Were any wealthy philanthropist to consult us as to the disposal of
his millions with a view to ensure the greatest possible advantages to
the greatest possible number, we should unhesitatingly recommend him
to undertake the publication of a Chinese newspaper, to be sold at a
merely nominal figure per copy. Under skilled foreign guidance, and
with the total exclusion of religious topics, more would be effected
in a few years for the real happiness of China and its ultimate
conversion to western civilisation, than the most hopeful enthusiast
could venture to predict. The _Shun-pao_, edited in Shanghai by Mr
Ernest Major, is doing an incredible amount of good in so far as its
influence extends; but the daily issue of this widely-circulated paper
amounts only to about four thousand copies, or one to every hundred
thousand natives! Missionary publications are absolutely useless, as
they have a very limited sale beyond the circle of converts to the
faith; but a _colporteur_ of religious books informed us the other day
that he was continually being asked for the _Shun-pao_. Now the
_Shun-pao_ owes its success so far to the fact that it is a pure money
speculation, and therefore an undertaking intelligible enough to all
Chinamen. Not only are its columns closed to anything like
proselytising articles, but they are open from time to time to such
tit-bits of the miraculous as are calculated to tickle the native
palate, and swell the number of its subscribers. Therefore, to avert
suspicion, it would be necessary to make a charge, however small,
while at the same time such bogy paragraphs as occasionally appear in
the columns of the _Shun-pao_ might be altogether omitted.
Our attention was called to this matter by a charming description in
the _Shun-pao_ of a late balloon ascent from Calais, which was so
nearly attended with fatal results. Written in a singularly easy
style, and going quite enough into detail on the subject of balloons
generally to give an instructive flavour to its remarks, this article
struck us as being the identical kind of "light science for leisure
hours" so much needed by the Chinese; and it compared most favourably
with a somewhat heavy disquisition on aeronautic topics which appeared
some time back in the _Peking Magazine_, albeit the latter was
accompanied by an elaborate woodcut of a balloon under way. There is
so much that is wonderful in the healthy regions of fact which might
with mutual advantage be imparted to a reading people like the
Chinese, that it is quite unnecessary to descend to the gross, and too
often indecent, absurdities of fiction. Much indeed that is not
actually marvellous might be put into language which would rivet the
attention of Chinese readers. The most elementary knowledge, according
to our standard, is almost always new, even to the profoundest scholar
in native literature: the ignorance of the educated classes is
something appalling. On the other hand, all who have read their
_Shun-pao_ with regularity, even for a few months, are comparatively
enlightened. We heard the other day of a Tao-t'ai who was always
meeting the phrase "International Law" in the above paper, and his
curiosity at length prompted him to make inquiries, and finally to
purchase a copy of Dr Martin's translation of "Wheaton." He
subsequently complained bitterly that much of it was utterly
unintelligible; and judging from our own limited experience of the
translation, we think His Excellency's objection not altogether
groundless.
Of the domestic life of foreigners, the Chinese, with the exception of
a few servants, know absolutely nothing; and equally little of foreign
manners, customs, or etiquette. We were acquainted with one healthy
Briton who was popularly supposed by the natives with whom he was
thrown in contact to eat a whole leg of mutton every day for dinner;
and a high native functionary, complaining one day of some tipsy
sailors who had been rioting on shore, observed that "he knew
foreigners always got drunk on Sundays, and had the offence been
committed on that day he would have taken no notice of it; but," &c.,
&c. They have vague notions that filial piety is not considered a
virtue in the West, and look upon our system of contracting marriages
as objectionable in the extreme. They think foreigners carry whips and
sticks only for purposes of assault, and we met a man the other day
who had been wearing a watch for years, but was in the habit of never
winding it up till it had run down. This we afterwards found out to be
quite a common custom among the Chinese, it being generally believed
that a watch cannot be wound up whilst going; consequently, many
Chinamen keep two always in use, and it is worth noticing that watches
in China are almost invariably sold in pairs. The term "foreign devil"
is less frequently heard than formerly, and sometimes only for the
want of a better phrase. Mr Alabaster, in one of his journeys in the
interior, was politely addressed by the villagers as _His Excellency
the Devil_. The Chinese settlers in Formosa call themselves "foreign
men," but they call us "foreign things;" for, they argue, if we called
you foreign men, what should we call ourselves? The _Shun-pao_
deserves much credit for its unvarying use of _western_ instead of
_outside_ nations when speaking of foreign powers, but the belief is
still very prevalent that we all come from a number of small islands
scattered round the coast of one great centre, the Middle Kingdom.
And so we might go on multiplying _ad nauseam_ instances of Chinese
ignorance in trivial matters which an ably-conducted journal has it in
its power to dispel. We are so dissimilar from the Chinese in our ways
of life, and so unlike them in dress and facial appearance, that it is
only many years of commercial intercourse on the present familiar
footing which will cause them to regard us as anything but the
barbarians they call us. Red hair and blue eyes may make up what Baron
Hubner would euphemistically describe as the "beau type d'un gentleman
anglais," but when worn with a funny-shaped hat, a short coat, tight
trousers, and a Penang lawyer, the picture produced on the retina of a
Chinese mind is unmistakably that of a "foreign devil."