of cultured Kiangsu province: Shanghai, Suchow, Chinkiang, Yangchow
and Nanking; and one city in adjoining Chekiang province, Hangchow. If
the clubs of these cities could by a dictograph breathe what they have
heard, volumes of wonderful interest would keep a score of publishers
busy. China has entered the world arena because of her human interest
on a vast scale.
The Manchu may try to come back, as the irreconcilable Major General
Yin Tchang has been plotting from Japanese Dalny. The doctrine of
sacred right, as strongly as the Hohenzollern has enunciated it, has
been preached before in China. The Manchu, with this in view, would
not abdicate until he was assured that in him would lie the ancient
right to pay the sacred Chou sacrifices, which are 4,000 years old.
The builder of the Great Wall, the Emperor Tsin, 200 B. C., said “Shao
Ming Yu Tien” (Heaven gives me my decree to reign). Sunyacius and the
republicans of 1911 said: “Tien Ming Wu Chang” (The divine right lasts
not forever).
Some of the political proverbs of the people are the following:
“An oligarchic government bites harder than a tiger.”
“A good hearer knows twice as much as a foolish talker, for he knows
himself and he knows the talker, too.”
“The great statesman makes public opinion his opinion.”
“When the whale gets out of his element, even minnows can safely laugh.”
“In the rise and decline of his country, each man has his share.”
Chang Chih Tung, the famous viceroy of Wuchang in 1909, used to say,
“Treachery can turn fame to everlasting stench.” May the New China not
be a traitor to progress. Chang was the progressive who established,
among many other modern plants, the wonderfully successful Hanyang
steel plant, whose products are used in Europe, both coasts of America,
Japan and in China on the roadbed from Canton to Harbin, 2,000 miles of
shining steel, in that “Celestial” land that is beginning to find that
it has a grand terrestrial future.
XII
SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA
Will the spirit which instituted the ancient notable public works of
China revive again? That is the question. The greatest irrigation work
in the world, 2,100 years old, is in China at Chingtu. It was invented
by Li Ping, the engineer-governor, B. C. 250. A plain seventy-five
miles by forty miles is irrigated. It supports nearly 4,000,000 people.
The water is taken from the Min River at Kwan Hien above Chingtu in
April, and is permitted to run in the thousands of channels until
November. Then the great banks of the Min are restored, as the rains
are sufficient, and the river runs in its old bed to join the “father
of waters”, the Yangtze River, at Sui Fu. The dikes are made of iron,
cement, stone, timber and bamboo cradles. Li left this message, which
is cut in the stones of his tomb outside the walls of Chingtu: “Shen
Tao Tan Ti Tso Yen” (Dig deep the bars, keep low the dikes). The
Chinese are going to use these works to produce power and light as well
as irrigation.
At Li Ling, over the Lu Ho River in southeast Hunan province, is a
high wooden cantilever bridge of six spans, four hundred and eighty
feet long and twenty feet wide, paved with cobbles, and covered with
an awning. The substructure is masonry, and the cantilever principle
is obtained by increasing the length of the pier timbers as they are
laid on one another. I want to describe a beautiful suspension bridge
over the Yang Ti River near Tali in Yunnan province, which shows that
engineering ability was generally spread throughout the provinces to
reach thus far in the extreme southwest. The double piers on each
side of the stream rise in great strength, and the arch is joined and
roofed over most artistically in characteristic Chinese style, like
a temple. Eight suspended iron chains make the floor of the bridge,
which is anchored half-way up the stone piers, under the arch. From
the chains arises a bamboo fence, which is kept from spreading by
stanchions, under which you must stoop at regular distances. There is
a commemoration statue of a recumbent water buffalo at the foot of one
of the pairs of piers. It and the bridge are all that remain of the
forgotten assemblage of orators, patrons, troops and society which ages
ago graced the occasion, another triumph of the doers over the talkers.
The engineer and the architect alone build their own monuments. As in
the case of Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s, “_Si monumentum requiris,
circumspice_.”
China thinks more of the engineer than we credit her with thinking;
otherwise she would not have criticized the Manchu so much of late.
Between high banks over the River Lou, in west Szechuen province, is
the famous Lou Ting Haio bridge, built in 1700. It is one hundred and
ninety-two feet long and has nine suspended iron chains, with loose
planks laid across. At Chow Chu, near Swatow, there is a beautiful
stone pier bridge over the Han River. Shops are established at each
pier, and the floor of the shop protrudes, and is supported with great
poles that retreat back to the piers. A daily fair is held upon the
bridge, because it is the most central point for the travelers from
many villages. Each village of the district has its own day for its
fair. At Changchow, near Amoy, is a wonderful bridge, from engineering
and artistic points of view. The great Chah Siang built it eight
hundred years ago from voluntary subscriptions. It is one thousand
yards long. There are one hundred and twenty piers, and the height
above the water is forty feet. Five stones of one hundred tons each,
twenty feet long, compose the roadway, each stone being several feet
wide. The piers up-stream are made with a cutwater bow. At Kweiyang,
the capital of Kweichau province, a massive stone bridge of ten piers,
with cutwaters, shows what ancient China could execute in masonry.
Near the rich coal mines at Ping Hsiang, in Kiangsi province, there
is a high five-arched, pier-pinnacled, balustraded bridge, which is
singularly beautiful. There are shrines on the piers, which also
have cutwaters. Chinese engineers discovered the principles of
the true arch; that is, a complete ring of voussoirs, and not the
succession of protruding corbels invented by the Hindus. The Chinese
are just discovering western industry and inventions, but we are just
discovering Chinese engineering, with engineers like their Yu and Chah
Siang, and the modern “Jeme”, which will cause not a little surprise
and enthusiasm in the practical Occidental world.
At Yangchow, on the Yangtze River, there is a remarkable pavilion
bridge. The heaviest part of the stone bridge is in the middle of
the stream, which is let through the masonry in a number of half and
full arch tunnels. Over these tunnels rises the heavy masonry pile,
topped with an artistic balustrade. On this is a superstructure of
five beautiful pavilions, with prominent up-curling eaves. The bridge
descends on each side to the banks along a sloping abutment. It is an
exceptional structure even for varied China, both from an artistic and
engineering standpoint. The ancient Liu Ko stone bridge over the Hun
River north of Peking is famous for its lion-pier terminals, its carved
stone balustrade which is in the ornate style. After leaving Szechuen
province, on the road into Yunnan, over the Niu Lan River, at Kiang Ti,
is a noted suspension bridge, hung between two heavy piers in a gorge,
the piers being surmounted with curve-roofed pavilions. The carvings of
monkeys, lions, etc., are very fine. The bridge, which is one hundred
and fifty feet by twelve feet, is made of iron chains, pulled very
taut, showing the unusual strength of the anchorage. There is also a
hand chain. The pavilions are, as usual, used as a restaurant and an
inn for travelers.
The two most famous suspension bridges are over the Mekong River in
Yunnan province, between Tali and Yungchang, and over the Salween River
on the main road to Burma. These chain bridges are hung from heavy
piers deep down in the vast gorges, and show that men were mighty
enough in those old days to tackle so mighty a problem. The Ban Chiao
bridge at Yungchang is worthy of the famous engineers of that province.
Strong stone piers are sunk down into the swift stream and anchored to
the high banks. A secure bridge has been laid down over this support.
The abutments are raised and roofed with a glorious double pagoda,
the ridge, curling eaves, flying supports and ornaments all being
splendidly carved. The bridge itself is protected with a balustrade,
and is roofed with tiles throughout. It is both an artistic and a
substantial structure. So much for the beautiful bridges of the old
régime, nearly all it will be noted in the native Chinese section of
the country. Herr Dorpmuller and other German engineers are teaching
the Chinese the revival of stone bridges by the massive structures
which they have erected on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway.
A beginning has been made in erecting iron truss bridges. The very
long pier bridge carrying the Peking-Hankau (Belgian built) railway
across the Yellow River is well known, and has stood longer than it was
thought it would because of the shifting foundation. The eight-pier
steel bridge over the Hwei River on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow
railway was erected by the Wright-Headson Company, of Motherwell,
Scotland. At Shanghai there is the wide Garden bridge. A steel bridge
has been erected over the Yellow River at Lanchow, the capital of
remote Kansu province, and at Tientsin is the Chin Kung truss bridge.
At Chungking a structure has been erected across the Yalung River.
The Hongkong-Canton, Tientsin-Nanking, Peking-Hankau, North China and
Kiachou-Tsinan railways of course have many steel culvert bridges.
There are already a considerable number of remarkable steel truss
bridges of eighteen to twenty-four spans over Liao, Nu Erh, Hsiao,
Taling, Sha, Tawen, Yellow and other great rivers of China. The French
railway, from Haiphong to Yunnan City, is built over one hundred small
bridges in the crossing of the Red River, Namti and Song River valleys.
From Peking to Tungchow, at the head of navigation from the coast,
about twenty miles, runs a broad road paved five hundred years ago
by the Ming kings with immense blocks, three feet square by two feet
thick. The road sadly needs resetting, but one can readily imagine
what a splendidly substantial road it once was in those spacious days
of the last of the pure Chinese kings. The Ming thought of art and
public works. The Manchu has thought more of intrigue and private
dinners since he gave up riding horses and living in tents. One of the
strongest charges against the Manchu was that he threw the great public
works which he inherited into ruin. This Tungchow Road is the road over
which commerce, invasion and many a dignified embassy have gone during
the recent strenuous centuries.
The Che Ling Road runs from Chinchow, in Hunan province, to Canton.
This is the road the new railway will take. The foot road is fifteen
feet wide and composed of great stone blocks one foot thick. Before
traffic was gathered at Hankau and Canton by steamships, the traffic on
the Che Ling foot road was very heavy, and shops lined the long stone
highway. Another famous road, the Mei Ling, also composed of stone
blocks, climbs the great Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) and connects
Nangan in Kiansi province and Canton. This is the road that Abbé Huc
took in 1849 when he made his daring journey from Tibet to Chingtu,
Chungking, Hankau, Kowkiang, Nanchang, up the Kan River to Canton and
Macao. There is a famous imperial road from Peking to Jehol, through
Kupikan pass, where the Manchus may finally be segregated. The road
from Peking to the Ming tombs is paved with a course of large stones.
The “Great Road” runs from Peking to Canton along the coast, and
answers to the old Japanese “Tokkaido”, which runs from Tokio to Kioto.
It was a Mongol road, dating back to the Great Wall. The best Chinese
roads, however, were made in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries
A. D., during the Sung dynasty, whose capital was Hangchow.
In 1890 the province of Szechuen built sixty-five miles of a mountain
river road in the gorges of the Yangtze River, starting from Kwei-chow
and running eastward. The road is from one hundred to five hundred feet
above high water and is cut six feet wide and eight feet high into the
limestone cliffs, truly a splendid revival of the noble works of the
Ming kings, and in a sublime situation not to be equaled anywhere.
The Szechuen people boast that their “road goes where a monkey
couldn’t hang”. The road was planned and executed entirely on Chinese
initiative. The best known road in China, and considering its length,
the best conditioned road in the empire, runs for four hundred miles
in Szechuen province from Wan Hsien on the Yangtze River, overland to
Chingtu City, the capital. It is called the Siao Pen Lu (smaller north
road), and is paved to the width of six feet. It has many wonderful
staircases cut up mountain faces. The road could be shortened one
hundred miles if bridges were built at the gorges. An internationally
owned railway was planned for this route. From Chungking to Chingtu in
Szechuen province, up hill and down, and across fields and marshes,
runs a traveled road paved much of the way with large stone slabs. From
Chungking to Sui Fu, along the Yangtze River for two hundred miles
runs a notable stone road five feet wide. Along all these old roads
the freight of 400,000,000 people has been carried on the backs of
men and women, and even children, whether by barrow or shoulder load,
during the long quiet centuries, at an awful cost of money; for too
large a proportion of the nation has been engaged in the transportation
as compared with the producing department, and this is one reason why
China has been poor so long.
Wells have been sunk by contractors, with whom the mayor of the village
(hsiang lao) dealt. A brick caisson, fitted on a bamboo frame, is dug
under and sunk. On this caisson the upper wall is built. Sometimes
iron-pointed bamboo pipes are driven through the bottom of the well.
These old methods will give way to the new, and windmills will begin to
hum in old China.
The modern water-works of Peking take the water from the Sha Ho, a
clear stream in the Western Hills. There are settling tanks, pumping
stations, stand-pipes, etc. One hundred and thirty thousand families
are supplied from the mains. The same concession to labor has been made
as at Hongkong, in that the cleaning of the filter sand and gravel is
done by hand instead of by machine. Nearly all the treaty ports are
putting in modern water-works, which have been sorely needed. China’s
death rate is decreasing, and it is not necessary, even from a Chinese
point of view, that there should be so many births or dual wives any
more.
Electric light plants are in operation at nearly all the coast treaty
ports, as well as at some of the Yangtze treaty ports and West River
ports inland. In the Occident, intellectual and spiritual light
preceded lighted roads and the light of science, but as everything is
opposite in China, it seems that science is preceding intellectual and
spiritual light. But “these twain shall meet in one equator round the
globe”.
The Lighthouse Department of the National Customs is employing foreign
engineers in harbor and channel work, and some improvements have been
made on the coast and along the rivers, the provincial authorities
making a special tax wherever possible to foot the bills. Often the
boatmen, merchants’ and bankers’ guilds are required to subscribe.
The first systematized attempt to handle public works scientifically
was undertaken by the provincial assemblies of Nganhwei and Kiangsu
provinces in the summer of 1911, during the awful famines, which
followed the great floods. America has sent large contributions of
flour and money for rice. The assemblies put the men, whom the floods
withheld from their fields, on railway building, canal dredging, bridge
building, and road making. It was along these roads that the triumphant
right wing of the republicans marched, headed by Generals Hsu and
Ling, in the memorable attack on Nanking, which broke the imperial
resistance, and threw the Manchu over the yamen wall!
Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have found that with
these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the
Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press
that lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings,
are given to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local
firms. The signs, taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have
enough to interchange without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments
will have to be made in some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy
and altruism will in the end overcome any misunderstandings that may
arise.
XIII
THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN
In 1911 Japan’s tariff agreements expired and a new high tariff
was put into effect in the effort to raise $300,000,000 a year
as the state’s revenue. The same result was experienced as in
India. Home manufacturers operated in the smaller industries, and
many larger foreign capitalists opened Japanese branches. For
instance, the Lever Soap Company, of England, came to Osaka, and
the Armstrong-Vickers-Maxim Company, of Newcastle, the gun-founders
and warship builders, came to Muroran in Ezo Island, to be near the
coal mines, the iron ore being imported largely from Tayeh, China,
and much of the pig iron from Hanyang, China. Prices of living have
advanced beyond wages, and in 1912 the municipalities of Tokio, etc.,
had to open free rice kitchens to feed crowds of the impoverished and
unemployed. The poor bear the heaviest share of the new taxes and the
increased prices levied by the trusts. The profits of some of the large
trusts go out of the country. There is the same complaint as in China,
that foreign capital and home monopoly are exploiting franchises,
subsidy chests and tariffs. The new high tariff is a success for the
monopolists, just as the American tariff was from 1865 to 1911. The
complaint among the people of the privilege-made-wealth running the
government and burdening the taxpayer is as bitter as in some other
countries. The suffrage being limited in Japan to five millions out
of sixty million people, this discontent does not yet show itself so
quickly as in America and Britain. American and British newspapers,
magazines and books which voice reform, and real and not deputized
representation of the taxed, are translated, and widely read, not only
in Japan, but in China.
The world knows the effective work of the Japanese press bureau,
organized with the aid of foreign advisers, before the Japan-Russia
War. This included the publication of Professor Nitobe’s book on
_Bushido_ in Philadelphia, glorifying to the highest pitch of the
warm Oriental imagination everything Japanese. This had much to do
with preparing the way for the Japanese advance in Manchuria. That
press bureau has been strengthened, and has its inspired organs in
some of the large cities of the Occident. No other country is able to
color the news on occasions as Japan is able. With the cry of _lèse
majesté_, Japan, Germany and Russia seem to be successful in stamping
out much of the independent criticism of the taxed, or those to whom
equal opportunity has been denied. There seems to be only one hope for
real liberty in Japan and elsewhere, the rise again, as in Bunyan’s,
Milton’s and Franklin’s time, of the independent pamphlet and book,
whose one motto shall be, “No taxation without real representation.”
The Japanese have appointed the Koreans, Count Yi and Viscount Cho, to
represent the absorbed Korean people, and these two men are expected
to sign every document praising the rule of the Japanese, which
document is then wired over the world by the thoroughly organized
press agency. The former immense missionary influence of the Americans
among the common people is slowly being choked out, and the large
foreign gold and other mining industries of Korea, which promised so
well, are also now under strict watch. In other words, the system of
dummification has been applied to Korean politics, and the famous
American teachers and political advisers have found it well to leave
the peninsula. I would instance the long articles in the New York
_Times_ of June 6, 1912, and the New York _Herald_ of September 1,
1912, in which the American Presbyterian and other churches charge
the Japanese bureaucracy with wholesale persecution, “planting” of
evidence, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Korean political
prisoners as late as 1912. Two methods of colonization face each other
in contrast at the threshold of China--the Japanese method in Korea,
and the American method in the Philippines. Both are progressing
commercially, but the latter alone is progressing educationally and
altruistically, so far. It is noticeable in Korea that the Japanese are
breaking down many beautiful walls and temples to build in their place
ugly utilitarian houses. They pay very little respect to those whom
they have conquered. They are obliterators of art, where art detains
utility. The name of the land has been changed to Chosen. In Manchuria,
despite conventions, the Japanese maintain ten times the railway guard
of soldiers agreed upon. Japan will bear friendly watching everywhere,
as the American writers, Millard and Homer Lea, are constantly urging.
Her armaments cost her a heavy taxation and she is searching for ways
to recoup herself. If Manchuria is to be saved to China, it will be
owing more to America’s insistence than to Britain, for Britain at
present is tied up to Japan, and Britain in India has given a hostage
to the East. Perhaps the best way to save Manchuria is to encourage
Chinese emigration, and this plan is now working out, tens of thousands
of Shangtungese leaving yearly for the three rich Manchurian provinces.
The American suggestion that the Russian and Japanese railways in
Manchuria should be made international is possibly not so good a plan
as to sell those roads to China with money loaned for the purpose,
and clean Manchuria of Russian and Japanese troops. There seems no
permanent reason why China should not run Manchurian railways and
mines as well and as profitably as she has run the North China Railway
and the Kaiping mine of Pechili province. To illustrate how Chinese
officialdom looks upon the general subject, I quote from Viceroy Liu
Ming Chuan’s memorial, approved by Li Hung Chang, written in 1893:
“Japan attempts now and again to be arrogant--like a mantis when it
assumes an air of defiance--and to despise China, and gives us no small
amount of trouble on the smallest pretext.”