Another significant passage is found in the Confucian Analects, and is as

follows, quoting, as before, Dr. Legge's translation, "Ch'AȘn K'ang asked

Po YA1/4, the son of Confucius, saying, 'Have you heard any lessons from your

father, different from what we have all heard?' Po YA1/4 replied, 'No; he

was once standing alone when I hurriedly passed below the hall, and he

said to me, "Have you learned the Odes?" on my replying, "not yet," he

added, "If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse

with." I retired and studied the Odes. Another day he was in the same way

standing alone, when I hastily passed below the hall, and he said to me,

"Have you learned the Rules of Propriety?" on my replying, "not yet," he

added, "If you do not learn the Rules of Propriety, your character cannot

be established." I then retired and studied the Rules of Propriety. I have

heard only these two things from him.' Ch'AȘn K'ang retired, delighted,

saying, 'I asked about one thing, and I have got three things. I have

heard about the Odes, I have heard about the Rules of Propriety, and I

have heard that the superior man maintains a distant reserve toward his

son.'"

Confucius was a master who felt himself to be in possession of great

truths of which his age was in deep need, and he offered his instructions

to rich and poor alike, upon the sole condition of receptivity. "I do not

open up the truth," he said, "to one who is not eager to get knowledge,

nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have

presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn

the other three, I do not repeat the lesson." For aught that appears, the

son of Confucius was wholly dependent for whatever he knew or received,

upon his father. According to Confucius, an acquaintance with the Odes,

and with the Rules of Propriety, form a very considerable part of the

equipment of a scholar. They embrace such subjects as could be

comprehended and assimilated, one would suppose, only by the assistance of

a competent teacher. That in the education of his own son, Confucius

should have contented himself with a casual question, and a single hint,

as to the pursuit of those branches which were in his eyes of preA"minent

importance, is a circumstance so singular that if it were not handed down

upon the same authority as the other facts in the life of the sage, we

might be disposed to doubt its credibility.

The theory upon which the master acted is happily epitomized by Ch'AȘn

K'ang--"distant reserve." Even to his own son the superior man is a higher

grade of being, whose slightest word contains fruitful seeds of

instruction. He expects his pupil to act upon a hint as if it were the

formal announcement of a law of nature. He is the sun around whom his

planets revolve, in orbits proportioned to the force of the central

attraction--an attraction which varies with the capacity to be attracted.

Yet in every case there is a point beyond which no pupil can go, he must

not come too near his sun.

According to Occidental thought, the ideal of teaching is exemplified in

the methods of such educators as Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, whose stimulating

influence was felt over an entire generation. Upon the plan of Confucius

it is difficult to see, not how he could have won the love of his

pupils--which was probably remote from his thought and from theirs--but

how he could have permanently impressed himself upon any except the very

apt. Few are the pupils, we may be sure, who after a chance question and a

remark will retire and study unaided a branch of learning which, they are

told, will enable them to converse, or to "establish" their characters.

Contrast with this method of Confucius that of James Mill, as detailed in

the autobiography of his son, John Stuart Mill. Here was a father, not a

professional philosopher, but a man of business, who amid the composition

of historical and other works, found time to superintend the education of

his son from the days of earliest infancy until mature manhood, not in the

ancient language only, but in history, philosophy, political economy,

composition, and even in elocution, and all with comprehensiveness of

plan, a labourious and unwearying persistence in teaching principles and

not rules, combined with scrupulous fidelity in minutest details. By this

patient assiduity and his father's skillful direction, Mill was given a

start over his contemporaries, as he himself remarks, of at least a

quarter of a century, and became one of the most remarkably educated men

of whom we have any record. One could wish that to his "imaginary

conversations of literary men and statesmen," Walter Savage Landor had

added a chapter giving a dialogue between Confucius and James Mill, "on

distant reserve as a factor in the education of sons."

It is far from being the fact that every Chinese village has its school,

but it is doubtless true that every village would like to have one, for

there is everywhere the most profound reverence for "instruction." The

reasons given for the absence of a school are always that the village is

too poor, or too small, or both.

In China every educated man is a potential schoolmaster, and most of those

who have the opportunity to do so take a school. It is one of the

allegorical sayings of the flowery land that "in the ink-slab fields there

are no bad crops," which signifies that literature is a vocation standing

upon a firmer basis than any other. This is the theory. As a matter of

fact the Chinese teacher is often barely able to keep soul and body

together, and is frequently obliged to borrow garments in which to appear

before his patrons. His learning may have fitted him to teach a school, or

it may not. It has completely unfitted him to do anything else. It is

therefore a period of great anxiety to the would-be pedagogue when the

school cards are in preparation.

"When the ground is clean, and the threshing-floor bare,

The teacher's heart is filled with care,"

says the proverb, and another adage is current, to the effect that if one

has a few bags of grain on hand, he is not obliged to be king over

children.

To the enormous oversupply of school-teachers, it is due that one of the

most honourable of callings is at the same time one of the most ill-paid.

Teachers of real ability, or who have in some way secured a great

reputation, are able to command salaries in proportion; but the country

schoolmaster, who can compete for a situation within a very small area

only, is often remunerated with but a mere pittance--an allowance of grain

supposed to be adequate for his food, a supply of dried stalks for fuel,

and a sum in money, frequently not exceeding ten Mexican dollars for the

year. It is not very uncommon to meet teachers who have but one or two

pupils, and who receive for their services little or nothing more than

their food. To the natural inquiry whether it was worth his while to teach

for such a slender compensation, a schoolmaster of this class replied,

that it was better than staying at home with nothing to eat. It is a

current saying that the rich never teach school, and the poor never attend

one--though to this there are exceptions. It is a strange fact that one

occasionally meets schoolmasters who have never studied anything beyond

the Four Books, and who therefore know nothing of the Five Classics, an

outfit comparable to that of a Western teacher who should only have

perused his arithmetic as far as simple division!

The proposition to have a school is made by the parents of the children,

and when it is ascertained that a sufficient number of names can be

secured, these are entered on a red card, called a school list

(_kuan-tan_). This is generally prepared by the time of the winter

solstice (December 21st), though sometimes the matter is left in abeyance

until the very end of the year, some six weeks later. On the other hand,

in some regions, it is customary to have the school card ready by the 15th

of the eighth moon, some time in August or September. The choice of a

teacher, like many other things Chinese, is very much a matter of chance.

It seems to be rather uncommon that a scholar should teach in his own

village, though this does often happen. The reason generally given for

this is that it is inconvenient for the pupils to be too near an

ex-preceptor who may make demands upon them in later years. Sometimes the

same teacher is engaged for a long series of years, while in other places

there is an annual change.

Once the pupil's name has been regularly entered upon the school list, he

must pay the tuition agreed upon, whether he ever attends the school or

not, no matter what the reason for his absence.

Should serious illness prevent the teacher from beginning his duties at

all, the engagement is cancelled; but if he enters upon them, and is then

disabled, the full tuition is exacted from every scholar, just as if the

engagement had been completed.

The wish of the school patron is to get as much work as he can out of the

teacher for the money paid him. The endeavour of the teacher is to get as

much money as he can, and to do as little work as he must. For this reason

he is always glad to have the names added after the school list has been

made out, because that will increase his receipts. The patrons frequently

object to this, because they think their own children will be neglected,

and unless all the patrons consent the addition cannot be made. They also

dislike to have the teacher bring a son or a nephew with him, lest the

slender salary should be insufficient for the food of both. In that event

the master might abandon the school before the year is over, as sometimes

occurs, but such teachers find it difficult to secure another school the

following year.

The schoolhouse is an unoccupied room in a private house, an ancestral, or

other temple, or any other available place borrowed for the purpose.

Renting a place for a school seems to be almost or quite unknown. The

teacher does his own cooking, or if he is unequal to this task, he is

assisted by one of his pupils, perhaps his own son, whom he often brings

with him, albeit, as already mentioned, there is classical authority

against having a son taught by a father.

The furniture required for each pupil is provided by his parents, and

consists simply of a table and a stool or bench. The four "precious

articles" required in literature are the ink-slab with a little well to

hold the water required to rub up the ink, the ink-cake, the brush for

writing, and paper.

The Chinese school year is coincident with the calendar year, though the

school does not begin until after the middle of the first moon, some time

in February. There is a vacation at the wheat harvest in June, and another

and longer one at the autumnal harvest in September and October. The

school is furthermore dismissed ten or twenty days before the new year.

Should the master not have been reA"ngaged he is likely to do very little

teaching during the last moon of the year, as he is much more interested

in arranging for the future than in piecing out the almost dead present.

The attendance of the scholars, too, is in any case irregular and

capricious, amply justifying the saying:

"Once entered at the twelfth month's door,

The teacher rules his boys no more."

Chinese education is based upon the wisdom of the ancients, and of those

ancients Confucius is held to be the chief. It is natural, therefore, that

upon the beginning of a school there should be special respect paid to the

Great Sage who is regarded as the patron of learning. Usages vary so much

that no generalizations are ever safe in China, but it is a singular fact

that instead of the altar, incense, candles, and formal prayers to

Confucius, which in some parts of the empire are in use at the beginning

of a year's school, in the province of Confucius himself the ceremonies

are for the most part much simpler. At the feast to the teacher by the

patrons, the scholars are introduced and make two obeisances, one meant

for Confucius, and the other for the present preceptor. In this case there

is not only no image of the Sage, but no written character to represent

him. And even this modest ceremony is far from universal. A teacher of

twenty-five or thirty years' experience declared that he had never seen

this performed but once.

[Illustration: THRESHING.]

[Illustration: AN AFTERNOON SIESTA.]

The scholars in a Chinese school are expected to be on hand at an early

hour, and by sunrise they are, perhaps, howling vigourously away. When it

is time for the morning meal they return to their homes, and as soon as it

is finished, again return. About noon they are released for dinner, after

which they go back as before to school. If the weather is hot, every one

else--men, women, and children--is indulging in the afternoon siesta, but

the scholars are in their places as usual, although they may be suffered

to doze at their desks as well as they can, for half the rest of the day.

In this way the discipline of the school is supposed to be maintained, and

some allowance made at the same time for poor human nature. Were they

allowed to take a regular nap at home, the teacher fears with excellent

reason that he would see no more of them for the day.

If Chinese pupils are to be pitied in the dog-days, the same is even more

true of the dead of winter, when the thermometer hovers between the

freezing-point and zero. The village school will very likely have either

no fire at all, or only such as is made by a pile of kindling or a bundle

of stalks lit on the earth floor, modifying the temperature but for a few

moments, and filling the room with acrid smoke for an hour. Even should

there be a little brazier with a rudimentary charcoal fire, it is next to

useless, and is mainly for the behoof of the master. The pupils will be

found (if they can afford such luxuries) enveloped in long winter hoods,

sitting all day in a state of semi-congelation.

They generally do not leave the schoolhouse until it is too dark to

distinguish one character from another. When at length the scholars are

released, it is not for a healthful walk, much less for a romp, but to

return to their homes in an orderly and becoming manner, like so many

grown Confucianists. In some schools the scholars are expected to come

back in the evening to their tasks, as if the long and wearisome day were

not sufficient for them, and this is, perhaps, universally the case in the

advanced schools where composition is studied.

According to the Chinese theory, the employment of teacher is the most

honourable possible. Confucius and Mencius, the great sages of antiquity,

were only teachers. To invite a teacher, is compared to the investiture of

a general by the emperor with supreme command. In consequence of this

theory, springing directly from the exalted respect for learning

entertained by the Chinese, a master is allowed almost unlimited control.

According to a current proverb, the relation of teacher and pupil

resembles that of father and son, but the simile of a general would be a

more correct expression of a teacher's powers. He is able to declare a

sort of martial law, and to punish with the greatest rigour.

One of the earliest lines in the Trimetrical Classic declares that "to

rear without instruction, is a father's fault"; "to teach without

severity, shows a teacher's indolence." It is common for boys to run away,

sometimes to great distances, because they have been punished at school.

The writer was told by a man in middle life that when he was a lad he had

been beaten by a preceptor of the same surname, because that teacher had

himself been beaten as a child by the pupil's grandfather, the grudge

being thus carried on to the third generation! The ferule always lies upon

the teacher's desk, and serves also as a tally. Whenever a scholar goes

out, he takes this with him, and is supposed to be influenced by the

legend upon one side, "go out reverentially," and upon the other, "enter

respectfully." Two pupils are not allowed to go out at the same time.

The most flagrant offence which a pupil can commit is the persistent

failure to learn his task within the allotted time. For this misdemeanour

he is constantly punished, and often to the extent of hundreds of blows.

Considering how little correction is ever administered to Chinese children

at home, and how slight are the attempts at anything resembling family

government, it is surprising to what extreme lengths teachers are allowed

to carry discipline. Bad scholars, and stupid ones--for a stupid scholar

is always considered as a bad one--are not infrequently punished every

day, and are sometimes covered with the marks of their beatings, to an

extent which suggests rather a runaway slave than a scholar. As the pupil

dodges about, with the hope of escaping some of the blows, he is not

unlikely to receive them upon his head, even if they were not intended for

it. In a case of this sort, a pupil was so much injured as to be thrown

into fits, and such instances can scarcely be uncommon. As a general

thing, no further notice appears to be taken of the matter by the parent

than to see the master and ascertain the special occasion of his severity.

The family of the pupil is naturally anxious that the pupil shall come to

something, and is ready to assume as an axiomatic truth that the only road

to any form of success in life is by the acquisition of an education. This

can be accomplished only by the aid of the teacher, and therefore the

rules laid down by him are to be implicitly followed, at whatever expense

to the feelings of either father or son.

In one case within the writer's knowledge, a father was determined that

his son should obtain sufficient education to fit him to take charge of a

small business. The son, on the other hand, was resolved to return to his

fork and manure basket, and the teacher was invited to further the plans

of the boy's father. When the time came to begin his education at school,

the lad absolutely declined to go, and like most Chinese parents in

similar circumstances, the father was perfectly unable to force him to do

what he did not wish to do. The only available plan was to have the boy

tied hand and foot, placed in a basket slung to a pole, and carried by two

men, like a pig. In this condition he was deposited at the schoolhouse,

where he was chained to two chairs, and not allowed to leave the building.

He was set the usual task in the Trimetrical Classic, to which, however,

he paid no attention whatever, although beaten as often as the teacher

could spare the time. The boy not only did not study, but he employed all

his strength in wailing over his hard lot. This state of things continued

for several days, at the end of which time it was apparent, even to the

boy's father, that, as the proverb says: "You cannot help a dead dog over

a wall;" and the lad was henceforth suffered to betake himself to those

agricultural operations for which alone he was fitted.

Different teachers of course differ greatly in their use of punishment,

but whatever the nature of the severities employed, a genuine Confucianist

would much rather increase the rigour of discipline than relax it. To his

mind the method which he employs appears to be the only one which is

fitted to accomplish the end in view. The course of study, the method of

study, and the capacity of the pupil, are all fixed quantities; the only

variable one is the amount of diligence which the scholar can be persuaded

or driven to put forth. Hence the ideal Chinese teacher is sometimes a

perfect literary Pharaoh.

When the little pupil at the age of perhaps seven or eight takes his seat

in the school for the first time, neither the sound nor the meaning of a

single character is known to him. The teacher reads over the line, and the

lad repeats the sounds, constantly corrected until he can pronounce them

properly. He thus learns to associate a particular sound with a certain

shape. A line or two is assigned to each scholar, and after the

pronunciation of the characters has been ascertained, his "study" consists

in bellowing the words in as high a key as possible. Every Chinese regards

this shouting as an indispensable part of the child's education. If he is

not shouting how can the teacher be sure that he is studying? and as

studying and shouting are the same thing, when he is shouting there is

nothing more to be desired. Moreover, by this means the master, who is

supposed to keep track of the babel of sound, is instantly able to detect

any mispronunciation and correct it in the bud. When the scholar can

repeat the whole of his task without missing a single character, his

lesson is "learned," and he then stands with his back to the teacher--to

make sure that he does not see the book--and recites, or "backs," it at

railway speed.

Every educator is aware of the extreme difficulty of preventing children

from reading the English language with an unnatural tone. To prevent the

formation of a vicious habit of this sort is as difficult as to prevent

the growth of weeds, and to eradicate such habits once formed is often

next to impossible. In the case of Chinese pupils, these vices in their

most extreme form are well-nigh inevitable. The attention of the scholar

is fixed exclusively upon two things,--the repetition of the characters in

the same order as they occur in the book, and the repetition of them at

the highest attainable rate of speed. Sense and expression are not merely

ignored, for the words represent ideas which have never once dawned upon

the Chinese pupil's mind. His sole thought is to make a recitation. If he

is really master of the passage which he recites, he falls at once into a

loud hum, like that of a peg-top or a buzz, like that of a circular saw,

and to extract either from the buzz or from the hum any sound as of human

speech--no matter how familiar the auditor may be with the passage

recited--is extremely difficult and frequently impossible.

But if the passage has been only imperfectly committed, and the pupil is

brought to a standstill for the lack of characters to repeat, he does not

pause to collect his thoughts, for he has no thoughts to collect--has in

fact no thoughts to speak of. What he has, is a dim recollection of

certain sounds, and in order to recall those which he has forgotten, he

keeps on repeating the last word, or phrase, or sentence, or page, until

association regains the missing link. Then he plunges forward again, as

before.

Let us suppose, for example, that the words to be recited are the

following, from the Confucian Analects, relating to the habits of the

master: "He did not partake of wine and dried meat bought in the market.

He was never without ginger when he ate. He did not eat much." The young

scholar, whose acquaintance with this chapter is imperfect, nevertheless

dashes on somewhat as follows: "He did not partake--he did not

partake--partake--partake--partake--partake of wine and dried meat bought

in--bought in--bought in the market--market--the market--the market. He

was never without ginger--when--ginger--when-ginger--when he ate-he ate-he

ate-he-ate-ate-he did not eat-eat-eat-eat-eat without ginger when he

ate-he did not eat-did not eat much."

This is the method of all Chinese instruction. The consequence of so much

roaring on the part of the scholars is that every Chinese school seems to

an inexperienced foreigner like a bedlam. No foreign child could learn,

and no foreign teacher could teach, amid such a babel of sound, in which

it is impossible for the instructor to know whether the pupils are

repeating the sounds which are given to them, or not. As the effect of the

unnatural and irrational strain of such incessant screaming upon their

voices, it is not uncommon to find Chinese scholars who are so hoarse that

they cannot pronounce a loud word.

The first little book which the scholar has put into his hands, is

probably the "Trimetrical Classic," (already mentioned) so called from its

arrangement in double lines of three characters above and three below, to

a total number of more than 1,000. It was composed eight centuries and a

half ago by a preceptor for his private school, and perhaps there are few

compositions which have ever been so thoroughly ground into the memory of

so many millions of the human race as this. Yet of the inconceivable

myriads who have studied it, few have had the smallest idea by whom it has

written, or when. Dr. Williams has called attention to the remarkable fact

that the very opening sentence of this initial text-book in Chinese

education, contains one of the most disputed doctrines in the ancient

heathen world: "Men at their birth, are by nature radically good; in their

natures they approximate, but in practice differ widely." After two lines

showing the modifying effects of instruction, and the importance of

attention, the mother of Mencius is cited as an expert in object lessons

for her famous son. The student is next reminded that "just was the life

of Tou, of Yen; five sons he reared, all famous men."

The author then reverts to his main theme, and devotes several strenuous

sentences to emphasizing the necessity for instruction in youth, "since

gems unwrought can never be useful, and untaught persons will never know

the proprieties." After a further citation of wonderful examples in

Chinese history, accompanied with due moralizing, there follow more than

sixty lines of a characteristically Chinese mosaic. The little pupil is

enlightened on the progressive nature of numbers; the designations of the

heavenly bodies; the "three relations" between prince and minister, father

and son, man and wife; the four seasons; the four directions; the five

elements; the five cardinal virtues; the six kinds of grain; the six

domestic animals; the seven passions; the eight kinds of music; the nine

degrees of relationship and the ten moral duties.

Having swallowed this formidable list of categories, the scholar is

treated to a general summary of the classical books which he is to study

as he advances. When he has mastered all the works adjudged "Classic," he

is told that he must go on to those of philosophers and sages, as in the

bill of particulars contained in the Trimetrical Classic. His special

attention is invited to history, which suggests a catalogue of the

numerous Chinese dynastic periods with the names, or rather the styles, of

a few of the important founders of dynasties. The list is brought down to

the first emperor of the present dynasty, where it abruptly stops at the

year 1644. A pupil who wishes to know the titles of the later emperors of

the Ch'ing Dynasty can be accommodated when the same shall have been

overthrown, and therefore has become a suitable object of historical

study. The pupil is urged to ponder these records of history till he

understands things ancient and modern as if they were before his eyes,

and to make them his morning study and his evening task.

The concluding section contains more of human interest than any of the

preceding parts, since we are told that the great Confucius once learned

something from a mere child; that the ancient students had no books, but

copied their lessons on reeds and slips of bamboo; that to vanquish the

body they hung themselves by the hair from a beam, or drove an awl into

the thigh; that one read by the light of glow-worms, and that another tied

his book to a cow's horn. Among the prodigies of diligence were two, who,

"though girls, were intelligent and well informed." The closing lines

strive to stimulate the ambition of the beginner, not only by the tales of

antiquity, but by the faithfulness of the dog at night, and the diligence

of the silk-worm and the bee. "If men neglect to learn, they are inferior

to insects." But "he who learns in youth, and acts when of mature age,

extends his influence to the prince, benefits the people, makes his name

renowned, renders illustrious his parents, reflects glory upon his

ancestors and enriches his posterity." If every Chinese lad does not

eventually become a prodigy of learning, it is certainly not the fault of

the author of this remarkable compendium, the incalculable influence of

which must be the justification of so extended a synopsis.

Another little book, to which the Chinese pupil is early introduced, is

the list of Chinese surnames, more than 400 in number, and all to be

learned by a dead lift of memory. The characters are arranged in

quartettes, and when a Chinese tells another his own surname, it is common

to repeat all four, whereupon his auditor recalls which of the several

names having the same sound it may be. In some parts of the empire the

"Thousand Character Classic" follows the Trimetrical Classic, while in

other parts its use seems to be quite unknown. It comprises, as the name

implies, a thousand characters, not one of which is repeated. It is common

to use these characters instead of ordinal numbers to designate seats in

the examination halls, so that it is desirable that scholars should be

familiar with the book.

After the scholar has mastered the smaller ones, he passes on to the "Four

Books," the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the

Mean, and the works of Mencius. The order in which these books are taken

up varies in different places, but, as already observed, the method of

study is as nearly as possible invariable. Book after book is stored away

in the abdomen (in which the intellectual faculties are supposed to be

situated), and if the pupil is furnished with the clew of half a sentence,

he can unravel from memory, as required, yards, rods, furlongs or miles of

learning.

After the Four Books, follow in varying order the Poetical Classic, the

Book of History, the Book of Changes, and the historical work of

Confucius, known as the Spring and Autumn Annals. To commit to memory all

these volumes, must in any case be the labour of many years. Usage varies

in different localities, but it is very common to find scholars who have

memorized the whole of the Four Books, and perhaps two of the later

Classics--the Odes and the History--before they have heard any

explanations even of the Trimetrical Classic, with which their education

began. During all these years, the pupil has been in a condition of mental

daze, which is denoted by a Chinese character, the component parts of

which signify a pig in the weeds (mAȘng). His entrance upon study is called

"lifting the darkness" (ch'i mAȘng), and to teach the beginner is to

"instruct darkness." These expressive phrases correspond to a fixed

reality. Of those who have committed to memory all the books named, some

of the brightest have no doubt picked up here and there, and as it were by

accident, an idea.

Thoughtful Chinese teachers, familiar with the capacity of their pupils,

estimate that the most intelligent among them can not be expected to

understand a hundredth part of what they have memorized. The great

majority of them have about as accurate a conception of the territory

traversed, as a boy might entertain of a mountainous district through

which he had been compelled to run barefooted and blindfolded in a dense

fog, chased for vast distances by a man cracking over his head a long

ox-whip. How very little many scholars do grasp of the real meaning, even

after explanations which the teacher regards as abundantly full, is

demonstrated by a test to which here and there a master subjects his

scholars, that of requiring them to write down a passage. The result is

frequently the notation of so many false characters as to render it

evident, not only that the explanations have not been apprehended, but

that notwithstanding such a multitude of perusals, the text itself has

been taken only into the ear as so many sounds, and has not entered the

mind at all.

The system of explanations adopted by Chinese teachers, as a rule, is

almost the exact opposite of that which, to an Occidental, would seem

rational. "In speech," said Confucius, "one should be intelligible, and

that is the end of it." The Confucian teacher, however, is often very far

indeed from feeling that it is necessary to be intelligible--that is to

say, to make it absolutely certain that his pupils have fully comprehended

his meaning. He is very apt to deliver his explanations--when a sufficient

number of years has elapsed to make it seem worth while to begin them at

all--_ex cathedra_, and in a stately, formal manner, his attention being

much more fixed upon the exhibition of his own skill in displaying his own

knowledge, than upon imparting that knowledge to his scholars. It is

common to hear it said of a teacher who has attained distinction, that

when he opens his mouth to explain the Classics, "every sentence is fit

for an examination essay." This is considered to be the acme of praise.

Sentences which are suited to be constituent parts of examination essays,

are not, it is superfluous to remark, particularly adapted to the

comprehension of young schoolboys, who know nothing about examination

essays, the style of which is utterly beyond their powers.

The commentary upon the Classics written by Chu Hsi, in the twelfth

century, A. D., has come to have an authority second only to that of the

text itself. That no Chinese school-teacher leads his pupils to question

for an instant whether the explanation is accurate and adequate, is a

matter of course. The whole object of a teacher's work is to fit his

pupils to compete at the examinations, and to prepare essays which shall

win the approval of the examiners, thus leading to the rank of literary

graduate. This result would be possible only to those who accept the

orthodox interpretation of the Classics, and hence it is easy to see that

Chinese schools are not likely to become nurseries of heresy. The very

idea of discussing with his pupils either text or commentary, does not so

much as enter the mind of a Chinese schoolmaster. He could not do so if he

would, and he would not if he could.

The task of learning to write Chinese characters is a very serious one, in

comparison with which it is scarcely unfair to characterize the mastery of

the art of writing any European language, as a mere pastime. The correct

notation of characters is, moreover, not less important than the correct

recognition of them, for success in some of the examinations is made to

depend as much upon caligraphy as upon style.

The characters which the teacher selects for the writing exercises of his

pupils, have no relation, strange as it may seem, to anything which he is

studying. These characters may at first be taken from little books of

rhymes arranged for the purpose, containing characters at once simple and

common.

The next step is to change to books containing selections from the T'ang

Dynasty poets, an appreciation of which involves acquaintance with tones

and rhyme, of which the pupil, as yet, knows nothing. The characters which

he now learns to write he has very likely never seen before, and they do

not at all assist his other studies. The only item of which notice is

taken, is whether the characters are well or ill-formed. Review there is

none.

The reason for choosing T'ang Dynasty poetry for writing lessons, instead

of characters or sentences which are a part of the current lesson, is that

it is customary to use the poetry, and is _not_ customary to use anything

else, and that to do so would expose himself to ridicule. Besides this,

poetry makes complete sense by itself (if the pupil could only comprehend

it) while isolated characters do not. The consequence of this method of

instruction is that hundreds of thousands of pupils leave school knowing

very little about characters, and much of what they do know is wrong. The

method of teaching characters explains in part what seems at first almost

unaccountable, that so few ordinary persons know characters accurately. It

is an inevitable incident of the system, that to write some of the

commonest characters, referring to objects used in daily life, is quite

beyond the power of a man who has been for years at school, for he has

never seen them either written or printed. Thus in taking an inventory of

household property, there is not one chance in ten that the characters

will be written correctly, for they do not occur in the Classics, nor in

T'ang Dynasty poetry. Not only so, but it is altogether probable that an

average graduate of the village school cannot indite a common letter, or

set down a page of any miscellaneous characters, without writing something

wrong.

If the teacher is a man of any reputation, he has a multitude of

acquaintances, fellow students, any of whom may happen to call upon him at

the schoolhouse, where he lives. Chinese etiquette requires that certain

attentions should be paid to visitors of this sort, and while it is

perfectly understood that school routine ought not to be broken in upon by

unnecessary interruptions, as a matter of fact in most schools these

interruptions are a serious nuisance, to which the teacher often cannot

and oftener will not put a stop.

The system here described, by which the whole time of the master is

supposed to be devoted to instructing his pupils, makes no allowances for

any absences whatever. Yet there are few human beings blessed with such

perfect health, and having such an entire freedom from all relations to

the external world, as to be able to conduct a school of this kind month

after month, with no interruptions.

It frequently happens that the teacher is himself one of the literary army

who attends the examinations in hope of a degree. If this is the case, his

absences for this purpose will often prove a serious interruption to the

routine of the school. Some patrons appear to consider that this

disadvantage is balanced by the glory which would accrue to their school

in case its master were to take his degree while in their service.

Moreover, aside from the regular vacations at the feast times and

harvests, every teacher is sure to be called home from time to time by

some emergency in his own family, or in his village, or among his numerous

friends. Under these circumstances he provides a substitute if he happens

to find it convenient to do so. Such are nicknamed

"remote-cousin-preceptors" (_su-pai lao-shih_), and are not likely to be

treated with much respect. When the teacher is absent for a day, instead

of dismissing the school, he perhaps leaves it theoretically in the charge

of one of the older scholars. The inevitable consequence is, that at such

times the work of the school is reduced not merely to zero, but to forty

degrees below zero. The scholars simply bar the front door, and amuse

themselves in using the teacher's ferule for a bat, and the Trimetrical

Classic, or the Confucian Analects, for a ball. The demoralization

attending such lawlessness is evidently most injurious to the efficiency

of the school.

The irregularities of the master's attendance are more than matched by

those of his scholars. The pressure of domestic duties is such that many

poorer families on one pretence or another are constantly taking their

children out of school. To-day the pupil must rake up fuel, next week he

must lead the animal that draws the seed drill, a month later he is taken

for two or three days to visit some relatives. Not long after there is in

the village, or perhaps in some neighbouring village, a theatrical

entertainment, but in either case the whole school expects a vacation to

go and see the sport. As already remarked when describing theatricals, if

this vacation were denied they would take it themselves. Besides

interruptions of this sort, there are the spring and autumn harvests, when

the school is dismissed for two months and perhaps for three, and the New

Year vacation, which lasts from the middle of the twelfth moon to the

latter part of the first moon. But, extensive as are these intermissions

of study, the dog-days are not among them, and the poor pupils go droning

on through all the heat of summer.

As the Chinese child has no Saturdays, no Sundays, no recesses, no variety

of study, and no promotion from grade to grade, nor from one school to

another, it is probable that he has enough schooling such as it is. As

every scholar is a class by himself, the absence of one does not interfere

with the study of another. Even if two lads happen to be reciting in the

same place, they have no more connection with each other than any other

two pupils. Of such a thing as classification the teacher has never heard,

and the irregular attendance of the scholars would, he tells you, prevent

it, even were it otherwise possible. Owing to the time required to hear so

many recitations, an ordinary school does not contain more than eight or

ten pupils, and twenty are regarded as beyond one teacher's capacity.

There is very little which is really intellectual in any part of the early

schooling of an ordinary Chinese boy. As a rule, the teacher does not

concern himself with his pupils further than to drag them over a specified

course, or at least to attempt to do so. The parents of the lad are

equally indifferent, or even more so. If the father himself can read, he

remembers that he learned to do so by a long and thorny road, and he

thinks it proper that his son should traverse it likewise. If the father

can not read, he at least recognizes the fact that he knows nothing at all

about the matter, and that it is not _his_ business to interfere. The

teacher is hired to teach--let him do it. As for visiting the school to

see what progress his son is making, he never heard of such a thing, and

he would not do it if he had heard of it. The teacher would say in his

manner if not in his words, "_What business have you here?_"

A sufficient reason for spending all his time in the schoolroom is the

fact that it is practically impossible for a Chinese child to do any

studying amid the distractions of a Chinese household. Even for adult

scholars it is almost always difficult to do so. At his home the pupil has

no mental stimulus of any sort, no books, magazines or papers, and even if

he had them, his barren studies at school would not have fitted him to

comprehend such literature.

The object of Chinese education is to pump up the wisdom of the ancients

into the minds of the moderns. In order to do this, however, it is

necessary to keep the stream in a constant flow, at whatever cost, else

much of the preceding labour is lost. According to Chinese theory, or

practice, a school which should only be in session for six months of the

year, would be a gross absurdity. The moment a child fails to attend

school, he is supposed (and with reason) to become "wild."

The territory to be traversed is so vast that the most unremitting

diligence is absolutely indispensable. This continues true, however

advanced the pupil may be; as witness the popular saying, "Ten years a

graduate (without studying), and one is a nobody." The same saying is

current in regard to the second degree, and with not less reason.

The necessity of confining one's attention to study alone, leads to the

selection of one or more of the sons of a family as the recipient of an

education. The one who is chosen is clothed in the best style which his

family circumstances will allow, his little cue neatly tied with a red

string, and he is provided, as we have seen, with a copy of the Hundred

Surnames and of the Trimetrical Classic. This young Confucianist is the

bud and prototype of the adult scholar. His twin brother, who has not

been chosen to this high calling, roams about the village all summer in

the costume of the garden of Eden, gathering fuel, swimming in the village

mud-hole, busy when he must be busy, idle when he can be idle. He may be

incomparably more useful to his family than the other, but so far as

education goes he is only a "wild" lad.

If the student is quick and bright, and gives good promise of

distinguishing himself, he stands an excellent chance of being spoiled by

thoughtless praises. "That boy," remarks a bystander to a stranger, and in

the lad's hearing, "is only thirteen years old, but he has read all the

Four Books, and all of the Book of Poetry, etc. By the time he is twenty,

he is sure to become a graduate." When questioned as to his attainments,

the lad replies without any of that pertness and forwardness which too

often characterize Western youth, but, as he has been taught to do, in a

bashful and modest manner, and in a way to win at once the good opinion of

the stranger. His manner leaves nothing to be desired, but in reality he

is the victim of the most dangerous of all flatteries, the inferiority of

what is around him. In order to hold his relative position, it is

necessary, as already pointed out, to bestow the most unwearied attention

on his books. His brothers are all day in the fields, or learning a trade,

or are assistants to some one engaged in business, as the case may be, but

_he_ is doing nothing, absolutely and literally nothing, but study.

So much confinement, and such close application from the very earliest

years, can scarcely fail to show their effects in his physical

constitution. His brother hoes the ground, bare-headed throughout the

blistering heats of July, but such exposure to the sun would soon give him

the headache. His brother works with more or less energy all day long

(with intermittent sequence), but were _he_ compelled to do the same the

result would not improbably be that he would soon begin to spit blood.

That he is physically by no means so strong as he once was, is undeniable.

He has very little opportunity to learn anything of practical affairs,

and still less disposition. The fact that a student has no time to devote

to ordinary affairs is not so much the reason of his ignorance, as is the

fact that for him to do common things is not respectable. Among the four

classes of mankind, scholars rank first, farmers, labourers, and merchants

being at a great remove.

The two things that a pupil is sure to learn in a Chinese school are

obedience, and the habit of concentrating his attention upon whatever he

is reading, to the entire disregard of surrounding distractions. So far as

they go these are valuable acquirements, although they can scarcely be

termed an education.

Every pupil is naturally anxious to get into the class of scholars, and

this he does as soon as he gives all his time to study; for whether he is

a real scholar or not, he plainly belongs to neither of the other classes.

We are told in the Confucian Analects that the master said, "The

accomplished scholar is not a utensil." The commentators tell us that this

means that whereas a utensil can only be put to one use, the accomplished

scholar can be used in all varieties of ways, _ad omnia paratus_, as Dr.

Legge paraphrases it. This expression is sometimes quoted in banter, as if

in excuse for the general incapacity of the Chinese literary man--_he_ is

not a utensil. The scholar, even the village scholar, not only does not

plow and reap, but he does not in any way assist those who perform these

necessary acts. He does not harness an animal, nor feed him, nor drive a

cart, nor light a fire, nor bring water--in short, so far as physical

exertion goes, he does as nearly as possible nothing at all. "The scholar

is not a utensil," he seems to be thinking all day long, and every day of

his life, until one wishes that at times he would be a utensil, that he

might sometimes be of use. He will not even move a bench, nor make any

motion that looks like labour. Almost the only exception to this general

incapacity, is an exception for which we should hardly be prepared; it is

a knowledge, in many cases of the art of cooking, in so far as it is

necessary for the practice of the scholar, who often teaches in a village

other than his home, where he generally lives by himself in the

schoolhouse.

We have already alluded to the great oversupply of teachers of schools.

Many of them, owing to their lack of adaptation to their environment, are

chronically on the verge of starvation. It is a venerable maxim that

poverty and pride go side by side, and nowhere does this saying find more

forcible exemplification than in the case of a poor Chinese scholar. He

has nothing, he can do nothing, and in most cases he is unwilling to do

anything. In short, viewed from the standpoint of political economy, he is

good for nothing.

One specimen of this class the writer once saw, who had been set at work

by a benevolent foreigner molding coal balls, an employment which

doubtless appeared to him and to the spectators as the substantial

equivalent of the chain-gang, and yet, to the surprise of his employer, he

accepted it rather than starve. A certain scholar of this description was

so poor that he was obliged to send his family back to her mother's house,

to save them from starvation. The wife, being a skillful needle-woman, was

employed at good wages in a foreign family, but when her husband heard of

it he was very angry, not because he was unwilling to have her associate

with foreigners, who he was kind enough to say were very respectable, but

because it was very unsuitable that she, the wife of a scholar, should

work for hire! The wife had the sense and spirit to reply that, if these

were his views, it might be well for him to provide his family with

something to eat, to which he replied with the characteristic and ultimate

argument for refractory wives, namely, a sound beating!

When one of these helpless and impecunious scholars calls upon a foreigner

whom he has met only once, or perhaps never even seen, he will not

improbably begin by quoting a wilderness of classical learning to display

his great--albeit unrecognized--abilities. He tells you that among the

five relations of prince and minister, husband and wife, father and son,

brother to brother, and friend to friend, his relationship to you is of

the latter type. That it would do violence to his conception of the duties

of this relation, if he did not let you know of his exigencies. He shows

you his thin trousers and other garments concealed under his scholar's

long gown, and frankly volunteers that _any_ contribution, large or small,

prompted by such friendship as ours to him will be most acceptable.

While the conditions of the life of the village scholar are thus

unfavourable for his success in earning a living, they are not more

favourable to his own intellectual development. The chief, if not the

exclusive sources of his mental alimentation have been the Chinese

Classics. These are in many respects remarkable products of the human

mind. Their negative excellencies, in the absence of anything calculated

to corrupt the morals, are great. To the lofty standard of morality which

they fix, may be ascribed in great measure their unbounded and perennial

influence, an influence which has no doubt powerfully tended to the

preservation of the empire. Apart from the incalculable influence which

they have exerted on the countless millions of China for many ages, there

are many passages which in and of themselves are remarkable.

But taken as a whole, the most friendly critic finds it impossible to

avoid the conviction, which forces itself upon him at every page, that

regarded as the sole text-books for a great nation they are fatally

defective. They are too desultory, and too limited in their range.

Epigrammatic moral maxims, scraps of biography, nodules of a sort of

political economy, bits of history, rules of etiquette, and a great

variety of other subjects, are commingled without plan, symmetry, or

progress of thought. The chief defects, as already suggested, are the

triviality of many of the subjects, the limitation in range, and the

inadequacy of treatment. When the Confucian Analects are compared, for

example, with the Memorabilia of Xenephon, when the Doctrine of the Mean

is placed by the side of the writings of Aristotle and Plato, and the

bald notation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by the side of the history

of Thucydides, when the Book of Odes is contrasted with the Iliad, the

Odyssey, or even the A†neid, it is impossible not to marvel at the measure

of success which has attended the use of such materials in China.

Considering what, in spite of their defects, the Classics have done for

China, it is not surprising that they have come to be regarded with a

bibliolatry to which the history of mankind affords few parallels. It is

extremely difficult for us to comprehend the effect of a narrow range of

studies on the mind, because our experience furnishes no instance to which

the case of the Chinese can be compared. Let us for a moment imagine a

Western scholar, who had enjoyed a profound mathematical education, and no

other education whatever. Every one would consider such a mind

ill-balanced. Yet much of the ill effect of such a narrow education would

be counteracted. Mathematical certainty is infallible certainty;

mathematics leads up to astronomy, and a thorough acquaintance with

astronomy is of itself a liberal education. Besides this, no man in

Western lands can fail to come into vital contact with other minds. And

there is what Goethe called the Zeit-geist, or Spirit of the Age, which

exerts a powerful influence upon him. But in China, a man who is educated

in a narrow line, is likely, though by no means certain, to remain narrow,

and there is no Chinese Zeit-geist, or if there is, like other ghosts, it

seldom interposes in human affairs.

The average Chinese scholar is at a great disadvantage in the lack of the

apparatus for study. In a Western land, any man with the slightest claim

to be called a scholar, would be able to answer in a short time, a vast

range of questions, with intelligent accuracy. This he would do, not so

much by means of his own miscellaneous information, as by his books of

reference. The various theories as to the location of the Garden of Eden,

the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, the probable authorship of the

Junius Letters, the highest latitude reached in polar exploration, the

names of the generals who conducted the fourth Peloponnesian war--all

these, and thousands of similar matters, could be at once elucidated by

means of a dictionary of antiquities, a manual of ancient or modern

history, a biographical dictionary, and an encyclopedia. To the ordinary

Chinese scholar, such helps as these are entirely wanting. He owns very

few books; for in the country where printing was invented, books are the

luxury of the rich.

The standard dictionary of Chinese, is that compiled two centuries ago in

the K'ang Hsi period, and is alleged to contain 44,449 characters, but of

these an immense number are obsolete and synonomous, and only serve the

purpose of bewildering the student. Within the past two generations the

Chinese language has undergone a remarkable development, owing to the

contact of China with her neighbours. All the modern sciences have

obtruded themselves, but there is no interest in the coA¶rdination of these

new increments to their language on the part of Chinese scholars, to whom

K'ang Hsi's lexicon is amply sufficient.

In order to attain success in Chinese composition, it is necessary to be

acquainted with the force of every character, as a means to which, access

to this standard dictionary, would seem to be indispensable. Yet, though

invaluable, it is not in the possession of one scholar in fifty. Its place

is generally taken by a small compendium, analogous to what we should call

a pocket-manual, in which the characters are arranged according to the

sound, and not according to the radicals, as in K'ang Hsi.

Pupils are seldom taught the 214 radicals, and many persons who have spent

years at school have no idea how to use K'ang Hsi's dictionary, when it is

put into their hands. Within a circle of eight or ten villages, there may

be only a single copy, and if it is necessary to obtain more accurate

information than is to be had in the pocket-dictionary, the inquirer must

go to the village where there is a copy of K'ang Hsi, and "borrow light"

there.

But such an extreme measure is seldom considered necessary. The incessant

study of the Classics has made all the characters in them familiar. Those

who write essays can compose them with the aid of these characters only,

and as for miscellaneous characters--that is, those not found in the

Classics--why should one care for _them_? A good edition of K'ang Hsi,

with clear type and no false characters, might cost, if new, as much as

the village schoolmaster would receive for his whole year's work.

At examinations below that for the second degree, a knowledge of history

is said to be as superfluous as an acquaintance with the dictionary. Nine

out of ten candidates at the lower examinations know little of the history

of China, except what they have learned from the Trimetrical Classic, or

picked up from the classics. The perusal of compendiums of history, even

if such are available, is the employment of leisure, and the composition

of essays as a business once entered upon, there is no leisure.

One occasionally meets a teacher who has made a specialty of history, but

these men are rare. Historical allusions often lie afloat in the minds of

Chinese scholars, like snatches of poetry, the origin and connection of

which are unknown. Many scholars who have the knack of picking up and

appropriating such spiculA| of knowledge, acquire the art of dextrously

weaving them into examination essays and owe their success to this

circumstance alone, whereas if they were examined upon the historical

connection of the incidents which they have thus cited, they would be

unable to reply. But as long as the use of such allusions in essays is

felicitous, no questions are asked, and the desired end is attained. "The

Cat that catches the Rat is a good Cat," says the adage, and it is no

matter if the Cat is blind, and the Rat is a dead one!

The _Peking Gazette_ occasionally contains memorials from officers asking

that certain sums be set apart for the maintenance of a library in some

central city, to aid poor students in the prosecution of their studies. If

there were libraries on a large scale in every district city, they would

be valuable and much-needed helps. But so far as appears, for all

practical purposes, they scarcely exist at all.

The Chinese method of writing history, is what Sydney Smith called the

antediluvian, that, namely, in which the writer proceeds upon the

hypothesis that the life of the reader is to be as long as that of

Methuselah. Projected upon this tremendous plan, the standard histories

are not only libraries in size, but are enormously expensive in price. In

a certain District (or County) it is a well-known fact that there is only

one such history, which belongs to a wealthy family, and which one could

no more "borrow," than he could borrow the family graveyard, and which

even if it could be borrowed would prove to be a wilderness of learning.

It is indeed a proverb, that "He that would know things ancient and

modern, must peruse five cartloads of books."

But even after this labour, his range of learning, gauged by Occidental

standards, would be found singularly inadequate. According to Chinese

ideas, the history of the reigning dynasty is not a proper object of

knowledge, and histories generally end at the close of the Ming Dynasty,

about 250 years ago. If any one has a curiosity to learn of what has

happened since that time, he can be gratified by waiting a few decades or

centuries, when the dynasty shall have changed, and the records of the

Great Pure Dynasty can be impartially written. Imagine a History of

England which should call a halt at the House of Hanover!

The result of the various causes here indicated, combined with the grave

defects in the system of education, is that multitudes of Chinese scholars

know next to nothing about matters directly in the line of their studies,

and in regard to which we should consider ignorance positively

disgraceful. A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming

naA-vetA(C) that he had never understood the allusions in the Trimetrical

Classic (which stands at the very threshold of Chinese study), until at

the age of sixty he had an opportunity to read a Universal History,

prepared by a missionary, in which for the first time Chinese history was

made accessible to him.

The encyclopedias and works of reference, which the Chinese have compiled

in overwhelming abundance, are as useless to the common scholar as the

hieroglyphics of Egypt. He never saw these works, and he has never heard

of them. The information condensed into a small volume like Mayers'

Chinese Reader's Manual, could not be drawn from a whole platoon of

ordinary scholars. Knowledge of this sort the scholar must pick up as he

goes along, remembering everything that he reads or hears; and much of it

will be derived from cheap little books, badly printed, and full of false

characters, prepared on no assignable plan, and covering no definite

ground.

The cost of Chinese books being practically prohibitory to teachers who

are poor, they are sometimes driven to copy them, as was the habit of the

monks in the middle ages. The writer is well acquainted with a

schoolmaster who spent the spare time of several years in copying a work

in eight octavo volumes, involving the notation of somewhere between

50,000 and 100,000 characters, to the great injury of his health and of

his eyesight.

The whole plan of Chinese study has been aptly called intellectual

infanticide. The outcome of it is that it is quite possible that the

village scholar who has the entire Classics at his tongue's end, who has

been examined before the Literary Chancellor more times than he can

remember, may not know fact from fiction, nor history from mythology. He

is, perhaps, not certain whether a particular historical character lived

in the Han Dynasty or in the Ming Dynasty, though the discrepancy involves

a matter of 1,000 or 1,200 years. He does not profess to be positive

whether a given name represents a real person, or whether it may not

perhaps have been merely one of the dramatis personA| of a theatrical play.

He cannot name the governors or governors-general of three out of the

eighteen provinces, nor does he know the capitals of a third of those

provinces. It is enough for him that any particular place in China, the

location of which he is ignorant of, is "south-side." He never studied any

geography ancient or modern, he never saw an ancient atlas nor a modern

map of China--never in fact heard of one.

An acquaintance of the writer's, who was a pupil in a mission school, sent

to a reading man of his village a copy of a Universal Geography in the

Mandarin Colloquial, the explanations of which would seem to render

mistake as to its purport almost impossible. Yet the recipient of the

work, after protracted study of it, could make nothing whatever of the

volume, and called to his aid two friends, one of whom was a literary

graduate, and all three of them puzzled over the maps and text for three

days, at the end of which time they all gave the matter up as an insoluble

riddle, and determined in despair to await the return of the donor of the

book, to explain what it was about!

This trait of intellectual obtuseness, is far enough from being

exceptional in Chinese scholars. With a certain class of them, a class

easily recognized, it is the rule, and it is a natural outcome of the mode

and process of their education. Although the education of a Chinese

scholar is almost exclusively devoted to acquiring facility of

composition, it is composition of one variety only, the examination essay.

Outside of examination halls, however, the examination essay, even in

China, plays a comparatively small part, and a person whose sole forte is

the production of such essays often shows to very little advantage in any

other line of business. He cannot write a letter without allowing the

"seven empty particles" to tyrannize over his pen. He employs a variety of

set forms, such as that he has received your epistle and respectfully

bathed himself before he ventured to open it (a very exaggerated instance

of hyperbole), but he very likely neglects to inform you from what place

he is writing and if he is reporting, for example, a lawsuit, he probably

omits altogether several items of vital importance to a correct

comprehension of the case. In a majority of instances he is miserably

poor, often has no employment whatever, and no prospect of obtaining any.

If he becomes acquainted with a foreigner, you are aware, before he has

made three calls, that he is in quest of a situation. You inquire what he

can do, and with a pathetic simplicity he assures you that he _can_ do

some things, and is really not a useless person. He can indeed, write from

a copy, or from dictation if an eye be constantly kept upon him to prevent

the notation of wrong characters. But it will not be surprising if his

employer finds that at whatever task he is set, he either does it ill, or

cannot do it at all.

There are several criticisms which the average Occidental is sure to make

on the average Chinese schoolmaster. He always lacks initiative and will

seldom do anything without explicit directions. He is also painfully

deficient in finality, especially in the statement of his own affairs,

often consuming an hour wheeling in concentric circles about a point to

which he should have come in three minutes--that is, had he been

constructed intellectually as most Westerners are. Yet he has undoubted

intellectual abilities, not frequently surprising one by the keenness and

justice of his criticisms and comments. But his mind has been trained for

one line of work, and often for that alone. Every one knows that the minds

of the Chinese are not by nature analytic; neither are they synthetic.

They may suppose themselves to have the clearest perception of the way in

which a statement ought to be made, but a whole platoon of teachers will

not seldom spend several days in working over and over an epitome of some

matter of business which happens to be somewhat complicated, and after all

with results unsatisfactory to themselves, and still more so to the

Occidental who fails to understand why it could not have been finished in

two hours. The same phenomenon is often witnessed in their efforts to

assimilate unfamiliar works which are _not_ geographical. If a reading man

is invited to peruse one and make an abstract of it, he generally

declines, remarking that he does not know how, a proposition which he can

speedily prove with a certainty equal to any demonstration in Euclid.

The inborn conservatism of the Chinese race is exhibited in the average

literary man, whatever the degree of his attainments. To change his

accustomed way of doing anything is to give his intellectual faculties a

wrench akin to physical dislocation of a hip-bone. Chinese writing is in

perpendicular columns, and if horizontal reads from right to left--the

reverse of English. A fossilized Chinese whom the writer set to noting

down sentences in a ruled foreign blank-book could not be induced to

follow the lines as directed, but wished to make columns to which he was

used. When the foreign way was insisted upon, he simply turned the book

partly around and wrote on the lines perpendicularly as before! He would

not be a party to violent rearrangement of the ancient symbols of thought.

Such a man's mind resembles an obsolete high bicycle--very good if one but

knows how to work it, but not quite safe for any others. There is another

similarity likewise in the circumstance that many Chinese who have some

degree of scholarship are not expecting to employ their intellectual

faculties except when they happen to be called for. One is often told by

Chinese who have gone from home for some considerable time, that he cannot

read something which has been offered to him, as he has left his glasses

at home, not supposing that he should have any use for them. A greater

intellectual contrast between the East and the West it might not be easy

to name.

To almost all Chinese the _form_ of a written character appears to be of

indefinitely greater importance than its meaning. Those who are learning

to read, or who can read only imperfectly, are generally so completely

absorbed in the mere enunciation of a character, that they will not and

probably cannot pay the smallest attention to any explanation as to its

purport, the consideration of which appears to be regarded as of no

consequence whatever, if not an interruption. But the scholar and the new

beginner have this admirable talent in common, that they are almost always

able completely to abstract themselves from their surroundings,

disregarding all distractions. This valuable faculty, as already remarked

and a phenomenally developed verbal memory are perhaps the most enviable

results of the educational process which we are describing. As an

excellent example, however, of the degree to which verbal memory

extinguishes the judgment, may be mentioned a country schoolmaster (a

literary graduate) whom the writer interviewed in a dispensary

waiting-room as to the respective deserts of Chou, the tyrant whose crimes

put an end to the Ancient Shang Dynasty, and Pi Kan, a relative whom Chou

ordered disemboweled in mere wantonness in order to see if a Sage really

has seven openings in his heart. The teacher recollected the incident

perfectly, and cited a passage from the Classics referring to it, but

declined to express any judgment on the merits of these men as he had

forgotten what "the small characters" (the commentary) said about them!

We have already adverted to some of the principal defects in the routine

of Chinese schools, but there is another which should not be omitted.

There is scarcely a man, woman or child in China, who will not spend a

considerable fraction of life in handling brass cash, in larger or smaller

quantities. It is a matter of great importance to each individual, to be

able to reckon, if not rapidly, at least correctly, so as to save trouble,

and what is to them of far more importance, money. It seems almost

incredible that for instruction in this most necessary of arts, there is

no provision whatever. To add, to subtract, to divide, to multiply, to

know what to do with decimal fractions, these are daily necessities of

every one in China, and yet these are things that no one teaches. Such

processes, like the art of bookkeeping in Western lands fifty years ago,

must be learned by practical experience in shops and places of business.

The village schoolmaster not only does not teach the use of the abacus, or

reckoning board, but it is by no means certain that he understands it

himself. Imagine a place in England or in the United States where the

schoolboy is taught nothing of the rules of arithmetic at school, and

where he is obliged, if he desires such knowledge, to learn the simple

rules of addition, etc., from one person, those for compound numbers from

another person, not improbably in a distant village, the measurement of

land from yet a third individual, no one of them being able to give him

all the help he requires.

The Chinese reckoning board is no doubt a very ingenious contrivance for

facilitating computation, but it is nevertheless a very clumsy one. It has

the fatal defect of leaving no trace of the processes through which the

results have been reached, so that if any mistake occurs, it is necessary

to repeat them all, on the reiterative principle of the House that Jack

Built, until the answer is, or is supposed to be correct. That all the

complicated accounts of a great commercial people like the Chinese, should

be settled only through such a medium, seems indeed singular. An expert

arrives at his conclusions with surprising celerity, but even those who

are familiar with ordinary reckoning, become puzzled the moment that a

problem is presented to them beyond the scope of the ordinary rules. If

one adult receives a pound of grain every ten days, and a child half as

much, what amount should be allotted to 227 adults and 143 children, for a

month and a half? Over a problem as simple as this, we have seen a group

of Chinese, some of whom had pretensions to classical scholarship, wrestle

for half an hour, and after all no two of them reached the same

conclusion. Indeed the greater their learning, the less fitted do the

Chinese seem to be, in a mathematical way, to struggle with their

environment.

The object of the teacher is to compel his pupils, first to Remember,

secondly, to Remember, thirdly and evermore to Remember. For every

scholar, as we have seen, is theoretically a candidate for the district

examinations, where he must write upon themes selected from any one of a

great variety of books. He must, therefore, be prepared to recall at a

moment's notice, not only the passage itself, but also its connections,

and the explanations of the commentary, as a prerequisite for even

attempting an essay.

Under the conditions of the civil service examinations, as they have been

conducted for many hundred years, a system of school instruction like the

one here described, or which shall at least produce the same results, is

an imperative necessity in China. A reform cannot begin anywhere until a

reform begins everywhere. The excellence of the present system is often

assumed and in proof, the great number of distinguished scholars which it

produces, is adduced. But, on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary

to take into account the innumerable multitudes who derive little or no

benefit from their schooling. Nothing is more common than to meet men who,

although they have spent from one to ten years at school, when asked if

they can read, reply with literal truth that their knowledge of characters

has been "laid aside"--in other words they have forgotten almost

everything that they once knew, and are now become "staring blind men," an

expression which is a synonym for one who cannot read.

It is a most significant fact that the Chinese themselves recognize the

truth that their school system tends to benumb the mental faculties,

turning the teachers into machines, and the pupils into parrots. On the

supposition that all the scholars were to continue their studies, and were

eventually to be examined for a degree, it might be difficult to suggest

any system which would take the place of the one now in use, in which a

most capacious memory is a principal condition of success.

In the Village School, however, it is within bounds to estimate that not

one in twenty of the scholars--and more probably, not three in a

hundred--have any reasonable prospect of carrying their studies to

anything like this point. The practical result, therefore, is to compel at

least ninety-seven scholars to pursue a certain routine, simply because it

is the only known method by which three other scholars can compete for a

degree. In other words, nineteen pupils are compelled to wear a heavy

cast-iron yoke, in order to keep company with a twentieth, who is trying

to get used to it as a step towards obtaining a future name! If this

inconvenient inequality is pointed out to teachers or to patrons, and if

they are asked whether it would not be better to adopt, for the nineteen

who will never go to the examinations, a system which involves less

memorizing, and a wider range of learning in the brief time which is all

that most of the pupils can spend at school, they reply, with perfect

truth, that so far as they are aware there is no other system; that even

if the patrons desired to make the experiment (which would never be the

case), they could find no teacher to conduct it; and that even if a

teacher should wish to institute such a reform (which would never happen),

he would find no one to employ him.

The extreme difficulty which men of some education often find in keeping

from starvation, gives rise to a class of persons known as Strolling

Scholars, (_yu hsiao_), who travel about the country vending paper,

pictures, lithographs of tablets, pens and ink. These individuals are not

to be confounded with travelling pedlars, who, though they deal in the

same articles, make no pretension to learning, and generally convey their

goods on a wheelbarrow, whereas the Strolling Scholar cannot manage

anything larger than a pack.

When a Strolling Scholar reaches a schoolhouse, he enters, lowers his

bundle, and makes a profound bow to the teacher, who (though much

displeased at his appearance) must return the courtesy. If there are large

pupils, the stranger bows to them and addresses them as his Younger

Brothers. The teacher then makes some inquiries as to his name, etc. If he

turns out to be a mere pretender, without real scholarship, the teacher

drops the conversation, and very likely leaves the schoolroom. This is a

tacit signal to the larger scholars to get rid of the visitor. They place

a few cash on the table, perhaps not more than five, or even three, which

the Strolling Scholar picks up, and with a bow departs. If he sells

anything, his profits are of the most moderate description--perhaps three

cash on each pen, and two cash on each cake of ink. With a view to this

class of demands, a small fund is sometimes kept on hand by the larger

scholars, who compel the younger ones to contribute to it.

If, however, the Strolling Scholar is a scholar in fact, as well as in

name, so that his attainments become apparent, the teacher is obliged to

treat him with much greater civility. Some of these roving pundits make a

specialty of historical anecdotes, and miscellaneous knowledge, and in a

general conversation with the teacher, the latter, who has not improbably

confined himself to the beaten routine of classical study, is at a

disadvantage. In this case, other scholars of the village are perhaps

invited in to talk with the stranger, who may be requested to write a pair

of scrolls, and asked to take a meal with the teacher, a small present in

money being made to him on his departure.

It is related that a Strolling Scholar of this sort, being present when a

teacher was explaining the Classics, deliberately took off his shoes and

stockings in presence of the whole school. Being reproved by the teacher

for this breach of propriety, he replied that his dirty stockings had as

good an "odour" as the teacher's classical explanations. To this the

teacher naturally replied by a challenge to the stranger to explain the

Classics himself, that they might learn from him. The Strolling Scholar,

who was a person of considerable ability, had been waiting for just such

an opportunity, and taking up the explanation, went on with it in such an

elegant style, "every sentence being like an examination essay," that the

teacher was amazed and ashamed, and entertained him handsomely. If a

teacher were to treat with disrespect one whose scholarship was obviously

superior to his own, he would expose himself to disrespect in turn, and

might be disgraced before his own pupils, an occurrence which he is very

anxious to avoid.

In China the relation between teacher and pupil is far more intimate than

in Western lands. One is supposed to be under a great weight of obligation

to the master who has enlightened his darkness, and if this master should

be at any time in need of assistance, it is thought to be no more than the

duty of the pupil to afford it. This view of the case is obviously one

which it is for the interest of teachers to perpetuate, and the result of

the theory and of the attendant practice is that there are many decayed

teachers roving about, living on the precarious generosity of their former

pupils.

X

CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION--THE VILLAGE HIGH SCHOOL--EXAMINATIONS--RECENT

EDUCATIONAL EDICTS

When it is definitely decided that a pupil is to study for the

examinations, he enters a high school, which differs in many respects from

the ones which he has hitherto attended. The teacher must be a man of more

than average attainments, or he can neither gain nor hold such a place.

His salary is much greater than that given by the ordinary school. The

pupils are much harder worked, being compelled to spend almost all their

waking hours in the study of model examination essays. These are to be

committed to memory by the score and even by the hundred, as a result of

which process the mind of the student gradually becomes so saturated with

the materials of which they are composed, that he will always be able to

take advantage of the accumulations of his patient memorizing in weaving

his own compositions in the examination hall.

During the preceding years of study he has already committed to memory the

most important parts of the literature of his native land. He is now

intimately familiar with the orthodox explanations of the same. He has

been gradually but thoroughly inducted into the mystery of tones and

rhymes, the art of constructing poetry, and the weaving of antithetical

couplets, beginning with the announcement that the heaven is high,

balanced by the proposition that the earth is thick, and proceeding to the

intricate and well-nigh inscrutable laws by which relation and

correlation, thesis and antithesis are governed. He has now to learn by

carefully graded stages the art of employing all his preceding learning in

the production of the essay, which will hereafter constitute the warp and

the woof of his intellectual fabric. In future he will eat, drink, write,

talk, and sleep essays, essays, essays.

Measured by Chinese standards, the construction of a perfect essay is one

of the noblest achievements of which the human mind is capable. The man

who knows all that has been preserved of the wisdom of the ancients, and

who can at a moment's notice dash off essays of a symmetrical

construction, lofty in sentiment, elevated in style, and displaying a wide

acquaintance not only with the theme, but also with cognate subjects, such

a man is fit not only to stand before kings, but before the very Son of

Heaven himself.

A high official called a provincial Literary Chancellor, (_Hsiao YA1/4an_),

is despatched from Peking to the provinces, to hold periodical

examinations once in three or twice in five years. Upon the occasion of an

emperor's ascending the throne, his marriage, the birth of an heir, etc.,

there are extra examinations bestowed as a favour (_AȘn k'o_). When the

village scholar is able to produce an essay, and to write a poem that will

pass the scrutiny of this formidable Literary Chancellor, he may hope to

become a hsiu-ts'ai or graduate. In order to fit him for this ordeal,

which is regarded by outsiders with awe, and is anticipated by the young

candidate himself with mingled hope and terror, it is necessary that he

should run the gauntlet of a long series of preliminary test examinations.

Some months before the visit of the Chancellor is to take place, of which

notice is communicated to the Governor of the Province, and from him to

the District Magistrates, preparations are made by the latter officer for

the first examination, which is held before him, and in the District city.

It is part of the duty of some of the numerous staff of this official to

disseminate the notice of such an impending examination. In any Western

country, this would be accomplished by the insertion of a brief

advertisement in the official newspaper of the District, or County. In

China, where there are no newspapers, the message must be orally

delivered. The high schools in which pupils are trained with special

reference to such examinations, are visited, and the day of the

examination notified. Literary graduates within the district, who must be

examined with reference to passing a higher grade, are also informed of

the date. A small sum, the equivalent of fifteen or twenty cents, is

expected by the yamAȘn messengers as a solace for the "bitterness" which

they have suffered in distributing the notices. Notwithstanding this

clumsy method of circulating the notifications, it is rare that any one

concerned fails to receive the message.

Those who intend to be examined, make their way to the city, a day or two

in advance of the time fixed, that they may rent quarters for the half

month which they will be obliged to spend there. If the student chance to

have friends in the city, he may avoid the expense of renting a place, and

if his home should be near the city, he may be able to return thither at

intervals, and thus lessen the expenditure; for all these trifles are

important to the poor scholar, who has abundant need of money. As many

scholars combine to rent one room or one house, the cost to each is not

great, perhaps the equivalent of one or two dollars. Each candidate must

furnish himself with provisions for half a month. In some district cities

there are special examination buildings, capable by crowding, of seating

600 or 800 persons. In other cities, where these buildings have either

never been built, or have been allowed to go to ruin, the examination is

conducted in the Confucian temple, or at the yamAȘn of the District

Magistrate.

On the first day of the examination, two themes are given out at daylight,

by which time every candidate must be in the place assigned him, and from

there he must not stir. The themes are each taken from the Four Books, and

the essay is not expected to exceed 600 characters. By nine or ten o'clock

the stamp of the examiner is affixed to the last character written in the

essay, preventing further additions if it should not be finished, and the

essays are gathered up. About eleven o'clock, the third theme is given

out. This is an exercise in poetry, the subject of which may be taken from

the Book of Odes, or from some standard poet. The poem is to be composed

of not more than sixty characters, five in each line. A rapid writer and

composer, may be able to hand in his paper by three or four in the

afternoon, and many others will require much longer. The limit of time may

be fixed at midnight, or possibly at daylight the next morning. The

physical condition of a scholar who has been pinned to his seat for four

and twenty hours, struggling to produce an essay and poem which shall be

regarded by the severest critic as ideal, can be but faintly imagined by

the Occidental reader.

The next two days being devoted to the inspection of the wilderness of

essays and poems, the product of this first trial, the unhappy competitors

have leisure for much needed rest and sleep. On the morning of the fourth

day, the "boards are hung," that is, the list of those whose essays have

passed, is exposed. If the whole number of candidates should be 500--an

extremely moderate estimate for a reasonably populous district--the

proportion of those whose hopes are at once wrecked may be half. Only

those whose names are posted after the first trial can enter the

succeeding one. If the subordinates of the magistrate perceive that a

great many names are thrown out, they may come kneeling before the

magistrate, knocking their heads, and begging that he will kindly allow a

few more names to pass. If he happens to be in good humour at the moment,

he may grant their request, which is not in the smallest degree prompted

by any interest in the affairs of the disappointed candidates, but on the

important principle, that the fewer the sheep, the smaller will be the

crop of wool.

The only fee required for the examination is that paid for registration,

which amounts to about twenty cents. Not the name of the candidate only,

but those of his father and grandfather are to be recorded, to make it

sure that no one legally disqualified is admitted. The paper upon which

the examination essays and poems are written is of a special kind, sold

only at the yamAȘn, and at a cost for each examination equivalent to about

ten cents, or fifty cents for the whole five examinations, but the

candidate must pay three-fifths of this amount for the first supply,

whether he is admitted to a further examination or not. If he is, he

becomes entitled to a rebate of this amount on his subsequent purchases.

On the fifth or sixth day, those who have been selected from the whole

number examined, again file into the examination hall, and are seated

according to their newly-acquired rank for the second test. Three themes

are again propounded, the first from the Four Books, the second from one

of the Five Classics, the third a poetical one, in a manner similar to the

first examination. A day or two is allowed for the inspection of these

essays, when the boards are again hung, and the result is to drop out

perhaps one-half of the competitors.

At the third examination the themes, which are given out somewhat later

than in the previous trials, are two in number, one from the Four Books,

the other poetical. About noon of this day, the magistrate has a meal of

vermicelli, rice, etc., sent to the candidates. By four in the afternoon

the hall is empty. After the interval of another day the boards are again

hung, indicating that all but perhaps fifty are excluded from further

competition.

The fourth examination begins at a later hour than the third, and while

the number of the themes may be larger than before--all of them from the

Four Books--time is not allowed for the completion of any of them. In

addition to the classical themes, a philosophical one may be given.

Besides this, there are poetical themes, to be treated in a way different

from those in the preceding examinations, and much more difficult, as the

lines of poetry are subject also to the rules governing the composition of

antithetical couplets.

The metre, whether five characters to a line, or seven, (the only

varieties to choose from), is left to the option of the candidate, who, if

he be a fine scholar and a rapid penman, may treat the same theme in both

ways. A meal is served as at the preceding trial, and by five or six

o'clock, the hall is empty. After the interval of another day, the fourth

board is hung, and the number who have survived this examination is found

to be a small one--perhaps twenty or thirty.

A day later the final examination occurs. The theme is from the Four

Books, and may be treated fully or partially according to the examiner's

orders at the moment. A poem is required in the five-character metre, and

also a transcript of some section of the "Sacred Edicts" of the Emperor

Yung ChAȘng. The design of the latter is to furnish a specimen of the

candidate's handwriting, in case it should be afterward needed for

comparison. A meal is furnished as before, and by the middle of the

afternoon the hall is cleared. The next day the board is again hung,

announcing the names who have finally passed. The number is a fixed one,

and it is relatively lowest where the population is most dense. In two

contiguous districts, for example, which furnish on an average 500 or 600

candidates, the number of those who can pass is limited, in the one case

to twenty and in the other to seventeen. In another district where there

are often 2,000 candidates, _only_ thirty can pass. It thus appears that

the chances of success for the average candidate, are extremely tenuous.

Every candidate for a degree, is required to have a "surety." These are

selected from graduates of former years, who have advanced one step beyond

that of hsiu-ts'ai, to that of ling-shAȘng hsiu-ts'ai. The total number of

sureties is not necessarily large, perhaps four from each district, and

many of them may be totally unacquainted with the persons for whom they

become thus responsible. The nature of this responsibility is twofold,

first to guarantee that the persons who enter under a particular name,

really bear that name, and second that during the examination they will

not violate any of the established rules. If a false name is shown to

have been entered, or if a violation of the rules occurs, the ling-shAȘng

would be held responsible, and would be likely to lose his own rank as a

graduate. Each candidate is required to furnish not only a surety, but

also an alternate surety, and in consideration of a present of from ten

cents to five or six dollars, the ling-shAȘngs are quite willing to

guarantee as many candidates as apply. They must be paid in advance, or

they will prevent the candidate from entering the examination hall.

The preliminary examinations in the District city, having been thus

completed, are followed about a month later by similar ones in the

Prefectural city, before the Prefect, (chih-fu). Here are gathered

candidates from all the districts within the jurisdiction of the Fu city,

districts ranging in number according to density of population, from two

or three, to twelve or more. Those who have failed to pass the District

examinations are not on that account disqualified from appearing at the

Prefectural examinations, which, like the former, are intended to act as a

process of sifting, in preparation for the final and decisive trial before

the Literary Chancellor. The details of the Prefectural examinations are

similar to those already described, and the time required is about the

same. The number of candidates in a thickly-settled Prefecture, will often

amount to more than 10,000. As no ordinary examination building will

accommodate so many at once, they are examined in relays. The examinations

are conducted by the Prefect, but it by no means follows that those who

have been first in the District examinations will be so now. The order

changes, indeed, from day to day, but those who are constantly toward the

head of the list, are regarded as certain to pass the Chancellor's

examination.

The writer is acquainted with a man who at his examination for the first

degree, stood last in a list of seventeen, at the trial next before the

final one. But in that test he was dropped one number, missing his degree

by this narrow margin. His grief and rage were so excessive as to

unbalance his mind, and for the greater part of his life he has been a

heavy burden on his wife, doing absolutely nothing either for her support

or for his own.

Those who have already attained the degree of hsiu-ts'ai, are examined by

themselves for promotion. The expense of obtaining sureties is confined to

the last two sets of examinations. The final trial before the Literary

Chancellor is conducted with far greater care and caution than the

preliminary ones before the local officials. The candidates having been

duly guaranteed and entered, are assigned to seats, distinguished by the

characters in the Millenary Classic, which as already mentioned, affords a

convenient system of notation, being familiar, and having no repeated

characters. The students are closely packed together, fifteen or twenty at

each table. The first table is termed "Heaven" after the first character

in the Millenary Classic, and its occupants are denoted as "heaven one,"

"heaven two," etc. Each candidate notes his designation; for in the final

lists of those who have passed, no names are used, but only the

description of the seat as above described. Every student is carefully

searched as he enters the hall, to ascertain whether he has about him any

books or papers which might aid him in his task. The examination begins at

an extremely early hour, the theme being given out by sunrise. This theme

is written on a large wooden tablet, and is carried about to all parts of

the room, that each candidate may see it distinctly. It is also read out,

in a loud voice. By nine or ten o'clock another subject is announced from

the Four Books and a poetical theme in five-metre rhythm. A rapid writer

and composer might finish his work by one or two o'clock in the afternoon.

As in other examinations, those who have completed their tasks are allowed

to leave the hall at fixed times, and in detachments. By five or six P. M.

the time is up, and the fatal stamp is affixed to the last character,

whatever the stage of the composition. During the whole of this

examination, no one is allowed on any pretext whatever to move from his

position. If one should be taken deathly sick, he reports to the

superintendent of his section, and requests permission to be taken out,

but in this case he cannot return. A student who should merely rise in his

seat and look around, would be beaten a hundred blows on his hand, like a

schoolboy (as indeed he is supposed to be), would be compelled to kneel

during the whole of the examination, and at the close would be ejected in

disgrace, losing the opportunity for examination until another year.

Some years ago the examination hall of the city of Chi-nan Fu, the capital

of Shan-tung, was in a very bad condition. The Chancellor held the summer

examinations at that city, because the situation is near to hills, and to

water, and thus was supposed to be a little cooler than others. At one of

these examinations, a violent rain came on, and the roof of the building

leaked like a sieve. Many of the poor candidates were wet to the skin,

their essays and poems being likewise in soak, yet there they were obliged

to remain, riveted to their seats. The unhealthy season caused much

sickness, and many of the candidates suffered severely, seven or eight

dying of cholera while the examinations were in progress. That this is not

an exceptional state of things, is evident from the fact that it has since

been repeated. In the autumn examinations for 1888, at this same place, it

was reported that over one hundred persons died in the quarters, either of

cholera or of some epidemic closely resembling it. Of these, some were

servants, some copyists, some students, and a few officials. On the same

occasion one of the main examination buildings fell in, as a result of

which several persons were said to have been killed. The utterly

demoralizing effect of such occurrences is obvious.

On the second or third day after the examinations the boards are hung, and

the number of those successful appears. Yet to make the choice doubly

sure, and to guard against fraud and accidents, still another examination

is added, which is final and decisive. In addition to the twenty or thirty

who have passed, half as many more names are taken of those next highest,

making perhaps thirty or forty candidates, between whom the final choice

will lie. At this examination a theme from the Four Books is again

announced, on which only a fragment, the beginning, middle or end of an

essay, is to be produced, under the immediate eye of the Chancellor

himself. The number of those examined being so limited, it is easy to

supervise them strictly, and changes in the previous order are sure to

occur.

When the results of this examination are posted, the persons who have

finally passed, and whose talents are definitely adjudged to be

"flourishing," are for the first time known. Those who have failed at any

stage of the trial may return to their homes, but those who have "entered

school" must remain at the Prefectural city, to escort the Chancellor upon

his way to the next city where he is to hold examinations.

The expenses of the Chancellor's examination, to those who fail to pass,

are the same as those of the preceding ones. But for those who have

"entered" there are other and most miscellaneous expenses, illustrating

the Chinese aphorism that it is the sick man who must furnish the

perspiration. The fee to the ling-shAȘng who is surety, has been already

mentioned. There are also other fees or gratuities, the amount of which

will depend upon the circumstances of the student, but all of which must

be paid. The underlings who transact the business of the examination

receive presents to the amount of several dollars, the "board-hangers"

must be rewarded with a few hundred cash, etc., etc.

As soon as the candidate is known to have "entered," a strip of red paper

is prepared, announcing this fact, and a messenger is posted off to the

graduate's home. For this service, a fee of several thousand cash is

expected. Large proclamations, called "Joyful Announcements," are prepared

by establishments where characters are cut on blocks, and sold to

successful competitors, at the rate of three or four cents apiece. A poor

scholar may not be able to afford these luxuries, but those who can

afford it buy great numbers of them, sending them in every direction to

friends and relatives, who take care to have them properly posted. On

receipt of these notifications, it is customary for the friends of the

fortunate family to pay a visit of congratulation, at which they must be

handsomely entertained at a feast. Each one brings with him a present in

money, varying according to his circumstances, and his relations to the

family of the graduate. If the newmade Bachelor has a wide circle of

relatives and friends, especially if some of them happen to be occupying

official positions, he will not improbably receive enough in gifts of this

sort, to reimburse himself for the costs attending his examinations, and

in exceptional instances, his congratulatory presents may greatly exceed

the total of his expenses.

The style of these notices is the same, a blank being left for the name

and rank of the graduate which is inserted in writing. It is a very common

practice in some regions to announce that the person concerned, "entered

as first on the list," though as a matter of fact he may have been one of

the last. This is considered a very easy and desirable way to get a name,

though no one is deceived by the fraud, for when a dead wall is covered by

scores of these announcements, each recording the entry of some one as the

"first name," it is obvious that the phrase is merely employed for

display.

It would naturally be supposed that the result of competition so severe

and so protracted as that for the degree of hsiu-ts'ai, would be certified

in the most careful manner, such as by a diploma bearing the seal of the

Chancellor. There is, however, nothing of the kind. The essays of the

successful candidates are supposed to be forwarded to the Board of Rites

in Peking, where it is to be hoped they eventually grow mouldy and

disappear, else the capital might be buried beneath the enormous mass. But

the individual whose talent is at last flourishing, has of that fact no

tangible evidence whatever. When it becomes desirable to investigate the

claim of a hsiu-ts'ai, he is asked in what year he graduated, the name of

the examiner, the several themes propounded, etc. It will be difficult to

manufacture plausible replies, which will not give some clew to their

falsity. In one case of this sort within the writer's knowledge, a man who

had been examined, but who did not pass, on being questioned gave the

name, the subjects, etc., which belonged to his own brother, who really

was a graduate. The man himself, as afterward appeared, was in prison at

the very time when he professed to have graduated.

This absence of credentials for a degree so much coveted, makes it easy

for scholars of shrewdness, and real ability, to pass themselves off in

districts remote from their own, as having attained to a rank which they

have not in reality reached.

A graduate is allowed to wear a plain brass button on his cap, which he

prefers to the pewter one given him on graduating. In case of violations

of law, the Magistrate of the District in which the offender lives, may

have his button taken away, and the graduate reduced to the level of any

other person. As long, however, as he continues to be a graduate, he

cannot be beaten like other Chinese, except on the palm of the hand. If a

Magistrate were to violate the rights of any graduate, the act would raise

a tornado about his head, before which he would be glad to retreat, for

the whole body of graduates would rise like a swarm of hornets to resent

the insult.

The financial exigencies of the past generation or two have led to the

open sale of literary degrees, a practice resorted to on a great scale by

the Chinese Government, whenever there is any unusual pressure for funds,

such as the repair of the disasters caused by the change in the Yellow

River. It is often quite possible to buy the degree of hsiu-ts'ai, for

about $100, and the purchaser is provided with a certificate, being in

this respect on a better footing than the graduate. But subscription

degrees are regarded with merited contempt, and their sale great as it has

been, does not appear to have seriously affected the regular

examinations, by diminishing the number of contestants.

There are other methods than purchase of a degree, by which the candidate

for literary honours, whose means admit of it, may try to weight the wheel

of fortune in his favour. There are three common ways of providing oneself

with examination essays without undergoing the labour of composing them.

Of these the first is known as the "box plan," (_hsiang-tzA-_), and it

is not so much cramming, as padding. The Four Books and Five Classics seem

at first sight to afford an almost unbounded field for subjects of essays,

and as the Chancellor does not announce his themes until he enters the

hall, it is hopeless to attempt to ascertain them in advance. But the

shrewd Celestial has an empirical, if not a scientific acquaintance with

the doctrine of chances and of averages. He knows that in the course of

years, the same themes recur, and that essays which were composed long

before he was born are just as good in the present year as they ever were.

The "padding" method consists in lining one's clothing with an immense

number of essays, the characters of which are of that minute kind known as

"fly-eye," scarcely legible without a magnifying glass. Upon this scale,

it is easy to reduce an essay with 300 characters to a compass of extreme

insignificance, and a moderately "padded" scholar might be provided with

8,000 or 10,000 such essays. Sometimes they are concealed in the baskets

in which the students bring their provisions to the hall. By dint of a

complete index, the student who is padded, can readily ascertain whether

he is provided with an essay upon the passage desired, and though the

withdrawal of an essay from a pack might seem a more difficult feat, it is

easily done by the judicious expenditure of a fee to the guards both at

the door and within the hall. A variation of the padding method is to have

essays written all over the lining of the inner jackets, which are made of

white silk for this purpose.

A second and very common way of obtaining essays without writing them, is

by purchase. In furtherance of this plan, there is a special system of

machinery, which (with appropriate financial lubrication) may be easily

set in motion.

The purchase of an essay is one of those acts which in China can by no

possibility be concealed. "There is no hedge that excludes the wind," and

the close proximity of so many witnesses would, in any case, render the

transaction in a manner a public one. Why then do not those scholars who

are honestly toiling for a degree, agree to expose the frauds by which

every one of them is so seriously wronged? It is not, indeed, an unknown

circumstance for a scholar to cry out, so as to attract the attention of

the examiners, when he witnesses the transfer of essays, but it is not

apparently a common act. The custom of selling essays, like other abuses

in China, is too universal and too ancient to be broken up, without the

steady coA¶peration of many forces, for which it is hopeless to look. The

Chinese dread to give offence by any such burst of indignation as would

be, for an Occidental, irrepressible. And so things go on in the old way.

As to the morality of the affair, if the consideration of it ever occurs

to any one, it is hard to make that appear culpable in a poor scholar,

which is legitimate for the emperor.

The proportion of students who obtain their degrees unfairly must be

large, but there is no means of ascertaining the facts, even

approximately. No two examinations are alike, and in all of them much

depends upon the temper and vigilance of the presiding officer. In one

district in which the writer lived, there was an examination in which so

many persons obtained their degrees by fraud, that even the patience of

the most patient of peoples was exhausted. Some defeated candidate wrote a

complaint of the wrong, and tossed it into the examination hall where it

was brought to the attention of the Chancellor, who had all the successful

candidates examined on their essays, an examination which eleven out of

fifteen were unable to pass, having bought their essays, and the result

was their summary disgrace. Since this occurrence, much greater care has

been exercised at this particular examination than was formerly the rule.

In another district a candidate known to the writer succeeded in passing

the first of the two examinations before the Chancellor, but the second

was too much for him. His essay and poem were adjudged bad, and he was

beaten a hundred blows on the hand. It was then the custom to publish the

names of those who passed the best examination on the first trial before

the Chancellor, as already having attained a degree. This notice had

already been sent to the home of the candidate, who now had the exquisite

mortification of having his name erased, when the prize was already within

his grasp. The subordinates in the yamAȘn of the Chancellor kneeled to his

Excellency, and implored him to overlook the amazing stupidity of this

candidate, which the great man was kind enough to do, and thus a degree

was wrested even from fate itself.

At all varieties of examinations, there are present many persons who act

as essay brokers and as middle-men between those who have essays to sell,

and those who wish to buy. It is supposed that both the seller of the

essay and the purchaser will be among those examined, but the practical

difficulty arises from the uncertainty whether their respective seats in

the hall, which cannot be known in advance, will be within reach of each

other. As any two persons are very liable to be so far apart that

communication will be impossible, it is usual for the essay broker to

introduce a number of essay vendors to each intending purchaser, so that

the chances of effecting a transfer between any two of them may be

increased. To bind the bargain, before the essay is composed, a brief but

explicit contract is signed by the purchaser in the hall. The terms are

arranged on a sliding scale, called "first two and after two," "first five

and after five," etc. This signifies that it is agreed that the person who

furnishes the essay shall receive in any event a first payment of 20,000

cash, or 50,000 cash, as the case may be, and should the purchaser win a

degree, there is to be an after payment of 200,000 cash, or 500,000 cash,

according to the terms. These payments are enforced by the brokers, who

must be well acquainted with the financial circumstances of the several

parties. These obligations, like gambling debts, cannot of course be

legally prosecuted, but the Chinese have in all such cases simple ways of

enforcing payment, such as raising a disturbance in an annoying and public

way.

The reputation of having bought an examination essay is not one which any

candidate wishes to have made public authentically, however notorious the

fact may be, but the reputation of having bought an essay and of having

declined payment, would be intolerable. Some essay vendors frequent

examinations for a long series of years, with no view to obtaining a

degree for themselves, but in order to reap more substantial benefits from

their scholarship than a degree is likely to confer. If they have once

taken a degree themselves, they can only carry on this trade by assuming

the name of some candidate, to whom a fee must be paid for the privilege

of personating him. Graduates of the rank of Selected Men also carry on

this business, sometimes in a double way, taking a degree for the person

whom they personate, and also having leisure to write essays for sale,

after their own are finished, thus killing two birds with one stone. In

either case, it is necessary to bribe the ling-shAȘng who is the guarantee

of the identity of the undergraduate.