education, however, and that is the emphasis it has always laid on
moral or ethical training. The teaching, too, seems to have been
remarkably effective. Take so basic a matter as paying one's debts,
for example: it is a part of the Chinaman's religion to get even with
the world on every Chinese New Year, which comes in February. If he
fails to "square up" at this time he "loses face," as his expressive
phrase has it. He is a bad citizen and unpopular. Consequently all
sorts of things may be bought cheaper just before the New Year than
any other time. Every man is willing to make any reasonable sacrifice,
selling his possessions at a great discount if necessary, rather than
have a debt against him run over into the new period--an excellent
idea for America!
I do not know whether Confucianism is responsible for this particular
policy, but at any rate the fact remains that outside the Bible the
world has never known a more sublime moral philosophy than that of
Confucius. It means much, therefore, that every Chinese pupil must
know the maxims and principles of the great sage by heart. Moreover,
as Confucius did not profess to teach spiritual truth, the
missionaries in China are fast coming to realize that it is both
unnecessary and foolish to urge the people to abandon Confucianism.
The proper policy is to tell the Chinese, "Hold on to all that is good
and true in Confucius. There is very little in his teachings that is
{131} in conflict with religion, and Christian leaders now recognize
him as one of the greatest moral forces the world has known. But to
the high moral teaching of the Chinese master you must add now the
moral teachings of Christianity and, more essential still, the great
body of spiritual truth which Confucianism lacks." The grand old man
among Chinese missionaries, Dr. W. A. P. Martin, who has been in the
work since 1850, said to me in Peking, "Some of the best Christians
are now the best Confucianists."
Confucianism, as any one can see by reading the books, is no more a
substitute for Christianity than Proverbs is for St. John's Gospel. As
Doctor Brewster, another missionary, says, "We do not ask an American
scholar to renounce Plato to become a Christian; why should we ask a
Chinaman to renounce Confucius?"
Confucius lived five centuries before Christ, and at his old home in
Shantung are the graves alike of his descendants and his
ancestors--the oldest family burying ground in the world. "No monarch
on earth can trace back his lineage by an unbroken chain through so
many centuries." In Peking I was so fortunate as to form a friendship
with a descendant of Confucius of the seventy-fifth generation--Mr.
Kung Hsiang Koh--a promising and gifted senior in the Imperial College
of Languages. At my request he inscribed a scroll for me in beautiful
Chinese characters, representing one of my favorite quotations from
his world-famous ancestor. I give an English translation herewith:
"Szema-New asked about the Superior Man. The Master said, 'The
superior man is without anxiety or fear.'
"'Being without anxiety or fear,' said New, 'does this constitute
what we should call the superior man?'
"The Master replied, 'When a man looks inward and finds no guilt
there, why should he grieve? or what should he fear?'"
On board _S. S. Kutwo_, Yangtze River, China.
{132}
XIV
SIDELIGHTS ON CHINESE CHARACTER AND INDUSTRY
Having mentioned some of the good points of John Chinaman (and he has
many excellent points), it is also necessary to point out some of his
shortcomings. The trouble with John is that he had some tiptop
ancestors, but he fell into the habit of looking backward at them so
continuously that he has failed, in recent centuries, to make any
further progress. He had a civilization and a literature when our
white ancestors were wearing skins; but there he stopped, so that we
have not only caught up with him, but have passed him almost
immeasurably. The result is that now China is waking up to find that a
great number of ancient abuses, both in public and private life, must
be sloughed off if she is to become a genuinely healthy modern nation.
Of what has been accomplished with reference to opium I have already
written at length. But this is only a beginning.
With the opium evil under foot, China will still have other dragons to
slay--if I may use the term dragon in an evil sense in a country whose
national emblem is the dragon. For one thing, slavery still exists in
China. A friend of mine in Peking told me of an acquaintance, an
educated Chinaman, who bought a young girl two years ago for two
hundred taels (about $120 gold), and says now he would not take one
thousand two hundred (about $720 gold). Already, however, a vigorous
sentiment for the complete abolition of slavery has {133} developed
over the empire. About six months ago an imperial edict was issued
prohibiting slave trading, decreeing that child-slaves should become
free on reaching the age of twenty-five, and opening ways for older
slaves to buy their freedom. The peons or slaves of the Manchu princes
were, however, excepted from the terms of this edict.
Foot-binding also continues a grievous and widespread evil. Formerly
every respectable Chinese father bound the feet of all his girls.
Fathers who did not were either degraded men, reckless of public
opinion, or so bitterly poor as to require the services of their
daughters in unremitting manual labor. Consequently, a natural foot on
a woman became a badge of social inferiority: a Chinaman of prominence
wouldn't marry her. Now, however, many of the wealthier upper-class
Chinamen in the cities are letting their girls grow up with unbound
feet, and this custom will gradually spread until the middle and lower
classes generally, seeing that fashion no longer decrees such a
barbaric practice, will also abandon it.
The progress of the reform, however, is by no means so rapid as could
be wished. A father with wealth may risk getting a husband for his
daughter even though she has natural feet, but ambitious fathers among
the common people fear to take such risks. An American lady whose home
I visited has a servant who asked for two or three weeks' leave of
absence last summer, explaining that he wished to bind the feet of his
baby daughter. My friend, knowing all the cruelty of the practice, and
having a heart touched by memories of the heart-rending cries with
which the poor little creatures protest for weeks against their
suffering, pleaded with the servant to let the child's feet alone. But
to no effect. "Big feet no b'long pretty," he said, and went home
unconvinced.
"The feet," according to the brief statement of ex-Minister Charles
Denby, "are bandaged at an age varying from three to five years. The
toes are bent back until they penetrate the sole of the foot, and are
tightly bound in that position. The {134} parts fester and the toes
grow into the foot." The result is that women grow up with feet the
same size as when they were children, and the flesh withers away on
the feet and below the knees. Throughout life the fashion-cursed girl
and woman must hobble around on mere stumps. When you first see a
Chinese woman with bound feet you are reminded of the old pictures of
Pan, the imaginary Greek god with the body of a man and the feet of a
goat. The resemblance to goat's feet is remarkably striking. As the
women are unable to take proper exercise--except with great
pain--there is little doubt that their physical strength has been
seriously impaired by this custom, and that the stamina of the whole
race as well has suffered in consequence.
Whenever a foreigner--it is the white man who is "the foreigner" over
here--begins a comparison or contrast between the Chinese and the
Japanese, he is sure to mention among the first two or three things
the vast difference in moral standards with regard to family life. The
cleanness of the family life in China, he will tell you, is one of the
great moral assets of the race, while the contrary conditions largely
prevailing in Japan would seem to threaten ultimate disaster to the
people.
As in most Asiatic countries, however, there is in China no very
definite moral sentiment against a man's marrying more than one wife.
In fact, it is regarded not as a question of morals but of expense. It
is one of the privileges of the Chinaman who can afford it, and the
No. 1 wife is often glad for her husband to take a No. 2 and a No. 3
wife, because the secondary wives are somewhat under her authority and
relieve her of much work and worry. A few months ago a Chinaman in
Hankow had a very capable No. 2 wife who was about to quit him to work
for some missionaries, whereupon Wife No. 1, Wife No. 3, and the
much-worried husband all joined in a protest against the household's
losing so capable a woman.
All these three wives were in subjection to the husband's mother,
however, until the old lady took cholera last year, and {135} in a day
or so was dead. The prevalence of awful scourges, such as cholera and
bubonic plague, is another evil which the new China must conquer.
These diseases are due mainly, of course, to unsanitary ways of
living, and when you have been through a typical Chinese city you
wonder that anybody escapes. The streets are so narrow that with
outstretched arms you can almost reach from side to side, and the
unmentionable foulness of them often smells to heaven.
Moreover, if you have the idea that the typical Chinaman is content to
live only on rice, prepare to abandon it. Hogs are more common in a
village of Chinamen than dogs in a village of negroes; and, in some
cases, almost equally at home in the houses. I saw a Chinese woman in
Kiukiang feeding a fat porker in the front room, while, in the narrow
streets around, hogs and dogs were wandering together or lying
contentedly asleep in the sunshine by the canal bank. In fact, the
ancient Chinese character for "home" is composed of two
characters--"pig" and "shelter"--a home being thus represented as a
pig under a shelter!
Small wonder that cholera is frequent, smallpox a scourge, and leprosy
in evidence here and there. Quite recently a couple of mission
teachers of my denomination have died of smallpox: they "didn't
believe in vaccination." Shanghai, as I write this, is just recovering
from a bubonic plague scare. There were one or two deaths from the
plague among the Chinese, whereupon the foreigners put into force such
drastic quarantine regulations that the Chinese rebelled with riots.
The whites then put their cannon into position, the volunteer soldiers
were called out, and it looked at one time as if I should find the
city in a state of bloody civil war, but fortunately the trouble seems
now to have blown over.
Unfortunately the ignorant Chinese put a great deal more faith in
patent medicines and patent medicine fakirs than they do in approved
sanitary measures. It is interesting to find that American patent
medicines discredited at home by {136} the growing intelligence of our
people have now taken refuge in the Orient, and are coining the poor
Chinaman's ignorance into substantial shekels. Worst of all, some of
the religious papers over here are helping them to delude the
unintelligent, just as too many of our church papers at home are
doing.
In Shanghai I picked up a weekly publication printed in Chinese and
issued by the Christian Literature Society, and asked what was the
advertisement on the back. "Dr. Williams's Pink Pills for Pale
People," was the answer.
One of the most peculiar things about China is the existence of almost
unlimited official corruption side by side with high standards of
honesty and morality in ordinary business or private life. I have
already referred to the system of "squeeze" or graft by which almost
every official gets the bulk of his earnings. In Shanghai it is said
that the Taotai, or chief official there, paid $50,000 (gold) for an
office for which the salary is only $1500 (gold) a year.
Against this concrete evidence of official corruption place this
evidence of a high sense of honor in private life. A young Chinaman,
employed in a position of trust in Hankow, embezzled some money. The
company, knowing that his family was one of some standing, notified
the father. He and his sons, brothers of the thief, went after the
young fellow and killed him with an ax. The community as a whole
approved the action, because in no other way could the father free his
family from the disgrace and ostracism it would have incurred by
having an embezzler in it.
{137}
[Illustration: FASHIONABLE CHINESE DINNER PARTY.]
[Illustration: HOW LUMBER IS SAWED IN THE ORIENT--THERE ARE
PRACTICALLY NO SAW MILLS.]
{138}
[Illustration: A QUOTATION FROM CONFUCIUS.]
This is the upper part of a scroll kindly written for the author by
Mr. Kung Hsiang Koh (or Alfred E. Kung as he signs himself in
English). Mr. Kung is a descendant of Confucius (Kung Fut-zu) of the
seventy-fifth generation, and the complete quotation of which the
scroll is a reproduction in Chinese characters reads as follows:
"Ssu-ma Niu asked for a definition of the princely man."
"The Master said: 'The princely man is one who knows neither grief
nor fear.' 'Absence of grief and fear?' said Niu, 'Is this the mark
of a princely man?' The Master said, 'If a man look into his heart
and find no guilt there, why should he grieve? Or of what should he
be afraid?'"
{136 continued}
The Yangtze River trip from Hankow to Shanghai, mentioned in my last
letter, I found very interesting. We were three days going the 600
miles. The Yangtze is the third largest river in the world and
navigable 400 miles beyond Hankow, or 1000 miles in all. It would be
navigable much farther but for a series of waterfalls. Nearly thirty
miles wide toward the mouth, its muddy current discolors the ocean's
blue forty miles out in the Pacific, I am told. In fact, I think {139}
it must have been that distance that I last saw the great turgid
stream off the Shanghai harbor. Even as far up as Hankow the river
becomes very rough on windy days. Consequently, when I wished to go
across to Wuchang, I found that the motor boat couldn't go, so
tempestuous were the waves, but a rather rickety looking little native
canoe called a "sampan," with tattered sails, bobbing up and down like
a cork, finally landed me safely across the three or four miles of
sea-like waves. All the way from Hankow to Peking one encounters all
sorts of Chinese junks and other odd river-craft. In many cases they
look like the primitive Greek and Roman boats of which one sees
pictures in the ancient histories. The Chinese are excellent sailors
and manage their boats very skilfully. The greatest canal that the
world knows was begun by them in the time of Nebuchadnezzar and
finished thirteen centuries ago.
Until very recently, however, the Chinese have not wanted railways.
Coming from Hankow to Shanghai I passed in sight of the site of the
old Woosung-Shanghai Railway, the first one built in China; but before
it got well started the people tore it up and threw it into the river.
In Shanghai I met his Excellency Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to
the United States, and he told me of his troubles in building, under
Li Hung Chang's directions, what turned out to be the first permanent
railway in China. This was less than twenty-five years ago. Li Hung
Chang said to Mr. Wu: "If we ask the authorities to let us build a
railway, they'll refuse, so I am going to take the responsibility
myself. The only way to overcome the prejudice against railways is to
let the people see that a railroad isn't the evil they think it is."
Accordingly, Mr. Wu set to work on the Tongshan Railway. He built
first ten miles, then twenty more. Then as the road was working well,
and its usefulness demonstrated, he and Li Hung Chang thought they
might get permission from the Throne to construct a line from Tientsin
to Peking. Successful in this effort, they went ahead with the survey
and {140} imported from America the materials for building the
line--and then came a new edict forbidding them to proceed! The matter
had been taken up by the viceroys and governors, and 80 per cent, of
them had opposed building the line!
Now, less than twenty-five years later, John Chinaman is calling for
railroads in almost every non-railroad section, and the railroads
already built are paying handsome dividends. Everybody seems to
travel. Besides the first-class and second-class coaches, most trains
carry box-cars, very much like cattle-cars and without seats of any
kind, for third-class passengers. And I don't recall having seen one
yet that wasn't chock full of Chinamen, happy as a similar group of
Americans would be in new automobiles. A missionary along the line
between Hankow and Peking says that he now makes a 200-mile trip in
five hours which formerly took him nineteen days. Before the railway
came he had to go by wheelbarrow, ten miles a day, his luggage on one
side the wheel, and himself on the other. Thousands of these
wheelbarrows, doing freight and passenger business, are in use in
Shanghai and the regions roundabout. A frame about three feet wide and
four feet long is built over and around the wheel, and a coolie will
carry as much as half a ton on one of them.
Along the Yangtze a considerable quantity of cotton is grown, and I
went out into some of the fields in the neighborhood of Shanghai. The
stalks were dead, of course, and in some cases women were pulling them
up for fuel, but I could see that the Chinese is a poorer variety than
our American cotton, and is cultivated more poorly. Instead of
planting in rows as we do, the peasants about Shanghai broadcast in
"lands" eight or ten feet wide, as we sow wheat and oats. About
Shanghai they do not use the heavier two and three horse plows I found
about Peking; consequently the land is poorly broken to begin with,
and the cultivation while the crop is growing amounts to very little.
No sort of seed selection or variety breeding has ever been attempted.
No wonder that {141} the stalks are small, the bolls small and few in
number, and the staple also very short.
From my observation I should say that with better varieties and better
cultivation China could easily double her yields without increasing
her acreage. There is likely to be some increase in acreage, too,
however, because farmers who have had to give up poppy culture are in
search of a new money crop, and in most cases will take up cotton.
As I have said before, the coolie class wear padded clothes all
winter, and as they have no fire in their houses, they naturally have
to wear several suits even of the padded sort. I remember a speech
Congressman Richmond P. Hobson made several years ago in which he
spoke of having seen Chinamen with clothes piled on, one suit on top
of another, until they looked like walking cotton bales. Some of his
hearers may have thought this an exaggeration, but if so, I wish to
give him the support of my own observation and that of a preacher. As
a Chinaman came in the street-car in Shanghai Friday my missionary
host remarked: "That fellow has on four or five suits already, and
he'll put on more as the weather gets colder."
Mr. Currie, the English superintendent of the International Cotton
Mills at Shanghai, told me as I went through his factory that the
Chinese men and women he employs average about 12 cents a day
(American money), but that from his experience in England he would say
that English labor at 80 cents or a dollar a day is cheaper. "You'd
have more for your money at the week's end. One white girl will look
after four sides of a ring spinning frame; it takes six Chinese, as
you see. Then, again, the one white girl would oil her own machine;
the Chinese will not. In the third place, in England two overseers
would be enough for this room, while here we must have seven."
Hong Kong.
{142}
XV
FAREWELL TO CHINA
With this letter we bid farewell to China. When I see it again it will
doubtless be greatly changed. Already I have come too late to see
poppy fields or opium dens; too late to see the old-time cells in
which candidates for office were kept during their examination
periods; too late, I am told, to find the flesh of cats or dogs for
sale in the markets. If I had waited five years longer, it is likely
that I should not have found the men wearing their picturesque queues
and half-shaven heads; before five years, too, a parliament and a
cabinet will have a voice in the government in which until now the one
potent voice has been that of the Emperor, the "Son of Heaven"
divinely appointed to rule over the Middle Kingdom. All over the
country the people are athrill with a new life. Unless present signs
fail, the century will not be old before the Dragon Empire, instead of
being a country hardly consulted by the Powers about matters affecting
its own interests, will itself become one of the Powers and will have
to be consulted about affairs in other nations.
Be it said, to begin with, that I am just back from Canton, the most
populous city in China and supposedly one of the half dozen most
populous in the whole world. As no census has ever been taken, it is
impossible to say how many people it really does contain. The
estimates vary all the way from a million and a half to three
millions. Half a million people, it is said, live on boats in the
river. Some of them are born, marry, grow old, and die without ever
having known a home {143} on land. And these boats, it should be
remembered, are no larger than a small bedroom at home. I saw many of
them yesterday afternoon, and I also saw many of the women managing
them. The women boatmen--or boat-women--of Canton are famous.
Think of a city of two or three million people without a vehicle of
any kind--wagon, buggy, carriage, street-car, automobile, or even a
rickshaw! And yet this is what Canton appears to be. I didn't see even
a wheelbarrow. The streets are too narrow for any travel except that
of pedestrians, and the only men not walking are those borne on the
shoulders of men who are walking. My guide (who rejoices in the name
of Ah Cum John) and I went through in sedan chairs--a sort of chair
with light, narrow shafts before and behind. These shafts fit over the
heads and bare shoulders of three coolies, or Chinese laborers, and it
is these human burden-bearers who showed us the sights of Canton.
To get an idea of what the city is like, fancy an area of about thirty
square miles crowded with houses as thick as they can stand, every
house jam up against its neighbors, with only walls between--no room
for yards or parks or driveways--and these houses dense with people!
Then punch into these square miles of houses a thousand winding
alleys, no one wide enough to be called a street, and fill up these
alleys also with hurrying, perspiring, pig-tailed Chinamen. There are
no stores, shops or offices such as would look familiar to an
American, but countless thousands of Chinese shops wide open to the
streets, with practically no doors in evidence.
Such is Canton: a human hive of industry: a maze of labyrinthine
alleys crowded with people, the alleys or streets too narrow to get
the full light of day!
Outside this crowded city of Canton's living masses is the even larger
and more crowded city of Canton's dead. From the highest point on the
city wall my guide pointed out an unbroken cemetery extending for ten
miles: the hills dotted {144} with mounds until they have the
appearance of faces pitted by smallpox.
For the Chinaman, however unimportant in actual life, becomes a man of
importance as soon as he dies, and his grave must be carefully looked
after. The finest place I saw in Canton was the mortuary where the
dead bodies of wealthy Chinamen are kept until burial. The handsome
coffins I saw ranged in value from $1400 to $2700 Mexican, or half
these amounts American money. The lacquered surfacing accounts for the
high cost.