THE CHINESE PEOPLE AND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS
Great antiquity of China’s national existence—Stagnation of her
organization as well as of her social, religious and
administrative institutions—Unity of Chinese civilization
notwithstanding varied surroundings, differences of language and
of racial origin, it being much more inflexible than that of the
Western world—Some of the principal characteristics of the
Chinese—Love of false appearances—Gulf that divides the
theoretical from the practical in all matters of Chinese
administration—Corruption of the Chinese Government and its
determination to impede progress—Lightness of the taxes—The mass
of the people apparently happy under distressing circumstances—The
good-humour and liveliness of the Celestials—Pity said to be
absolutely excluded from the Chinese character—Why the Chinese
make bad soldiers—Organization of the family and position of
women—Vices of the Chinese: love of gambling, opium, filthy habits
and superstitions—Their better qualities—The people themselves not
in a state of decadence—Primary effects of contact with Western
civilization.
The Chinese are at one and the same time the most numerous and the
longest existing nation in the world. The annals of the Celestial Empire
date as far back as those of Egypt, and twenty centuries ago, when
States which now rule the earth were in process of formation, China,
having undergone several evolutions, was already constituted as she is
to-day. The Chinese have never been subjected to any of those marked and
repeated changes which, during the last two thousand years, have so
profoundly modified the social organization and the manners and customs
of other countries; and even the introduction of a new religion did not
produce in the East anything comparable to the revolution which, at
about the same time, occurred in the West through the spread of
Christianity. Buddhism did not modify the Chinese people, but the
Chinese people modified Buddhism after their own image and likeness,
without, however, permitting the doctrines of Sakyamuni to exercise the
least influence over their character, or change an iota of their ideas
concerning life and morality, which were determined by Confucius and
other sage Celestials, being in reality derived less from the
meditations of philosophers or the inspiration of prophets than from the
intuitive instinct of the race. The institutions of China have not
altered the mental habits or method of life upon which they profess to
be modelled, any more than has the theoretical principle of family
existence altered the Imperial Government; for the Chinese even now
often qualify their high officials by the endearing epithets ‘father’
and ‘mother.’ Political revolutions have not made a deeper impression
upon the fossilized organization of the Chinese Government, than has
religion on the character and manners of the people. The various
dynasties that have succeeded each other have changed nothing, although
some of them have been of foreign origin: the Mongolian in the
thirteenth century and the Manchurian in our own time; but they effected
no variations in the system of Government, and only placed certain
functionaries to watch over the mandarins, precisely as the Tatar
marshals are instructed to spy upon the officials of nowadays.
China has always been governed after Chinese methods, and although she
has occasionally been conquered by foreigners, she has invariably
absorbed them into her own civilization, and obliged them to observe her
traditions. The Chinese care very little about the future, the greatness
or the independence of their country; but they cling with extraordinary
tenacity to their old manners and customs, and thereby offer a striking
contrast to their neighbours the Japanese, who, notwithstanding their
intense patriotism, will make any sacrifice, even that of religious
principle and most cherished tradition, if they think that they may
thereby benefit their Empire. The Japanese have almost the same
conception of patriotism as Europeans, but not so the Chinese, with whom
this virtue is merely a racial affair, which in the hour of danger
invariably proves of little or no avail, especially against adversaries
of a kind never previously encountered.
Does there exist, beyond this intense love of old customs and of an
immutable civilization, any bond of union among the three or four
hundred millions of human beings who constitute the population of
China?[23] At first sight no people could possibly appear more
thoroughly homogeneous than the Chinese; but it is not necessary to stay
long among them to perceive that even from the physical point of view
there are certain racial differences which make it more difficult at
first to note the dissimilarity which separates their race from our own.
Even more striking are the diverse dialects spoken in the Empire,
several of which are not mere patois, but distinct languages, rendering
it impossible for a native of Canton or Foochow to make himself
understood at Peking; and in many provinces these idiomatic
peculiarities are very interesting. In Fo-kien no less than three patois
are spoken—the Amoy, Swatow, and the Foochow, which are utterly
different from each other. Between the cities of Peking and Tien-tsin,
scarcely thirty leagues apart, there is already a marked difference in
the matter of dialect. It is also a noteworthy fact that very little
sympathy exists among the Chinese from different provinces, who keep
aloof from each other even when circumstances oblige them to live in the
same town. Very marked, too, are the divergent characteristics and
temperaments observable between the inhabitants of the North and those
of the South, the former being much the most energetic and enterprising,
but at the same time more hostile to foreigners. The Central Government
is almost unknown by the multitudes outside of Peking, and it would be a
comparatively easy task to raise an army in one part of China to fight
against the inhabitants of another.
The question may now be asked whether China, which covers an area equal
to that of Europe, and is even more thickly peopled, is less homogeneous
than our own Continent. Does there exist between the various Chinese
provinces the same differences that mark each of the nations that in the
aggregate form Europe? From the geographical and climatic point of view
it is evident that the difference is not very great, although China
possesses very high mountains only on her Western frontier, and her
plains are much more extensive and continuous. But from the ethnical
point of view it would be an exaggeration to state that there is much
analogy between China and Europe, since the former is certainly much the
more homogeneous. The different countries of our Continent are inhabited
by peoples who are only remotely related to each other, and who are
merely united by the ties of a common civilization, whereas amongst the
subjects of the Son of Heaven the ties are much stronger and the
physical resemblance is more marked. I am, of course, speaking of the
inhabitants of China proper only—of the eighteen provinces, to which
might be added a nineteenth, Ching-king, or Southern Manchuria, now in
process of colonization by the Chinese. The various tributary peoples
belonging to the Celestial Empire, such as the Mongolians, the Thibetans
and the Turki in Eastern Turkestan, are absolutely distinct from each
other and from the predominant race; but although the dependencies which
they cover constitute two-thirds of the surface of the entire Empire,
they only form a twentieth of the entire population, and do not share in
its Government.
It should be observed that the absence of any sympathy between the
inhabitants of the different Chinese provinces might have been found
quite recently exemplified in Europe, not merely between nation and
nation, but between province and province in the same country, and that
linguistic variations are still noticeable even in the most homogeneous
countries. History is full of instances of intestine troubles which have
existed in nearly every European nation, and it is but thirty years
since the Germans were at war with each other.
I have often heard related the misadventures of two Celestials, natives
of different provinces, who, whilst travelling in Europe, met one day
only to discover that their sole means of making themselves understood
was by speaking English. But does not this story recall the recent Slav
Congress in Austria, whose debates had to be held in German in order
that they might be followed by all the delegates? The existence of
patois and dialects results from the inhabitants of certain districts
having neither the time nor the money to go beyond their village further
than the nearest market-town. Then, again, education in China does not
tend, as in Europe, to produce unity of language, since its writing is
quite independent of pronunciation, and the innumerable letters of its
alphabet represent, not sounds, but ideas. The lack of any spirit of
patriotism may be largely attributed to this state of absolute
isolation, to which may be added a general and very profound ignorance.
But patriotism as we understand it is, after all, a matter of modern
sentiment, therefore not to be looked for in so antiquated a nation as
the Chinese.
It matters little whether there be a common origin or not, since our
notions of race are very difficult to define, and modern anthropological
and ethnographical discoveries tend more and more towards the acceptance
of the theory of the existence of distinct races. Whereas the patois of
the ten northernmost provinces are merely dialects of the Manchurian
languages, those of the south, especially of Fo-kien and Canton, are
totally different, and apparently confirm the theory that the Chinese
invaders who came from the north-east found the land already inhabited
by a people whom they assimilated, precisely as they are doing in our
time in Manchuria, and as did the Romans in ancient Gaul.
The entire population of China, excepting a few obscure mountain tribes,
the remainder, possibly, of the autochthones of the South, whatever
their origin, have for centuries moulded themselves on a civilization
that penetrates far deeper into the details of every-day life than any
known in Europe. The result is a greater uniformity among the people who
have adopted it than will be found among men who follow a less rigid
code that permits of greater latitude and affords a freer scope for the
exercise of individuality. Many peculiarities in the Chinese character
appear at first contradictory, even to those who have lived long in the
country, and who assert that no European can ever thoroughly understand
a Chinaman because his mind is so differently constituted.
The most striking characteristic of the Chinese, says Mr. Arthur H.
Smith, an American missionary who has lived twenty-two years in China,
in his admirable book ‘Chinese Characteristics,’ is their remarkable
manner of ‘facing’ a thing. To save appearances, or to ‘face’ a
difficulty cunningly rather than boldly, is the endeavour of the
inhabitants of the Kingdom of the Son of Heaven, and is the key,
moreover, to a great many other matters that might otherwise appear
incomprehensible. Every Chinaman considers himself an actor, whose
public words, acts, and deeds have nothing in common with reality. The
most praiseworthy and even the most innocent of actions, unless it be
performed in a certain way, will only cover its author with shame and
ridicule. If a fault is committed, the guilty party is expected to deny
it with the utmost effrontery in spite of convincing evidence, and on no
account must he confess himself guilty, even if he is obliged to repair
the injury done. From the highest to the lowest, the Chinese entertain a
profound respect for shamming. A boy caught stealing will slip the
coveted object up his sleeves, stoop down and pretend to pick it up, and
with the smile of an angel present it to his master, saying, ‘Here is
what you have lost.’ A little over a hundred years ago the mandarins who
were escorting Macartney, the English Ambassador, into the presence of
the Son of Heaven, profited by his ignorance of their language to place
over his carriage an inscription to the effect that it contained ‘the
Ambassador bringing tribute from the Kingdom of England,’ and thus kept
up the fiction of the universal sovereignty of their lord and master.
Undoubtedly the observance of a certain amount of etiquette is both
useful and praiseworthy, and so considered by all civilized nations; but
Chinese etiquette is the most punctilious and complicated that was ever
imagined, and never on any account to be neglected for a single instant.
This excessive attention to outward forms, which, if they be but
observed, may conceal any kind of iniquity, explains the fact that in
China there is a deeper gulf between theory and practice than in any
other country in the world. That it has always been so may be
questioned, but at present the morals of Confucius have long since been
lost in a code of etiquette which defines virtue as consisting in the
observance to the letter of the three hundred rules of ceremony and the
three thousand regulations of conduct, without paying the least
attention to the spirit in which they were originally formulated.
It is in the system of Government in China that the contrast between
precept and practice becomes most evident. As Mr. Henry Norman remarks
with hardly exaggerated severity, ‘Every Chinese official, with the
possible exception of one in a thousand, is a liar, a thief and a
tyrant!’ Examples confirming this assertion are very numerous, and even
the celebrated Li Hung-chang cannot be included in the list of those
officials who are noted for their honesty, since he had to disgorge a
great part of the immense fortune he had accumulated—twenty millions, it
is reputed—to save his head during the Chino-Japanese War, when he had
to purchase the goodwill of many Court dignitaries, eunuchs and others,
notwithstanding which, money matters still occupy a great deal of his
attention. I had the honour while I was at Peking to dine at the French
Legation in the company of this exalted personage, on the occasion of
the visit of the Admiral commanding the French Fleet in the Far East and
several officers of his staff. Li conversed through the intermediary of
an interpreter named Ma, to whom he spoke in the Fo-kien, his native
dialect; it appears he speaks Manchu very badly. He put to each of the
guests several polite questions usual among Orientals, inquired after
their rank, their age, and invariably wound up his courteous inquiries
by asking: ‘Well, and what is your salary?’ With us the income of an
official is a matter of very little importance, but with the famous
mandarin it was the essential.
For centuries the administration of China has been as corrupt as it is
to-day, but for all this it has never driven the people to rebellion. It
is true that occasionally there are local agitations, whose chiefs go so
far as to pounce upon offending representatives of authority and convey
them to the capital of the district, or province, to demand their
degradation, which is more often than not accorded—a fact which inspired
an English paper at Shanghai to descant on the ‘democratic manner in
which the Chinese participate in their government.’ Oppression tempered
by revolt is the rule which prevails in the Celestial Empire, but there
is no fear of a general revolution against so degenerate a system. This
administrative machine, however, which appears to us to be so
detestable, only impedes progress, but does not affect the population,
which is accustomed to routine habits hundreds of years old, and has not
the remotest idea that a reform is either necessary or practicable. When
an enterprising man wishes to introduce even the most insignificant of
modern trades, he invariably attracts the attention of the mandarins, to
whom he is obliged to apply for permission to carry on his novelty, and
will only obtain it after much bribery and a promise to pay such a huge
percentage on his profits as to render the returns of his venture too
insignificant to be worth his continuing it. But for the uncomplaining
and unprogressive, who have nothing to do with administrative affairs,
life in China flows easily and quietly enough. The taxes are very light,
especially for the peasantry, who live by what they harvest in their
fields, or for the workpeople, whose wants are very small They fall,
however, heavily upon commercial transactions and the transport of
merchandise, are a great impediment to commerce, and though they never
affect them directly, for their poverty is far too great to permit of
their buying anything, they contribute indirectly to keep the inferior
classes in a state of abject poverty. According to the investigations of
Herr von Brandt, former German Minister to Peking, and a man who has
studied China profoundly, the land tax in China reaches £5,250,000,
being about 3s. per acre in the North, with a maximum of 13s. in the
South. This is not much when we consider the intense activity of Chinese
agriculture, which extracts from the soil almost everywhere two harvests
annually. The total of the Budget, according to the same authority,
reaches 100,000,000 taels, or £15,000,000. Other authorities estimated
it as high as £24,000,000, but even this is not excessive. The following
is Von Brandt’s account of the different sources of revenue of the
Chinese Empire:
Inland Revenue £5,250,000
Treaty port Customs (obtained by the International Customs
Service) 3,450,000
Right for transit in the interior (_likin_) 1,800,000
Native Customs and tax on native opium 1,500,000
Salt tax 1,500,000
Sale of titles and honorary distinctions 750,000
Tribute of rice 450,000
Licenses, etc. 300,000
———————————
Total £15,000,000
===========
The public revenues, gathered by the provincial treasuries, are sent on
to Peking after deduction of the amount necessary for the requirements
of the district. It is stated that only a third of these receipts is
disposable for the needs of the Central Government.
The mass of the Chinese people endure, therefore, without much
discontent, a Government which in ordinary time weighs very lightly upon
them, that meddles very little in the affairs of their villages or
communes, always very strongly constituted in the Far East, and, above
all, never disturbs their ancient customs. Exceedingly poor, and only
able to live by dint of hard work, and having a very severe struggle for
life, the people have no time to waste on philosophical reflections,
and, moreover, possess no standard of comparison to assist it to judge
of the hardness of its fate. In addition to this, we must not forget
that the Chinese are endowed by nature with an excessive spirit of
conservatism and a patience and perseverance quite beyond praise, to
which must be added a jovial good-humour that enables them to endure an
existence which to the people of any other country would appear
intolerable. Peasants and workpeople alike have no hope of ever seeing
their humble condition improved, and their prospective existence is one
of absolute monotony, entirely passed in sowing and reaping, in carrying
heavy burdens, in the turning of looms, or in labouring the earth,
without having, excepting on a few feast-days, a moment’s rest, save
what is absolutely necessary for meals and sleep. None the less, they
always seem very happy, complain very little, and thoroughly enjoy their
few pleasures, and apparently absolutely ignore their troubles.
This happy spirit of resignation explains why the Chinese,
notwithstanding their poverty, are one of the most contented people in
the world, and, consequently, one of the happiest; but, unfortunately,
they are exposed from time to time to dreadful calamities: an
inundation, an epidemic, or a bad harvest, which brings about inevitable
misery and famine to the entire population, who are left without any
resources because their work has not been sufficiently remunerative to
enable them to put anything by for a rainy day. Not a year passes
without a dreadful calamity occurring somewhere or other in the immense
Celestial Empire, causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people,
so that, notwithstanding the astonishing number of children born, the
population apparently does not increase. Here, then, we have a striking
application of the doctrines of Malthus; for in this society, into which
no ray of progress is admitted, men multiply quicker than their means of
subsistence, but natural calamities re-establish the balance by annually
overwhelming a prodigious number of men, women and children.
The exaggerated sense of conservatism and the improvidence of the
administration are in part responsible for the occurrence of these grave
calamities, which are generally accompanied by a recrudescence of that
chronic piracy and brigandage which is peculiar to China, being the sole
means of gaining a livelihood left to many ruined wretches. Sometimes,
however, the agents of the Government, after having done nothing either
to prevent a catastrophe or to mitigate its consequences, increase it in
times of famine by their avidity in seizing the rice, and thus provoke a
rebellion, as happened in 1898 at various parts of the Yang-tsze-Kiang.
But beyond these cases, in which the authorities are manifestly guilty,
the Chinese people submit with the utmost resignation to calamities
which they foresee and consider as merely natural, and which, when they
happen, barely ruffle their habitual placidity. Death to such a people
cannot have the same terrors it has for us.
Europeans are of all the civilized peoples of the earth those who
complain most of life, but yet who hold most dearly to it. The people of
the Far East, the Chinese as well as the Japanese, on the other hand,
consider it least. Indifference to death seems to be with them almost a
physical characteristic, the result of the singular insensibility of
their nervous system. With respect to this last, we have plenty of
evidence. The doctors in the European hospitals where natives are
treated relate with amazement how their patients undergo the most
painful operations without a murmur and without the necessity of having
to resort to anæsthetics. In every-day life, too, the same curious
apathy is to be observed in the extraordinary facility with which they
can fall asleep whenever they choose, even in the midst of the most
awful din and noise, and they can, moreover, remain for hours in one
position without making the slightest motion. The reverse of the medal
is that, although they are so indifferent to their own sufferings, they
are without the slightest feeling for those of others, and can watch the
writhing agony of a human being without expressing the least horror or
sympathy. The dreadful custom of binding the feet of women in such a
manner as to push the heel forward and double up the toes under the sole
of the foot, inducing a sore that is never healed, is but one out of
many examples of Chinese cruelty. The various and horrible tortures
inflicted by the judicial tribunals are another illustration of the same
dreadful instinct. The idea of bargaining with a person in danger of
death, or with a man who has fallen into the water before attempting to
rescue him from drowning, are things which would never suggest
themselves to a European, but they come naturally to the Chinese.
The little value in which human life is held in the Far East is
exemplified by the frequency of suicide, merely to vindicate a point of
honour which in many parts of Europe would be settled at the point of
the sword. The _hara-kiri_ is not restricted to Japan, or to the upper
classes of Chinese society. A Chinaman, even of the lowest order, will
commit suicide out of vengeance, spite, or even through what he
considers a matter of honour. Sacrifice of life is common even among
women, if we may believe the following narrative extracted from a
Chinese newspaper:
‘One day a sow belonging to a certain Madame Feng, having done some
slight injury to the door of a certain Madame Wang, that lady forthwith
demanded compensation with interest, which was refused, whereupon Madame
Wang announced her intention of committing suicide. This dreadful threat
proved altogether too much for Madame Feng, who there and then
determined to beat her enemy with her own weapon by flinging herself
into the nearest canal.’[24] Suicides are by no means rare among the
upper classes of the literati, and quite recently a censor, a high
functionary who possesses the privilege of addressing petitions to the
Sovereign, awaited the passing of the Imperial cortege and then killed
himself as a political demonstration, in order to add weight to a
memorial he had presented concerning some promise of the Government
which had not been fulfilled. The innumerable public executions form a
pendant to the equally numerous cases of suicide.
The reader may be somewhat surprised that a people fearing death so
little should make such bad soldiers; but, after all, however lightly a
man may hold his life, no one sacrifices it unless it be for some ideal
or other. If the Celestials care so little about existence, they care
still less for the grandeur of their country, patriotic feeling being
absolutely absent from their nature. During the French campaign in
Formosa it was no uncommon thing to see Chinese prisoners refuse to do
tasks which they considered beneath them, and which they could only be
induced to perform after having seen the heads of a few of their
comrades fall under the sword. These very people who prefer death rather
than derogate from their dignity are the same who have often been seen
throwing down their arms on the battlefield. It is but fair to add that
it is the military mandarins or officers who generally give the signal
for a stampede. Possibly, if commanded by other officers, the Chinese,
with their wonderful power of enduring privation and callousness for
death, would eventually form an admirable army which, even if it were
unable to defend China against foreign Powers, would certainly prove a
valuable ally to one or other of them.[25]
The practice of infanticide, especially of female infants, is another
example of the different ways in which the Chinese and Europeans regard
life and family ties. With us the love of parents for children is often
greater than that of children for their parents; but in China it is
quite the reverse. According to Confucius, filial piety was the noblest
of virtues, indeed, the fountain-head of them all, and it is the one
which his compatriots still practise most assiduously. Among the lower
orders, however, this virtue is confined to the support of parents; but
this is a duty never neglected. Among the twenty-four famous examples of
filial piety is mentioned the case of a man who, at the very moment that
he was about to bury his little three-year-old girl alive because he
could not afford to keep her as well as his old mother, had his infant
saved by the unexpected discovery of a treasure purposely placed in the
intended grave by a good genie, who was eager to reward so beautiful an
instance of filial piety. A still greater sin against this virtue is
that of not possessing male posterity; for then the family becomes
extinct, and the ancestors are deprived of those sacrifices to which
they have a right, and which it is the first duty of every well-thinking
man to offer them at regular intervals. Marriages are contracted very
early, and there is no stronger evidence needed against a wife to obtain
her divorce than that she has not had a son. The doctrine of filial
piety as it is understood by the Chinese, and the worship of ancestors,
which is its highest expression, have their good as well as their bad
side. It forms the principal mainstay of that useless system of
admiration of an irrevocable past in which everything is supposed to
have been better than it can possibly be to-day, and which of necessity
turns the people of the Celestial Empire from all desire for progress,
because to do so would be an outrage to an ancestry whose wisdom can
never be surpassed.
If this belief produces unfortunate social consequences, it at the same
time serves to consolidate family ties; but ever so it is pernicious,
especially with respect to the condition of women. The lot of Chinese
women is certainly not a happy one. Lodging rather than living with her
husband, under his parents’ roof, the young wife is never allowed to see
her own family, excepting at certain fixed periods prearranged by
custom. In their earlier years married women in China are exposed to the
caprices and rebuffs of a shrewish mother-in-law, who is the tyrant of
the family, and whose humble servants the daughters-in-law are expected
to be. For all this, they enjoy a certain amount of liberty, for they
are neither cloistered nor veiled; but they very rarely leave their
house, a state of semi-seclusion which does not prevent their morals
being often very indifferent. ‘In a district near mine,’ an American
missionary at Fo-kien assured me, ‘there are very few husbands who are
not deceived by their wives; and in the one which is under my direction
the state of morality, or rather of immorality, is pretty nearly the
same.’ Theoretically speaking, adultery in a Chinese woman is considered
a very grave crime. As for the husband, he is not expected to practise
fidelity. The average Chinaman delights in obscenity, and revels in
improper stories and jests; and when he has a little money to spare,
spends it very freely in the loosest company. Those places of
entertainment where Venus reigns supreme are not, as in Japan, situated
in the best and most brilliantly lighted quarter of the town, for such
of my readers who have visited Canton may possibly remember to have had
pointed out to them the ‘flower-boats’—floating constructions two
stories high, whose internal decorations are of the most magnificent.
The national vice of the Chinese, however, is gambling, and it is one
very few of them can resist. In his interesting monograph on Peking,
Mgr. Favier tells us how the beggars in rags will stake their last scrap
of clothing. Certain fanatics will stake their wives and children, and
men have been known to wager away their finger-joints. A young
Christian, who was an inveterate gambler, on one occasion staked and
lost his wife, who was only twenty years of age, for the large sum of
15s. The missionary paid the debt and returned the young woman to her
mother. A few months afterwards she rejoined her husband, and, adds the
author, with the authority of his thirty-eight years of missionary life
in China, ‘in all probability he has staked and lost her again.’
Intemperance, on the other hand, is extremely rare; but those who would
be drunkards in Europe, Mgr. Favier assured me when I was in Peking, are
opium-smokers in China, where he estimates that about one-fifth of the
population of the towns give themselves over to this horrible practice.
In the country districts the number is very much less, and another
missionary, who lives at Fo-kien in Southern China, estimates it at not
more than five per cent. The habit of opium-smoking is very widely
spread among the upper classes and the literati; but its effects are not
so pronounced among the rich as among the poor, who, by reason of bad
diet, are less prepared to resist its effects, especially as they
generally indulge in this vice in their leisure hours in the most
dreadful dens, and, moreover, smoke a very inferior quality of opium. A
young man who begins to indulge in this pernicious habit in his
twentieth year usually shuffles off this mortal coil before he is
twenty-two. The vices of the Chinese do not particularly shock
foreigners who live among them, for they are not obliged to see them;
but it is otherwise with their universal and repellently filthy habits
and intense love of all kinds of horrible noises, which they indulge in
on every possible occasion, be it a sad or merry one, a marriage or a
funeral, at festivals as well as at fires. What exasperates a European,
however, more than anything else are the vulgar superstitions which
replace among the Celestials the spirit of religion, which is quite
absent, and which constitute another hindrance to progress. Their
strange ideas with respect to _feng-shui_, or geomancy, often upset the
least attempt at introducing any improvement even in European
concessions or in such cities as Hong-Kong and Singapore. Then, again,
the disposition of the Chinese mind does not admit of general or
abstract ideas, and repudiates all sense of the ideal, and, in a word,
is sterilized by such absolute materialism as to shock even the most
cynical of Europeans. Take them for all in all, therefore, the
Celestials may be described as a not particularly seductive or
sympathetic people, all the less so as their ugly appearance is not
compensated for by the charm of manner which renders the Japanese so
agreeable and which enables them to gild even their vices.
The Chinese, however, have certain great qualities which are not
precisely amiable, in spite of their extreme politeness, a matter rather
of ceremony than of sincerity. These qualities are of a serious nature:
patience, perseverance, hard work, the greatest aptitude for commercial
pursuits, industry, economy, singular resistive power, and respect for
parents and old age, to which may be added a remarkably contented frame
of mind. Therefore, even if the Chinese Government presents every
indication of decadence, it would be unjust to say the same of its
energetic and hard-working subjects. Unquestionably the Government is
not the only thing that needs reforming in China. There is the secular
habit of always looking to the past for a type of perfection, which
produces a certain atrophy of the Chinese intelligence, depriving it of
all elasticity, originality and power of invention, and making it only
capable of servile imitation, lacking even discernment—a fact which is
admirably illustrated in the well-known story of the tailor to whom a
European sent an old pair of breeches in order that he might copy them.
This he did so conscientiously that he cut a hole in the exact place
where there had been one in the well-worn pair which had been entrusted
to him. In the same order of ideas is an instance supplied me by the
Jesuit Fathers at Sicawei, near Shanghai, who showed me some drawings
executed by young Chinese students, intended for the plates to be
introduced in a publication on the fauna of the Far East. They included
some drawings of the skeletons of animals, which, however, were
disfigured, notwithstanding the entreaties of the Fathers, with certain
accidental blots and marks that appeared upon the models. It is not
impossible to induce the Chinese to learn new habits, but it is almost
impossible to induce them to correct those which have been bequeathed to
them by their ancestors. It is possible to teach them how to work modern
machinery, but no power, human or divine, could teach a Chinese
carpenter to work otherwise than he has been trained to do. At the
orphanage at Sicawei, under the direction of the Jesuits, I was shown
over the carpentry department, and was surprised to find each bench
occupied by only one workman. The Father who showed me over the school
informed me that it was absolutely impossible to induce two workmen to
occupy the same bench. The younger orphans saw the older children and
the adults who had remained in the service of the mission working thus,
and insisted upon doing likewise.
The awakening of any sense of originality or invention in the mind of
this people, by whom these qualities have been lost for the simple
reason that they have been systematically trained to look backwards
rather than forwards, will be a work of centuries, and only brought
about by prolonged contact with the peoples and ideas of the West, and
this contact is only now beginning. Before it produces its full effects
upon the race it will doubtless do so upon the land of China itself, if
permission can only be obtained to exploit the great natural wealth
which lies undisturbed beneath the soil of this enormous Empire, and is
thus lost to humanity. If the work of developing the economic resources
of China be undertaken in a spirit of selfish interest, it will
nevertheless very considerably ameliorate the lot of the Chinese people,
if only by extending their field of activity, which is now limited to
agriculture and small industries. It will allow them, for example, to
exploit the subsoil, which is as much neglected in the Celestial Empire
as the soil itself has been perfected by exceedingly skilful farming.
If, as we believe, the great industries resulting from modern scientific
discoveries have really contributed to better the condition of the
people of Europe, surely their introduction into China should be most
beneficial to the inhabitants of that vast Empire.