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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
CHINESE
9
CHARACTERISTICS
BY
ARTHUR H. ^ITH
TWENTY-TWO YEARS A MISSIONARY OF THE AMERICAN BOARD IN CHINA
¥
FIFTH EDITION, REVISED, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
¥
117480
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York Chicago Toronto
Copyright, 1894,
By Fleming H. Revell Company,
Jf
/
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
List of Illustrations
Introduction
I. Face
II. Economy
III. Industry
IV. Politeness
V. The Disregard of Time
VI. The Disregard of Accuracy
VII. The Talent for Misunderstanding
VIII. The Talent for Indirection
IX. Flexible Inflexibility
X. Intellectual Turbidity
XI. The Absence of Nerves
XII. Contempt for Foreigners
XIII. The Absence of Public Spirit
XIV. Conservatism
XV. Indifference to Comfort and Convenience
XVI. Physical Vitality
XVII. Patience and Perseverance
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7
9
i6
19
27
35
41
48
58
65
74
82
90
98
107
115
125
144
152
117480
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XVIII. Content and Cheerfulness 162
XIX. Filial Piety 171
XX. Benevolence 186
XXI. The Absence of Sympathy 194
XXII. Social Typhoons 217
XXIII. Mutual Responsibility and Respect for Law . . . 226
XXIV. Mutual Suspicion 242
XXV. The Absence of Sincerity 266
XXVI. Polytheism, Pantheism, Atheism 287
XXVII. The Real Condition of China and Her Present
Needs 314
Glossary 331
Index 333
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.*
Tung-Chou Pagoda, near Peking '
A Memorial Arch
)• Frontispiece.
Native Children in Courtyard
Turtle Monument
FACING PAGE
A Chinese Kitchen, showing Method of Preparing Food . . 19
Passenger Boat on the Pei Ho, North China 30
Carpenters Sawing Large Timber 44
A Peking Cart 60
Chinese Card-players 70
A Chinese Barber 118
A Middle-class Family in Winter Dress 127
Interior of a Mohammedan Mosque 171
Native Women Sewing and Weaving Lace ' 200
Four Generations 217
A Portion of the Great Chinese Wall 242
A Chinese Boys’ School (Christian) 251
The Temple of Heaven, Peking 287
A Chinese Idol 300
Camel’s-back Bridge, on the Grounds of the Emperor’s Summer Palace 318
* For the use of original photographs, from which engravings have been made and here published for the first time, the author and publishers desire to acknowledge their indebtedness to Miss J. G. Evans of Tung-Chou, for frontispiece and illustrations facing pages 30, 44, 118, 171, 217, 242, and 300; and to the Rev. C. S. Hays of Chefoo, for illus- tratioas facing pages 19, 70, aoo, and 251.
7
Within the Four Seas all are brethren.
ConfUcian Analects, XII., v. 4.
The scientific study of Man is the most difficult of all branches of knowledge.
O. W. Holmes.
We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful — nay, essential — to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
Carlyle.
S
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS.
INTRODUCTION.
WITNESS when put upon the stand is expected to tell
the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Many witnesses concerning the Chinese have told the truth, but perhaps few of them have succeeded in telling nothing but the truth, and no one of them has ever told the whole truth. No single individual, whatever the extent of his knowl- edge, could by any possibility know the whole truth about the Chinese. The present volume of essays is therefore open to objection from three different points of view.
First, it may be said that the attempt to convey to others an idea of the real characteristics of the Chinese is vain. Mr. George Wingrove Cooke, the China correspondent of the London Times in 1857-58, enjoyed as good an opportunity of seeing the Chinese under varied circumstances, and through the eyes of those well qualified to help him to a just under- standing of the people, as any writer on China up to that time. In the preface to his published letters, Mr. Cooke
9
lO
INTRODUCTION
apologises as follows for his failure to describe the Chinese character: “I have, in these letters, introduced no elaborate essay upon Chinese character. It is a great omission. No theme could be more tempting, no subject could afford wider scope for ingenious hypothesis, profound generalisation, and triumphant dogmatism. Every small critic will probably utterly despise me for not having made something out of such opportunities. The truth is, that I have written several very fine characters for the whole Chinese race, but having the misfortune to have the people under my eye at the same time with my essay, they were always saying something or doing something which rubbed so rudely against my hypothe- sis, that in the interest of truth I burnt several successive letters. I may add that I have often talked over this matter with the most eminent and candid sinologues, and have always found them ready to agree with me as to the impos- sibility of a conception of Chinese character as a whole. These difficulties, however, occur only to those who know the Chinese practically ; a smart writer, entirely ignorant of the subject, might readily strike off a brilliant and antithetical analysis, which should leave nothing to be desired but truth. Some day, perhaps, we may acquire the necessary knowledge to give to each of the glaring inconsistencies of a Chinaman’s mind its proper weight and influence in the general mass. At present, I, at least, must be content to avoid strict definitions, and to describe a Chinaman* by his most prominent qualities.”
Within the past thirty years, the Chinese has made himself a factor in the affairs of many lands. He is seen to be irre-
* It is a matter of surprise, and even more of regret, that this barba- rous compound seems to have rooted itself in the English language, to the exclusion of the proper word Chinese. We do not know of a foreign periodical in China in which natives of that country are not constantly called “ Chinamen,” nor of a single writer in the Empire who consistently avoids the use of the term.
INTRODUCTION
1 1
pressible; is felt to be incomprehensible. He cannot, indeed, be rightly understood in any country but China, yet the im- pression still prevails that he is a bundle of contradictions who cannot be understood at all. But after all there is no ap- parent reason, now that several hundred years of our ac- quaintance with China have elapsed, why what is actually known of its people should not be co-ordinated, as well as any other combination of complex phenomena.
A more serious objection to this particular volume is that the author has no adequate qualifications for writing it. The circumstance that a person has lived for twenty-two years in China is no more a guarantee that he is competent to write of the characteristics of the Chinese, than the fact that another man has for twenty-two years been buried in a silver mine is a proof that he is a fit person to compose a treatise on metal- lurgy, or on bi-metallism. China is a vast whole, and one who has never even visited more than half its provinces, and who has lived in but two of them, is certainly not entitled to generalise for the whole Empire. These papers were origi- nally prepared for the North- China Daily News of Shanghai, with no reference to any wider circulation. Some of the topics treated excited, however, so much interest, not only in China, but also in Great Britain, in the United States, and in Canada, that the author was asked to reproduce the articles in a permanent form.*
A third objection, which will be offered by some, is that parts of the views here presented, especially those which deal with the moral character of the Chinese, are misleading and unjust.
It should be remembered, however, that impressions are not like statistics which may be corrected to a fraction. They
* “ Chinese Characteristics ” was published in Shanghai in i8go; after being widely circulated throughout China and the East, the edition was exhausted more than two years ago.
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INTRODUCTION
rather resemble photographic negatives, no two of which may be alike, yet each of them may present truthfully something not observable in any of the rest. The plates on which the photographs are taken differ ; so do the lenses, and the develop- ers, and the resulting views differ too.
Many old residents of China, whose knowledge of the country is very much greater than that of the writer, have ex- pressed themselves as in substantial agreement with his opin- ions, while others, whose judgment is entitled to equal respect, think that a somewhat lighter colouring in certain parts would increase the fidelity of the too “monochromatic” picture. With this undoubtedly just criticism in mind, the work has been revised and amended throughout. While the exigencies of republication at this time have rendered convenient the omission of one-third of the characteristics originally dis- cussed, those that remain contain nevertheless the most im- portant portions of the whole, and the chapter on Content and Cheerfulness is altogether new.
There can be no valid excuse for withholding commendation from the Chinese for any one of the many good qualities which they possess and exhibit. At the same time, there is a danger of yielding to a priori considerations, and giving the Chinese credit for a higher practical morality than they can justly claim — an evil not less serious than indiscriminate condemnation. It is related of Thackeray, that he was once asked how it hap- pened that the good people in his novels were always stupid, and the bad people clever. To this the great satirist replied that he had no brains above his eyes. There is a wood-cut representing an oak tree, in the outlines of which the observer is invited to detect a profile of Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, standing with bowed head and folded arms. Pro- tracted contemplation frequently fails to discover any such profile, and it would seem that there must be some mistake, but when once it is clearly pointed out, it is impossible to look
INTRODUCTION
13
at the picture and not see the Napoleon too. In like manner, many things are to be seen in China which do not at first appear, and many of them once seen are never forgotten.
While it has been impossible to introduce a qualifying clause into every sentence which is general in its form, the reader is expressly warned that these papers are not intended to be generaUsations for a whole Empire, nor yet comprehensive abstracts of what foreigners have observed and experienced. What they are intended to be is merely a notation of the im- pression which has been made upon one observer, by a few \/ out of many “ Chinese Characteristics.” They are not meant as a portrait of the Chinese people, but rather as mere outline sketches in charcoal of some features of the Chinese people, as they have been seen by that one observer. Taken together, they constitute only a single ray, of which an indefinite number are required to form a complete beam of white light. They may also be considered as studies in induction, in which many particulars taken from the experience not of the writer only, but of various other individuals at various times, are grouped.
It is for this reason that the subject has been so largely treated by exemplification.
Mr. Meadows, the most philosophical of the many writers on China and the Chinese, expressed the opinion that the best way to convey to the mind of another person a correct idea of the genius of a foreign people would be to hand him for perusal a collection of notes, formed by carefully recording great numbers of incidents which had attracted one’s attention, particularly those that seemed at all extraordinary, together with the explanation of the extraordinary parts as given by natives of the country.
From a sufficient number of such incidents a general prin- ciple is inferred. The inferences may be doubted or denied, but such particulars as are cited cannot, for that reason alone, be set aside, being so far as they go truthful, and they must
INTRODUCTION
14
ultimately be reckoned with in any theory of the Chinese character.
The difficulty of comparing Chinese with Anglo-Saxons will be most strongly felt by those who have attempted it. To such it will soon become evident that many things which seem “ characteristic ” of the Chinese are merely Oriental traits ; but to what extent this is true, each reader in the light of his own experience must judge for himself.
It has been said that in the present stage of our intercourse with Chinese there are three ways in which we can come to some knowledge of their social life — by the study of their novels, their ballads, and their plays. Each of these sources of information doubtless has its worth, but there is likewise a fourth, more valuable than all of them combined, a source not open to every one who writes on China and the Chinese. It is the study of the family life of the Chinese in their own homes. As the topography of a district can be much better understood in the country than in the city, so it is with the characteristics of the people. A foreigner may live in a Chi- nese city for a decade, and not gain as much knowledge of the interior life of the people as he can acquire by living twelve months in a Chinese village. Next to the Family we must regard the Village as the unit of Chinese social life, and it is therefore from the standpoint of a Chinese village that these papers have been written. They are of purpose not intended to represent the point of view of a missionary, but that of an observer not consciously prejudiced, who simply reports what he sees. For this reason no reference is made to any charac- teristics of the Chinese as they may be modified by Christian- ity. It is not assumed that the Chinese need Christianity at all, but if it appears that there are grave defects in their char- acter, it is a fair question how those defects may be remedied.
The “ Chinese question,” as already remarked, is now far more than a national one. It is international. There is rea-
INTRODUCTION
15
son to think that in the twentieth century it will be an even more pressing question than at present. The problem of the means by which so vast a part of the human race may be im- proved cannot be without interest to any one who wishes well to mankind. If the conclusions to which we may find ourselves led are correct, they will be supported by a line of argument heretofore too much neglected. If these conclusions are wrong, they will, however supported, fall of themselves.
It is many years since Lord Elgin’s reply to an address from the merchants of Shanghai, but his words are true and pertinent to-day. “When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the country shall have been removed, Christian civilisation of the West will find itself face to face not with barbarism, but with an ancient civilisation in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claims to our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry which will then ensue, Christian civilisation will have to win its way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a faith which reaches to heaven furnishes better guarantees for public and private morality than one which does not rise above the earth.”
CHAPTER 1.
FACE,
.T first sight nothing can be more irrational than to call
that which is shared with the whole human race a “ char- acteristic ” of the Chinese. But the word “ face ” does not in China signify simply the front part of the head, but is literally a compound noun of multitude, with more meanings than we shall be able to describe, or perhaps to comprehend.
In order to understand, however imperfectly, what is meant by " face,” we must take account of the fact that as a race the Chinese have a strongly dramatic instinct. The theatre may almost be said to be the only national amusement, and the Chinese have for theatricals a passion like that of the English- man for athletics, or the Spaniard for bull-fights. Upon very slight provocation, any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. He throws himself into theatrical atti- tudes, performs the salaam, falls upon his knees, prostrates him- self and strikes his head upon the earth, under circumstances which to an Occidental seem to make such actions super- fluous, not to say ridiculous. A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms. When roused in self-defence he addresses two or three persons as if they were a multitude. He exclaims : “ I say this in the presence of You, and You, and You, who are all here present.” If his troubles are adjusted he speaks of him- self as having “ got off the stage ” with credit, and if they are not adjusted he finds no way to “retire from the stage.” All this, be it clearly understood, has nothing to do with realities.
The question is never of facts, but always of form. If a fine speech has been delivered at the proper time and in the proper way, the requirement of the play is met. We are not to go behind the scenes, for that would spoil all the plays in the world. Properly to execute acts like these in all the complex relations of life, is to have “ face.” To fail of them, to ignore them, to be thwarted in the performance of them, this is to “ lose face.” Once rightly apprehended, “ face ” will be found to be in itself a key to the combination lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese.
It should be added that the principles which regulate “face” and its attainment are often wholly beyond the intellectual apprehension of the Occidental, who is constantly forgetting the theatrical element, and wandering off into the irrelevant regions of fact. To him it often seems that Chinese “face” is not unlike the South Sea Island taboo, a force of undeniable potency, but capricious, and not reducible to rule, deserving only to be abolished and replaced by common sense. At this point Chinese and Occidentals must agree to disagree, for they can never be brought to view the same things in the same light. In the adjustment of the incessant quarrels which distract every hamlet, it is necessary for the “peace-talkers” to take as careful account of the balance of “ face ” as Euro- pean statesmen once did of the balance of power. The object in such cases is not the execution of even-handed justice, which, even if theoretically desirable, seldom occurs to an Oriental as a possibility, but such an arrangement as will dis- tribute to all concerned “ face ” in due proportions. The same principle often obtains in the settlement of lawsuits, a very large percentage of which end in what may be called a drawn game.
To offer a person a handsome present is to “ give him face.” But if the gift be from an individual it should be accepted only in part, but should seldom or never be altogether refused. A
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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
few examples of the thirst for keeping face will suffice for illus- tration. To be accused of a fault is to “lose face,” and the fact must be denied, no matter what the evidence, in order to save face. A tennis-ball is missed, and it is more than sus- pected that a coolie picked it up. He indignantly denies it, but goes to the spot where the ball disappeared, and soon finds it lying there (dropped out of his sleeve), remarking, “ Here is your ‘lost ’ ball.” The waiting-woman who secreted the penknife of a guest in her master’s house afterwards dis- covers it under the table-cloth, and ostentatiously produces it. In each case “ face ” is saved. The servant who has care- lessly lost an article which he knows he must replace or forfeit an equivalent from his wages, remarks loftily, as he takes his dismissal, “ The money for that silver spoon I do not want,” and thus his “ face ” is intact. A man has a debt owing to him which he knows that he shall not collect ; but going to the debtor, he raises a terrible disturbance, by which means he shows that he knows what ought to be done. He does not get the money, but he saves his “ face,” and thus secures himself from imposition in the future. A servant neglects or refuses to perform some duty. Ascertaining that his master intends to turn him off, he repeats his former offence, dismisses himself, and saves his “ face.”
To save one’s face and lose one’s life would not seem to us very attractive, but we have heard of a Chinese District Magistrate who, as a special favour, was allowed to be be- headed in his robes of office in order to save his face!
A Chinese Kitchen, Showing Method of Preparing Food.
CHAPTER II.
ECONOMY.
I ^HE word economy ’ signifies the rule by which the house J- should be ordered, especially with reference to the rela- tion between expenditure and income. Economy, as we understand the term, may be displayed in three several ways : by limiting the number of wants, by preventing waste, and by the adjustment of forces in such a manner as to make a little represent a great deal. In each of these ways the Chinese are pre-eminently economical.
One of the first things which impress the traveller in China is the extremely simple diet of the people. The vast bulk of the population seems to depend upon a few articles, such as rice, beans in various preparations, millet, garden vegetables, and fish. These, with a few other things, form the staple of countless millions, supplemented it may be on the feast-days, or other special occasions, with a bit of meat.
Now that so much attention is given in Western lands to the contrivance of ways in which to furnish nourishing food to the very poor, at a minimum cost, it is not without interest to learn the undoubted fact that, in ordinary years, it is in China quite possible to furnish wholesome food in abundant quantity at a cost for each adult of not more than two cents a day. Even in famine times, thou ands of persons have been kept alive for months on an allowance of not more than a cent and a half a day. This implies the general existence in
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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
China of a high degree of skill in the preparation of food. Poor and coarse as their food often is, insipid and even re- p)ulsive as it not infrequently seems to the foreigner, it is im- possible not to recognise the fact that, in the cooking and serving of what they have, the Chinese are past-masters of the culinary art. In this particular, Mr. Wingrove Cooke ranked them below the French, and above the English (and he might have added the Americans). Whether they are really below any one of these nationalities we are by no means so certain as Mr. Cooke may have been, but their superiority to some of them is beyond dispute. In the few simple articles which we have mentioned, it is evident that even from the point of view of the scientific physiologist, the Chinese have made a wise choice of their staple foods. The thoroughness of their mode of preparing food, and the great variety in which these few constituents are constantly presented, are known to all who have paid the least attention to Chinese cookery.
Another fact of extreme significance does not force itself upon our notice, but can easily be verified. There is very little waste in the preparation of Chinese food, and everything is made to do as much duty as possible. What there is left after an ordinary Chinese family have finished one of their meals would represent but a fraction of the net cost of the food. In illustration of this general fact, it is only necessary to glance at the physical condition of the Chinese dog or cat. On the leavings of human beings it is the unhappy function of these animals to “ live,” and their lives are uniformly pro- tracted at “ a poor dying rate.” The populations of new countries are proverbially wasteful, and we have not the least doubt that it would be possible to support sixty millions of Asiatics in comparative luxury with the materials daily wasted in a land like the United States, where a living is easily to be had. But we should like to see how many human beings could be fattened from what there is left after as many Chinese
ECONOMY
2 I
have “ eaten to repletion,” and the servants or children have all had their turn at the remains! Even the tea left in the cups is pom'ed back into the teapot to be heated again.
It is a fact which cannot fail to force itself upon our notice at every turn, that the Chinese are not as a race gifted with that extreme fastidiousness in regard to food which is fre- quently developed in Western lands. All is fish that comes to their net, and there is very little which does not come there first or last. In the northern parts of China the horse, the mule, the ox, and the donkey are in universal use, and in large districts the camel is made to do full duty. Doubtless it will appear to some of our readers that economy is carried too far, when we mention that it is the general practice to eat all of these animals as soon as they expire, no matter whether the cause of death be an accident, old age, or disease. This is done as a matter of course, and occasions no remark whatever, nor is the habit given up because the animal may chance to have died of some epidemic malady, such as the pleuro-pneu- monia in cattle. Such meat is not considered so wholesome as that of animals which have died of other diseases, and this truth is recognised in the lower scale of prices asked for it, but it is all sold, and is all eaten. Certain disturbances of the human organisations into which such diseased meat has entered are well recognised by the people, but it is doubtless considered more economical to eat the meat at the reduced rates, and run the risk of the consequences, which, it should be said, are by no means constant. Dead dogs and cats are subject to the same processes of absorption as dead horses, mules, and donkeys. We have been personally cognisant of several cases in which villagers cooked and ate dogs which had been purposely poisoned by strychnine to get rid of them. On one of these occasions some one was thoughtful enough to consult a foreign physician as to the probable re- sults, but as the animal was “ already in the pot,” the survivors
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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
could not make up their minds to forego the luxury of a feast, and no harm appeared to come of their indulgence!
Another example of Chinese economy in relation to the preparation of food is found in the nice adjustment of the material of the cooking-kettles to the exigencies of the requi- site fuel. The latter is scarce and dear, and consists generally of nothing but the leaves, stalks, and roots of the crops, mak- ing a rapid blaze which quickly disappears. To meet the needs of the case the bottoms of the boilers are made as thin as possible, and require very careful handling. The whole business of collecting this indispensable fuel is an additional example of economy in an extreme form. Every smallest child, who can do nothing else, can at least gather fuel. The vast army of fuel-gatherers, which in the autumn and winter overspread all the land, leave not a weed behind the hungry teeth of their bamboo rakes. Boys are sent into the trees to beat off with clubs the autumnal leaves, as if they were chest- nuts, and even straws are scarcely allowed leisure to show which way the wind blows, before some enterprising collector has “ seized ” them.
Every Chinese housewife knows how to make the most of her materials. Her dress is not in its pattern or its construc- tion wasteful like those of her sisters in Occidental countries, but all is planned to save time, strength, and material. The tiniest scrap of foreign stuff is always welcome to a Chinese woman, who will make it reappear in forms of utility if not of beauty, of which a whole parliament of authoresses of “ Do- mestic Economies” would never have dreamed. What can- not be employed in one place is sure to be just the thing for another, and a mere trifle of bias stuff is sufficient for the binding of a shoe. The benevolent person in London or New York who gives away the clothing for which he has no further use entertains a wild hope that it may not be the means of making the recipients paupers, and so do more harm than
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good. But whoever bestows similar articles upon the Chinese, though the stuffs which they use and the style of wear are so radically different from ours, has a well-grounded confidence that the usefulness of those particular articles has now at last begun, and will not be exhausted till there is nothing left of them for a base with which other materials can unite.
The Chinese often present their friends with complimentary inscriptions written on paper loosely basted upon a silk back- ground. Basting is adopted instead of pasting, in order that the recipient may, if he chooses, eventually remove the inscrip- tion, when he will have a very seix'iceable piece of silk!
Chinese economy is exhibited in the transactions of retail merchants, to whom nothing is too small for attention. A dealer in odds and ends, for example, is able to give the pre- cise number of matches in a box of each of the different kinds, and he knows to a fraction the profit on each box.
Every scrap of a Chinese account-book is liable to be utilised in pasting up windows, or in the covering of paper lanterns.
The Chinese constantly carry their economy to the point of depriving themselves of food of which they are really in need. They see nothing irrational in this, but do it as a matter of course. A good example is given in Dr. B. C. Henry’s “ The Cross and the Dragon.” He was carried by three coolies for five hoius a distance of twenty-three miles, his bearers then returning to Canton to get the breakfast which was furnished them. Forty-six miles before breakfast, with a heavy load half the way, to save five cents!
In another case two chair coolies had gone with a chair thirty-five miles, and were returning by boat, having had noth- ing to eat since 6 a.m., rather than pay three cents for two large bowls of rice. The boat ran aground, and did not reach Canton till 2 p.m. next day. Yet these men, having gone twenty-seven hours without food, carrying a load thirty-five
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CHINESE CH/tRACTERISTICS
miles, offered to take Dr. Henry fifteen miles more to Canton, and but for his baggage would have done so !
Many of the fruits of Chinese economy are not at all pleas- ing to the Westerners, but we cannot help admitting the genuine nature of the claim which may be built on them. In parts of the Empire, especially (strange to say) in the north, the children of both sexes roam around in the costume of the Garden of Eden, for many months of the year. This comes to be considered more comfortable for them, but the primary motive is economy. The stridulous squeak of the vast army of Chinese wheelbarrows is due to the absence of the few drops of oil which might stop it, but which never do stop it, because to those who are gifted with “ an absence of nerves ” the squeak is cheaper than the oil.
If a Japanese emigrates, it is specified in his contract that he is to be furnished daily with so many gallons of hot water, in which he may, according to custom, parboil himself. The Chinese have their bathing-houses too, but the greater part of the Chinese people never go near them, nor indeed ever saw one. “ Do you wash your child every day ? ” said an inquisi- tive foreign lady to a Chinese mother, who was seen throwing shovelfuls of dust over her progeny, and then wiping it off with an old broom. “ Wash him every day ! ” was the indig- nant response; “he was never washed since he was born! ” To the Chinese generally, the motto could never be made even intelligible which was put in his window by a dealer in soap, “ Cheaper than dirt.”
The Chinese doubtless regard the average foreigner as it is said the Italians do the English, whom they term “soap- wasters.” Washing of clothes in China by and for the Chi- nese there certainly is, but it is on a very subdued scale, and in comparison with what we call cleanliness it might almost be left out of account. Economy of material has much to do with this, as we cannot help thinking, for many Chinese appre-
ECONOMY
25
ciate clean things as much as we do, and some of them are models of neatness, albeit under heavy disadvantages.
It is due to the instinct of economy that it is generally im- possible to buy any tool ready-made. You get the parts in a “raw ” shape, and adjust the handles, etc., yourselves. It is generally cheaper to do this for one’s self than to have it done, and as every one takes this view of it, nothing is to be had ready-made.
We have spoken of economical adjustments of material, such as that found in ordinary houses, where a dim light, which costs next to nothing, is made to diffuse its darkness over two apartments by being placed in a hole in the dividing wall. The best examples of such adjustments are to be found in Chinese manufactures, such as the weaving of all kinds of fabrics, working in pottery, metal, ivoiyy etc. Industries of this sort do not seem to us to exemplify ingenuity so much as they illustrate Chinese economy. Many better ways can be devised of doing Chinese work than the ways which they adopt, but none which make insignificant materials go further than they do with the Chinese. They seem to be able to do almost everything by means of almost nothing, and this is a characteristic generally of their productions, whether simple or complex. It applies as well to their iron-foundries, on a minute scale of completeness in a small yard, as to a cooking- range of strong and perfect draft, made in an hour out of a pile of mud bricks, lasting indefinitely, operating perfectly, and costing nothing.
No better and more characteristic example of economy of materials in accomplishing great tasks could be found, even in China, than the arrangements, or rather the entire lack of arrangements, for the handling of the enormous amount of grain which is sent as tribute to Peking. This comes up the Peiho from Tientsin, and is discharged at T‘ung-chou. It would surprise a “ Corn Exchange ” merchant to find that all
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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
the machinery needed for unloading, measuring, and removing this mountain of rice and millet is simply an army of coolies, a supply of boxes made like a truncated cone, which are the “ bushel ” measures, and an indefinite number of reed mats. Only this and nothing more. The mats are spread on the ground, the grain is emptied, remeasured, sacked, and sent off, and the mats being taken up, the Emperor’s Com Exchange is once more a mere mud-bank!
On an American tobacco plantation one of the heaviest ex- penses is the building of the long and carefully constructed sheds for dryu'ng. In Chinese tobacco farms there is for this object no expense at all. The sheds are made of thatch, and when they are worn out the old material is just as good for fuel as the new. When the tobacco is picked, the stout, stiff stalks are left standing. Straw ropes are stretched along these stalks, and upon the ropes are hung the tobacco leaves, which are taken in at night with the ropes attached, like clothes hung to a line. Eor simplicity and effectiveness this device could hardly be excelled.
Every observant resident in China would be able to add to these illustrations of a Chinese social fact, but perhaps no more characteristic instance could be cited than the case of an old Chinese woman, who was found hobbling along in a painfully slow way, and on inquiry of whom it was ascertained that she was going to the home of a relative, so as to die in a place convenient to the family graveyard, and thus avoid the expense of coffin-bearers for so long a distance!
CHAPTER III.
INDUSTRY.
INDUSTRY is defined as habitual diligence in any employ- ment— steady attention to business. In this age of the world industry is one of the most highly prized among the virtues, and it is one which invariably commands respect.
The industry of a people, speaking roughly, may be said to unite the three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness ; or, to use a different e.xpression, it may be said to have two qualities of extension, and one of intension. By the quality of length, we mean the amount of time during which the in- dustry is exercised. By the quality of breadth, we mean the number of persons to whom the predicate of industrious may be fairly applied. By intension, we mean the amount of energy which is displayed in the “ habitual diligence,” and in “steady attention to business.” The aggregate result will be the product of these three factors. It is by no means always the case that the impressions of the casual traveller and those of the old residents are the same, but there can be little doubt that casual travellers, and residents of the longest standing, wall agree in a profound conviction of the diligence of the Chinese people. The very first glance which a new-comer gets of the Chinese, induces him to think that this people is carrying out in social affairs the maxim which John Wesley named as the rule for a successful church — “ All at it, and always at it.” Idleness in China is not conspicuous. Every one seons to be doing something. There are of course plenty
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of wealthy persons, albeit a mere microscopic fraction of the whole community, who can abundantly live without doing any work, but their life is not ordinarily of a kind which is exter- nally visible to the foreigner. Wealthy people in China do not commonly retire from business, but devote themselves to it with the same kind and degree of attention as when they were poor.
The Chinese classify themselves as Scholars, Farmers, Work- men, and Merchants. Let us glance at each of these subdivi- sions of society, and see what they have to say for the industry of the people.
It is exceedingly difficult for Occidentals to enter sympa- thetically into such a scheme of education as that of the Chinese. Its gross defects are not likely to be overlooked, but one feature of it is adapted to thrust itself on the attention at all times — it has no real rewards, except for diligence. The many back doors which are always open to those who have the money to purchase degrees would seem well calculated to dampen the ardour of any student, but such is not the main effect of the sale of office. The complaint is made in all the provinces that there are far more eligible candidates for every position than there are positions to be filled. All the ex- amination halls, from the lowest to the highest, seem to be perpetually crowded, and the number of students who com- pete in any single prefecture often rises to above ten thousand. When we consider the amount of mental toil which the mere entrance to any one of these examinations involves, we get a vivid conception of the intellectual industry of the Chinese. The traditional diligence of the standard heroes mentioned in the Trimetrical Classic, who studied by the light of a glow- worm, or who tied their books to the horns of the ox with which they were ploughing, is imitated at the present day, with various degrees of approximation, by thousands in all parts of China. In many cases this industry begins to dis-
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appear with the initial success of the first degree, but the Chinese do not consider such a one a scholar at all, but re- serve this title of honour for those who keep on in the narrow and thorny path, until at length their perseverance is crowned with success. In what land but China would it be possible to find examples of a grandfather, son, and grandson all com- peting in the same examination for the same degree, age and indomitable perseverance being rewarded at the age of eighty years by the long-coveted honour ?
In the spring of 1889 various memorials appeared in the Peking Gazette relating to aged candidates at the provincial examinations. The Governor- General reported that at the autumnal examination in Foochow nine candidates over eighty years of age, and two over ninety, went through the prescribed tests and sent in essays of which the composition was good and the handwriting firm and distinct. Aged candidates, he says, who have passed through an interval of sixty years from attaining their bachelor’s degree, and who have attended the three last examinations for the higher, are, if unsuccessful the fourth time, entitled to an honorary degree. The Governor of Honan in like manner reported thirteen candidates over eighty years of age, and one over ninety, who all “went through the whole nine days’ ordeal, and wrote essays which were perfectly accurate in diction and showed no signs of fail- ing years.” But even this astonishing record was surpassed in the province of Anhui, where thirty-five of the competitors were over eighty years of age, and eighteen over ninety! Could any other country afford a spectacle like this ?
If the life of the scholar in China is one of unremitting dili- gence, that of the farmer is not less so. His work, like that of a housekeeper, is never done. With the exception of a com- paratively brief period in the middle of the winter, throughout the northern provinces there never appears to be a time when there is not only something to do, but a great deal of it.
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Doubtless this is more or less true of farming everywhere, but the Chinese farmer is industrious with an industry which it would be difficult to surpass.
That which is true of the farmer class, is true with still greater emphasis of the mere laboirrer, who is driven by the constant and chronic reappearance of the wolf at his door to spend his life in an everlasting grind. As the farmer bestows the most painstaking thought and care upon every separate stalk of cabbage, picking off carefully each minute insect, thus at last tiring out the ceaseless swarms by his own greater perseverance, so does the labourer watch for the most insig- nificant job, that he may have something for his stomach and for his back, and for other stomachs and backs that are wholly dependent upon him. Those who have occasion to travel where cart-roads exist, will often be obliged to rise soon after midnight and pursue their journey, for such, they are told, is the custom. But no matter at what hour one is on the way, there are small bodies of peasants patrolling the roads, with fork in hand and basket on their back, watching for oppor- tunities to collect a little manure. When there is no other work pressing, this is an invariable and an inexhaustible re- source.
It is by no means uncommon to see those who are hard pressed to find the means of support, following two different lines of occupation which dovetail into each other. Thus the boatmen of Tientsin, whose business is spoiled by the closing of the rivers, take to the swift ice-sled, by which means it is possible to be transported rapidly at a minimum cost. In the same way, most of the rural population of some districts spend all the time which can be spared from the exigencies of farm work in making hats or in plaiting the braid, now so large an article of export. Chinese women are not often seen without a shoe-sole in their hands on which they are perpetually tak- ing stitches, even while talking gossip at the entrance of their
Passenger Boat on the Pei Ho. North China.
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alleys ; or perhaps it is a reel of cotton which they are spinning. But idle they are not.
The indefatigable activity of the classes which have been named is well matched by that of the merchants and their em- ployes. The life of a merchant’s clerk, even in Western lands, is not that of one who holds a sinecure, but as compared with that of a Chinese clerk it is comparative idleness. For to the work of the latter there is no end. His holidays are few and his tasks heavy, though they may be interspersed with periods of comparative torpor.
Chinese shops are always opened early, and they close late. The system of bookkeeping by a species of double entry ap- pears to be so minute that the accountants are often kept busy till a very late hour recording the sales and balancing the entries. When nothing else remains to be done, clerks can be set to sorting over the brass cash taken in, in quest of rare coins which may be sold at a profit.
It is a matter of surprise that the most hard-worked class of the Chinese race is that class which is most envied, and into which every ambitious Chinese strives to raise himself — to wit, the official. The number and variety of transactions with which a Chinese official of any rank must occupy himself, and for the success of which he is not only theoretically but very practically responsible, is likewise sirrprising. How would our Labour Unions, who are so strenuous about the coming Eight Hours a Day, relish a programme of a day’s work such as the following, which is taken from a statement made to an inter- preter in one of the Foreign Legations in Peking by an emi- nent Chinese statesman? “ I once asked a member of the Chinese cabinet, who was complaining of fatigue and over- work, for an account of his daily routine. He replied that he left home every morning at two o’clock, as he was on duty at the Palace from three to six. As a member of the Privy Council, he was engaged in that body from six until nine.
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From nine until eleven he was at the War Department, of which he was President. Being a member of the Board of Punishment, he was in attendance at the office of that body daily from twelve until two, and, as one of the senior Minis- ters of the Foreign Office, he spent every day, from two till five or six in the afternoon, there. These were his regular daily duties. In addition to them he was frequently appointed to serve on special boards or commissions, and these he sand- wiched in between the others as he could. He seldom reached home before seven or eight o’clock in the evening.” It is not strange to be told that this officer died six months after this conversation, from overwork and exhaustion, nor is it at all unlikely that the same state of things may put an end to many careers in China the continuance of which would have been valuable to the interests of the government.
The quality of extension, of which we have spoken, applies to the number of those who are industrious, but it also applies to the extent of time covered by that industry, which, as we have seen, is very great. The Chinese day begins at a dim period, often not at a great remove from midnight. The Emperor holds his daily audiences at an hour when every Court of Europe is wrapped in the embrace of Morpheus. To an Occidental this seems simply inexplicable, but to a Chinese it doubtless appears the most natural thing in the world. And the conduct of the Son of Heaven is imitated more or less closely by the subjects of the Son of Heaven, in all parts of his Empire. The copper workers of Canton, the tinfoil workers of Foochow, the wood-carvers of Ningpo, the rice-mill workers of Shanghai, the cotton-cleaners and workers in the treadmill for bolting flour in the northern provinces, may all be heard late at night, and at a preposterous hour in the morning. Long before daylight the traveller comes upon a countryman who has already reached a distance of many miles from his home, where he is posted in the darkness waiting for the com- ing of daylight, when he will begin the sale of his cabbages!
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By the time an Occidental has had his breakfast, a Chinese market is nearly over. There are few more significant con- trasts than are suggested by a stroll along the principal street in Shanghai, at the hour of half-past five on a summer’s morn- ing. The lordly European, who built those palaces which line the water-front, and who does his business therein, is conspicuous by his total absence, but the Asiatic is on hand in full force, and has been on hand for a long time. It will be hours before the Occidentals begin to jostle the Chinese from the sidewalks, and to enter with luxurious ease on their round of work, and by that time the native will have finished half his day’s labour.
Sir John Davis was quite right in his comments on the cheerful labour of the Chinese, as a sign that their government has succeeded in securing them great content with their con- dition. This quality of their labour is one of its most striking characteristics, and to be comprehended must be long observed and well weighed.
It remains to say a word of the quality of intension in Chi- nese industry. The Chinese are Asiatics, and they work as such. It is in vain to attempt to make over this virile race on the model of our own. To us they certainly appear lacking in the heartiness which we esteem so highly. The Anglo- Saxon needs no scriptural hint to enable him to see the im- portance of doing with his might what his hand finds to do, but the Chinese cannot be made to change his pace, though the combined religions and philosophy of the ages were brought to bear upon him. He has profited by the accumu- lated experience of millenniums, and, like the gods of Homer, he is never in a hurry.
One cannot help forecasting a time when the white and the yellow races will come into a keener competition than any yet known. When that inevitable day shall have arrived, which of them will have to go to the wall?
Surely if Solomon was right in his economic maxim that
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the hand of the diligent maketh rich, the Chinese ought to be among the most prosperous of the peoples of the earth. And so they doubtless would be, if there were with them a balance of virtues, instead of a conspicuous absence of some of those fundamental qualities which, however they may be enumerated as “ constant virtues,” are chiefly “ constant ” in their absence. When, by whatever means, these qualities of honesty and sin- cerity shall have been restored to their theoretical place in the Chinese moral consciousness, then (and not sooner) will the Chinese reap the full reward of their unmatched Industry.
CHAPTER IV.
POLITENESS.
There are two quite different aspects in which the polite- ness of the Chinese, and of Oriental peoples generally, may be viewed — the one of appreciation, the other of criti- cism. The Anglo-Saxon, as we are fond of reminding our- selves, has, no doubt, many virtues, and among them is to be found a very large percentage of fortiter in re, but a very small percentage of suaviter in inodo. When, therefore, we come to the Orient, and find the vast populations of the immense Asi- atic continent so greatly our superiors in the art of lubricating the friction which is sure to arise in the intercourse of man with man, we are filled with that admiration which is the tribute of those who cannot do a thing to those who can do it easily and well. The most bigoted critic of the Chinese is forced to admit that they have brought the practice of politeness to a pitch of perfection which is not only unknown in Western lands, but, previous to experience, is unthought of and almost unimaginable.
The rules of ceremony, we are reminded in the Classics, are three hundred, and the rules of behaviour three thousand. Under such a load as this, it would seem unreasonable to hope for the continuance of a race of human beings, but we very soon discover that the Chinese have contrived to make their ceremonies, as they have made their education, an instinct rather than an acquirement. The genius of this people has made the punctilio, which in Occidental lands is relegated to
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the use of courts and to the intercourse of diplomatic life, a part of the routine of daily contact with others. We do not mean that in their everyday life the Chinese are bound by such an intricate and complex mass of rules as we have men- tioned, but that the code, like a set of holiday clothes, is always to be put on when the occasion for it arises, which happens at certain junctures the occurrence of which the Chinese recog- nise by an unerring instinct. On such occasions, not to know what to do would be for a Chinese as ridiculous as for an educated man in a Western land not to be able to tell, on occasion, how many nine times nine are.
The difficulty of Occidental appreciation of Chinese polite- ness is that we have in mind such ideas as are embodied in the definition which affirms that “ politeness is real kindness, kindly expressed.” So it may be in the view of a civilisation which has learned to regard the welfare of one as (theoreti- cally) the welfare of all, but in China politeness is nothing of this sort. It is a ritual of technicalities which, like all techni- calities, are important, not as the indices of a state of mind or of heart, but as individual parts of a complex whole. The entire theory and practice of the use of honorific terms, so bewildering, not to say maddening, to the Occidental, is sim- ply that these expressions help to keep in view those fixed re- lations of graduated superiority which are regarded as essen- tial to the conservation of society. They also serve as lubri- cating fluids to smooth human intercourse. Each antecedent has its consequent, and each consequent its antecedent, and when both antecedent and consequent are in the proper place, everything goes on well. It is like a game of chess in which the first player observes, “ I move my insignificant King s pawn two squares.” To which his companion responds, “ I move my humble King’s pawn in the same manner.” His antagonist then announces, “ I attack yoru' honourable King’s pawn with my contemptible King’s knight, to his King’s
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37
bishop’s mean third,” and so on through the game. The game is not affected by the employment of the adjectives, but just as the chess-player who should be unable to announce his next move would make himself ridiculous by attempting what he does not understand, so the Chinese who should be igno- rant of the proper ceremonial reply to any given move is the laughing-stock of every one, because in the case of the Chinese the adjectives are the game itself, and not to know them is to know nothing.
At the same time, the rigidity of Chinese etiquette varies directly as the distance from the centres at which it is most essential, and when one gets among rustics, though there is the same appreciation of its necessity, there is by no means the familiarity with the detailed requirements which is found in an trrban population.
But it must at the same time be admitted that there are ver}^ few Chinese who do not know the proper thing to be done at a given time, incomparably better than the most culti- vated foreigner, who, as compared with them, is a mere infant in arms ; generally, unless he has had a long preliminary ex- perience, filled with secret terror lest he should make a wrong move, and thus betray the superficial nature of his knowledge. It is this evident and self-confessed incapacity to comply with the very alphabet of Chinese ceremonial politeness which makes the educated classes of China look with such undis- guised (and not unnatural) contempt on the “ Barbarians,” who do not understand “ the round and the square,” and who, even when they have been made acquainted with the beauties of the usages of polite life, manifest such disdainful indiffer- ence, as well as such invincible ignorance.
Politeness has been likened to an air-cushion. There is nothing in it, but it eases the jolts wonderfully. At the same time it is only fair to add that the politeness which the Chinese exercises to the foreigner (as well as much of that which he
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displays to his own people) is oftener prompted by a desire to show that he really understands the proper moves to be made, than by a wish to do that which will be agreeable to his guest. He insists on making a fire which you do not want, in order to steep for you a cup of tea which you detest, and in so doing fills your eyes with smoke, and your throat with a sensation of having swallowed a decoction of marshmallows ; but the host has at least established the proposition that he knows how a guest ought to be treated, and if the guest is not pleased, so much the worse for the guest. In the same man- ner the rural host, who thinks it is his duty to have the humble apartment in which you are to be lodged, swept and (figura- tively) garnished, postpones this process until you have already arrived, and despite your entreaties to desist he will not, though he put your eyes out by raising the dust of ages. The Book of Rites teaches, perhaps, that a room shall be swept, and swept it shall be, whatever the agonies of the traveller in the process. The same rule holds at feasts, those terrors of the uninitiated (and not seldom of the too initiated), where the zealous host is particular to pile on your plate the things that it is good for you to like, regardless of the fact that you do not want them and cannot swallow a morsel of them. So much the worse for you, he seems to say, but of one thing he is sure, he will not be lacking in /lis part. No one shall be able to accuse him of not having made the proper moves at the proper times. If the foreigner does not know the game, that is his own affair, not that of the host.
It was upon this principle that a Chinese bride, whose duty it had become to call upon a foreign lady, deliberately turned her back upon the latter, and made her obeisance towards a totally different quarter, to the amazement and annoyance of her hostess. Upon subsequent inquiry it turned out that the bride had performed her prostration to the north because that is the direction of the abode of the Emperor, no attention
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being paid to the circumstance that the person to whom the bride was supposed to be paying her respects was on the south side of the room. If the foreign lady did not know enough to take her place on the proper side of the room, the bride did not consider that any concern of hers ; she, at least, would show that she knew in what direction to knock her head!
Chinese politeness often assumes the shape of a gift. This, as already remarked, gives the recipient “ face.” There are certain stereotyped forms which such offerings take. One who has much to do with the Chinese will be always liable to deposits of packages, neatly tied up in red paper, containing a mass of greasy cakes which he cannot possibly eat, but which the giver will not take back, even though he is informed by the unwilling recipient (driven to extremities) that he shall be obliged to give them all to some other Chinese.
Chinese politeness by no means forbids one to “ look a gift horse in the mouth.” One is often asked how much a present cost him, and guests in taking leave of a host or hostess con- stantly use the formula : “ I have made you much trouble ; I have forced you to spend a great deal of money I ”
A foreigner who had been invited to a wedding, at which bread-cakes are provided in abundance, observed that when the feast was well advanced a tray was produced containing only two or three bread-cakes, which were ostentatiously of- fered as being hot (if any preferred them so). They were first passed to the foreigner as the guest of honour, who merely declined them with thanks. For some unexplained reason, this seemed to throw a kind of gloom over the proceedings, and the tray was withdrawn without being passed to any one else. It is the custom for each guest at a wedding to con- tribute a fixed sum towards the expenses of the occasion. It was the usage of this locality to collect these contributions while the guests were still at the table, but as it would not
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conform to Chinese ideas of propriety to ask a guest for his offering, it was done under the guise of passing him hot bis- cuit. Every one understood this polite fiction except the ill- informed foreigner, whose refusal rendered it improper for any one else to make his contribution at that time. At a subse- quent wedding to which he was invited in the same family, this foreigner was interested in hearing the master of cere- monies, taught by dear experience, remark to the guests with more than Occidental directness, “ This is the place for those who have accounts to come in and settle them ! ”
After all abatements have been made for the tediously minute and often irksome detail of trifles of which Chinese politeness takes account, for all of which it prescribes regula- tions, it still remains true that we have much to learn from the Chinese in the item of social intercourse. It is quite possible to retain our sincerity without retaining all our brusqueness, and the sturdy independence of the Occident would be all the better for the admixture of a certain amount of Oriental suavity.
There are, however, many Occidentals who could never be brought to look at the matter in this light. An acquaintance of the writer’s resided for so many years in Paris that he had unconsciously adopted the manners of that capital. When at length he returned to London, he was in the habit of removing his hat, and making a courteous bow to every friend whom he met. Upon one occasion, one of the latter returned his salu- tations with the somewhat unsympathetic observation, “ See here, old fellow, Tione of yotcr French monkey tricks here ! ” Happy the man who is able to combine all that is best in the East and in the West, and who can walk securely along the narrow and often thorny path of the Golden Mean.
CHAPTER V.
THE DISREGARD OF TIME.
IT is a maxim of the developed civilisation of our day, that “time is money.” The complicated arrangements of modem life are such that a business man in business hours is able to do an amount and variety of business which, in the past century, would have required the expenditure of time in- definitely greater. Steam and electricity have accomplished this change, and it is a change for which the Anglo-Saxon race was prepared beforehand by its constitutional tendencies. Whatever may have been the habits of our ancestors when they had little or nothing to do but to eat, drink, and fight, we find it difficult to imagine a period when our race was not characterised by that impetuous energy which ever drives the individuals of it onward to do something else, as soon as another something is finished.
There is a significant difference in the salutations of the Chinese and of the Anglo-Saxon. The former says to his comrade whom he casually meets, “ Have you eaten rice ? ” The latter asks, “ How do you do ? ” Doing is the normal condition of the one, as eating is the normal condition of the other. From that feeling which to us has become a second nature, that time is money, and under ordinary circumstances is to be improved to its final second, the Chinese, like most Orientals, are singularly free. There are only twelve hours in the Chinese day, and the names of these hours do not desig- nate simply the point where one of them gives place to another,
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but denote as well all the time covered by the twelfth part of a day which each of them connotes. In this way the term “ noon,” which would seem as definite as any, is employed of the entire period from eleven to one o’clock. “ What time is it,” a Chinese inquired in our hearing, “ when it is noon by the moon? ” Phrased in less ambiguous language, the question which he intended to propound was this : “ What is the time of night when the moon is at the meridian ? ”
Similar uncertainties pervade almost all the notes of time which occur in the language of everyday life. “ Sunrise ” and ” sunset ” ai'e as exact as anything in Chinese can be expected to be, though used with much latitude (and much longitude as well), but “ midnight,” like “ noon,” means noth- ing in particular, and the ordinary division of the night by “ watches ” is equally vague, with the exception of the last one, which is often associated with the appearance of daylight. Even in the cities the “ watches ” are of more or less uncertain duration. Of the portable time-pieces which we designate by this name, the Chinese as a people know nothing, and few of those who really own watches govern their movements by them, even if they have the watches cleaned once every few years and ordinarily keep them running, which is not often the case. The common people are quite content to tell their time by the altitude of the sun, which is variously described as one, two, or more “ flagstaffs,” or if the day is cloudy a general result can be arrived at by observing the contraction and dilatation of the pupil of a cat’s eye, and such a result is quite accurate enough for all ordinary purposes.
The Chinese use of time corresponds to the exactness of their measures of its flight. According to the distinction described by Sydney Smith, the world is divided into two classes of persons, the antediluvians and the post-diluvians. Among the latter the discovery has been made that the age of man no longer runs into the centuries which verge on a
THE DISREGARD OF TIME
43
millennium, and accordingly they study compression, and adaptation to their environment. The antediluvians, on the contrary, cannot be made to realise that the days of Methu- saleh have gone by, and they continue to act as if life were still laid out on the patriarchal plan.
Among these “ antediluvians ” the Chinese are to be reck- oned. A good Chinese story-teller, such as are employed in the tea-shops to attract and retain customers, reminds one of Tennyson’s “ Brook.” Men may come and men may go, but he goes on “ forever ever.” The same is true of theatrical exhibitions, which sometimes last for days, though they fade into insignificance in comparison with those of Siam, where we are assured by those who claim to have survived one of them that they are known to hold for two months together! The feats of Chinese jugglers when well done are exceedingly clever and very amusing, but they have one fatal defect — they are so long drawn out by the prolix and inane conversation of the participants, that long before the jugglers finish, the for- eign spectator will have regretted that he ever weakly con- sented to patronise them. Not less formidable, but rather far more so, are the interminable Chinese feasts, with their almost incredible number and variety of courses, the terror and de- spair of all foreigners who have experienced them, although to the Chinese these entertainments seem but too short. One of their most pensive sayings observes that “ there is no feast in the world which must not break up at last,” though to the unhappy barbarian lured into one of these traps this hopeful generality is often lost in despair of the particular.
From his earliest years, the Chinese is thoroughly accus- tomed to doing everything on the antediluvian plan. When he goes to school, he generally goes for the day, extending to all the period from sunrise to dark, with one or two inter- missions for food. Of any other system, neither pupils nor master have ever heard. The examinations for degrees are
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protracted through several days and nights, with all grades of severity, and while most of the candidates experience much inconvenience from such an irrational course, it would be difficult to convince any of them of its inherent absurdity as a test of intellectual attainments.
The products of the minds of those thus educated are redo- lent of the processes through which they have passed. The Chinese language itself is essentially antediluvian, and to over- take it requires the lifetime of a Methusaleh. It is as just to say of the ancient Chinese as of the ancient Romans, that if they had been obliged to learn their own language they would never have said or written anything worth setting down! Chinese histories are antediluvian, not merely in their attempts to go back to the ragged edge of zero for a point of depart- ure, but in the interminable length of the sluggish and turbid current which bears on its bosom not only the mighty vegeta- tion of past ages, but wood, hay, and stubble past all reckon- ing. None but a relatively timeless race could either compose or read such histories ; none but the Chinese memory could store them away in its capacious “abdomen.”
Chinese disregard of time is manifested in their industry, the quality of intension in which we have already remarked to be very different from that in the work of Anglo-Saxons.
How many of those who have had the pleasure of building a house in China, with Chinese contractors and workmen, thirst to do it again? The men come late and go early. They are perpetually stopping to drink tea. They make long journeys to a distant lime-pit carrying a few quarts of liquid mud in a cloth bag, when by using a wheelbarrow one man could do the work of three ; but this result is by no means the one aimed at. If there is a slight rain all work is suspended. There is generally abundant motion with but little progress, so that it is often difficult to perceive what it is which repre- sents the day’s “ labour ” of a gang of men. We have known
Carpenters Sawing Large Timber.
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45
a foreigner, dissatisfied with the slow progress of his carpen- ters in lathing, accomplish while they were eating their dinner as much work as all four of them had done in half a day.
The mere task of keeping their tools in repair is for Chinese workmen a serious matter in expenditure of time. If the tools belong to the foreigner, however, there is no embarrassment on this score. They are broken mysteriously, and yet no one has touched them. lion est inventus is the appropriate motto for them all. Poles and small rafters are pitched over the wall, and all the neighbourhood loins appear to be girded with the rope which was purchased for supporting the staging. During the entire progress of the work, each day is a crisis. All previous experience goes for nothing. The sand, the lime, the earth of this place will not do for any of the uses for which sand, lime, and earth are in general supposed to be adapted. The foreigner is helpless. He is aptly represented by Gulliver held down by threads, which, taken together, are too much for him. Permanently have we enshrined in our memory a Cantonese contractor, whose promises, like his money, vanished in smoke, for he was unfortunately a victim of the opium pipe. At last, forbearance having ceased to be a virtue, he was confronted with a formidable bill of particulars of the things wherein he had come short. “ You were told the size of the glass. You measured the windows three several times. Every one of those you have made is wrong, and they are useless. Not one of your doors is properly put together. There is not an ounce of glue about them. The flooring- boards are short in length, short in number, full of knot-holes, and wholly unseasoned.” After the speaker had proceeded in this way for some time, the mild-mannered Cantonese gazed at him sadly, and when he brought himself to speak he re- marked, in a tone of gentle remonstrance; “Don’t say dat! Don’t say dat ! No ge7itleman talk like dat ! ”
To the Chinese the chronic impatience of the Anglo-Saxon
46
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
is not only unaccountable, but quite unreasonable. It has been wisely suggested that they consider this trait in our character as objectionable as we do their lack of sincerity.
In any case, appreciation of the importance of celerity and promptness is difficult to cultivate in a Chinese. We have known a bag full of foreign mail detained for some days between two cities twelve miles apart, because the carrier’s donkey was ailing and needed rest! The administration of the Chinese telegraph system is frequently a mere travesty of what it might be and ought to be.
But in no circumstances is Chinese indifference to the lapse of lime more annoying to a foreigner than when the occasion is a mere social call. Such calls in Western lands are recog- nised as having certain limits, beyond which they must not be protracted. In China, however, there are no limits. As long as the host does not offer his guest accommodations for the night, the guest must keep on talking, though he be expiring with fatigue. In calling on foreigners the Chinese can by no possibility realise that there is an element of time, which is precious. They will sit by the hour together, offering few or no observations of their own, and by no means offering to depart. The excellent pastor who had for his motto the say- ing, “ The man who wants to see me is the man I want to see,” would have modified this dictum materially had he lived for any length of time in China. After a certain experience of this sort, he would not improbably have followed the ex- ample of another busy clergyman, who hung conspicuously in his study the scriptural motto, “The Lord bless thy goings out!" The mere enunciation of his business often seems to cost a Chinese a mental wrench of a violent character. For a long time he says nothing, and he can endure this for a period of time sufficient to wear out the patience of ten Euro- peans. Then, when he begins to speak, he realises the truth of the adage which declares that “it is easy to go on the
THE DISREGARD OF TIME
47
mountains to fight tigers, but to open your mouth and out with a thing — this is hard!” Happy is the foreigner situated like the late lamented Dr. Mackenzie, who, finding that his incessant relays of Chinese guests, the friends “ who come but never go,” were squandering the time which belonged to his hospital work, was wont to say to them, “ Sit down and make yourselves at home ; I have urgent business, and must be ex- cused.” And yet more happy would he be if he were able to imitate the naive terseness of a student of Chinese who, hav- ing learned a few phrases, desired to experiment with them on the teacher, and who accordingly filled him with stupefaction by remarking at the end of a lesson, “ Open the door! Go! ”
CHAPTER VI.
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY.
The first impression which a stranger receives of the Chi- nese is that of uniformity. Their physiognomy appears to be all of one type, they all seem to be clad in one perpetual blue, the “ hinges ” of the national eye do not look as if they were “put on straight,’’ and the resemblance between one Chinese cue and another is the likeness between a pair of peas from the same pod. But in a very brief experience the most unobservant traveller learns that, whatever else may be predicated of the Chinese, a dead level of uniformity cannot be safely assumed. The speech of any two districts, no matter how contiguous, varies in some interesting and perhaps unac- countable ways. Divergences of this sort accumulate until they are held to be tantamount to a new “ dialect,” and there are not wanting those who will gravely assure us that in China there are a great number of different “languages” spoken, albeit the written character is the same. The same variations, as we are often reminded, obtain in regard to customs, which, according to a saying current among the Chinese, do not run uniform for ten li together, a fact of which it is impossible not to witness singular instances at every turn. A like diversity is found to prevail in those standards of quantity upon the ab- solute invariability of which so much of the comfort of life in Western lands is found to depend.
The existence of a double standard of any kind, which is
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY
49
often so keen an annoyance to an Occidental, is an equally keen joy to the Chinese. Two kinds of cash, two kinds of weights, two kinds of measures, these seem to him natural and normal, and by no means open to objection. A man who made meat dumplings for sale was asked how many of these dumplings were made in a day ; to which he replied that they used about “one hundred [Chinese] pounds of flour,” the un- known relation between this amount of flour and the number of resultant dumplings being judiciously left to the inquirer to conjecture for himself. In like manner, a farmer who is asked the weight of one of his oxen gives a figure which seems much too low, until he explains that he has omitted to estimate the bones! A servant who was asked his height mentioned a measure which was ridiculously inadequate to cover his length, and upon being questioned admitted that he had left out of account all above his shoulders! He had once been a soldier, where the height of the men’s clavicle is important in assign- ing the carrying of burdens. And since a Chinese soldier is to all practical purposes complete without his head, this was omitted. Of a different sort was the measurement of a rustic who affirmed that he lived “ ninety li from the city,” but upon cross-examination he consented to an abatement, as this was reckoning both to the city and back, the real distance being, as he admitted, only “ forty-five li one way ! ”
The most conspicuous instance of this variability in China is seen in the method of reckoning the brass cash, which con- stitute the only currency of the Empire. The system is every- where a decimal one, which is the easiest of all systems to be reckoned, but no one is ever sure, until he has made particular inquiries, what number of pieces of brass cash are expected in any particular place to pass for a hundred. He will not need to extend his travels over a very large part of the eighteen provinces to find that this number varies, and varies with a lawlessness that nothing can explain, from the full hundred
5°
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
which is the theoretical “ string,” to 99, 98, 96, 83 (as in the capital of Shansi), down to 33, as in the eastern part of the province of Chihli, and possibly to a still lower number else- where. The same is true, but in a more aggravated degree, of the weight by which silver is sold. No two places have the same “ ounce,” unless by accident, and each place has a great variety of different ounces, to the extreme bewilderment of the stranger, the certain loss of all except those who deal in silver, and the endless vexation of all honest persons, of whom there are many, even in China. The motive for the perpetuation of this monetary chaos is obvious, but we are at present concerned only with the fact of its existence.
The same holds true universally of measures of all sorts. The bushel of one place is not the same as that of any other, and the advantage which is constantly taken of this fact in the exactions connected with the grain tax would easily cause political disturbances among a less peaceable people than the Chinese. So far is it from being true that " a pint is a pound the world around,” in China a “ pint ” is not a pint, nor is a “ pound ” a pound. N ot only does the theoretical basis of each vary, but it is a very common practice (as in the salt monopoly, for example) to fix some purely arbitrary standard, such as twelve ounces, and call that a pound (catty). The purchaser pays for sixteen ounces and receives but twelve, but then it is openly done and is done by all dealers within the same range, so that there is no fraud, and if the people think of it at all, it is only as an “ old-time custom ” of the salt trade. A similar uncertainty prevails in the measurement of land. In some districts the “ acre ” is half as large again as in others, and those who happen to live on the boundary are obliged to keep a double set of measuring apparatus, one for each kind of “ acre.”
It is never safe to repeat any statement (as travellers in China are constantly led to do) in regard to the price of each
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY
51
“catty” of grain or cotton, until one has first informed him- self what kind of “ catty ” they have at that point. The same holds as to the amount of any crop yielded per “ acre,” statis- tics of which are not infrequently presented in ignorance of the vital fact that “ acre ” is not a fixed term. That a like state of things prevails as to the terms employed to measure distance, every traveller in China is ready to testify. It is always necessary in land travel to ascertain, when the distance is given in “ miles ” (//), whether the “ miles ” are “ large ” or not! That there is some basis for estimates of distances we do not deny, but what we do deny is that these estimates or measurements are either accurate or uniform. It is, so far as we know, a universal experience that the moment one leaves a great imperial highway the “ miles ” become “ long.” If 1 20 li constitute a fair day’s journey on the main road, then on country roads it will take fully as long to go 1 00 li, and in the mountains the whole day will be spent in getting over 80 li. Besides this, the method of reckoning is frequently based, not on absolute distance, even in a Chinese sense, but on the rela- tive difficulty of getting over the ground. Thus it will be “ninety//” to the top of a mountain the summit of which would not actually measure half that distance from the base, and this number will be stoutly held to, on the ground that it is as much trouble to go this “ninety //” as it would be to do that distance on level ground. Another somewhat peculiar fact emerges in regard to linear measurements, namely, that the distance from A to B is not necessarily the same as the distance from B to A! It is vain to cite Euclidian postulates that “ quantities which are equal to the same quantity are equal to each other.” In China this statement requires to be modified by the insertion of a negative. We could name a section of one of the most important highways in China, which from north to south is 183 li in length, while from south to north it is 190 li, and singularly enough, this holds true no
52
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
matter how often you travel it or how carefully the tally is kept! *
Akin to this is another intellectual phenomenon, to wit, that in China it is not true that the “ whole is equal to the sum of all its parts.” 'I'his is especially the case in river travel. On inquiry you ascertain that it is “forty li" to a point ahead. Upon more careful analysis, this “ forty ” turns out to be com- posed of two “ eighteens,” and you are struck dumb with the statement that “ four nines are forty, are they not ? ” In the
* Since this was written, we have met in Mr. Baber’s “ Travels in West- ern China ” with a confirmation of the view here taken. “ We heard, for instance, with incredulous ears, that the distance between two places depended upon which end one started from ; and all the informants, separately questioned, would give the same differential estimate. Thus from A to B would be unanimously called one mile, while from B to A would, with equal unanimity, be set down as three. An explanation of this offered by an intelligent native was this : Carriage is paid on a basis of so many cash per mile, it is evident that a coolie ought to be paid at a higher rate if the road is uphill. Now it would be very troublesome to adjust a scale of wages rising with the gradients of the road. It is much more convenient for all parties to assume that the road in diffi- cult or precipitous places is longer. This is what has been done, and these conventional distances are now all that the traveller will succeed in ascertaining. ‘But,’ I protested, ‘on the same principle, wet weather must elongate the road, and it must be farther by night than by day.’ ‘ Very true, but a little extra payment adjusts that.’ This system may be convenient for the natives, but the traveller finds it a continual annoy- ance. The scale of distances is something like this : On level ground, one statute mile is called two li ; on ordinary hill roads, not very steep, one mile is called five li ; on very steep roads, one mile is called fifteen li. The natives of Yunnan, being good mountaineers, have a tendency to underrate the distance on level ground, but there is so little of it in their country, that the future traveller need scarcely trouble himself with the consideration. It will be sufficient to assume five local li, except in very steep places, as being one mile.”
In Mr. Little’s “ Through the Yang-tse Gorges,” he mentions a stage which down the river was called ninety h, while up-stream it was 120 li. He estimates 3.62 li to a statute mile, or 250 to a degree of latitude.
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY
53
same manner, “ three eighteens ” make “ sixty,” and so on generally. We have heard of a case in which an imperial courier failed to make a certain distance in the limits of time allowed by rule, and it was set up in his defence that the ‘‘sixty //” were “large.” As this was a fair plea, the magis- trate ordered the distance measured, when it was found that it was in reality “ eighty-three //,” and it has continued to be so reckoned ever since.
Several villages scattered about at distances from a city varying from one li to six, may each be called “ The Three- Li Village.” One often notices that a distance which would otherwise be reckoned as about a //, if there are houses on each side of the road, is called five li, and every person in that hamlet will gravely assure us that such is the real length of the street.
Under these circumstances, it cannot be a matter of sur- prise to find that the regulation of standards is a thing which each individual undertakes for himself. The steel-yard maker perambulates the street, and puts in the little dots (called “ stars ”) according to the preferences of each customer, who will have not less than two sets of balances, one for buying and one for selling. A ready-made balance, unless it might be an old one, is not to be had, for the whole scale of stand- ards is in a fluid condition, to be solidified only by each suc- cessive purchaser.
The same general truth is illustrated by the statements in regard to age, particularity in which is a national trait of the Chinese. While it is easy to ascertain one’s age with exact- ness, by the animal governing the year in which he was born, and to which he therefore “ belongs,” nothing is more com- mon than to hear the wildest approximation to exactness. An old man is “seventy or eighty years of age,” when you know to a certainty that he was seventy only a year ago. The fact is, that in China a person becomes “ eighty ” the moment
54
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
he stops being seventy, and this “ general average ” must be allowed for, if precision is desired. Even when a Chinese in- tends to be exact, it will often be found that he gives his age as it will be after the next New-Year’s day — the national birth- day in China. The habit of reckoning by “ tens ” is deep- seated, and leads to much vagueness. A few people are “ ten or twenty,” a “ few tens,” or perhaps “ ever so many tens,” and a strictly accurate enumeration is one of the rarest of ex- periences in China. The same vagueness extends upwards to “ hundreds,” “ thousands,” and “ myriads,” the practical limit of Chinese counting. For greater accm'acy than these general expressions denote, the Chinese do not care.
An acquaintance told the writer that two men had spent “ 200 strings of cash ” on a theatrical exhibition, adding a moment later, “ It was 173 strings, but that is the same as 200 — is it not ? ”
Upon their departure for the home land, a gentleman and his wife who had lived for several years in China, were pre- sented by their Chinese friends with two handsome scrolls, intended not for themselves but for their aged mothers — the only survi^’ing parents — who happened to be of exactly the same age. One of the inscriptions referred to “ Happiness, great as the sea,” and to “ Old age, green as the perpetual pines,” with an allusion in smaller characters at the side to the fact that the recipient had attained “ seven decades of felicity.” The other scroll contained flowery language of a similar char- acter, but the small characters by the side complimented the lady on having enjoyed “ six decades of glory.” After duly admiring the scrolls, one of the persons whose mother was thus honoured, ventured to inquire of the principal actor in the presentation, why, considering the known parity of ages of the two mothers, one was assigned seventy years, and the other only sixty. The thoroughly characteristic reply was given, that to indite upon each of two such scrolls the identi-
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY
55
cal legend, “ seven decades,” would look as if the writers were entirely destitute of originality !
Chinese social solidarity is often fatal to what we mean by accuracy. A man who wished advice in a lawsuit told the writer that he himself “ lived ” in a particular village, though it was obvious from his narrative that his abode was in the suburbs of a city. Upon inquiry, he admitted that he did not now live in the village, and further investigation revealed the fact that the removal took place nineteen generations ago ! “ But do you not almost consider yourself a resident of the city now ? ” he was asked. “ Yes,” he replied simply, “ we do live there now, but the old root is in that village ! ”
Another individual called the writer’s attention to an ancient temple in his own native village, and remarked proudly, “/ built that temple.” Upon pursuing the subject, it appeared that the edifice dated from a reign in the Ming Dynasty, more than three hundred years ago, when “ I ” only existed in the potential mood.
One of the initial stumbling-blocks of the student of Chi- nese is to find a satisfactory expression for identity, as distin- guished from resemblance. The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on a line of assumptions different from those to which we are accustomed, and they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the Occidental to ascertain everything with unerring exactness. The Chinese does not know how many families there are in his native village, and he does not wish to know. What any human being can want to know this number for is to him an insoluble riddle. It is “ a few hundreds,” “ several hundreds,” or “ not a few,” but a fixed and definite number it never was and never will be.
The same lack of precision which characterises the Chinese use of numbers, is equally conspicuous in their employment of written and even of printed characters. It is not easy to pro- cure a cheap copy of any Chinese book which does not abound
56
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
in false characters. Sometimes the character which is em- ployed is more complex than the one which should have been used, showing that the error was not due to a wish to econo- mise work, but it is rather to be credited to the fact that ordi- narily accuracy is considered as of no importance. A like carelessness of notation is met with in far greater abundance in common letters, a character being often represented by an- other of the same sound, the mistake being due as much to illiteracy as to carelessness.
Indifference to precision is nowhere more flagrantly mani- fested than in the superscription of epistles. An ordinary Chinese letter is addressed in bold characters, to “ My Father Great Man,” “ Compassionate Mother Great Man,” “ Ances- tral Uncle Great Man,” “Virtuous Younger Brother Great Man,” etc., etc., generally with no hint as to the name of the “ Great Man ” addressed.
It certainly appears singular that an eminently practical people like the Chinese should be so inexact in regard to their own personal names as observation indicates them to be. It js very common to find these names written now with one character and again with another, and either one, we are in- formed, will answer. But this is not so confusing as the fact that the same man often has several different names, his fam- ily name, his “style,” and, strange to say, a wholly different one, used only on registering for admission to literary exam- inations. It is for this reason not uncommon for a foreigner to mistake one Chinese for two or three. The names of vil- lages are not less uncertain, sometimes appearing in two or even three entirely different forms, and no one of them is ad- mitted to be more “ right ” than another. If one should be an acknowledged corruption of another, they may be employed interchangeably, or the correct name may be used in official papers and the other in ordinary speech, or yet again, the
THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY
57
corruption may be used as an adjective, forming with the original appellation a compound title.
The Chinese are unfortunately deficient in the education which comes from a more or less intimate aquaintance with chemical formulae, where the minutest precision is fatally neces- sary. The first generation of Chinese chemists will probably lose many of its number as a result of the process of mixing a “few tens of grains” of something with “several tens of grains” of something else, the consequence being an unanticipated earthquake. The Chinese are as capable of learning minute accuracy in all things as any nation ever was — nay, more so, for they are endowed with infinite patience — but what we have to remark of this people is that, as at present constituted, they are free from the quality of accuracy and that they do not understand what it is. If this is a true statement, two infer- ences would seem to be legitimate. First, much allowance must be made for this trait in our examination of Chinese his- torical records. We can readily deceive ourselves by taking Chinese statements of numbers and of quantities to be what they were never intended to be — exact. Secondly, a wide margin must be left for all varieties of what is dignified with the title of a Chinese “ census.” The whole is not greater than its parts, Chinese enumeration to the contrary notwith- standing. When we have well considered all the bearings of a Chinese " census,” we shall be quite ready to say of it, as was remarked of the United States Supreme Court by a canny Scotchman who had a strong realisation of the “glorious uncertainty of the law,” that it has “the last guess at the case! ”
CHAPTER VII.
THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING,
This remarkable gift of the Chinese people is first observed when the foreigner knows enough of the language to employ it as a vehicle of thought. To his pained surprise, he finds that he is not understood. He therefore returns to his studies with augmented diligence, and at the end of a series of years is able to venture with confidence to accost the general public, or any individual thereof, on miscellaneous topics. If the person addressed is a total stranger, especially if he has never before met a foreigner, the speaker will have opportu- nity for the same pained surprise as when he made his maiden speech in this tongue. The auditor evidently does not under- stand. He as evidently does not expect to understand. He visibly pays no attention to what is said, makes no effort whatever to follow it, but simply inten'upts you to observe, “When you speak, we do not understand.” He has a smile of superiority, as of one contemplating the struggles of a deaf- mute to utter articulate speech, and as if he would say, “ Who supposed that you could be understood ? It may be your misfortune and not your fault that you were not born with a Chinese tongue, but you should bear your disabilities, and not worry us with them, for when you speak we do not under- stand you.” It is impossible to retain at all times an unruffled serenity in situations like this, and it is natural to turn fiercely on your adversary, and inquire, “ Do you understand what I
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THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING
59
am saying at this moment ? ” “ No,” he replies, “ I do not
understand you! ”
Another stage in the experience of Chinese powers of mis- understanding is reached when, although the words are dis- tinctly enough apprehended, through a disregard of details the thought is obscured even if not wholly lost. The “ Foreigner in Far Cathay ” needs to lay in a copious stock of phrases which shall mean, “ on this condition,” “ conditionally,” “ with this understanding,” etc., etc. It is true that there do not appear to be any such phrases, nor any occasion for them felt by the Chinese, but with the foreigner it is different. The same is true in regard to the notation of tenses. The Chinese do not care for them, but the foreigner is compelled to care for them.
Of all subjects of human interest in China, the one which most needs to be guarded against misunderstanding is money. If the foreigner is paying out this commodity (which often ap- pears to be the principal function of the foreigner as seen from the Chinese standpoint) a future-perfect tense is “a military necessity.” “ When you shall have done your work, you will receive your money.” But there is no future-perfect tense in Chinese, or tense of any description. A Chinese simply says, “ Do work, get money,” the last being the principal idea which dwells in his mind, the “ time relation ” being absent. Hence when he is to do anything for a foreigner he wishes his money at once, in order that he may “ eat,” the presumption being that if he had not stumbled on the job of this foreigner he would never have eaten any more! Eternal vigilance, we must repeat, is the price at which immunity from misunder- standings about money is to be purchased in China. Who is and who is not to receive it, at what times, in what amounts, whether in silver ingots or brass cash, what quality and weight of the former, what number of the latter shall pass as a “ string ” — these and other like points are those in regard to
6o
CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
which it is morally impossible to have a too definite and fixed understanding. If the matter be a contract in which a builder, a compradore, or a boatman is to do on his part certain things and furnish certain articles, no amount of preliminary precision and exactness in explanations will come amiss.
To “cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face” is in China a proceeding too common to attract the least attention. A boatman or a carter who is engaged to go wherever the for- eigner who hires his boat may direct, sometimes positively refuses to fulfil his contract. The inflexible obstinacy of a Chinese carter on such occasions is aptly illustrated by the behaviour of one of his mules, which, on coming to a particu- larly dusty place in the road, lies down with great deliberation to its dust-bath. The carter meantime lashes the mule with his whip to the utmost limit of his strength, but in vain. The mule is as indifferent as if a fly were tickling it. In consider- ing the phenomena to which this is analogous, we have been frequently reminded of the caustic comments of De Quincey, in which, with a far too sweeping generalisation, he affirms that the Chinese race is endued with “ an obstinacy like that of mules.” The Chinese are not obstinate like mules, for the mule does not change his mood, while the same obstreperous carter who defies his employer in the middle of his journey, though expressly warned that his “ wine-money ” will be wholly withheld should he persist, is at the end of the journey ready to spend half a day in pleading and in prostrations for the favour which at a distance he treated with contemptuous scorn. That a traveller should have a written agreement with his carters, boatmen, etc., is a matter of ordinary prudence. No loophole for a possible misconstruction must be left open.
“ Plain at first, afterwards no dispute ” is the prudent apho- rism of the Chinese. Yet the chances are that, after exhaust- ing one’s ingenuity in preliminary agreements, some occasion for misunderstanding will arise. And whatever be his care on
A Peking Cart.
THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING 6i
this point, money will probably make the foreigner in China more trouble than any other single cause. Whether the Chi- nese concerned happen to be educated scholars or ignorant coolies, makes little difference. All Chinese are gifted with an instinct for taking advantage of misunderstandings. They find them as a January north wind finds a crack in a door, as the water finds a leak in a ship, instantly and without apparent effort. The Anglo-Saxon race is in some respects singularly adapted to develop this Chinese gift. As the ancient Persians were taught principally the two arts of drawing the long bow and speaking the truth, so the Anglo-Saxon is soon perceived by the Chinese to have a talent for veracity and doing justice as well towards enemies as towards friends. To the Chinese these qualities seem as singular as the Jewish habit of suspend- ing all military operations every seventh day, no matter how hard-pressed they might be, must have appeared to the Ro- mans under Titus, and the one eccentricity proves as useful to the Chinese as the other did to the Romans.
Foreign intercourse with China for the centxrry preceding i860 was one long illustration of the Chinese talent for mis- understanding, and the succeeding years have by no means exhausted that talent. The history of foreign diplomacy with China is largely a history of attempted explanations of matters which have been deliberately misunderstood. But in these or in other cases, the initial conviction that a foreigner will do as he has promised is deeply rooted in the Chinese mind, and flourishes in spite of whatever isolated exceptions to the rule are forced upon observation. The confidence, too, that a for- eigner will act justly (also in spite of some private and many national examples to the contrary) is equally firm. But given these two fixed points, the Chinese have a fulcrum from which they may hope to move the most obstinate foreigner. “You said thus and thus.” “ No, f did not say so.” “ But I under- stood you to say so. We all understood you to say so.
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CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS
Please excuse our stupidity, and please pay the money, as you said you would.” Such is the substance of thousands of arguments between Chinese and foreigners, and in ninety- seven cases out of a hundred the foreigner pays the money, just as the Chinese knew he would, in order to seem strictly truthful as well as strictly just. In the remaining three cases some other means must be devised to accomplish the result, and of these three two will succeed.
Examples of the everyday misunderstanding on all subjects will suggest themselves in shoals to the experienced reader, for their name is legion. The coolie is told to pull up the weeds in your yard, but to spare the precious tufts of grass just beginning to sprout, and in which you see visions of a longed-for turf. The careless buffalo takes a hoe and chops lip every green thing he meets, making a wilderness and call- ing it peace. He did not “ understand ” you. The cook was sent a long distance to the only available market, with instruc- tions to buy a carp and a young fowl. He returns with no fish, and three tough geese, which were what he thought you ordered. He did not “ understand ” you. The messenger that was sent just before the closing of the mail with an im- portant packet of letters to the French Consulate returns with the information that the letters could not be received. He has taken them to the Belgian Consulate, and the mail has closed. He did not “ understand ” you.
How easy it is for the poor foreigner both to misunderstand and to be misunderstood is well illustrated in the experience of a friend of the writer, who visited a Chinese bank with the proprietors of which he was on good terms, and in the neigh- bourhood of which there had recently been a destructive con- flagration. The foreigner congratulated the banker that the fire had not come any nearer to his establishment. On this the person addressed grew at once embarrassed and then angry, exclaiming; “What sort of talk is this? This is not a
THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING
63
proper kind of talk!” It was not till some time afterwards that the discovery was made that the point of the offence against good manners lay in the implied hint that if the fire had come too near it might have burned the cash-shop, which would have been most unlucky, and the very contemplation of which, albeit in congratulatory language, was therefore taboo 1 A foreigner who was spending a short time in the capital met a drove of camels, among which w'as a baby camel. Turning to the driver of the cart, who had been for many years in the employ of foreigners, he said : “ When you come back to the house, tell my little boy to come out and look at this little camel, as he has never seen one, and it will amuse him very much.” After a considerable lapse of time, during which, as in the last case, the idea was undergoing slow fermentation, the carter replied thoughtfully : “ If you should buy the camel, you could not raise it — it would be sure to die! ”
The writer was once present at a service in Chinese, when the speaker treated the subject of the cure of Naaman. He pictured the scene as the great Syrian general arrived at the door of Elisha’s house, and represented the attendants striv- ing to gain admittance for their master. Struggling to make this as pictorial as possible, the speaker cried out dramatically, on behalf of the Syrian servants, “ Gatekeeper, open the door ; the Syrian general has come!” To the speaker’s surprise a man in the rear seat disappeared at this point as if he had been shot out, and it subsequently appeared that this person had laboured under a misunderstanding. He was the gate- keeper of the premises, and oblivious of what had gone before, on hearing himself suddenly accosted he had rushed out with commendable promptness to let in Naaman!
Not less erroneous were the impressions of another auditor of a missionary in one of the central provinces, who wished to produce a profound impression upon his audience by showing with the stereopticon a highly magnified representation of a
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very common parasite. As the gigantic body of this reptile, much resembling an Egyptian crocodile, was thrown athwart the canvas, one of the spectators present was heard to an- nounce in an awed whisper the newly gained idea, “ See, this is the great Foreign Louse!”
CHAPTER VIIL
THE TALENT FOR INDIRECTION.
ONE of the intellectual habits upon which we Anglo- Saxons pride ourselves most is that of going directly to the marrow of a subject, and when we have reached it saying exactly what we mean. Considerable abatements must no doubt be made in any claim set up for such a habit, when we consider the usages of polite society and those of diplomacy, yet it still remains substantially true that the instinct of recti- linearity is the governing one, albeit considerably modified by special circumstances. N o very long acquaintance is required with any Asiatic race, however, to satisfy us that their instincts and ours are by no means the same — in fact, that they are at opposite poles. We shall lay no stress upon the redundancy of honorific terms in all Asiatic languages, some of which in this respect are indefinitely more elaborate than the Chinese. Neither do we emphasise the use of circumlocutions, peri- phrases, and what may be termed aliases, to express ideas which are perfectly simple, but which no one wishes to express with simplicity. Thus a great variety of terms may be used in Chinese to indicate that a person has died, and not one of the expressions is guilty of the brutality of saying so ; nor does the periphrasis depend for its use upon the question whether the person to whom reference is made is an emperor or a coolie, however widely the terms employed may differ in the two cases. Nor are we at present concerned, except in a very general way, with the quality of veracity of language. When
65
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every one agrees to use words in " a Pickwickian sense,” and every one understands that every one else is doing so, the questions resulting are not those of veracity but of method.
No extended experience of the Chinese is required to en- able a foreigner to arrive at the conclusion that it is impossi- ble, from merely hearing what a Chinese says, to tell what he means. This continues to be true, no matter how proficient one may have become in the colloquial — so that he perhaps understands every phrase, and might possibly, if worst came to worst, write down every character which he has heard in a given sentence ; and yet he might be unable to decide exactly what the speaker had in mind. The reason of this must of course be that the speaker did not express what he had in mind, but something else more or less cognate to it, from which he wished his meaning or a part of it to be inferred.
Next to a competent knowledge of the Chinese language, large powers of inference are essential to any one who is to deal successfully with the Chinese, and whatever his powers in this direction may be, in many instances he will still go astray, because these powers were not equal to what was required of them. In illustration of this all-pervading phenomenon of Chinese life, let us take as an illustration a case often occur- ring among those who are the earliest, and often by no means the least important, representatives to us of the whole nation — our servants. One morning the “ Boy ” puts in an appear- ance with his usual expressionless visage, merely to mention that one of his “aunts” is ailing, and that he shall be obliged to forego the privilege of doing our work for a few days while he is absent prosecuting his inquiries as to her condition. Now it does not with certainty follow from such a request as this that the “ Boy ” has no aunt, that she is not sick, and that he has not some more or less remote idea of going to see about her, but it is, to put it mildly, much more probable that the “ Boy ” and the cook have had some misunderstanding, and
THE TALENT FOR INDIRECTION
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that as the prestige of the latter happened in this case to be the greater of the two, his rival takes this oblique method of intimating that he recognises the facts of the case, and retires to give place to another.
The individual who has done you a favour, for which it was impossible to arrange at the time a money payment, po- litely but firmly declines the gratuity which you think it right to send him in token of your obligation. What he says is that it would violate all the Five Constant Virtues for him to accept anything of you for such an insignificant service, and that you wong him by offering it, and would disgrace him by insisting on his acceptance of it. What does this mean? It means that his hopes of what you would give him were blighted by the smallness of the amount, and that, like Oliver Twist, he “ wants more.” And yet it may not mean this after all, but may be an intimation that you do now, or will at some future time, have it in your power to give him something which will be even more desirable, to the acquisition of which the present payment would be a bar, so that he prefers to leave it an open question till such time as his own best move is obvious.
If the Chinese are thus guarded when they speak of their own interests, it follows from the universal dread of giving offence that they will be more cautious about speaking of others, when there is a possibility of trouble arising in conse- quence. Fond as they are of gossip and all kinds of Small- talk, the Chinese distinguish with a ready intuition cases in which it will not do to be too communicative, and under these circumstances, especially where foreigners are concerned, they are the grave of whatever they happen to know. In multi- tudes of instances the stolid-looking people by whom we are surrounded could give us “points,” the possession of which would cause a considerable change in our conduct towards others. But unless they clearly see in what way they are to be benefited by the result, and protected against the risks, the
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instinct of reticence will prevail, and our friends will maintain an agnostic silence.
Nothing is more amusing than to watch the demeanour of a Chinese who has made up his mind that it is best for him to give an intimation of something unfavourable to some one else. Things must have gone very far indeed when, even under these conditions, the communication is made in plain and unmistakable terms. What is far more likely to occur is the indirect suggestion, by oblique and devious routes, of a something which cannot, which tnicst not be told. Our in- formant glances uneasily about as though he feared a spy in ambush. He lowers his voice to a mysterious whisper. He holds up three fingers of one hand, to shadow dimly forth the notion that the person about whom he is not speaking, but gesturing, is the third in the family. He makes vague intro- ductory remarks, leading up to a revelation of apparent im- portance, and just as he gets to the climax of the case he sud- denly stops short, suppresses the predicate upon which every- thing depends, nods significantly, as much as to say, “Now you see it, do you not ? ” when all the while the poor unen- lightened foreigner has seen nothing, except that there is noth- ing whatever to see. Nor will it be strange if, after working things up to this pitch, your “ informant ” (falsely so called) leaves you as much in the dark as he found you, intimating that at some other time you will perceive that he is right !
It is a trait which the Chinese share with the rest of the race, to wish to keep back bad news as long as possible, and to communicate it in a disguised shape. But “ good form ” among Chinese requires this deception to be carried to an ex- tent which certainly seems to us at once surprising and futile. We have known a fond grandmother, having come unexpect- edly upon the whispered consultation of two friends, who had arrived expressly to break to her the news of the sad death of a grandchild away from home, to be assured with the empha-
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sis of iteration that they were only discussing a bit of gossip, though within half an hour the whole truth came out. We have known a son, returning to his home after an absence of several months, advised by a friend in the last village at which he called before reaching his home not to stay and see a the- atrical exhibition, from which he inferred, and rightly, that his mother was dead! We once had a Chinese letter entrusted to us for transmission to a person at a great distance from home, the contents of the missive being to the effect that during his absence the man’s wife had died suddenly, and that the neighbours, finding that no one was at hand to prevent it, had helped themselves to every article in the house, which was literally left unto him desolate. Yet on the exterior of this epistle were inscribed in huge characters the not too accurate words, “A peaceful family letter”!
The Chinese talent for indirection is often exhibited in re- fraining from the use of numerals where they might reason- ably be expected. Thus the five volumes of a book will be labelled Benevolence, Justice, Propriety, Wisdom, Confidence, because this is the invariable order in which the Five Constant Virtues are named. The two score or more volumes of K'ang Hsi’s Dictionary are often distinguished, not, as we should anticipate, by the radicals which indicate their contents, but by the twelve “time-cycle characters.” At examinations stu- dents occupy cells designated by the thousand successive characters of the millenary classic, which has no duplicates.
Another illustration of this subject is found in the oblique terms in which references are made, both by members of her family and others, to married women. Such a woman liter- ally has no name, but only two surnames, her husband’s and that of her mother’s family. She is spoken of as “ the mother of so-and-so.” Thus a Chinese with whom you are acquainted, talks of the illness of “ the Little Black One his mother.” Perhaps you never heard in any v’ay that he had a “ Little
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Black One ” in his household, but he takes it for granted that you must know it. If, however, there are no children, then the matter is more embarrassing. Perhaps the woman is called the “Aunt” of a “Little Black One,” or by some other periphrasis. Elderly married women have no hesitation in speaking of their “ Outside,” meaning the one who has the care of things out of the house ; but a young mamed woman not blessed with children is sometimes put to hard straits in the attempt to refer to her husband without intimating the con- nection in words. Sometimes she calls him her “ Teacher,” and in one case of which we have heard she was driven to the desperate expedient of dubbing her husband by the name of his business — “ Oilmill says thus and so! ”
A celebrated Chinese general, on his way to the war, bowed low to some frogs in a marsh which he passed, wishing his soldiers to understand that valour like that of these reptiles is admirable. To an average Occidental it might appear that this general demanded of his troop somewhat “ large powers of inference,” but not greater, perhaps, than will be called for by the foreigner whose lot is cast in China. About the time of a Chinese New-Yearwhen the annual debt-paying season had arrived, an acquaintance, upon meeting the writer, made certain gestures which seemed to have a deep significance. He pointed his finger at the sky, then at the ground, then at the person whom he was addressing, and last at himself, all without speaking a word. There was certainly no excuse for misapprehending this proposition, though we are ashamed to say that we failed to take it in at its full value. He thought that there would be no difficulty in one’s inferring from his pantomime that he wished to borrow a little money, and that he wished to do it so secretly that only “Heaven,” “Earth,” “You,” and “ I ” would know ! The phrase “ eating [gluttony], drink- ing [of wine], lust, and gambling ” denotes the four most com- mon vices, to which is now added opium smoking. A speaker
Chinese Card Players.
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sometimes holds up the fingers of one hand and remarks, “ He absorbed them all,” meaning that some one was guilty in all these ways.
It is an example of the Chinese talent for indirection, that owing to their complex ceremonial code one is able to show great disrespect for another by methods which to us seem preposterously oblique. The manner of folding a letter, for example, may embody a studied affront. The omission to raise a Chinese character above the line of other characters may be a greater indignity than it would be in English to spell the name of a person without capital letters. In social intercourse rudeness may be offered without the utterance of a word to which exception could be taken, as by not meeting an entering guest at the proper point, or by neglecting to escort him the distance suited to his condition. The omission of any one of a multitude of simple acts may convey a thinly disguised insult, instantly recognised as such by a Chinese, though the poor untutored foreigner has been thus victimised times without number, and never even knew that he had not been treated with distinguished respect! All Chinese revile one another when angry, but those whose literary talents are adequate to the task delight to convey an abusive meaning by such dehcate innuendo that the real meaning may for the time quite escape observation, requiring to be digested like the nauseous core of a sugar-coated pill. Thus, the phrase timg- hsi — literally “ east-west ” — means a thing, and to call a per- son “ a thing ” is abusive. But the same idea is conveyed by indirection, by saying that one is not “ north-south,” which implies that he is “east-west,” that is, “a thing”!
Every one must have been struck by the wonderful fertility of even the most illiterate Chinese in the impromptu inven- tion of plausible excuses, each one of which is in warp and woof fictitious. No one but a foreigner ever thinks of taking them seriously, or as any other tlian suitable devices by which
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to keep one’s “ face.” And even the too critical foreigner requires no common ability to pursue, now in air, now in water, and now in the mud, those to whom most rigid econ- omy of the truth has become a fixed habit. And when driven to close quarters, the most ignorant Chinese has one firm and sure defence which never fails, he can fall back on his igno- rance in full assurance of escape. He “ did not know,” he “ did not understand,” twin propositions, which, like charity, cover a multitude of sins.
No more fruitful illustration of our theme could be found than that exhibited in the daily issues of the Peking Gazette. Nowhere is the habit of what, in classical language, is styled “pointing at a deer and calling it a horse ” carried to a higher pitch, and conducted on a more generous scale. Nowhere is it more true, even in China, that “ things are not what they seem,” than in this marvellous lens, which, semi-opaque though it be, lets in more light on the real nature of the Chi- nese government than all other windows combined. If it is a general truth that a Chinese would be more likely than not to give some other than the real reason for anything, and that nothing requires more skill than to guess what is meant by what is said, this nowhere finds more perfect exemplification than in Chinese official life, where formality and artificiality are at their maximum. When a whole column of the “ lead- ing journal ” of China is taken up with a description of the various aches and pains of some aged mandarin who hungers and thirsts to retire from His Majesty’s service, what does it all mean? When his urgent prayer to be relieved is refused, and he is told to go back to his post at once, what does that mean? What do the long memorials reporting as to matters of fact really connote? When a high official accused of some flagrant crime is ascertained — as per memorial printed — to be innocent, but guilty of something else three shades less blame- worthy, does it mean that the writer of the memorial was not
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influenced to a sufficient extent, or has the official in question really done those particular things ? Who can decide ?
Firmly are we persuaded that the individual who can peruse a copy of the Peking Gazette and, while reading each docu- ment, can form an approximately correct notion as to what is really behind it, knows more of China than can be learned from all the works on this Empire that ever were written. But is there not reason to fear that by the time any outside barbarian shall have reached such a pitch of comprehension of China as this implies, we shall be as much at a loss to know what he meant by what he said, as if he were really Chinese?
CHAPTER IX.
FLEXIBLE INFLEXIBILITY.
HE first knowledge which we acquire of the Chinese is
JL derived from our servants. Unconsciously to themselves, and not always to our satisfaction, they are our earliest teach- ers in the native character, and the lessons thus learned we often find it hard to forget. But in proportion as our experi- ence of the Chinese becomes broad, we discover that the con- clusions to which we had been insensibly impelled by our dealings with a very narrow circle of servants are strikingly confirmed by our wider knowledge, for there is a sense in which every Chinese may be said to be an epitome of the whole race. The particular characteristic with which we have now to deal, although not satisfactorily described by the para- doxical title which seems to come nearest to an adequate expression, can easily be made intelligible by a very slight description.
Of all the servants employed in a foreign establishment in China, there is no one who so entirely holds the peace of the household in the hollow of his hands, as the cook. His aspect is the personification of deference as he is told by his new mistress what are the methods which she wishes him to em- ploy, and what methods she most emphatically does not wish employed. To all that is laid down as the rule of the estab- lishment he assents with a cordiality which is prepossessing, not to say winning. He is, for example, expressly warned that the late cook had a disagreeable habit of putting the
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bread into the oven before it was suitably raised, and that as this is one of the details on which a mistress feels bound to insist, he and his mistress parted. To this the candidate re- sponds cheerfully, showing that whatever his other faults may be, obstinacy does not seem to be one of them. He is told that dogs, loafers, and smoking will not be tolerated in the kitchen ; to which he replies that he hates dogs, has never learned to smoke, and being a comparative stranger, has but few friends in the city, and none of them are loafers. After these preliminaries his duties begin, and it is but a few days before it is discovered that this cook is a species of “blood brother ” of the last one in the item of imperfectly risen bread, that there is an unaccountable number of persons coming to and departing from the kitchen, many of them accompanied by dogs, and that a not very faint odour of stale tobacco is one of the permanent assets of the establishment. The cook cordially admits that the bread is not quite equal to his best, but is sure that it is not due to imperfect kneading. He is particular on that point. The strangers seen in the kitchen are certain “ yard brothers ” of the coolie, but none of them had dogs, and they are all gone now and will not return — though they are seen again next day. N ot one of the servants ever smokes, and the odour must have come over the wall from the establishment of a man whose servants are dreadful smokers. The cook is the personification of reasonableness, but as there is nothing to change he does not know how to change it.
The same state of things holds with the coolie who is set to cut the grass with a foreign sickle, bright and sharp. He re- ceives it with a smile of approval, and is seen later in the day doing the work with a Chinese reaping-machine, which is a bit of old iron about four inches in length, fitted to a short handle. “ The old,” he seems to say, “ is better.” The wash- erman is provided with a foreign washing-machine, which
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economises time, soap, labour, and, most of all, the clothing to be washed. He is furnished with a patent wringer which requires no strength, and does not damage the fabrics. The washing-machine and the wringer are alike suffered to relapse into “ innocuous desuetude,” and the washerman continues to scrub and wrench the garments into holes and shreds as in former days. Eternal vigilance iS the price at which innova- tions of this nature are to be defended.
The gardener is told to repair a decayed wall by using some adobe bricks which are already on hand, but he thinks it better to use the branches of trees buried a foot deep in the top of the wall, and accordingly does so, explaining, if he is questioned, the superiority of his method. The messenger who is employed to take an important mail to a place several days’ journey distant, receives his packages late in the evening, that he may start the next morning by daylight. The next afternoon he is seen in a neighbouring alley, and on being sent for and asked what he means, he informs us that he was obliged to take a day and wash his stockings! It is the same experience with the carter whom you have hired by the day. He is told to go a particular route, to which, like all others in the cases supposed, he assents, and takes you by an entirely different one, because he has heard from some passing stranger that the other was not so good. Cooks, coolies, gardeners, carters — all agree in distrusting otir judgment, and in placing supreme reliance upon their own.
Phenomena illustrating our subject are constantly observed wherever there is a foreign dispensary and hospital. The patient is examined carefully and prescribed for, receives his medicine in a specified number of doses, with directions thrice repeated to avoid mistakes, as to the manner in which and times at which it is to be taken. Lest he should forget the details, he returns once or twice to make sure, goes home and swallows the doses for two days at a gulp, because the excel-
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lence of the ciire must be in the direct ratio of the dose. The most minute and emphatic cautions against disturbing a plas- ter jacket are not sufficient to prevent its summary removal, because the patient does not wish to become a “ turtle,” and have a hard shell grow to his skin.
It is not a very comforting reflection, but it is one which seems to be abundantly justified by observation, that the opinion of the most ignorant assistant in a dispensary seems (and therefore is) to the average patient as valuable as that of the physician in charge, though the former may not be able to read a character, does not know the name of a drug or the symptoms of any disease, and though the latter may have been decorated with all the letters in the alphabet of medical titles, and have had a generation of experience. Yet a hint from the gatekeeper or the coolie may be sufficient to secure the complete disregard of the directions of the physician, and the adoption of something certainly foolish, and possibly fatal.
Thus far, we have spoken of instances of inflexibility in which foreigners are concerned, for those are the ones to which our attention is soonest drawn, and which possess for us the most practical interest. But the more our observation is directed to the relations of the Chinese to one another, through which if anywhere their true dispositions are to be manifested, the more we perceive that the state of things indicated by the ex- pressive Chinese phrase “ Outwardly is, inwardly is not,” is not exceptional. Chinese servants are yielding and complai- sant to Chinese masters, as Chinese servants are to foreign masters, but they have no idea of not doing things in their own way, and it is not unlikely that their masters never for a moment suppose that their orders will be literally obeyed. A foreign employer requires his employes to do exactly as they are told, and because they do not do so he is in a state of chronic hostility to some of them. A friend of the writer who had one of that numerous class of servants who combine
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extreme faithfulness with extreme mulishness — thus making themselves an indispensably necessary nuisance — happily ex- pressed a dilemma into which the masters of such servants are often brought, when he remarked that as regarded that partic- ular “ Boy,” he was in a condition of chronic indecision, whether to kill him or to raise his wages! The Chinese master knows perfectly well that his commands will be ignored in various ways, but he anticipates this inevitable result as one might set aside a reserve for bad debts, or allow a margin for friction in mechanics.
The same greater or less disregard of orders appears to pre- vail through all the various ranks of Chinese olhcials in their relations to one another, up to the very topmost round. There are several motives any one of which may lead to the contra- vening of instructions, such as personal indolence, a wish to oblige friends, or, most potent of all, the magnetic influence of cash. A district magistrate who lived in a place where the water is brackish, ordered his servant to take a water-cart and draw water from a river several miles distant. The servant did nothing of the kind, but merely went to a village where he knew the water to be sweet, and provided the magistrate with as much as he wanted of this fluid, to the saving of two thirds the distance and to the entire satisfaction of all parties. If the magistrate had known to a certainty that he was disobeyed, it is not probable that he would have uttered a whisper on the subject so long as the water was good. In China “the cat that catches the rat is the good cat.” Nothing succeeds like success. The dread of giving offence and the innate Chinese instinct of avoiding a disturbance would prevent misdemean- ours of disobedience from being reported, though five hundred people might be in the secret. That was a typical Chinese servant who, having been told to empty the water from a cistern into something which would save it for future use, was found to have poured it all into a well! Thus he con-
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trived to preserve the shell of conformity, with the most abso- lute negation of any practical result. Dr. Rennie mentions the case of an official at Amoy, who cut in two an Imperial proclamation, posting the last part first, so that it could not easily be read. Such devices are common in matters concern- ing foreigners, whom mandarins seldom wish to please.
It is easy to see how' such a policy of evasion may come into collision with the demands of justice. The magistrate sentences a criminal to wear a heavy wooden collar for a period of two months, except at night, when it is to be re- moved. By the judicious expenditure of cash “ where it will do the most good,” this order is only so far carried out that the criminal is decorated with the cangue at such times as the magistrate is making his entrance to and his exit from the yamen. At all other times the criminal is quite free from the obnoxious burden. Does the magistrate not suspect that his sentence will be defeated by bribery, and will he slip out the back way in order to come upon the explicit proof of disobe- dience ? By no means. The magi.strate is himself a Chinese, and he knew when the sentence w'as fixed that it would not be regarded, and with this in mind he made the term twice as long as it might otherwise have been. This seems to be a sample of the intricacies of official intercourse in all depart- ments, as exemplified by what foreigners continually observe. The higher officer orders the lower to see that a certain step is taken. The lower official reports respectfully that it has been done. Meanwhile nothing has been done at all. In many cases this is the end of the matter. But if there is a continued pressure from some quarter, and the orders are urgent, the lower magistrate transmits the pressure to those still lower, and throws the blame upon them, until the 7}tome}itu77i of the pressure is exhausted, and then things go on just as they were before. This is called “ reform,” and is often seen on a great scale, as in the spasmodic suppression of the sale of opium, or
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of the cultivation of the poppy, with results which are known to all.
There are doubtless those to whom the Chinese seem the most “ obstinate ” of peoples, and to such the adjective “ flex- ible,” which we have employed to characterise the “ inflexi- bility ” of the Chinese, will appear singularly inappropriate. Nevertheless, we must repeat the conviction that the Chinese are far from being the most obstinate of peoples, and that they are in fact far less obstinate than the Anglo-Saxons. We call them “ flexible ” because, with a “ firmness ” like that of mules, they unite a capacity of bending of which the Anglo-Saxon is frequently destitute.
No better illustration of this talent of the Chinese for “flex- ibility ” can be cited, than their ability to receive gracefully a reproof. Among the Anglo-Saxon race it is a lost art, or rather it is an art that was never discovered. But the Chi- nese listens patiently, attentively, even cordially, while you are exposing to him his own shortcomings, assents cheerfully, and adds, “ I am in fault, I am in fault.” Perhaps he even thanks you for your kindness to his unworthy self, and prom- ises that the particulars which you have specified shall be immediately, thoroughly, permanently reformed. These fair promises you well know to be “ flowers in the mirror, and the bright moon in the water,” but despite their unsubstantial nature, it is impossible not to be mollified therewith, and this, be it noted, is the object for which they were designed.
Few comparisons of the sort hit the mark more exactly than that which likens the Chinese to the bamboo. It is graceful, it is everywhere useful, it is supple, and it is hollow. When the east wind blows it bends to the west. When the west wind blows it bends to the east. When no wind blows it does not bend at all. The bamboo plant is a grass. It is easy to tie knots in grasses. It is difficult, despite its supple- ness, to tie knots in the bamboo plant. Nothing in nature is
FLEXIBLE INFLEXIBILITY
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more flexible than a human hair. It can be drawn out a large percentage of its own length, and when the tractile force is withdrawn, it at once contracts. It bends in any direction by its own weight alone. There is a certain growth of hair on many human heads which consists of definite tufts, quite per- sistent in the direction of their growth, and generally incapa- ble of any modification. Such a growth is vulgarly called a “ cow-lick,” and as it cannot be controlled, the remaining hairs, however numerous they may be, must be arranged with reference thereto. If the planet on which we dwell be con- sidered as a head, and the several nations as the hair, the Chinese race is a venerable cow-lick, capable of being combed, clipped, and possibly shaved, but which is certain to grow again just as before, and the general direction of which is not likely to be changed.
CHAPTER X.
INTELLECTUAL TURBIDITY.
IN speaking of “ intellectual turbidity ” as a Chinese charac- teristic, we do not wish to be understood as affirming it to be a peculiarity of the Chinese, or that all Chinese possess it. Taken as a whole, the Chinese people seem abundantly able to hold their own with any race now extant, and they certainly exhibit no weakness of the intellectual powers, nor any tend- ency to such a weakness. At the same time it must be borne in mind that education in China is restricted to a very narrow circle, and that those who are but imperfectly educated, or who are not educated at all, enjoy in the structure of the Chi- nese language what is called by the lawyers an “accessory before the fact ” to any most flagrant intellectual turbidity of which they may be disposed to be guilty.
Chinese nouns, as is by this time known to several, appear to be indeclinable. They are quite free from “ gender ” and “ case.” Chinese adjectives have no degrees of comparison. Chinese verbs are not hampered by any “ voice,” “ mode,” “tense,” “number,” or “person.” There is no recognisable distinction between nouns, adjectives, and verbs, for any char- acter may be used indiscriminately in either capacity (or in- capacity), and no questions asked. We are not about to com- plain that the Chinese language cannot be made to convey human thought, nor that there are wide ranges of human thought which it is difficult or impossible to render intelligible in the Chinese language (though this appears to be a truth),
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but only to insist that such a language, so constructed, invites to “intellectual turbidity” as the incandescent heats of summer gently woo to afternoon repose.
Nothing is more common in conversation with an unedu- cated Chinese than to experience extreme difficulty in ascer- taining what he is talking about. At times his remarks appear to consist exclusively of predicates, which are woven together in an intricate manner, the whole mass seeming, like Moham- med’s coffin, to hang in the air, attached to nothing whatever. To the mind of the speaker, the omission of a nominative is a point of no consequence. He knows what he is talking about, and it never occurs to him that this somewhat important item of information is not conveyed to the mind of his auditor by any kind of intuition. It is remarkable what expert guessers long practice has made most Chinese, in reading a meaning into words which do not convey it, by the simple practice of supplying subjects or predicates as they happen to be lacking. It is often the most important word in the whole sentence which is suppressed, the clue to which may be entirely un- known. There is very frequently nothing in the form of the sentences, the manner of the speaker, his tone of voice, nor in any concomitant circumstance, to indicate that the subject has changed, and yet one suddenly discovers that the speaker is not now speaking of himself as he was a moment ago, but of his grandfather, who lived in the days of Tao Kuang. How the speaker got there, and also how he got back again, often remains an insoluble mystery, but we see the feat accom- plished every day. To a Chinese there is nothing more re- markable in a sudden, invisible leap, without previous notice, from one topic, one person, one century to another, than in the ability of a man who is watching an insect on the window- pane to obseiwe at the same time and without in the least de- flecting his eyes, a herd of cattle situated in the same line of vision on a distant hill.
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The fact that Chinese verbs have no tenses, and that there is nothing to mark transitions of time, or indeed of place, does not tend to clarify one’s perceptions of the inherently turbid. Under such circumstances the best the poor foreigner can do, who wishes to keep up the appearance at least of following in the train of the vanished thought, is to begin a series of cate- chetical inquiries, like a frontier hunter “blazing” his way through a pathless forest with a hatchet. “ Who was this I>erson that you are talking about now?” This being ascer- tained, it is possible to proceed to inquire, “Where was this?” “When was it?” “What was it that this man did?” “What was it that they did about it?” “ What happened then?” At each of these questions your Chinese friend gazes at you with a bewildered and perhaps an appealing look, as if in doubt whether you have not parted with all your five senses. But a persistent pm'suit of this silken thread of categorical inquiry will make it the clue of Ariadne in delivering one from many a hopeless labyrinth.
To the uneducated Chinese any idea whatever comes as a surprise, for which it is by no means certain that he will not be totally unprepared. He does not understand, because he does not expect to understand, and it takes him an appreciable time to get such intellectual forces as he has into a position to be used at all. His mind is like a rusty old smooth-bore cannon mounted on a decrepit carriage, which requires much hauling about before it can be pointed at anything, and then it is sure to miss fire. Thus when a person is asked a simple question, such as “ How old are you? ” he gazes vacantly at the questioner, and asks in return, “ I ? ” To which you re- spond, “Yes, you.” To this he replies with a summoning up of his mental energies for the shock, “How old?” “Yes, how old ? ” Once more adjusting the focus, he inquires, “ How old am I ? ” “ Yes,” you say, “ how old are you ? ”
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“ Fifty-eight,” he replies, with accuracy of aim, his piece being now in working order.
A prominent example of intellectual turbidity is the preva- lent habit of announcing as a reason for a fact, the fact itself. “ Why do you not put salt into bread-cakes ? ” you ask of a Chinese cook. “ We do not put salt into bread-cakes,” is the explanation. “ How is it that with so much and such beautiful ice in your city none of it is stored up for winter? ” “ No,
we do not store up ice for winter in our city.” If the Latin poet who observed, “ Happy is he who is able to know the reasons of things,” had lived in China, he might have modified his dictum so as to read, “ Unhappy is the man who essays to find out the reasons of things.”
Another mark of intellectual torpor is the inability of an ordinary mind to entertain an idea, and then pass it on to another in its original shape. To tell A something which he is to tell B, in order that C may govern his actions thereby, is in China one of the most fatuous of undeitakings. Either the message will never be delivered at all, because the parties concerned did not understand that it was of importance, or it reaches C in such a shape that he cannot comprehend it, or in a form totally at variance with its original. To suppose that three cogs in so complicated a piece of machinery are capable of playing into each other without such friction as to stop the works, is to entertain a very wild hope. Even minds of considerable intelligence find it hard to take in and then give out an idea without addition or diminution, just as clear water is certain to refract the image of a straight stick as if it were a broken one.
Illustrations of these peculiarities will meet the observant foreigner at every turn., “Why did he do so?” you inquire in regard to some preposterous act. “Yes,” is the compen- dious reply. There is a certain numeral word in constant use,
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which is an aggravating accessory to vague replies. It sig- nifies both interrogatively, “How many?” and affirmatively, “Several.” “How many days have you been here?” you ask. “Yes, I have been here several days,” is the reply. Of all the ambiguous words in the Chinese language, probably the most ambiguous is the personal (or impersonal) pronoun fa, which signifies promiscuously “ he,” “she,” or “ it.” Some- times the speaker designates the subject of his remarks by vaguely waving his thumb in the direction of the subject’s home, or towards the point where he was last heard of. But more frequently the single syllable fa is considered wholly sufficient as a relative, as a demonstrative pronoun, and as a specifying adjective. Under these circumstances, the talk of a Chinese will be like the testimony of a witness in an English court, who described a fight in the following terms ; “ He’d a stick, and he’d a stick, and he w’acked he, and he w’acked he, and if he’d a w’acked he as hard as he w’acked he, he’d a killed he, and not he he.”
“Why did you not come when you were called?” you venture to inquire of a particularly negligent servant. “ Not on account of any reason,” he answers, with what appears to be frank precision. The same state of mental confusion leads to a great variety of acts, often embarrassing, and to a well- ordered Occidental intellect always irritating. The cook makes it a matter of routine practice to use up the last of whatever there may be in his charge, and then serves the next meal minus some invariable concomitant. When asked what he means by it, he answers ingenuously that there teas no more. “ Then why did you not ask for more in time? ” “ I did not
ask for any more,” is his satisfactory explanation. The man to whom you have paid a sum of cash in settlement of his account, going to the trouble of unlocking your safe and making change with scrupulous care, sits talking for “ an old half-day ” on miscellaneous subjects, and then remarks with
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nonchalance, “ I have still another account besides this one.” “ But why did you not tell me when I had the safe open, so that I could do it all at once ? ” “ Oh, I thought that account and this one had nothing to do with each other!” In the same way a patient in a dispensary who has taken a liberal allowance of the time of the physician, retires to the waiting- room, and when the door is next opened advances to re-enter. Upon being told that his case has been disposed of, he ob- seiwes, with delightful simplicity, “ But I have got another different disease besides that one!”
An example of what seems to us immeasurable folly, is the common Chinese habit of postponing the treatment of dis- eases because the patient happens to be busy, or because the remedy would cost something: It is often considered cheaper to undergo severe and repeated attacks of intermittent fever, than to pay ten cash — about one cent — for a dose of quinia, morally certain to cure. We have seen countless cases of the gravest diseases sometimes nourished to the point where they became fatal simply to save time, when they might have been cm'ed gratuitously.
A man living about half a mile from a foreign hospital, while away from home contracted some eye trouble, and waited in agony for more than two weeks after his return before coming for treatment, hoping each day that the pain would stop, instead of which, one eye was totally destroyed by a comeal ulcer.
Another patient, who had been under daily treatment for a deeply ulcerated neck, mentioned on the eighteenth day that his leg prevented his sleeping. Upon examination he was found to have there another ulcer about the size and depth of a teacup! When his neck was well he was intending to speak about his leg!
Many such phenomena of Chinese life may serve to remind one of a remark in one of the novels of Charles Reade, that
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“ Mankind are not lacking in intelligence, but they have one intellectual defect — they are Muddleheads! ”
A Chinese education by no means fits its possessors to grasp a subject in a comprehensive and practical manner. It is popularly supposed in Western lands that there are certain preachers of whom it can be truthfully affirmed that if their text had the smallpox, the sermon would not catch it. The same phenomenon is found among the Chinese in forms of peculiar flagrance. Chinese dogs do not as a rule take kindly to the pursuit of wolves, and when a dog is seen running after a wolf it is not unlikely that the dog and the wolf will be moving, if not in opposite directions, at least at right angles to each other. Not without resemblance to this oblique chase, is the pursuit by a Chinese speaker of a perpetually retreating subject. He scents it often, and now and then he seems to be on the point of overtaking it, but he retires at length, much wearied, without having come across it in any part of his course.
China is the land of sharp contrasts, the very rich and the wretchedly poor, the highly educated and the utterly ignorant, living side by side. Those who are both very poor and very ignorant, as is the fate of millions, have indeed so narrow a horizon that intellectual turbidity is compulsory. Their ex- istence is merely that of a frog in a well, to which even the heavens appear only as a strip of darkness. Ten miles from their native place many such persons have never been, and they have no conception of any conditions of life other than those by which they have always been surrounded. In many of them even that instinctive curiosity common to all races seems dormant or blighted. Many Chinese, who know that a foreigner has come to live within a mile from their homes, never think to inquire where he came from, who he is, or what he wants. They know how to struggle for an existence, and they know nothing else. They do not know whether they
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have three souls, as is currently supposed, or one, or none, and so long as the matter has no relation to the price of grain, they do not see that it is of any consequence whatever. They believe in a future life in which the bad will be turned into dogs and insects, and they also believe in annihilation pure and simple, in which the body becomes dirt, and the soul — if there be one — fades into the air. They are the ultimate out- come of the forces which produce what is in Western lands called a “ practical man,” whose life consists of two compart- ments, a stomach and a cash-bag. Such a man is the true positivist, for he cannot be made to comprehend anything which he does not see or hear, and of causes as such he has no conception whatever. Life is to him a mere series of facts, mostly disagreeable facts, and as for anything beyond, he is at once an atheist, a polytheist, and an agnostic. An occa- sional prostration to he knows not what, or perhaps an offer- ing of food to he knows not whom, suffices to satisfy the instinct of dependence, but whether this instinct finds even this expression will depend largely upon what is the custom of those about him. In him the physical element of the life of man has alone been nourished, to the utter exclusion of the psychical and the spiritual. The only method by which such beings can be rescued from their torpor is by a transfusion of a new life, which shall reveal to them the sublime truth uttered by the ancient patriarch, “ There is a spirit in man,” for only thus is it that “the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding.”
CHAPTER XL
THE ABSENCE OF NERVES.
IT is a very significant aspect of modern civilisation whicli is expressed in the different uses of the word “nervous.” Its original meaning is “possessing nerve; sinewy; strong; vigorous.” One of its derivative meanings, and the one which we by far most frequently meet, is, “ Having the nerves weak or diseased ; subject to, or suffering from, undue excitement of the nerves ; easily excited ; weakly.” The varied and com- plex phraseology by which the peculiar phases of nervous diseases are expressed has become by this time familiar in our ears as household words. There is no doubt that civilisation, as exhibited in its modern form, tends to undue nervous ex- citement, and that nervous diseases are relatively more com- mon than they were a century ago.
But what we have now to say does not concern those who are specially subject to nervous diseases, but to the general mass of Occidentals, who, while not in any specific condition of ill health, are yet continually reminded in a great variety of ways that their nervous systems are a most conspicuous part of their organisation. We allude, in short, to people who are “ nervous,” and we understand this term to include all our readers. To the Anglo-Saxon race, at least, it seems a matter of course that those who live in an age of steam and of elec- tricity must necessarily be in a different condition, as to their nerves, from those who lived in the old slow days of sailing-
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packets and of mail-coaches. Ours is an age of extreme activity. It is an age of rush. There is no leisure so much as to eat, and the nerves are kept in a state of constant ten- sion, with results which are sufficiently well known.
Business men in our time have an eager, restless air (at least those who do their business in Occidental lands), as if they were in momentary expectation of a telegram — as they often are — the contents of which may affect their destiny in some fateful way. We betray this unconscious state of mind in a multitude of acts. We cannot sit still, but we must fidget. We finger our pencils while we are talking, as if we ought at this particular instant to be rapidly inditing something ere it be forever too late. We rub our hands together as if prepar- ing for some serious task, which is about to absorb all our energies. We twhl our thumbs, we turn our heads with the swift motion of the wild animal which seems to fear that something dangerous may have been left unseen. W e have a sense that there is something which we ought to be doing now, and into which we shall proceed at once to plunge as soon as we shall have despatched six other affairs of even more pressing importance. The effect of overworking our nerves shows itself not mainly in such affections as “ fiddler’s cramp,” “ telegrapher’s cramp,” “ witer’s cramp,” and the like, but in a general tension. We do not sleep as we once did, either as regards length of time or soundness of rest. We are wakened by slight causes, and often by those which are exasperatingly trivial, such as the twitter of a bird on a tree, a chance ray of light straggling into our darkened rooms, the motion of a shutter in the breeze, the sound of a voice, and when sleep is once interrupted it is banished. We have taken our daily life to rest with us, and the result is that we have no real rest. In an age when it has become a kind of aphorism that a bank never succeeds until it has a president who takes it to bed with him, it is easy to understand that.
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while the shareholders reap the advantage, it is bad for the president.
We have mentioned thus fully these familiar facts of our everyday Western life, to point the great contrast to them which one cannot help seeing, and feeling too, when he begins to become acquainted with the Chinese. It is not very com- mon to dissect dead Chinese, though it has doubtless been done, but we do not hear of any reason for supposing that the nervous anatomy of the “ dark-haired race ” differs in any essential respect from that of the Caucasian. But though the nerves of a Chinese as compared with those of the Occidental may be, as the geometricians say, “ similar and similarly situ- ated,” nothing is plainer than that they are nerves of a very different sort from those with which we are familiar.
It seems to make no particular difference to a Chinese how long he remains in one position. He will write all day like an automaton. If he is a handicraftsman, he will stand in one place from dewy morn till dusky eve, working away at his weaving, his gold-beating, or whatever it may be, and do it every day without any variation in the monotony, and appar- ently with no special consciousness that there is any monotony to be varied. In the same way Chinese school-children are subjected to an amount of confinement, unrelieved by any recesses or change of work, which would soon drive Western pupils to the verge of insanity. The very infants in arms, instead of squirming and wriggling as our children begin to do almost as soon as they are born, lie as impassive as so many mud gods. And at a more advanced age, when Western children would vie with the monkey in its wildest antics, Chinese children will often stand, sit, or squat in the same posture for a great length of time.
It seems to be a physiological fact that to the Chinese exercise is superfluous. They cannot understand the desire which seems to possess all classes of foreigners alike, to walk
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when there is no desire to go anywhere ; much less can they comprehend the impulse to race over the country at the risk of one’s life, in such a singular performance as that known as a “ paper hunt,” representing “ hare and hounds ” ; or the mo- tive which impels men of good social position to stand all the afternoon in the sun, trying to knock a base-ball to some spot where it shall be inaccessible to some other persons, or, on the other hand, struggling to catch the same ball with celerity, so as to “kill” another person on his “base”! A Cantonese teacher asked a servant about a foreign lady whom he had seen playing tennis : “ How much is she paid for rushing about like that ? ” On being told “ Nothing,” he would not believe it. Why any mortal should do acts like this, when he is abundantly able to hire coolies to do them for him, is, we repeat, essentially incomprehensible to a Chinese, nor is it any more comprehensible to him because he has heard it explained.
In the item of sleep, the Chinese establishes the same differ- ence between himself and the Occidental as in the directions already specified. Generally speaking, he is able to sleep any- where. None of the trifling disturbances which drive us to despair annoy him. With a brick for a pillow, he can lie down on his bed of stalks or mud bricks or rattan and sleep the sleep of the just, with no reference to the rest of creation. He does not want his room darkened, nor does he require others to be still. The “ infant crying in the night ” may continue to cry for all he cares, for it does not disturb him. In some regions the entire population seem to fall asleep, as by a common instinct (like that of the hibernating bear), dur- ing the first two hours of summer afternoons, and they do this with regularity, no matter where they may be. At two hours after noon the universe at such seasons is as still as at two hours after midnight. In the case of most working-people, at least, and also in that of many others, position in sleep is
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of no sort of consequence. It would be easy to raise in China an army of a million men — nay, of ten millions — tested by competitive examination as to their capacity to go to sleep across three wheelbarrows, with head downwards, like a spider, their mouths wide open and a fly inside !
Beside this, we must take account of the fact that in China breathing seems to be optional. There is nowhere any venti- lation worth the name, except when a typhoon blows the roof from a dwelling, or when a famine compels the owner to pull the house down to sell the timbers. We hear much of Chinese overcrowding, but overcrowding is the normal condition of the Chinese, and they do not appear to be inconvenienced by it at all, or in so trifling a degree that it scarcely deserves mention. If they had an outfit of Anglo-Saxon nerves, they would be as wretched as we frequently suppose them to be.
The same freedom from the tyranny of nerves is exhibited in the Chinese endurance of physical pain. Those who have any acquaintance with the operations in hospitals in China, know how common, or rather how almost universal, it is for the patients to bear without flinching a degree of pain from which the stoutest of us would shrink in terror. It would be easy to expand this topic alone into an essay, but we must pass it by, merely calling attention to a remark of George Eliot’s, in one of her letters. “ The highest calling and elec- tion,” she says — irritated, no doubt, by theological formulas for which she had no taste — “ is to do without opium, and to bear pain with clear-eyed endurance.” If she is right, there can be little doubt that most Chinese, at least, have made their calling and election sure.
It is a remark of Mrs. Browning’s, that “ Observation with- out sympathy is torture.” So it doubtless is to persons of a sensitive organisation like the distinguished poetess, as well as to a multitude of others of her race. An Occidental does not like to be watched, especially if he is doing any delicate
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or difficult work. But perhaps a Chinese does his best work under close observation. We all of us grow rapidly weary of being stared at by the swarms of curious Chinese who crowd about a foreigner, in every spot to which foreigners do not commonly resort. We often declare that we shall “ go wild ” if we cannot in some way disperse those who are subjecting us to no other injury than that of unsympathetic observation. But to the Chinese this instinctive feeling of the Occidental is utterly incomprehensible. He does not care how many people see him, nor when, nor for how great a length of time, and he cannot help suspecting that there must be something wrong about persons who so vehemently resent mere inspection.
It is not alone when he sleeps that an Occidental requires quiet, but most of all when he is sick. Then, if never before, he demands freedom from the annoyance of needless noises. Friends, nurses, physicians, all conspire to insure this most necessary condition for recovery ; and if recovery is beyond hope, then more than ever is the sufferer allowed to be in as great peace as circumstances admit. Nothing in the habits of the Chinese presents a greater contrast to those of Western- ers, than the behaviour of the Chinese to one another in cases of sickness. The notification of the event is a signal for all varieties of raids upon the patient from every quarter, in num- bers proportioned to the gravity of the disease. Quiet is not for a moment to be thought of, and, strange to say, no one appears to desire it. The bustle attendant upon the arrival and departure of so many guests, the work of entertaining them, the wailings of those who fear that a death is soon to take place, and especially the pandemonium made by priests, priestesses, and others to drive away the malignant spirits, constitute an environment from which death would be to most Europeans a happy escape. Occidentals cannot fail to sym- pathise with the distinguished French lady who sent word to a caller that she “ begged to be excused, as she was engaged
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in dying.” In China such an excuse would never be offered, nor, if it were offered, would it be accepted.
It remains to speak of the worries and anxieties to which humanity is everywhere subjected in this distracted world. The Chinese are not only as accessible to these evils as any other people, but far more so. The conditions of their social life are such that in any given region there is a large propor- tion who are always on the ragged edge of ruin. A slight diminution of the rainfall means starvation to hundreds of thousands. A slight increase in the rainfall means the devas- tation of their homes by destructive floods, for which there is no known remedy. No Chinese is safe from the entanglement of a lawsuit, which, though he be perfectly innocent, may work his ruin. Many of these disasters are not only seen, but their stealthy and steady approach is perceived, like the gradual shrinking of the iron shroud. To us nothing is more dreadful than the momentary expectation of a calamity which cannot be forefended, and which may bring all that is horrible in its train. The Chinese face these things, perhaps because they seem to be inevitable, with a “ clear-eyed endurance,” which is one of the most remarkable phenomena of the race. Those who have witnessed the perfectly quiet starvation of millions in times of devastating famine will be able to understand what is here meant. To be fully appreciated, it must be seen, but seen on no matter what scale, it is as difficult for an Occi- dental really to understand it as it is for a Chinese truly to understand the idea of personal and social liberty, which the Anglo-Saxon has inherited and developed.
In whatever aspect we regard them, the Chinese are and must continue to be to us more or less a puzzle, but we shall make no approach to comprehending them until we have it settled firmly in our minds that, as compared with us, they are gifted with the “ absence of nerves.” What the bearing of this pregnant proposition may be on the future impact of this
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race with our own — an impact likely to become more violent as the years go by — we shall not venture to conjecture. We have come to believe, at least in general, in the survival of the most fit. Which is the best adapted to survive in the strug- gles of the twentieth century, the “ nervous ” European, or the tireless, all-pervading, and phlegmatic Chinese?
CHAPTER XII.
CONTEMPT FOR FOREIGNERS.
IT is difficult for the European traveller who visits the city of Canton for the first time, to realise the fact that this Chinese emporium has enjoyed regular intercourse with Euro- peans for a period of more than three hundred and sixty years. During much the greater part of that time there was very little in the conduct of any W estern nation in its dealings with the Chinese of which we have any reason to be proud. The normal attitude of the Chinese towards the people of other lands who chose to come to China for any purpose whatever, has been the attitude of the ancient Greeks to every nation not Grecian, considering and treating them as “bar- barians.” It is only since i860, by a special clause in the treaties, that a character which signifies “barbarian,” and which the Chinese had been in the habit of employing in offi- cial documents as synonymous with the word “ foreign,” was disallowed.
It must always be remembered in connection with the be- haviour of the Chinese towards outside nations of the West, that the Chinese had for ages been surrounded only by the most conspicuous inferiority, and had thus been flattered in the most dangerous because the most plausible and therefore the most effective, way. Finding, as they did, that the for- eigners with whom they came into contact could be alternately cajoled and bullied into conforming to the wishes of the Chi- nese, the latter were but confirmed in their conviction of their
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owTi unspeakable superiority, and invariably acted upon this theory, until compelled by the capture of Peking to do other- wise. Since that time, although only a generation has passed away, great changes have come over China, and it might be supposed that now at length foreign civilisation and foreigners would be appreciated by the Chinese at their full value. No very extended or intimate acquaintance with the Chinese peo- ple is needed, however, to convince any candid observer that the present normal attitude of the Chinese mind, official and unofficial, towards foreigners, is not one of respect. If the Chinese do not feel for us an actual contempt, they do feel condescension, and often unintentionally manifest it. It is this phenomenon with which we have now to deal.
The first peculiarity which the Chinese notice in regard to foreigners is their dress, and in this we think no one will claim that we have much of which we can be proud. It is true that all varieties of the Oriental costume seem to us to be clumsy, pendulous, and restrictive of “personal liberty,” but that is because our requirements in the line of active motion are utterly different from those of any Oriental people. When we consider the Oriental modes of dress as adapted to Orien- tals, we cannot help recognising the undoubted fact that for Orientals this dress is exactly suited. But when Orientals, and especially Chinese, examine our costume, they find noth- ing whatever to admire, and much to excite criticism, not to say ridicule. It is a postulate in Oriental dress that it shall be loose, and shall be draped in such a way as to conceal the contour of the body. A Chinese gentleman clad in a short frock would not venture to show himself in public, but num- bers of foreigners are continually seen in every foreign settle- ment in China, clad in what are appropriately styled “ monkey jackets.” The foreign sack-coat, the double-breasted frock- coat (not a single button of which may be in use), and espe- cially the hideous and amorphous abortion called a “ dress-
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coat,” are all equally incomprehensible to the Chinese, partic- ularly as some of these garments do not pretend to cover the chest, which is the most exposed part of the body, made still more exposed by the unaccountable deficiencies of a vest cut away so as to display a strip of linen. Every foreigner in China is seen to have two buttons securely fastened to the tail of his coat, where there is never anything to button, and where they are as little ornamental as useful.
If the dress of the male foreigner appears to the average Chinese to be essentially irrational and ridiculous, that of the foreign ladies is far more so. It violates Chinese ideas of propriety, not to say of decency, in a great variety of ways- Taken in connection with that freedom of intercourse between the sexes which is the accompaniment of Occidental civilisa- tion, it is not strange that the Chinese, who judge only from traditional standards of fitness, should thoroughly misunder- stand and grossly misconstrue what they see.
Foreign ignorance of the Chinese language is a fertile occa- sion for a feeling of superiority on the part of the Chinese. It makes no difference that a foreigner may be able to con- verse fluently in every language of modern Europe, if he can- not understand what is said to him by an ignorant Chinese coolie, the coolie will despise him in consequence. It is true that in so doing the coolie will only still further illustrate his own ignorance, but his feeling of superiority is not the less real on account of its inadequate basis. If the foreigner is struggling with his environment, and endeavouring to master the language of the people, he will be constantly stung by the air of disdain with which even his own servants will remark in an audible “ aside,” “ Oh, he does not understand! ” when the sole obstacle to understanding lies in the turbid statement of the Chinese himself. But the Chinese does not recognise this fact, nor if he should do so would it diminish his sense of innate superiority. This general state of things continues in-
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definitely for all students of Chinese, for no matter how much one knows, there is always a continental area which he does not know. It seems to be a general experience, though not necessarily a universal one, that the foreigner in China, after the preliminary stages of his experience are passed, gets little credit for anything which he happens to know, but rather dis- credit for the things which he does not know. The Chinese estimate of the value of the knowledge which foreigners dis- play of the Chinese language and Chinese literature is fre- quently susceptible of illustration by a remark of Dr. John- son’s in regard to woman’s preaching, which he declared to be like a dog's walking on its hind legs — it is not well done, but then it is a surprise to find it done at all!
Foreign ignorance of the customs of the Chinese is another cause of a feeling of superiority on the part of the Chinese. That any one should be ignorant of what they have always known, seems to them to be almost incredible.
The fact that a foreigner frequently does not know when he has been snubbed by indirect Chinese methods, leads the Chinese to look upon their unconscious victim with conscious contempt. Scornful indifference to what “ the natives ” may think of us, brings its own appropriate and sufficient punishment.
Many Chinese unconsciously adopt towards foreigners an air of amused interest, combined with depreciation, like that with which Mr. Littimer regarded David Copperfield, as if mentally saying perpetually, “So young, sir, so young!” This does not apply equally to all stages of one’s experience in China, for experience accumulates more or less rapidly for shrewd observers, as foreigners in China are not unlikely to be. Still, whatever the extent of one’s experience, there are multitudes of details, in regard to social matters, of which one must necessarily be ignorant for the reason that he has never heard of them, and there must be a first time for every acquisition.
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Foreign inability to do ’^hat any ordinary Chinese can do with the greatest ease, leads the Chinese to look down upon us. We cannot eat what they eat, we cannot bear the sun, we cannot sleep in a crowd, in a noise, nor without air to breathe. W e cannot scull one of their boats, nor can we cry “ Yi! yi! ” to one of their mule-teams in such a way that the animals will do anything which we desire. It is well known that the artillery department of the British army, on the way to Peking in i860, was rendered perfectly helpless near Ho- hsi-wu by the desertion of the .native carters, for not a man in the British forces was able to persuade the Chinese animals to take a single step!
Inability to conform to Chinese ideas and ideals in cere- mony, as well as in what we consider more important matters, causes the Chinese to feel a thinly disguised contempt for a race whom they think will not and cannot be made to under- stand “propriety.” It is not that a foreigner cannot make a bow, but he generally finds it hard to make a Chinese bow in a Chinese way, and the difficulty is as much moral as physical. The foreigner feels a contempt for the code of ceremonials, often frivolous in their appearance, and he has no patience, if he has the capacity, to spend twenty minutes in a polite scuffle, the termination of which is foreseen by both sides with absolute certainty. The foreigner does not wish to spend his time in talking empty nothings for “an old half-day.” To him time is money, but it is very far from being so to a Chi- nese, for in China every one has an abundance of time, and very few have any money. No Chinese has ever yet learned that when he kills time it is well to make certain that it is time which belongs to him, and not that of some one else.
With this predisposition to dispense as much as possible with superfluous ceremony because it is distasteful, and be- cause the time which it involves can be used more agreeably in other ways, it is not strange that the foreigner, even m his
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own eyes, makes but a poor figure in comparison with a cere- monious Chinese. Compare the dress, bearings, and action of a Chinese official, his long, flowing robes and his graceful motions, with the awkward genuflections of his foreign visitor. It requires all the native politeness of the Chinese to prevent them from laughing outright at the contrast. In this connec- tion it must be noted that nothing contributes so effectively to the instinctive Chinese contempt for the foreigner as the evi- dent disregard which the latter feels for that official display so dear to the Oriental. What must have been the inner thought of the Chinese who were told that they were to behold the “ great American Emperor,” and who saw General Grant in citizen’s costume with a cigar in his mouth, walking along the open street? Imagine a foreign Consul, who ranks with a Chinese Taotai, making a journey to a provincial capital to inter\new the Governor, in order to settle an international dis- pute. Thousands are gathered on the city wall to watch the procession of the great foreign magnate, a procession which is found to consist of two carts and riding horses, the attendants of the Consul being an interpreter, a Chinese acting as mes- senger, and another as cook! Is it any wonder that Orien- tals, gazing on such a scene, should look with a curiosity which changes first to indifference and then to contempt ?
The particulars in which we consider ourselves to be un- questionably superior to the Chinese do not make upon them the impression which we should expect, and which we could desire. They recognise the fact that we are their superiors in mechanical contrivances, but many of these contrivances are regarded in the light in which we should look upon feats of sleight-of-hand — curious, inexplicable, and useless. Our results appear to them to be due to some kind of supernatural power, and it is remembered that Confucius refused to talk of magic. How profoundly indifferent the Chinese are to the wonders of steam and electricity practically applied, an army
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of disappointed contractors who have been in China have discovered. With few exceptions, the Chinese do not wish (though they may be forced to take) foreign models for any- thing whatever. They care nothing for sanitation, for ventila- tion, nor for physiology. They would like some, but by no means all, of the results of Western progress without submit- ting to Western methods, but rather than submit to Western methods they will cheerfully forego the results. Whatever has a direct, unmistakable tendency to make China formidable as a “ power,” that they want and will have, but the rest must wait ; and if there were not a Zeitgeist, or Spirit-of-the-Age, superior to any Chinese, other improvements might wait long. Some Chinese scholars and statesmen, apparently realising the inferiority of China, claim that Western nations have merely used the data accumulated by ancient Chinese who cultivated mathematical and natural science to a high degree, but whose modem descendants have unfortunately allowed the secrets of nature to be stolen by the men of the West.
The Chinese do not appear to be much impressed by the undoubted ability of individual foreigners in practical lines. Saxons admire the man who “ can,” and, as Carlyle was so fond of remarking, they make and call him “ king.” The skill of the foreigner is to the Chinese amusing and perhaps amazing, and they will by no means forget or omit to make demands upon it the next time they chance to want anything done ; but so far from regarding the foreigner in this respect as a model for imitation, it is probable that the idea does not even enter the skull of one Chinese in ten thousand. To them the ideal scholar continues to be the literary fossil who has learned everything, forgotten nothing, taken several degrees, has hard work to keep from starvation, and with claws on his hands several inches in length, cannot do any one thing (ex- cept to teach school) by which he can keep soul and body together, for “ the Superior Man is not a Utensil.”
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Western nations, taken as a whole, do not impress educated Chinese with a sense of the superiority of such nations to China. This feeling was admirably exemplified in the reply of His Excellency Kuo, former Chinese Minister to Great Britain, when told, in answer to a question, that in Dr. Legge’s opinion the moral condition of England is higher than that of China. After pausing to take in this judgment in all its bear- ings, His Excellency replied, with deep feeling, “ I am very much surprised.” Comparisons of this sort cannot be success- fully made in a superficial way, and least of all from a diplo- matic point of view. They involve a minute acquaintance with the inner life of both nations, and an ability to appre- ciate the operations of countless causes in the gradual multi- plication of effects. Into any such comparison it is far from being our purpose now to enter. It is now well recognised that the Literati of China are the chief enemies of the for- eigner, wLo, though he may have sundry mechanical mysteries at his disposal, is held to be wholly incapable of appreciating China’s moral greatness. This feeling of jealous contempt is embodied in the typical Chinese scholar, “ with his head in the Sung Dynasty and his feet in the present.” It is men of this class who prepared and put in circulation the flood of bitter anti-foreign literature with which in recent years central China has been inundated.
It w'as once thought that with Western inventions China could be taken by storm. Knives, forks, stockings, and pianos were shipped to China from England, under the impression that this Empire was about to be “ Europeanised.” If there ever had been a time when the Chinese Empire was to be taken by storm in this way, that time would have been long ago, but there never was such a time. China is not a coun- try, and the Chinese are not a people, to be taken by storm with anything whatsoever. The only way to secure the solid and permanent respect of the Chinese race for Western peo-
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pies as a whole is by convincing object lessons, showing that Christian civilisation in the mass and in detail accomplishes results which cannot be matched by the civilisation which China already possesses. If this conviction cannot be pro- duced, the Chinese will continue, and not without reason, to feel and to display in all their relation to foreigners both con- descension and contempt.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ABSENCE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT.
The Book of Odes, one of the most ancient of the Chinese Classics, contains the following prayer, supposed to be uttered by the husbandmen : “ May it rain first on our public fields, and afterwards extend to our private ones.” Whatever may have been true of the palmy days of the Chou Dynasty and of those which preceded it, there can be no doubt that very little praying is done in the present day, either by hus- bandmen or any other private individuals, for rain which is to be applied “ first ” on the “ public fields.” The Chinese government, as we are often reminded, is patriarchal in its nature, and demands filial obedience from its subjects. A plantation negro who had heard the saying, “ Every man for himself, and God for us all,” failed to reproduce the precise shade of its thought in his own modified version, as follows, “ Every man for himself, and God for hunself! ” This new form of an old adage contains in a nutshell the substance of the views of the average Chinese with regard to the powers that be. “ I, for my part, am obliged to look out for myself,” he seems to think, if indeed he bestows any thought whatever on the government, and “ the government is old enough and strong enough to take care of itself without any help of mine.” The government, on the other hand, although patriarchal, is much more occupied in looking after the Patriarch, than in caring for the Patriarch’s family. Generally speaking, it will do very little to which it is not impelled by the danger, if it
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does nothing at first, of having to do all the more at a later date. The people recognise distinctly that the prospective loss of taxes is the motive force in government efforts to mit- igate disasters such as the continual outbreaks of irrepressible rivers. What the people do for themselves in endeavouring to prevent calamities of this sort, is due to the instinct of self- preservation, for the people thus make sure that the work is done, and also escape the numberless exactions which are sure to be the invariable concomitants of government energy locally applied.
No more typical example could be selected of the neglect of public affairs by the government, and the absence of public spirit among the people, than the condition of Chinese roads. There are abundant evidences in various parts of the Empire that there once existed great imperial highways connecting many of the most important cities, and that these highways were paved with stone and bordered with trees. The ruins of such roads are found not only in the neighbourhood of Peking, but in such remote regions as Hunan and Szechuen. Vast sums must have been expended on their construction, and it would have been comparatively easy to keep them in repair, but this has been uniformly neglected, so that the ruins of such highways present serious impediments to travel, and the tracks have been abandoned from sheer necessity. It has been supposed that this decay of the great lines of traffic took place during the long period of disturbances before the close of the Ming Dynasty, and at the beginning of the pres- ent Manchu line ; but making all due allowance for political convulsions, a period of two hundred and fifty years is surely sufficiently long in which to restore the arteries of the Empire. No such restoration has either taken place or been attempted, and the consequence is the state of things with which we are but too familiar.
The attitude of the government is handsomely matched by
THE ABSENCE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT loy
that of the people, who each and all are in the position of one who has no care or responsibility for what is done with the public property so long as he personally is not the loser. In fact, the very conception that a road, or that anything, belongs to “ the public ” is totally alien to the Chinese mind. The “ streams and mountains ” (that is, the Empire) are sup- posed to be the property in fee simple of the Emperor for the time, to have and to hold as long as he can. The roads are his too, and if anything is to be done to them let him do it. But the greater part of the roads do not belong to the Em- peror in any other sense than that in which the farms of the peasants belong to him, for these roads are merely narrow strips of farms devoted to the use of those who wish to use them, not with the consent of the owner of the land, for that was never asked, but from the force of necessity. The entire road belongs to some farm, and pays taxes like any other land, albeit the owner derives no more advantage from its use than does any one else. Under these circumstances, it is evidently the interest of the farmer to restrict the roads as much as he can, which he does by an extended system of ditches and banks designed to make it difficult for any one to traverse any other than the narrow strip of land which is in- dispensable for communication. If the heavy summer rains wash away a part of the farm into the road, the farmer goes to the road and digs his land out again, a process which, com- bined with natural drainage and the incessant dust-storms, results eventually in making the road a canal. Of what we mean by “right of way” no Chinese has the smallest con- ception.
Travellers on the Peiho River between Tientsin and Peking have sometimes noticed in the river little flags, and upon inquiry have ascertained that they indicated the spots where torpedoes had been planted, and that passing boats were ex- pected to avoid them! A detachment of Chinese troops en-
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gaged in artillery practice has been known to train their cannon directly across one of the leading highways of the Empire, to the great interruption of traffic and to the terror of the animals attached to carts, the result being a serious runaway accident.
A man who wishes to load or to unload his cart leaves it in the middle of the roadway while the process is going on, and whoever wishes to use the road must wait until the pro- cess is completed. If a farmer has occasion to fell a tree he allows it to fall across the road, and travellers can tarry until the trunk is chopped up and removed.
The free and easy ways of the country districts are well matched by the encroachments upon the streets of cities. The wide streets of Peking are lined with stalls and booths which have no right of existence, and which must be sum- marily removed if the Emperor happens to pass that way. As soon as the Emperor has passed, the booths are in their old places. The narrow passages which serve as streets in most Chinese cities are choked with every form of industrial obstruction. The butcher, the barber, the peripatetic cook with his travelling-restaurant, the carpenter, the cooper, and countless other workmen, plant themselves by the side of the tiny passage which throbs with the life of a great metropolis, and do all they can to form a strangulating clot. Even the women bring out their quilts and spread them on the road, for they have no space so broad in their exiguous courts. There is very little which the Chinese do at all which is not at some time done on the street.
Nor are the obstructions to traffic of a movable nature only. The carpenter leaves a pile of huge logs in front of his shop, the dyer hangs up his long bolts of cloth, and the flour-dealer his strings of vermicelli across the principal thoroughfare, for the space opposite to the shop of each belongs not to an imaginary “ public,” but to the owner of the shop. The idea
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III
that this alleged ownership of the avenues of locomotion en- tails any corresponding duties in the way of repair, is not one which the Chinese mind, in its present stage of development, is capable of taking in at all. No one individual, even if he were disposed to repair a road (which would never happen), has the time or the material wherewith to do it, and for many persons to combine for this purpose would be totally out of the question, for each would be in deep anxiety lest he should do more of the work, and receive less of the benefit, than some other person. It would be very easy for each local magistrate to require the villages lying-along the line of the main highways, or within a reasonable distance thereof, to keep them passable at almost all seasons, but it is doubtful whether this idea ever entered the mind of any Chinese official.
Not only do the Chinese feel no interest in that which belongs to the “public,” but all such property, if unprotected and available, is a mark for theft. Paving-stones are carried off for private use, and square rods of the brick facing to city walls gradually disappear. A wall enclosing a foreign ceme- tery in one of the ports of China was carried away till not a brick remained, as soon as it was discovered that the place was in charge of no one in particular. It is not many years since an extraordinary sensation was caused in the Imperial palace in Peking by the discovery that extensive robberies had been committed on the copper roofs of some of the buildings within the forbidden city. It is a common observation among the Chinese that, within the Eighteen Provinces, there is no one so imposed upon and cheated as the Emperor.
The question is often raised whether the Chinese have any patriotism, and it is not a question which can be answered in a word. There is undoubtedly a strong national feeling, espe- cially among the literary classes, and to this feeling much of the hostility exhibited to foreigners and their inventions is to
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be traced. Within recent years the province of Hunan has been flooded with streams of anti-foreign literature full of malignant calumniations, and designed to cause riots which shall drive the foreign devil out of the Celestial Empire. From the Chinese point of view the impulse which leads to these publications is as praiseworthy as we should consider resistance to anarchists to be. The charges are partly due to misapprehension, and in part also to that race hatred from which Western nations are by no means free. Probably many Chinese consider these attacks thoroughly patriotic. But that any considerable body of Chinese are actuated by a desire to serve their country, because it is their country, aside from the prospect of emolument, is a proposition which will require much more proof than has yet been offered to secure its ac- ceptance by any one who knows the Chinese. It need not be remarked that a Chinese might be patriotic without taking much interest in the fortunes of a Tartar Dynasty like the present, but there is the best reason to think that, whatever the dynasty might happen to be, the feeling of the mass of the nation would be the same as it is now — a feeling of profound indifference. The key-note to this view of public affairs was sounded by Confucius himself, in a pregnant sentence found in the “ Analects ” : “ The Master said : He who is not in an office has no concern with plans for the administration of its duties.” To our thought these significant words are partly the result, and to a very great degree the cause, of the constitu- tional unwillingness of the Chinese to interest themselves in matters for which they are in no way responsible.
M. Hue gives an excellent example of this spirit. “ In 1851, at the period of the death of the Emperor Tao Kuang, we were travelling on the road from Peking, and one day when we had been taking tea at an inn, in company with some Chinese citizens, we tried to get up a little political dis- cussion. We spoke of the recent death of the Emperor, an
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important event which of course must have interested every- body. We expressed our anxiety on the subject of the suc- cession to the Imperial throne, the heir to which was not yet pubhcly declared. 'Who knows,’ said we, ‘which of the three sons of the Emperor will have been appointed to succeed him? If it should be the eldest, will he pursue the same sys- tem of government? If the younger, he is still very young, and it is said that there are contrary influences, two opposing parties at court; to which will he lean?’ We put forward, in short, all kinds of hypotheses, in order to stimulate these good citizens to make some observation. But they hardly listened to us. We came back again and again to the charge, in order to elicit some opinion or other on questions that really appeared to us of great importance. But to all our piquant suggestions they replied by shaking their heads, puffing out whiffs of smoke, and taking great gulps of tea. This apathy was really beginning to provoke us, when one of these worthy Chinese, getting up from his seat, came and laid his two hands on our shoulders in a manner quite paternal, and said, smiling rather ironically ; ‘ Listen to me, my friend ! Why should you trouble your heart and fatigue your head by all these vain surmises? The mandarins have to attend to affairs of state; they are paid for it. Let them earn their money, then. But don’t let us torment ourselves about what does not concern us. We should be great fools to want to do political business for nothing.’ ‘ That is very conformable to reason,’ cried the rest of the company ; and thereupon they pointed out to us that our tea was getting cold and our pipes were out.”
When it is remembered that in the attack on Peking, in i860, the British army was furnished with mules bought of the Chinese in the province of Shantung ; that Tientsin and Tungchow made capitulations on their own account, agreeing to provide the British and French with whatever was wanted if these cities were not disturbed ; that most indispensable
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coolie work was done for the foreign allies by Chinese subjects hired for the purpose in Hongkong ; and that when these same coolies were captured by the Chinese army they were sent back to the British ranks with their cues cut off — it is not difficult to perceive that patriotism and public spirit, if such things exist at all in China, do not mean what these words imply to Anglo-Saxons.
Upon the not infrequent occasions when it is necessary for the people to rise and resist the oppressions and exactions of their rulers, it is always indispensable that there should be a few men of capacity to take the lead. Under them the move- ment may gather such momentum that the government must make some practical concessions. But whatever it does with the mass of the “stupid people,” the leaders are invariably marked men, and nothing less than their heads will satisfy the demands of justice. To be willing not merely to risk but almost certainly to lose one’s life in such a cause