A ramble through a native town in China must often have discovered to
the observant foreigner small collections of second-hand books and
pamphlets displayed on some umbrella-shaded stall, or arranged less
pretentiously on the door-step of a temple. If innocent of all claims
to a knowledge of the written language, he may take them for cheap
editions of Confucius, with which literary chair-coolies are wont to
solace their leisure hours; at the worst, some of these myriad novels
of which he has heard so much, and read--in translations--so little.
It possibly never enters our barbarian's head that many of these
itinerant book-sellers are vendors of educational works, much after
the style of Pinnock's Catechisms and other such guides to knowledge.
Buying a handful the other day for a few cash,[*] we were much amused
at the nature of the subjects therein discussed, and the manner in
which they were treated. The first we opened was on Ethnology and
Zoology, and gave an account of the wonderful types of men and beasts
which exist in far-off regions beyond the pale of China and
civilisation. There was the long-legged nation, the people of which
have legs three _chang_ (thirty feet) long to support bodies of no
more than ordinary size, followed by a short account of a cross-legged
race, a term which explains itself. We are next told of a country
where all the inhabitants have a large round hole right through the
middle of their bodies, the officials and wealthy citizens being
easily and comfortably carried _a la_ sedan chair by means of a strong
bamboo pole passed through it. Then there is the feathered or bird
nation, the pictures of which people remind us very much of Lapps and
Greenlanders. A few lines are devoted to a pygmy race of nine-inch
men, also to a people who walk with their bodies at an angle of 45
degrees. There is the one-armed nation, and a three-headed nation,
besides fish-bodied and bird-headed representatives of humanity; last
but not least we have a race of beings without heads at all, their
mouth, eyes, nose, &c., occupying their chests and pit of the stomach!
"And of the cannibals that each other eat,
The Anthropophagi, and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."
The little work which contains the above valuable information was
published in 1783, and has consequently been nearly one hundred years
before an enlightened and approving public.
[*] About 24 cash go to a penny.
Not to dwell upon the remaining portion, devoted to Zoology, and
containing wonderful specimens of various kinds of animals and birds
met with by travellers beyond the Four Seas, we would remark that the
geography of the world, notwithstanding some very fair existing
treatises, is little studied by Chinese at the present day. More works
on topography have been written in Chinese than in probably any other
language, but to say that even these are read is quite another matter.
Geography, properly so called, is almost entirely neglected, and in a
rather extensive circle of literary acquaintances, it has never been
our fortune to meet with a single scholar acquainted with the useful
publications of Catholic or Protestant missionaries--the latter have
not contributed much--except perhaps the mutilated edition of
Verbiest's little handbook.
To describe one is to give a fair idea of all such native works for
the diffusion of knowledge. We found in our little parcel a complete
guide (save the mark!) to the _Fauna_ and _Flora_ of the Celestial
Empire, besides a treatise headed "Philosophy for the Young," in which
children are shown that to work for one's living is better than to be
idle, and that the strength of three men is powerless against _Li_.
Now as _Li_ means "abstract right," and as it is an axiom of Chinese
philosophy that "right in the abstract" does exist, we are gravely
informed that neither the moral or physical violence of any three men
acting in concert can hope to prevail against it. So much for the
state of education in China at the present day, the remedy for which
unwholesome condition will by no means readily be found. From time to
time a few scientific treatises are translated by ambitious members of
the missionary body, but such only tend to swell the pastor's fame
amongst his own immediate flock: they do not advance civilisation one
single step. The very fact of their emanating from a missionary would
of itself be enough to deter the better class of Chinese from
purchasing, or even accepting them as a gift.[*]
[*] "The principal priest . . . declined the gift of some Christian
books."--From _Glimpses of Travel in the Middle Kingdom_,
published in the _Celestial Empire_ of July 3d, 1875.