have served me on a trip around the world, and are strong enough to
make several more. They are remarkable in five important points,
elasticity, lightness, strength, resistance to dampness, and cheapness
in purchase price and transportation cost. Travelers and explorers
bemoan the fact that excess baggage charges cost them almost as much
as passenger fares. This problem the wonderful Chinese solved with
these remarkable trunks. The framework is of strong bamboo, on which a
tough rattan and bamboo envelope is wound. This is lined with soldered
zinc, and covered with strong canvas, and for serviceability in the
five important points mentioned, the iron and leather trunks can not
compare. Go to the Chinese, thou traveler, and be wise! Many of the
chairs used at Tientsin have a dome-top, with curious scale design
and knob, and are therefore more Burmese than Chinese in design. The
chairs of Hongkong are strictly flat-topped. Jade is green, pink and
crystal, and retains a soapy glisten. Jades buried in tombs as mortuary
ornaments, however, acquire a brown smoky tinge, and the distinction
should be made in assorting collections at museums. The Bishop
collection of art jades, and the Peters collection of tomb jades in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are deservedly world famous.
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
One of the most ornate pagodas in China, near Shanghai. Surrounding
temple buildings are now frequently used for schools.]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Steel truss bridges on modern roads; sentry box for modern police;
modern flats; felt hats, modern umbrellas; telephone wires, steam
launches of the New China.
]
[Illustration:
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
The Japanese type of girlhood, as contrasted with the Chinese, shown in
another photograph.]
The typical Chinese rug shows beautiful apricot ground, spangled with
blue medallions. Rich brown and gold rugs are also frequently made,
the centers of weaving being Tientsin, Nanking, Hangchow, Canton, etc.
The most accessible places where specimens are shown are the large
museums. The yellow rugs are used in China in connection with the red
tile floorings, and the brown rugs are used often upon blue-tiled
floorings, so that if one would catch the true Chinese ensemble, a
colored crash must be used in connection with the rugs. Some critics
are hasty in declaring that a Chinese rug is glaring when they place
a yellow rug on a yellow floor! Chinese rugs were made generally for
temples, imperial and viceregal yamens, mandarins’ yamens, and guild
halls, as the designs often reveal. Rugs exist which were woven as long
ago as the reign of the native Ming kings, fifteenth century. Other
rugs date from the Kang Hi and Chien Lung reigns of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. Temple rugs five by eight feet, or a little over,
come from Buddhist monasteries. The ground, as one would expect, is
orange, ornamented with clouds, water, figures of Buddha or his mother,
Kun Yam, and the zodiac. Imperial Manchu rugs employ the Manchu dragon.
Each rug differs slightly, as the artist trusted to his eye alone in
following the pattern which hung over his head.
China is almost depleted of her ceramic treasures. The Anglo-French
expedition of 1860 under Lord Wolseley destroyed the Emperor Hien
Fung’s summer and other palaces near Peking. Some of the allies of 1900
looted Peking itself. The Manchus in the 1911–12 revolution sold the
Peking, Mukden and Jehol palace treasures. The collection of the Roman
Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, gathered during a long life, was
sold in New York in 1912. The Taiping rebellion of 1854 swept bare the
pottery province of Kiangsi, and the distress following the 1911–12
revolution and the floods of 1910–11–12 sent the hidden treasures of
the Yangtze and Hwei River provinces to the block. An artist of the
King Teh Ching potteries would now have to resort to Occidental museums
to find his models of cloisonné and champlevé enamels studded with
precious stones; yellow and red Lang Yao monochromes of inimitable
purity; Ku Hsu Hsuan translucent glass; Kang Hi hawthorn, ginger,
and peach-bloom vases, round and square; Yung Cheng landscape and
fish vases; flaming jars of the royal Mings; egg shell, rose, green,
peony, medallion, dragon, lion vases and plaques of Yung Cheng and
Chien Lung periods; the joyous, finely finished pottery of the Kang Hi
(seventeenth century period); the rugged, strong, stern work of the
tenth century; strutting camels, grinning griffins, spirited horses;
the elegant, soft Ming work; the square, flower-covered, green and
yellow vases of the sixteenth century; bulging vases of the seventeenth
century, with green decoration on a blue ground, as fine as a mixture
of emeralds and amethysts; awful gods and funny men stepping about in
priceless porcelain. It was not a slight price that to attain political
liberty China had to lose her artistic soul. More fortunate Japan never
had to pay this price, though she had little art and architecture to
lose as compared with the rich and glorious treasures of vast China.
A remarkable catalogue of Chinese porcelains with two hundred and
fifty-four gorgeously colored plates was written by Messrs. Gorer and
Blacker and published by Quaritch, London, in 1912.
In an attempt, even so late, to save China’s art from the foreigner,
the public-spirited Tze Tsan Tai, of Hongkong, a collector himself,
proposes the establishing of national museums to preserve at least the
paintings of China that are notable for their graphic quality, color,
humor and love of nature. The most famous schools were in the Sung,
Yuan and Ming dynasties, and Mr. Tze’s collection, which he proposes to
give to the cause, includes collections from many other schools also.
It would be better to open at first museums at Hongkong and Shanghai,
and then at Peking, Nanking, Hankau, etc. Some of the names of the
artists can be secured in Paleologue’s _L’Art Chinois_, Owen Jones’
_Chinese Ornament_, Dyer Ball’s _Things Chinese_, and E. F. Penellosa’s
_Epochs of Chinese Art_.
Chinese temple and house furniture is made of teak. This wood does not
grow in China, but in Siam, Java, Ceylon and the Philippines, the main
source of supply being the afforested belt of Northern Siam. The tree
is an upland one. It is barked or girdled and allowed to die. After two
years the tree is felled, the exposure killing off the small branches
and developing the oils which help in giving the extraordinary life
of the wood. The government does not permit trees of under six and
one-half feet girth to be felled. The Chinese of Canton particularly
carve the wood in its rich red color, and they also stain it ebon
black. Another desirable quality in the Orient is that the wood resists
the white ant. The woodwork and furniture of the palatial Hongkong Club
is teak, and many of Hongkong’s, Canton’s, Shanghai’s, Manila’s and San
Francisco’s palatial residences and public buildings and yachts now
use the wood. Hard as it is, the Chinese seem to prefer to saw it by
hand even in Hongkong. They tilt the immense logs on end, and one man
works under the log, and one stands on the log, the dust being dragged
upward by their contrary cut saws, which are designed to save the eyes
of the under-man. The natural oil in the wood prevents driven nails or
bolts from rusting, and is therefore valuable in ship-sheathing. It is
the most durable wood known. The teak piles of West End, Hongkong, and
Kowloon over on the mainland, are a unique sight. Water-buffaloes are
used to drag up the immense timbers.
A Chinese proverb is, “Speed for a horse, but a slow race for a good
jeweler”. The German machinery-stamping jeweler has not yet reached the
Orient with his machines, though his products imitate even the Chinese
ideograph-buckles. One of their humorous proverbs is, “He thought he
painted a tiger, but only a dog waged his tail at the likeness”, and
this is about the relationship between the Chinese and the German
products. Wherever you buy, remember the artist can put his soul and
his taste only into what he makes by hand.
XXX
SOCIOLOGICAL CHINA
When America was as yet undiscovered, and Europe was largely a
forest inhabited by hunting tribes, China had taken up an advanced
position on sociology. She has long been the world’s clearest and
bravest economical thinker, from whom even Germany has consciously or
unconsciously copied, and for thousands of years she has followed a
thorough civil service in political appointments. It is not surprising
therefore that Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the organizer of the revolution
of 1911–12, the first president of republican China, and the leading
economist of the race, enunciated himself as follows on April 5, 1912:
“I have finished the political revolution and now will commence the
greatest social revolution in the world’s history. The abdication of
the Manchus is only the beginning of a greater development, and the
future policy of the republic will be in the direction of socialism.
I am an ardent admirer of Henry George, whose ideas are practicable
on the virgin soil of China, as compared with their impracticability
in Europe or the United States, where the money is controlled by the
capitalists. I have the full consent of the new republican government
to start a propaganda immediately, whereby the railroads, mines, and
similar industries, will be controlled by the government. The single
tax system, and as far as possible, free trade, will be adopted.”
Shang, a minister of the Tsin clan of Confucius’ time--the age
of courageous statesmen--said: “To restore balance in the state,
and remove the dangerous discontent of the poor, renew taxes on
the privileged classes.” The Chinese predate all that we claim in
America, Britain and Germany as the modern discovery of the formulæ
of sociology, economics, commerce, taxes and tariffs, and their aim
is always toward free trade, repression of monopoly, opportunity for
the ordinary man, who, instead of the privileged, represents the
importance of a state, and the necessity of the greater punishment
of the rich than the poor for the same offense, because hunger and
self-preservation do not drive the rich to crime. Under the ancient
criminal code, the hsiang lao (village head) under penalty of the
bamboo, must compel all available land to be cultivated, not only that
government may receive taxes, but that famine may be averted. The
Chinese, Koun Tze, as early as B. C. 100, wrote: “The more horses that
are put to the chariots of the rich, the more those who are poor will
have to walk.”
“The more the houses of the rich are vast and magnificent, the more
those of the poor will be small and miserable.”
“The more the tables of the rich are covered with dainties, the more
people there will be reduced to plain rice.”
“At all costs, government should secure to all, all the necessities of
life.”
This last sentence is worthy of being linked with the immortal epigram
in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.
Other notable economic writers were Tsien Tche and Leang Tsien, but
towering above them all for adaptability to the convictions and crying
necessities of our day was Wang Ngan Shih, 1069 A. D., a Rooseveltian
statesman of the Sung dynasty, whose capital was the present Kaifong.
Remember that this statesman-author wrote when William the Conqueror
was putting England under the yoke of feudalism, which hated the
principles of liberty. Wang taught partly as follows:
1. The first duty of government is to secure plenty and relaxation for
the common people.
2. The state should take possession of all important resources and
become the main and dictating employer in commerce, industry and
transportation, with the view of preventing the working classes being
ground to the dust by the monopolizing rich.
3. Government tribunals should fix the local prices of provisions and
merchandise.
4. The rich shall pay all taxes; the small owner shall pay nothing as
long as he remains small.
5. Old age pensions.
6. The state to insure work for workmen.
7. The state to assign land, distribute seed and direct sowing, so that
there shall neither be cornering of food by the rich, nor lack of food
for the poor.
8. Destruction of usurers.
9. Confiscation of large and criminally-won estates; that is,
retroactive laws and restitution, instead of “Go and sin no more, but
keep what you got by former sins.”
The Boswell of Confucius in the Ta Hio (Great Study) writes: “If those
who govern states only think of amassing riches for their personal
use, they will infallibly attract toward them depraved men, and these
depraved men will really govern the state. The administration of
these unworthy ministers will call down the chastisements of heaven,
and also excite the vengeance of the aggrieved people. The riches of
those who have the honor to govern states should rather be justice and
equity, and not only talk of justice and equity.” Is this not excellent
statesmanship, even if written in China long before the Christian era?
China’s love of peace was inculcated brilliantly by Lao Tse (604
B. C.) in these words: “The least glorious peace is preferable to the
most brilliant successes of war. The most splendid victory is but the
light from a conflagration.” The Ancients said: “Render no funeral
honors to conquerors; receive them with tears and cries in memory of
the homicides they have committed, and let the monuments of their
victories be surrounded with the tombs of those whose death they
brought about.” Confucius, a practical statesman, fifty-three years
later, ineffectually combated this philosophy with these words: “They
who discuss by diplomacy should always have the support of a military
backing”; that is, the mailed fist and the soft word! The feudal
system began to totter in China in B. C. 250, under the reign of the
emperor-builder of the Great Wall, Tsin Chih Hwang-Ti. The classical
examinations gave it the death blow in A. D. 600. With its martial
accessory, the feudal system continued in Japan, which tolerated no
democratic examinations for office, until the very late date of 1869
A. D., thus lasting there the longest in the world, for it had died in
England eight centuries earlier. Such was the beneficent effect of the
famous classical examinations and civil service in old China.
The most brilliant maxim on sociology ever written is Chinese:
“Gold is tested by fire:
Man is tested by gold.”
On this subject of hardships, Mencius himself wrote, in 315 B. C.:
“When Heaven (Tien) is about to confer a responsible office on any
man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and
bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to
extreme poverty. It confounds his bravest undertakings. By all these
methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his courage and increases his
adaptability.” China was the first country to establish a Price Board,
now recommended by all political parties in America for dealing with
monopolies until real competition can be again set up. Salt production
is a government monopoly. The dealer must buy from the government and
sell a fixed quantity at a fixed price in a fixed district. The justice
that the government regulates is that the dealer may not adulterate
and may not charge an unreasonable profit. If the cost of production
is high, the people profit, because the government will not need to
collect high taxes in other ways. There is no chance for a crowd of
drone-middlemen to get away with immense profits, or for private
monopolists to lay a whole people under economic slavery. This is the
Chinese theory. In many parts of Eastern Szechuen every farm has its
little salt well with bamboo wheel and men treaders. The salt is sold
to the government at a fixed price, about two and one-half cents a
pound. The Chinese say: “Why do your trusts now want consolidation?
The divisions of Europe, by the competition of various ambitions,
have made Europe bright and progressive. America’s trusts, by making
all things one, will produce decay of genius, invention, liberty and
individualism.” A Chinese reformer had written to a rich bribe-taker
and bribe-giver for work in one of the industries which he controlled,
and he also endeavored to sell to the rich man a copy of one of his
books. Chided in later years with seeking employment in his earlier
years from a man whom he had later cause to criticize, the reformer
said: “The devil is king and has usurped the seats of employment; yet,
although he is devil, he owes me employment. A man’s right to work and
to retain free opinion are inalienable, and a government, in granting
a monopoly, can not sell such rights of the individual; they are a
perpetual lien on the monopoly.” Intelligent municipal philanthropy
has not been unknown of late years. I will instance an occurrence at
Lanchow, a city on the Yellow River (Hoang-Ho) in far western Kansu
province. In the fall of 1911 large numbers of people had become
a charge upon the city on account of summer floods and consequent
famine. By the end of August the moat of the city had become dry. The
authorities roofed and partitioned this trench into many houses so as
to shelter hundreds of vagrant families.
China has specialized in localization, or home rule. Even in charities
this operates. No province, district or city encourages any other
district’s imposing its public charges upon it. To illustrate, we shall
say that your Chinese interpreter and his wife have accompanied you
from Amoy to Chingtu City. The interpreter dies. If you do not send
the woman back to Amoy, she will report to the Amoy Guild in Chingtu.
That guild will subscribe and send her on her way as far as Chungking,
where the Amoy Guild will subscribe and send her in care of the Amoy
Guild at Hankau. Eventually, to her great pleasure no doubt, she will
reach her people in Amoy. A widow is not molested on her travels; her
persistence in widowhood and desire not to sell herself, either as a
second wife, slave or strumpet, are highly respected. She would not
be encouraged, however, nor would she desire to remain in Chingtu,
where, being a stranger, she would be unable to secure employment. The
same system would operate inversely if a Chingtu woman were, through
misfortune, stranded in far-away Amoy. The Chingtu Guilds in Amoy,
Fuchau, Shanghai, Hankau, etc., would relay her onward to her home,
where she would be more likely to secure work, remarriage, or properly
be a charge upon her own community. A criminal is treated in the same
way. He is driven on toward his own community, which can elect whether
they desire to board him in jail at public expense or make life so
uncomfortable for him by corporal punishment that he will select a
virtuous existence in preference to crime.
The community, closely related in cousinship, makes the family clan
responsible for the misfortunes and crimes of its members. If a
criminal breaks the law, the law does not bother itself long with the
criminal. By one fell swoop it makes the clan take the criminal’s
course in hand for the rest of his life. There is much talk of revising
China’s code, the slogan being the American maxim: “Crime is personal.”
China’s code in this particular does not need revision. It saves the
state much expense; it is more effective also in real permanent reform.
It is the most scientific system of reform ever invented, and beats
all farming out of criminals, parole, coals of kindness, pellets of
advice, pardons, abolishing of stripes, preachings, coddlings, threats,
music-treatment, trepannings, religious advice, hypnotic treatment,
flowers, sentiment, visits of the jail angel, etc.! Don’t whip the
criminal alone; whip the criminal’s six elder brothers and cousins
because they must have been lax in instruction and watch. They will
see that never again will they suffer for the scamp’s dereliction!
The Chinese say, “Don’t whip your trusts; whip your electorate! They
will forever after see that the trusts do not break bounds; they will
watch the charters.” Guilt then is not personal; it is communal. We
are our brother’s keeper, and if we allow him to meet with misfortune
or do wrong, we must suffer with him. How quickly would the Chinese
scientific system of localization and communism correct and limit
crime, poverty and misfortune.
British vessels trading in China are manned entirely with Chinese
crews. During the dock strike in Britain, in August, 1911, the dockers
refused to handle the cargoes of vessels which employed Chinese.
China then entered a claim for damages, because her citizens were
ill-treated, and the Chinese guilds threatened to embarrass the
British vessels when they returned to load in the East. The writer
has had some experience with such a situation in Hongkong, where the
British government exercises a strong hand in preventing the spread
of stevedore strikes. The use of the boycott in China calls for
special study. In no land is it more in use. It is a powerful weapon
for securing justice when laws and diplomacy fail either because of
weakness or venalty. China, of course, has no navy to support her
diplomacy. Recent boycotts in China have been the following: In 1904
the merchant guilds of Canton and Hongkong desired to support, among
other things, China’s protest against the American Exclusion Act. A
boycott of American goods and American ships was ordered, and the loss
to American trade ran into the millions. In 1908 the Japanese landed
arms for pirates in Macao, South China, and with the powerful Japanese
navy compelled the Chinese officials who had seized the smuggling
steamer _Tatsu Maru_ to give her up. The Chinese guilds of Hongkong and
Canton then boycotted Japanese ships, causing the Toyo Kisen Kaisha a
loss of millions in earnings and a deficit of $300,000 for the year’s
operation. Japan probably would have again declared war on China with
this excuse if she had not feared America’s naval support of China’s
general cause under the Hay “non-partition of China” policy. The loss
to Japan ran into many millions. In 1910 the same body of Chinese
guilds boycotted American trade as a reply to the long and costly
detainment of Chinese on Angel Island, San Francisco.
We shall hear more and more of international boycotts by the Chinese,
and should study the question. They hover on the borderland of justice,
and are recommended by many of the women’s clubs of America in dealing
with monopolies. They will be misunderstood. They will produce much
annoyance and trouble. They are mighty weapons in the hands of the
clannish Chinese. Many fortunes of millionaires were really produced
by boycotts. For instance, Mr. B controls the X railway, which latter
has used the Y railway as a connection for freight. Mr. B wants to buy
the Y railway for a song. He diverts all the freight he can to the Z
railway, and when the Y railway fails, he buys its stock for a song.
Then he restores the freight of the X railway to the Y railway, whose
earnings rise and make his fortune, which is immediately entrenched
under nonretroactive and nonrestitution laws. In China the boycott is
only used by the guilds for patriotic purposes. Of course, we traders
in America and Britain object because we suffer, but looking with
Chinese eyes and with a world-economical vision at the matter, we must
admit that the Chinese guilds are not ignoble or selfish and that
their use of the boycott is a mighty diplomatic weapon. It has humbled
Japan without the use of a soldier or a thirteen-inch broadside. By
threatening a boycott, Wu Ting Fang and the Shanghai Assembly at the
darkest hour of the republican revolution, prevented certain nations
from making a loan to the imperialists, which was the most brilliant
and potential move of the revolution. It really won for the southern
cause, the military capture of Nanking following as a matter of
course. Let Japan, Russia and others beware how they take advantage of
China, whether in Manchuria, the Yangtze provinces, Shangtung, Yunnan,
Szechuen or other provinces, or territories like Tibet, Mongolia and
Turkestan; the Chinese guilds with their boycott are a sure refuge
in time of trouble, back of any failing walls of arms, finance or
diplomacy.
The following are some of the sociological proverbs of the Chinese:
“The chain is as strong as its weakest ring, and a corporation is as
moral as its most corrupt director.”
“Taking rocks away makes a smooth stream, as removing wrongs makes a
placid nation.”
“We can’t all agree exactly, for many faces, many minds, and the ten
fingers are not all of one length; but they are all useful.”
“Money covers a multitude of sins.”
“Fire will burn through anything, and money will get through anything.”
“The deeper you go in your cave, the smaller seems your heaven.”
“A living poor man is better than a dead rich man.”
“Some have had a thousand years of sorrow in a hundred years of life.”
“You may think you’re on the right way, but you lose nothing by asking.”
“You can’t carve much on a rotten stick.”