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CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913. The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Honorable Yuan Shih Kai, confirmed as president of China by the
National Assembly, January, 1913. A middle province type (Honan).
He is wearing the uniform of the General-in-Chief of the northern
army. A forceful progressive leader of the New China.
]
CHINA
REVOLUTIONIZED
_By_
JOHN STUART THOMSON
AUTHOR OF
The Chinese, Bud and Bamboo, Etc.
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, APRIL, 1913
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
DEDICATED TO MOTHER
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE GENESIS OF THE REPUBLICAN REVOLUTION 1
II WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA 114
III INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA 137
IV FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA 161
V BUSINESS METHODS OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA 175
VI RAILWAYS IN CHINA 186
VII SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA 196
VIII AMERICA IN CHINA 206
IX THE NATIVE LEADERS 222
X CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL POLITICS 229
XI CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS 242
XII SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA 250
XIII THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN 259
XIV PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON CHINA 281
XV SOME FOREIGN TYPES IN CHINA, AND THEIR INFLUENCE 288
XVI THE MANCHU 305
XVII CHINA’S ARMY AND NAVY 317
XVIII MODERN EDUCATION IN CHINA 334
XIX LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE 351
XX LIFE OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA 363
XXI FOREIGN CITIES OF CHINA 375
XXII NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA 433
XXIII RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY CHINA 450
XXIV LEGAL PRACTISE AND CRIME IN CHINA 472
XXV CHINESE DAILY LIFE 487
XXVI CLIMATE, DISEASE AND HYGIENE 499
XXVII CHINESE WOMANHOOD 519
XXVIII AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY IN CHINA 533
XXIX CHINESE ARCHITECTURE AND ART 541
XXX SOCIOLOGICAL CHINA 555
XXXI AWAKENED INTEREST IN AMERICA 567
INDEX 581
CHINA REVOLUTIONIZED
I
THE GENESIS OF THE REVOLUTION IN CHINA AND ITS HISTORY
FROM OCTOBER 10, 1911, TO YUAN SHIH KAI’S ACCEPTANCE OF THE PROVISIONAL
PRESIDENCY
A republic in place of the oldest monarchy! Preposterous. It would
involve making a yellow man think as a white man, and that had never
occurred, not even in the case of the prodigy, Japan. It would involve
free intercourse with the whole wide world, and China had opposed such
an innovation stubbornly for 400 years. It meant that the proudest
and most self-contained nation should treat others as equals and
interchange with them. It involved throwing 4,000 years of continuous
history and agglomerated pride and precedent to the winds, and humbly
beginning anew as a tyro for a while. It meant the dealing with
400,000,000 kings, instead of one, and asking: “My lord, what is your
will?” An educational system 2,000 years old to be forgotten at once!
A religion 5,000 years old at least, whereby every man had his own god
(his father), to be made as cheap as the paltry sacrifices of wine,
rice and the painted stick of Confucianism were in reality! The taking
up of individual and national responsibility for 400,000,000 people,
and entrance upon a wide path of world-influence, with its divided
shame and fame! The taking and giving of blows for wrong and right!
The giving up of the triple eternal Nirvana of father, self and son,
in exchange for an exciting rôle limited to fifty-five crowded years
in the individual! The scale of action! A land as large as all Europe,
and a people as numerous as the Caucasic race! The thunderous knock on
the long-locked doors of science and medicine by 400,000,000 people who
had bowed to idol and charm alone! It shook the world. It was pregnant
with paradisal possibilities for mankind, because of the vastness of
the movement and the depth of its well-spring. The launching of this
new leviathan ship of state could not but raise a wave that would
lift the already floating hulks of Europe and America, and give them
added impetus, though temporary alarm. The rearrangement of commerce,
manufacture, labor, finance, taxation, learning, agriculture, art and
possibly religion for the whole world. The adding of the most difficult
language to the tongues and pens of men, and the call on the English
speech to rise once more greater than the mighty stranger, or die.
The challenge to Palestine’s Bible to conquer by truth, or retreat
with half a world lost. The uprising again of the yellow ghosts of
Kublai Khan, Batu, Timurlane, and the Khans of the Golden Horde. What
would be the Caucasian’s answer to Emperor William’s question: “The
Yellow Peril”? It will be remembered that the kaiser once painted a
picture showing the nations of Europe gathering to defend the cross
and civilization against an incendiary Buddha lowering in the eastern
sky. Would the stranger within the gates be protected even while
republican and imperialist fought out their argument? Would leadership
arise, and would the great Mongolian mass be intellectualized now
that it was energized? Since the vast body was suddenly displaced,
would it henceforward move by mere gravity, or sympathetic volition?
Could it collectivize and not disintegrate? What would be the effect
on the scores of trembling thrones, where Rominoff, Hapsburg, Savoy,
Hohenzollern, Ottoman, Mikado, Billiken, etc., said they ruled by
“divine right”, which is quite a different thing from noble England’s
“constitutional right”? Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese republicans sent
out this challenge: “Tien ming wu chang” (the divine right lasts not
forever).
All these questions presented themselves when the reformers startled
the world with the announcement that there was to be a republic in
China. It was to be a republic--not a monarchy--said even those
Chinese who had been educated in Japan, where lately a Japanese editor
educated in America and ten others had been tried and executed in
secret, the papers sealed, and the press censored. They wanted pitiless
publicity in the new republican China. Had there been no abatement
of the opium habit through America’s leadership of sentiment, and
Britain’s sacrifice of revenue from 1909 to 1911, there could have
been no rebellion in 1911. The reform cleared the befogged heads of
the nation, added a million men to agitation, and furnished a hundred
million dollars directly and indirectly toward the independence of the
agitators. How great a stone America and Britain set rolling in that
Opium Conference of 1909 at Shanghai!
The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from
a clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home
and abroad did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the
imperial viceroy of Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new
Canton-Hongkong railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same
month troops under the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly
surrounded the office of the _Shat Pat Po_ newspaper, at Canton, and
arrested several reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province,
came down the Si Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat
_Po Pik_ to Canton and took back with him from the Canton arsenal,
machine guns and ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus
persistently called all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry
of Posts and Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes,
so as to censor messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret
sympathy with the reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for
gunboats, so as to disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the
revolution was to strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid _Hai
Chi_, well-known in New York, these viceroys suggested should be sent
to King George’s coronation review at Spithead. Even as far back as
July, 1907, the Chinese government approached the powers, requesting
that they make espionage on arms consigned to South China. Rather
to our amusement, they used to arrive at Hongkong as boxed pipes,
condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.--anything but guns, but that was
the humor of the freight classification which the shippers used! In
December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in Wuchow, Kwangsi
province, at the head of navigation on the West River, decided to cut
off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill and track
races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five years
before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of
the attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel
Wen, who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in
1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation
reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being
held, instead of circulated by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other
southern provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates
lack of faith as to the business and political future.
The celebrated Manchu, Tuan Fang, director-general of railways, was
ordered by the Ministry of Communications to proceed to Canton and
Kung Yik, the new town of the Americanized Chinese, in August, 1911,
to “pacify the people”. Tuan replied that he would not go, and gave
as his excuse: “Canton is infested with anarchism”. In the same month
the regent, Prince Chun, asked Prince Ching to recommend an energetic
general to be sent to quell disturbances in Kwangtung province, and
the Tartar general, Fung Shan, was sent. Spying was not uncommon,
impersonators going to a province ahead of new appointees and reciting
a record at the yamen which seemed to identify them. In August, 1911,
the cabinet at Peking decided to send photographs of new officials in a
sealed envelope, so as to prevent this impersonating.
As an indication of the new spirit which was moving among the Chinese
of Canton for better things at this time, take the inception of the
model town of Heungchow. Chinese returned from America, Singapore
and Hongkong could not bear the municipal restraint of the old city.
They chose a site ten miles up the inner harbor of Macao. Dredging
and a breakwater were begun for a harbor. Broad streets, drains, fine
stores, temples, police and fire stations and equipment, water-works,
libraries, parks, reforestation, chamber of commerce, tramways,
electricity and gas, hospitals, schools, theaters, detached homes with
gardens, launch and steamer lines, and a free port,--all were in the
scheme. When a government permits monopoly of food, and riots result
because of justice ineffectually exerted, history shows that the
government is about to fall. I instance the fierce Hangchow rice riots
of July, 1906, under the leadership of the Hung Pang (Red Association),
and the Changsha rice riots of 1910, when Yale College, in China, was
barely saved from the conflagration in the very district which in 1911
was swept by the high tide of the revolution. In 1906 text-books were
issued to the modern schools (Hok Tongs) which contained a caricature
of China, not as the “Middle Kingdom” of old, but as a morsel from
which all the nations took a bite. The intent, of course, was to arouse
resentful patriotism in place of the old inert pride. Many of these
schoolboys enlisted in the two bravest corps of the republicans, the
“Dare to Die” band, and the “Bomb Throwers” regiment. In April, 1911,
the rebels, under two of Sun Yat Sen’s lieutenants, Hu Wai Sang and Wu
Sum, operating in Kwangtung province, issued to the world almost the
identical manifesto that President Sun and Foreign Secretary Wu Ting
Fang issued in January, 1912, covering the following points:
1. Ousting the Manchu.
2. Friendly intercourse with foreigners and protection of foreign
property and person.
3. All foreign treaties now in force to be allowed to run their course.
4. Foreign loans and indemnities contracted by Manchus to date to be
paid.
5. Concessions contracted to date to be binding.
Desperate fighting took place, and had the rebels been sufficiently
supplied with money and arms, the republic would have been declared
at Canton in April instead of at Wuchang and Nanking in November. The
United States gunboat _Wilmington_ and British gunboats were rushed
to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect foreigners. Admiral Li, who was
killed in the October revolution, was barely able to conquer this
April revolution in Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. For centuries the
Chinese women would not associate with the Manchus, whom they called
“tent women”. All through Turkestan the Chinese walled off their
section of the city from the Mongolian settlements, though after the
conquest the Manchu troops displaced the Chinese.
Nearly all the missions were informed by students and friends
many months previous to the revolution that serious and continued
disturbances would occur. The Chinese saw that individualism had
arisen in America and England and was battling with the privileged.
Individualism arose at last in China and resented in this rebellion
the quietism taught by the superstition of Taoism, the resignation
of Buddhism and the obedience of Confucianism. “I am not a clan; I
am a man,” said the ambitious Chinese as he saw the new ray of hope.
American diplomacy was not altogether uninformed or unprepared. The
American fleet was made the largest foreign fleet in Chinese waters in
the first month of the revolution, Admiral Murdock having the cruisers
_Saratoga_ (the converted _New York_ of Spanish War fame), _Albany_,
_New Orleans_, _Wilmington_; the gunboats _Helena_, _El Cano_,
_Villalobos_, _Samar_; the monitor _Monterey_; and the destroyers
_Barry_ and _Decatur_.
As far back as June 3, 1910, a year and four months before the
revolution, the Shanghai _News_ printed the following article: “All
the legations and consuls have received anonymous letters from
friendly revolutionaries in Shanghai containing the warning that an
extensive anti-dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist
the Manchus, foreigners are not to be harmed.” In August, 1911, a
rebellion broke out at Sining, in far western Kansu province. The
stores were raided for every bolt of foreign cotton to make uniforms.
A boy of fifteen was named leader and he was given the significantly
fanciful name of “Savior of his country” (Chiu Shih Wang). Rich men
cornered the rice supply in the flooded Yangtze valley, and food
riots broke out all along the river in August, 1911. On August 23,
1911, rebels boarded a Chinese gunboat on the romantic Si Kiang (West
River) near Canton, shooting the commander and seizing the arms and
ammunition. On September first the Navy Department strengthened the
patrol of Kwangtung province waters so as to stop the smuggling of
arms, and the army board required miners to get permits to import
dynamite, as they feared that the “anarchists” were importing the
explosive. The awful floods and famines of 1910–11 in the basins of
the Yangtze River, the Hwei River and Grand Canal had created much
criticism of the government, which failed to alleviate suffering;
and the famine-stricken were willing to fight, because an army has a
commissariat, at least. “Every one that was in distress, and every
one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, escaped to
the cave of Adullam.” Newspapers, such as the oldest reform journal,
the _Shen Pao_, of Shanghai, related horrible illegal tortures of the
“third degree” used by Manchuized officials, which I have quoted in the
chapter on “Legal Practise.”
Tin was largely financing the propaganda, the 400,000 Chinese tin
merchants and miners of Singapore and Penang in the Straits Settlements
being the largest contributors. Following them came the 100,000
American Chinese and the 50,000 Australian Chinese. Even in 1898, Li
Hung Chang was known to declare, at Canton, that it was not impossible
that the spread of the proposed new education of the foreigners would
overturn the Manchu dynasty, of which he, a Chinese from Hofei, in
Nganhwei province, had been the strongest prop among the viceroys for
forty-five years. Superstition was not inactive. Halley’s comet flared
in the sky. It had shone when Cæsar fell; when Jerusalem fell; when
Italy fell before Attila; when English Harold fell before William the
Conqueror; when Rome fell in England; when Quebec fell before Wolfe;
and now its awful flame must surely prophesy the fall of the Manchu
dynasty. Omens were recited that red snow (snow and loess) had fallen
in Honan province, and that the Hangchow tidal bore had risen twenty
feet, broke over the bank and poured water into the first gallery of
the Haining pagoda. This always meant the fall of the dynasty, for
had it not happened on the night the beloved Mings fell, and when the
scholarly Sungs fell?
As with civil servants in some other countries, the Manchuized civil
service (mandarins) acted as though they were the governors and not
the servants of the people by allotting to themselves high salaries
and peculations. The year before the revolution the land tax yielded
about $150,000,000. Only $30,000,000 reached the government exchequer.
The Chinese held the Manchus responsible for this criminal neglect
of audit, for at least $100,000,000 should have reached the imperial
and provincial exchequers. That would have allowed $50,000,000 for
the expected peculation of that kind of office holders who believe
that “public office is a private graft”. In September, 1911, the
month preceding the great revolution, the _Chi Feng Po_, a native
paper of Peking, reported that all wages were in arrears and that
even the tea coolies had humorously pasted an anonymous sheet on the
imperial controller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our wages yet; WHY!
WHY!” Taxes were increased on long-suffering Kwangtung province in
the south, the brick kilns of Kochau, the silk sheds of Namhoi, the
tea houses, and even the temple keepers being assessed “all the taxed
would bear”. I shall instance a representative revolt. On September 6,
1911, the bonze at Shek Lung, near Canton, organized a revolt among the
worshipers at his temple. The mob demolished the municipal yamen, the
police station, the government distilleries, abattoir and fish market.
As far back as 1898 the emperor, Kwang Hsu, by edict declared that the
lottery at Canton should pay one-third of the upkeep of the far-away
Peking University. I have related in the chapter on “Chinese Daily
Life” the incident of a unique statue of a kneeling figure erected in
the Kwan clan temple at San Wui, near Canton, in August, 1911, which is
whipped by the worshipers to commemorate the defection of a member to
the government’s railway and tax program. There was always ill feeling
between Peking and Kwangtung provinces, the Manchu and Manchuized
viceroys joking at Peking when they were ordered to assume charge at
the yamen at Canton: “Well, I’m off to boss Miaotszes (barbarians),”
which the refined and commercial Cantonese certainly were not. This
superciliousness was deeply resented.
Repeated complaint had been made that an unrepresentative Manchu
government gave away concessions right and left to foreigners, and
that when these concessions were recalled or bought out, owing to
outraged patriotic feeling in the southern and central provinces,
the foreigner in instances charged immense sums for good will and
franchise in addition to his outlay and interest. I shall not recite
instances, as it is the system that I am denouncing, not the persons.
The Chinese rightly said, if we look at the matter with his eyes, that
he was not going to pay vast sums for the retrocession of his own
franchise, which was in some instances coerced from, or wheedled out
of, an effete, governing, unrepresentative clique, the members of which
never consulted the provinces that were concerned. “Taxation without
representation” again. It was not like the repudiation of the bonds
of the southern states, for no money had been paid. “Compensation”
and “indemnity” are two words the Chinese have learned to hate, and
some day they mean to build an immense navy and equip a large army to
interpret these words in the way the Occident interprets them, when
they are synonymous with injustice and “grab”. Bitter complaint has
continually been made since 1898 that Germany monopolized the mining
and railway franchises of the rich province of Shangtung.
On the subject of railways, concessions, etc., the following remarks
will be recalled in the American General J. H. Wilson’s book, _China_
(1887): “The Chinese will build railroads, open mines, etc., whenever
they can be shown that this can be done with their own money, obtained
at first by private subscription, and by their own labor, under the
direction of foreign experts who will treat them fairly and honestly.
They will not for the present grant concessions or subsidies to
foreigners. They will not even take money from any syndicate by
mortgage.” Complaint was also made that the Ming dynasty, 268 years
ago, left as a heritage to the Manchu dynasty, a land full of public
works, bridges, roads, temples, pagodas, canals, and that while the
Manchu collected large taxes, he seldom or never repaired a temple,
canal or road, so that China is now desolate. Objection was also made
that the government shipyards, like the Kiangnan, at Shanghai, were
building luxurious ocean steam yachts for Prince Tsui and others of the
imperial clan, an expense which the nation could not afford.
Two years before the famous revolution of October 10, 1911, the
author, in his book, _The Chinese_, picked out five men as the leaders
of changing China: Sun Yat Sen, as the anti-Manchu rebel, who would
take up arms in the endeavor to establish a republic; Kang Yu Wei,
who would go almost as far in reform, but would retain the Manchu
dynasty under a strict constitutional monarchy; Liang Chi Chao, as
the translator of reform books and a probable secretary of a reformed
state; Wu Ting Fang, as a secret reformer at heart, “who would bear
sympathetic watching”, and Yuan Shih Kai, to a degree an Occidentalized
opportunist of great ability, who was most favored by the Peking and
Tientsin foreigners, though distrusted by the Chinese and foreigners
in the south and Yangtze valley of China. The revolution was in full
sway by November, 1911, with Sun Yat Sen named as probable president
of a Chinese republic (Republic of Han); Kang in the exact place
prophesied; Liang as secretary of justice of Yuan’s first trial cabinet
of a constitutional monarchy; Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of a
provisional republic at Shanghai; and Yuan called from his two years’
exile at Chang Te in Honan province to be the first minister of the
reformed constitutional monarchy.
This most wonderful of revolutions seemed to break as a bolt from a
clear sky on October 10, 1911, at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, in the
center of the land, under the very guns of the United States gunboats
_Helena_ and _Villalobos_ which were steaming by. It was, as I have
attempted to show, rather a carefully planned matter, the propaganda
going on abroad and at home under bands and leaders, all of whose views
did not stop at the same place, but whose opinions had one source
in patriotic reform. Kang, the oldest and first of the reformers,
commenced in 1897 by winning with his book, _Japan’s Reform_, the
emotional Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu. But when the emperor fell in
1898 before the reactionary dowager, Tse Hsi, Kang, the Cantonese with
a Hongkong education, was driven to British Singapore and Penang,
from which places he has planned his travels and propaganda of the
“Pao Huang Hwei” (Empire Reform Association), which contemplated a
revolution of reform, but the retention of the Manchu dynasty as
constitutional monarchs for the time being. This association was quite
different from the Kao-lao-hwei, “Ko Ming” and “Sia Hwei” (reform
associations) of Sun Yat Sen, which aimed at a republic. In other words
Kang was a Taft “standpatter” medium reformer, and Sun a thorough-going
advanced reformer of the Roosevelt type. Kang’s associations grew up
in China, America and England, and Kang visited them, recommending the
drilling of companies to attack the troops of the reactionary literati
of the Hanlin academy.
Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits
Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the
reform Chinese papers, the _Hsi Pao_ (Western paper), and the _Ming
Pao_, and flooded his country with translations of parts of the great
books of British and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the
retention of the Manchu monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an
American missionary of Nanking had translated Henry George’s _Progress
and Poverty_ into Chinese, and this book was in the hands of the
reformers, and particularly appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan
Chi’s _Commercial Press_ of Honan Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been
translating a million dollars a year of Western text-books for Chinese
schools. The American Presbyterian Press at Suchow, and at 18 Peking
Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal Press, the presses of the other
American and British missions and Bible societies, had for years been
issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich compradores of foreign
houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented $1,000 to patriotic
lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s argument with his
father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ _Antigone_, brilliantly denouncing
absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was recited
by the foreign-trained students.
Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but from
his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch
with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with
his backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on
the style of Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew
so well. At Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909,
with instruction in Occidental organization, and the best troops of
the empire, as well as the best schools, and almost the best mills,
were organized by Yuan. The reformers who dare the most, however,
look upon Yuan by his past, as a temporizer, opportunist and dictator
largely under foreign influence; too much Occidentalized, and out
of touch with the spirit of “China for the Chinese”, and the “Sia
Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him as, in the past, a
Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a republican, but
must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some other head; great
as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great. They say
that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently sincere
in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too
much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for
Yuan, the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully.
Yuan is the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking, Tientsin,
Chifu, Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so
much in touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central
or Southern China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational
treaty ports of those sections, and of the brilliant British colony of
Hongkong in South China, which, with British and American Shanghai,
has done most for a reformed China. Yuan’s only experience outside
of China proper was when as a youth he served twelve years with the
army in Korea. Yuan’s temperament is cold. A noted southern statesman,
referring to him, said: “What can you expect of a man who is so cold
that he has to carry three braziers up his sleeve?” In the Korean
campaign of 1884 against Japan, Yuan is said to have objected to Red
Cross operations, jesting that the surgeons didn’t need to take the
trouble, for “while they had remade the man, they hadn’t remade the
soldier”. Yuan was a ruthless decapitator in that and other campaigns.
However, “to err is human, and to forgive, divine”, and if Yuan serves
a united republican China with full heart in the future, the mistakes
of the past will be forgotten in the joys of the glorious deeds that
are possible.
Doctor Sun Yat Sen (let us Latinize him as Sunyacius) is a Hongkong
product, and has been a revolutionist and a republican from the
beginning. As a boy he was fed on thrilling stories of the Taiping
rebellion by his uncle, who had served as an officer in that rebellion.
He was born at Fatshan, seven miles west of Canton, in 1866. From
1884–87 he was assisted by Doctor Kerr, of the Anglo-American Mission,
Canton, in whose office he studied medicine and English. He studied
medicine and surgery under Doctor Cantlie at Hongkong, of which colony
he became a citizen (that is, a British citizen), though of course,
he has now returned to his Chinese citizenship. Doctor Cantlie was
then teaching in the Hongkong School of Medicine, which is now a part
of the Hongkong University. In 1892 Sun became the first Chinese
practising physician at Macao, and met with great opposition from the
Portuguese doctors, who, in 1894, drove him to Canton. His father was
a Chinese Christian evangelist, a Congregationalist (London Mission)
by denomination, and Sunyacius looks upon the study of the Christian
Bible as the greatest necessity in China’s education. Even two years
before Kang’s work at Peking, Doctor Sunyacius, in 1895, smuggled
arms into Canton, got his revolutionary forces at work, and received
his first baptism of fire, in which he showed, as on subsequent
occasions, absolute fearlessness regarding his life. Sunyacius also
lived for a while with his brother and sympathizers in Honolulu, and
his studies in Hawaii and in America committed him to the republican
form of government. Owing to the Swatow men not meeting the Hongkong
men at Canton, Sunyacius’ plans collapsed in 1895. By the advice of
Mr. Dennis, a prominent solicitor of Hongkong, Sunyacius fled to Kobe,
Japan; to Honolulu and to San Francisco. This incisive, good-looking
little man of about five feet five inches in height, who dresses and
looks like an American or a Briton, has for years been traveling
incognito in America, England and Japan, organizing drill, educational
and contributing corps of the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the
money and men going to Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main
revolution broke out on that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General
Hwang Hing was Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this
aid. All of Sunyacius’ helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling
this money, except one, and of him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will
meet with his due reward.”
Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his
insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a
lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus,
to have his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a
thousand pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland
Street in London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation.
Sunyacius’ rescue came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong
teacher, Doctor Cantlie, was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave
to a British secretary in the Chinese Legation a note addressed to
Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was fortunately delivered in the British
spirit of fair play and through the pleas of a woman, the Briton’s
wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in “noble scorn
of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to Lord
Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened, surrounding
the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking). Sunyacius
was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese. Only for
Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the
tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the
mother and teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.
Sunyacius’ headquarters have been at British Singapore and at Hongkong,
but he is as well known at San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London,
Vancouver and Yokohama. He has walked into dormitories of Columbia
College, New York, and talked revolution and reform with some of the
students under the unconscious eye of so prominent a conservative as
President Butler. One of his student protégés was Wellington Koo, now
the Chinese secretary to Yuan Shih Kai. Sunyacius is a thorough-going
scholar, propagandist, organizer and republican, like the book he
carried, a man of “Progress and Poverty”. The world’s great bankers,
especially two London firms long connected with Chinese progress,
knew him, his disguises as a salesman, etc., and his careful plans
of government and finance, and he has not been timid in America, or
in London, Hongkong and the Straits Settlements in asking for loans
for his propaganda and revolution. He has handled a million dollars
honestly, and lived most frugally. The greatest luxury he ever allowed
himself was a “Prince Albert” coat and a rose-bouttonière, but that was
so that he might appear acceptably before an audience of Occidentals!
When in Singapore, Doctor Sun had his picture taken in white ducks
and a topey hat, so that he is a modern in tonsorial as well as other
matters! “This conference must be secret and our correspondence must
be anonymous, and upon receipt, burned,” said Sun to the bankers.
“Why?” they asked. “Because I am shadowed night and day. Look across
the way when I suddenly lift the curtain.” He raised the curtain, and
the bankers saw two “sleuths” in the cowardly shadow, one of them a
Chinese, lurking in a recess of a money capital of the Occident, many
thousand miles from the Manchu cabal in Peking, who had Oriental and
Occidental detective agencies in their blacklisting pay.
Dr. Sun is a brilliant and enthusiastic speaker in Chinese and in
English. His speeches to the Chinese often extend into hours. His
small copper-plate handwriting in English is better than his Chinese
chirography. He is a polished writer, having published in 1904 in
London a book on “The Chinese Question”. The Manchus have kept Doctor
Sun out of China, and he is therefore not yet thoroughly known to the
Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who fired the first successful shot,
but he is the pick of the southern and the alien Chinese, who are the
best educated of their race, and have largely financed reform: the
Chinese of Canton, Singapore, Penang, noble Hongkong, Macao, America,
England, Japan, Australia, and brilliant Shanghai. He has never held
office under the Manchus at home or abroad, and is therefore not well
known to foreigners in the salons of diplomats, in the capitals of the
Caucasic race, or to the masses of the Chinese in the north and west
provinces, but he is a coming man, and perhaps the most consistent
and steady of the reformers, as he is certainly the most promising,
intellectual and coolly daring. Sun Yat Sen’s name may some day be
Latinized into Sunyacius, just as Kung Fut Tse’s name became popular
as Confucius. Why not also Latinize Yuan Shih Kai’s name into the more
popular Yuanshius? The following incident will throw a light on Sun’s
character: On February 22nd his elder brother, Sun Mei, a man ordinary
in equipment, was almost elected governor of the great province of
Kwangtung as a popular tribute to Sun Yat Sen. The latter wired from
Nanking, disapproving of the choice for the province’s good, and urging
“brother Mei” to confine himself to business, for which he was more
fitted. Such frankness in family relations when public preferment is at
stake, is scarcely common.
Wu Ting Fang, a Cantonese trained at Hongkong, London and Washington,
blossomed out suddenly at Shanghai in November, 1911, as foreign
minister of the provisional Chinese republican government of the
fourteen central, eastern and southern rebel provinces. The western
world stopped its breath in tremendous astonishment. Wu! the brilliant,
fashionable and evasive Chinese minister at Washington, who would
put you off on politics to discuss vegetarianism, a rebel! He was
secretive beyond parallel, and had never talked revolution. The writer
tried to get him to talk reform in 1909 in connection with the reform
prophecies in his book, _The Chinese_, and though Wu had then fully
decided on the part he would take in the coming revolution, he would
only repeat what the writer said, and would express absolutely no
opinion of his own. I have known writers who have flayed him for this
abrupt evasion, calling him a “rice Christian” of yore, a temporizer,
etc., but I admire him for his calmness, fixed resolves, and patience
in waiting for the prodigious hour to strike. Wu knew what was coming,
and was heartily, though secretly, in favor of it. He was the first of
the rebels to insist on foreign acknowledgment of the rebel government,
and he formulated the most brilliant move of the revolution--the
announcement that if foreigners advanced money to the imperialists, and
the republicans won, the latter would repudiate such loans. This really
won the revolution, for numbers of the foreign syndicates, especially
the Russian, were at first heartily in favor of the Manchu _status
quo_. Wu has already codified the reform and penal laws of China, and
is prepared to enter upon that difficult question, extraterritoriality.
Watch Wu; he is not afraid to take the side of “China for the Chinese”,
although he is the most polished in western culture of all Chinese
officials. He aims to interpret the East to the West. Wu risked vast
preferment, and therefore he is a more sincere man than doughty Yuan,
and he will grow in power with the masses of the Chinese nation. His
brother-in-law is the exceedingly able Doctor Ho Kai, Commander of the
Order of Michael and George, the Chinese member of the Legislative
Council of the royal colony of Hongkong Island, a thorough legislator,
a lovable and brilliant man. Wu is a member of a worthy Canton family.
He is a graduate of the Middle Temple, London; has practised before
the Hongkong bar; and he served Li Hung Chang for many years as legal
adviser at Tientsin and Peking, in drawing up foreign treaties, etc.
There were other reformers in China and abroad at work from 1898 to
1911, although the western press gave no attention to the really
astonishing matter. The bitter Hunanese republican rebel, the
irrepressible Hwang Hing, was also exiled by the empress dowager,
Tse Hsi, in 1898. He fled to Japan, with a price on his head also,
and could hardly be restrained from calling the psychic moment for a
revolution into immediate declaration. He was a fast organizer, and
being nearer the ground, was in close enough touch with the Chinese of
the central provinces to be at Wuchang in October, 1911, shortly after
the first blow was struck. He had much to do with the gentry of the
Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who largely financed and precipitated
the main revolution. Hwang is considered by the extremists of his party
as presidential timber. He is a fervent talker, and like Sun, the last
man in the world to be an opportunist, which is the great Yuan’s one
fault in the minds of many of the Chinese people. Hwang Hing is the one
reformer who has some Japanese sympathies, on account of his education
in Japan. He was born at Changsha in Hunan, where Yale College has a
branch.
In America the editors of the _Chung Sai Yat Po_, the _Chinese World_,
and _Free Press_ in San Francisco; the Chinese Students’ Club in New
York (225 East Thirty-first Street), which publishes a journal, and
the _Chinese Reform News_ in New York, often visited by Sun Yat Sen’s
American representative, Wong Man Su, ably took up the propaganda,
which was carried on in their own way by a thousand newspapers which
arose throughout China from 1906 onward, first in the treaty ports,
and later in Chinese cities, especially Canton, Hankau and Shanghai.
Much reference was made to the fact that while China, the largest
Oriental country, was without a real parliament, other Oriental
countries had successfully overthrown despotism and oligarchism, and
had popular assemblies, which granted some representation in return
for the privilege of taxation. Japan had a Diet; even black Russia had
a Duma; the Filipinos had an Assembly; Turkey had an Assembly; little
Persia had a representative Mejliss; native members had at last been
admitted into the Viceroy’s Council in India; and Hongkong, with its
500,000 Chinese had long had two Chinese as brilliant members of the
Legislative Council.
Viceroy Seu Ki Yu’s essay of 1866, praising Washington and
republicanism as ideal, was reissued and distributed, and had great
influence. By 1909 and 1910 the reformers had compelled the Manchus
to heed the howling of the wind, and see the shadow of a cloud, at
least as big as a man’s hand, on the horizon of internal politics. The
dowager empress, Tse Hsi, and later, Prince Ching, and the regent,
Prince Chun--all Manchus--granted provincial and national assemblies;
but they were called and considered only “Tsecheng Yuan” (advice
boards), and not legislative bodies in the free and full sense of
the word. The pensions of the Manchus and bannermen in the various
Chinese cities were decreased, and land was offered them so that they
might enter the industrial body. Many Manchus rebelled, as at Chingtu
City in September, 1911. Argument increased. The cloud on the horizon
grew larger. Objection was made to the court’s monopoly of the rich
copper mines of Yunnan province, and complaint was reiterated that
while the southern provinces mainly supported the imperial authority
in taxes paid, these provinces were the least consulted, and the
weakest in representation in any governmental consultations that
were held at Peking. The government developed the armies and schools
of the three northern provinces of Pechili, Shangtung and Shansi with
taxes collected mainly in the southern provinces, where the government
neglected schools, police and army divisions. It was hard to get the
Stuart kings to call Parliaments, and when at a belated date they did,
complaint was louder than ever, for there was something to complain of,
and at last a constitutional place to complain in.
These Chinese assemblies gave little representation directly to the
masses, a high property or high tax qualification debarring them as
in Japan; but the gentry of the guilds, in many cases, espoused the
reform sentiment of the masses, exactly as the Stuart Parliaments did
to the disgust of the Stuarts who hoped for monarchic support, and as
the barons of the “Magna Charta” did at Runnymede to the disgust of
Plantagenet John. One provincial assembly president we must note at
this point. He is Tang Hua Lung, of the Hupeh Assembly. When Hankau was
taken on October 10, 1911, Tang jumped to the front as organizer of
the first rebel provincial government; the “province of Hupeh of the
Republic of Han”, with headquarters at Wuchang on the Yangtze River,
the ancient viceregal capital of the illustrious Chang Chih Tung. With
Tang Hua, Sun Yu, brother of Sun Yat Sen, came into prominence. In the
mother province of reform, the most progressive province politically
of all the twenty-one, Kwangtung, Wu Hon Man agitated in his assembly
for reform, and when the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming Chi, fled to
Hongkong, because he could find no other refuge, Wu Hon Man rushed into
the yamen at Canton with the rebelling Sixteenth, and other regiments,
and took charge of that great province for the republican rebels. In
its nationalization-of-railways scheme, the Manchus confiscated the
Kwangtung railways, promising to pay the owners only sixty per cent. of
their investment. Title deeds of mines in Kwangtung and other provinces
were also confiscated by the tyrannical Manchu government.
China’s army was a territorial one. Troops raised in this way are
hard to control in local emergencies, but they are easier to recruit,
mobilize, drill and discipline at the beginning than mixed corps. Among
the Generals of Divisions, transferred from the Navy Department, was Li
Yuan Heng, on whom the revolutionaries largely fixed their hopes as the
man trained and true for the real deeds of deadly arms, which make new
governments possible. Propaganda and patience are all right in their
places, but powder needs a special man of a stern mold, fit to deal
with merciless and terrible enemies. General Li was one of these men,
and General Hwang, Sun Yat Sen’s special representative at the Hankau
and Hanyang battles, was another. General Ling, on the rebels’ right
wing and the republican commander-in-chief, General Hsu Shao Ching,
at Shanghai, were others. General Li’s proclamation of the “Republic
of Han”, with military headquarters at Wuchang, covered the following
points:
1. Expulsion of the Manchu dynasty.
PROHIBITED ON PAIN OF DEATH
2. Injuring foreigners.
3. Injuring business by taking advantage of war.
4. Rapine, arson and adultery.
5. Mobbing.
6. Preventing recruiting.
7. Withstanding commissariat.
TO BE REWARDED HIGHLY
8. Supplying commissariat.
9. Supplying ammunition.
10. Protecting foreign concessions.
11. Protecting foreign missions.
12. Spreading republican and reform (Sia Hwei) propaganda.
13. Facilitating restoration of business and commerce.
General Li, a Hupeh man, was the Marlborough of the revolution, a
young, dashing, Christian soldier, used to courts, fine-looking, full
of humor, traveled, approachable. General Hsu, as the successful siege
of Nanking was later to prove, was the Grant of the revolution, steady,
reasonable, persistent, a spender of men, a strategist and a pounder.
General Li was educated at the Pei Yang naval colleges at Tientsin and
Chifu, and at Japanese military and naval schools at Tokio, Kure and
Yokosuka, where the name of China’s one naval hero of the China-Japan
War, Admiral Ting, of the famous battleships _Chen Yuen_ and _Ting
Yuen_, is held in considerable respect. Li passed through the terrific
fire of the naval engagements of the _Yalu_ and _Wei Hai Wei_ in 1894.
He is a Protestant Episcopalian. He traveled round the world with Li
Hung Chang in 1896, so that America and Britain were then entertaining
unawares one of the Washingtons of republican China.
As general of the Twentieth Division of the northern army, camped at
Lanchow, just east of Peking, was General Chang Shao Tsen (we shall
call him Chang the First to distinguish him from two other generals
Chang of the Manchu camp at Nanking and elsewhere in the northeastern
provinces). Chang the First was well trained by the revolutionists
in their doctrines of liberty, and was told to watch two camps, the
so-called People’s National Assembly at Peking and the Manchu Court
at Peking. Chang the First was trained in war by Yuan Shih Kai and
the Manchu general-in-chief, Yin Tchang, both of whom were effective
men, the former schooled by Tientsin and Peking foreigners, the latter
well trained in the Austrian ranks and before the line of guards at
Berlin. In old Canton, the mighty stanch Wu Hon Man was president of
the provincial assembly of Kwangtung province. He, too, was ready
to declare for rebellion, despite the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming,
and the loyal Tartar general, who were quartered on his province. In
the north, Governor Sun Hao Chi, of classic old Shangtung province
(the home of Confucius), was ready to go over. In the province where
Shanghai is located, the president of the assembly, Chang Chien, who
proposes to visit American chambers of commerce, and who is well known
as the host in China of visiting Pacific coast chambers of commerce,
was more than ready to declare for reform. He, with Wu Ting Fang, was
insistent on the abdication of the Manchu dynasty and the declaration
of a republic.