cost, and the American army
is to adopt this method to reduce the cost of living at foreign army
posts.
XXIV
LEGAL PRACTISE AND CRIME IN CHINA
Books and articles that have thrown light on this dark question include
those of Wu Ting Fang, once minister to America; Mr. Jernigan’s _China
in Law_; Sir G. T. Staunton’s _Penal Code_; Sir C. Alabaster’s _Chinese
Criminal and Property Law_; Parker’s _Chinese Family Law_; Mayer’s
_Chinese Government_; lengthy notes in the _Middle Kingdom_, by the
learned American, S. Wells Williams; Dyer Ball’s _Things Chinese_;
Professor Giles’ _Historic China_; Sir Henry Maine’s commentaries; and
the old _Chinese Repository_. The Hebrew penal code, _Leviticus_, is
antedated by the Chinese penal code of Shun’s reign nearly a thousand
years. It can not compare, of course, in extent or in lofty principle
with the Levitican code. Brutal punishments, such as branding,
amputation of members, linchee, bambooing and torture made these early
reigns so peaceful that it is said “money lost on the road would be
left there until the owner returned to find it”. The truth probably
is that this referred to the prince’s money, and that if injustice
was done the common man, the inferior serf or slave, by the prince or
the powerful, the weaker had to whistle for his judgment as long then
as he has had to do in subsequent periods of history. Each change of
dynasty brought in a revision of the code, not that it was made more
humane, but that there were necessary items of _lèse majesté_ to add.
For instance, the Manchus required that when the emperor passed at
night, every onlooker (all except the soldiers were kept indoors) was
required to turn _volte-face_ on pain of death. There was no procedure
for revoking a statute. The judge could unexpectedly spring on the
victim some precedent or law that was followed in the “year one”, and
the prisoner could plead in vain that another law of the “year two”
gave him a better chance. In other words, the mandarin practically said
with one of Louis Fourteenth’s judges, to litigants: “_La loi, c’est
moi_”, and he interpreted the code as he wished! United protest to the
Peking censors, mobbing and refusal to pay taxes were in reality the
only reprisals that the people could exert against the exactions of an
unjust judge. Confucius, in rendering service as a ruler in two states,
interpreted codes. One of the states, the Tsin (B. C. 246), shortly
after Confucius, put in effect the Li Kwai code in six books. Codes of
the following important dynasties exist: Han, Tsin, Tang, Sung, Yuan,
Ming and Tsing (Manchu).
The Grecian Thebes, of which Sophocles wrote, was notorious for its
torture of suspected criminals, and Herodotus relates that the ancient
Medes exercised similar practises. The “third degree” is outrageously
developed in China as in no other country, the law requiring
confessions in every case before penalty is inflicted. “_More Sinico_”,
the pepper is rubbed in the eyes, and the confession is forced out
of whomsoever is made the victim. Crimes are often “planted”, and
blackmail of the weaker by the stronger runs riot. The laws themselves
have been noted for their conciseness and simplicity, the number of
volumes signifying little as the Chinese ideograph-text is expansive.
“It is prohibited to murder”; “It is prohibited to trespass”, etc.
There is imperfect codification of precedents and decisions, so that
the prisoner must rely on himself (or on money!) to explain that the
homicide was in self-defense; the trespass to escape from a mad dog.
The spirit is always above the letter; it alone makes perfect law
possible. Where there is a will to do right, right generally prevails,
and it may be said that many of the Chinese judges try to do right,
get at the truth, and give a common-sense judgment, for they are not
iron-bound as the Occident is under appeal, precedent, quibble and
evasion; the letter above the spirit. If the case is an action within
a clan, the “hsiang lao” (old man of the village) generally assists
the judge in getting at the truth. If the action is between two clans
of two villages, or between competing guilds, God help the judges in
sifting the truth from the lies! Such situations arouse the sympathy
of disinterested foreigners for Chinese judges. Sometimes the native
is not at fault, as the Chinese viceroys and Foreign Boards have often
complained that some of the Romanists and one legation have interfered
to a greater or lesser degree when a nominal Christian, who had a suit
at law, was trying to evade justice by enrolling himself as a “rice
Christian”.
The frequent edicts of the throne, published in the Peking _Gazette_,
at once became laws, such as: “It is prohibited to smoke opium;”
“It is prohibited to bind feet,” etc. Law will now be enunciated as
in America, by the central and provincial legislatures of the new
republic. A sort of martial law now prevails, and the provinces,
after a quick drum-head trial, are shooting or lopping off the heads
of pirates and mutinous soldiers in great numbers. Decapitation,
flogging, torture, strangling, stocks, cangue, etc., will all probably
be retained, as the Chinese are stolid when it comes to bearing pain,
and the criminal classes must be treated with severity. Linchee,
or Ling Chih (cutting into a thousand pieces) may be discontinued
and shooting substituted. If, however, Confucianism remains as the
leading religion, decapitation will be continued. The Confucians
loathe the severing of the head, and this punishment is a powerful
deterrent of crime. Imprisonment in a modern jail is no punishment for
a hard-working Chinese, and something else must be substituted, such as
the state impressing the convict’s free labor, to offset the convict’s
family becoming a charge on the clan or state. It has been found in
Yunnan City, Kweilin City and elsewhere that a modern jail, with good
food and sanitary conditions, induces the poor wretches to commit
crimes so as to achieve permanent incarceration as quickly as possible!
As in the French system, the old-style Chinese judge is also often
the prosecutor, and witnesses and accused are made to fight it out in
the hearing of the judge, so that as the frequent “lie” is passed,
the truth may jump from the tossed bag! (_Confronter les témoins à
l’accusé._) The twenty-eight volumes of the Manchu code cover general,
civil, finance, military, criminal and public works law.
The following, taken from the Shanghai _Shen Pao_, of August 29 and
30, 1911, the oldest and most reliable native paper of China, will
illustrate the “third degree” methods used by the old literati judges
of the Manchus, and incidentally the astonishing endurance of the
Chinese, who from time immemorial have lived outdoor lives and whose
hearts have incredible powers of recovery. “The murderer, Hsu, was
brought before the assistant magistrate Chung on August 27th for a
final trial. The magistrate ordered the clerk to read the confession
of the murderer (procured by torture in the native walled city of
Shanghai), who said it was incorrect in one statement. The assistant
magistrate consented to the correction. When City Magistrate Tien
learned of this, he ordered Hsu to be whipped. Up to three hundred
strokes no groan escaped from Hsu. At this Tien was angered and called
to the torturers to strike heavily. Hsu was now whipped so cruelly that
his flesh was cut from his back, and some muffled groans were heard.
When five hundred strokes had been administered, he was again asked
to confess or suffer pain. As he was still obstinate the magistrate
ordered him to receive eight hundred strokes of the bamboo. He was
now subjected to the most inhuman kind of torture, that in which the
prisoner kneels on an iron chain, while two yamen runners stand upon a
wooden beam laid across the back of his legs. As Hsu stood even this
torture, he was strung up by his fingers and queue on a scaffold. Hsu
cried out that he would not be kicked by the runners. The magistrate
was now very angry. He ordered Hsu to be stretched upon the weighing
machine (which gradually pulls the victim apart). The man fainted,
but when he recovered he would not confess. The scaffold was again
requisitioned, and he was strung up again by fingers and queue. He
struggled and his queue of hair parted from his head. Next day, he was
made to kneel on the iron chain under two men for two hours. When he
was about to faint, the two runners picked him up and ran him about to
restore his heart action. Alternately they put him upon the chain and
restored his circulation. He then cried out: ‘Why should I sign two
confessions; I have but to die.’ He was ordered to receive four hundred
strokes of the bamboo. The magistrate Tien threatened to persecute the
victim’s wife and son. Hsu now relapsed into a fever which has been
running two days.”
The Chinese when in a rage (chih) is not a knife-user as are the
southern races of Europe, but a hair or queue-puller. Now that the
queue is being severed in China, he will probably take to kicking or
boxing, in the French and Anglo-Saxon methods, in expressing his temper.
The social adjuster, or peace-talker, is a well-known institution, more
generally employed within the hsiang (village) and guild, than the
law. “To go to law is to put one’s estate in the ditch and one’s soul
in hell,” is one of their sayings. Therefore, the importance of first
engaging the services of the adjuster, or second, to meet the second
of the offender, rather than to enter suit, and get into the hands of
lawyers, court runners, grasping judges, etc. This heathen adjuster
answers to the work that the lay deacon may have done in the early
Christian church, in settling cases out of court. It is an institution
that might well be copied from China in these days of criticism of
the bench and bar by such authorities as Ex-presidents Roosevelt and
Taft, and Mr. Bryan. The Chinese adjuster puts the case before, and
settles it in accord with, public opinion, without any idea of fee;
and certainly public opinion is a better judge than the law whose
justice is built too much on fees, appeals and the maintenance of a
large set of pettifoggers who live on the woes and ill temper of the
unfortunate. In the revision of the Chinese code by Wu Ting Fang, Wang
Chung Wei (educated at Yale), etc., long life to the social adjuster,
the village Solon, whose ways are ways of peace, but whose path is not
one of pleasantness! We have said that authorities have castigated the
bar in China and America. Here is what Cicero said of Rome (the mother
of laws) in the “Murena” oration: “For though many things have been
settled excellently by the laws, yet most of them have been depraved
and corrupted by the talkatively litigious genius of lawyers.”
The method of “planting” forged evidence is met with in China where a
powerful enemy wishes to ruin some victim. The Yuen Fung Yuen Bank, of
Bonham Strand, is one of the largest native banks in Hongkong, in which
colony it is illegal to import opium except through the Farm, which
pays the government a large royalty. This valuable drug passes almost
at bullion value. Anonymous information was sent to the Farm contractor
that at 8:00 P. M. the bank would receive illicit opium. Detectives
were put in ambuscade. At the hour mentioned a coolie bearing a basket
rapped at the bank’s door and shouted: “A letter for you.” Then he ran,
but was caught. An examination revealed a tin of opium at the bottom
of a basket of eggs. Investigation disclosed the whole thing as a
“plant” prepared by an old enemy of the Yuen Fung Bank. In the same way
bodies of the dead and murdered are often secretly placed at the doors
of innocent victims, and as much motive as possible is prepared so as
to get them in trouble with law and popular indignation. In years now
happily passed missionaries have been bothered in this way by “Boxer”
conspirators.
The Chinese code provides that all deeds shall bear the stipulation
that “the land was first offered to the seller’s kinsmen, who refused
to buy.” When a deed is lost, the Mandarin can issue a duplicate deed
on presentation of the last tax receipt and tax receipts themselves are
transferred in place of lost deeds.
In 313 B. C. the state of Tsi (present Shangtung Province) broke up its
half of a wooden tablet containing part of the agreement with the state
of Tsu (present Hupeh Province). These halves fitted into each other,
and beyond any possibility of substitution proved the genuineness
of the record. An old book called the _Si Yuen_ (washing the pit),
used in connection with the criminal code, prescribes the method of
ascertaining whether death was caused by blows or was natural. A clay
pit is heated white, the ashes are dug out, and wine is poured in.
The body is then placed on a cradle in the pit, and a roof of tiles is
placed over the pit’s mouth. If the fumes of the rice alcohol bring out
the marks, even on a partly decayed body, the murderer is searched for.
Other books relate that if a body is thrown into the water after death,
it will not show distended stomach, hair stuck to head, or foam in
mouth; the hands and feet will not be stiff, or the soles of the feet
white. Their criminologists also write that if a body is thrown into a
fire after death, there will be no burning or ashes in the throat and
nostrils. The Chinese of the old time were rather clever investigators
of crime.
This scene was presented outside the west gate of Tientsin one
October day in 1870 after the massacre at the French convent. The
French compelled Li Hung Chang to give them satisfaction. Li held the
execution at dawn so that a mob might not gather. The criminals were
flattered as martyrs. None of them was bound. New silk clothes, fine
shoes and the ornaments of females were put upon them. Arriving at the
execution ground, they were given opium. They shouted to the crowd,
“Are we showing a shamed face?” And the answer came back: “No.” “Call
us brave lads for being given to the foreigners as a sacrifice,” they
cried again. A shout of approval came back. Then they sang a war song,
and while their relatives cried, they knelt and stretched out their
own necks before the blow of the heavy, short, mercury-loaded Taifo
sword of the executioner. The shedding of a cock’s blood, even in the
British courts of Hongkong, when an oath is taken, is a survival of
the ancient Chinese custom, practised in Confucius’ day (550 B. C.),
when the ministers of the various states of Lu, Wu, Tsin, etc., had
a criminal killed, and wetting their lips with his blood, took oath
to keep the treaty, which was inscribed on wood, each party taking a
broken portion. The following incident will throw a flashlight on a
section of Chinese legal practise, just previous to the revolution of
1911. It is well known that Wu Ting Fang, two and a half years before
the revolution, had revised and modernized the Chinese code, but it was
not even in part put in practise before the revolution. In Tungkadoo, a
town of Kiangsu province, a bonze (priest) murdered a fellow-bonze and
confessed under third-degree torture. The native authorities brought
him to Shanghai to be strangled, but the chief bonze, with headquarters
at Chingkiang, requested that the criminal should be turned over to him
to be burned to death according to the code of the Order. Cremation of
dead bodies was more common in China when Marco Polo visited the land
than it is now, though it is practised in the Honan Island section of
Canton.
It is probable that not for some years will the punishments of
flogging, neck cangue and stocks be removed from the revised Chinese
code. These punishments, involving public “loss of face,” are abhorred
by the Chinese, and while they are somewhat barbaric, they are
effective deterrents of crime in China. They were both revived by the
British government of Hongkong in dealing with native offenders during
the turbulent times of the 1911–12 revolution, when it was found that
hard labor, jail sentences and fines were laughed at by the immense
Chinese population of the island colony. Greece, as long ago as 330
B. C., had borrowed the cangue from China, and Demosthenes, in the
_Oration On the Crown_, can think of no way so effective to damage his
accuser, Aeschines, than to mention that the latter’s father had to
wear a zulon (cangue) as a punishment for thievery. Chien Shao Cheng,
of the Justice Department, Peking, has visited American prisons and
studied foreign penal methods.
An “Investigating and Arresting Department” is the name by which one
of the Manchu courts at Canton went. It employed detectives, and the
taotai (mayor) did not disguise the fact that the court resorted to
“third degree” tortures. This was one of the many things which made
followers for the reformers. Banishment cases are constantly coming
up. The prisoner who will not or can not depart to another country or
province is put in the stocks for four hours a day for a year, and the
remainder of the day he spends at hard labor. Strangling in cages was
in vogue at Canton in the last days of the Manchu reign, orders having
come from Peking in September, 1911, that the coolie who attempted to
assassinate Admiral Li should be suspended by the neck in a bottomless
cage. In the yamen at Chingtu City stands a stone tablet bearing the
word Sha (kill), erected by the Shansi marauder, Chang Hien Chung, who
massacred the Szechuenese, who supported the native Ming emperors. The
stone remained as a threat to be used by the Manchu mandarins on behalf
of the Ta Ching dynasty. The Ministry of Justice under the Manchu
régime ordered the viceroys and governors to prohibit foreigners from
unnecessarily being present in court.
On account of the scarcity of foreign population, the Hongkong jury
consists of seven and the Shanghai jury of five. There is constant
argument between the Chinese press and the English press of the treaty
ports in China on the subject of “mixed” courts in which foreigners
sit. China is writing a reformed code in which Wu Ting Fang had a hand,
and in which the new minister, Wong Chun Hui, is interested, and is
pressing forward to the day when at least she will try all Chinese,
including those who have injured foreigners in settlements. The
newspaper argument will do good instead of harm. In 1899 Japan ceased
to allow her citizens to be tried under foreign law, and even began
to try foreigners under Japanese law. On the subject of trusts and
directorial responsibility, I have seen in the Tientsin _Ching Wei Pao_
a plea that employés be not fined and imprisoned for corporate faults,
but that those who make the money (directors and shareholders) bear the
responsibility. China is, and has always been, a frank sociological
thinker.
A police system on the French gendarmerie plan has been put in vogue at
Peking, and photographs are being generally used for identification.
The Chinese have been very averse to photographs. The custom was
broken down by Hongkong insisting for twenty years that emigrants
should be photographed in duplicate so that their certificates might
be identified. This gradually got the Chinese used to the custom, the
returned emigrants spreading word that there was no ill-luck in the
operation. The old-fashioned policeman who went his rounds beating a
gong is becoming obsolete, and the new policeman, like our own, is
supposed to bait himself with silence and skill, so as to be sugar
in leading the burglar to the trap. Not long ago, however, I heard
the old-fashioned Chinese Lukong beating his wooden drum as he went
his rounds in the Portuguese colony of Macao, China. When the police
recover lost goods, half only is returned to the owner, and half often
goes to public charity which is organized in a guild. This is an old
regulation in many parts of China. One of their wits said that the
difference between a lower and a higher court is that one has the first
and the other has the last “guess” at a case! The Chinese point out
the delays in the execution of murderers as a most serious defect in
justice, and the sentimentalism expressed by part of our press and
pulpit as a most serious defect in our mentality. They show headings
in our newspapers reading as follows: “Ministers Strive with Murderer
Blank”; “Four Pastors Prepare Murderer Blank for Death,” etc. The
laconic Chinese ask: “How long a time did the murderer give his victim
to prepare for death.” The Chinese say that our levity in this terrific
matter has run the average of murders in America up to the highest
point in any nation, and that their average, with England’s, is the
lowest because of swift and sure justice in those two countries.
In our month of August occurs the festival of the goddess of
needlework. It is customary for the women to exhibit the wealth and
ornaments of the family during this festival. In 1911, at Fatshan,
near Canton, where Sunyacius was born, robbers disguised as women
arrived in closed chairs before the yamen (compound) of the Li family,
and pretending to be relatives, they broke past the doormen. When
inside the home, they drew weapons, and with the inmates intimidated,
ransacked the house of jewels and valuables, escaping to the river,
where the pirate boats took them on board and made off for the
reaches and canals. Owing to the paucity of maritime police, because
of a limited revenue, piracy has swept over China’s waters since her
Captain Kidd, Koxinga, operated from Amoy in 1657. The West River of
Kwangtung province has been notorious in recent years, and in my former
book, _The Chinese_, I have related the attacks upon Europeans in the
steamers _Sainam_ and _Shui On_.
The most startling attack in many years was upon the well-known
Pacific Mail steamer _Asia_, in April, 1911. Known previously as the
_Coptic_, this steamer sailed from San Francisco for twenty years in
the trans-Pacific service, and she was therefore well known to many
thousands of Americans. She was a graceful Belfast-built boat of low
freeboard, and easily boarded. In a fog on April 23rd she ran against
the precipitous Finger Rock Island, which rises off the coast of
Chekiang province. Wireless was immediately sent out, and the Chinese
Merchants’ S. S. Company’s vessel _Shoa Shing_ started for the rescue.
Before she could arrive and after her departure with the sixty rescued
passengers, Chekiang pirates, in swift snake boats and sanpans, put
off to the attack, and despite revolver defense, boarded the _Asia_
and her boats. They even demanded under duress that passengers should
sign “chits,” promising to pay sums of money for rescue. When the
steamer was temporarily abandoned, they boarded and stripped her of
almost everything except the smokestack paint. Fisherman and pirate
are about as synonymous on some waters of China as Cornishman and
farmer, Panamanian and placer miner are in some of our romantic novels!
Thrilling engagements with pirates not infrequently occur almost
under the windows of the fashionable Boa Vista and Hing Kee Hotels on
romantic Macao’s Praya Granda.
On July 13, 1910, a party of Chinese students, women and children were
kidnapped in Macao, by pirates led by the second of the swashbuckler
Leungs, and by the leader Luk, and taken to Ko-Ho (Colowan) Island,
where they were chained to the walls of caves and of a Portuguese
fort, after the latter had been stormed, and the blue and white flag
of the castles hauled down to be succeeded by the triangular red flag
of the pirates. The governor of Macao sent the Portuguese gunboats
_Patria_ and _Macao_, and an expedition of artillery and infantry of
the “Legionaries Coloniale.” The possession of this island by the
Portuguese has long been disputed by China, and the Chinese gunboats,
which now drew up only watched the engagement. Two thousand pirates
fought with modern weapons and smokeless powder, which had been
smuggled from Japan. The Portuguese bombarded with four-inch guns, and
dropped so many shells into so many compartments of two pirate junks,
as with skull and sail they made for rocky Wung Kum Island, that they
sank with all on board. In an armistice, Commander Wu, of the Chinese
navy, a brave commander of whom we shall hear more, disguised as a
coolie, courageously spied on the pirates’ stronghold and ascertained
where most of the women were imprisoned, so as to save these retreats
from being bombarded. The pirates were smoked out of these caves with
sulphur and the women resuscitated.
Not only South China, but North China also has experienced piratical
attacks in recent times. In September, 1910, a large band of Hung-Hutz
pirates, disguised as bean merchants, sailed down the Liao River to
Newchwang and captured for ransom fifteen wealthy Chinese merchants
under the walls of the foreign settlements. They safely made retreat
with captured arms to their mountain stronghold, one hundred miles up
the river, near Liaoyang, and settled down for a siege. The Chinese
desire to build more railways through this section, but the Japanese
and Russians have opposed American backing of another road and have
hoodwinked Britain and Europe into a disinterested attitude, which is
the _status quo_, but not the permanent settlement of the question.
The Chinese have a saying regarding courts, retainers and the animals
outside, as follows: “When the mandarin swears, the dogs bark, and when
the mandarin laughs the dogs grin, and the terrible tsai ren (yamen
court runners, corresponding to our detectives) stroke their rough
fingers.” Some of their legal proverbs are:
“When two rascals differ, the truth is near; when they agree, the truth
is hid.”
“Don’t jump to conclusions in evidence, for a grain of sand is not the
seashore, nor a tree a forest.”
“It is hard to rise, but easy to fall.”
“No one would believe a blind man who tried to tell a ghost story.”
“It’s easier to twist the road than the mountain.”
XXV
CHINESE DAILY LIFE
The happy Leigh Hunt, who was half American by blood, in one of his
incomparable Addisonian essays, _Tea Drinking_, wrote as follows of
the daily life and surroundings of the Chinese: “The very word tea,
so petty, so infantine, so winking-eyed, so expressive, somehow or
other, of something inexpressibly minute and satisfied with a little
(tee!) resembles the idea one has (perhaps a very mistaken one) of that
extraordinary people of whom Europeans know little or nothing, except
that they sell us this preparation, bow back again our ambassadors,
have a language consisting of only a few hundred words, gave us
chinaware and the strange pictures on our teacups, made a certain
progress in civilization long before we did, mysteriously stopped at it
and would go no further, and if numbers and the customs of venerable
ancestors are to carry the day, are at once the most populous and the
most respectable nation on the face of the earth. As a population they
certainly are a most enormous and wonderful body, but as individuals,
their ceremonies, their trifling edicts, their jealousy of foreigners,
and their teacup representations of themselves impress us irresistibly
with a fancy that they are a people all toddling, little-eyed,
little-footed, little-bearded, little-minded, quaint, overweening,
pig-tailed, bald-headed, cone-capped or pagoda-hatted, having childish
houses and temples with bells at every corner and story, and shuffling
about in blue landscapes, over nine-inch bridges, with little mysteries
of bell-hung whips in their hands,--a boat or a house or a tree, made
of a pattern, being over their heads or underneath them, and a bird
as large as the boat, always having a circular white space to fly in!
Such are the Chinese of the teacups and the grocers’ windows, and
partly of their own novels, too, in which everything seems as little
as their eyes, little odes, little wine parties and a series of little
satisfactions. However, it must be owned that from these novels one
gradually acquires a notion that there is a great deal more good sense
and even good poetry among them than one had fancied from the accounts
of embassies and the autobiographical paintings on the chinaware, and
this is the most probable supposition. An ancient and great nation as
civilized as they is not likely to be so much behind hand with us in
the art of living as our self-complacency leads us to imagine. If their
contempt of us amounts to the barbarous, perhaps there is a greater
share of barbarism than we suspect in our scorn of them.”
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Buddhist temples, now used as schools. Fine type of architecture;
ornamented ridge, curving eaves; unique medallions.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Actors, in characters of general, emperor and prime minister. Note use
of modern scenery. The old stage did not use scenery.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The new woman in the New China, borne to market on a wheelbarrow
along a modern tree-lined road; modern umbrellas in background
used as a protection from the sun. A beggar crouches at the
roadside.
]
In August the Chinese resort to the graveyards and burn paper money and
tin- and gold-foil models at the graves of their ancestors. It is a
pretty sight at night to see thousands of these little fires lighting
up the vast fields of the dead like a plain of stars through which
the living spirits move. The ceremonies sometimes include the Greek
custom of pouring out a libation of wine, and as this is the custom
especially in the western provinces, it may indicate a former communion
with old Greece. Long before the Christian era Greece had possibly
acquired veneration for graves from older China. Demosthenes cried out
to the Athenians in B. C. 354 as a climax to his arguments: “Will ye
sacrifice your sepulchres to the Persian?” A mortuary custom in the
southwest provinces, also similar to the Greek, is to place a coin
in the mouth, to pay for ferriage of the spirit. The round coin, made
of jade, and sometimes banded with pure gold, is an exact copy of the
copper cash, with a square hole in the center. These tomb jades acquire
a stained appearance as compared with the delightful glisten of jades
kept in the light.
Foreigners with cinematograph lanterns are now going into the interior
of China with interpreters to manage part of their shows, and are doing
well, as the Chinese delight in the moving pictures. It is necessary to
apply to the provincial governor for a passport, and to register at the
consulate at the nearest treaty port. Both French and American films
are used.
The purpose of the long nails, dwarfed feet and heavy hairdressing
is the snobbish one of showing that such a person does not need to
work, but can afford to keep servants. These devotees of fashion,
rapidly becoming fewer, suffer so much torture that their conceit
can be forgiven them. “Don’t say a word, you Westerners; remember
your suffocating waists and your high-heeled compressed shoes,”
retort some of the Chinese! At Ningpo boys wear boots made of human
hair. Over these they draw straw sandals. For waterproof material an
oiled cotton is used. The very poor classes use a picturesque cape
and kilt made of rush leaves, and one sees sights on the mountain
roads of Hongkong that remind one of Robinson Crusoe and Friday. The
Chinese are great bird fanciers. Crows, magpies, hawks, larks, ducks,
finches, etc., are exposed for sale in the fairs. The singing birds
are taught to sing in competition, and also to catch seeds thrown into
the air. Fortune-tellers take up their location at the street corner
in Hongkong, Canton, and other ports, with their trained Kwangtung
sparrows. When you pay your coin, the owner places a package of cards
in envelopes before the door of the cage. The bird selects one and is
rewarded with a grain of rice. You identify the card by the picture
that it bears. The owner puts the card, together with a tiny slip of
sandalwood, back in the envelope, shuffles the envelopes and calls the
bird out again. The bird will select the same envelope, which proves
that Kwangtung sparrows at least have a fine sense of smell! On another
corner stands a bird trainer with a grossbeak-weaver perched upon his
finger. He throws coins into the air, toward which the bird darts,
catching the coins in its bill and returning to the finger of the
master.
On the narrow streets, in constant danger of being jostled into, the
letter-writer sits at a table, painting the beautiful characters for
whomsoever wishes to buy a letter. His customers are many,--fruiterers,
laborers, fishermen, cooks, gunny-lifters, hotel-runners, lantern
sellers, rice bird hawkers, etc. The Buddhist or Taoist priest, too, is
not averse to writing a letter for a wife buyer for an added fee after
his customer has bought a written prayer to Buddha or his own dead
father, which prayer the priest burns in presenting it to the spirit.
There are many Mohammedan Chinese in the western and southwestern
provinces, and scattered throughout the empire are Mohammedan
companies. They are generally butchers and bakers by occupation. Among
these Mohammedans are doubtless the lost colonies of Chinese Jews.
It is found that the Miao aborigines of Szechuen and Yunnan are a more
impulsive, vivacious, and by turns a more sulky race than the staid,
trim, mannerly Chinese. Missionaries, therefore, report that when they
Christianize the aborigines they find them delightfully frank and
vivacious companions, who grow to be liked heartily, as the cultured
Chinese is in comparison deeply respected. The Miaos (Now Su tribe)
show Burmese influence, too, for they burn their dead, a custom which
is abhorred by the Chinese masses, though some Buddhist priests do it.
The Miaos often worship a hill, and far to the east, even at Hongkong,
I have seen members of the aboriginal Hakka tribes worshiping a hill,
or a rock, or the seashore. On the hillsides of Hongkong jars will be
found on stones among the woods. These contain the bones of Hongkong
Chinese who have died in America and whose bones lie out in the woods,
waiting till the Taoist calendar reports that it is a lucky day for
burial. If you make the fee large enough the priest can grant you
absolution any day and you may bury with full assurance of good luck.
It then becomes a struggle between the priest’s determination and the
mourner’s stubbornness in the matter of securing possession of the
coins of the dead one! The body lies in an American graveyard until
the large bones only remain. These are manifested across the Pacific
as “fish bones” and are received at Hongkong by the Tung Wah Hospital
for the guild of which deceased was a member. The hospital turns the
bones over to the chief mourner, who places them in a jar, as already
related. While the Chinese abhor sickness, and will sometimes desert a
fever patient after loading his blanket with stones so that he can not
leave the bed, they have no abhorrence of coffins or bones. For long
periods they keep the coffin in the best room of the house, or the jar
of bones in the garden.
In selling goods by auction at the pawnshops, or inns, the auctioneer
does not permit audible bidding. The goods are passed through an
opening for inspection. Then the bidders walk to the window, and
by whisper, card, or squeeze of the hand, indicate the bid. This
encourages high instead of low bidding at the beginning, for it is
known that the first bidder who offers a fair price secures the
article.
The Chinese, on account of their localization, and lack of experience,
while usually placid, can be worked up into uncontrollable excitement.
This explains the murders of missionaries by mobs in the long years
up to 1901. Many suicides among officials and widows and daughters of
soldiers followed the excitement and distress of the October, 1911,
revolution. The camaraderie of American clubs which has evolved the
greeting, “old fellow,” equal to the “old chap” of British clubs, was
copied from China, where you must call every one “old man” (lao jen).
It is the highest term of respect, is in diplomatic use, and even
bonzes and teachers are addressed in that way. A captain of a sanpan
is called the “great old one” (lao ta). The mayor is called “old man
of the village” (hsiang lao). The following incident will illustrate
how the clan dominates Chinese life. San Wui is a city lying near
Canton. The Kwan family is one of the largest and wealthiest clans
living there. It maintained near the district burial ground a fine,
large ancestral hall filled with family tablets and effigies. Against
the votes of the clan, in the middle of August, 1911, Kwan Ta, one
of the most powerful members, rented the building to the police, who
used it as headquarters in collecting unpopular taxes and pressing
the people to accept the nationalization of railways scheme. The
people led by the Kwan clan, burned the ancestral temple. The members
of the clan then rebuilt the hall and ordered the sculptors to make
an image of the unpopular Kwan Ta, who had died in the meantime. The
granite image represents the man with his hands behind his back in a
kneeling posture. On his back is carved the history of his defection.
As each member of the Kwan clan comes into the temple on the great
days to worship the ancestral tablets which have been restored, it is
obligatory that he shall give Kwan Ta’s image three strokes of the
bamboo!
The method of carrying water in India and China is conspicuously
different. In India the drawers go from the well with the jar of water
balanced on their heads. In China the water is put into two large
buckets, which are slung from the two ends of a bamboo, which is
balanced on the shoulder. Chinese markets in the villages and smaller
cities are managed on the fair system, as in Russia. You can not buy
barrow wheels at the bridge fair every day in the week, because the
wheelwright only comes to your village fair every second Friday,
his tour taking him through ten villages perhaps. You can not buy
feather dusters or shoes every day, as the pedler is off on a tour of
six villages, and only visits your fair, held at the temple, every
Saturday. But food and coins you can buy every morning at your two
village fairs, and the hucksters there will tell you just what days the
barber, the druggist, the potter, the copper hammerer, etc., will be
around again, unless thieves waylay them, or gamblers entice them, or
Taoist astrologers, looking for a bribe, deceive them into belief that
it is their unlucky day by their birth star on the almanac!
That the Chinese civilization in general had little communication with
Egypt or Babylonia, after once being separated, may be inferred partly
from the fact that the early Chinese forgot the secret of embalming the
body. The _Bamboo Books_, tenth century B. C. recite how the Emperor
Muh, whose concubine died while traveling with him in the Tartary
desert, had to bury her there at once, and other records recite that
when tombs were opened they stank so badly that dogs had first to be
sent in to ascertain when human beings could safely enter. It was not
until long centuries after this that the Chinese learned to use lime
to destroy the flesh.
Conjuring has been popular from the earliest times. The famous _Bamboo
Books_ recite that the Emperor Muh, on his travels into Tartary in the
tenth century B. C., was infatuated by an unusually clever conjurer
there. Lieh Tsz, a patriotic chronicler of the fifth century B. C.,
complains that the emperor of disintegrating China had more time to
study the tricks of a conjurer than for state affairs.
An interesting means of transportation over the mountains of the north
is the pony-litter, which is swung between two animals in tandem. The
trip is exciting enough, especially when one of the animals falls to
its knees. Chinese gang laborers do all their pulling, pushing and
lifting, accompanied by a chantey song. The famous trackers of the
Yangtze gorges and the Grand Canal; the gunny lifters of Hongkong; the
wood sawers and teak pilers; the coal passers of Hankau, all sing at
the top of their splendid voices as they work.
When a native moves he is supposed to carry fire from his old kitchen
to the new one, so as not to rekindle the misfortunes of the last
lessee. He desires to burn up his old predecessor’s past, which may
have been all bad (or he would not have moved), and to continue his
own fortune, which is all good, or ought to be! When moving into a new
house, the tenant replaces a threshold, lintel or rafter so that he may
not inherit the bad fortune of the former tenant. He starts all things
anew, as the new piece of lumber or stone typifies. The old-fashioned
Chinese hotel buildings in the northern provinces are not unlike those
in Palestine, low buildings with few windows in the walls being built
around a court. In the court are troughs for the donkeys, mules,
Mongolian ponies and especially camels of the pack trains. The roofs
of the buildings, with their up-curling eaves and pagoda pinnacles,
are the most beautiful in the world. It seems uncanny to see a crowd
passing your house on a holiday without a sound, because the Chinese
shoe is all felt. In contrast with this, compare the noisy shuffling
of the wooden shoes of Japan, where one man makes more noise than a
thousand Chinese, or a dozen Occidentals.
The happiness of a Chinese home is measured by the degree in which
one’s neighbors leave one alone, not by the degree one is bothered
with the repeated visits of neighbors, as is the fashion in the
more intrusive Occident. The Chinese illustrate this characteristic
by building a high wall around the clustered buildings of the
home-compound. As a rule, the Chinese rent not; they move not. They
build a time-bronzed, indestructible home, even if it be as simple as
one rough rock laid across two age-silvered boulders. Generations,
down the ages, flow and follow there, as wave follows wave down the
steps of the waterfall. What is the result? A personal fame, heroism
of faith, a love, a depth, a beauty, in none of which our Western life
can offer an equal joy or strength. The Oriental, never having dropped
the extinguished lamp of memory from his hand, is able to follow the
path of history with intensity, satisfaction and certainty, while we
of the West, having no similar assurance, wander the fields of the
earth, unsatisfied still, where our individual name may be carved
with permanence. What hate pursues us? What fate awaits us? It is the
saddest sign in our psychological organization. If we intend to remain
great, we must end this _renting_ of scooped holes in cave apartments,
scatter our big cities into smaller ones, spread out on the land and
give every man a home of his own, and a strong enough one to leave
through the ages to his great-grandson. This is the Chinese way; it
is the only true way, as witness their six thousand years of certain
history, while they take care to-day of four times our population. The
custom of sheltering the families of sons and grandsons within one
patriarchal compound is truly Asian. It is described by Homer in the
sixth book of _The Iliad_ as obtaining in the home of Priam, King of
Troy, B. C. 2500. At New-year time, in Fukien province, all the family
join hands around a brazier which is smoking on a table, to signify the
unity of the family around a common hearth.
The Chinese make a stew of chicken, ginger, lettuce and cucumbers, or
vegetable marrow, and it is very good. Beans are soaked in water and
allowed to sprout before being pickled, or boiled in sugar. Salutes
at feasts are sometimes made in the German fashion by raising the
wine (samshu) cup to the eyes before drinking. The Chinese mix rice,
nuts, flour, fruit and seed in their candies, and their cakes are
highly colored and made very sweet. Where the Germans use vinegar and
salt as a preservative, the Chinese use sugar, and the results, while
surprising, are often delightful. Partly as revealing the sumptuous
table which it is now possible to set at Hongkong or Shanghai, or
Tientsin, and partly to show to what gastronomic heights the treaty
port Chinese rise, I quote the menu of the Wah On Kwong Association, or
Guild, served at one of the Hongkong hotels by Chinese stewards:
Queen olives Caviare on toast
Bird’s Nest soup Chicken soup Fungus soup
Garoupa, shrimp sauce Boiled shark steak
Fillet of beef (Champignon sauce)
Chicken compote Stewed sharks’ fins
Pigeon gelatine Pâté de foie gras en Aspic
Beche de Mer Fried frogs’ legs
Roast saddle of Queensland mutton with jelly
Roast ribs of sirloin of Queensland beef
Roast Kwangtung turkey Boiled fowl
Singapore pine apple Hankau ham Potatoes
Peas Vegetable marrow Salad
Asparagus, olive oil sauce
Victoria pudding Chartreuse jelly
Cakes Mango ice cream
Preserved ginger Small oranges Chinese nuts
Coffee European wines
Lucien Rozet Cliquot Heidsieck Chateau Larose
Medoc Manzanilla Marsala
The iron pans that come from Shansi province are made as thin as
possible so as to economize fuel; indeed, as light fuel as grass and
stalks is used. The kitchen god is Chang Kung, and he was given this
office because “nine generations peacefully inhabited the same compound
when he lived on earth.” As pigs, ducks and geese are driven long
distances to market, little straw sandals are woven for their feet.
This one sometimes sees in Southern France when the frugal peasant is
competing with local railway rates!
An official asked a mannerly subordinate which way he was walking
home, and the latter replied: “Your way, sir.” The same official,
discussing a subject said to the subordinate: “Say what you think.” The
subordinate, who was a good party politician even in China, replied: “I
think what you say.” Some of their proverbs on daily life are:
“Wine will not drown sorrow.”
“The flattering tongue wants to fill its pocket.”
“The pot is as strong as its thinnest spot; the chain is as strong as
its weakest ring.”
“Don’t ask your thirsty visitor if he will have tea, because if he is
mannerly he will say, ‘Don’t trouble yourself’; just draw the tea for
him.”
“It’s always the good climber that falls from the top of the tree.”
“Those best find to-day who plan each to-morrow.”
“To-morrow’s always harder before you get to it.”
“A word is fleeter than a gale.”
“The widest field has some one listening at the edge.”
“A grape well chewed is better than a sweet potato swallowed whole.”
“Room in the heart makes room in the house.”
“Because you feel merry, there’s no need to dance when you are on a
horse’s back or in a small boat.”
“Sacrifice one sheep to capture the tiger and save the other sheep.”
“Even honey is not sweet at the end of the meal.”
“A fat cat never got all his food at home.”
“Tightening your drumhead is as good as enlarging your stick.”
“A blind fox catches only a dead fowl.”
XXVI
CLIMATE, DISEASE AND HYGIENE
In the last two years China has surprised the world by carrying out
her agreement to extirpate quickly opium smoking and poppy growing.
It is the most spectacular abatement of a gigantic nuisance that the
world has known. Among the heroes of the reform was Lin Ping Chang, a
grandson of the famous Commissioner Lin who destroyed the chests of
opium at Canton and brought on the war with Britain in 1840. Heredity
obtains in China! It would have taken England and America possibly
fifty years to bring about an equal reform in personal habits, but
the Chinese have for 3,500 years been the most obedient people to
government in the world, “Filial Piety” being the eminent principle of
the religious, social and political life. The good work is going on
apace, and Hongkong and India, thanks to the noble altruism of Lord
Morley, Sir E. Grey, Mr. Asquith and Lloyd George, are with good grace
swallowing the bitter pill of loss of revenue from this lucrative
trade. It was a great victory for religion over commerce, and the
latter died hard, for unregulated commerce is anything but a moralist
at heart. The humanitarian sentiment in Britain, America and China won
over money. Britain in her parliament _Blue Books_ used to say: “Opium
is a legitimate article of trade and a vested right that China is
unable to attack.” To-day John Morley speaks of Britain’s “humanitarian
duty.” Persian opium, which is much denser in morphia than is the
Indian, still comes to Hongkong for Formosa. This is the opium of which
Herodotus in 430 B. C. amusingly wrote as follows, his imagination
supplying his facts: “Though it comes from a most stinking place, it is
itself most fragrant. It is found sticking like gum to the beards of
he-goats, which collect it from the woods.”
Now Japan should obey the humanitarian sentiment of the world, and
stamp out opium in her Formosan colony. The opium conferences at
Shanghai in 1909 and the Hague in 1911, called by America and presided
over by the American, Bishop Brent, have produced wonderful results.
It now remains for the western nations to emulate China’s example and
stamp out morphia. China could well come back at America and say: “What
are _you_ going to do about morphine and hypodermic syringes? You
import yearly 500,000 pounds of opium, and you use only 70,000 pounds
in medicine. As far as morphine goes you are more ‘doped’ than all
the nations combined. You import 200,000 ounces of cocaine each year,
of which only 15,000 ounces are used in medicine.” The exportation of
India opium will cease in 1918, and China will have ceased to grow the
poppy this year. In the heat of the debates in England, Eric Lewis, a
Welsh supporter of Lloyd George’s, proposed that England should buy
all the opium in India, like the famous Chinese Commissioner Lin of
Canton, dump it in the sea, and indemnify by a loan of $40,000,000 the
poppy growers of Bengal. Now let us cease to criticize Britain, for if
she grossly sinned, she has repented and made amends, as could now be
expected of a Britain which has recently established national pensions
for her aged, and brought her educational extension, employers’
liability and land taxation up to the mark set by America.
So thoroughly successful was the Chinese government in restricting the
planting of the poppy even in distant Yunnan province, that in 1911 the
passenger earnings of the new French railway from Haiphong to Yunnan
were greater, because men fed on maize, instead of diseased by opium,
are both strong and wealthy enough to travel. Maize succeeded the
poppy. When China was attacking the use of opium in the mandarinate,
one official wrote to the Board of Constitutional Reform: “His Majesty
can send me the silver cord (for suicide by strangulation) but I _can
not_ give up opium.” They did give it up, for an opium smoker was
denied his right to plead in court, and his office was taken from him.
At plowing time, revenue officers were sent into Yunnan, Szechuen and
other poppy provinces, to see that poppy seed was not sown. The opium
cure, which is either swallowed or administered hypodermically, is
given the patient at the same time the drug is, and if his stomach only
was concerned, he is so nauseated that in five days he will give up the
indulgence. The cure contains fifteen per cent. tincture belladona,
fluid extract of prickly ash (xanthoxylum), and fluid extract of
hyoscyamus. Another cure includes iron, coffee, quinine, strychnine,
gentian and capsicum, with temporary injections of morphine in cases
of collapse. In a former book, _The Chinese_, I affirmed that China
and India could soon economically recover from the prohibition of
opium planting if the same attention were directed to other fields. I
shall instance Yunnan alone. In the first year of the prohibition the
province suffered. In 1910 and 1911 the increase in silver, copper and
tin mining, and maize cultivation had alone reimbursed Yunnan for all
her loss of opium revenues, and a sobered people realized that they
were even then only beginning to find their energies for legitimate
enrichment. The burning of pipes continues in China. In _The Chinese_
I related some dramatic occurrences in Shanghai. In September, 1911,
Chinese gathered on the athletic field of the Tientsin Y. M. C. A. and
burned 100,000 opium pipes, and at Yunnan City, under the auspices of
Governor Li Chin Hsi, a great burning was held on the parade ground of
the arsenal; the new military, the police and bands attending to add
éclat to the function.
Doctor Buchanan, of India, has discovered that cats are immune to
China’s curse, bubonic plague, and that they can safely destroy the
rats which carry the germs. But cats and dogs indulge in fleas, and
the flea is as busy in transporting the plague germ as are the rats.
Poison and traps are the things to use against rats, and cats and
dogs should be asked to retire, too, until China cleans herself up
a bit, when she can probably safely indulge in bench shows of her
famous chow and Pekingese dogs! Even the fur marmot has been asked to
go, since the pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria in the winter
of 1910. That awful epidemic revealed a new scourge, even worse than
bubonic, to the startled world. Bubonic thrives in dampness in the
south in summer time. Pneumonic thrives in indoor winter conditions.
America was represented on the field by Doctor R. P. Strong, of Manila,
Doctors Aspland and Stenhouse, and the medical missionaries Sinclair,
Gibb and Mary Ogden; Japan by Doctor Kitasato, who discovered the
bubonic bacillus at Hongkong in 1894; Russia by Doctor Haffkine and
Doctor Zabolothy; China by Doctor Wu Lien Teh; England by Doctor A. F.
Jackson, who fell a martyr, to the great grief of all China; Scotland
by Doctor Ross, of Mukden. Though no victim recovers, the germ can not
live outside in dry air. The doctors and sanitary corps, inoculated
with Yersin serum, or Haffkine’s or Kitasato’s prophylactic lymph, at
once equipped themselves with masks and surtouts, and the scene was
one which Manzoni might have novelized. Often dying men were seen to
struggle up to the pile of bodies among which were their fathers, bow
low in filial, Confucian ancestor worship, even to pour out libations
and present sacrifice, and then join the heap in a delirious death
agony. Such a tragic attitude could be possible only in a land of
ancestor worship.
Kingslake, in _Eothen_, describes the quarantined city of Cairo in
1835, when a thousand deaths a day occurred until the terrorized
population hated the name death, and called it with bated breath
“another accident”. I have been through similar nerve-racking
experiences in the plague centers of China, the mentioning of death
and cemeteries being tabooed from polite conversation, though hundreds
were falling. Kingslake’s description is graphic. He went to the only
European physician in the city, and found him wrapped up, suffering
from the plague. The heroic man prescribed for Kingslake. Later,
thinking that he might have recovered, Kingslake sent his servant to
ask the physician to call. “Did you meet him?” The servant replied:
“Yes, I met him coming out of his house,--on his bier!” In the
tenth chapter of _Eothen_, Kingslake recites how the plague in 1835
ruthlessly struck down the brave brothers of the Franciscan monastery
in holy Jerusalem. One quarantined member went on his priestly duty to
the stricken city. On his return to the pest-house, he rang a bell as a
signal that he still lived, and was carrying on the martyr’s work over
the paths that Christ himself trod. When the bell ceased ringing, a new
brother went forth to bury the martyr, and take up his duties which
could only also lead to death.
In 1720, Belsunce, the hero Bishop of Marseilles, seemed alone to
breathe pure air and handle pure food as he moved among the infected
who to the number of 50,000 dropped at his feet. Infection comes
from indoor breathing, direct, or from sputum. Banish dirt, darkness
and foul air, and both bubonics at once commit suicide or die of
starvation. The pneumonic, it will be recalled, swept from Harbin to
Newchwang, and held Europe in terror that it would take the Siberian
goods train westward for St. Petersburg and Berlin. Thirty European
doctors and nurses were martyrs, most of them Russians. The Chinese
permitted what they have never permitted before, the cremation of the
dead, and the segregation of suspects in detention camps. At Harbin
alone there were 1,200 deaths, the dead being cremated in the brick
kilns. If heroic members of any legation staff should be given honors
for the Peking campaign against plague in 1911, there are 20,000
veterans of Hongkong and South China who should be clothed in a coat of
medals for plague dangers they never thought of talking about, except
to say with their guest Kipling that “it was all in the day’s work”. I
have seen the foreign police, soldiers, sanitary corps and volunteers
of Hongkong and Canton tackle multitudinous dangers in epidemics with
all the éclat of a football game, and the men of Bombay regularly
do the same thing. Because of the legations and press bureaus, the
foreigner in North China, God bless him, is much better advertised than
is the foreigner of South China and India. India had one Kipling; South
China is looking for hers!
In a former volume I have instanced some surprising appearances of
bubonic plague in Europe. In September, 1910, a girl, her father,
mother and nurse, died successively under mysterious conditions at
Preston, Suffolk, England. It was later noticed that the rats in the
neighborhood were dying. Examination showed that the black plague
was the cause, and the supposition is that the disease was imported
in grain received from Odessa, Russia, and that the germs developed
under conditions of damp, dirt and darkness. In 1902, Odessa, Russia,
reported a plague case in the house of a baker. In August, 1910, plague
was recrudescent there in the very same house, showing that the bubonic
plague germs had lived eight years. The ineffective measures of the
authorities to destroy the rats caused the spread of the last-mentioned
epidemic. World campaigns against rats will doubtless now occur from
time to time, as insurance companies have taken up the study of the
subject.
Abattoir and market laws calling for foreign supervision and veterinary
inspection were first instituted by Hongkong, and Singapore, Shanghai,
Tientsin, Saigon, Manila, and Tsingtau followed in about the order
named. Partial inspection is exercised at Canton, Hankau, Newchwang,
Peking and other cities. It is one of the things China must and will
soon take hold of, for Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius) who has done so much
for Chinese reform, is himself a modern physician and has always
lived in foreign or treaty ports. In connection with this, China will
improve her cattle, which are of the wild, buffalo-humped variety,
with an excess of bone. Her Hankau and Manchurian black, as well as
the Kwangtung white, pigs are now going to Liverpool, London, Glasgow
and Bremen. It is wonderful that populous China can be an exporter of
meat to Europe. It shows two things: that living in America and Europe
is too high, and that return freights are too low. China centuries ago
instituted pure food laws, preceding Germany, Britain and America. They
did not go far of course, but they showed the germinative idea. The
guild or manufacturer was glad to stamp biscuit or ink-stick, and the
food purveyor placed a red stamp on his dried duck, fish, or vermicelli
package, the stamp standing for purity or inferiority according to the
reputation of the packer.
Every reader has sympathized with the heroic General Roberts who in
his book, _Forty-One Years in India_, tells of a sunstroke which he
suffered in the heat of the tropics. The great heat and humidity
are likely to produce, certainly in those who use stimulants, drugs
or much meat, anaemia or acidulation of the blood, with persistent
auto-intoxication, and the resulting torture of constantly reeling
under the heat can be imagined. The Chinese are up at daylight, and
most active in the cooler part of the day. The Chinese skull, because
of the lifelong habit of shaving the head under the Manchu régime,
grows thicker than the European’s skull, and the former, therefore, are
better able to resist the equatorial sun. Herodotus pointed out that
the ancient Egyptians, for the same reason, resisted the sun better
than the Persians, who accustomed themselves to head-coverings from
childhood. The Chinese emperor and the mandarins gave their audiences
at dawn. It will be recalled that Cicero, when governor of Asiatic
Cicilia, admitted the crowds of complainants to his popular court at
daylight, so as to use the hot midday for retirement from the heat.
At Hongkong, where, hot as it is, exercise is imperative, we used to
rise at daylight and rush to the golf, tennis and riding courses for an
hour’s play, and this unusual sight would induce you to say that it was
not so luxurious a colony as the sumptuous club life of the later day
would possibly make it appear to be.
The bar in an Oriental club is eloquent of the fact that you are in
the malarial East, for among the popular bottles is the one containing
quinine-sulphate powder, and the veterans seem able to judge what is a
proper dose to take out with a spoon to mix with their sherry as they
salute and say: “Here’s how,” or “The king.”
South China is kind to the man who suffers from heat. Knowing that he
is coolest who can throw away his flesh and move in his bare bones,
she provides a damp hot climate that reduces men to the appearance of
trained thoroughbreds! There they walk, the thinnest foreigners of the
Far East, the Hongkong, Manila, Saigon, Shanghai and Canton men! They
have been boiled down almost to their backbones and skulls from March
until November, and there being no tissue to feed, the blood can all go
to building up the gray matter! Although black focuses the actinic rays
of the overhead equatorial sun, and a body feels twenty degrees more
of heat than when covered with white, the British courts of Hongkong
insist on the formal garb of Lincoln’s Inn, a black coat and gown. Pity
the barristers and judges of Hongkong who delve into the law and weigh
out justice in the stifling atmosphere of the magnificent courts of the
illustrious Crown colony. The almost naked, or duck-covered criminal,
bracing up for his sentence, shows fewer beads on his perspiring brow
than do his learned accusers! “Inflexible” is not a more famous name in
the British navy than in the British legal and colonial service.
The Americans in Manila, the French in Saigon, and the republican
Chinese, however, are listening to the dictates of hygiene rather than
to the long sonorous trump of tradition. In the American cavalry in
the tropics it is found that the imported white animals are immune to
the heat, whereas the darker breeds soon die. Southern Tibet is coming
nearer to the railhead with its wonderful climate for the enervated
of the whole East. India, Tonquin and China are sending on their
construction gangs, and the day is not so far off when the veil at the
8,000 feet passes, which has hid the last withheld land, will be rent
in twain. The two men who have done the most to break down the forts
of exclusion are Sir Francis, Colonel Younghusband, for the Indian
government, and the Chinese general, Chao Ehr Feng, who in 1910 also
broke up the Buddhist superstitious system by driving the Dalai Lama
(their pope) for the first time into unholy foreign soil at Darjeeling.
Twenty miles south of Chungking, in the sublime valley of Wen Tang, is
a famous hot sulphur bath cut in the rock. The flow is generous, and
the Buddhist priests have divided the bath so that men and women may
use it. They make no charge for the use of the water, but they charge
for inn service. Before many years many foreigners will resort here, as
the bathing is beautifully clean.
A remarkable thing about China is the comparative absence of flies,
because manure and refuse is so important as a fertilizer that it
is immediately carried to the intensively farmed fields, which are
expected to produce two to three harvests a year. Therefore typhoid
and other diseases are not as prevalent as they otherwise would be.
However, a whisper in your ear, reader: if China lacks in flies, she
abounds in “bunkies,” which is the polite name for fleas! Nature abhors
a vacuum and always provides for the deficiency in one field from the
surplus in another! To have real safety in a Chinese inn, one needs to
go to bed in a Peary suit, furnished with a diver’s helmet. This is
never done, however, because of the heat. Cold weather only increases
the torture, for the pauper “bunkie,” small as he is, successfully
races to the heated kang faster than the paying guest! As the Chinese
masses use no liquor, tobacco or drugs, and live an outdoor life on
vegetable food mainly, their hearts are in splendid condition, and all
the hospital surgeons report remarkable recoveries when an accident has
made operations necessary. The race seems to have that old aboriginal
fortitude of not fearing the knife or wincing under pain. They have
no idea of the danger of infection by contact, the rich being as
ill-informed as the poor. Wet towels, wrung out in the same hot water,
are for refreshment rubbed over the hands, face and neck of every one
at a feast. A governor’s pipe is first lighted and puffed for him by a
miserable attendant, the governor merely wiping the mouthpiece dry with
his hand or long sleeve, the custom being to cut out a soiled sleeve
and substitute a new sleeve so as to save the splendid garment.
The Chinese are proving themselves to be adept in dental surgery. Many
Chinese have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania dental
school, and they have set up in business throughout the Chinese treaty
ports. Others have graduated from Hongkong’s school, and still others,
entering as apprentices under Chinese dentists, trained abroad, soon
start out for themselves and pass the good work along. When customers
are slow in coming, the Chinese dentist adds another shingle to his
door. “Dentist and Photographer”; “Dentist and Printer”; “Dentist
and Manufacturers’ Agent,” are common signs. A good many stories are
printed that the old-fashioned Oriental dentist trained himself for
tooth pulling by practising with his fingers on pulling pegs from soft
and afterward from hardwood logs, but this is true only as far as
loosened teeth are concerned. They always used forceps of some kind.
Generals Roberts and Kitchener could not, by taking thought, add one
cubit unto the stature of the British soldier, but they decreed that
he must have as good teeth as he had a rifle when on foreign service,
and so the dentists of Hongkong and other garrison ports flourish. The
British call themselves “dental surgeons.” The Chinese put out a sign
that they repair or extract molars “by best American methods.” The
Philadelphia dentist, here as over the world, leads in his calling.
One owns a leading newspaper of Hongkong. The prices of the American
dentist are high, as the tourist and five-year indentured clerk
discover. Apprentices are brought out under contract covering service,
and it is rumored that some contracts prohibit independent practise
in the same port at the end of the term; but common law has long ago
exploded the legality of a man signing away his rights to make a living.
It is strongly hoped that a cure has now been found for incipient
tubercular leprosy, hitherto supposed to be incurable. South China
has more lepers than any country, and the necessary segregation is
incomplete. Doctor J. T. Wayson, city physician of Honolulu, has used
the “beauty pencil” (stick of carbon dioxide ice), which gives a
temperature of one hundred degrees below zero, on the nodule sores,
breaking down the affected tissues time after time, until no “bacilli
leprae” are found in the tests of the cuttings from the surrounding
parts. He has found that affected children of lepers seem to have been
cured. The trial of this method will be made in the missionary and
University of Pennsylvania hospitals at Canton, which is the center
of the largest leprous district in the world, though it has had no
Robert Louis Stevenson or Father Damien eloquently to make its wants
known, as was done for the Molokai colony in Hawaii. If there is some
unknown microbic diathesis or nervous tendency to it, this remedy, like
quinine, strychnine, phosphate of iron, chaulmoogra oil, etc., may not
be a permanent success. Long years of observation only can tell. I
have gone through the leper camps and the leper boat colonies of the
Heungshan Peninsula between Canton and Macao. The colonies do not seem
to move up or down in numbers. There seems to be no danger of infection
if the visitor does not eat or handle things among them.
As I have related in _The Chinese_, the scenes are piteous beyond
words, and illustrate China’s old Spartan methods, that the sooner
incompetents pass away the better for all. It is said that a fish diet
encourages the diathesis, and certainly Heungshan is a remarkable fish
center. Doctor G. A. Hansen, of Bergen, a Norwegian bacteriologist, and
Doctors Brinckerhoff, Cumy and Hallman, of Honolulu, all discovered
the leprosy bacillus, and Doctor Hansen broke down the belief that
the disease was hereditary. By segregation, he reduced Norway’s cases
from three thousand to four hundred. The American bacteriologists are
experimenting on toxins. In 1902 an American named Conrardy established
and lived in a model endowed lazaretto with five hundred lepers
near Canton. He, of course, contracted the disease, which made slow
headway because of his vitality, which was stronger than that of the
vegetable-fed Chinese. He expected to live for fifteen years, but at
the end of eight years he was slowly sinking. On beautiful Joao Island,
which is in view from your hotel window at Macao, South China, Portugal
long ago established a leper asylum.
A careful study of the newspapers for many years must lead one to the
deduction that as the Chinese adopt foreign life in the treaty ports,
suicides are increasing among married women and business men. Probably
both religion and nerves are at fault, for they go somewhat together.
As is well known, Chinese cities and dwelling-compounds are surrounded
by walls. Unusual rains or quickly melting snows often undermine the
walls of compounds, filling the street with débris. In August, 1911,
at Mukden, Manchuria, particularly, the streets looked as though the
Russians and Japanese had again just got through with bombarding the
town! How differently everything is done in China and the Occident! The
New Jersey cities are spending some $10,000,000 to take liquid sewage
from their rivers and conduct it in a trunk sewer to New York Bay. In
China so little sewage remains after the farmer is through with its
manuring properties that British analysts concluded to take the water
supply for the three cities of Hankau, Hanyang and Wuchang, in the
center of populous China, directly from the Han River near the cities.
The extensive plant consists of a deep intake protected from the heavy
loess siltage; an air lift, which showers the water in rain into filter
beds; reservoirs of five million gallons; three Worthington pumps of
300,000 gallons an hour and an electric plant to supply the cities. The
company is Chinese, and Chinese did all the contracting by the favorite
method of piecework. As the provincial parliament was not established
when the company was chartered, the viceroy granted the franchise.
American boilers were used.
Water gathering is easy in Hongkong, though it has no river. Many
mountains of the island have been reserved and trenched at the bottom.
The torrential rains strike these peaks, and a thousand trenches
carry the water to dammed valleys at Taitam, Pokfulum and Wong Nei
Chong, high enough up in the hills to give gravity pressure for the
mains. The beautiful aqueducts on Bowen Road, far up on the mountain
side, facing the famous harbor, are a sight no tourist approaching on
his steamer will forget. When pianos are made for the humid south,
loose keys and felt, fastened without gum, must be provided for, and
even at that lamps are kept burning under the instrument to dry the
atmosphere. A case of the Korean “earth disease,” or “tochil,” is rare
in America, owing to the vigilance of our Marine Hospital Service,
but one case got into Seattle from the Orient in September, 1910. The
disease is incurable and infectious, and is much dreaded. Other races
may have forgotten, but the Orient never forgets, and always can bring
up something wonderful from the dispersion of Babel, and every camp
gathering since, along the valley of the Tarim!
An account of the quarantine practise at Hongkong and other Oriental
tropical ports may be of interest. Manila, Saigon, Singapore, Shanghai
or Nagasaki may hear or believe that there is plague or cholera at
Hongkong, and they quarantine vessels from the latter port. There
is always certain feeling between the port doctors, and Hongkong
retaliates. A vessel loaded with steerage and cabin passengers arrives
at Hongkong from one of these other ports. The yellow flag is hoisted
on the main topmast and no one is allowed to board the ship, which
lies in the stream, until the port doctor and his assistants come off
in a launch, which flies a yellow flag, and allows the ship’s yellow
flag to be hauled down. Quartermasters man the gangway and rail until
the doctor frees the vessel. He holds a conference with the ship’s
doctor, and woe betide the latter’s vessel, or its future calls up and
down the coast, if untruths are told or concealments made. The cabin
passengers are carefully watched as they march by the cabin table, and
the temperature of suspicious cases is taken. Any one who shows over
ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit is examined further for corroborative
symptoms. The temperature of every one of the steerage is taken and the
glass thermometer is not always cleaned as it is passed from mouth to
mouth here in these crowded regions! A suspicious case is stripped of
clothes then and there in the line. Despite satisfactory examinations,
vessels are sometimes held up forty-eight hours, and every one in the
steerage, as well as his baggage and quarters, is sulphur-smoked,
steamed and washed. A fumigation hulk is used for this purpose, and it
is the most hated vessel anchored in the harbor. I have known a ship’s
white officers, afflicted with plague, cholera, etc., to be taken off
to the plague hulk _Hygeia_, and their vessels to be detained fourteen
days for observation and cleansing before being released by the British
and American doctors of the port. The detention anchorage ranges on the
northwest of the usual fairway, and though a beautiful spot under the
heathen hills of old China, it is naturally considered by many as a
most melancholy one.
There is always a smouldering fire of conflict burning in the hearts
of ships’ agents, port doctors and United States Marine hospital
surgeons on duty abroad. The agents are inclined to imperfect care
and quicker despatch of vessels. The United States doctors who,
abroad, splendidly and incorruptibly guard the health of America, are
likely to injure competitive business for the sake of making safety
doubly sure. The proper course is “_in medio tutissimus ibis_.” I
have known these doctors to examine the earth around lily roots and
prohibit their export to America during many months of the year. Ships’
captains, doctors and agents, ever pressed by the management for
increased earnings, take every bit of risk they can, even in the case
of west-bound Chinese suffering from phthisis, and the check of the
United States Marine Hospital Service is salutary, and will continue to
be necessary. When a vessel is homeward bound the United States Marine
doctor at Hongkong will not give a clean bill of health for America
until all steerage passengers and their effects have been washed and
steamed in disinfecting waters. Often the emigrants are stripped and
America thus saved from loathsome hidden diseases being imported. The
scene is sometimes enough to make the doctors as sagacious as Solomon,
or as compassionate as Florence Nightingale.
What a work is opening up in China for the labors of the medical
missionary, first with the touch and then with the voice of the Angel
of Salvation. The rigid medical examination of returning Chinese at
Hongkong and San Francisco is disliked by Chinese consuls, firms and
the steerage passengers themselves, but the best friend of China, if
he is enlightened as to the unsanitary conditions yet obtaining there,
could not ask America to lighten her severity, which is no more onerous
than Japan’s, until China cleans up her land, sanitizes her houses, and
supplies herself with a modern medical system. The inspection at San
Francisco sometimes calls for lancing of the ear at night to see if the
patient is suffering from filariasis, and at Hongkong and sometimes
at San Francisco the immigrant is required to disrobe, bathe and have
his effects fumigated. The Hongkong inspection can not obviate the
wisdom of a new inspection at San Francisco to ward against hookworm,
elephantiasis, plague, cholera and the unmentionable disease.
Hongkong is ever increasing its hospital equipment, which is now the
most extensive in the Far East. Some of the buildings erected on the
mountain peaks are palatial. On the western slope of Victoria Mount
there is the worldwide known Tung Wah Hospital, managed by Chinese
educated in the medical schools of Britain, America and Hongkong. At
this hospital Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the first president of China, was
a student some years ago. Over Bowen Road, above the clouds of Mount
Wanchai, is the sumptuous Military Hospital, and at the foot of the
mountain is the no less splendid Naval Hospital. On Mount Kellett is
Sharp’s Hospital, and on Victoria Peak is the Peak Hospital. There is
the Civil Hospital, the Nethersole Hospital, hospitals over on the
mainland at Kowloon, and there will be a railroad hospital at Kowloon.
Canton has copied from Hongkong. The Chinese there are modernizing
their ancient guild hospitals which lie outside of the eastern wall.
Philanthropy in only the smallest of the Hongkong hospitals has been
depended upon, most of them being municipal or service hospitals. At
Canton is the immense Doctor Peter Parker Hospital, founded in 1835,
for which the American Presbyterian women of Philadelphia furnish
the medical missionaries. There are 300 beds, and 25,000 patients
are treated annually. The Chinese do their part, having presented a
building for a medical college. The Gregg Hospitals for Women at Canton
is presided over by Doctors Mary Fulton and Mary Niles, and the Chinese
have given $3,500 for a children’s ward. At Kowkiang, on the Yangtze,
there is the model Danforth Memorial Hospital, erected with American
money and presided over by a noted Chinese lady physician who has taken
the name of Miss Mary Stone, and who graduated from the University of
Michigan Medical School.
In remote large Hainan Island, in Suchow, at Paoting, Chingtu, Peking,
etc., there are American Presbyterian hospitals. Where there are now
hundreds there will soon be thousands of medical missionaries and more
medical colleges to fit the Chinese to help themselves. It is the most
important work in China,--more important even than foreign loans for
railways and industrials, and far more important than loans for armies
and navies. Doctor F. C. Yen, of Yale Medical College, Changsha, is a
fine example of a native medical man, trained in the best that the West
knows. Several American universities have opened medical schools in
China, the University of Pennsylvania at Canton, Yale at Changsha in
stern conservative Hunan province; and now Harvard proposes to open
a medical school possibly at Shanghai, to be staffed by the Harvard
Medical School, and the diseases which they will attack are China’s
curses, the dangers of the world,--the skin diseases, tumors, the
two plagues, cholera, dysentery, leprosy, malaria and consumption.
One-third of the money for the Scotch Presbyterian Hospital and medical
college at Mukden was contributed by the Chinese, who now warmly
appreciate Western medicine.
The day is not distant when the Chinese, placed on their feet in
finance, will pay half the expense of medical missions. The Chinese
give liquorice to men and animals as a cure for wasting diseases.
From the skin of a venomous toad their doctors derive a preparation
which they call Sen-so. It is a far more powerful stimulus to heart
action than our drug digitalis. It is well known that deer’s horns
are ground to powder by the old-fashioned Chinese doctors. In the
valley of the Wei River, just north of the Peling range in far western
Kansu province, stags are raised in enclosures for this purpose. The
soft prongs of the horn are cut off in summer time. The old-fashioned
doctors of China never dissected, as abuse of the body is contrary to
Confucianism. They knew nothing of circulation, and little of anatomy,
physiology or chemistry. “Then Confucianism must go,” say the new
Chinese scientists. Two of their medical proverbs are:
“A physician may cure every disease except the disease of Fate.”
“Send for the diagnostician before the druggist, for the cure must fit
the disease.”
Four great tropical medicine colleges have been opened outside of
the Orient. The first was the University of Liverpool School. Then
followed the London School of Tropical Medicine, and the Hamburg School
of the Germans. Now the New York Tropical Medical School has been
opened at Twentieth Street and Second Avenue. The work will include
the translation of text-books, and America will be able to do much
for Southern China in the clinic on ships which the school will have
as soon as the Panama Canal is open. Serums have yet to be found for
the paralyzing dengue which every foreigner in China has suffered from
at one time or another: typhus, anæmia, dum-dum, tze-tze, sleeping
sickness, amoebic dysentery, malaria and pneumonic plague, though the
indefatigable Doctor Kitasato found a temporary serum for the last
named.
The medical works translated into Chinese by medical missionaries
include the following: Doctor J. G. Kerr’s (first teacher of Doctor
Sunyacius) translation of Bartholow’s _Practise of Medicine_, Doctor
S. A. Hunter’s translation of a _Materia Medica and Pharmacopœia_,
Doctor Dudgeon’s translation of Gray’s _Anatomy_, Doctor Porter’s
translation of a physiology, Doctor Mary Fulton’s _Diseases of
Children_; _Nursing in Surgery_, and _Gynecology_, etc.
When I think of the trials of the Orient in its heated, humid,
equatorial region, where I lived for three years; and the hardships,
dangers and life-remembered punishment of its unavoidable, various
diseases, I am inclined to suggest in this book the formation of an
“Equator Club,” eligibility for membership in which shall be at least
two years’ uninterrupted residence between the tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn. Such an experience was certainly a unique and trying one,
a tremendous test of physique, as a growing number, who have endured
it, will confess, and a perpetuated remembrance of those days, and an
interest in the successors who have followed one to take up the white
man’s growing burdens in those realms of the imperious sun, would
certainly do good.
XXVII
CHINESE WOMANHOOD
On the last of our August the women of China celebrate the festival of
the goddess of needlework. The interesting legend told to the daughters
of the house is as follows: This goddess, because of her wonderful
skill, was given by the great god Tien to a worthy farmer. After
this life she incurred the wrath of the god and was removed from her
husband’s star. Once a year, when her star comes round again, magpies
conduct her back to her husband’s star home, across the carpet of the
Milky Way, where she is welcome for a while, because she is as good a
needleworker as he is a farmer and provider. The festival includes the
exhibition on a table of the needlework of the women and the toy work
of the girls. Wonderful toys of gummed sesame seeds, wax and paper are
made, and toys worked by clockwork or heat, which exhibit all kinds
of rural life,--some of it humorous. From behind screens the women
listen to what the men callers have to say to the head of the family
in praise of their handiwork. It is, however, principally a women’s
festival and encourages the production of the gorgeous embroidery of
the Chinese. A Chinese wit was asked the difference in the position
of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon women, and she replied: “An Oriental man
beats his wife in public to show that he is indeed the ruler, but he
pets her in private, whereas a Western man pets his wife in public and
beats her in private.” I do not know what the remote Tibet men do
with their powerful women in private, but I do know that the women of
Tibet who come down into Szechuen and Yunnan provinces with the trading
trains are on an equal with man. They join him in work, play, in
meeting strangers and in holding the “cash,” and therefore are the most
independent of the Chinese women. They do not bind their feet, as they
have too much work to do. They come next to the Tonquinoise as perhaps
the best-looking of the Chinese. The best dressed women in China live
in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces. The dress of Korean women is not so
gorgeous as the Chinese dress, the former wearing green or white, and
hiding their heads in immense basket hats, “to keep them from flirting”
the wits say! The Korean woman at home, instead of modestly screening
her face with a fan, does so by lifting up her wide sleeve. Muffs and
gloves are not worn in the cold north. Instead, the wide long sleeve is
gathered round the hand.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Lighting China’s sea-ways by the National Customs Department. This
is the Guia Light. Note the winding rock path, cut to the summit;
Kwangtung province.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Modern buildings of brick. Nearly all have large verandas. Canton
water-front, Pearl River.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Chinese type of girlhood, as contrasted with the Japanese type
shown in another photograph. In the New China the compressing of
feet is taboo.
]
The campaign of the Tien Tsu Hui (As-Heaven-Made-It Foot Society)
against foot-binding is meeting with much success. Chinese women are
rejoicing that they are not withheld from physical freedom and an
education, by being longer crippled. The idea that a bound foot is the
surest sign of a lady, and the best recommendation for marriage, is
dying out. As prices increase with the material development of China,
men will not be able to hire servants to carry and wait on these
crippled women. Therefore economy will advance the reform also. The
famous viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, who died in 1909, was the
first prominent Chinese official to become converted to the reform.
The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi joined the movement. It is a pity
that more Chinese girls from the Yangtze and southern provinces do not
come to American and European schools, as their work, on returning
to China, would do most for this reform. The snobbish idea, of course,
was that a girl who never needed to work, and had never worked, made
a very select wife, just as in America and Britain the “snobs” think
that a girl who has never worked, and can not work, makes a finer wife
than a woman who has been or is in business. The French have thought
otherwise for a long time. One of the pioneer foreign women, outside of
the missionaries, who worked and lectured in China for the unbinding of
feet, was Mrs. Archibald Little, author of _The Land of the Blue Gown_,
and wife of the intrepid Yangtze explorer and author.
The following love tale is the one oftenest painted on your teacup
and saucer, and other Chinese pottery, and on fans, etc. Kung She is
the sweet and lovely daughter of a rich man. She falls in love with
her father’s bright and brave young secretary, who has more in rosy
prospect and dreams than in lined pocket. The father proposes that
the daughter shall, against her will, marry a rich old suitor. The
lovers in desperation elope over a bamboo bridge to an island pavilion
of willow wood, with beautiful up-curving eaves. The wrathful suitor
follows and burns the pavilion and the bridge. The souls of the lovers
take refuge in the bodies of two doves which are seen cooing from the
branches of a banyan that grows above the pavilion. Thus we sit down
to eat, and we fan ourselves each day over a beautiful love tale of
romantic old China.
The queue is now going out as man’s head-dress in republican China.
The general custom with Chinese women is to dress the hair out behind,
sticking in large-headed gold pins; and the Manchu’s dress it over
the ear, with the help of wide pins, and broad ribbons and flowers.
The aboriginal tribes of Lolos in Szechuen province, and Miao Tszes
in Kweichau province, dress the hair on top of the head over rats, in
true Western cone-style. The Chinese women oil their hair and brush it
out smooth on forms. The only departure from this is a straight bang
allowed to girls. They wonder if we have brushes or combs in the West,
and point to our curls (called “rough dog”) as a proof of our tonsorial
carelessness.
Some of the proverbs of the women are:
“You can not tell a good husband that his wife has a defect.”
“Ugly and beautiful daughters all have one face to a true mother.”
“A man weds a wife for her goodness, but a concubine for her face.”
“Mother’s love is even in beasts, for the hungriest tiger will not eat
its whelps.”
“Deeds are better than admiration.”
“A virtuous wife is like a loyal statesman; she knows only one king,
her husband.”
“Mother and father first and wealth after.”
“She is dead indeed who walks around with a dead heart.”
“If you listen to every one’s advice, the picture will never be
straight on the wall.”
“Let thy purse and not thine eyes tell thee what to buy.”
“You can’t expect the looking glass to reveal more than you put into
it.”
Because of the worship of men ancestors, Confucianism has been called a
man’s religion. Yet it recognizes woman’s work. A bronze brazier stands
before the open white marble altar at Peking, in which once a year at
the ancient Chou sacrifices to the God of Heaven, the emperor-pope
burns silk. The Manchu emperor, in abdicating the throne, retained
his sacerdotal offices, though strictly speaking, they should have
fallen to the Ducal Kung Fut Tszes, of Shangtung province, who are
the seventy-seventh in direct line from Confucius. A number of the
Kungs, however, are Christians, and they exerted little insistence on
their Confucian privileges. The care of the worms and the weaving of
silk is distinctly woman’s work in China. This sacrifice is repeated
by the governor at every capital, and heads of families sometimes, in
their own office of patriarch priest, make the silk sacrifice. This is
quite distinct from hiring a Taoist bonze to burn silvered and gilded
imitations of money to appease a devil or “ying” spirit. A patriarch
would have no influence there, the operation requiring a specialist
more familiar with witches and demons! The Chinese women always sit on
chairs and lounges (kangs); the Koreans and Japanese sit on the floor.
This does not mean that the Koreans, whom the Japanese have conquered,
are in sympathy with the latter, for they thoroughly hate each other.
The Chinese never wear a feather, except to denote literary rank in
men. Therefore the bucolic natives who see the fashion of western
women, remark: “Only your women are educated, and very talented at
that, some having a dozen literary degrees.” Millinery is for men, not
for women in China, as only men wear a feathered cap. The gorgeous tail
feathers of the Machi species of pheasant are particularly popular.
Preserves of these birds are kept in the Wei valley, north of the
Peling range of mountains in far western Kansu province, to provide the
men milliners with supplies!
A well-known custom at Chinese weddings is the effort of the bride
to sit upon part of the groom’s gown when they are drinking the
betrothal tea together. The cups are tied with a red string, and the
groom must not break the string in his effort to release his gown. If
the bride succeeds it means that she will be his ruler. A partially
similar custom prevails among the Miaotse aboriginal tribes of Yunnan
province. The friends of the groom endeavor to prevent the bride’s
brothers from throwing her veil on the roof of the house. If the latter
are successful in the rush, the omen is that the bride will rule the
groom, saying in any argument: “Remember that on June 15th my veil
went on your roof!” The midwife is a well-filled calling, but she does
not go by that name. She is called the “life-catcher” throughout the
land. The “mother-in-law” joke does not obtain in China. Its place is
taken by the son-in-law joke. It is the aim of the son-in-law and his
wife to “go and live on mother” as long as possible. Mother resents
it with the usual complaint: “Here comes my son-in-law, with his wife
and six children, to live on us again for a month; dearie me,” etc.!
When a family marries off a daughter, generally to save the expense
of supporting her, they hope to see the last of her as far as that
expense goes. Family courtesy, the Confucian “li” code, prescribes
yearly entertainment, however, of the son-in-law’s family, which is
not reciprocated, and hence the standing of the son-in-law joke as a
mirth-provoker among those who perceive the code’s requirements obeyed,
with exactness but not with cheerfulness!
Although the race has for centuries shaved the heads of the men almost
to baldness, they have a great abhorrence of baldness in women, and
this is frequently pleaded as a cause for divorce or breaking of an
engagement (marriage contract). The women in general have luxuriant
hair, though it is coarse, and its color and luster remain till late
in life, owing to the use of oils, the absence of hats, and the
out-of-door habits. If the lion-like chow dog (yellow or black) is the
pet of the men, the Pekingese toy spaniel is the pet of the Manchu
woman. She calls it her “sleeve dog.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi
enumerated its points as follows: “It shall learn to bite a stranger;
its toy body shall be maned and fixed with the fierce eyes of the
great lion seeking its prey. Its ears shall be set like the sails of a
war junk; its nose shall be stubby like the monkey god of the Hindus;
its forelegs shall be bowed so that it can walk over the foot of its
mistress, but shall not be able to stray far from the yamen; its feet
shall be tufted so that its step shall be as on turf; and its color
shall suit every change of gown. It shall be fed on the breasts of
quails, livers of curlews and sharks’ fins. Its drink shall be Hankau,
first-budded tea and antelope’s milk. If ill, it shall be anointed
with the fat of leopards, and drink a thrush-egg full of the juice of
the custard apple and dissolved rhinoceros’ horn. If very ill, piebald
leeches shall be applied to it.” Despite all this poetry which aptly
goes with this fashionable dog, it thrives very well on Spratt’s dog
biscuit in the salons of West End, London, and Fifth Avenue, New York.
A number of ladies are mixing up Chinese and Japanese names for the
pets at the bench shows (Peking Yen, for instance), but the dog answers
very well to the names Jip, Tip, etc., which we used to call those
old favorite toy dogs, the black-and-tans. The dog looks like a cross
between a Pomeranian and a King Charles spaniel. The face is decidedly
lion-like; the bushy tail sweeps well over the back as does that of his
big brother, the Chinese chow dog. The legs are short and bowed, and
the manner is very alert.
Possibly overmuch has been written that the Chinese despise female
children and worship male children. In the economic and religious
structure of old China boys have been more valuable, but the human
heart of the race has responded to love for its girls. Poverty, more
than hardness of heart, has induced the race in instances to sell its
girls; for China has been very poor because of flood and famine,
resulting from inefficiency of government and the non-development of
mines and manufacturing. The two greatest teachers of old China have
for twenty-five centuries taught love of children in the following
among other maxims. Confucius said: “Treat the young tenderly,” and
Mencius wrote: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s
heart.” Where the parents can afford it, the Chinese dress their boys
and girls expensively and gorgeously, and fondle them as lovingly as do
the Hebrews, who are supposed to set the standard in love for children,
as compared with us colder northern races. One of the first things that
the new government will attempt to suppress will be the sale of girl
slaves and concubinage. The population of China will fall or remain
stationary, which will be a good thing for China. There is, therefore,
no “Yellow Peril” for the West, as the Emperor William enunciated in
1898. The poorer a man, the more children he desires in China, so that
sons may take care of him in old age, but he forgets that he is raising
uneducated sons and neglected girls, who are often sold into slavery.
Better a family of four well-cared-for children in the new hygienic
Cathay than a family of ten in the old China. China’s population will
fall under the new régime, but her efficiency, education and comfort
will advance, and those who will benefit the most, as compared with
their former condition, will be her women.
At the time of the revolution, October, 1911, to February, 1912, there
were 400,000 starving girls and women in the Yangtze and Hwei River
valleys alone who offered to sell themselves for food; China’s courts
will no more defend the legality of such contracts under duress, as we
in the West must revise our “freedom of contract” and “confession” laws
where an uninformed or a restrained individual signs away rights. Every
Chinese boy has till now married early in life, Shanghai being an
exception in having a large demi-monde colony. The _Kuo Kuang Pao_, a
native paper of Peking, complained in a late issue of courtesans (with
modesty they call it rather the “custom of Shanghai”) coming to Peking,
and soliciting students brazenly in the streets. Shanghai has a “slave
refuge” for the protection of abandoned and abused girls. Intense
poverty on account of famine is at the base of this curse. It is not
as common in Hongkong and Canton as in the valleys of the Hoang, Han,
Yangtze and Hwei Rivers.
The position of the Chinese woman, taken by the white man, who is mean
enough to do it, as a common law wife, and of their Eurasian children,
who are often not acknowledged, or are deserted, is a pathetic one in
Hongkong, Shanghai and many treaty ports. It was more common in the
old days than it is now, and men of high position often fell, when the
Oriental ports were designated over an ill-informed world as the “white
man’s grave,” to which no white woman would come. There are Eurasian
schools and orphanages in Hongkong, Shanghai, Macao, etc., and the
colonies of deserted Eurasians have a population of thousands. They are
far from unintelligent. The best billiard player in Hongkong was of
this mixed race. They have dark eyes and hair and dress in both foreign
and Chinese style. They are taller and have larger heads than the pure
Chinese. In the second and third generations the hair turns fairer.
Naturally they partake of the characteristics of each race. A Eurasian
is more sprightly than the Chinese, and he is inclined to the sporting
and spendthrift proclivities of the foreigner. They are the clerks
and second men of the ports. Few rise high, though many now attend
colleges. They are the best penmen and linguists of the Far Fast,
though not earnest enough to become scholars, or persistent enough
to become the successful merchants which the men of their mother’s
race are. Feeling sometimes acutely the opprobrium which is visited
upon them by both races, they often claim a dark foreign nationality,
generally Portuguese of Macao colony.
I want to relate the remarkable history of one Eurasian and his mother.
I shall say no more of his father than that in blood and ability he
was one of the noblest names that came for a long sojourn in the Far
East. His position was such that the father could not own the son,
especially as in time the former married a white woman. The boy, who
from the beginning bore a Chinese name, was the picture of his father,
and his dressing in Chinese clothes and wearing a queue shocked all
of us who knew the history, for the boy was taller than the Chinese
and had the face of a foreigner. Some laughed, for the youth seemed
to be a foreigner on perpetual masquerade. He came into our hong as
clerk, was easily the best penman and figurer in the office. His
manners were those of fashionable West End, London, or genteel Upper
Fifth Avenue; you felt when you heard him speak that you were talking
to your superior. He often had business dealings with his father, yet
he did not seem conscious of the relationship. The son, being even
the abler man, the painful dramatic situation was pitiful. The tall
Eurasian youth married a Chinese woman in time, and reverted to his
mother’s race, and his deserted Chinese mother returned to her blood,
married a Chinese, had many pure blood children, and publicly disowned
her Eurasian boy. Privately, however, the boy and mother sometimes
met, and the scene matched in dramatic pathos the meetings with the
father. The youth seemed to be cheerful despite all these trials. I
never saw him reveal pride or resentment; only in this way, when in
later years for a time, he came into a position of power in a Chinese
company which entered into international trade, he was merciless when
the white competitor withstood him. I have often felt his mighty
blows and been outwitted by his commercial strategy. He smiled in a
complacent way as though to say: “Why might I not circumvent you; you
know something, perhaps, about one race, but nothing about the other.
I, being a Eurasian, know much about the two races.” He deserved all
his conquests. He had something to avenge, and he did right in casting
his life with China and not Europe. The remarkably dramatic setting of
this boy’s, his mother’s and father’s life would have given Shakespeare
material for a tragedy, and the foreigner concerned would have paid
the price of his heartless audacity, despite the romantic poetry
which Pierre Loti wove around such relationships in his book _Madame
Chrysanthème_.
Perhaps the most significant sign of China’s reform is the new status
of women. Never before have Chinese women traveled with their merchant
husbands. In a few isolated instances Chinese ministers have taken
their wives abroad, but there have never been mixed parties of men
and women until the revolution. On November, 1911, a touring party
of prominent members of Chinese trading guilds of several of the
provinces met at Shanghai for a business tour of Japan. They were
accompanied by their wives. The New China has its Mrs. Pankhurst in
Miss Yik Yung Ying, of Canton, who is foreign trained and has admission
to the Nanking Assembly as representing the women of her province of
Kwangtung. She has obtained from the Nanking Assembly a promise of
equal suffrage on equal property and educational conditions. Some of
her suffragettes attacked the assembly police and broke windows in true
Pankhurst style, the patient Chinese wits only remarking: “This froth
will blow off the glass and leave the clear liquid!”
Many girls of the mission schools of Canton, Fuchau and the Yangtze
cities of the rebellion could not be restrained from serving at
the front in the republican revolution. Some of them tried to form
bomb-throwing corps. Where they insisted on service the missionaries
of Wuchang, Hankau, Shanghai and Nanking organized them in several
uniformed Red Cross Corps, which performed effective and brave work.
The large clans, or family villages, are sending to the missions for
graduate teachers to take charge of their girls. The head man (hsiang
lao) sets apart a bedroom, a schoolroom and a courtyard for the
school, and the whole family clan contributes. The mothers of course
continue their instruction in the Chinese classics, folk lore, religion
and their inimitable needlework. Elsewhere I have spoken of the St.
Hilda’s school at Wuchang, under American Episcopal auspices, which
aims to become the Women’s College of Central China. A daughter of the
original reformer, Kang Yu Wei, has studied in America. Miss Li Yu,
the granddaughter of Li Hung Chang, took the course at Wells Female
College, at Aurora, New York, where she was a prize scholar.
Cornell in particular, Hartford High, Leland Stanford, Columbia,
University of Washington State, Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, University
of Michigan, and all the women’s and co-ed colleges in America have
enrolled more Chinese women than all the other women’s colleges of the
world, but not so many as they might and will, now that the new régime
has opened with rainbow promise. Forty young Chinese women are studying
medicine in America through the work of China’s first woman doctor,
Miss Ya Mi Kin, who is in charge of the Tientsin Woman’s Hospital and
nurses’ school.
A remarkable Chinese woman doctor, going by the name of Doctor Mary
Stone (educated at University of Michigan), manages the American
hospital at Kiukiang, and Doctor Tsang Cho Kin, a Cantonese lady, is
prominent in modern medical work at Canton, Fuchau and Shanghai. The
American Presbyterian women (to instance only one denomination here)
have seventeen girls’ schools open at Canton alone, and in addition the
following exemplary development: a school for blind girls, in charge
of Doctor Mary Niles; a boarding school for children of lepers; a
hospital school for girls in charge of Mrs. Kerr; a training school for
women teachers; the Hackett Medical College for women; and the Turner
Nurses’ School, under the charge of the noted Doctor Mary Fulton. At
Ningpo there is a girls’ school and a women’s industrial school. At
Shanghai there is the well-known girls’ school at the south gate; and
at Hangchow and Nanking there are girls’ boarding schools. At Nanking
the wives of Chinese taotais (officials such as mayors) are encouraged
to preside over mothers’ meetings. At Peking there is the Bridgman
College for Women, a women’s medical college and nurses’ school, a
girls’ day and industrial school. At Paoting, in Pechili, there is
the Union School for Girls; at Tengchow, in Shangtung, a girls’ high
school and industrial school; and at Tsinan a girls’ school. At many of
these girls’ schools, presided over by foreign women, the Chinese pay
much of the expense; and they are copying the schools to the best of
their ability all over the land for their girls and women, and calling
upon the mission women’s schools for graduates whom they may use as
teachers. There is no greater proof that the New China has begun its
march toward the sun than that its womanhood has at last been thus
recognized in modern education and opportunity.
Womanhood over the world responds to the same chord of sympathy. One of
the contributions to the Woman’s _Titanic_ Memorial came from a Chinese
girl, Ying Low, with this message: “I send this for Captain Smith’s
soul.” The word for woman in Chinese is “nu,” and the probability now
is that she will be new indeed, and the foundation stone of the New
China for her sons.
The first modern style Chinese marriage among those not Christian was
solemnized in April, 1912, in the well-known Chang Su Ho Gardens,
Shanghai. The families concerned were wealthy and the marriage was a
civil one. A ring, music, flowers, witnesses, a public ceremony and
certificate contract all came into use. There was nothing picturesquely
old-style or secret, as the middleman, the closed chair, the ceremony
at the groom’s house, the joined teacups, the contests between teams
of both families, the worshiping of sticks and house coffins, the
discordant orchestra, the chairs of food, the goose present and
heckling of the bride by practical jokers.
XXVIII
AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY IN CHINA
Agriculture has always been a leading calling in China. The farms are
small and are intensively worked. They have been too small, and the
immense population has been crowded into the river plains only of the
vast country. Not one quarter of China and its territories is worked
as it might be. The adopting of machinery and the application of the
single tax to some of the unworked land by the new régime will make
possible the enlargement of farms, and the consequent stocking with
meat, milk, egg, wool and skin-producing animals on a vast scale.
The decrease of population that will occur owing to the decadence of
ancestor-worshiping Confucianism, and the system of early marriage
and concubinage, will necessitate the introduction of agricultural
machinery. An increased agriculture will bring about the exportation
of food products from so fertile and sunny a land. The enhancement of
hygiene with the new medical knowledge will confirm this increased
production in agriculture, as there will be no waste of life through
ignorance, and human surplus vitality will be directed to increasing
the productivity of the land, and the reclamation of the waste spaces.
In agricultural wisdom little can be taught the Chinese. In love of
and assiduity in agriculture no one equals him. Professors King and
Ross, of Wisconsin University, have dealt in an exhaustive way with
the subject, and other books recommended to the inquirer are Ball’s
_Things Chinese_, Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, Fielde’s _Corner of
Cathay_, the journals of the Royal Asiatic Society, Lay’s _Chinese As
They Are_, and Douglas’s _Society in China_. The list of products is
exceedingly long. Here are just a few as we run down the gamut from the
north to the south: wheat, all millets, maize, buckwheat, sugar beet,
tobacco, pulse, hay, straw braid, soy and other beans, barley, sorghum,
rhubarb and drugs, hemp, all berries and tree fruits, cotton, sesamum,
indigo, persimmons, melons, walnuts, almonds, olives, peanuts, tea,
bamboo, rice, sweet and white potatoes, grass-cloth plant, oranges,
sugar, coffee, rubber, cocoa, pumeloes, lichee, quince, ginger, loquat,
mulberry, mustard, tallow trees, flowers for perfumery, lily roots for
food and candy, colza nuts for oil, rhus nuts for varnish, camphor,
all hardwoods, insect wax, matting and opium. Their truck farms are
unequaled. They seem to lose not one lettuce or cabbage leaf. Every
bug is nipped in the chrysalis by hand; everybody works from dewy dawn
to twilight’s star! Where China exports $40,000,000 of agricultural
products to-day to the manufacturing nations that border the Pacific
and Atlantic, to-morrow she will export $400,000,000, besides becoming
herself richer in pantry and bank.
The farmers are always searching for soil enrichers, with such success
that you seldom see the nitrogen-starved yellow instead of green field.
Not a handful of ashes is wasted; not an herb or branch but is gathered
for the compost heap to make humus. Water is brought over the land,
that it may deposit its nitrogenous wealth, and the mud of canals is
dredged for the valuable rotted slime. Three times a year a part of
China, 1,200 miles long and 1,200 miles wide, is one vast flooded
field. By placing mud walls around his fields, a farmer does not need
to raise all his irrigation water by power. Rather, he directs gravity,
for he saves the rapid surface draining of the land, especially in
the higher terraces. In the lower terraces he digs wells to store the
surface water against drought. The water showered upon the higher
fields he lets down to the lower during dry periods. They believe in a
rotation of soils as well as in a rotation of crops, and will exchange
bodily a rice field’s and an orchard’s top soil. By intensive farming a
Chinese gets as much from a ten-acre farm as we get from a hundred-acre
one, and he never permits a soil to be impoverished by its crop. You
never see his implements, rude as they are, left uncovered over night.
He carries home even his straw fork, which is made three-pronged by
training nature instead of fashioning by hand. When the farmer’s wife
and girls are not in the field they are working up straw braid for
America’s and Europe’s hats and weaving silk and making embroidery for
western gowns.
South of the Yangtze River human nightsoil is mixed with water and
applied to the farms in liquid form. North of the Yangtze the drier
climate permits of mixing the manure with earth and drying the slabs
for transport. A farmer in South China willingly builds a toilet on the
public road and requests the public, including the humorously shocked
foreigner, with a sign which is much shorter than my words, to remember
how China must be fertilized in order to support more inhabitants to
the acre than any other land! The result is that China’s streams,
outside of the suspended mud and silt that they carry, alone of all
countries, are nearly pure, and foreign sanitary engineers take potable
water directly from the rivers, as at Hankau, Canton, etc. The loss
to the land of fertilizers by burning them as fuel, in the absence
of forests and worked coal mines, is nowhere better illustrated than
in Mongolia and the province of Fukien. In Mongolia the camel dung
is dried and used as fuel. In Fukien, railway development has been
retarded, and the coal of the Ankoi and other mines does not reach the
hut in the field. Straw, therefore, instead of returning to the land,
is of necessity used as fuel. For instance, take the tanning industry.
The hides are thrown in a pond, in which there is a solution of alum.
After peeling, the leather is stretched on springy frames of strong
bamboo, and placed over an earthen furnace for smoking and drying. The
fuel is _straw_, which gives the hide a yellow color, at a lamentable
cost. In their opening era of manufacturing, the Chinese do not intend
to permit dyes, chemicals, refuse or sewage to be drained into their
streams and rivers, which from their source to the sea are used over
and over for irrigation and for drinking.
Chinese matting comes mainly from the West River (Si Kiang) ports west
of Canton. The fresh water reed is in some cases fertilized, as at Tung
Kun and Lintan, so as to produce size and sheen. The reed is split
when cut in the green and the sun rounds the strands. German aniline
dyes are used, which produce a sorry product as compared with the
famous natural dyes of old China. In producing red, however, the dye
is obtained by boiling a Philippine redwood. The looms are simple hand
looms, worked in the humble homes of the people. The mats are dried
and set over a charcoal fire. The shipping season is in the fall. Vast
quantities, baled in reeds, come by junk and steamer from the riverine
ports to Hongkong, where they are put in godowns until the arrival of
a trans-Pacific or Suez steamer, or a Standard Oil Company freighter
and sailing vessel. The very low rate is controlled by the sailing
ship, and quantity is of the first essence of importance in making
the business pay any one concerned, except the middleman in America
or Europe. Better dyes might be furnished to the reed farmers and
better looms and designs will now probably be distributed among them.
It is a floor covering which should grow more popular from an economic,
and especially a sanitary point of view, as it does not harbor moths
or germs, and is easy to handle; and from a conservation point of
view, its wider use would reserve carpet wool for clothing. The clean
Japanese despise us for our use of the fixed, unsanitary woolen carpet.
The seed of the reed is planted, just as rice is, in a sheltered spot
in the fall. Transplanting occurs early in the year and the fields are
irrigated. It takes two men or women four days to weave a roll on a
very crude loom.
The farmer is king. He has attacked the old magnificent roads, eight
feet wide, cut at great expense in the mountains, carried soil over
part of them and planted his corn. Marble-lined lotus gardens of
magnificent old estates he has filled up with his rice seed; and
the grain waves beneath the windows of deserted palaces, the owners
probably long ago, because of their opinions and not their crimes,
having, in Manchu days, dropped their heads beneath the blow of the
taifo swords while they bowed upon their knees in a line at far-away
Peking!
Ginger is grown extensively in China. It is used for cooking and as a
medicine. Preserved in sugar, it is known world-wide as a delicious
confection. The Chinese prefer it in a heavy syrup. This species of
lily grows about two feet high. The roots are very heavy and are kept
irrigated in mud. It is one of the few plants which leave their odor in
the air in the fields where they grow. The marmalade industry will have
a great future in the vast southern provinces. Java, the Philippines
and Formosa, are near with their sugar, and the provinces of Kwantung,
Kwangsi and Fukien have noble orchards of pumelo, lemon and orange
trees. As the family-village farms the apparently undivided fields as
a community, watchers have to be set in the fields and at the granary
floors, when harvest time approaches. A platform is built of bamboo,
and the watcher mounts it, carrying along his gong. As there are no
fences and few trees, the watcher commands a wide view, and deters
private bands and prowlers of other villages from making sudden raids.
Manchuria has been found to be an ideal ground for the sugar beet,
the black soil producing a higher percentage of sugar than anywhere
in the world. The sugar industry is a most important addition to the
agricultural wealth of those three extremely rich provinces, which are
destined to help in the feeding of industrial America. Returned Chinese
emigrants from Java and America started in 1911, in Fukien and Chekiang
provinces the cultivation of cotton on an extended scale, looking to
the new mills of Shanghai, Hangchow and Wuchang to buy the product,
which will be shipped by junks, steamer and the new coast railway. The
Chinese value their highly tilled lands near the large cities at a
price equal to forty-five dollars in gold for our acre.
British Hongkong set the example in reforestation. Germany followed at
Kiachou, Shangtung, with acacia, fir, ash, larch, walnut and oak trees
along the railway line. Japan followed in South Manchuria, and China
herself established a forestry school at Mukden in 1908, and in Kansu
later. It is absolutely essential to retard the snows and rainfalls
at the heads of the great rivers if the awful floods and consequent
famines are ever to be obviated in the valleys of the Hoangho, Han,
Yangtze and Hwei Rivers. The camphor is China’s own tree, especially in
Formosa, Fukien, and the southern provinces. Ceylon, California, Texas,
Florida, Jamaica, Malay, Italy and German East Africa have successfully
introduced the tree, and will in time help to supply the world’s
growing requirements for the arts and industries, which synthetic
camphor can not do, because of the deforestation of America’s southern
pine, which now supplies the necessary oil of turpentine. Camphor can
be distilled from any part of the tree, even the dead leaves, and some
conservation foresters, especially Americans and Germans, are urging
a world movement to use the leaves, dropped twigs and cuttings alone
for this purpose. Camphor formerly was made by cutting up the tree
and treating the chips with water in a closed vessel, the volatilized
camphor condensing on rice straw packed in the head of the still. The
deposit was purified by sublimation in glass retorts in the presence of
lime.
I have for years been writing that the Chinese is a born humorist. The
humor of their arboriculturists is well known in their stunting and
twisting of trees and bamboos. The matched curved bamboos of the Fati
and other gardens of Canton are famous. Another quaint form is the
splitting of a tree trunk so as to form a living arch. When the tree is
young, it is uprooted and split up the trunk and replanted in the road
leading to a shrine or temple. As the trunk grows apart, the road leads
under the arch. Under the shelter of the north wall of the imperial
section of the city of Peking, there are famous old cryptomeria
cypresses split in this way. The humorist is saying: “See Nature’s god
with his grotesque products laughing at man’s idea of religion!” The
farmer and his boy are humorists. They meet you on the highroad and
laugh because the pigs and geese which they are driving to market all
have tiny straw sandals on their feet, and the water buffalo which they
are riding to the exchange has sandals, but they themselves are in
their bare feet, and they point out to you the humorous incongruity!
The very handsome Hagenbeck pheasant from the Kobdo valley of
Manchuria, fiftieth parallel, can live farthest north of any pheasant,
and can therefore withstand our winters. It is large and edible. The
Mongolian pheasant has been acclimated on the Rothschild estate in
Herts, England. The Manchurian eared pheasant is heavy and edible, but
unlike the others is not wild and active enough for the game fields.
Accordingly it best suits the poulterer of China. The pheasant is
a fairly cheap dish at all the clubs and hotels of China, and the
indentured clerk of Hongkong is therefore to his surprise dining like
a king daily on the game which the owner of his concern would consider
at home a luxury reserved for the Christmas dinner! Some of the native
proverbs are:
“No matter where the stream is, the sea is calling it.”
“Frost and ice are made of water, but they don’t grow things like rain
and dew.”
“A spark is small, but it can burn a thousand farms.”
“Don’t try to put out the burning field with tears; run for water.”
“One bad bean makes the whole basket rot.”
“Rain on a summer’s dawn means a clear day, but a rain at noon will
last.”
XXIX
CHINESE ARCHITECTURE AND ART
“The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” are
unearthed a foot at a time to the wondering eyes of the world by the
tireless antiquarian-architect. China has some extensive ruins that
show the death struggle of a dynasty with the tooth of the destroyer,
Time. Near Singan, in Shensi province, are the ruins of the tombs,
arches and palaces of the builder of the Great Wall. On the left bank
of the Orkhon River in Mongolia, southwest of Kuren, are the ruins of
the Uigur empire, seventh to ninth centuries, A. D. These Mongols were
first Buddhist, then Nestorian Christian, and afterward Mohammedan
in faith, and their fathers took part in the terrific invasions of
Europe that have made Russia one quarter Asiatic. Ujfalvy, Schott and
Professor Thomsen have written books on the race, and Heikel and Radlov
explored the ruins in 1890–1. On the right bank of the same river,
fifteen miles southeast, at the edge of the Gobi Desert, are the ruins
of the Mongol empire of the thirteenth century, founded by Ogodai Khan
in 1234 A. D., and whose greatest conqueror, Kublai Khan, of whom Marco
Polo wrote, overran all China and Turkestan. Had it not been for a
lucky storm that destroyed his armada, he would have overrun Japan also.
One hundred and fifty miles northwest of Pnom Penh, in a deserted
tropical jungle, are the ruins of the Khmer dynasty which ruled
Cambodia from the eighth to the twelfth centuries. These gorgeous
palaces were built for luxurious Oriental kings when the early Mercian,
Northumbrian and Wessex chiefs were shivering in wooden huts in our
primeval England. The ruins are at Angkor on the north of the Great
Summer Lake. The main temple of the Angkor Wat, in a walled enclosure,
is in splendid preservation, and is one pf the world’s most wonderful
architectural curiosities. It is shaped like a wide Chinese temple, but
has in addition splendid pagodas one hundred and eighty feet high over
the entrances. The architecture is Indo-Chinese. There is much carving
and sculpture, fine corridors and columns that were colored. Five
miles north is another walled ruin, thirty feet in height, enclosing
an area of two miles square, the walls pierced by five gorgeous gates.
The ruins stand alone in the moonlight, unclaimed and untenanted.
What few Siamese, Shans or Annamese may wander here, fall down in
speechless worship. The dense jungle is filled with insects, reptiles,
wild animals, and but for them the silence is primeval. Pierre Loti
recently visited the ruins by sailing up the Mekong River from Saigon
to Pnom Penh. There he took elephants and oxen one hundred and fifty
miles for the Great Summer Lake, across which he paddled. His book,
_Un Pelerin d’Angkor_, not yet translated, was issued in French by
Calmann-Levy, Paris, in 1912. Other French authors on this subject are
Delaporte (_Voyage au Camboge_); Fournereau (_Les Ruins d’Angkor_), and
Tissandier (_Cambodje-Java_).
Two hundreds miles north of Angkor, at Korat, are further Khmer ruins.
The other ruins and tombs of old China are those of the Ming dynasty at
Nankou pass, north of Peking, and Nanking; the Manchu dynasty at Mukden
and northwest of Peking; and the Sung dynasty at Hangchow. The tomb of
Prince Ki Chah of the then Wu principality, who died B. C. 530, and
which bears an inscription prepared by Confucius, can be seen to-day
lying between the new British-built railway and the Grand Canal, twenty
miles east of Changchow in the south of Kiangsu province. The laws of
the Tsin principality, 513 B. C., were engraved on iron, but have not
been recovered in any tomb or on any wall. Individual pagoda ruins
and ancient walls cover the land, as does star-dust the sky. Laws,
customs, history and a relation of the Rites, were engraved on metal
bowls, which stood on three legs. These bowls were handed down through
the dynasties to the princes, together with the ancestral tablets, as
a sign of royal authority. There exists to-day in a temple on Silver
Island, near Chinkiang in Kiangsu province, such a tripod bowl of the
Chow princely dynasty, date 812 B. C. This was about the date when
Jeroboam recovered Damascus from Israel. When Confucius was a boy of
twelve, and already deep in his study of history, Cyrus the Elder had
captured ancient Babylon and founded the Persian empire. It is quite
probable that the old Hia, Shang and Chou kings (2200 B. C. onward)
left their records, as the contemporary Egyptians and Babylonians
did, in brick tablets, but those tablets, being made of non-adhesive,
fibrous loess mud of the present Shensi and Shansi provinces, soon
crumbled. It was a different thing when centuries later, the Chinese
kings, having traveled farther south, employed better potters to use
the more adhesive clays of the present Kiangsi province. The Hia kings
of what is now Shensi province reigned when the giant sequoia evergreen
trees of California were seedlings 4010 years ago.
Chinese bronzes date back as far as the imperial Chou dynasty (1120
B. C.) which instituted the sacrifices and ancestor worship, and a few
majestically simple bronze tripods, elemental monsters and sacrificial
vessels date back to the Shang dynasty 1800 B. C. These tripods are
similar to those that Homer describes in the ninth book of _The Iliad_,
2500 B. C. The oldest bronzes are, of course, noble and plain in
design, the warmer, richer art of Buddhism coming in at a far later
date, and bringing in the innovation of the human figure, flowers and
incense burners. The Natural History Museum at New York has precious
collections of the old mortuary bronzes of the Chou dynasty referred
to in Professor Parker’s illuminating work on the days of Confucius.
Bronze vases, goblets, censers, mirrors, tablets, baskets, bells, some
of them studded, are in the collection which dates as far back as 1800
B. C. Chinese form has been persistent, its ornamentation progressive.
When we are looking at these bronzes, we should realize that they
were fashioned by men contemporary with Homer. The oldest tombs were
in Turkestan, Kansu and Shensi provinces, lying alongside the path of
the primeval emigration along the Tarim’s banks from Eden. In various
articles I have instanced the similarity between old Greek and old
Chinese designs. The dragon was used in art designs and considered a
sacred Jovian portent by the Homerian Greeks who were camped before
Troy, B. C. 2500. In anthropological customs, Pope relates that the
Homerian Greeks of the Euboea tribe, drawn up before Troy’s walls, 2500
B. C., shaved their foreheads but left the hair on the back of their
heads to grow long, like the present Manchus.
The new bronze portrait statue of Li Hung Chang at the Sicawei Gardens,
Shanghai, is unusual, and marks a new era in memorials in China, pailoo
arches and tablets having formerly been erected. True, there are many
fanciful statues to Buddha and Confucius, and one to Marco Polo in the
Temple of the Five Hundred Genii at Canton, but they are rather to be
considered as effigies. In Tibet, they erect engraved, square stone
monuments, a figure of Buddha being cut into three of the top panels,
representing the past, present and future Buddha. A horned roof, with a
little central pagoda covers the monument. These strikingly symmetrical
monuments are erected on high places along the mountain passes. The
Buddhists cut gigantic figures of the god into cliffs, bushes serving
as hair, and grass as eyebrows. Notable among these are the colossal
cliff Buddhas at Kiating and Yung Hsien in Szechuen province. Old caves
and cave-temples are generally in proximity with these images.
In Szechuen province, the piers of bridges have a stone dragon as a
terminal, the head looking up-stream, and across the bridge, the tail
pointing down-stream. The proportions are beautiful and the effect
delightful. The best known and most beautiful camel’s back bridge in
the empire is at Wan Hsien at the head of the Yangtze gorges. Stone
steps mount up the arch, which is crowned with a beautiful house of
blue stucco. The house is used as a rest place, and a restaurant
These bridges show how much the Chinese understood of engineering and
also that they were good masons. In the caves along the Min River
in Szechuen province, pottery coffins have been found, dating back
previous to the Christian era, and showing that the early Chinese of
the Chou dynasty did not bring all the civilization of China with
them, but found many arts among the aborigines. At Ning Hsia, an oasis
city in the horn of Kansu province, is a peculiar pagoda where the
joylessness of the north has cut the curling ten galleries down to mere
ridges, and roofed the eleven stories with a mere turban roof. Each
story has Roman windows, except the top, which has circular windows.
The architecture shows Mohammedan influence over these Buddhists,
and the structure, with that at Liangchow in the same province, is
exceedingly unique in so ornate a land of up-curling roofs, carved
screens, and overhanging galleries. While the Chinese never build
fences, the Manchus, of Manchuria, construct a curious palisade
composed of crosses, one end of which is stuck in the ground. The
whole of the Grand Canal was crossed by many thousands of beautiful
marble bridges, erected during the Sung dynasty. Many of them still
remain, with their great beauty of aspiring arch, balustrade, carving
and anchorage. At Sui Fu, on the upper Yangtze, is a temple remarkable
not for its size, but for the proportion of its galleries and roof,
the cornices of which curl upward violently at great width from the
walls. The temple is met by steps that climb up the mountain side
from the great river. The walls too, with their panels, frieze and
balustrade, are interesting, but the design of the roof is an artistic
triumph, equaled only by the Loong Wah Temple which is photographed as
a frontispiece in my book, _The Chinese_. It is this sweeping boldness
and generosity of curve which should be copied in roofs and galleries
in the new Chinese architecture, which lovers of the old China
earnestly recommend.
Many of the poorer huts of Pechili province are built of clay poured
around a reinforcing of kaoliang stalks. Sometimes tiles are set in
the clay roof, which is very heavy, and in the rainy season, it often
falls in on the tenant. In Kiangsu province the thatching is made of
reeds. Of course improvements are often designed, and they attempt to
make a cement or chunam by mixing burnt lime and stone in the clay. The
very poor, however, really live in mud burrows like the fox, whether
the mud is made into a hut, or the dwelling is cut as a cave in the
loess hills of Shensi and Shansi provinces. The Manchurian and northern
Pechili style of architecture is severe and strong, but it has its
simple beauties. A Buddhist temple not far from Shan Hai Kwan is a
good example. A plain brick and stucco wall, the height of the eaves
of the buildings, surrounds the compound. It is broken by a fort-gate,
with a Roman arched doorway. The tiled roofs of the fort and temple
curl up only slightly. A few high pine trees, branching out only near
the top, tower like nature’s banners over the temple, which is matched
to the austere lives and buildings of the dwellers in the north. The
proportions throughout are nobly and chastely balanced in accord with
the architectural influence of the stern Great Wall throughout this
region.
At the Edinburgh Mission Conference of the nations in 1908, the Chinese
pleaded for the preservation of their architecture. Too great praise
can not be given the British for their taste in occupying a Chinese
palace as legation headquarters at Peking. Many missions, every foreign
business house, nearly every foreign college, the government itself
in its new buildings, even the kindred Japanese, and nearly every
foreign legation, are all housed in an ugly adaptation of a Renaissance
building with verandas. The fashion came from Singapore and Hongkong,
but Hongkong gets some picturesqueness out of the style because that
colonial city has a mountain to terrace it on. The ventilation and
light are poor; the roof is hideous. There is one foreign architect
whose soul will never escape from the purgatory of bad architects. He
designed for the Honan Assembly a hall at Kaifong which is Moorish
in general design; the roof is a Roman dome; the arches are Gothic;
and the screens are Chinese. The Japanese do not bring their own
beautiful buildings, like those gems, the incomparable Horiuji pagoda
and monastery, Yakushiji pagoda; and the shrine of Ieasu at Nikko, to
China, and they do not copy or adapt any of the tens of thousands of
Chinese gems. They often build a ponderous, ugly, dark, Renaissance
building like the Japanese consulate at Shanghai, costly enough but
unrepresentative.
St. John’s University (American Episcopal), of Shanghai, has made the
laudable concession of putting a Chinese roof on its valuable foreign
buildings. The eaves have a slight Chinese up-turn, but there is little
of Chinese ornament in apron, ridge, column, double roof, or pagoda
spire here and there. However, America, nearly always the leader in
sympathy with the Chinese, has here made a beginning in saving China’s
peerless architecture and art. At Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichou,
the French have erected a notable pagoda church, which concedes to
Chinese canons a five-story pagoda entrance, and the rear façade is
formed as a pailoo with five roofs. With the same idea the British
architect has placed on the costly Renaissance “Audience Hall”, of
Bangkok, three ornate Burmese pagoda spires. As Greece stands for
simplicity and line, China stands for richness, curve and color. She
should not die, if according to Keats, “a thing of beauty is a joy
forever.” Ruskin insisted in his famous lectures to artistic Edinburgh
that the salient feature of a building was the _roof_, and that there
adornment should be rich, like a woman’s hair, or hat, her “crown of
glory”. This rule, perhaps indirectly, he took from the Chinese, who
from the buried centuries have undeviatingly been faithful to it. The
_Assembly Herald_ of the American Presbyterian Church, January, 1912,
page twenty-seven, illustrates a gem of modern Chinese architecture. It
is a chapel built by a native elder in his simple but beautiful faith.
On each side of the entrance there is a rich tile grille that relieves
the plain façade. Under the eaves is another beautiful grille that
relieves the plain surface. Over the door is a heavy tile canopy with
characteristic up-curling points. The tile roof is peaked and might
have been more up-curling at the eaves in the beautiful, characteristic
Chinese style. The apron under the eaves is richly carved. The Chinese
still have a strong rich grasp of beauty, when they are encouraged to
develop their architecture.
It is not the custom in stores, temples or homes to keep curios, silks,
etc., on view. They are all wrapped in paper, and kept in boxes or
cupboards. When a trusted guest arrives, there is an exciting scene as
the treasures are unpacked and revealed to admiring eyes. China has
always had court painters, a notable one in the reign of the Empress
Dowager Tse Hsi being Li Shih Chuan. He was a believer in joy, and
developed the more human aspects of the countenance. He was a master in
painting fine gowns, dainty embroideries and rich furniture. Portrait
paintings are not common, but in the Yangtze provinces some are to be
seen. They are in water color and painted on screens. Actors carry an
enormous bamboo or ivory tusk, on which is engraved or painted their
repertoire. The giver of a feast selects from this the plays which he
wishes to have performed for his guests. The Chinese manufacture a hard
wall-paper, similar to what we call Lincrusta Walton and use on the
walls of our parlor cars and saloons of steamships. The mold is of hard
wood, on which the sharp design is carefully chiseled _en relievo_. The
blotter-like bamboo paper composition is hammered on this mold, then
taken off and sun-dried. Sizing is applied. Afterward the design and
final Ningpo or Szechuen rhus-nut varnishing is added. This paper is
damp proof, which is an important quality in so humid a climate.
The Chinese of Queens Road, Hongkong, made me two bamboo trunks that
have served me on a trip around the world, and are strong enough to
make several more. They are remarkable in five important points,
elasticity, lightness, strength, resistance to dampness, and cheapness
in purchase price and transportation cost. Travelers and explorers
bemoan the fact that excess baggage charges cost them almost as much
as passenger fares. This problem the wonderful Chinese solved with
these remarkable trunks. The framework is of strong bamboo, on which a
tough rattan and bamboo envelope is wound. This is lined with soldered
zinc, and covered with strong canvas, and for serviceability in the
five important points mentioned, the iron and leather trunks can not
compare. Go to the Chinese, thou traveler, and be wise! Many of the
chairs used at Tientsin have a dome-top, with curious scale design
and knob, and are therefore more Burmese than Chinese in design. The
chairs of Hongkong are strictly flat-topped. Jade is green, pink and
crystal, and retains a soapy glisten. Jades buried in tombs as mortuary
ornaments, however, acquire a brown smoky tinge, and the distinction
should be made in assorting collections at museums. The Bishop
collection of art jades, and the Peters collection of tomb jades in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are deservedly world famous.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
One of the most ornate pagodas in China, near Shanghai. Surrounding
temple buildings are now frequently used for schools.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Steel truss bridges on modern roads; sentry box for modern police;
modern flats; felt hats, modern umbrellas; telephone wires, steam
launches of the New China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Japanese type of girlhood, as contrasted with the Chinese, shown in
another photograph.]
The typical Chinese rug shows beautiful apricot ground, spangled with
blue medallions. Rich brown and gold rugs are also frequently made,
the centers of weaving being Tientsin, Nanking, Hangchow, Canton, etc.
The most accessible places where specimens are shown are the large
museums. The yellow rugs are used in China in connection with the red
tile floorings, and the brown rugs are used often upon blue-tiled
floorings, so that if one would catch the true Chinese ensemble, a
colored crash must be used in connection with the rugs. Some critics
are hasty in declaring that a Chinese rug is glaring when they place
a yellow rug on a yellow floor! Chinese rugs were made generally for
temples, imperial and viceregal yamens, mandarins’ yamens, and guild
halls, as the designs often reveal. Rugs exist which were woven as long
ago as the reign of the native Ming kings, fifteenth century. Other
rugs date from the Kang Hi and Chien Lung reigns of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Temple rugs five by eight feet, or a little over,
come from Buddhist monasteries. The ground, as one would expect, is
orange, ornamented with clouds, water, figures of Buddha or his mother,
Kun Yam, and the zodiac. Imperial Manchu rugs employ the Manchu dragon.
Each rug differs slightly, as the artist trusted to his eye alone in
following the pattern which hung over his head.
China is almost depleted of her ceramic treasures. The Anglo-French
expedition of 1860 under Lord Wolseley destroyed the Emperor Hien
Fung’s summer and other palaces near Peking. Some of the allies of 1900
looted Peking itself. The Manchus in the 1911–12 revolution sold the
Peking, Mukden and Jehol palace treasures. The collection of the Roman
Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, gathered during a long life, was
sold in New York in 1912. The Taiping rebellion of 1854 swept bare the
pottery province of Kiangsi, and the distress following the 1911–12
revolution and the floods of 1910–11–12 sent the hidden treasures of
the Yangtze and Hwei River provinces to the block. An artist of the
King Teh Ching potteries would now have to resort to Occidental museums
to find his models of cloisonné and champlevé enamels studded with
precious stones; yellow and red Lang Yao monochromes of inimitable
purity; Ku Hsu Hsuan translucent glass; Kang Hi hawthorn, ginger,
and peach-bloom vases, round and square; Yung Cheng landscape and
fish vases; flaming jars of the royal Mings; egg shell, rose, green,
peony, medallion, dragon, lion vases and plaques of Yung Cheng and
Chien Lung periods; the joyous, finely finished pottery of the Kang Hi
(seventeenth century period); the rugged, strong, stern work of the
tenth century; strutting camels, grinning griffins, spirited horses;
the elegant, soft Ming work; the square, flower-covered, green and
yellow vases of the sixteenth century; bulging vases of the seventeenth
century, with green decoration on a blue ground, as fine as a mixture
of emeralds and amethysts; awful gods and funny men stepping about in
priceless porcelain. It was not a slight price that to attain political
liberty China had to lose her artistic soul. More fortunate Japan never
had to pay this price, though she had little art and architecture to
lose as compared with the rich and glorious treasures of vast China.
A remarkable catalogue of Chinese porcelains with two hundred and
fifty-four gorgeously colored plates was written by Messrs. Gorer and
Blacker and published by Quaritch, London, in 1912.
In an attempt, even so late, to save China’s art from the foreigner,
the public-spirited Tze Tsan Tai, of Hongkong, a collector himself,
proposes the establishing of national museums to preserve at least the
paintings of China that are notable for their graphic quality, color,
humor and love of nature. The most famous schools were in the Sung,
Yuan and Ming dynasties, and Mr. Tze’s collection, which he proposes to
give to the cause, includes collections from many other schools also.
It would be better to open at first museums at Hongkong and Shanghai,
and then at Peking, Nanking, Hankau, etc. Some of the names of the
artists can be secured in Paleologue’s _L’Art Chinois_, Owen Jones’
_Chinese Ornament_, Dyer Ball’s _Things Chinese_, and E. F. Penellosa’s
_Epochs of Chinese Art_.
Chinese temple and house furniture is made of teak. This wood does not
grow in China, but in Siam, Java, Ceylon and the Philippines, the main
source of supply being the afforested belt of Northern Siam. The tree
is an upland one. It is barked or girdled and allowed to die. After two
years the tree is felled, the exposure killing off the small branches
and developing the oils which help in giving the extraordinary life
of the wood. The government does not permit trees of under six and
one-half feet girth to be felled. The Chinese of Canton particularly
carve the wood in its rich red color, and they also stain it ebon
black. Another desirable quality in the Orient is that the wood resists
the white ant. The woodwork and furniture of the palatial Hongkong Club
is teak, and many of Hongkong’s, Canton’s, Shanghai’s, Manila’s and San
Francisco’s palatial residences and public buildings and yachts now
use the wood. Hard as it is, the Chinese seem to prefer to saw it by
hand even in Hongkong. They tilt the immense logs on end, and one man
works under the log, and one stands on the log, the dust being dragged
upward by their contrary cut saws, which are designed to save the eyes
of the under-man. The natural oil in the wood prevents driven nails or
bolts from rusting, and is therefore valuable in ship-sheathing. It is
the most durable wood known. The teak piles of West End, Hongkong, and
Kowloon over on the mainland, are a unique sight. Water-buffaloes are
used to drag up the immense timbers.
A Chinese proverb is, “Speed for a horse, but a slow race for a good
jeweler”. The German machinery-stamping jeweler has not yet reached the
Orient with his machines, though his products imitate even the Chinese
ideograph-buckles. One of their humorous proverbs is, “He thought he
painted a tiger, but only a dog waged his tail at the likeness”, and
this is about the relationship between the Chinese and the German
products. Wherever you buy, remember the artist can put his soul and
his taste only into what he makes by hand.
XXX
SOCIOLOGICAL CHINA
When America was as yet undiscovered, and Europe was largely a
forest inhabited by hunting tribes, China had taken up an advanced
position on sociology. She has long been the world’s clearest and
bravest economical thinker, from whom even Germany has consciously or
unconsciously copied, and for thousands of years she has followed a
thorough civil service in political appointments. It is not surprising
therefore that Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the organizer of the revolution
of 1911–12, the first president of republican China, and the leading
economist of the race, enunciated himself as follows on April 5, 1912:
“I have finished the political revolution and now will commence the
greatest social revolution in the world’s history. The abdication of
the Manchus is only the beginning of a greater development, and the
future policy of the republic will be in the direction of socialism.
I am an ardent admirer of Henry George, whose ideas are practicable
on the virgin soil of China, as compared with their impracticability
in Europe or the United States, where the money is controlled by the
capitalists. I have the full consent of the new republican government
to start a propaganda immediately, whereby the railroads, mines, and
similar industries, will be controlled by the government. The single
tax system, and as far as possible, free trade, will be adopted.”
Shang, a minister of the Tsin clan of Confucius’ time--the age
of courageous statesmen--said: “To restore balance in the state,
and remove the dangerous discontent of the poor, renew taxes on
the privileged classes.” The Chinese predate all that we claim in
America, Britain and Germany as the modern discovery of the formulæ
of sociology, economics, commerce, taxes and tariffs, and their aim
is always toward free trade, repression of monopoly, opportunity for
the ordinary man, who, instead of the privileged, represents the
importance of a state, and the necessity of the greater punishment
of the rich than the poor for the same offense, because hunger and
self-preservation do not drive the rich to crime. Under the ancient
criminal code, the hsiang lao (village head) under penalty of the
bamboo, must compel all available land to be cultivated, not only that
government may receive taxes, but that famine may be averted. The
Chinese, Koun Tze, as early as B. C. 100, wrote: “The more horses that
are put to the chariots of the rich, the more those who are poor will
have to walk.”
“The more the houses of the rich are vast and magnificent, the more
those of the poor will be small and miserable.”
“The more the tables of the rich are covered with dainties, the more
people there will be reduced to plain rice.”
“At all costs, government should secure to all, all the necessities of
life.”
This last sentence is worthy of being linked with the immortal epigram
in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.
Other notable economic writers were Tsien Tche and Leang Tsien, but
towering above them all for adaptability to the convictions and crying
necessities of our day was Wang Ngan Shih, 1069 A. D., a Rooseveltian
statesman of the Sung dynasty, whose capital was the present Kaifong.
Remember that this statesman-author wrote when William the Conqueror
was putting England under the yoke of feudalism, which hated the
principles of liberty. Wang taught partly as follows:
1. The first duty of government is to secure plenty and relaxation for
the common people.
2. The state should take possession of all important resources and
become the main and dictating employer in commerce, industry and
transportation, with the view of preventing the working classes being
ground to the dust by the monopolizing rich.
3. Government tribunals should fix the local prices of provisions and
merchandise.
4. The rich shall pay all taxes; the small owner shall pay nothing as
long as he remains small.
5. Old age pensions.
6. The state to insure work for workmen.
7. The state to assign land, distribute seed and direct sowing, so that
there shall neither be cornering of food by the rich, nor lack of food
for the poor.
8. Destruction of usurers.
9. Confiscation of large and criminally-won estates; that is,
retroactive laws and restitution, instead of “Go and sin no more, but
keep what you got by former sins.”
The Boswell of Confucius in the Ta Hio (Great Study) writes: “If those
who govern states only think of amassing riches for their personal
use, they will infallibly attract toward them depraved men, and these
depraved men will really govern the state. The administration of
these unworthy ministers will call down the chastisements of heaven,
and also excite the vengeance of the aggrieved people. The riches of
those who have the honor to govern states should rather be justice and
equity, and not only talk of justice and equity.” Is this not excellent
statesmanship, even if written in China long before the Christian era?
China’s love of peace was inculcated brilliantly by Lao Tse (604
B. C.) in these words: “The least glorious peace is preferable to the
most brilliant successes of war. The most splendid victory is but the
light from a conflagration.” The Ancients said: “Render no funeral
honors to conquerors; receive them with tears and cries in memory of
the homicides they have committed, and let the monuments of their
victories be surrounded with the tombs of those whose death they
brought about.” Confucius, a practical statesman, fifty-three years
later, ineffectually combated this philosophy with these words: “They
who discuss by diplomacy should always have the support of a military
backing”; that is, the mailed fist and the soft word! The feudal
system began to totter in China in B. C. 250, under the reign of the
emperor-builder of the Great Wall, Tsin Chih Hwang-Ti. The classical
examinations gave it the death blow in A. D. 600. With its martial
accessory, the feudal system continued in Japan, which tolerated no
democratic examinations for office, until the very late date of 1869
A. D., thus lasting there the longest in the world, for it had died in
England eight centuries earlier. Such was the beneficent effect of the
famous classical examinations and civil service in old China.
The most brilliant maxim on sociology ever written is Chinese:
“Gold is tested by fire:
Man is tested by gold.”
On this subject of hardships, Mencius himself wrote, in 315 B. C.:
“When Heaven (Tien) is about to confer a responsible office on any
man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and
bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to
extreme poverty. It confounds his bravest undertakings. By all these
methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his courage and increases his
adaptability.” China was the first country to establish a Price Board,
now recommended by all political parties in America for dealing with
monopolies until real competition can be again set up. Salt production
is a government monopoly. The dealer must buy from the government and
sell a fixed quantity at a fixed price in a fixed district. The justice
that the government regulates is that the dealer may not adulterate
and may not charge an unreasonable profit. If the cost of production
is high, the people profit, because the government will not need to
collect high taxes in other ways. There is no chance for a crowd of
drone-middlemen to get away with immense profits, or for private
monopolists to lay a whole people under economic slavery. This is the
Chinese theory. In many parts of Eastern Szechuen every farm has its
little salt well with bamboo wheel and men treaders. The salt is sold
to the government at a fixed price, about two and one-half cents a
pound. The Chinese say: “Why do your trusts now want consolidation?
The divisions of Europe, by the competition of various ambitions,
have made Europe bright and progressive. America’s trusts, by making
all things one, will produce decay of genius, invention, liberty and
individualism.” A Chinese reformer had written to a rich bribe-taker
and bribe-giver for work in one of the industries which he controlled,
and he also endeavored to sell to the rich man a copy of one of his
books. Chided in later years with seeking employment in his earlier
years from a man whom he had later cause to criticize, the reformer
said: “The devil is king and has usurped the seats of employment; yet,
although he is devil, he owes me employment. A man’s right to work and
to retain free opinion are inalienable, and a government, in granting
a monopoly, can not sell such rights of the individual; they are a
perpetual lien on the monopoly.” Intelligent municipal philanthropy
has not been unknown of late years. I will instance an occurrence at
Lanchow, a city on the Yellow River (Hoang-Ho) in far western Kansu
province. In the fall of 1911 large numbers of people had become
a charge upon the city on account of summer floods and consequent
famine. By the end of August the moat of the city had become dry. The
authorities roofed and partitioned this trench into many houses so as
to shelter hundreds of vagrant families.
China has specialized in localization, or home rule. Even in charities
this operates. No province, district or city encourages any other
district’s imposing its public charges upon it. To illustrate, we shall
say that your Chinese interpreter and his wife have accompanied you
from Amoy to Chingtu City. The interpreter dies. If you do not send
the woman back to Amoy, she will report to the Amoy Guild in Chingtu.
That guild will subscribe and send her on her way as far as Chungking,
where the Amoy Guild will subscribe and send her in care of the Amoy
Guild at Hankau. Eventually, to her great pleasure no doubt, she will
reach her people in Amoy. A widow is not molested on her travels; her
persistence in widowhood and desire not to sell herself, either as a
second wife, slave or strumpet, are highly respected. She would not
be encouraged, however, nor would she desire to remain in Chingtu,
where, being a stranger, she would be unable to secure employment. The
same system would operate inversely if a Chingtu woman were, through
misfortune, stranded in far-away Amoy. The Chingtu Guilds in Amoy,
Fuchau, Shanghai, Hankau, etc., would relay her onward to her home,
where she would be more likely to secure work, remarriage, or properly
be a charge upon her own community. A criminal is treated in the same
way. He is driven on toward his own community, which can elect whether
they desire to board him in jail at public expense or make life so
uncomfortable for him by corporal punishment that he will select a
virtuous existence in preference to crime.
The community, closely related in cousinship, makes the family clan
responsible for the misfortunes and crimes of its members. If a
criminal breaks the law, the law does not bother itself long with the
criminal. By one fell swoop it makes the clan take the criminal’s
course in hand for the rest of his life. There is much talk of revising
China’s code, the slogan being the American maxim: “Crime is personal.”
China’s code in this particular does not need revision. It saves the
state much expense; it is more effective also in real permanent reform.
It is the most scientific system of reform ever invented, and beats
all farming out of criminals, parole, coals of kindness, pellets of
advice, pardons, abolishing of stripes, preachings, coddlings, threats,
music-treatment, trepannings, religious advice, hypnotic treatment,
flowers, sentiment, visits of the jail angel, etc.! Don’t whip the
criminal alone; whip the criminal’s six elder brothers and cousins
because they must have been lax in instruction and watch. They will
see that never again will they suffer for the scamp’s dereliction!
The Chinese say, “Don’t whip your trusts; whip your electorate! They
will forever after see that the trusts do not break bounds; they will
watch the charters.” Guilt then is not personal; it is communal. We
are our brother’s keeper, and if we allow him to meet with misfortune
or do wrong, we must suffer with him. How quickly would the Chinese
scientific system of localization and communism correct and limit
crime, poverty and misfortune.
British vessels trading in China are manned entirely with Chinese
crews. During the dock strike in Britain, in August, 1911, the dockers
refused to handle the cargoes of vessels which employed Chinese.
China then entered a claim for damages, because her citizens were
ill-treated, and the Chinese guilds threatened to embarrass the
British vessels when they returned to load in the East. The writer
has had some experience with such a situation in Hongkong, where the
British government exercises a strong hand in preventing the spread
of stevedore strikes. The use of the boycott in China calls for
special study. In no land is it more in use. It is a powerful weapon
for securing justice when laws and diplomacy fail either because of
weakness or venalty. China, of course, has no navy to support her
diplomacy. Recent boycotts in China have been the following: In 1904
the merchant guilds of Canton and Hongkong desired to support, among
other things, China’s protest against the American Exclusion Act. A
boycott of American goods and American ships was ordered, and the loss
to American trade ran into the millions. In 1908 the Japanese landed
arms for pirates in Macao, South China, and with the powerful Japanese
navy compelled the Chinese officials who had seized the smuggling
steamer _Tatsu Maru_ to give her up. The Chinese guilds of Hongkong and
Canton then boycotted Japanese ships, causing the Toyo Kisen Kaisha a
loss of millions in earnings and a deficit of $300,000 for the year’s
operation. Japan probably would have again declared war on China with
this excuse if she had not feared America’s naval support of China’s
general cause under the Hay “non-partition of China” policy. The loss
to Japan ran into many millions. In 1910 the same body of Chinese
guilds boycotted American trade as a reply to the long and costly
detainment of Chinese on Angel Island, San Francisco.
We shall hear more and more of international boycotts by the Chinese,
and should study the question. They hover on the borderland of justice,
and are recommended by many of the women’s clubs of America in dealing
with monopolies. They will be misunderstood. They will produce much
annoyance and trouble. They are mighty weapons in the hands of the
clannish Chinese. Many fortunes of millionaires were really produced
by boycotts. For instance, Mr. B controls the X railway, which latter
has used the Y railway as a connection for freight. Mr. B wants to buy
the Y railway for a song. He diverts all the freight he can to the Z
railway, and when the Y railway fails, he buys its stock for a song.
Then he restores the freight of the X railway to the Y railway, whose
earnings rise and make his fortune, which is immediately entrenched
under nonretroactive and nonrestitution laws. In China the boycott is
only used by the guilds for patriotic purposes. Of course, we traders
in America and Britain object because we suffer, but looking with
Chinese eyes and with a world-economical vision at the matter, we must
admit that the Chinese guilds are not ignoble or selfish and that
their use of the boycott is a mighty diplomatic weapon. It has humbled
Japan without the use of a soldier or a thirteen-inch broadside. By
threatening a boycott, Wu Ting Fang and the Shanghai Assembly at the
darkest hour of the republican revolution, prevented certain nations
from making a loan to the imperialists, which was the most brilliant
and potential move of the revolution. It really won for the southern
cause, the military capture of Nanking following as a matter of
course. Let Japan, Russia and others beware how they take advantage of
China, whether in Manchuria, the Yangtze provinces, Shangtung, Yunnan,
Szechuen or other provinces, or territories like Tibet, Mongolia and
Turkestan; the Chinese guilds with their boycott are a sure refuge
in time of trouble, back of any failing walls of arms, finance or
diplomacy.
The following are some of the sociological proverbs of the Chinese:
“The chain is as strong as its weakest ring, and a corporation is as
moral as its most corrupt director.”
“Taking rocks away makes a smooth stream, as removing wrongs makes a
placid nation.”
“We can’t all agree exactly, for many faces, many minds, and the ten
fingers are not all of one length; but they are all useful.”
“Money covers a multitude of sins.”
“Fire will burn through anything, and money will get through anything.”
“The deeper you go in your cave, the smaller seems your heaven.”
“A living poor man is better than a dead rich man.”
“Some have had a thousand years of sorrow in a hundred years of life.”
“You may think you’re on the right way, but you lose nothing by asking.”
“You can’t carve much on a rotten stick.”
“Some dogs are so intent on chasing the rabbit that they don’t see the
tiger chasing them.”
“Right is the only might that lasts.”
“Of all the fools the greatest is the miser. He breaks his back with
the burden which he carries when the goal is in sight.”
“Before you beat an irresponsible dog for its howl, think of the
manners you owe to its master.”
“If you would have a long twilight of life, you must begin old age
early.”
“Riches may ornament a wall, but only virtue can adorn a person.”
“The heart has one language the world over, but the tongues of men have
many languages.”
“When you are rich the whole world is your cousin; when you are poor,
even your cousin doesn’t know you.”
“He who deserves an increase in his wage is a coward if he does not ask
for it.”
“It’s a pretty mean traveler who destroys the bridge which has served
his purpose; there are other brother-travelers.”
“With money you can yell like a lion; without it you must squeak like a
mouse.”
“There were two fools: one when he was poor thought of days of riches;
the other when he was rich never thought of days of poverty.”
“A kind stranger at hand is better than a cold relative afar.”
“Repentance is only good when it looks forward.”
“Be hard on yourself and easy on your fellows.”
“The same thing can be fact to a friend and fiction to a foe.”
“Rough food is strongest, as rough wool is warmest.”
“Emulation is only proper in charities.”
“Charity is like smoking, hard to learn and hard to stop.”
“Jewels in a pig’s nose and riches in a snob’s hand.”
“He gives more who gives a penny to the poor than he who adds a fortune
to the wealth of the rich.”
“Those who rose from nothing lord it most.”
“Get at the cause rather than attack the effect.”
“A headlong hero is not so good as a timid man who knows just what he
is after.”
“If you would serve a fair master, work for yourself.”
“Once books, art, music, poetry and gardening used to interest the men
of China and the world; now it is the new age, when only food and power
engage; is materialism progress?”
“The best place to await your enemy is at the graveyard boundary, for
he must pass there at last.”
“Another mouth at the table shrinks the bowl on the fire.”
“You can only give a man a stone for bread once.”
“The old boat is full of nails, and the old man is full of
experiences.”
XXXI
AWAKENED INTEREST IN AMERICA
Three recent manifestations, selected from many, will indicate the
awakened interest in America in things Chinese and the New China. Like
the ostrich which pushed its head in the sand, and concluded that the
world that was not seen, did not exist, our stage has for centuries
persisted in ignoring Sinim-histrionics. Now Chinese plays are not
uncommon. One in particular is worthy of mention. William Winter,
the dean of the American critics, says of _The Daughter of Heaven_,
playing at the Century Theater, New York: “I have seen every important
spectacle displayed in America during the last sixty years and I think
_The Daughter of Heaven_ is superior to anything of the kind I ever
saw.” The Liebler Company state that it has cost them $100,000.00 to
stage the play. How my eminent Thespian friends in old China will
marvel when they read this amount! For the same sum they would agree
to give four thousand simultaneous plays in the four thousand walled
cities of China! _Revenons à nos moutons._ There are eight gorgeous
scenes, the exact detail of which the stage manager brought from Peking
and Nanking, where he specially went for local color, and where the
play is laid. Scene one introduces a moving state sanpan boat, lighted
by lanterns, as a setting for a beautiful tenor love song. Scene two
shows the Manchu emperor’s room in the Peking palace. Scene three is
of the Ming empress’ gardens at Nanking. This lovely scene is made
realistic by living flocks of sacred cranes and peacocks moving about
the stage. Scene four is the throne room of the Ming palace at Nanking,
a gorgeous representation of Chinese luxury such as we shall never
see again, now that the old royal China has passed away. Scene five
is outside the pavilion of the Ming empress. Scene six, in contrast
to previous gorgeousness, gives a somber Craig-like setting to the
battlements of Nanking, and all the remarkable modern art of the stage
manager is called into exercise to produce thrilling battle effects.
Scene seven is outside the Chien Men gate at Peking, executions taking
place, and all the daily life of the Manchus holding one spellbound by
its accuracy. Scene eight is the Manchu throne room at Peking.
Now, as to the plot and theme. Pierre Loti, the Orientalist, of course
knows his China, for he fought in the relief of Peking, and I have
related elsewhere in this volume, his unique pilgrimage to Angkor.
Judith Gautier, his collaborator, knows the passionate human heart,
as should the daughter of the famous romantic French poet, Theophile
Gautier. They have combined their skill to write a tragic Shakespearean
theme in a Chinese setting, but the human heart beats to the same pulse
under all colors of complexion. In short, the theme is as follows:
As there has been for three hundred years, in this play there is war
between the Ming and Manchu races. Neither the beautiful young widow,
the Ming empress, nor the bachelor Manchu emperor, has been allowed by
the factionists of their respective parties to consider the national
suicide of race strife. The Manchu emperor resolves if possible to
do two things: to restrain in time his army which is attacking the
Mings, and in disguise personally to sue at Nanking for the hand of
the remarkable beauty, the Ming empress. He can not sue as a Manchu
emperor; he knows the Ming empress has only too much cause to hate
his race. This worthy Romeo gains admittance to the audience chamber
of the Ming empress, and his unusual address and fire carry away the
forlorn empress’ heart, despite herself. He therefore has made the
personal conquest that could only be made on love’s unsupported basis,
and he can afford to wait. In the meantime, the Manchu emperor’s real
character is discovered, but he escapes from the Ming palace. His
armies, controlled by a cabal of generals, against his will, overcome
the Mings, kill the Ming empress’ adored little son and thus break
her heart by destroying the dynasty. The Ming empress is captured by
the Manchu armies, and is brought to the Manchu emperor’s palace at
Peking. There, in real character, the emperor sues for two things: for
the fruition of long deferred love, and for the patriotic union of the
warring races, in their marriage. In an awful scene of Homeric passion,
the Ming empress finally decides that too much blood has flowed between
the races for her selfishly to accept of the offered love and honor.
She sees the shades of the leaders of the great Ming race, led by
her adored little son, and she decides in Oriental fashion, just as
General Nogi did, that duty calls her to follow them into the spirit
land. The fiery hearted Manchu emperor stands by spellbound, for he
can not refute the Cathayan viewpoint, terrible as is his personal
suffering. He, too, must be willing to resign love. The Ming empress
allows the Manchu emperor to escort her up the privileged central
stairway reserved for royalty, to the widest and oldest throne of the
human race, and for a hushed and glorious moment she sits radiant in
the place of power. The shades of her race, in clouds, approach and
reproach her. She asks the emperor to return to her the pearl which
she gave him at Nanking, when, incognito, he was an accepted suitor.
He hands it to her, and she suddenly swallows it. The lines of Loti
and Gautier draw out passion, as the French feel it, in this scene to
the limit of endurance, and to its exquisite pain the brave Anglo-Saxon
acting of the actor Basil Gill adds a tempestuous power that is
thrilling and convincing. When the Manchu emperor at last realizes
that the long silent Ming empress really sits dead on the throne, with
overflowing emotion he strikes the great audience gong, and commands
“to their knees and kotows” the host of viceroys and courtiers which
enters; yes, though proud Manchus, they must, indeed, at last worship a
Ming empress. As I have pointed out in a chapter on the Portuguese in
China in my former book, _The Chinese_, such a scene is historically
correct, for the frenzied king, Don Pedro, once placed the remains of
his beautiful bride, Ignez de Castro, who was murdered for love by his
enemies, on the throne and compelled a before unwilling people, to pay
homage to her. Such is the deathless pride of true love, which mocks at
fate even at the triumphant gates of death.
What further shall be said of the acting of Basil Gill and Viola Allen.
He makes a brave, eloquent, manly lover, and his reading of the lines
can be heard round and full throughout the immense vault of the Century
Theater. Viola Allen, as the Ming empress, touches with finished skill,
every chord of emotional acting, ever with burning fire and yet ever
with artistic control, which best brings the sympathetic tear. They
both ring the changes, both in what they suggest and in what they say,
on the noble chord: _Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori_. Compared
with the silly themes of some popular plays, what a wholesome one is
_The Daughter of Heaven_. While there is little accurate Chinese music,
one wishes for more of it, as the Chinese throughout their plays use
more music than this play uses. The costumes, the most gorgeous ever
seen, will be seen no more, as the old China has passed away. The
Liebler Company have rendered a public service by staging so accurate,
expensive and educational a production, even if the actors repeatedly
mispronounce the word “dynasty”! All Orientalists eagerly hope that the
public will avail themselves of the unique opportunity without delay,
as there is no telling how long it will pay the producer to stage such
an expensive play. No such spectacle will again be seen; the old China
has passed away, but it is caught and preserved in the amber in _The
Daughter of Heaven_.
Among the Americans who deserve special credit for awakening an
interest in the New China should be mentioned Professor George H.
Blakeslee, of the Department of History of Clark University, Worcester,
Massachusetts, who for years has brought together a remarkable
World’s Oriental Congress, the influence of which, in its published
proceedings, etc., is rolling like a golden wheel around the globe,
raying forth information, reconciliation, altruism and a forward
Americanism in the Orient, which is pro-Oriental and not incursive in
any sense, in the opinion of the Orientals. At the last conference
there were thirty-six major addresses by specialists.
In closing this long volume, I would like to make a plea for China.
America should at once, without waiting for the “concert of Europe”
(the “entangling alliances” which Washington prohibited) recognize
the new Chinese republic. For some time, with others, I have been
working on such a popular movement (as an American, and in no sense in
the pay of the Chinese government), writing to editors, authors and
influential men, making addresses before learned and popular bodies,
and ascertaining the opinions of Orientalists and Orientals. In public
meetings, I have found the sentiment of the American people to be
entirely in favor. I wrote Ex-president Roosevelt in full on November
25th, 1912, and the _Outlook_ of November 30, 1912 kindly published an
article in favor. The editor of the _Independent_ wrote me that they
had long been favorable. From my mail, I quote a few representative
sentiments as follows:
“Mr. Carnegie asks me to say that he is confident the republic will be
among the first to recognize her sister republic.” The frank editor
of the _North American Review_ writes: “We are in sympathy with your
belief that the time has come for America’s recognition of, and aid
to, the new Chinese republic.” President Woodrow Wilson warmly wrote
me from Bermuda: “You may be sure that my interest in the fortunes of
China is deep and permanent, and that the subject of recognition to
which you call my attention will have my very serious and thoughtful
consideration.” The earnest Ex-treasurer of New York, Colonel Arthur
MacArthur, editor of the influential Troy _Budget_, writes: “My paper
will continue to publish editorials and information in favor, and help
to keep the movement prominently before the people.” The Worcester,
Massachusetts, _Telegram_ has been most zealous. These are only samples
of what the journals of the country are doing. Honorable Champ Clark,
Speaker of the House of Representatives, writes me: “Individually I
think the Chinese republic ought to be recognized, but it has been
settled definitely in this country that the recognition of governments
is an executive function.” Governor William Sulzer, the “father” of the
famous Sulzer Resolution which passed Congress, and which congratulated
republican China on her new form of government, writes me: “You can
rely on me to do all I can in the future, as in the past, to promote
the welfare of the Chinese republic.” Professor Blakeslee, of Clark
University, wrote me: “I want to tell you how much I appreciate
all that you are doing to urge the early recognition of the Chinese
republic. Have you thought of getting up another petition? I should be
glad to sign it; so would Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard University,
and three-fourths of those who spoke at the Conference would sign it.”
Of course there are some American “Manchus” and Laodiceans who are not
in favor of the movement. At our last conference, at Clark University,
of Orientalists recently arrived from the Orient, it was the general
opinion that China should be helped by recognition, as miniature
Portugal and South American republics, some of a moth’s life, have been
helped. Americans at the head of Chinese universities have told me:
“We are heart and soul in favor.” The able Chinese officials educated
in America, are passionate in their appeal for recognition by America
now, without waiting for the “concert of Europe” on this one point.
Wu Ting Fang, first foreign minister, and Wang Chung Wei, assistant
foreign minister of the southern republicans, who won the battles of
the revolution, have been asking for America’s recognition since their
first formal note of January, 1912. America has from the beginning
warmly appreciated the recognition by France, Spain, etc., of our
struggling republic in 1778, and leading Chinese ministers of state
have told me that China would have the same feeling if recognition is
not delayed till China is strong enough not to care so much as now.
The forceful idiom of one official, who smiled as he spoke, was: “You
know a beggar appreciates those favors the most which were given to him
when he was a beggar, and not when he comes into his estate.” Are we
waiting till China gives a _quid pro quo_ in concessions or monopolies,
or until some future election confirms the revolution, as though the
battles won were not a firmer expression of determination than even an
election, in which latter, enemies can cloud the issue. Americans have
almost entire charge of China’s higher education. The Panama Canal is
going to bring trade intercourse with China very dose to the Eastern
and Mississippi states of America. Secretary of State John Hay’s note
to the powers in 1900, insisting for all time on the “integrity of
China,” really commits America now to the recognition of the republic.
Delayed recognition is really encouraging certain powers in ignoring
the American altruistic doctrine of the “non-partition of China”. I
refer partially to the secession of parts of Chinese Turkestan and
Mongolia, largely caused by Monsieur Korostovetz’ intrusive visit in
the van of Cossacks to the heart of the latter dependency as late as
December, 1912.
My idea is that generously helping China in republicanism, in
accordance with the spirit and terms of Washington’s Farewell Address,
which specified that Americans “should recommend their form of
government to the applause, affection and the _adoption_ of every
nation,” will redound to the reputation of America in altruism.
America’s largest field for expansion in trade, educational and
religious influence, is in the New China, and the new progressive
Chinese, from long association with them, I can give my word, fully
deserve our unreserved admiration and friendship. As illustrating
the general opinion of American educationalists in China, I quote
the following letter from my warm friend Doctor J. E. Williams,
Vice-president of the great University of Nanking, China. Mr. Williams
led in the movement whereby $430,000 was collected for China’s relief
in the last flood and famine, and in the conservative administration of
that relief, and the model farm colonies which were later established
for the Chinese. “I am greatly interested in what you are doing to
hasten America’s recognition of the republic. I am heart and soul in
sympathy. I also agree with what you write, that there are many who are
not the friends of China. To any one who knows the inside facts, the
latter make no case at all against China, but to the people who do not
know, they put up a plausible story. Compare China’s advance after a
year of revolution and reform, with the efforts of our own forefathers
to establish the American republic. After one year of enlistment,
Washington’s soldiers were leaving him and returning to their homes.
As for financial credit, the original colonies had absolutely none. As
for trade and commerce, there was nothing worth mentioning. As for the
development of popular education as a basis of republican government,
there were hardly the rudiments in evidence. As for the ability to open
mines and railways as the _sine qua non_ of recognition, the original
Thirteen Colonies had not even dreamed of mines and railways. It is
my conviction that the Chinese are better prepared for republican
government, and have a better outlook for its achievement than the
Americans did any time up to the conclusion of the Civil War. I should
be pleased to cooperate in any way in your plans for influencing the
leaders in bringing about early recognition. Your plan is capital in
every respect and I heartily concur.”
Generally, America has in the case of the South American republics,
etc., recognized governments after they have been established one year.
The year has long passed in the case of China. China has poor railroad
communication and recognition should not be delayed until the suffrage
is voting in machine form, and perhaps by “machine” plan! How smoothly
was the American suffrage voting in 1778 when France, Holland, Sweden,
Prussia and Spain recognized America? We did not even have a capital
at that time, for our enemies had ravaged Philadelphia. China has two
capitals (one of sentiment and one of fact) Nanking and Peking, but
would like to have one, if foreigners will permit her! Why should
America delay? “China has been forever and will be forever.” Soon she
will be strong enough not to care, but what America does _now_ she
will forever appreciate, and America will sit nearest to her heart’s
gratitude. Think of it! A republic of 400,000,000 people trading
and communing with us across the narrowing Pacific, and beneath the
smiling rays of the same warm sun which we both face: an altruistic
brotherhood of East and West, working for the uplift of the whole
world. China should be recognized and sent on her way rejoicing. Be
not deceived; the new Chinese know us well, and take due remembrance
of any delay that is based on narrow-mindedness or the uncharitable or
selfish heart. Great cycles have opened beyond the seas; let America
and Britain be great with them, and part of that greatness consists in
helping China to be great. One leading Chinese minister and polished
orator in our own language, who, I believe, will some day be president
of China, for he has the youth, ability and ambition, told me with
tears in his enthusiastic eyes, as he declaimed on the great subject,
that if America will stand by China in this matter of honor, China
will engrave gratitude forever on the core of her heart. The Chinese
republican officials say that whether the excuse for delay is that the
republic must be tried at the polls; or that China hasn’t railways, or
China hasn’t credit, or China hasn’t “Christian science”, and whatnot,
the delay is encouraging Russia to encroach, and is discouraging
their own people, by the fact that one great Pacific republic won’t
officially recognize the other one, which was bought by the same awful
price set by Freedom: the sacred blood of patriots sacrificed by the
war-sword on the altar of Liberty.
The recognition movement is growing among our people, and is not
confined to one class. Many business organizations are in favor of it.
The Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce have adopted resolutions urging
favorable action without longer delay. Our National Chamber of Commerce
has done the same thing. Senator Bacon, of Georgia, has recently
introduced in congress a joint resolution, favoring early recognition.
Representative university presidents have written me of their sympathy
with the movement. I quote from a letter from Doctor David Starr
Jordan, president of Leland Stanford Jr. University, of California, as
follows: “I am thoroughly in sympathy with your work for recognition,
and am thoroughly in sympathy with the desire of most of the American
people that the republic in China may be officially recognized by the
United States.” Notable pulpit orators have also joined the movement. I
quote from a representative letter from the Reverend Doctor John Haynes
Holmes, pastor of the Unitarian church of the Messiah, Park Avenue, New
York City, as follows: “The Chinese subjects which you have suggested
that my church, along with others, should bring to the attention of
our people, are certainly pertinent. I am particularly interested in
the second, viz., recognition of China as a sister republic. I shall
hope to find place in my preaching for some emphatic favorable mention
of these matters. With appreciation of the splendid work that you are
doing for China’s recognition, I am.”
It is fitting that I should close this volume with the following
important letter to me from my one-time fellow-townsman of Hongkong,
Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), the leading citizen of the New China,
the greatest of the Chinese reformers, who was at the head of the
Chinese republican revolution; the first provisional president of
China at Nanking, and who is at present the head of China’s National
Railway and Industrial Development Board. This message, which will
make history, is really a semi-official message from the vast Chinese
republic of 400,000,000 people, through their greatest hero, the
Christian founder of their republic, and their most influential
official and citizen, to the American people. It reads:
“I have the honor of acknowledging your letters, together with the
newspaper interviews with you urging America’s prompt recognition of
the Chinese republic. In reply I beg to inform you that your effort in
your interviews, books, etc., in conducting this campaign in China’s
interest, is highly appreciated by me and my associates. We hope that
your efforts for the recognition of China by the United States of
America will be _speedily crowned with great success_.”
Those who know the American people know that their hearts unanimously
bespeak a warm and favorable answer without further delay to so
momentous an appeal. It is the great privilege and honor of this book
to help to convey Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s message to America.
THE END
INDEX
Aborigines, 349, 361, 437, 446, 455, 490.
Advertising, 144, 181.
Aeroplanes, 71, 322.
Agriculture, 138, 142, 211, 220, 338, 512, 533.
Aglen, Sir F., 169, 288.
Aigun, 219.
American-British “entente”, 232, 266, 284.
America’s fleet in China, 6, 7, 12, 31, 41, 43, 46, 78, 88, 106, 110,
206, 215, 231, 262, 309.
America’s influence, 3, 48, 50, 73, 79, 84, 90, 93, 96, 134, 139, 154,
187, 206, 211, 240, 284, 308, 318, 336, 344, 346, 380, 567.
America’s troops in China, 86, 100, 368.
Amoy, 44, 378.
Ancestor worship, 92, 453, 488, 533.
Angkor ruins, 541.
Antiquities, 361, 435, 541.
Architecture, 161, 287, 313, 398, 451, 541.
Army, 23, 36, 45, 50, 56, 58, 65, 69, 72, 84, 87, 91, 102, 105, 161,
163, 209, 243, 266, 317, 322, 328.
Art, 39, 154, 254, 313, 543.
Athletics, 335, 339.
Auctioneer, 492.
Austria’s influence, 139, 197.
Automobiles, 84, 195, 375.
Ball, Dyer, 299, 383.
Banking, 4, 18, 47, 130, 165, 172, 211, 405.
Baptists, 340, 404.
Barber S. S. Line, 196.
Bashford, Bishop, 58, 87, 298.
Bell, Major General, 86.
Beresford, Admiral Lord, 326.
Bergen, President P. W., 302, 340.
Bible, 2, 14, 16, 308, 468.
Bible Societies, 243, 461.
Blagovestchensk, 220, 284.
Blake, Sir Henry, 300.
Blakeslee, Professor, 571, 572.
Boats, 120, 190, 204, 325.
Books, 12, 13, 18, 32, 180, 243, 290, 299, 303, 315, 518.
Bowen, President A. J., 301, 337.
Boycotts, 59, 73, 77, 233, 562.
Brent, Bishop, 399.
Bragg, General, 291.
Bridges, new, 190, 193.
Bridges, old, 250.
Broadway Tabernacle, N. Y., 339.
Brownell, Dean, 339.
Britain’s influence, 17, 48, 50, 73, 79, 106, 151, 155, 180, 184, 194,
230, 234, 288, 343, 363, 437, 467.
British-India S. S. Co., 197.
British troops in China, 102, 367, 378.
Bubonic plague, 502.
Buddhism, 7, 35, 104, 311, 351, 450.
Budget, 243.
Business, 24, 137, 159, 175, 184, 235.
Butterfield & Swire, 149, 151, 176, 178, 196.
Calendar, Christian, 47, 82.
Camp, Walter, 339.
Camphor, 538.
Canada in China, 175, 184, 348, 437.
Canadian Pacific Steamship Line, 196.
Canals, 201, 203.
Cantlie, Doctor, 15, 17.
Canton, 4, 6, 23, 43, 84, 106, 190, 202, 380, 516.
Canton Christian College, 304, 380.
Car building, 153, 188, 194.
Carlyle, 453.
Catholic work, 345, 459, 462.
Cecil, Lord, 346.
Cement, 138, 154, 384.
Chang Hsun, General, 42, 63, 166, 317.
Chang Jen, Viceroy, 42.
Chang Shao, General, 25, 38, 76.
Chao Ehr Feng, General, 34, 317, 508.
Chao Ehr Sun, Viceroy, 97, 103.
Chartered Bank, 165.
Chater, Sir Paul, 334.
Cheo Ping Chun, Premier, 109.
Chifu, 406.
Children, 525.
China Merchants S. S., 83, 93, 197, 199, 200.
China-Japan War, 326, 329.
Chinese Eastern Railway, 198.
Chinese Engineering & Mining Company, 148, 178, 197.
Chingtu, 22, 35, 193, 250, 343, 344, 435.
Chin Tao Chen, Minister Fin., 82, 223.
Chin Wang Tao, port, 83, 94, 203, 211, 219, 328.
Chops, 181.
Chungking City, 438.
Chun, Regent, 50, 67, 320.
Civil service, 9, 161.
Clans, 7, 492.
Clark, Speaker Champ, 572.
Clark University Oriental Congress, 304, 571.
Coal, 139, 142, 147, 153, 238, 287, 409, 441.
Colquhoun, Sir Archibald, 189, 202, 205, 293.
Collinson, Engineer, 298.
Commercial attachés, 175.
Compradores, 176, 294.
Copper, 22, 149.
Concessions, 6, 10, 11, 27, 28, 72, 76, 85, 140, 175.
Confucianism, 7, 92, 449, 453, 469, 475, 522.
Confucius, 58, 61, 245, 325, 473.
Conger, E. H., 209.
Congregationalism, 73, 340, 342, 460.
Congress, National, 22, 32, 38, 50, 60, 78, 242, 244, 349.
Connaught, Duke of, 369.
Conservation, 150, 202, 401.
Constitutional Articles, Nineteen, 50, 89, 319.
Consuls, 175, 192, 207, 308.
Copyright and patents, 156.
Corporations, 146, 179, 184, 279, 412, 482.
Cotton, 178, 277, 538.
Creasy, Sir Edward, 240.
Credit system, 166.
Crime, 117, 124, 472, 561.
Currency, 86, 167.
Curzon, Lord, 293.
Customs, National, 161, 163, 169, 288.
Dalai Lama, 35, 311.
_Daughter of Heaven, The_, play, 567.
Debt, National, 28, 162, 164.
Dentists, 509.
Deutsche-Asiatique Bank, 165, 405.
Docks, 151, 215, 404.
Dogs, 524.
Dollar S. S. Co., 196.
Doumer, Paul, 189, 285, 292.
Dorpmuller, Herr, 298.
Dress, 7.
Edmunds, President, 304.
Education, modern, 8, 10, 162, 243, 297, 302, 334, 343, 347, 460, 531.
Eighth Division, 90, 319.
Electric development, 139, 194, 211, 257.
Emigration, 156, 216, 236.
Emperor Pu Yi, 91.
Engine building, 140.
Engineering, 180, 187, 251, 341.
English language, 143, 194, 341, 347, 359.
Episcopalians, 13, 25, 40, 73, 302, 335, 342, 343, 346, 405, 406, 461,
466.
Eunuchs, 311.
Eurasians, 527.
Extraterritoriality, 20, 232.
Fairs, 493.
Famine, 89, 161, 257, 526.
Farms, 533.
Favier, Bishop, 303.
Feng, General, 317, 404.
Finance, 141, 146, 161, 185.
Fire departments, 140.
Floods, 8, 89, 441.
Flour, 138, 294.
Food, 6, 8, 221, 371, 496.
Foreigners, 6, 7, 12, 14, 24, 28, 49, 71, 85, 192, 234, 287, 288, 302,
363, 447.
Forests, 194, 533, 538.
Formosa, 149, 165, 311.
France’s influence, 31, 153, 170, 189, 198, 285, 292, 304, 311, 332.
Fuchau, 30, 332, 343, 386.
Fulton, Doctor Mary, 345.
Furniture, 154, 553.
Gamewell, F. D., 298.
Gautier, Judith, 568.
George, Henry, 13, 407, 555.
Germany in China, 11, 31, 54, 59, 63, 84, 148, 152, 154, 180, 193,
197, 199, 253, 298, 311, 341, 347, 407.
Goethe, 356.
Gordon, “Chinese”, 289.
Grand Canal, 200, 203.
Graphite, 150.
Greeley, Admiral, 292, 364.
Green, Owen, 300.
Guilds, 142, 233, 560.
Hangchow, 390.
Hankau, 36, 39, 40, 45, 48, 52, 333, 403.
Hanyang, 36, 51, 55.
Hanyang Steel Works, 145, 188, 249, 298, 404.
Hart, Sir Robert, 169, 288.
Hay, John, 209.
Hayes, Doctor W. M., 300, 340.
Hirth, Professor, 300.
Holcomb, Chester, 300.
Homes, 494, 495, 546.
Hongkong, 15, 20, 33, 43, 51, 63, 77, 143, 150, 154, 185, 189, 285,
293, 296, 309, 363, 377, 507, 512.
Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, 4, 165, 177, 191.
Hongkong and Whampoa Dock, 151, 178.
Horses, 141, 307, 376, 443.
Hosie, Sir Alexander, 300, 315.
Hospitals, 126, 382, 402, 414, 515.
Hotels, 212, 374.
Humor, 70, 114.
Hunan, 27, 36.
Hupeh, 18, 23.
Hsu, Commander-in-chief, 24, 46, 62, 68, 82, 87, 317.
Hwang Hing, General, 16, 21, 43, 45, 55, 82, 87, 317.
Hygiene, 257, 399, 533.
Ichang, 405.
Idols, 125, 456.
Imperial Third Division, 39, 40, 106, 404.
Indemnities, 6, 11, 28, 32, 85, 164, 169, 232, 309, 336.
Industrial China, 138, 153, 170, 294, 347.
Insurance, 181.
International Banking Company, 165, 176.
International Merchants’ Marine, 198.
Irrigation, 250, 286, 534.
Iron, 139, 145, 149, 188, 441.
Japan’s debt, 264, 265.
Japan’s influence, 3, 25, 29, 31, 48, 53, 73, 79, 93, 109, 152, 155,
193, 199, 201, 215, 230, 259, 563.
Jardine, Matheson & Company, 149, 176, 196, 396.
Jehol, 39, 45, 255.
Jeme Tien Yao, Engineer, 187, 223, 252.
Jordan, President David Starr, 577.
Kalgan, 39.
Kang Yu Wei, 12, 96, 243, 312.
Kerr, Doctor, 15.
Kinder, C. W., 194, 298.
Kitchener, Lord, 293.
Knitting factories, 144, 183.
Korea, 15, 165, 168, 260.
Kwang Hsu, Emperor, 13, 98, 200, 242, 245, 312.
Kwangtung province, 5.
Labor, 142, 143, 217, 237.
Lanchow camp, 38, 76, 83, 87.
Land Tax, 9.
Land values, 370, 478.
Language, 2, 177, 289, 299, 359.
Laws, 20, 63, 85, 156, 299, 472.
Lea, Homer, 46, 69, 261.
Leprosy, 510.
Lhasa, 35.
Liang Chi Chao, 12.
Lighthouses, 257.
Li Hung Chang, 8, 21, 200, 318.
Likin, 171.
Ling, General, 24, 42, 44, 47, 49, 62.
Liquor, 132, 314, 508.
Literature, 351.
Little, Archibald, 115, 192, 205.
Little, Robert, 300.
Li Yuan Heng, General, 24, 25, 35, 45, 48, 55, 65, 87, 133, 209, 317,
327, 402.
Lloyds Bank, 165.
Loans, 11, 20, 28, 29, 57, 59, 64, 69, 84, 85, 93, 103, 108, 161, 169,
171, 191, 201, 292.
Lockhart, Sir Stewart, 300.
Loti, Pierre, 285, 541, 568.
Lowry, Doctor H. H., 297.
Macao, 16, 131, 138, 202, 207, 370, 383, 484.
Machinery, 138, 176, 212.
Manchuria, 29, 94, 138, 188, 211, 217, 231, 261, 278, 281, 300, 306,
315, 432.
Manchus, 4, 6, 9, 11, 18, 22, 31, 38, 40, 44, 54, 60, 72, 79, 85, 146,
239, 248, 254, 305, 311, 356, 421.
Manila, 152, 211.
Martin, Doctor W. A. P., 297, 342, 469.
Masons, 369.
Mateer Doctor C. W., 301, 468.
Matting, 536.
Medical Missions, 15, 40, 335, 337, 339, 340, 342, 414, 465, 502, 515.
Messageries Maritimes Steamship Company, 198, 285, 293.
Methodists, 298, 301, 340, 342, 344, 402, 467.
Mines, 11, 24, 27, 28, 151.
Ming claimant, 102, 222.
Ming dynasty, 11, 254, 392.
Ming tombs, 47, 392.
Missionaries, 13, 39, 49, 78, 171, 261, 302, 400, 462, 465.
Missions, 7, 15, 25, 30, 56, 73, 90, 344, 345, 461, 469.
Mitsu Bishi Company, 152, 179.
Mitsui & Company, 179, 197, 278.
Model town, 5.
Mody, Hormusjee, 334.
Mongolia, 138, 281.
Morrison, George E., 292, 298.
Mosby, Colonel, 291.
Moving pictures, 489.
Mukden, 39, 45, 93, 193, 430.
Museums, 348.
Music, modern, 338, 341.
Nanking, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53, 56, 62, 83, 338, 343, 392.
Nanking Assembly, 80, 91.
Nathan, Sir M., 296, 364.
Navy, 4, 8, 25, 36, 41, 67, 69, 70, 88, 95, 141, 151, 162, 233, 326.
Newchwang, 429.
Newspapers, 4, 7, 8, 13, 21, 33, 114, 140, 300, 357, 368, 377.
Ningpo, 388.
Ninth Imperial Division, 44.
Nippon Yusen Kaisha Steamship Company, 197, 200.
Non-partition of China, 79, 86, 230, 282, 328, 429, 574.
Northern Pacific Railway Steamship Company, 196.
Oils, 141, 149, 179.
Okuma, Count, 76.
Open Door policy, 217, 230, 305.
Opium, 3, 309, 339, 399, 499.
Pacific Mail, 176, 196, 198, 292.
Paint, 149.
Panama Canal, 96, 137, 198, 267.
Parker, Professor, 60, 299.
Parsees, 365.
Patent and copyright, 156, 182.
Pawnshops, 172.
Peculation, 118, 121, 146, 162, 200.
Peking, 38, 194, 339, 343, 413.
Peking, rebellion of troops, 99.
Peking-Kalgan Railway, 191.
Peking Syndicate, 27, 148, 178, 197.
Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Company, 176, 196.
Philippines, 33, 214, 237, 261, 267, 285, 290.
Physicians, 122.
Piracy, 51, 53, 67, 78, 106, 122, 286, 483.
Pneumonic plague, 342.
Ports, 187, 201, 203.
Portugal, 31.
Port Arthur, 425.
Post-office, 144, 243.
Population, 322, 526, 533.
Pott, President F., 302, 335.
Pottery, 150, 421, 551.
Presbyterians, 13, 62, 301, 302, 340, 342, 344, 345, 467, 516, 531,
548.
Presses, 345, 460.
Prisons, 120, 446.
Provincial Governors, 248.
Public Works, 161, 250, 257.
Quarantine practise, 513.
Queues, 4, 70, 81, 245, 314.
Railways, 3, 11, 61, 93, 148, 153, 162, 186, 193, 211, 219, 249, 282,
298, 382, 578.
Railways, Nationalization of, 10, 23, 27, 28, 33, 85, 137, 171, 344,
492.
Rea, G. B., 300.
Recognition of China, 85, 88, 94, 101, 214, 571.
Red Cross, 47, 342.
Reforestation, 194, 533, 538.
Reform Edicts, 243.
Republicanism, 22, 31, 54, 56, 68, 71, 73, 77, 79, 88, 94, 97, 99,
111, 248, 334, 336.
Republican revolution, 1, 6.
Revenue, 161.
Richard, Doctor Timothy, 342.
Roads, 142, 254.
Roots, Bishop, 346.
Ross, of Wisconsin, Professor, 533.
Russian Volunteer fleet, 199.
Russia’s influence, 29, 31, 48, 60, 79, 108, 153, 189, 193, 219, 229,
263, 281, 300, 425, 434, 563.
Russo-Asiatique Bank, 64, 103, 165, 170, 405.
Sah, Admiral, 36, 41, 327.
Saigon, 153, 187, 292.
Salt, 141, 161.
Schiff, Jacob H., 216.
Schools, 4, 6, 135.
Scott, Admiral Sir Percy, 364.
Secret Societies, 247.
Servants, 131.
Sewage, 512.
Seward, W. H., 206, 210, 292.
Shanghai, 15, 41, 70, 152, 189, 202, 343, 393.
Shanghai-Nanking Railway, 171, 191.
Shek Kam Chuen, 107.
Sheng Kung Pao, 27.
Sheng Yun, General, 49, 71, 103, 104.
Shintoism, 469.
Shorthand, 349.
Ship-building, 11, 151, 213, 327.
Shops, 144.
Siberian Railway, 192, 283.
Singan, 37, 433, 541.
Singapore, 152, 187, 201, 286.
Sociology, 555.
Sowerby, Captain, 53.
Soy-bean and oil, 278.
Sports, 369, 376.
Standard Oil Company, 176, 179, 196.
Steamships, 140, 158, 162, 190, 196, 199, 204, 290.
Straight, Willard, 292.
Straits Settlements, 8, 237.
Students, 29, 77, 310, 347.
Suchow, 401.
Sugar, 149, 277.
Suicide, 87.
Sulzer, Governor William, 572.
Sun Yat Sen, 3, 6, 12, 15, 18, 21, 46, 69, 76, 80, 88, 92, 95, 101,
209, 247, 312, 382, 393, 402, 462, 469, 505, 555, 578.
Syndicates, 27, 191.
Szechuen province, 35.
Taiping rebellion, 15, 306, 462.
Tang Shao Yi, 69, 74, 105, 222, 411.
Taoism, 7, 92, 454.
Tai Yuan, 343, 441.
Tariff, 137, 214, 217, 231, 259.
Taxes, 9, 22, 30, 72, 141, 161, 169, 244, 259, 320, 556.
Tayeh, 138.
Tea, 155.
Technical schools, 154, 162, 194, 341, 344, 406.
Telegraph, 162.
Temperance, 469.
Temples, 10, 343.
Tenny, Doctor, 94, 297.
Theatricals, 358, 567.
Tibet, 70.
Tientsin, 178, 202, 343, 409.
Tientsin-Shanghai Railway, 186, 191, 253.
Tin, 8, 148, 151, 286.
Tongshan shops and school, 154, 194, 298.
Togo Kisen Kaisha Steamship, 152, 184, 197.
Trade, 210, 287, 534.
Traffic, 193, 256.
Transportation, 143, 195.
Tropical Club, 518.
Treaties, 6, 85, 208, 219, 229, 308.
Tse Hsi, Empress, 13, 98, 310, 312, 316, 433, 452.
Tsinan, 341, 343, 408, 448.
Tsingtau (German), 152, 186, 407.
Tsitsikar, 219.
Tuan Fang, 5, 71.
United States Marine Hospital Service, 514.
United States Steel Corporation, 179.
Universities, 10, 200, 243, 362.
University, Boone, 334, 343.
University, British, 346.
University, Canton, 334, 343, 380.
University, Hangchow, 334, 342, 391.
University, Harvard, 340, 516.
University, Hongkong, 15, 295, 334.
University, Nanking, 46, 48, 64, 301, 334, 337, 392.
University, Nan Yang, 396.
University, Pei Yang (Tientsin), 155, 297, 318, 334, 341, 411.
University, Peking, 200, 243, 297, 334, 342.
University, Pennsylvania, 340, 382, 510, 516.
University, St. John’s, 302, 334, 335, 395, 548.
University, Shangtung, 334, 340, 449.
University, Shansi, 233, 334, 342, 442.
University, Suchow, 334, 342, 402.
University, Yale, 21, 327, 334, 339, 516.
University, Yunnan, 445.
Van Buren, J. S., 289.
Vladivostok, 278.
Volunteer Companies, 239.
Walled cities, 7.
Ward, General Frederick, 321.
Washington, George, 210.
Water-works, 139, 256, 512.
Webster, Daniel, 206, 208, 292, 384.
Wei Hai Wei, 203, 232, 300, 326, 331, 407.
Wen Tsung Yao, 82.
Western Electric Company, 211.
West Point Military Academy, 325.
West River, 67.
Wildman, Consul, 291.
Williams, J. E., 304, 337, 575.
Wilson, General J. H., 11, 204.
Wilson, President Woodrow, 572.
Wireless telegraphy, 199.
Wood, General, 364.
Women, Chinese, 7, 69, 90, 128, 313, 519, 560.
Women, Manchu, 121, 209, 312.
Women, medical college, 344, 516.
Women, schools, 335, 345, 530.
Wool, 138, 275.
Wuchang, 12, 31, 35, 55, 343, 346.
Wuhu, 440.
Wu Ting Fang, 12, 19, 26, 32, 41, 45, 59, 65, 71, 82, 93, 166, 208,
305, 315, 352, 472, 573.
Yangtze River 189, 192, 346.
Yellow Peril, 2.
Yin Tchang, General, 26, 103, 315, 317, 320.
Yokohama Specie Bank, 165.
Y. M. C. A., 468.
Young, Doctor, 342.
Younghusband, Sir F., 70, 306, 508.
Yuan Shih Kai, 12, 14, 45, 48, 55, 57, 60, 92, 95, 104, 110, 243, 300,
318, 343, 410.
Yunnan, 22, 41, 120, 188, 250, 293, 343, 444.
Yunnan Railway, 238, 285, 293.
THE CHINESE
By John Stuart Thomson; published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company,
Indianapolis and New York; seventy-one splendid illustrations, three
colored maps, $2.50; and by T. Warner Laurie, Fleet Street, London,
12s. 6d.
PRESS COMMENTS
Cook’s _Tours Annual_, 1911–12, page 108, recommends this book to world
tourists.
Philadelphia _Item_: “It is not only the most authoritative, valuable
and up-to-date book on China; it is also the most readable.”
Paris _La Nouvelle Revue_: “You will not find its equal as first-hand
information. Treated with marvelous mastership ... a keen observer ...
full of puissant interest.”
New York _Herald_: “A very complete view, graphically dealt with.”
New York _American_: “The definitive book on China.”
New York _Evening Post_ and New York _Nation_: “Relates in a humorous
vein his rich observations. It is refreshing to find so much valuable
and fresh information expressed in a quaint and original manner.
A comprehensive grasp of the greatest problem of the Far East....
Prophetic words.... One of the most interesting and instructive books
on the Chinese; ... most charming.”
New York _Tribune_: “A fund of descriptive information.”
New York _Times_: “The British reviewers speak as enthusiastically
of this book as the American journals have done. Written in a
pleasant and easy manner.... He is the happy possessor of a highly
developed efficiency and sense of humor.... Should prove agreeable to
a great circle of readers.... Excellent descriptive powers and gift
of observation.... Of inestimable use to the student, merchant or
traveler.”
New York _Sun_: “Fresh and seeing eyes; a flowing pen; that human
sympathy which counts greatly in gaining sympathetic readers; an
astonishing quantity of facts presented with so light a hand as
to invite the reader on almost every page; ... brilliantly clear
photographs; Mr. Thomson’s text itself is almost pictorial.”
Chicago _Journal_: “The only readable book ever written about that
weirdly interesting people.”
Columbus _Journal_: “A book that is believed to be the best English
definition yet given of the Chinese and their country.”
Portland, Oregon, _Chamber of Commerce Bulletin_: “This volume is in
the forefront of them all.”
Philadelphia _Press_: “For the American there is no book on China equal
to this one.”
Pittsburgh _Dispatch_: “Our leading authority on Far Eastern questions;
he enunciates the American doctrine of the Far East.”
London _News_: “Few writers have dealt satisfactorily with the subject,
and there was plenty of room for such a book as _The Chinese_.... He
has given a valuable and instructive picture of China as she stands
to-day at her time of crisis.”
London _Times_: “Knows China intimately; keen eye for detail; terse and
graphic style; ... mass of information.”
Hongkong, China, _Mail_: “Keenly observant; shrewd and sympathetic
insight; ... a vision of China of the present day, very telling in its
brightness and jauntiness of comparison; splendidly phrased.”
New York _Commercial_: “Most acute and pertinent observer. Fascinating
qualities of style not unworthy of the brilliant pen of Macaulay. The
book has a deep and permanent delight.”
Chicago _Banker_: “A new authoritative treatise by a writer resident in
China for years.”
Edinburgh _Scotsman_: “It may be doubted if there has been a volume
published for a long time which gives a better idea of the present
condition of the country.... He gives a vivid impression and is endowed
with a gift of humor.”
Transcriber’s Notes
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant
preference was found; otherwise, they were not changed.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.
Page 121: “heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill” was printed that way.
Page 181: “Nasymth Wilson Company” is a misprint for “Nasmyth Wilson
Company”.
Page 215: “not calculated to give China fair play” was printed as “not
calculated in give China fair play”; changed here.
Page 220: “oligarchal Russian army” was printed that way.
Page 279: “Incoporator Dill” was printed that way.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "China Revolutionized" ***
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