the revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, does a great work under
the auspices of the American Episcopal women of Philadelphia, a few of
whom bought land outside the east gate of that old capital, where the
famous Chang Chih Tung was for many years viceroy. The girls’ college
sprang up under the watchful eye of Bishop Roots, who has made a noble
name among the Chinese. The opportunity of this school is to be yet the
Barnard College or the Girton College of China, and of the need of it,
by women for women, all this volume could not say enough. No land is
sure of its progressive condition until the women are freed, educated
and progressive. The enjoyment of continued progress by the men is not
certain until the girls and women are swinging alongside of them on the
great road of life at the same pace, and with equal opportunity. There
can not be real companionship between inferior and superior; women and
men must be equal. Therefore the eyes of all China and America and
Britain are on such institutions as St. Hilda’s. It, too, is run on the
share principle, fifty dollars per girl per year, to put a modern woman
as a lighthouse in China to advance the world cause of womanhood.
The Yangtze valley, in particular, is the sphere of America’s
influence, and where the high tide of rebellion swept, America’s
educational influence will now follow, since fate has launched her
there in the colleges mentioned, and others not mentioned for want of
space. Lord Cecil plans to have the vast English foundation of Oxford
and Cambridge Colleges at Wuchang (see his enthusiastic book), and
if America has its equal at the other end of the brimming Yangtze at
Shanghai, honors will be equal. Germany is not going to neglect the
opportunity, as she has plans for Nanking and Hankau. Much luck to her.
_Contentia in bona!_ America and England have won a vast advantage,
however, over Germany and France, in that China, on recommendation of
the Board of Education, has adopted English as the official language
for the study of science, geography, travel and international politics
in all Chinese universities, technical colleges and high schools. This
victory was brought about through the influence of the Chinese students
who had studied in Britain and America, and a comparison of the
technical and educational books issued by the different countries, the
report being that the English language had three to one in its favor.
When the nations wish to study about China or any foreign country, they
have to take up or translate books written in English, for the American
and Briton are the most curious concerning the world’s countries and
naturally the authorities on comparative ethnology and international
economics.
The Y. M. C. A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school
as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial
schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering
China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government
industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and
almost lost cloisonné, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are
memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The
schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of
the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.”
In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The
pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier, viz:
“Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding
that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”
That the Chinese can become linguists has seldom been more uniquely
illustrated than in the following experience related by Prince Henri
d’Orleans. He was about to travel through the territories of the
aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan province. The difficulty was to find
an interpreter. The general interpreter who only knew the Mandarin
pronunciation of the north, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the
south, would not do. The prince found at the Mission d’Etrangeres at
Tali, in remote Yunnan, an interpreter who knew the Lolo dialects, and
though he could not converse with the prince in French or English, he
could converse fairly well in Latin, and they got along splendidly. It
appears that the Catholic fathers had taught the convert from the Latin
Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc!
Eager as the Chinese are to learn from text-books, they more eagerly
cry for exhibits which appeal to the eye, and the establishment of
museums, heretofore neglected, except in the few universities already
mentioned, should be undertaken. Take one week’s records at the
Hongkong Museum, for instance. Four hundred and sixteen non-Chinese and
163 Chinese used the library, but 193 non-Chinese and 3,100 Chinese
studied in the museum. The resourceful Canadian government sent a
traveling exhibit through China. It is what the Chinese call for. We
shall yet see floating and wheeled museums, _in parvo_, throughout the
empire, as educational bodies and merchants appreciate this as the
quickest way to approach the Chinese mind.
When the revolution of 1911 had developed strength, the Chinese
government found itself unable to remit to the thousands of students
who were studying in foreign countries. The American and British
universities, without exception, nobly offered to aid any needy Chinese
student. The move was brilliant and humane, and will be bread scattered
upon returning waters of appreciation some day.
The new representative assemblies have necessitated the introduction of
shorthand in China. The Tsze Chen Yuan (National Assembly) in session
at Peking as early as August, 1911, ordered night classes to be opened
for learning the art, so that the civil service clerks might attend.
I know that missionaries, helpless in committing to paper accurately
the sounds of the scores of Lolo, Miaotsze, and other dialects in
Yunnan, Szechuen and Kweichou provinces (where aborigines abound) have
had recourse effectually to phonography. If the brilliant Dickens,
John Hay, the American secretary of state, who founded the policy of
“non-partition of China,” and many others, were phonographers, why
might a missionary not be one also!
Some of the educational proverbs of the Chinese are the following:
“A lion breeds lions, and a brave father has brave sons.”
“Learn easy, forget easy; learn hard, forget hard.”
“Life is a river; if you are not going forward on it, you are falling
behind.”
“Youth jumps and slips; age picks its steps and crosses safely.”
“Measure words by the height of the brain, not the height of the body.”
“A loose rein for a good head; a tight rein for a loose heart.”
“Faces are alike, but minds are myriad.”
“It takes longer to determine than to do.”
“Fate doesn’t plan the lot of a fool.”
“The mind chisels the face.”
“It isn’t far at the turn of two roads, but they end far apart.”
“With weeds, and with learning, get at the root.”
“Nothing that is human is alien to a good man’s interest.”
“He who has no ambition is like an ax without edge.”
“Moments are more precious than jewels, for the first can not be
recovered if lost; the second may be found.”
“A right beginning makes a proper ending.”
“A tight mouth keeps back much mischief.”
“Heaven never put a bar against resource.”
“When you know yourself thoroughly, you know everyone else.”
“Prejudice is the thief of persuasion.”
“Two things strangle, the tongue and the cord.”
“Be as cross to yourself as you are to others; be as sweet to others as
you are to yourself.”
“Never too great to learn.”
“The last step must be as steady as the first in climbing a hill.”
“The downy chin goes over it; the bristly chin goes round it; or, the
young head for the long jump, and the old head for the long thought.”
“Good gives the tangible, evil but the shadows.”
“If you insist on every one being like you, look nowhere but in your
mirror.”
XIX
NOTES ON CHINESE LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE
Among the treasures of Buddhist monasteries are the stone tablets
called “Pei Tze.” It used to be the custom of celebrated visitors to
write an epigram, a witticism, a poem, or a sentence of philosophy,
which the monks had a stone-cutter engrave as near the beautiful
chirography as possible on these tablets, which constitute through the
empire a great literary treasure which is not likely now to be renewed.
Not a little of the sententiousness is humorous. A sign hanging up in a
celebrated Buddhist monastery in the Chingtu plain, Szechuen province,
makes this merry reference to fleas, which constitute the largest
part of the present immense population of China: “There are animals
with more legs than ponies at Inns _other_ than this Inn.” Another
popular humorous motto is: “One can carry kindness too far, such as the
fisherman who had such pity for fish that he would only go fishing with
straight hooks.” The idiom for inaction is: “keeping one’s hands in
one’s sleeves.” For “eating crow” the Chinese say: “eating a dumb man’s
bitterness.” More of their wisdom follows:
“Meekness and gentleness are the boat and the sail for crossing the
rough stream of this world.”
“The truths that we least wish to hear are those which it is most to
our advantage to know.”
“The way to glory lies through a palace; to riches through a market; to
virtue through a desert.”
“The Manchu court is like the sea, where everything depends on the
wind.”
“He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his
own.”
“The prison is shut night and day, yet is always full; the temples are
always open, yet you find no one in them.”
“He who lets things be given to him is not good at taking.”
“The dog in the kennel barks at his fleas, but the dog who is hunting
does not feel them.”
“The finest roads are the shortest ones.”
“Man may bend to virtue, but virtue can not bend to man.”
“The wise man does not speak of all he does, but he does nothing that
can not be spoken of.”
The Occidental manner of emphasizing a plea is: “If you don’t follow
this advice, look out for the consequences.” Here is the Chinese
phrase, as concluding Wu Ting Fang’s plea, in December, 1911, to the
Prince Regent Chun to abdicate: “Our voice is hoarse and our tears
are exhausted; no more can be said.” Their idiom for: “I’m not my own
boss” is: “I eat another’s bread; I watch at the door.” More of their
proverbs are:
“Who is he, though he never goes out, yet has seen all that is under
the sky? The scholar among his books.”
“If the ruby is unpolished, it is not a gem.”
“Age for a sharp chin, and a sharp tongue.”
“It is with human nature as with wines: age sweetens some and sours
others.”
“Happiness and misery both come in doubles.”
“Going through college doesn’t mean that the college has gone through
you.”
“You can lead a boy to the right book, the rest depends on himself.”
“The deeper the water, the slower the stream.”
“It is easier to escape a splinter that you see, than a beam that you
don’t see.”
“Familiarity takes the height off a mountain.”
“Wit may purchase wealth, but wealth can not purchase wit.”
“Originality can go so far back that it becomes aboriginality.”
“Your parents died when you were a child,” is the bitterly sarcastic
way in which the Chinese express that one has no manners, or
up-bringing. The following repartee is credited to almost every
traveled Chinese official, but it originated in the imagination of an
Occidental wit, because the Chinese consider manners and forgiveness
the first rule of public conduct. Official Bu was asked by an
impertinent Occidental why he wore such a ludicrous appendage as a
queue. “Why do you wear a mustache?” asked the Oriental, “Because I’ve
such an awful mouth.” “I thought so, from your first question,” was the
Oriental’s rejoinder.
Yu Yuen, a satirist of 400 B. C., when China was divided into many
states, ruled by inferior princes, wrote in defense of the able prime
ministers who were trying to save the states: “I, too, am glad I can
not fall to the intellect and moral level of princes.”
Chang Jo Hu, A. D. 800, with Isaiah-like emphasis reminds even
long-lived proud China that
“There’s no rock of empire man shall make,
But tooth and tide of time shall shake.”
He also wrote:
“The waves of the Yangtze that pass to the sea,
Nevermore shall return to me;
So, friend of my soul, ’tis with me and with thee.”
Po Chuh Ih, A. D. 772, once president of the Board of War, and later an
exile, wrote some Scott-like lays, including the _Never Ending Wrong_,
and the famous _Lute Girl_, which is full of silver music coming over
a moon-lit lake. At the lake he meets the lute-girl, once a court
favorite, but now old and deserted. The poet does not try to disguise
the truth. He says:
“The eye of Beauty wins a monarch’s soul,
And wrecks an Empire, too.”
Tai Chen, a poet, speaking for the Emperor Ming Huang, who is pursued
to Mount Omi, in Szechuen, by the rebel, An Lu Shen, writes: “The star
of empire pales before the morning beams of conquering foes.” Some of
his lyrics show pretty conceits like: “The pansies are faces of loves
that have died.” His _Ruined Home_ reads like parts of Solomon’s wisdom.
Tai Chen was preceded by the most famous poet of China, Li Po (A. D.
702). He was born in Szechuen province. His patron was the Emperor Ming
Huang, then a wanderer, as we have stated. A Browning-like poet of the
world, he talks of the Tang emperors of Nanking, patrons of sculptors,
“calling down the dreams of the gods and imprisoning them in stone.”
In an ode to Nanking, he tells about: “a woman asleep by a loom, and
a beautiful dream guiding her fingers along a glorious pattern that
is known only to the gods.” He believes in the high mission of the
poet, for he sings of “the fadeless lines of fire, running back to the
births of immortal poets, who now walk amidst the stars.” Like others
of the Chinese, and many of the new race of American poets, he has a
strong sympathy with trade unions. He addressed an ode _To the Golden
Presence of Guild Brothers_. He sings mightily of war in a song _To my
Fatherland_, and then lapses thus into a sadder note when he reflects
upon whom the sorrows of war come: “The pensive washwoman sends her
heart to the Tartar war in far Kansu province to find her conscript
soldier husband who suffers in the snows.”
Kao Shih, a contemporary poet, was a tremendous believer in the
personal soul. He wrote striking verse because of his love of the
occult, and his tendency to give to natural phenomena dramatic
personalities.
Ou Yang Hsiu, of the following dynasty, the Sung, 1007 A. D., himself
a governor, and historian of the Tang dynasty, wrote a famous “Autumn”
poem, which is truly a march of Elizabethan metaphors. He showed, too,
a cynicism which was like the Elizabethan:
“Fame, after all, is such a little thing!
Behold the fox and weasel’s young now play
Where lie the ashes of the great Man-Ching.”
Abbé Huc’s servant, Wei Chau, picked up in the book stores of Nanchang,
in Kiangsi province, pamphlets with the following brilliant epigrams,
which are not surpassed in any literature, and which might have been
written by Wilde:
“My books speak to my mind; my friends to my heart; all the rest speak
to my ears only.”
“One needs his wits most when dealing with a fool.”
“One forgives anything to him who forgives himself nothing.”
We call our printed Bible the “Word of God.” The Chinese have
an expression somewhat similar. Their beautiful ideographs are
delightfully called “Eyes of God.” The following is an effort of the
Manchus in literature, translated idiomatically, and it shows the
literary feebleness of the relapsed old conquerors. It is the national
anthem which the dynasty gave by edict to the Chinese to sing at the
opening of the rebellion in October, 1911:
“May the Golden Round be kept intact;
May Heaven help us;
Let the people and Nature live as quietly as ducks among lilies;
Both peoples (Chinese and Manchu) now dress alike; therefore be alike;
In this time of the Manchu (Ta Ching--Great Pure) dynasty we are
fortunate to see true splendor and greatness;
May Heaven protect the Emperor and his line;
For Heaven is greatest,
And Nature is infinite” (the suggestion being to fear God, or Nature’s
god).
The omnivorous Goethe made some investigation of Chinese literature,
and here is his opinion of what he had read: “The people think, act
and feel almost entirely as we do, although with them everything is
clearer, calmer and more moral. In their arrangements everything is
sensible, bourgeois, without great passion or poetry. What is moral,
proper and in strict moderation is considered.” Now and then more or
less distinct evidences of Chinese influence on the Greeks come to
view, though the thread west of the headwaters of the Tarim is now
lost. Many of the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato are similar to
those of Chinese Lao Tse, and therefore they may have been instructed
by the Chinese sage, whose book could have gone overland to Greece with
the caravans of silk.
The advent of the many newspapers has made a great difference in
the nerves and consciousness of the Chinese. From being the most
stolid of peoples, indifferent to famine, flood, war, persecution by
the officials or by the favored, poverty, pain, hardships physical
and mental, they have become as restive, impatient, nervous and
self-conscious as other races. Famine and flood used to sweep down
and destroy millions. What was the use of complaining, since no one
knew, nobody cared, and the victim might as well not care? Now, if
disaster takes off not a million men, but one man, it is important,
the newspapers chronicle it, and show how the lot of others may be
the lot of the individual. The sufferer himself cries: “Woe is to me;
isn’t this unendurable; help me; I can not, I WILL not bear it.” The
newspaper has developed the ego. The Chinese has become self-conscious
and nervous. He can not, he will not hereafter bear anything more than
other peoples. In the August, 1911, floods and the October, 1911,
revolution more fuss was made over the loss of a thousand men and women
than over the loss of hundreds of thousands in the Taiping rebellion in
the same region in 1853.
Not long ago, a weekly at Hongkong appealed to its public for a new
name. I quote some of the names to reveal what the Far East thinks of
itself in a humorous or serious light: “Bird of Freedom”; “Bubbles”;
“China Answers”; “Cathay’s Looking Glass”; “Chop Sticks”; “East
of East”; “Fragrant Waters” (the translation of Hongkong); “Fire
Crackers”; “Murmurs and Funnosities”; “Mixed Pickles”; “Peak and
Praya”; “Topical Tropical Times”; “The Griffin” (a beginner in the
Orient); “The Gong”; “The Hit”; “Humming Top”; “Imperial Outpost”;
“The Lantern”; “Merry-Go-Round”; “The Palm”; “The Pearl”; “Sun of
Cathay”; “The Typhoon”; “The Ferret”; “The Colonel”; “Maskee” (the
Chinese way of saying “never mind”); “Puckee” (the Oriental way of
saying “O.K.”). The Chinese newspaper is a success, commercially,
patriotically and educationally. Millions now read it every day. It
gave the best and earliest news of the October, 1911, revolution.
There are Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver,
Singapore, Penang, Hongkong, Sydney, Paris and London.
Chinese plays recite the history of the clans and early states. Even
the boatman and laborer are familiar with them. Every hill, valley,
and reach and fall of a river north of the Yangtze has its hero and
story. This would seem to prove that the race first came through the
Tarim and Kansu gates to the new land. The rich, who aim to control
trade routes and privileges depending upon popular tolerance, in
Roman fashion give free theatricals to the village folk. The acting
is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the
costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding
the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling
troupes. Guild halls and some monasteries have theaters in connection
with the compound. A restaurant is run during the long series of plays.
You hurry out to dine when the play you are least interested in is rung
in by cymbal. Bets and lawsuits between the guilds and villages are
often settled by the loser paying for the visit of a theatrical troupe.
Beautiful specimens of the blue and gold gowns of the emperor-actor can
be secured at the silk shops of the treaty ports, and in some of the
Oriental shops of New York, San Francisco and London.
The American and British college graduate wears a hood; the Chinese
wears a yellow panel on his breast and back (it may be changed under
the republicans to blue). When Yuan Shih recently took the oath of
office as provisional president, two bonzes of the famous Lama Temple
at Peking stepped up, and presented him with honorary panels of yellow
silk.
The incident will be recalled in Judges, Chapter 12, where the
Gileadites slew the Ephraimites who could only pronounce the word
“shibboleth” as “sibboleth”. The Manchus are thicker of tongue than
the Chinese. An ingenious story got about in October, 1911, that the
rebels of General Li’s army were testing some disguised Manchus with
the pronunciation of the numeral six, “Liu”, before killing them in
retaliation for a massacre, the Manchus being unable to get the sound
far enough back in their mouths and around their tongue in the proper
Chinese fashion. The proper tone, lisp and aspirate makes all the
difference, for the same written word “ho” means river and fire; the
word “shui” means water and sleep; “chih” means gas and red, and so on.
English, and not German, has been prescribed as the language to be
used in the study of science and world politics. The Chinese idiom
and ideograph could not come near enough to distinct expression. For
instance, the best they could do with fire-engine, steam-roller,
Elijah’s chariot of fire, and automobile, was to call them all “fire
carriage”; and electricity, globe, and flash-light were all three
“lightning breath”. Geography, the world, and panorama were all called
“All Under Heaven” (Tien Hsia). “Heavenly Literature” (Tien Wen)
represented the words theology and astronomy. Lacking pronouns, the
language adopts peculiar expedients. Thus an affix meaning “near”
answers to “my”, and “that side” answers to “your”. That is, “near
house” is my house; “that side house” is obviously your house. If this
does not clearly convey the idea, the arbitrary ideographic affix of
“honorable” and “despisable” will; that is, the “honorable house” is
your house of course, and the “despisable house” with so effusively
mannerly a people could only be my house. On account of their
experience with the difficult and beautiful Chinese character which
requires accuracy, the Chinese penman who learns to write English,
does it in the most beautiful Spencerian copper-plate. The same care
and skill is shown in copying drawings from our modern text-books,
which have been translated for their new schools. The Chinese think in
pictures. The characters for “many stars, clouds wait” means a clear
night, as “clouds many, stars wait” means a gathering storm. This is
why they have chosen English for its exactness, as they can not well
express the word gathering. “It is bad walking” is rendered by “Walk
not attain” (Tsou puh te). Passenger boats or skiffs are not so named.
Those in use at Hongkong are called “san pans” (meaning three boards),
and the famous light boats of the Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan
Hsien are called “wu pans” (five boards). The forcible etymology of
some Chinese words is illustrated by the words for “fan tan” gambling,
which literally means “turn and part”. The cup is turned over a lot
of coins, and the rest of the heap is brushed aside. Then the cup is
raised, and the croupier, with his separator-stick, parts four coins
at a time from the lot, until four or a particle are left, this being
the winning number of the game. That the old southern Chinese, as
contrasted with the succeeding northern Mongol invaders, invented the
language is shown in many of the words. For instance, the word for
road or path is called throughout China a “dry way”, and not a road or
street. Only the central and southern provinces flood the fields for
rice culture, leaving the raised dry paths.
Samuel Pollard, a missionary working in Yunnan, is compiling an
alphabet and reducing to writing the speech of the hitherto unrecorded
aboriginal tribes, the Miao and Lolos. He plans then to give them some
western literature in return for the ethnological riches which they
give us. They are the most unique people in the world, older even than
the Chinese. Their fortresses are in Szechuen, Yunnan and Kweichow
provinces, and there are, perhaps, two millions of this fearless
fighting race. From dimmest history they have been pressed back to the
mountain tops by the Chinese, who have spread out from their original
home in the Yellow River valley with four hundred million people. That
the Chinese have impressed some of their language, as far as necessary
trade goes, on the aborigines can be seen from the following table,
there remaining only two (two and five) sounds in these eight, which
have not been somewhat influenced: