THE LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS—PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE OF THE
EMPIRE
The literati or governing class—How it is recruited from the mass of
the people through examinations—Bachelors, Masters of Arts and
Doctors—Enormous number of candidates—The functionaries
exclusively selected from the literati—Most of the posts
sold—The syndicate for the exploitation of public offices—The
gravest defect of the system, the examinations, the subjects
selected being merely exercises in rhetoric and memory about an
immense quantity of nonsensical matter supplied by the Chinese
classics and ancient annals—Abortive attempts to introduce small
doses of Western science into these examinations—Superstitions
of the literati—This stupid system of examination the principal
cause of Chinese isolation—Complete disappearance of the
military spirit resulting from the same fatal cause—Hostility
and contempt entertained by the literati against all European
progress—Difficulty of suppressing or reforming the mandarinate.
The curse of China and the main reason why her remarkable people, who
once deserved to be compared with the ancient Romans, have sunk to the
degraded condition in which we find them at present, is the mandarinate,
which she has the misfortune to consider one of her chief glories. It is
this corrupt and antiquated system that is destroying the Celestial
Empire. It has often been observed that nations generally have the
Government they deserve, and it is undoubtedly true that the
administration of China is, in a measure, the logical result of her
geographical situation and singular history, to which might be added the
peculiar character of her people. On the other hand, there is no
question that the worst traits of the national character are accentuated
in the mandarin class which governs the country, and saps its activity
and energy.
Theoretically, the Chinese Government is based on paternal principles;
as a matter of fact, it is entirely in the hands of the class known as
‘literati,’ from whose ranks all the State officials, or mandarins, are
recruited; and if we wish to understand the primary causes of the
misgovernment of the Celestial Empire, we must become thoroughly
acquainted with the origin and manners of the mandarins, who are not
hereditary, but recruited from the mass of the people in the most
democratic manner in the world by means of public competitive
examinations. These examinations confer three honorary degrees, which
might be likened to those bestowed by our Universities: Bachelors,
Masters of Arts, and Doctors. The degree of Bachelor is competed for in
each district (there are sixty districts per province), and that of
Master of Arts in the eighteen provincial capitals; that of Doctor, on
the other hand, is only to be obtained in Peking. One may imagine the
esteem in which these degrees are held by the people when I mention that
in 1897, when I was at Shanghai, no less than 14,000 candidates came up
for examination at Nanking, with only 150 honours to be distributed
amongst them. It is considered a great honour for a family to include a
literate amongst its members, and his obtaining his degree is celebrated
throughout the entire province which enjoys the privilege of being his
birthplace. Should he be fortunate enough to obtain his laureate at
Peking, he is welcomed on his return to his native town as a veritable
conquering hero. It is quite true that, in order to pass his
examination, he has to go through an amount of physical suffering and
patient endurance which would deter any but a Chinaman from the attempt.
Each candidate is shut up for three whole days in a box-like cell four
feet square, in which he cannot even lie down, with no other companions
than his brush, paper and stick of Chinese ink; and barely an
examination passes without some student or other being found dead in his
cell. According to popular rumour, it is said that the all-pervading
corruption penetrates even into these cells, and that not a few
candidates succeed less through their merits than through the golden
gate; and it has even been observed that the sons and near relatives of
existing high functionaries are pretty sure to pass; but as a rule,
however, it seems that merit generally obtains its reward. It is,
however, after the examinations that begin the real difficulties of
those who are not rich and are without influential friends. One might
naturally expect that after the trouble, fatigue, and expense of the
examination were over, some post or other would surely be forthcoming to
recompense the efforts of the candidate; but the contrary is the rule,
and many a man has had to wait a lifetime before obtaining the reward
for which he has striven so hard. Nevertheless, those students who seem
to possess exceptional ability generally push themselves forward in the
following manner: a syndicate has been formed which advances the funds
necessary to assist the aspirant in mounting the first rung on the
ladder of fame, and to help him further, until he is in a position to
return the money borrowed, either in cash or kind, with a very handsome
interest. The idea of exploiting public offices as a sort of commercial
concern is, to say the least, ingenious, and, what is more, it seems to
be occasionally exceedingly remunerative. On the other hand, the expense
and the intrigue that such a pernicious system must necessarily involve
can better be imagined than described. As an instance in point, I was
assured that the position of Tao-tai or Governor of Shanghai, worth, for
not more than three years, a salary of 6,000 taels, or £900, a year, was
recently bought for over £30,000.
Even worse than the purchase of public offices, and the favouritism
shown at examinations, are the subjects chosen for competition, which
are exclusively selected from Chinese classical and scholastic
literature. The works of Confucius, those of his disciples, of Mencius
and of other philosophers who enlightened the world two thousand years
ago, and a mass of quaint lore derived from the ancient Chinese
chronicles, form the subject of these extraordinary examinations, and
the students have to learn some hundred volumes as nearly as possible by
heart, memory being the one thing most highly prized by the Board of
Examiners. The student is expected to quote certain extracts word by
word as they appear in the books, and his examination papers must,
moreover, be embellished by a great quantity of quotations—the more the
better. An elegant style is obtained only through acquaintance with as
many of the 60,000 Chinese characters as possible, from which the
student is expected to make an appropriate selection, and, as each sign
means a word, and not a few of these are almost unknown, and only to be
found in some hidden corner of an ancient volume, the waste of time is
appalling. The preparatory instruction, therefore, simply consists in
cramming the wretched candidate with a knowledge of as great a number of
signs or characters, and quotations from the Celestial classics, as
possible. One of the most curious features of the Chinese is that,
although everybody knows how to read and write a little, no one can do
so perfectly, for the simple reason that no Chinaman has ever been known
to completely master the voluminous alphabet of his country. The most
ignorant has acquired some ten or a dozen characters relating to his
trade, and sufficient for his purpose. When a man has mastered 6,000 or
8,000 he is considered learned, and, when we come to think of it, there
must be very few ideas that cannot be expressed by so many thousands of
words. Many of the higher literati manage to acquire even 20,000 words,
and the state of the mind of that man may safely be left to the reader’s
imagination, especially if we reflect that he must have passed his
entire youth studying by rote thousands of signs only distinguishable
from one another by the minutest strokes, and in acquiring a prodigious
amount of obsolete knowledge from classical books and annals whose
authors lived in remote antiquity. Of late years a slight modification
has been introduced in the shape of certain concessions to what is
officially called the ‘new Western culture.’ To the usual questions
selected from the works of Confucius and other philosophers have now
been added the identification of names mentioned in modern geography,
and since the Chino-Japanese War the examiners at Nanking ask their
candidates some very grave and informing queries in astronomy, as: ‘What
is the apparent diameter of the sun as seen from the earth? and what
would be that of the earth as seen from the sun or from some other
planet?’ The following sage question is typical of the intellectual
condition of both examiner and examined: ‘Why is the character in
writing which represents the moon closed at the bottom, and the one
which represents the sun left open?’
In the capital of a province near Shanghai the learned examiners wished
to encourage the study of mathematics, and, accordingly, prizes were
offered for competition and a solemn circular sent out to encourage
young men to take part in the examination. Some young fellows, who had
been educated in the missionary schools, solved most of the problems
offered fairly well, and in accordance with the rules of modern
elementary education. Others, on the other hand, who were better
acquainted with the Four Books and the Five Great Classics than with
Western geometry, made the remarkable discovery that the problems were
explained in an old work written many centuries ago, with the result
that they simply copied word by word the fantastical solutions therein
formulated, and, of course, carried off the prizes. In the following
year one of the professors of a foreign missionary college asked leave
for a competent European teacher to be included in the examining
committee in order to assist in the preparation of the papers and to
pronounce a verdict upon the answers sent in. Needless to say, the
demand was refused and the questions were sent out without the least
attempt to insure their being loyally answered. Among the questions
asked at a competitive scientific examination in Chekiang in 1898 were
the following: ‘How are foreign candles made, and in what consists their
superiority over those manufactured in China?’ ‘Name the principal ports
touched at by the steamers running between Japan and the Mediterranean.’
‘To which of the new sciences and methods which people are endeavouring
to introduce should the greatest importance be attached?’ ‘Write an
essay on international law.’ Comment is needless.
These foolish innovations, of course, do not change the fundamental
scholastic and rhetorical character of Chinese examinations, and the
usual themes for the compositions remain identical. Here are two
examples quoted by Mr. Henry Norman: ‘Confucius hath said, “In what
majesty did Chun and Yu reign over the Empire, as though the Empire was
as nothing unto them!” Confucius hath said, “Yao was verily a great
sovereign. How glorious he was! Heaven alone is grand, and Yao only
worthy to enter it. How exalted was his virtue! The people could find no
words wherewith to qualify it.”‘[22] This was the theme that had to be
developed by many a flower of rhetoric. It is only through the study of
these books, written twenty centuries ago, and encumbered by parables
and affected maxims, and of ancient annals crammed with fantastic
legends believed in as absolute facts, that are selected the members of
the class who are expected to govern China!
The result of this method of education was exemplified as late as 1897,
two years after a war which had brought the Celestial Empire within an
inch of ruin, when a censor, one of the highest officials in the Empire,
addressed a document to the Emperor, wherein he protested against the
concessions made to the inventions of the Western barbarians, which he
did not hesitate to qualify as calculated to disturb the peace of the
dead. Instead of constructing railways, he gravely insisted, it were
wiser to offer a handsome reward to the man who should recover the
secret of making flying chariots to be drawn by phœnixes which certainly
existed in the good old times. A little time previously a member of the
Tsung-li-Yamen had lifted his voice to protest against the various
railway embankments and the nails that studded the lines, which, he
believed, were likely to inconvenience and wound the sacred dragons who
protect the cities of the Empire, and who dwell beneath the soil. The
strange superstitions of the _feng-shui_ geomancy dealing with the
circulation through the air of good and evil spirits, and with the
prescribed height to which buildings may be erected, and the exact
positions of doors and other like grave matters, which, it seems, unless
they be properly attended to, are apt to upset and offend the flying
spirits in their progress through space, exercise a greater empire over
the minds of Chinese officials in the very highest places than matters
which we should consider of the greatest importance.
The fact that the mandarinate is recruited from the democracy renders it
even more pernicious than if it constituted a hereditary aristocracy,
for, as it stands, nobody has any interest in overthrowing it. The most
intelligent people try to enter it, and it attracts all the most gifted
men in the Empire, but only to corrupt them. The literary class enjoys
an enormous prestige, and the poorest man lives in the hope of seeing
his son one of its learned members. It, therefore, does not excite any
of that hatred usually provoked by caste privilege, and thus does not
stand the least danger of being upset. On the other hand, the condition
to which it has reduced the Celestial Empire is a condemnation of the
system of examination for Government office, and many a Western State
might do well to study this question and to take its lesson to heart.
That its effects have been more accentuated in China than elsewhere is
undeniable, being the result of diverse historic and ethnographical
circumstances peculiar to that nation. The Chinese reached a high state
of civilization long before our era, and being more numerous and
intelligent than their neighbours, so soon as they were cemented into
one compact nationality they proceeded to subjugate Indo-China and
Korea; and so it came to pass that China had no dangerous foes to
disturb her, Japan being isolated in her island Empire, and she was
separated from India by a formidable mountain barrier and from the West
by immense deserts. From that time the Chinese had nothing to trouble
them, and had but to live in quiet admiration of the labours of their
ancestors, who were the authors of the perfect peace which they enjoyed,
and thus little by little they accustomed themselves to look upon them
as superior beings and as types of perfection. More advanced than any of
their tributary subjects, and having nothing to fear from competition,
they became lost in self-admiration, or, rather, in the admiration of
those who had made their country what it was, and ended by believing
that no further progress was either necessary or possible, and thus are
now absolutely non-progressive.
The isolation and the want of emulation in which China has existed for
so many centuries have destroyed whatever energy and initiative she
might otherwise have possessed. It should be remarked, however, that the
Roman Empire was in very much the same condition, and for the same
reason, at the time of the invasion of the Barbarians, and that outside
the moral revolution effected by Christianity—which, by the way, only
obtained its fullest developments by the overthrow of the Empire—no
further progress was being made. The sterile admiration of bygone
greatness, therefore, is the foundation-stone of the doctrines of
Confucius. The Chinese people, who are essentially practical and
positive, and less given, perhaps, than any other in the world to study
general questions and lofty ideals, soon deteriorated under so
retrogressive a system, and eventually lost all sight of the origin of
many of their most important institutions. Religion and morals were
reduced to mere rites and ceremonies that only conceal the emptiness of
Chinese civilization, and so the nation came to the conclusion that the
one thing in this world worth the doing was to save appearances, and
conceal corruption beneath a flimsy mask.
The isolation of China and her superiority over her neighbours produced
another very grave consequence—the ruin of that martial spirit which has
obliterated all idea of duty and sacrifice. The military mandarins are
despised by their civil colleagues, and their tests consist almost
exclusively of physical exercises such as archery and the lifting of
heavy weights. ‘One does not use good iron to make nails, nor a good man
to make a soldier,’ says the Chinese proverb, and thus it is that the
Chinese army is recruited from a horde of blackguards and plunderers,
whose only good qualities are their contempt for life and physical
endurance, which might under proper management turn this raw material
into an excellent army.
The Celestial Empire is quite as incapable of resisting the advance of
modern civilization as it is of assimilating it. From the literati who
govern the land nothing is to be expected, for they will neither learn
nor forget anything. Their prejudices are so strong as to prevent their
accepting any great movement of reform, even if it were in their
interests, and in the stagnant position in which China is at present,
aided by the lack of intercommunication between the provinces, the
mandarins do exactly as they please. The _Peking Gazette_, the official
paper, described quite recently in the most glowing terms the
suppression of a revolt, showing at the same time the expenses incurred
and the rewards offered to those who had aided in its suppression. The
real truth of the story was that no revolution whatever had taken place
in the district mentioned, and the only unusual event which had occurred
was the pursuit of a runaway thief by three soldiers. Such an instance
could not possibly occur in a well-regulated State, and naturally the
men who profited by the lie will not be very desirous of a change in so
profitable a system. ‘Those who despair most of China are those who know
her best,’ once said a missionary to me; and his words have been
confirmed by nearly every traveller in the Far East with whom I have
spoken on the subject. No reform can be expected in the country from
within, and a proof in point will be found in the history of the Palace
Revolution of September 9th, 1898. The question, therefore, which
presents itself is whether external pressure can be brought to bear on
China with a view to reforming her Government without causing the
dislocation of the Empire.