THE CONCLUSION OF THE LECTURE
At lunch the passengers talked about the lecture that was not yet
finished; and all of them who said anything declared that they were very
much pleased with it, and they hoped the remainder of it would be given
in the afternoon. Of course all of them had read more or less about
China; and while there was much that was new to them, they were glad to
have their knowledge of the country revived.
"I have been in Hong-Kong, Canton, and Shang-hai, and I have heard no
lecture on board that pleased me more than that to which we listened
this forenoon; and I appoint this afternoon at three o'clock for the
conclusion of it," said the commander.
At this hour all the company, including the passengers from the Blanche,
were in their places; and the speaker mounted the rostrum, apparently as
fresh as ever. He was received with as much and as earnest applause as
had been given at the end of the second part of his lecture; and with
this pleasant approval of his work, he continued his discourse.
"According to the accounts of all recent travellers, the roads of China
are in a villanously bad condition, and there are no railroads worth
mentioning," he began. "And yet the necessity of good common roads was
apparent to the ruler, even before the building of the Great Wall, and
twenty thousand of them have been constructed; but the Chinese, having
finished a great work, do not meddle with it again. The roads have never
been repaired thoroughly, and that accounts for their present condition.
The rivers and canals furnish the principal means of communication,
though the roads are still used.
"The dress of the poorer classes is very much the same for both sexes.
It is regulated by sumptuary laws for all classes; but it is varied by
the wealthy in the use of costly material, and the ornaments they add to
it. You have all seen Chinamen enough in the streets of New York and
other cities, and the dress they wear is about the same as that worn in
their native land. The queue is the most notable thing about them. This
was not the ancient custom of wearing the hair, but was introduced and
enforced by the Manchu rulers over three hundred years ago, when it was
considered a degrading edict; though now the Chinaman sticks to his
queue with as much tenacity as he does to his very life.
"The small feet of the women, even of the highest class, is quite as
notable as the queues. This species of deformity was not required by the
Manchus, for they wore their feet as God gave them; and it is not an
ancient custom, for it has prevailed only from the sixth century of our
era. Nature's growth is checked by tightly bandaging the feet in early
childhood, subjecting the victim to severe pain and discomfort. But you
will see the women for yourselves, and can judge of the effect upon
them. The very poor and those in menial conditions are not necessarily
subjected to the torture, but fashion carries even many of this class
into the custom. Small but natural feet are the pride of our young
ladies, and some of them complain that when the feet were given out they
got more than their share.
"The sexes are kept apart until marriage; and this has been a social
feature from the earliest time. Girls and boys in the family did not
occupy the same mat or eat together from the age of seven, and when the
former were ten they ceased to appear outside of the women's apartments.
Girls were taught manners therein, to handle the cocoons, to do all the
work appertaining to the manufacture of silk and the details of Chinese
housekeeping. This was in the feudal time; and the females were not
instructed in book-learning, and are not now, though they pick up
something of an education, and learned women are not unknown, even those
who have written books.
"In regard to marriage, the parents have entire control, and
professional match-makers are an institution. It is to a great extent a
matter of horoscopes. Usually the bride and groom have not seen each
other till the marriage ceremony, and of course they lose all that
delightful period which precedes the event. But they appear to take to
each other when brought together, and to be happy as man and wife.
Though the man has one legal wife, there is no law or custom to prevent
him from taking half a dozen more secondary wives.
"There are seven lawful grounds for divorcing a wife from her
husband,--disobedience to her husband's parents; failure to give birth
to a son; dissolute conduct; jealousy of her man, especially in regard
to the _other_ wives; talkativeness; thieving; and leprosy. I will leave
the ladies to make their own comments. There are three considerations
which may set aside these reasons for divorce,--that her parents are no
longer living; that she has passed with her spouse through the years of
mourning for his parents; and that he has become rich after being poor.
The children are often affianced in childhood, and probably this fact
furnishes many of the grounds for proceedings in the divorce court.
"Infanticide is not an uncommon crime in China, female children being
almost always the victims. Probably its prevalence is somewhat
exaggerated. It is among the poorest class that this atrocity prevails,
the universal desire for male children, in connection with the ancestral
worship of the people, being the root of the evil. Public opinion is
against the practice, though not as decidedly as might be wished.
"The complexion of the Chinese is yellowish, as you have seen in our
streets; and from the extreme north to the Island of Hainan, they all
have long black hair, almond or oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, and
round faces. They are greatly addicted to opium and gambling wherever
you find them. Dr. Legge says that the longer one lives among them the
better he likes them, and the better he thinks of them; but we are not
likely to be able to test the correctness of this remark.
"The Chinese bury their dead in graves in the form of a horseshoe, and
with an almost infinite variety of ceremonies and sacrifices. Where the
friends are able to pay the expense, the last rites are ostentatious and
very costly. You may chance to see something of them before you leave
the country. When a very rich Chinaman travels, he takes his coffin with
him.
"They have no day in the week corresponding to our Sunday, but they have
an annual universal holiday at New Year's. It is a season of rejoicing
and festivity all over the country. Stores are closed for several days,
and the government offices are shut up for a month. The people 'dress
up,' and the temples are visited, the gambling resorts are in full
blast, and crackers and other fireworks make Fourth of July of the
season.
"There is some sort of a festival every month, such as the 'Feast of
Lanterns,' on the full moon, of the tombs, 'Dragon Boats,' and 'All
Souls,' in honor of departed relatives, when the supposed hungry spirits
from the other side of the Styx are fed at the cemeteries. The people
are extravagantly fond of theatricals; and a kind of bamboo tent is
erected for the performance, which is usually of inordinate length.
Females, as in India, do not appear on the stage.
"It would be quite impossible for me to follow the consecutive history
of China from 2637 B.C. down to the present time; it would be an
infliction upon you, and I shall only mention some of the principal
events. Our authority in these remarks numbers the Chinese army at three
hundred and fifty thousand; the Year Book makes it double this number.
Judged by a European standard, it does not amount to much outside of
mere numbers; though in addition to it there is a sort of militia,
camped in the several provinces, more in the nature of police than
soldiers, of twice as many men as the imperial army.
"The first great war in China was the Tâi-Ping rebellion, which the
older of you can remember. It began in 1851, and was continued for
nearly twenty years. Its leader was Hung, a poor student, who studied up
a new religion, which was certainly an improvement upon those of the
people, for it recognized the Great God, and Christ as the Elder
Brother. A strict morality and the keeping of the Sabbath were required
of its adherents, and idolatry and the use of opium were forbidden.
"Hung incited the rebellion; and its object was to overturn the ruling
dynasty of the Manchus, and place himself on the throne. It was at
first very successful in its progress, and it looked as though the
imperial cause was doomed. In 1855 the rebels, for the want of
sufficient re-enforcements in an attempt to capture Pekin, were
compelled to retreat to Nanking, and then the decline of the
insurrection began. A body of foreigners under an American by the name
of Ward joined the imperialists, and rendered important service; but he
was killed in battle in 1862. He was succeeded by one of the
subordinates, who became General Burgevine; and he was quite as
successful as General Ward had been. The new general fell out with the
government, and retired. By the influence of British residents at
Shang-hai, who had organized an effective army, General Charles George
Gordon, of whom you heard in Egypt, was placed in command. He captured
Nanking, and the rebellion was suppressed in 1865.
"You have been informed of the movements of the Portuguese, English,
French, Dutch, and Spaniards to obtain territory in the East from 1497,
when Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. All of them
established colonies; and in 1516 they began to send their ships to
China, whose people did not receive them kindly. This was in the early
days of the Manchu rulers, who claimed to be superior to all other
monarchs on the face of the earth; they would not acknowledge the
visitors as their equals, and regarded them as vassals.
"When the Chinese ruler learned of the conquests of those from the West
he tried to prevent their approach to his dominions. But trade had been
established; and the opium traffic had its birth, and the people were
crazy to procure and smoke it. This was the cause of the wars between
China and England and France, with the vassal question. In 1800 an edict
of the emperor prohibited the importation of opium into his dominions.
"England before this had entered upon the task of making a treaty to
settle the relations between the two countries; but no treaty was made,
and the smuggling of opium continued for many years. In 1816 another
embassy went to Pekin; but it was summarily and contemptuously dismissed
because the ambassador refused to go through the ceremony of repeatedly
prostrating himself before the emperor, and acknowledging his own
sovereign as a vassal of the emperor.
"The trade went on after India passed to the government of England.
China was still obstinate, insisted upon the vassalship of the Western
nation, and was confident in her power to repress the opium trade. The
merchants pressed vigorously for the enlargement of their trade with
China, which did not seem to be aware of its weakness before a European
power. A famous mandarin was appointed governor-general of the Kwang
provinces to bring the barbarians to their senses. He proceeded in
earnest, and England declared war against the country in 1840. The
result was evident from the first, and the war ended with the peace of
Nanking in 1842. The items were the ceding of Hong-Kong to the victor,
the opening of five ports to the trade and residence of the British.
Correspondence was established between the officials of the two nations;
but not a word was said about opium, and the smuggling went on as
before.
"In 1857, after some troubles in Canton in which the English were at
fault, and the refusal of the governor-general to meet an agent of the
British government, the latter declared war again, with France as an
ally. Canton was captured the same year; and Yeh, the governor, was
taken prisoner, and sent to Calcutta. There was little fighting in this
war; and Canton being in possession of the allies, a joint commission,
attended by representatives of the United States and Russia, proceeded
to Pekin to make their demands upon the emperor. A treaty was made at
Tien-tsin, confirming the former, and with many important articles. One
provided for the appointment of ambassadors by each nation, another for
the protection of Christian missionaries, and several others of less
moment.
"It looked as though the Chinese emperor had been sufficiently
humiliated; but the treaty 'slipped up,' for its last clause provided
that the treaty should be ratified at Pekin within one year. The emperor
could not abide the idea of permitting the ambassadors to enter the
sacred capital, and he looked about him for the means of escaping the
issue. The forts between the capital and the Gulf of Pe-chi-li had been
rebuilt and were well armed. The Chinese officials urged the signing at
Tien-tsin, and this was done by several of the embassy; but France and
England insisted that it must be signed in Pekin, as provided in the
instrument itself.
"They started for the sacred city with several men-of-war, but they
found the mouth of the river closed to them by the forts. A severe
engagement followed, in which the allies were beaten, the only battle
gained by the Chinese. At the end of a year another expedition with
twenty thousand men went with the ambassadors, the forts were all taken,
and the officials went to Tien-tsin. The force marched on Pekin; and the
emperor fled, leaving his brother Prince Kung to meet the embassy. The
north-east gate of the city was surrendered, and the treaty was duly
signed at Pekin.
"In 1861 the emperor died, having named his son, six years old, as his
successor. A dozen years later he took possession of the throne, the
regency expiring then. He died two years later, and a nephew of Prince
Kung was appointed to the succession by the imperial family. He was a
child of four years of age then, and reigned under a regency till 1887,
when he took possession of the government at the age of sixteen.
"I should have said before that a change of the tariff in 1842 made the
importation of opium legal in the empire. The country has in recent
years employed foreign officers in its army and navy, and foreign
mechanics in its workshops. China is represented at five of the
principal nations of the world by ambassadors. It has built up a very
respectable navy, mostly at the shipyards of Great Britain; and foreign
officers have greatly improved the condition of the army.
"Telegraphic communication has been extensively established, and a
railroad eighty-one miles long has been built. Educational institutions
have been founded, and schools opened for the instruction of young men
in several foreign languages. The increasing consumption of opium, which
seems to have been placed in the way of the people by the action on the
part of England, is a cause for great regret among the friends of China.
I have said too much already, and I know you must be very tired. I thank
you for bearing with me so long; and I will promise not to do so again,
at least so far as China is concerned. China is at peace with all the
world, and I leave her so."
The professor retired with even greater applause than in the forenoon.
Since he spoke, China has been engaged in a great war with Japan; and
possibly his account of the country will assist those who are yet to
read the history of the conflict.