III
TO understand China's attitude towards foreigners, the following considerations must be borne in mind:--
First, the conservative temperament of the Chinese. It is true but misleading, to say that they have ``no word or written character for patriotism, but 150 ways of writing the characters for good luck and longlife.'' For while the Chinese may have little love for country, they have an intense devotion to their own customs. For nearly 5,000 years, while other empires have risen, flourished and fallen, they have lived apart, sufficient unto themselves, cherishing their own ideals, plodding along their well-worn paths, ignorant of or indifferent to the progress of the Western world, mechanically memorizing dead classics, and standing still comparatively amid the tremendous onrush of modern civilization. I say comparatively still, for if we carefully study Chinese history, we shall find that this vast nation has not been so inert as we have long supposed. The very revolutions and internal commotions of all kinds through which China has passed would have prevented mere inertia. But when we compare these movements and the changes that they have wrought with the kaleidoscopic transformations in Europe and America, China appears the most stationary of nations. She has moved less in centuries than western peoples have in decades. The restless Anglo-Saxon is alternately irritated and awed by this massive solidity, not to say stolidity. There is, after all, something impressive about it, the impressiveness of a mighty glacier which moves, indeed, but so slowly and majestically that the duration of an ordinary nation's life appears insignificant as compared with the almost timeless majesty of the Chinese Empire.
Second, the vastness of China. Her territory and population are so enormous that her people found sufficient scope for their energies within their own borders. They therefore felt independent of outsiders. The typical European nation is so limited in area and is so near to equally civilized and powerful peoples that it could not if it would live unto itself. The situation of most nations forces them into relations with others. But China had a third of the human race and a tenth of the habitable globe entirely to herself, with no neighbours who had anything that she really cared for. It was inevitable, therefore, that a naturally conservative people should become a self- centred and self-satisfied people.
Third, the character of adjacent nations. None of them were equal to the Chinese in civilization and learning, while in territory and population, they were relatively insignificant. Even Japan, by far the most powerful of them, has only a tenth of China's population, while her remarkable progress in intelligence and power is a matter of less than a couple generations. Until recently, indeed, Japan was as backward as China and was not ashamed to receive many of her ideas from her larger neighbour, as the number of Chinese characters in the Japanese language plainly show. As for China's other neighbours, who were they? Weak nations which abjectly sent tribute by commissioners who grovelled before the august Emperor of the Middle Kingdom, or barbarous tribes which the Chinese regarded about as Americans regard the aboriginal Indians. Gibson translates the following passage from a Chinese historian as illustrative at once of China's haughty contempt of outsiders and of her reasons for it:
``The former kings in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. They differ both in their customs and their food, and in language they are utterly unintelligible. . . . On this account the ancient sage kings treated them like birds and beasts. They did not contract treaties, nor did they attack them. To form a treaty is simply to spend treasure and to be deceived; to attack them is simply to wear out the troops and provoke raids. . . . Thus the outer are not to be brought inside. They must be held at a distance, avoiding familiarity. . . . If they show a leaning towards right principles and present tributary offerings, they should be treated with a yielding etiquette; but bridling and repression must never be relaxed for conforming to circumstance. Such was the constant principle of the sage monarchs in ruling and controlling the barbarian tribes.''
It is not surprising, therefore, that when foreigners from the distant West sought to force their way into China, the Chinese, knowing nothing of the countries from which they came, should have regarded them in accordance with their traditional belief and policy regarding the inferiority of all outsiders.
The resultant difficulty was intensified by the indifference, to use no harsher term, of the foreigner to the fact that the Chinese are a very ceremonious people, extremely punctilious in all social relations and disposed to regard a breach of etiquette as a cardinal sin. ``Face'' is a national institution which must be preserved at all hazards. No one can get along with the Chinese who does not respect it.
``It is an integral part of both Chinese theory and practice that realities are of much less importance than appearances. If the latter can be saved, the former may be altogether surrendered. This is the essence of that mysterious `face' of which we are never done hearing in China. The line of Pope might be the Chinese national motto: `Act well your part, there all the honour lies'; not, be it observed, doing well what is to be done, but consummate acting, contriving to convey the appearance of a thing or a fact, whatever the realities may be. This is Chinese high art; this is success. It is self-respect, and it involves and implies the respect of others. It is, in a word, `face.' The preservation of `face' frequently requires that one should behave in an arbitrary and violent manner merely to emphasize his protests against the course of current events. He or she must fly into a violent rage, he or she must use reviling and perhaps imprecatory language, else it will not be evident to the spectators of the drama, in which he is at the moment acting, that he is aware just what ought to be done by a person in his precise situation; and then he will have `no way to descend from the stage,' or in other words, he will have lost `face.' ''
Even in death this remains the ruling passion. Chinese coffins require much wood and are an expensive burden in this land where timber is scarce, for Confucius said that a coffin should be five inches thick. So the poorer Chinese thriftily meet this requirement by making the sides and ends hollow! Thus ``face'' is saved.
In these circumstances, it was very important that the relations of Europeans to China should be characterized not only by justice but by tact and at least decent respect for the feelings and customs of the people. The chief cause of China's hostility to foreigners undoubtedly lies in the notorious and often contemptuous disregard of these things by the majority of the white men who have entered China and by the Governments which have backed them.
There is much in the Chinese that is worthy of our respectful recognition. Multitudes are indeed, stolid and ignorant, but multitudes, too, have strong, intelligent features. Thousands of children have faces as bright and winning as those of American children. More strongly than ever do I feel that Europe and America have not done justice to the character of the Chinese. I do not refer to the bigoted and corrupt Manchu officials, or to the lawless barbarians who, like the ``lewd fellows of the baser sort'' in other lands, are ever ready to follow the leadership of a demagogue. But I refer to the Chinese people as a whole. Their view-point is so radically different from ours that we have often harshly misjudged them, when the real trouble has lain in our failure to understand them.
Let us be free enough from prejudice and passion to respect a people whose national existence has survived the mutations of a definitely known historic period of thirty-seven centuries and of an additional legendary period that runs back no man knows how far into the haze of a hoary antiquity; who are frugal, patient, industrious and respectful to parents, as we are not; whose astronomers made accurate recorded observations 200 years before Abraham left Ur; who used firearms at the beginning of the Christian era; who first grew tea, manufactured gunpowder, made pottery, glue and gelatine; who wore silk and lived in houses when our ancestors wore the undressed skins of wild animals and slept in caves; who invented printing by movable types 500 years before that art was known in Europe; who discovered the principles of the mariner's compass without which the oceans could not be crossed, conceived the idea of artificial inland waterways and dug a canal 600 miles long; who made mountain roads which, in the opinion of Dr. S. Wells Williams, ``when new probably equalled in engineering and construction anything of the kind ever built by Romans;'' and who invented the arch to which our modern architecture is so greatly indebted.
In the Great Bell Temple two miles from Peking is one of the wonderful bells of the world. It is fourteen feet high, thirty-four feet in circumference at the rim, nine inches thick and weighs 120,000 pounds. It is literally covered inside and out with Chinese characters consisting of extracts from the sacred writings, and the Rev. Dr. John Wherry, who is an expert in the Chinese language, says that there is ``not one imperfect character among them.'' The bell when struck by the big wooden clapper emits a deep musical note that can be heard for miles. Such a magnificent bell vividly illustrates the stage of civilization reached by the Chinese while Europe was comparatively barbarous, for the bell was cast as far back as 1406 in the reign of Yung-loh, and the present temple buildings were erected about it in 1578. The Germans began using paper in 1190, but Sven Hedin found Chinese paper 1,650 years old and there is evidence that paper was in common use by the Chinese 150 years before Christ. Until a few hundred years ago, European business was conducted on the basis of coin or barter. But long before that, the Chinese had banks and issued bills of exchange. There has recently been placed in the British Museum a bank-note issued by Hung-Wu, Emperor of China, in 1368.
The Chinese exalt learning and, alone among the nations of the earth, make scholarship a test of fitness for official position. True, that scholarship moves along narrow lines of Confucian classics, but surely such knowledge is a higher qualification for office than the brute strength which for centuries gave precedence among our ancestors. A Chinese writer explains as follows the gradations in relative worth as they are esteemed by his countrymen: ``First the scholar: because mind is superior to wealth, and it is the intellect that distinguishes man above the lower orders of beings, and enables him to provide food and raiment and shelter for himself and for other creatures. Second, the farmer: because the mind cannot act without the body, and the body cannot exist without food, so that farming is essential to the existence of man, especially in civilized society. Third, the mechanic: because next to food, shelter is a necessity, and the man who builds a house comes next in honour to the man who provides food. Fourth, the tradesman: because, as society increases and its wants are multiplied, men to carry on exchange and barter become a necessity, and so the merchant comes into existence. His occupation --shaving both sides, the producer and consumer--tempts him to act dishonestly; hence his low grade. Fifth, the soldier stands last and lowest in the list, because his business is to destroy and not to build up society. He consumes what others produce, but produces nothing himself that can benefit mankind. He is, perhaps, a necessary evil.''
While the Government of China is a paternal despotism in form and while it is always weak and corrupt and often cruel and tyrannical in practice, nevertheless there is a larger measure of individual freedom than might be supposed. ``There are no passports, no restraints on liberty, no frontiers, no caste prejudices, no food scruples, no sanitary measures, no laws except popular customs and criminal statutes. China is in many senses one vast republic, in which personal restraints have no existence.''
We must not form our opinion from the Chinese whom we see in the United States. True, most of them are kindly, patient and industrious, while some are highly intelligent. But, with comparatively few exceptions, they are from the lower classes of a single province of Kwan-tung--Cantonese coolies. The Chinese might as fairly form their opinion of Americans from our day-labourers. But there are able men in the Celestial Empire. Bishop Andrews returned from China to characterize the Chinese as ``a people of brains.'' When Viceroy Li Hung Chang visited this country, all who met him unhesitatingly pronounced him a great man. The New York Tribune characterizes the late Liu Kun Yi, Viceroy of Nanking, as a man who ``rendered inestimable services to China and to the whole world,'' ``a man of action, who acted with a strong hand and masterful leadership and at the same time with a justice and a generosity that made him at once feared, respected and loved.''
After General Grant's tour around the world, he told Senator Stewart that the most astonishing thing which he had seen was that wherever the Chinese had come into competition with the Jew, the Chinese had driven out the Jew. We know the persistence of the Jew, that he has held his own against every other people. Despite the fact that he has no home and no Government, that he has been ridiculed and persecuted by all men, that everywhere he is an alien in race, country and religion, he has laboured on, patiently, resolutely, distancing every rival, surmounting every obstacle, compelling even his enemies to acknowledge his shrewdness and his determination till to-day in Russia, in Austria, in Germany, in England, the Jew is bitterly conceded to be master in the editorial chair, at the bar, in the universities, in the counting-house and in the banking office; while the proudest of monarchs will undertake no enterprise requiring large expenditure until he is assured of the support of the keen-eyed, swarthy-visaged men who control the sinews of war. Generations of exclusion from agriculture and the mechanical arts and of devotion to commerce, have developed and inbred in the Jew a marvellous facility for trade.
And yet this race, which has so abundantly demonstrated its ability to cope with the Greek, the Slav and the Teuton, finds itself outreached in cunning, outworn in persistence and over- matched in strength by an olive-complexioned, almond-eyed fellow with felt shoes, baggy trousers, loose tunic, round cap and swishing queue, who represents such swarming myriads that the mind is confused in the attempt to comprehend the enormous number. The canny Scotchman and the shrewd Yankee are alike discomfited by the Chinese. Those who do not believe it should ask the American and European traders who are being crowded out of Saigon, Shanghai, Bangkok, Singapore, Penang, Batavia and Manila. In many of the ports of Asia outside of China, the Chinese have shown themselves to be successful colonizers, able to meet competition, so that to-day they own the most valuable property and control the bulk of the trade. It is true that the Chinese are inordinately conceited; but shades of the Fourth of July orator, screams of the American eagle! it requires considerable self-possession in a Yankee to criticize any one else on the planet for conceit. The Chinese have not, at least, padded a census to make the world believe that they are greater than they really are. In June, 1903, the same New York newspaper that gave the horrible details of the burning of a negro by an American mob within thirty miles of Philadelphia announced that a Chinese, Chung Hui Wang, had taken the highest honours in the graduating class at Yale University. Another New York journal, in commenting on the fact that Chao Chu, son of the former Chinese minister, Wu Ting Fang, was graduated in 1904 at the Atlantic City High School as the valedictorian of a class of thirty-one, remarked:
``At every commencement there are honours enough to go around, and those won by the Celestial contestants will not be begrudged them. Yet it is not exactly flattering to smart American youth to realize that representatives of an effete civilization after a few years' acquaintance with western ways can meet our home talent on its own ground and carry off the prizes of scholarship.''
A British consular official, who spent many years in China and who speaks the language, declares that in his experience of the Chinese their fidelity is extraordinary, their sense of responsibility in positions of trust very keen, and that they have a very high standard of gratitude and honour. ``I cannot recall a case,'' he says, ``where any Chinese friend has left me in the lurch or played me a dirty trick, and few of us can say the same of our own colleagues and countrymen.'' The Hon. Chester Holcombe, who quotes this, adds--``The writer, after years of experience and intimate acquaintance with all classes of Chinese from every part of the Empire, is convinced that the characterization of the race as thus given by those who at least are not over-friendly does it only scant justice.''
Many quote against the Chinese the familiar lines--
``----for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.''
But whoever reads the whole poem will see the force of the London Spectator's opinion that it is a ``satire of the American selfishness which is the main strength of the cry against the cheap labour of the Chinese,'' and that ``it would not be easy for a moderately intelligent man to avoid seeing that Mr. Bret Harte wished to delineate the Chinese simply as beating the Yankee at his own evil game, and to delineate the Yankee as not at all disposed to take offense at the ``cheap labour'' of his Oriental rival, until he discovered that he could not cheat the cheap labourer half so completely as the cheap labourer could cheat him.''
It is common for people to praise the Japanese and to sneer at the Chinese. All honour to the Japanese for their splendid achievements. With marvellous celerity they have adopted many modern ideas and inventions. They are worthy of the respect they receive. But those who have made a close study of both peoples unhesitatingly assert that the Chinese have more solid elements of permanence and power. The Japanese have the quickness, the enthusiasm, the intelligence of the French; but the Chinese unite to equal intelligence the plodding persistence of the Germans, and the old fable of the tortoise and the hare is as true of nations as it is of individuals. Unquestionably, the Chinese are the most virile race in Asia ``Wherever a Chinese can get a foot of ground and a quart of water he will make something grow.'' Colquhoun quotes Richthofen as saying that ``among the various races of mankind, the Chinese is the only one which in all climates, the hottest and the coldest, is capable of great and lasting activity.'' And he states as his own opinion: ``She has all the elements to build up a great living force. One thing alone is wanted-- the will, the directing power. That supplied, there are to be found in abundance in China the capacity to carry out, the brains to plan, the hands to work.''
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment