The Chinese people reverence above all things literature and learning;
they hate war, bearing in mind the saying of Mencius, "There is no such
thing as a _righteous_ war; we can only assert that some wars are better
than others;" and they love trade and the finesse of the market-place.
China can boast many great soldiers, in modern as well as in ancient
days; but anything like a proper appreciation of the military arm is of
quite recent growth. "Good iron is not used for nails, nor good men for
soldiers," says the proverb; and again, "One stroke of the civilian's
pen reduces the military official to abject submission." On the other
hand, it is admitted that "Civilians give the empire peace, and soldiers
give it security."
Chinese parents have never, until recent days, willingly trained their
sons for the army. They have always wished their boys to follow the
stereotyped literary curriculum, and then, after passing successfully
through the great competitive examinations, to rise to high civil office
in the state. A good deal of ridicule has been heaped of late on the
Chinese competitive examination, the subjects of which were drawn
exclusively from the Confucian Canon, and included a knowledge of
ancient history, of a comprehensive scheme of morality, initiated by
Confucius, and further elaborated by Mencius (372-289 B.C.), of the
ballads and ceremonial rites of three thousand years ago, and of an
aptitude for essay-writing and the composition of verse. The whole
curriculum may be fitly compared with such an education as was given
to William Pitt and others among our own great statesmen, in which an
ability to read the Greek and Roman classics, coupled with an intimate
knowledge of the Peloponnesian War, carried the student about as far as
it was considered necessary for him to go. The Chinese course, too, has
certainly brought to the front in its time a great many eminent men, who
have held their own in diplomacy, if not in warfare, with the subtlest
intellects of the West.
Their system of competitive examinations has indeed served the Chinese
well. It is the brightest spot in the whole administration, being
absolutely above suspicion, such as attaches to other departments of the
state. Attempts have been made from time to time to gain admission by
improper means to the list of successful candidates, and it would be
absurd to say that not one has ever succeeded; the risk, however, is too
great, for the penalty on detection may be death.
The ordeal itself is exceedingly severe, as well for the examiners as
for the candidates. At the provincial examinations, held once in every
third year, an Imperial Commissioner, popularly known as the Grand
Examiner, is sent down from Peking. On arrival, his residence is
formally sealed up, and extraordinary precautions are taken to prevent
friends of intending candidates from approaching him in any way. There
is no age limit, and men of quite mature years are to be found
competing against youths hardly out of their teens; indeed, there is
an authenticated case of a man who successfully graduated at the age of
seventy-two. Many compete year after year, until at length they decide
to give it up as a bad job.
At an early hour on the appointed day the candidates begin to assemble,
and by and by the great gates of the examination hall are thrown open,
and heralds shriek out the names of those who are to enter. Each one
answers in turn as his name is called, and receives from the attendants
a roll of paper marked with the number of the open cell he is to occupy
in one of the long alleys into which the examination hall is divided.
Other writing materials, as well as food, he carries with him in a
basket, which is always carefully searched at the door, and in which
"sleeve" editions of the classics have sometimes been found. When all
have taken their seats, the Grand Examiner burns incense, and closes the
entrance gates, through which no one will be allowed to pass, either in
or out, dead or alive, until the end of the third day, when the first of
the three sessions is at an end, and the candidates are released for
the night. In case of death, not unusual where ten or twelve thousand
persons are cooped up day and night in a confined space, the corpse is
hoisted over the wall; and this would be done even if it were that of
the Grand Examiner himself, whose place would then be taken by the
chief Assistant Examiner, who is also appointed by the Emperor, and
accompanies the Grand Examiner from Peking.
The long strain of three bouts of three days each has often been
found sufficient to unhinge the reason, with a variety of distressing
consequences, the least perhaps of which may be seen in a regular
percentage of blank papers handed in. On one occasion, a man handed in a
copy of his last will and testament; on another, not very long ago,
the mental balance of the Grand Examiner gave way, and a painful scene
ensued. He tore up a number of the papers already handed in, and bit
and kicked every one who came near him, until he was finally secured
and bound hand and foot in his chair. A candidate once presented himself
dressed in woman's clothes, with his face highly rouged and powdered,
as is the custom. He was arrested at the entrance gate, and quietly sent
home to his friends.
Overwork, in the feverish desire to get into the Government service, is
certainly responsible for the mental break-down of a large proportion
of the comparatively few lunatics found in China. There being no lunatic
asylums in the empire, it is difficult to form anything like an exact
estimate of their number; it can only be said, what is equally true of
cripples or deformed persons, that it is very rare to meet them in the
streets or even to hear of their existence.
As a further measure of precaution against corrupt practices at
examinations, the papers handed in by the candidates are all copied out
in red ink, and only these copies are submitted to the examiners. The
difficulty therefore of obtaining favourable treatment, on the score of
either bribery or friendship, is very much increased. The Chinese, who
make no attempt to conceal or excuse, in fact rather exaggerate any
corruption in their public service generally, do not hesitate to declare
with striking unanimity that the conduct of their examination system is
above suspicion, and there appears to be no valid reason why we should
not accept this conclusion.
The whole system is now undergoing certain modifications, which,
if wisely introduced, should serve only to strengthen the national
character. The Confucian teachings, which are of the very highest order
of morality, and which have moulded the Chinese people for so many
centuries, helping perhaps to give them a cohesion and stability
remarkable among the nations of the world, should not be lightly cast
aside. A scientific training, enabling us to annihilate time and space,
to extend indefinitely the uses and advantages of matter in all its
forms, and to mitigate the burden of suffering which is laid upon the
greater portion of the human race, still requires to be effectively
supplemented by a moral training, to teach man his duty towards his
neighbour. From the point of view of science, the Chinese are, of
course, wholly out of date, though it is only within the past hundred
and fifty years that the West has so decisively outstripped the East. If
we go back to the fifteenth century, we shall find that the standard of
civilization, as the term is usually understood, was still much higher
in China than in Europe; while Marco Polo, the famous Venetian traveller
of the thirteenth century, who actually lived twenty-four years in
China, and served as an official under Kublai Khan, has left it on
record that the magnificence of Chinese cities, and the splendour of the
Chinese court, outrivalled anything he had ever seen or heard of.
Pushing farther back into antiquity, we easily reach a time when the
inhabitants of the Middle Kingdom "held learning in high esteem, while
our own painted forefathers were running naked and houseless in the
woods, and living on berries and raw meat." In inventive, mechanical and
engineering aptitudes the Chinese have always excelled; as witness--only
to mention a few--the art of printing (_see below_); their water-wheels
and other clever appliances for irrigation; their wonderful bridges (not
to mention the Great Wall); the "taxicab," or carriage fitted with a
machine for recording the distance traversed, the earliest notice
of which takes us back to the fourth century A.D.; the system of
fingerprints for personal identification, recorded in the seventh
century A.D.; the carved ivory balls which contain even so many as nine
or ten other balls, of diminishing size, one within another; a chariot
carrying a figure which always pointed south, recorded as in existence
at a very early date, though unfortunately the specifications which have
came down to us from later dates will not work out, as in the case of
the "taxicab." The story goes that this chariot was invented about 1100
B.C., by a wonderful hero of the day, in order to enable an ambassador,
who had come to the court of China from a far distant country in the
south, to find his way expeditiously home. The compass proper the
Chinese cannot claim; it was probably introduced into China by the
Arabs at a comparatively late date, and has been confused with the
south-pointing chariot of earlier ages. As to gunpowder, something
of that nature appears to have been used for fireworks in the seventh
century; and something of the nature of a gun is first heard of during
the Mongol campaigns of the thirteenth century; but firearms were not
systematically employed until the fifteenth century. Add to the above
the art of casting bronze, brought to a high pitch of excellence
seven or eight centuries before the Christian era, if not earlier; the
production of silk, mentioned by Mencius (372-289 B.C.) as necessary
for the comfort of old age; the cultivation of the tea-plant from time
immemorial; also the discovery and manufacture of porcelain some sixteen
centuries ago, subsequently brought to a perfection which leaves all
European attempts hopelessly out-classed.
In many instances the Chinese seem to have been so near and yet so far.
There is a distinct tradition of flying cars at a very remote date; and
rough woodcuts have been handed down for many centuries, showing a car
containing two passengers, flying through the clouds and apparently
propelled by wheels of a screw pattern, set at right angles to the
direction in which the travellers are proceeding. But there is not a
scrap of evidence to show what was the motive power which turned the
wheels. Similarly, iron ships are mentioned in Chinese literature so
far back as the tenth century, only, however, to be ridiculed as an
impossibility; the circulation of the blood is hinted at; added to which
is the marvellous anticipation of anaesthetics as applied to surgery, to
be mentioned later on, an idea which also remained barren of results for
something like sixteen centuries, until Western science stepped in and
secured the prize. Here it may be fairly argued that, considering the
national repugnance to mutilation of the body in any form, it could
hardly be expected that the Chinese would seek to facilitate a process
to which they so strongly object.
In the domain of painting, we are only just beginning to awake to the
fact that in this direction the Chinese have reached heights denied to
all save artists of supreme power, and that their art was already on
a lofty level many centuries before our own great representatives had
begun to put brush to canvas. Without going so far back as the famous
picture in the British Museum, by an artist of the fourth and fifth
centuries A.D., the point may perhaps be emphasized by quotation from
the words of a leading art-critic, referring to painters of the tenth
and eleventh centuries:--"To the Sung artists and poets, mountains
were a passion, as to Wordsworth. The landscape art thus founded, and
continued by the Japanese in the fifteenth century, must rank as
the greatest school of landscape which the world has seen. It is the
imaginative picturing of what is most elemental and most august in
Nature--liberating visions of storm or peace among abrupt peaks,
plunging torrents, trembling reed-beds--and though having a fantastic
side for its weakness, can never have the reproach of pretty tameness
and mere fidelity which form too often the only ideal of Western
landscape."
Great Chinese artists unite in dismissing fidelity to outline as of
little importance compared with reproduction of the spirit of the object
painted. To paint a tree successfully, it is necessary to produce not
merely shape and colour but the vitality and "soul" of the original.
Until with the last two or three centuries, nature itself was always
appealed to as the one source of true inspiration; then came the artist
of the studio, since which time Chinese art has languished, while
Japanese art, learned at the feet of Chinese artists from the fourteenth
century onwards, has come into prominent notice, and is now, with
extraordinary versatility, attempting to assimilate the ideals of the
West.
The following words were written by a Chinese painter of the fifth
century:--
"To gaze upon the clouds of autumn, a soaring exaltation in the soul; to
feel the spring breeze stirring wild exultant thoughts;--what is there
in the possession of gold and gems to compare with delights like these?
And then, to unroll the portfolio and spread the silk, and to transfer
to it the glories of flood and fell, the green forest, the blowing
winds, the white water of the rushing cascade, as with a turn of the
hand a divine influence descends upon the scene. . . . These are the
joys of painting."
Just as in poetry, so in pictorial art, the artist avoids giving full
expression to his theme, and leaving nothing for the spectator to supply
by his own imaginative powers. "Suggestion" is the key-note to both the
above arts; and in both, "Impressionism" has been also at the command
of the gifted, centuries before the term had passed into the English
language.
Literature and art are indeed very closely associated in China. Every
literary man is supposed to be more or less a painter, or a musician of
sorts; failing personal skill, it would go without saying that he was a
critic, or at the lowest a lover, of one or the other art, or of both.
All Chinese men, women and children seem to love flowers; and the poetry
which has gathered around the blossoms of plum and almond alone would
form a not inconsiderable library of itself. Yet a European bouquet
would appear to a man of culture as little short of a monstrosity; for
to enjoy flowers, a Chinaman must see only a single spray at a time. The
poorly paid clerk will bring with him to his office in the morning some
trifling bud, which he will stick into a tiny vase of water, and place
beside him on his desk. The owner of what may be a whole gallery of
pictures will invite you to tea, followed by an inspection of his
treasures; but on the same afternoon he will only produce perhaps a
single specimen, and scout the idea that any one could call for more.
If a long landscape, it will be gradually unwound from its roller, and
a portion at a time will be submitted for the enjoyment and criticism
of his visitors; if a religious or historical picture, or a picture
of birds or flowers, of which the whole effort must be viewed in its
completeness, it will be studied in various senses, during the intervals
between a chat and a cup of tea. Such concentration is absolutely
essential, in the eyes of the Chinese critic, to a true interpretation
of the artist's meaning, and to a just appreciation of his success.
The marvellous old stories of grapes painted by Zeuxis of ancient
Greece, so naturally that birds came to peck at them; and of the curtain
painted by Parrhasius which Zeuxis himself tried to pull aside; and
of the horse by Apelles at which another horse neighed--all these find
their counterparts in the literature of Chinese art. One painter, in
quite early days, painted a perch and hung it over a river bank, when
there was immediately a rush of otters to secure it. Another painted the
creases on cotton clothes so exactly that the clothes looked as if they
had just come from the wash. Another produced pictures of cats which
would keep a place free from rats. All these efforts were capped by
those of another artist, whose picture of the North Wind made people
feel cold, while his picture of the South Wind made people feel hot.
Such exaggerations are not altogether without their value; they suggest
that Chinese art must have reached a high level, and this has recently
been shown to be nothing more than the truth, by the splendid exhibition
of Chinese pictures recently on view in the British Museum.
The literary activities of the Chinese, and their output of literature,
have always been on a colossal scale; and of course it is entirely due
to the early invention of printing that, although a very large number of
works have disappeared, still an enormous bulk has survived the ravages
of war, rebellion and fire.
This art was rather developed than invented. There is no date, within
a margin even of half a century either way, at which we can say that
printing was invented. The germ is perhaps to be found in the engraving
of seals, which have been used by the Chinese as far back as we can go
with anything like historical certainty, and also of stone tablets
from which rubbings were taken, the most important of these being the
forty-six tablets on which five of the sacred books of Confucianism were
engraved about A.D. 170, and of which portions still remain. However
this may be, it was during the sixth century A.D. that the idea of
taking impressions on paper from wooden blocks seems to have arisen,
chiefly in connexion with religious pictures and tracts. It was not
widely applied to the production of books in general until A.D. 932,
when the Confucian Canon was so printed for the first time; from which
point onwards the extension of the art moved with rapid strides.
It is very noticeable that the Chinese, who are extraordinarily averse
to novelties, and can hardly be induced to consider any innovations,
when once convinced of their real utility, waste no further time in
securing to themselves all the advantages which may accrue. This was
forcibly illustrated in regard to the introduction of the telegraph,
against which the Chinese had set their faces, partly because of the
disturbance of geomantic influences caused by the tall telegraph poles,
and partly because they sincerely doubted that the wires could achieve
the results claimed. But when it was discovered that some wily Cantonese
had learnt over the telegraph the names of the three highest graduates
at the Peking triennial examination, weeks before the names could be
known in Canton by the usual route, and had enriched himself by buying
up the tickets bearing those names in the great lotteries which are
always held in connexion with this event, Chinese opposition went down
like a house of cards; and the only question with many of the literati
was whether, at some remote date, the Chinese had not invented
telegraphy themselves.
Moveable types of baked clay were invented about A.D. 1043, and some
centuries later they were made of wood and of copper or lead; but they
have never gained the favour accorded to block-printing, by which most
of the great literary works have been produced. The newspapers of modern
days are all printed from moveable types, and also many translations
of foreign books, prepared to meet the increasing demand for Western
learning. The Chinese have always been a great reading people,
systematic education culminating in competitive examinations for
students going back to the second century A.D. This is perhaps a
suitable place for explaining that the famous _Peking Gazette_, often
said to be the oldest newspaper in the world, is not really a newspaper
at all, in that it contains no news in our sense of the term. It is a
record only of court movements, list of promoted officials, with a
few selected memorials and edicts. It is published daily, but was not
printed until the fifteenth century.
Every Chinese boy may be said to have his chance. The slightest sign
of a capacity for book-learning is watched for, even among the poorest.
Besides the opportunity of free schools, a clever boy will soon find a
patron; and in many cases, the funds for carrying on a curriculum, and
for entering the first of the great competitions, will be subscribed in
the district, on which the candidate will confer a lasting honour by his
success. A promising young graduate, who has won his first degree with
honours, is at once an object of importance to wealthy fathers who
desire to secure him as a son-in-law, and who will see that money is not
wanting to carry him triumphantly up the official ladder. Boys without
any gifts of the kind required, remain to fill the humbler positions;
those who advance to a certain point are drafted into trade; while hosts
of others who just fall short of the highest, become tutors in private
families, schoolmasters, doctors, fortune-tellers, geomancers, and
booksellers' hacks.
Of high-class Chinese literature, it is not possible to give even the
faintest idea in the space at disposal. It must suffice to say that all
branches are adequately represented, histories, biographies, philosophy,
poetry and essays on all manner of subjects, offering a wide field even
to the most insatiate reader.
And here a remark may be interjected, which is very necessary for the
information of those who wish to form a true estimate of the Chinese
people. Throughout the Confucian Canon, a collection of ancient works on
which the moral code of the Chinese is based, there is not a single word
which could give offence, even to the most sensitive, on questions of
delicacy and decency. That is surely saying a good deal, but it is not
all; precisely the same may be affirmed of what is mentioned above as
high-class Chinese literature, which is pure enough to satisfy the most
strait-laced. Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge
mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly
innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary
purity of language is all the more remarkable from the fact that, until
recent years, the education of women has not been at all general, though
many particular instances are recorded of women who have themselves
achieved success in literary pursuits. It is only when we come to the
novel, to the short story, or to the anecdote, which are not usually
written in high-class style, and are therefore not recognized as
literature proper, that this exalted standard is no longer always
maintained.
There are, indeed, a great number of novels, chiefly historical and
religious, in which the aims of the writers are on a sufficiently high
level to keep them clear of what is popularly known as pornography or
pig-writing; still, when all is said and done, there remains a balance
of writing curiously in contrast with the great bulk of Chinese
literature proper. As to the novel, the long story with a worked-out
plot, this is not really a local product. It seems to have come along
with the Mongols from Central Asia, when they conquered China in the
thirteenth century, and established their short-lived dynasty. Some
novels, in spite of their low moral tone, are exceedingly well written
and clever, graphic in description, and dramatic in episode; but it is
curious that no writer of the first rank has ever attached his name to
a novel, and that the authorship of all the cleverest is a matter of
entire uncertainty.
The low-class novel is purposely pitched in a style that will be
easily understood; but even so, there is a great deal of word- and
phrase-skipping to be done by many illiterate readers, who are quite
satisfied if they can extract the general sense as they go along.
The book-language, as cultivated by the best writers, is to be freely
understood only by those who have stocked their minds well with the
extensive phraseology which has been gradually created by eminent
men during the past twenty-five centuries, and with historical and
biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things. A word or
two, suggesting some apposite allusion, will often greatly enhance the
beauty of a composition for the connoisseur, but will fall flat on
the ears of those to whom the quotation is unknown. Simple objects in
everyday life often receive quaint names, as handed down in literature,
with which it is necessary to be familiar. For instance, a "fairy
umbrella" means a mushroom; a "gentleman of the beam" is a burglar,
because a burglar was once caught sitting on one of the open beams
inside a Chinese roof; a "slender waist" is a wasp; the "throat olive"
is the "Adam's apple"--which, by the way, is an excellent illustration
from the opposite point of view; "eyebrow notes" means notes at the
top of a page; "cap words" is sometimes used for "preface;" the
"sweeper-away of care" is wine; "golden balls" are oranges; the "golden
tray" is the moon; a "two-haired man" is a grey-beard; the "hundred
holes" is a beehive; "instead of the moon" is a lantern; "instead of
steps" is a horse; "the man with the wooden skirt" is a shopman;
to "scatter sleep" means to give hush-money; and so on, almost _ad
infinitum_.
Chinese medical literature is on a very voluminous scale, medicine
having always occupied a high place in the estimation of the people, in
spite of the fact that its practice has always been left to any one who
might choose to take it up. Surgery, even of an elementary kind, has
never had a chance; for the Chinese are extremely loath to suffer any
interference with their bodies, believing, in accordance with Confucian
dogma, that as they received them from their parents, so they should
carry them into the presence of their ancestors in the next world.
Medicine, as still practised in China, may be compared with the European
art of a couple of centuries ago, and its exceedingly doubtful results
are fully appreciated by patients at large. "No medicine," says one
proverb, "is better than a middling doctor;" while another points out
that "Many sons of clever doctors die of disease."
Legend, however, tells us of an extraordinary physician of the fifth
century B.C. who was able to see into the viscera of his patients--an
apparent anticipation of the X-rays--and who, by his intimate knowledge
of the human pulse, effected many astounding cures. We also read of an
eminent physician of the second and third centuries A.D. who did add
surgery to this other qualifications. He was skilled in the use of
acupuncture and cautery; but if these failed he would render his patient
unconscious by a dose of hashish, and then operate surgically. He is
said to have diagnosed a case of diseased bowels by the pulse alone, and
then to have cured it by operation. He offered to cure the headaches
of a famous military commander of the day by opening his skull under
hashish; but the offer was rudely declined. This story serves to show,
in spite of its marvellous setting, that the idea of administering an
anaesthetic to carry out a surgical operation must be credited, so far
as priority goes, to the Chinese, since the book in which the above
account is given cannot have been composed later than the twelfth
century A.D.