went out to Yokohama as an assistant in the consular office of his
uncle. He was soon in Hongkong as agent of the Pacific Mail, Occidental
and Oriental, and Toyo Kisen Kaisha trans-Pacific steamship companies,
and was in touch with the Chinese of that great crown colony for
thirty-three years. He had an intimate knowledge of China, and trained
many of its commercial men who have risen high in the commercial and
diplomatic affairs of the new republic. In Hongkong he was looked
upon as one of the ablest minds that linked the West and the East.
He was devoted to Southern China, developed its trade, dry docks
and shipping, and formulated China’s first trans-Pacific steamship
line, the Chinese Merchants’ Steamship Company of 1903. The famous
Chinese guilds of Kwangtung province looked upon him as a sage, and
sought his aerie retreat over Robinson Road on the cliff for many a
conference under the swaying punkahs. He was a very tall thin man,
with a long countenance, great eyes, and a slow, full, round voice. It
was impossible to irritate him to heated expression. Like the mills
of the gods, he ground slow but exceedingly fine. He used to bemoan
the fact that Americans who managed Oriental companies generally do so
from America, before being first experienced in the Orient, and he was
a strong advocate of the British system of moving partners who would
serve their seven-years term in the Orient, seven at home and then back
to the Orient again. He was decidedly in an inferior field in commerce.
If American diplomacy had been steadier in the East, freed from the
spoils system, his mentality and training were perfectly fitted for a
great American minister at Peking, or a great consul-general at Canton.
He was a deep student of the Filipino, as well as the Chinese, but was
altogether in favor of the latter. He was more pessimistic perhaps
than was justified regarding what America will be able to do with the
Filipino and the Philippines. A thorough student of the Far East, and
the representatives of all nations who gathered there, smiling like
Buddha in his vast but reserved knowledge, nothing irritated him so
much in his official duties as listening to the conversation of the
official American globe-trotter, who dropped into Hongkong for a week,
and then drove contrary opinions down the throats of such sinologues
as he was, and wrote books, most of the prophecies of which remain as
a joke when compared with events. There was one American senator and
another American official who wrote books of Far East prophecies whose
“cocksureness”, like that of the Kanaka surf-rider, used to strike to
the core of the resentment of this usually placid Solon of the East,
who died in the terrific heat of the Red Sea in 1910, worn out with his
long life near the equator, and never having written the books that
were within him, and which he really owed the world. His sister married
an Austrian nobleman. The family homestead was at Englewood, New
Jersey, and on his mother’s side he was connected with the Sheffields
and Phelpses, of Yale College memory.
There have been other notable Americans who served in China. Colonel
John S. Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla leader, was consul-general at
Hongkong from 1878–85, and General E. S. Bragg, of the Wisconsin Iron
Brigade of the Civil War, was consul-general at Hongkong from 1902–4.
The general had a sharp wit and tongue, and is known world wide for
these two phrases which got into domestic and international politics:
“We love Cleveland for the enemies he has made;” and, “You can as
easily make a citizen of a Cuban as a whistle out of a pig’s tail.” The
contretemps can be understood when it is explained that the general was
at the time consul at Havana. Like the Arabs of Longfellow, after this
incident and the receipt of some mail from Washington, he “folded his
tent and silently stole away” for Hongkong! General Bragg, at Antietam,
was approached by General Gibbon’s aide, with orders to push the enemy
as long as it was safe, and the former’s famous reply was: “It has been
d---- unsafe here for the last half hour. Forward again, Wisconsin.”
Mr. Rounsevelle Wildman, author of _China’s Open Door_, and editor of
_Overland Monthly_, consul-general at Hongkong, where he amused the
staid Britons by his energetic efforts to sell his worthy book, lost
his life aboard the Pacific Mail steamer _Rio_, which sank with all on
board just outside the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Daniel Webster sent
his son Fletcher as secretary of the famous Cushing Commission, which
visited Hongkong, Canton and Macao. Secretary William H. Seward later
passed over the same waters, and I have seen Admiral Greeley, of Polar
fame, picking out the great war secretary’s steps at Wanchi, Hongkong.
The Tibet traveler and author, A. H. Savage Landor, I knew at Hongkong.
Some of us believed his thrilling tales of escape after torture and
some of us were cynical. He was a worn man then, grateful for favors
that are usually accorded to the traveler, an enthusiast, a student of
the Western Chinese, and a courageous fellow.
In 1911, America, Britain, Germany and France arranged to loan China
about $100,000,000 for railways and new currency. A neutral financial
adviser was found to be necessary, and President Vissering, of the
Dutch Java Bank, was agreed upon by the four nations, with Japan
favorably impressed. If the loan agreements go through, and when
affairs assume their normal course in China, Doctor Vissering will have
opportunity to leave his mark in a wider sphere in the Far East. Mr.
Hillier has long represented the British financial interests in Peking;
Mr. Straight, the American; and Doctor George E. Morrison, of the
London _Times_ staff, has been adviser to both imperial and republican
governments at Peking.
One of the most remarkable imperialists who ever came to China was
Paul Doumer. He was a French newspaper man, and came East as consul,
later becoming governor of Indo-China, which he sealed to France with
an iron hand. He made Haiphong, Hanoi and Saigon remarkable centers
of civilization, sanitation, music, art, architecture, commerce and
French imperialism. Cost was nothing to him. He seemed to make or
hypnotize money after he had hypnotized governments and financiers
with his eloquence and ambition. He formed Legionary troops and held
a strong navy in the East. He brought the great Messageries Maritimes
steamship line from Marseilles to Saigon. He grasped Kwangchou Bay in
Kwangtung province, and made Hongkong tremble for her prestige over
Canton and the southwest, her old imperial sphere. Then he dreamed
great visions of imperialism, as Rhodes was dreaming in Africa, Curzon
in India, A. Colquhoun in Burma, Kitchener in the Soudan, and some
Americans like Roosevelt and Taft in Panama and the Philippines. He,
“_le petit_ Paul Doumer,” would build a six hundred-mile railway, much
of the right of way where men had never been before, from Haiphong
to Yunnan, in the heart of Southwest China, turn the British flank
at the headwaters of the Yangtze River, and link Yunnan, and some
day Chingtu, with Marseilles and Paris. What if fever, one hundred
bridges in fifty miles, a cost of $100,000 a mile of road, and a little
traffic had to be conquered, he would build to the center of China,
dividends or no dividends. By 1910 he and his men had done it. The
British, fired by Colquhoun and Curzon, raced him from Burma, but he
has beat them by fifteen years. The Chinese do not love the French,
and they are building from Yunnan to Nanning to reach Hongkong; but
it is largely French for the present at Yunnan. Hongkong and Mandalay
have been flanked. The Chinese would have preferred the Americans, or
the British, who do not covet Oriental land. The French aim to push
that railway up to Chingtu, and cut China in half. Yunnan City, on its
high plateau, once the farthest from Peking and civilization, is now
a center of remarkable modernity, the Chinese emulating the French
in lighted streets, water-works, factories, modern prisons, trade
schools, uniformed police, and a provincial army and arsenal of modern
type. If you ask how has Paul Doumer influenced China, _circumspice_
at Yunnan City. Before Paul Doumer came East, following the dream of
empire, if you had been asked which was the last city of China that
would adopt progress, you would have said “inaccessible Yunnan,”
whereas it has been almost the first. Doumer’s most notable book on
China is _L’Indo Chine Française_, with the emphasis on the _Française_!
For two decades the name of Mr. Rumor (I shall call him that for
the purposes of this sketch), of Hongkong, was synonymous with the
rocket which seemed to have become a fixed star. He was a Canadian,
born in the little riverine town of Belleville on the St. Lawrence.
Adventure found him in Hongkong, a clerk in the Public Works Department
of the Colonial Government, at a child’s salary in a land costly
for the foreigner. The Chinese were beginning to use wheat flour in
place of rice, which had become valuable for export. Rumor acted as
their adviser during lunch hours, when the fervid sun of the Orient
burned up the tamarind’s shade and fried the papaw’s thick leaves. In
time he himself quietly imported consignments of Oregon flour. His
Chinese compradore was honest and divided the profits, though the
compradore did all the work. Rumor grew richer, and became an agent
for Northern Pacific American mills. As the years passed, the able and
honest Chinese compradore brought him orders sufficient to load many
full ships that breasted the slow waves of the Pacific. The Chinese
compradore lived plainly, and saved enough money to become a financial
power in the great imperial colony. Rumor then went into military,
naval and diplomatic society, built one of the finest aerie mansions
in the Far East on Hongkong’s peak of palaces near the unique tram on
Barker Road, where a thousand feet of picturesque cliff fell from its
foundation. He imported Kentucky saddle horses and racers, and at great
expense put Canadian sheep on the foothills of old China to see if they
could conquer the bamboo grass. He owned a steam yacht and a sailing
yacht, gave musicales to the military of the garrison station at both
his down-town chambers on the Praya and at his mountain château, and
entertained an American governor of the East who became a president.
He was a handsome man, the mirror of fashion and manners in the
cosmopolitan colony. His was the easy bearing of those who associate
with princes and know their standing. Like Beau Brummel, of Piccadilly,
he could make a griffin’s social fortune by being seen walking with him
down the Praya. Stories were told of his recklessness in hours of play.
He was a dashing character, altogether. He made annual trips to the
great cities that line the equatorial belt of the world and to capitals
of the North. He seemed to have tapped the mines of Eldorado.
At last, he would add fame to riches. Hongkong was about to enter
the great educational arena in the awakening of the Far East with
a splendid university. Hormusjee Mody, the Prince of Parsees, gave
the land. Who would give the endowment and thus perhaps secure a
knighthood? Why, Rumor, who at last was truly popular and not envied
alone, for he was now about to do something for others than himself. In
the meantime he had started a Chinese flour mill at Junk Bay, Hongkong.
He would startle the whole economic world, as Harbin did, by grinding
Chinese grain on the spot, and he would import less Australian and
Oregon flour. There seemed to be no end to Rumor’s extension or the
glamour which he cast over his compradore and the Chinese bankers, as
well as the American mills. Many tried to emulate him and steal his
trade, or imitate his “chops” on the flour bags; but the Chinese, “olo
custom”, clung to Rumor, who alone expanded, came, saw and conquered.
San Francisco was shaken by an earthquake, and New York by a financial
panic. The twin waves went round the world, and met in Hongkong harbor
one dark night, just as Rumor, purposely unaccompanied by a white
man, was returning in his yacht _Canada_ from his flour mill at Junk
Bay, all the long miles of the famous harbor to the landing under his
mountain palace and the university site. No one knows much about it,
except that the crew at last missed him overboard. The tidal financial
wave had swamped him. He could ride its crest no more in splendor.
The great university will bear many names, but probably not the name
of Rumor as its endower when the accounts of the estate are balanced.
Three Chinese, of Singapore, stepped forward and endowed the university
with nearly $500,000 gold, although they were at the same time holding
up the hands of the exhausted Chinese republican revolution.
Sir Matthew Nathan came to Hongkong as governor from hot and feverish
Nigeria. Hongkong is a moist hot place, very near the direct sun of the
equator, and men who wish to live long go slow in the luxuries of work,
liquor, etc. It is a good place to send your victim, as David disposed
of Uriah “in the forefront of the hottest battle”. Sir Matthew’s
enthusiasm was to be every inch a “knower” (mandarin) of the people,
and a governor. He wore his staff out. He was up at unseasonable hours
in addition to his regular duties. He worked as hard on the hot Praya
as another man would on cool Piccadilly in March. Every emergency and
occasion found him at hand, whether an awful fire, a new railway, or
the launching of a great ship. The memorable typhoon of September,
1906, struck the unprepared colony which has been visited so often
with these circular hurricanes. Sir Matthew seemed to superintend the
rescuers at every spot of the long beach and harbor. When the steamboat
_Hankow_ holocaust occurred in October he worked, axe and arm, with the
firemen. Little wonder that he died, really of exhaustion. He was a
typical example of the grand old British civil service in China. He was
heroic, unselfish, tireless, sympathetic, a man whose example lives to
fire China with zeal and altruism.
Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the
American Peking legation and has served on many American political
missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s
government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with
Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin,
and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his
guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin,
the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has
done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese
Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is
a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of
the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father
wrote that noble basic work, _The Middle Kingdom_, but for his own work
as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The
American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely
explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the
debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.
Doctor H. H. Lowry, for many years president of the Methodist
College at the Hata Men gate, Peking, has long exercised a strong
influence upon Chinese officials and students. He is a man of great
tact, enthusiasm, wisdom and scholarship, and is known both to have
enlisted Yuan Shih Kai on the side of religious tolerance, and to have
confirmed him in modern educational methods. The American Methodist
bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, is a mighty militant man with the
southern republicans. The students adore him. The patriots of young
China worship him. Fiery zeal, idealism, and the courage of a lion
are characteristics of this influential, learned and sacrificing man.
Doctor F. D. Gamewell, of Peking, is a Methodist missionary who has
been in China for thirty years. He is world-famous for his engineering
skill in directing the fortification of the legations in the awful
siege of 1900. He is a man of great physical courage, calmness of mind,
and sanity of judgment, and is a tower of influence among the Chinese
officials. He hails from Hackensack, New Jersey.
C. W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first
locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of
North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the
Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in
mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity
in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston.
The British engineers who have established China’s great railway
development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in
charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans,
Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the
northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the
Australian at Peking who represents the London _Times_, has long held
the world bound to his prompt despatches regarding Chinese politics,
of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been
dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship
of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master
hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, _An
Australian in China_, speaks for itself.
The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long
terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they
have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester
University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books
reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language.
Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul
at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His
books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat
for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old
harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a
pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have
taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in
Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc.
His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and
among others his book, _Things Chinese_, is an encyclopedic authority.
The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong,
where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let
the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai,
too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote _China in
Law and Commerce_, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field
which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon Moule
wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai
men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who
for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority,
the _North China News and Herald_. Mr. Little was succeeded by the
eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The _National Review_,
a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter
Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous _Far
Eastern Review_, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University,
a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written
interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong,
married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous
type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary
officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer
in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church,
does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology
for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable
Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous
days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the
guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, _Three
Years in Western China_; _Manchuria, Its People and Resources_. Chester
Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in
the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, _The Real Chinese
Question_. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.
Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose
works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M.
Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his
Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai
Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years
and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial
secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult
language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the
name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of
_Lion and Dragon in North China_, who was one of our Hongkong cadets,
Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and
scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West
in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting
China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy,
their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of
a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai,
the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million
dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the
fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan
by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning
to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates
that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were
admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders
in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture,
building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of
progress and government.
Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian
University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps
best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern
(Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great
Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields
a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials of Middle
China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian
College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power
to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business
men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and
hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university
where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the
educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese,
teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western
trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes
to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed
to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the
protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H.
Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful
cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials
and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and
interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There
are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and
Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in
the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination.
Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great
college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St.
John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants,
travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their
interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East,
and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching
every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different
sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for
good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo arch,
before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are
weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their
emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of
reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books
devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various
types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The
traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they
seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the
sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women
who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least
4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in
Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and
women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one
must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality
for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many
types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.