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New Forces in Old China
An Inevitable Awakening
by ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
March, 1999 [Etext #1675]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of New Forces in Old China, by Brown
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New Forces in Old China
An Inevitable Awakening
by ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
To my Friends in China
Preface
THE object of this book is to describe the operation
upon and within old, conservative, exclusive China
of the three great transforming forces of the modern
world--Western trade, Western politics and Western religion.
These forces are producing stupendous changes in that hitherto
sluggish mass of humanity. The full significance of these
changes both to China and to the world cannot be comprehended
now. There is something fascinating and at the same
time something appalling in the spectacle of a nation numbering
nearly one-third of the human race slowly and majestically
rousing itself from the torpor of ages under the influence of
new and powerful revolutionary forces. No other movement
of our age is so colossal, no other is more pregnant with
meaning. In the words of D. C. Bougler, ``The grip of the outer
world has tightened round China. It will either strangle her
or galvanize her into fresh life.''
The immediate occasion of this volume was the invitation of
the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary to deliver a
series of lectures on China on the Student Lectureship Foundation
and to publish them in book form. This will account in
part for the style of some passages. I have, however, added
considerable material which was not included in the lectures,
while some articles that were contributed to the Century Magazine,
the American Monthly Review of Reviews and other
magazines have been inserted in their proper place in the
discussion. The materials were gathered not only in study and
correspondence but in an extended tour of Asia in the years
1901 and 1902. In that tour, advantage was taken of every
opportunity to confer with Chinese of all classes, foreign
consuls, editors, business men and American, German and British
officials, as well as with missionaries of all denominations.
Everywhere I was cordially received, and, as I look at my
voluminous note-books, I am very grateful to the men of all
faiths and nationalities who so generously aided me in my
search for information.
No one system of spelling Chinese names has been followed
for the simple reason that no one has been generally accepted.
The Chinese characters represent words and ideas rather than
letters and can only be phonetically reproduced in English.
Unfortunately, scholars differ widely as to this phonetic spelling,
while each nationality works in its own peculiarities wherever
practicable. And so we have Manchuria, Mantchuria and
Manchouria; Kiao-chou, Kiau-Tshou, Kiao-Chau, Kiau-
tschou and Kiao-chow; Chinan and Tsi-nan; Ychou, Ichow
and I-chou; Tsing-tau and Ching-Dao; while Mukden is confusingly
known as Moukden , Shen-Yang, Feng-tien-fu and Sheng-
king. As some authors follow one system, some another and some
none at all, and as usage varies in different parts of the Empire,
an attempt at uniformity would have involved the correction
of quotations and the changing of forms that have the sanction
of established usage as, for example, the alteration of
Chefoo to Chi-fu or Tshi-fu. I have deemed it wise, as a rule,
to omit the aspirate (e. g, Tai-shan instead of T'ai-shan) as
unintelligible to one who does not speak Chinese. Few
foreigners except missionaries can pronounce Chinese names
correctly anyway. Besides, no matter what the system of spelling,
the pronunciation differs, the Chinese themselves in various
parts of the Empire pronouncing the name of the Imperial
City Beh-ging, Bay-ging, Bai-ging and Bei-jing, while most
foreigners pronounce it Pe-kin or Pi-king. I have followed the
best obtainable advice in using the hyphen between the different
parts of many proper names. For the rest I join the
perplexed reader who devoutly hopes that the various commit-
tees that are at work on the Romanization of the Chinese language
may in time agree among themselves and evolve a system
that a plain, wayfaring man can understand without provocation
to wrath.
156 Fifth Avenue,
New York City.
Preface to the Second Edition
THE author gratefully acknowledges the kindness with
which his book has been received not only in this
country but in England and China. In this edition
he has corrected a number of errors that appeared in the first
edition and has availed himself of later statistical information.
He is under special obligations to the Rev. W. A. P. Martin,
D. D., LL. D., of Wuchang, and the Rev. Arthur H. Smith,
D. D. LL. D., of Pang-chwang, for valuable counsel. These
distinguished authorities on China have been so kind as to
study the book with painstaking care and to give the author
the benefit of their suggestions. All these suggestions have
been incorporated in this edition to the great improvement of
its accuracy.
The result of the Russia-Japan War is noticeably accelerating
the new movement in China. The Chinese have been as
much startled and impressed by the Japanese victory as the
rest of the world and they are more and more disposed to follow
the path which the Japanese have so successfully marked
out. The considerations presented in this book are therefore
even more true to-day than when they were first published.
The problem of the future is plainly the problem of China and
no thoughtful person can afford to be indifferent to the vast
transformation which is taking place as the result of the operation
of the great formative forces of the modern world.
156 Fifth Avenue,
New York City.
Contents
PART I
OLD CHINA AND ITS PEOPLE
I. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
II. DO WE RIGHTLY VIEW THE CHINESE . . . . . . 25
III. ATTITUDE TOWARDS FOREIGNERS-CHARACTER AND
ACHIEVEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
IV. A TYPICAL PROVINCE . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
V. A SHENDZA IN SHANTUNG. . . . . . . . . . . 52
VI. AT THE GRAVE OF CONFUCIUS. . . . . . . . . 65
VII. SOME EXPERIENCES OF A TRAVELLER-FEASTS, INNS
AND SOLDIERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
PART II
THE COMMERCIAL FORCE AND THE ECONOMIC
REVOLUTION
VIII. WORLD CONDITIONS THAT ARE AFFECTING CHINA101
IX. THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION IN ASIA. . . . . .111
X. FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN VICES. . . . . .121
XI. THE BUILDING OF RAILWAYS . . . . . . . . .130
PART III
THE POLITICAL FORCE AND THE NATIONAL
PROTEST
XII. THE AGGRESSIONS OF EUROPEAN POWERS . . . .145
XIII. THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA. . . . . . .154
XIV. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS-TREATIES. . . . . . .165
XV. RENEWED AGGRESSIONS. . . . . . . . . . . .174
XVI. GROWING IRRITATION OF THE CHINESE--THE
REFORM PARTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184
XVII. THE BOXER UPRISING . . . . . . . . . . .193
PART IV
THE MISSIONARY FORCE AND THE CHINESE
CHURCH
XVIII. BEGINNINGS OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE--THE
TAI-PING REBELLION AND THE LATER
DEVELOPMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217
XIX. MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE LAWSUITS . . . . .228
XX. MISSIONARIES AND THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS . .236
XXI. RESPONSIBILITY OF MISSIONARIES FOR THE BOXER
UPRISING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249
XXII. THE CHINESE CHRISTIANS . . . . . . . . .268
XXIII. THE STRAIN OF READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED
ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. . . . . . . . . . . .280
XXIV. COMITY AND COOPERATION . . . . . . . . .290
PART V
THE FUTURE OF CHINA AND OUR RELATION
TO IT
XXV. IS THERE A YELLOW PERIL. . . . . . . . . .305
XXVI. FRESH REASON TO HATE THE FOREIGNER . . .320
XXVII. HOPEFUL SIGNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333
XXVIII. THE PARAMOUNT DUTY OF CHRISTENDOM. . . . .351
INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371
List of Illustrations
Facing Page
Railway Station, Paoting-fu. . . . . . . . . .Title
View of Canton, Showing House Boats. . . . . . . . 22
H. I. H. Prince Su and Attendants. . . . . . . . . 32
A Rut in the Loess Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
Germans Building Railway Bridge in Shantung. . . . 56
A Shendza in Shantung. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Climbing Tai-shan, the Sacred Mountain . . . . . . 70
The Grave of Confucius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Part of the Author's Escort of Chinese Cavalrymen. 92
Watching the Author writing in his Diary at a noon stop
A Snap Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
The Bund, Shanghai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112
American Cigarette Posters on a Chinese Bridge . .112
The Chinese Cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
The Old and The New. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130
French Military Post, Saigon . . . . . . . . . . .150
German Soldiers on the Bund, Tien-tsin . . . . . .150
The British Legation Guard, Peking . . . . . . . .174
The Temple of Heaven, Peking . . . . . . . . . . .198
Memorial Arch, Hall of the Classics, Peking. . . .228
Graduating Class, Presbyterian Theological Seminary,
Canton, 1904. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268
Approach to the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City,
Peking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .320
Two of China's Great Men Yuan Shih Kai and Chang
Chih-tung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .344
Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370
PART I
Old China and its People
I
THE ANCIENT EMPIRE
HE must be dead to all noble thoughts who can tread
the venerable continent of Asia without profound
emotion. Beyond any other part of the earth, its
soil teems with historic associations. Here was the birthplace
of the human race. Here first appeared civilization. Here
were born art and science, learning and philosophy. Here man
first engaged in commerce and manufacture. And here
emerged all the religious teachers who have most powerfully
influenced mankind, for it was in Asia in an unknown antiquity
that the Persian Zoroaster taught the dualism of good and
evil; that the Indian Gautama 600 years before Christ declared
that self-abnegation was the path to a dreamless Nirvana; that
less than a century later the Chinese Lao-tse enunciated the
mysteries of Taoism and Confucius uttered his maxims
regarding the five earthly relations of man, to be followed within
another century by the bold teaching of Mencius that kings
should rule in righteousness. In Asia it was 1,000 years
afterwards that the Arabian Mohammed proclaimed himself as the
authoritative prophet. There the God and Father of us all
revealed Himself to Hebrew sage and prophet in the night vision
and the angelic form and the still, small voice; and in Asia are
the village in which was cradled and the great altar of the
world on which was crucified the Son of God.
We of the West boast of our national history. But how brief
is our day compared with the succession of world powers which
Asia has seen.
Chaldea began the march of kingdoms 2,200 years before
Christ. Its proud king, Chedor-laomer, ruled from the Persian
Gulf to the sources of the Euphrates, and from the Zagros
Mountains to the Mediterranean. Then Egypt arose to rule
not only over the northeastern part of Africa, but over half of
Arabia and all of the preceding territory of Chaldea. Assyria
followed, stretching from the Black Sea nearly half-way down
the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the eastern
boundary of modern Persia. Babylon, too, was once a world
power whose monarch sat
``High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.''[1]
[1] Milton, ``Paradise Lost,'' Book II.
Persia was mightier still. Two thousand years before America
was heard of, while France and Germany, England and Spain,
were savage wildernesses, Persia was the abode of civilization
and culture, of learning and eloquence. Her empire extended
from the Indus to the Danube and from the Oxus to the Nile,
embracing twenty satrapies each one of whose governors was
well-nigh a king. Alexander the Great, too, at the head of
his invincible army, swept over vast areas of Asia, capturing
cities, unseating rulers, and bringing well-nigh all the civilized
world under his dominion. And was not Rome also an Asiatic
power, for it stretched not only from the firths of Scotland
on the north to the deserts of Africa on the south, but
from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the River Euphrates on
the east.
Altogether it is a majestic but awful procession, overwhelming
us by its grandeur and yet no less by its horror. It is
a kaleidoscope on a colossal scale, whose pieces appear like
fragments of a broken universe. Empires rise and fall.
Thrones are erected and overturned. The mightiest creations
of man vanish. Yea, they have all waxed ``old as doth a garment,''
and ``as a vesture'' are they ``changed.''
But were these ancient nations the last of Asia? Has that
mighty continent nothing more to contribute to the world than
the memories of a mighty past? It is impossible to believe
that this is all. The historic review gives a momentum which
the mind cannot easily overcome. As we look towards the Far
East, we can plainly see that the evolution is incomplete.
Whatever purpose the Creator had in mind has certainly not yet been
accomplished. More than two-thirds of those innumerable
myriads have as yet never heard of those high ideals of life and
destiny which God Himself revealed to men. It is incredible
that a wise God should have made such a large part of the
world only to arrest its development at its present unfinished
stage, inconceivable that He should have made and preserved
so large a part of the human race for no other and higher purpose
than has yet been achieved.
Within this generation, a new Asiatic power has suddenly
appeared in a part of Asia far removed from the region in which
the wise men of old lived and studied, and the might of
that nation is even now checking the progress of huge and
haughty Russia. But brilliant as has been the meteoric career
of Japan, there is another race in Asia, which, though now
moving more sluggishly, has possibilities of development that
may in time make it a dominant factor in the future of the
world. Great forces are now operating on that race and it is
the purpose of this book to give some account of those forces
and to indicate the stupendous transformation which they are
slowly but surely producing.
The magnitude of China is almost overwhelming. In spite
of all that I had read, I was amazed by what I saw. To say
that the Empire has an area of 4,218,401 square miles is almost
like saying that it is 255,000,000,000 miles to the North Star;
the statement conveys no intelligible idea. The mind is only
confused by such enormous figures. But it may help us to remember
that China is one-third larger than all Europe, and that if the
United States and Alaska could be laid upon China there
would be room left for several Great Britains. Extending from
the fifty-fourth parallel of latitude southward to the eighteenth,
the Empire has every variety of climate from arctic cold to
tropic heat. It is a land of vast forests, of fertile soil, of rich
minerals, of navigable rivers. The very fact that it has so long
sustained such a vast population suggests the richness of its
resources. There are said to be 600,000,000 acres of arable soil,
and so thriftily is it cultivated that many parts of the Empire
are almost continuous gardens and fields. Four hundred and
nineteen thousand square miles are believed to be underlaid
with coal. Baron von Richthofen thinks that 600,000,000,000
tons of it are anthracite, and that the single Province of Shen-si
could supply the entire world for a thousand years. When we
add to this supply of coal the apparently inexhaustible deposits
of iron ore, we have the two products on which material greatness
largely depends.
The population proves to be even greater than was supposed,
for while 400,000,000 was formerly believed to be a maximum
estimate, the general census recently taken by the Chinese
Government for the purpose of assessing the war tax places the
population of the Empire at 426,000,000. This, however,
includes 8,500,000 in Manchuria, 2,580,000 in Mongolia,
6,430,020 in Tibet and 1,200,000 in Chinese Turkestan.
Some of these regions are only nominally Chinese. Those on
the western frontier were until comparatively recent years
almost as unknown as the poles. Sven Hedin's description of
those that he traversed is wonderfully fascinating. Only a
daring spirit, the explorer of the type that is born, not made,
could have pierced those vast solitudes and wrested from them
the secret of their existence. That Hedin had no money for
such a costly quest could not deter this Viking of the Northland.
Kings headed the subscription and others so eagerly followed
that ample funds were soon in hand. Princes helped with
equipment and counsel. The Czar made all Russian railways
free highways, and every local official and nomad chieftain
exerted himself to aid the expedition. Hedin does not claim
to give anything more than an ordered diary of his travels,
together with a description of the lands he explored and the
peoples he found. But what a diary it is! It takes the reader
away from the whirl of crowded cities and clanging trolley-cars
into the boundless, wind-swept desert and the solitude of
majestic mountains where the lonely traveller wanders with his
camels through untrodden wildernesses or floats down the
interminable stretches of unknown rivers, while night after
night he sleeps in his tiny tent or under the open sky. The
author failed to reach the long-sought Lassa, the suspicious
Dalai Lama refusing to be deceived or cajoled and sternly sending
the inquisitive traveller out of the country. But the expedition
of three years and three days was rich in other disclosures of
ruined cities and great watercourses and lofty plateaus and
majestic mountain ranges. The population is sparse in those
desolate wastes, and the scattered inhabitants are wild and
uncouth and free.
Manchuria, however, is far from being the barren country
that so many imagine it to be. It is, in many respects, like
Canada, a region embracing about 370,000 square miles and of
almost boundless agricultural and mineral wealth. The
population, save in the southern parts, is not yet dense but it is
rapidly increasing.
But in central and eastern China, the conditions are very
different. Here the population can only be indicated by a
figure so large that it is almost impossible for us to comprehend
it. Consider that the eighteen provinces alone, with an
area about equal to that part of the United States east of the
Mississippi River, have eight times the population of that
part of our country.
``There are twice as many people in China as on the four continents--
Africa, North and South America and Oceanica. Every third person
who toils under the sun and sleeps under God's stars is a Chinese.
Every third child born into the world looks into the face of a Chinese
mother. Every third pair given in marriage plight their troth in a
Chinese cup of wine. Every third orphan weeping through the day
every third widow wailing through the night are in China. Put them in
rank, joining hands, and they will girdle the globe ten times at the
equator with living, beating human hearts. Constitute them pilgrims and let
two thousand go past every day and night under the sunlight and
under the solemn stars, and you must hear the ceaseless tramp, tramp, of
the weary, pressing, throbbing throng for five hundred years.''[2]
[2] The Rev. J. T. Gracey, D. D., ``China in Outline,'' p. 10.
There is something amazing in the immensity of the population.
Great cities are surprisingly numerous. In America, a
city of nearly a million inhabitants is a wonderful place and all
the world is supposed to know about it. But while Canton and
Tien-tsin are tolerably familiar names, how many in the United
States ever heard of Hsiang-tan-hsien ? Yet Hsiang-tan-
hsien is said to have 1,000,000 inhabitants, while within comparatively
short distances are other great cities and innumerable
villages. In the Swatow region, within a territory a
hundred and fifty miles long and fifty miles wide, there are no
less than ten walled cities of from 40,000 to 250,000 inhabitants,
besides hundreds of towns and villages ranging from a few
hundred to 25,000 or 30,000 people. Men never tire of writing
about the population adjacent to New York, Boston and
Chicago. But in five weeks' constant journeying through the
interior of the Shantung Province, there was hardly an hour in
which multitudes were not in sight. There are no scattered
farmhouses as in America, but the people live in villages and
towns, the latter strongly walled and even the former often have
a mud wall. As the country is comparatively level, it was easy
to count them, and as a rule there were a dozen or more in
plain view. I recall a memorable morning. It was Friday,
June 28, 1901. We had risen early, and by daylight we had
breakfasted, and started our carts and litters. In our enjoyment
of the cool, delicious morning air, we walked for several
li. Just before the sun rose, we crossed a low ridge and from
its crest, I counted no less than thirty villages in front of us,
while behind there were about as many more, the average
population being apparently about 500 each. For days at a time,
my road lay through the narrow, crowded street of what seemed
to be an almost continuous village, the intervening farms being
often hardly more than a mile in width.
Imagine half the population of the United States packed into
the single state of Missouri and an idea of the situation will be
obtained, for with an area almost equal to that of Missouri,
Shantung has no less than 38,247,900 inhabitants. It is the
most densely populated part of China. But the Province of
Shan-si is as thickly settled as Hungary. Fukien and Hupeh
have about as many inhabitants to the square mile as England.
Chih-li is as populous as France and Yun-nan as Bulgaria.
The density of China's population may be better realized by
a glance at the following detailed comparison between the
population of Chinese provinces and the population of similar
areas in the United States:
{FIX THIS TABLE}
Area
Provinces Square miles Population
Hupeh, 71,410 35,280,685
Ohio and Indiana 76,670 5,864,720
Honan, 67,940 35,316,800
Cheh-kiang, 36,670 1
Kentucky, 40,000 1,858,635
Kiang-si, 6819,47580 26 532,125
Virginia and West Virginia, 64}776oo 7,fi50S282
Michigan and Wisconsin, 111,880 22,876 340
Georgia, 50,g80 1,837 353
Shantung, 62 ooo 4 7øø 945
Shan-si, 81 830 12 200 456
Illinois, S6,ooo 3,826,8S l
Shen-si, 776 8240 1 058,910
Ran-su, Icc.q80 10~385~376
California, 155,9 1,208,130
Sze-chuen, 218,480 68 724,890
Ohio, Ind., Ill., Ky., 173s430 11 350,219
Ngan-hwei, 54,810 23,670,314
New York, 47,600 5,997,853
Klang-su, 38,600 13,980,235
Pennsylvania, 44,985 5,258,014
Kwan-tung and Hainan, gg,g70 31,865,251
Kansas, 81,700 I,427,o96
Kwang-si, 77,200 5,142,330
Minnesota, 79,205 x ,301,826
Hunan, 83,380 22,169,673
Louisiana, 45,ooo Iw1
Perhaps the most thoroughly typical city in China is Canton.
The approach by way of the West River from Hongkong
gives the traveller a view of some of the finest scenery in China.
The green rice-fields, the villages nestling beneath the groves,
the stately palm-trees, the quaint pagodas, the broad, smooth
reaches of the river reflecting the glories of sunset and moon-
rises and the noble hills in the background combine to form a
scene worth journeying far to see.
But Canton itself is unique among the world's great cities,
and the most sated traveller cannot fail to find much that will
interest him. After much journeying in China, we thought we
had seen its typical places, but no one has seen China until he
has visited Canton. With an estimated population of 1,800,000,
it is the metropolis of the Empire. The number of people
per acre may be less than in some parts of the East Side in New
York, for the houses are only one story in height. But the
crowding is amazing. The streets are mere alleys from four to
eight feet wide, lined with open-front shops, so filled overhead
with perpendicular signs and cross coverings of bamboo poles
and mattings that they are in as perpetual shade as an African
forest, and so choked with people that men often had to back
into a shop to let our chairs pass. No wheeled vehicle can
enter those corkscrew streets and we saw no animal of any kind
save two cows that were being led to slaughter.
And the hubbub! Such shouting and yelling cannot be
heard anywhere else in the world. Our chair coolies were in a
constant state of objurgation in clearing a way. Everybody
seemed to be bellowing to everybody else and when two chairs
met, the din shattered the atmosphere. A foreigner excites a
surprising amount of curiosity, considering the number that
visit Canton. Troops of boys followed us and there was a good
deal of what sounded like cat-calling. But it was all good-
natured, or appeared to be.
The unpretentious shop-fronts often beckon to mysteries that
are well worth penetrating--tobacco factories where coolies
stamp the leaves with bare feet; tea, gold, dye and embroidery
shops where designs of exquisite delicacy are exhibited; silk-
weaving factories where fine fabrics are made on the simplest of
looms; feather shops where breastpins and other ornaments
are made of tiny bits of feathers on a silver base--a work
requiring almost incredible nicety of vision and such strain upon
the eyes that the operators often become blind by forty. Another
curiosity is a shop where crickets are reared for fighting
as the Filipino fights cocks and the Anglo-Saxon fights dogs.
The Chinese gamble on the result and a good fighting cricket is
sometimes sold for $100. The attendant put a couple in a jar
for our alleged amusement and they began fighting fiercely.
But I promptly stopped the melee as I did not enjoy such sport.
The river is one of the sights of China. It is crowded with
boats of all sizes. The owner of each lives on it with his
family, the babies having ropes tied to them so that if they
tumble into the water, they can be pulled out.
Altogether, it is a remarkable city. Viewed from the famous
Five-Story Pagoda, on a high part of the old city wall, it is a
swarming hive of humanity. As one looks out on those myriads
of toiling, struggling, sorrowing men and women, he is
conscious of a new sense of the pathos and the tragedy of human
life. If I may adapt the words of the Rev. Dr. Richard S.
Storrs on the heights above Naples, at the Church of San Mar-
tino, on the way to St. Elmo--I suppose that every one who
has ever stood on the balcony of that lofty pagoda ``has
noticed, as I remember to have noticed, that all the sounds
coming up from that populous city, as they reached the upper
air, met and mingled on the minor key. There were the voices
of traffic, and the voices of command, the voices of affection
and the voices of rebuke, the shouts of sailors, and the cries of
itinerant venders in the street, with the chatter and the laugh
of childhood; but they all came up into this incessant moan in
the air. That is the voice of the world in the upper air, where
there are spirits to hear it. That is the cry of the world for
help.''[3]
[3] ``Address on Foreign Missions,'' pp. 178, 179.
II
DO WE RIGHTLY VIEW THE CHINESE
TOO much has been made of the peculiarities of the
Chinese, ignoring the fact that many customs and
traits that appear peculiar to us are simply the differences
developed by environment. Eliza Scidmore affirms that
``no one knows or ever really will know the Chinese, the most
comprehensible, inscrutable, contradictory, logical, illogical
people on earth.'' But a Chinese gentleman, who was
educated in the United States, justly retorts: ``Behold the
American as he is, as I honestly found him--great, small, good, bad,
self-glorious, egotistical, intellectual, supercilious, ignorant,
superstitious, vain and bombastic. In truth,'' he adds, ``so
very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found
the American that I hesitate.''[4]
[4] ``As a Chinaman Saw Us,'' pp. 1, 2.
The Chinese are, indeed, very different from western peoples
in some of their customs.
``They mount a horse on the right side instead of the left. The old
men play marbles and fly kites, while children look gravely on. They
shake hands with themselves instead of with each other. What we call
the surname is written first and the other name afterwards. A coffin is a
very acceptable present to a rich parent in good health. In the north
they sail and pull their wheelbarrows in place of merely pushing them.
China is a country where the roads have no carriages and the
ships have no keels; where the needle points to the south, the place of
honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect is supposed to lie in the
stomach; where it is rude to take off your hat, and to wear white clothes
is to go into mourning. Can one be astonished to find a literature without
an alphabet and a language without a grammar?''[5]
[5] Temple Bar, quoted in Smith's ``Rex Christus,'' p. 115.
It would never occur to us to commit suicide in order to
spite another. But in China such suicides occur every day,
because it is believed that a death on the premises is a lasting
curse to the owner. And so the Chinese drowns himself in his
enemy's well or takes poison on his foe's door-step. Only a
few months ago, a rich Chinese murdered an employee in a
British colony, and knowing that inexorable British law would
not be satisfied until some one was punished, he hired a poor
Chinese named Sack Chum to confess to having committed the
murder and to permit himself to be hung, the real murderer
promising to give him a good funeral and to care for his family.
An Englishman who thought this an incredible story wrote a
letter of inquiry to an intelligent Chinese merchant of his
acquaintance and received the following reply:
``Nothing strange to Chinamen. Sack Chum, old man, no money, soon
die. Every day in China such thing. Chinaman not like white man--
not afraid to die. Suppose some one pay his funeral, take care his family.
`I die,' he say. Chinaman know Sack Chum, we suppose, sell himself to
men who kill Ah Chee. Somebody must die for them. Sack Chum say
he do it. All right. Police got him. What for they want more?''
These things appear odd from our view-point and there are
many other peculiarities that are equally strange to us. But it
may be wholesome for us to remember that some of our customs
impress the Chinese no less oddly. The Frankfurter Zeitung,
Germany, prints the following from a Chinese who had seen
much of the Europeans and Americans in Shanghai:
``We are always told that the countries of the foreign devils are grand
and rich; but that cannot be true, else what do they all come here for?
It is here that they grow rich. They jump around and kick balls as if
they were paid to do it. Again you will find them making long tramps
into the country; but that is probably a religious duty, for when they
tramp they wave sticks in the air, nobody knows why. They have no
sense of dignity, for they may be found walking with women. Yet the
women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are dragged
around a room to the accompaniment of the most hellish music.''
A Chinese resident in America wrote to his friends at home
a letter from which the following extract is taken:
``What is queerer still, men will stroll out in company with their wives
in broad daylight without a blush. And will you believe that men and
women take hold of each other's hands by way of salutation? Oh, I have
seen it myself more than once. After all, what can you expect of folk
who have been brought up in barbarous countries on the very verge of
the world? They have not been taught the maxims of our sages; they
never heard of the Rites; how can they know what good manners mean?
We often think them rude and insolent when I'm sure they don't mean it
they're ignorant, that's all.''[6]
[6] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' p. 116.
A call that I made upon a high official in an interior city
developed a curious interest. He was a pale, thin man,
apparently an opium smoker and a mandarin of the old school.
But he was intelligent enough to ask me not only about ``the
twenty-story buildings of New York,'' but ``the differences
between the various Protestant sects,'' and in particular about
``the Mormons and their strength!'' Who could have
imagined that the Latter Day Saints of Utah could be known to a
Chinese nobleman of Chih-li? Verily, our own idiosyncrasies
are known afar.
It will thus be seen that mutual recriminations regarding
national peculiarities are not likely to be convincing to either
party. Human nature is much the same the world over. From
this view-point at least we may discreetly remember that
``There is so much bad in the best of us,
And so much good in the worst of us,
That it hardly behoves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.''
I do not mean to give an exaggerated impression of the
virtues of the Chinese or what Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop calls
``a milk-and-water idea'' of heathenism. Undoubtedly, they
have grave defects. Official corruption is well-nigh universal.
A correspondent of the North China Herald reports a well-
informed Chinese gentleman of the Province of Chih-li as
expressing the conviction that one-half the land tax never reaches
the Government. ``But that is not all,'' said he.
``There are other sources of income for the hsien official. Thus here
in this county, thirty-five or forty years ago, the Government imposed an
extra tax for the purpose of putting down the Tai-ping rebellion, and the
officials have continued to collect that tax ever since. Of course if the
literati should move in the matter and report to Paoting-fu, the magistrate
would be bounced at once; but they are not likely to do so. The tax is a
small one, my own share not being more than five dollars or so.''
China's whole public service is rotten with corruption.
Offices with merely nominal salaries or none at all are usually
bought by the payment of a heavy bribe and held for a term of
three years, during which the incumbent seeks not only to
recoup himself but to make as large an additional sum as
possible. As the weakness of the Government and the absence of
an outspoken public press leave them free from restraint, China
is the very paradise of embezzlers. ``Any man who has had the
least occasion to deal with Chinese courts knows that `every
man has his price,' that not only every underling can be
bought, but that 999 out of every 1,000 officials, high or low,
will favour the man who offers the most money.''[7] Dishonesty
is not, as with the white race, simply the recourse in emergency
of the unscrupulous man. It is the habitual practice, the rule
of intercourse of all classes. The Chinese apparently have no
conscience on the subject, but appear to deem it quite praise-
worthy to deceive you if they can.
[7] Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, Peking.
Gambling is openly, shamelessly indulged in by all classes.
As for immorality, the Rev. Dr. J. Campbell Gibson of Swatow
says that ``while the Chinese are not a moral people, vice has
never in China as in India, been made a branch of religion.''
But the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, of Peking, declares ``that every
village and town and city--it would not be a very serious ex-
aggeration to say every home,--fairly reeks with impurity.''
The Chinese are, indeed, less openly immoral than the Japanese,
while their venerated books abound with the praises of virtue.
But medical missionaries could tell a dark story of the extent
to which immorality eats into the very warp and woof of
Chinese society. The five hundred monks in the Lama
Temple in Peking are notorious not only for turbulence and
robbery, but for vice. The temple is in a spacious park and
includes many imposing buildings. The statue of Buddha is
said to be the largest in China--a gilded figure about sixty feet
high--colossal and rather awe-inspiring in ``the dim religious
light.'' But in one of the temple buildings, where the two
monks who accompanied us said that daily prayers were
chanted, I saw representations in brass and gilt that were as
filthily obscene as anything that I saw in India. There is
immorality in lands that are called Christian, but it is disavowed
by Christianity, ostracized by decent people and under the ban
of the civil law. But Buddhism puts immorality in its temples
and the Government supports it. This particular temple has
the yellow tiled roofs that are only allowed on buildings
associated with the Imperial Court or that are under special
Imperial protection. Mr. E. H. Parker, after twenty years'
experience in China, writes,
``The Chinese are undoubtedly a libidinous people, with a decided
inclination to be nasty about it. . . . Rich mandarins are the most
profligate class. . . . Next come the wealthy merchants. . . . The
crapulous leisured classes of Peking openly flaunt the worst of vices.
Still, amongst all classes and ranks the moral sense is decidedly
weak. . . . Offenses which with us are regarded as almost capital--
in any case as infamous crimes--do not count for as much as petty
misdemeanours in China.[8]
[8] ``China,'' pp. 272, 273
More patent to the superficial observer is a cruelty which
appears to be callously indifferent to suffering. This manifests
itself not only in most barbarous punishments but in a thou-
sand incidents of daily life. The day I entered China at
Chefoo, I saw a dying man lying beside the road. Hundreds
of Chinese were passing and repassing on the crowded
thoroughfare. But none stopped to help or to pity and the sufferer
passed through his last agony absolutely uncared for and lay
with glazing eyes and stiffening form all unheeded by the
careless throng. Twenty-four hours afterwards, he was still lying
there with his dead face upturned to the silent sky, while the
world jostled by, buying, laughing, quarrelling, heedless of the
tragedy of human life so near. And when in Ching-chou-fu, I
stopped to see if I could not give some relief to a woman who
was writhing in the street, I was hastily warned that if I
touched her unasked, the populace might hold me responsible
in the event of her death and perhaps demand heavy damages,
if, indeed, it did not mob me on the spot. Undoubtedly the
Chinese are often deterred from aiding a sufferer because they
fear that if death occurs ``bad luck'' will follow them, a horde of
real or fictitious relatives will clamour for damages, and perhaps a
rapacious magistrate will take advantage of the opportunity to
make a criminal charge which can be removed only by a heavy
bribe. And so the sick and poor are often left to die uncared
for in crowded streets, and drowning children are allowed to
sink within a few yards of boats which might have rescued
them. But everywhere in China, little attention is paid to
suffering and many customs seem utterly heartless.
In spite, too, of the agnostic teachings of Confucius and
their own practical temperament, the Chinese are a very
superstitious people and live in constant terror of evil spirits. The
grossest superstitions prevail among them, while beyond any
other people known to us they are stagnant, spiritually dead,
densely ignorant of those higher levels of thought and life to
which Christianity has raised whole classes in Europe and
America.
Some people who are ignorant of the real situation in China
are being misled by an anonymous little book entitled ``Letters
From a Chinese Official.'' The author insists that Anglo-Saxon
institutions are far inferior to the institutions of China. He
declares that ``our religion (Chinese) is more rational than
yours, our morality higher and our institutions more perfect,''
and that there is less real happiness in Europe and America
than in China. As for Christianity, he regards it as quite
impracticable. He holds that Confucianism is feasible and that
Christianity is not, and much more to the same effect. There
is strong internal evidence that the author is not a Chinese at all,
but a cynical European. At any rate, the book is an ex parte
statement of the most glaring kind, omitting the good in
Europe and America and the bad in China. One who has
visited the Celestial Empire gasps when he reads that the
Chinese houses are ``cheerful and clean,'' that the Chinese live the
life of the mind and the spirit to a far higher degree than the
Christian peoples of the West, and that Chinese life has a
dignity and peace and beauty which Europe cannot equal. ``Such
silence! Such sounds! Such perfume! Such colour!''
the author rhapsodizes. Bishop Graves, of Shanghai, who has
spent a quarter of a century in China and who is therefore
presumably competent to speak, declares:
``Far be it from me to belittle the beauty of the Chinese landscape;
but why did he not leave out that about the perfume? Why, you can
smell China out at sea! However, it is just as easy to imagine the
perfume as the rest of it, while you are writing. . . . Exaggeration is
the most conspicuous note of these `Letters.' Any one who has not
seen China can test whether this book is true to fact by comparing it with
any narrative of sober travel, and if he happens to live in China, his own
nose and eyes are a sufficient witness. . . . The writer takes the
worst of our morals, the weakest of our religion, the most debasing of our
industrial conditions, the most pernicious of our vices, and against them
he sets not the best that China can show, but an exaggerated picture
which is false to fact. This is not argument but trickery, because it
presumes on the fact that one's readers will know no better.''
Indeed, the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, who has resided in
Peking for ten years, writes that he cannot believe that the
author of ``Letters from a Chinese Official'' is a sincere man.
He continues:
``I would be almost willing to assert that it is impossible for a man,
brought up in China, then spending many years abroad, to return to China
and write such a book in honesty and sincerity of heart. He could not
possibly help knowing that nine-tenths of what he was writing about
China was absolutely untrue, that her political, legal, social, domestic and
personal life are rotten to the core, and that only in a few exceptional
cases is any pretence even made of living according to the ethics of
Confucius. It might be possible for an educated man, whose surroundings
had always been of an exceptionally good character, and who had never
gone outside of his own province or studied foreign books, to write with
some enthusiasm of the beauties of Chinese life, but not for any one else.''
Still, at a time when the Chinese are being vociferously
abused, it is only fair that we should give them credit for the
good qualities which they do possess. I ask with Dr. William
Elliott Griffis: ``In talking of our brother men, what shall
be our general principle, detraction or fair play? Because
lackadaisical writers picture the Christless nations as in the
innocence of Eden, shall we, at the antipodes of fact and
truth, proceed to blacken their characters? Shall we compare
the worst in Canton, Benares or Zululand, with the best in London,
Berlin or Philadelphia? Surely God cannot look with
complacency or hear with delight much of the practical slander
spoken among white folks and Anglo-Saxons of His children
and our brothers.''
There has been too much of a disposition to think of the
Chinese as a mass, almost as we would regard immense herds
of cattle or shoals of fish. Why not rather think of the
Chinese as an individual, as a man of like passions with
ourselves? Physically, mentally, and morally he differs from us
only in degree, not in kind. He has essentially the same hopes
and fears, the same joys and sorrows, the same susceptibility to
pain and the same capacity for happiness. Are we not told
that God ``hath made of one blood all nations of men''?
We complacently imagine that we are superior to the Chinese.
But discussing the question as to what constitutes superiority
and inferiority of race, Benjamin Kidd declares that ``we shall
have to set aside many of our old ideas on the subject. Neither
in respect alone of colour, nor of descent, nor even of the
possession of high intellectual capacity, can science give us any
warrant for speaking of one race as superior to another.'' Real
superiority is the result, not so much of anything inherent in
one race as distinguished from another, as of the operation
upon a race and within it of certain uplifting forces. Any
superiority that we now possess is due to the action upon us of
these forces. But they can be brought to bear upon the
Chinese as well as upon us. We should avoid the popular
mistake of looking at the Chinese ``as if they were merely
animals with a toilet, and never see the great soul in a man's
face.''[9] ``There is nothing,'' says Stopford Brooke, ``that needs
so much patience as just judgment of a man. We ought to
know his education, the circumstances of his life, the friends
he has made or lost, his temperament, his daily work, the
motives which filled the act, the health he had at the time--we
ought to have the knowledge of God to judge him justly.''
[9] George Eliot.
We need in this study a truer idea of the worth and dignity
of man as man, a realization that back of almond eyes and under
a yellow skin are all the faculties and the possibilities of a
human soul, to grasp the great thought that the Chinese is not
only a man, but our brother man, made like ourselves in the
image of God. Let us have the charity which sees beneath all
external peculiarities our common humanity, which leads us to
respect a man because he is a man; which, no matter what
complexion he may have, no matter where he lives, no matter
to what degradation he has fallen, will take him by the hand
and endeavour to elevate him to a higher plane of life. For
him we need an enthusiasm for humanity which shall not be a
sentimental rhetoric, but a catholic, throbbing love, remembering
that he is
``Heir of the same inheritance,
Child of the self-same God,
He hath but stumbled in the path
We have in weakness trod.''
Ruskin reminds us that the filthy mud from the street of a
manufacturing town is composed of clay, sand, soot and water;
that the clay may be purified into the radiance of the sapphire;
that the sand may be developed into the beauty of the opal; that
the soot may be crystallized into the glory of the diamond and
that the water may be changed into a star of snow. So man in
Asia as well as in America may, by the transforming power of
God's Spirit, be ennobled into the kingly dignity of divine
sonship. We shall get along best with the Chinese if we remember
that he is a human being like ourselves, responsive to kindness,
appreciative of justice and capable of moral transformation
under the influence of the Gospel. He differs from us not
in the fundamental things that make for manhood, but only in
the superficial things that are the result of environment. From
this view-point, we can say with Shakespeare:--
``There is some sort of goodness in things evil,
Would men observingly distil it out.''
Those who are wont to refer so contemptuously to the Chinese
might profitably recall that when, in Dickens' ``Christmas
Carol,'' the misanthropic Scrooge says of the poor and suffering:
``If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease
the surplus population,''--the Ghost sternly replies:--
``Man, if man you be at heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant
until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is. Will you
decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the
sight of heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions
like this poor man's child. Ah, God! to hear the insect on the leaf
pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!''
III
ATTITUDE TOWARDS FOREIGNERS--CHARACTER
AND ACHIEVEMENTS
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.' ''[10]
[10] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 107, 108.
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.''[11]
[11] Quoted by Beach, ``Dawn on the Hills of T'ang,'' pp. 45, 46.
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.''[12]
[12] E. H Parker, ``China.''
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.''[13]
[13] The Outlook, February 13, 1904.
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.''
IV
A TYPICAL PROVINCE
SHANTUNG is not only one of the greatest, but it is in
many respects one of the most interesting of all the
provinces of China. Its length east and west is about
543 miles and in area it is nearly as large as the whole of New
England. The name, Shantung, signifies ``east of the mountains.''
Forests once existed, but tillable land has become so
valuable that trees are now comparatively few save in the
villages and temples and about the graves of the rich. But for the
most part, Shantung resembles the great prairie regions of the
western part of the United States, broken by occasional ranges
of hills and low mountains. The soil is generally fertile,
though in the southwestern part I found some stony regions
where the soil is thin and poor. South of Chinan-fu one finds
the loess, a light friable earth which yields so easily to wheel
and hoof and wind and water that the stream of travel through
successive generations has worn deep cuts in which the traveller
may journey for hours and sometimes for days so far below the
general level of the country that he can see nothing but the
sides of the cut and in turn cannot be seen by others. The
character of the soil and the power of the wind and rain have
combined not only to excavate these long passages, but to cast
up innumerable mounds and hills, often of such fantastic shapes
that one is reminded of the quaint and curious formations in
the Bad Lands of the Missouri, though the loess hillocks lack
the brilliant colouring of the American formations.
Throughout the province as a whole, almost every possible
square rod of ground is carefully cultivated by the industrious
people, so that in the summer time the whole country appears
to be continuous gardens and farms dotted with innumerable
villages. Wheat appears to be the chief crop and, as in the
Dakotas, the entire landscape seems to be one splendid field of
waving, yellowing grain. But early in June the wheat disappears
as if by magic, for the whole population apparently, men,
women and children, turn out and harvest it with amazing
quickness in spite of the fact that everything is done by hand.
Men and donkeys carry the grain to smooth, hard ground
spaces, where it is threshed by a heavy roller stone drawn by a
donkey or an ox or by men, and several times I saw it drawn
by women. Then it is winnowed by being pitched into the
air for the wind to drive out the feathery chaff. The methods
vividly illustrate the first Psalm and other Bible references--
gleaning, muzzling ``the ox when he treadeth out the corn,''
the threshing floor and ``the chaff which the wind driveth
away.''
One might suppose that after the wheat harvest, stubble
fields would be much in evidence. But they are not, for the
millet promptly appears. It is hardly noticeable when the
wheat is standing. But it grows rapidly, and as soon as the
wheat is out of the way, it covers great areas with its refreshing
green, looking in its earlier stages like young corn. It is of
two varieties. One is a little higher than wheat, with hanging
head and a small yellow grain. The other is the kao-liang,
which grows to a height of about twelve feet. When small, it
is thinned out to one stalk or sometimes two in a hill so that it
can develop freely. This stalk is to the common people almost
as serviceable as the bamboo to tropical dwellers. It is used
for fences, ceilings, walls and many other purposes. The grain
of the two varieties is the staple food, few but the richer
classes eating rice which is not raised in the north and is high
in price. A third species of millet, shu-shu, is used chiefly
for distilling a whiskey that is largely used but almost always
at home and at night so that little drunkenness is seen by the
traveller.
Fuel is very scarce, trees being few and coal, though
abundant, not being mined to any extent. So the people cook
with stalks, straw, roots, etc., and in winter pile on additional
layers of wadded cotton garments. Chinese houses are not
heated as ours are, though the flues from the cooking fire, running
under the brick kang, give some heat, too much at times.
Silk is produced in large quantities and mulberry trees are
so common as to add greatly to the beauty of the country. As
the cocoons cannot be left on the trees for fear of thieves, the
leaves are picked off and taken into houses where the worms
are kept.
Poppy fields, too, are numerous. The flowers are gloriously
beautiful. I often saw men gathering the opium in the early
morning. After the blossoms fall off, the pod is slit and the
whitish juice, oozing out, is carefully scraped off. High hills
rising to low mountains add beauty to the western part of Shantung,
while the more numerous trees scattered over the fields as
well as in the villages make extensive regions look like vast
parks.
The people are among the finest types of the Chinese,
tall, strong and, in many instances, of marked intellectual
power. To the Chinese, Shantung is the most sacred of the
provinces, for here were born the two mighty sages, Confucius
and Mencius.
Politically, the Province is divided into ten prefectures, each
under a prefectural magistrate, called a Chih-fu, and with a
capital which has the termination ``fu.'' I-chou-fu, for example,
is a prefectural city. Each fu is subdivided into ten districts
under a district magistrate or Chih-hsien, the capital, or
county seat as we should call it, having the termination ``hsien''
or ``hien'' as for example Wei-hsien. There are 108 of these
hsien cities. Between the fu and the hsien cities are a few chou
cities as Chining-chou. They are practically small fus, Chining-
chou having four hsiens under it. The magistrate is called a Chou-
kwan and is responsible directly to a Tao-tai who is an official
between the prefectural magistrate or Chih-fu and the Governor.
There are three Tao-tais in the province. At the
provincial capital are the treasurer or Fan-tai, the Nieh-tai or
judge, the Hueh-tai or commissioner of education and the salt
commissioner, Yen-yuen. These are all high officials. Over
all is the Governor, virtually a monarch subject only to the
nominal supervision of the Imperial Government at Peking.
He is appointed and may at any time be removed by the
Emperor, but during his tenure of office he has almost unlimited
power.
My tour of China included two interesting months in this
great province. As I approached Chefoo on the steamer from
Korea, I was impressed by the beauty of the scene. The water
was smooth and sparkling in the bright spring sunshine. The
harbour is exceptionally lovely. The shore lines are irregular,
terminating in a high promonotory on which are situated the
buildings of the various consulates. To the right, as the
traveller faces the city, is the business section with its wharves
and well-constructed commercial buildings, while on the left is
the wide curve of a fine beach on which front the foreign hotel
and the handsome buildings of the China Inland Mission.
Beyond the city, rises a noble hill on the slopes of which stand
the buildings of the Presbyterian Mission. From the water,
Chefoo is one of the most charming cities in all China.
Big, lusty Chinese in their wide, clumsy boats called sampans,
swarmed in the harbour. Sculling alongside, the boatman
caught the rail of the steamer with his boat-hook and with
the agility of a monkey scrambled up the long pole, dropped it
into the water and began to hustle for business. The babel of
voices bidding for passengers was like the tumult of Niagara
hack-drivers, but we were so fortunate as to be met by Dr. W.
F. Faries and the Rev. W. O. Elterich of the Presbyterian
Mission and under their skillful guidance, we were soon taken
ashore.
A closer view of the Chinese city proved less attractive than
the captivating one from the harbour. The population long
ago over-ran the limits of the old city so that to-day most of
the people are outside the walls. Within those ancient battlements,
the streets are narrow and crooked, while the filth is
indescribable. The visitor who wishes to see something of the
work and to enjoy the hospitality of the noble company of
Presbyterian missionaries on Temple Hill must either pass through
that reeking mess or go around it. There is, after all, not
much choice in the routes, for the Chinese population outside
the walls has simply squatted there without much order, and
the corkscrew streets are not only thronged with people and
donkeys and mules, but malodorous with ditches through which
all the nastiness of the crowded habitations trickles. Why
pestilence does not carry off the whole population is a mystery
to the visitor from the West, especially as he sees the pools out
of which the people drink, their shores lined with washerwomen
and the water dark and thick with the dirt of decades. Byron's
words in ``Childe Harold'' are as true of Chefoo as of Lisbon:
``But whoso entereth within this town,
That, sheening far, a celestial seems to be,
Disconsolate will wander up and down
'Mid many things unsightly to strange e'e;
For hut and palace show like filthily.
The dingy denizens are reared in dirt,
No personage of high or mean degree
Doth care for cleanness of surtout, or shirt,
Though shent with Egypt's plague, unkempt, unwashed, unhurt!''
The first open port of Shantung was Teng-chou-fu, a quaint
old city on the far northeastern point of the Shantung promontory.
It has been outstripped in importance by its later
rival, Chefoo, and is now ignored by the through steamers and
seldom visited by travellers. As the trip from Chefoo by land
requires two long hard days over a mountain range and as time
was precious, I decided to go by water. The regular coasting
steamer was not running on account of danger from pirates,
who had been unusually bold and murderous in attacking passing
vessels. But I succeeded in hiring a small launch. It was
a trip of fifty-five miles along the coast on the open sea, but the
weather was good and so we risked it. Several of the missionaries
took advantage of the occasion to visit friends in Tengchou-fu
so that a pleasant little party was formed.
We had intended to start at 7:30 A. M., but some of our luggage
and chair coolies, who had been engaged to take us from
Temple Hill to the launch at 6:30, did not come, and we had
to press into service some untrained ``boys.'' Then, our chair
coolies, who had been carefully instructed as to their destination
and who had solemnly asserted that they knew just where to go,
got separated from the others and calmly took us to the Union
Church. We appreciated their apparent conviction that we
needed to go to church, but we vainly tried to make them
understand that we wanted to go somewhere else. The delay
would have become exasperating if a small English boy who
knew Chinese had not helped us out. Then the two coolies
who were carrying our valises and the lunch-baskets went
another way and sat down en route ``to rest.'' They would
doubtless be sitting there yet if, after waiting till our patience
was exhausted, we had not sent men to find them. But that is
Asia.
However, all arrived at last and at 8:20 A. M. we cast off.
The day was glorious and as the sea was not rough enough to
make any one ill, we had a delightful trip along the coast with
its bare, brown hills so much resembling the scenery of California.
We reached Teng-chou-fu at 3:15 and that the pirates
were not imaginary was evident for as we entered the harbour,
they made a dash and captured a junk less than a mile away.
An alarm cannon was fired and soldiers were running to the
beach as we landed.
While in Teng-chou-fu, we witnessed a pathetic ceremony.
There had been no rain for several weeks. The kao-liang was
withering and the farmers could not plant their beans on the
ground from which the winter wheat had been cut. The people
had become alarmed as the drought continued, and they
were parading the streets bearing banners, wearing chaplets of
withered leaves on their heads to remind the gods that the
vegetation was dying, beating drums to attract the attention of
the god, and ever and anon falling on their knees and praying
--``O Great Dragon! send us rain.'' It was pitiful. This
country is fertile but the population is so enormous that, in the
absence of any manufacturing or mining, the people even in the
most favoured seasons live from hand to mouth, and a drought
means the starvation of multitudes.
V
A SHENDZA IN SHANTUNG
THE spring of 1901 was not the most propitious time
for a tour of the province of Shantung. It was
shortly after the suppression of the Boxer outbreak
and the country was still in an unsettled condition. The
veteran Dr. Hunter Corbett, who had resided in the province
for a generation said, ``We are living on a volcano and we do
not know at what moment another eruption will occur.''
Students returning from the examinations at the capitol told the
people that the Boxers were to rise again and kill all the foreigners
and Chinese Christians. The missionaries did not believe
the report, but they said that it might be believed by the
people and cause a renewal of agitation as such rumours the
year before had been an important factor in inciting the populace
to violence. But the interior of this great province was
one of the objective points of my tour and I could not miss it.
Besides, if the missionaries could go, I could. Wives, however,
were resolutely debarred. No woman had yet ventured
into the interior and the authorities refused to approve their
going. In case of trouble, a man can fight or run, but a
woman is peculiarly helpless. Nor could we forget that the
Chinese during the Boxer outbreak treated foreign women who
fell into their hands with horrible atrocity. So the wives, rather
against their will, remained in the ports.
Arrangements are apt to move slowly in this land of deliberation.
The genial and efficient United States Consul at Chefoo,
the Hon. John Fowler, joked me a little about my hurry to
start, laughingly remarking that this was Asia and not New
York, and that I must not expect things to be done on the
touch of a button as at home. But finding that a German
steamer was to leave the next day for Tsing-tau, the starting
point for the interior, the energetic missionaries helped me to
``hustle the East'' to get off on it. The Chinese tailor gasped
when I told him that I must have a khaki suit by six the following
evening, but when he learned that I was to sail and
therefore could not wait, he promised rather than lose the job.
The next day the steamer agent notified me that the sailing
hour had been changed to four o'clock. I sent word to the
tailor with faint hope of ever seeing that suit, and when a later
message gave three o'clock as the real time, I abandoned hope.
But the enterprising Celestial made his fingers fly, finished the
suit by 2:50 P. M., and took it to the house of my hostess.
Finding that I had already gone to the steamer, he hurried off
to the wharf, hired a sampan, sculled a mile and panting but
triumphant placed the suit in my hands just as the steamer was
getting under way. His charge for the suit, including all his
trouble and the cost of the sampan, was $7 Mexican ($3.50).
Saturday found me in Tsing-tau, and Monday, I turned my
face inland, accompanied by the Rev. J. H. Laughlin and Dr.
Charles H. Lyon, and, as far as Wei-hsien, by the Rev. Frank
Chalfant, all of the Presbyterian mission, besides Mr. William
Shipway of the English Baptist mission, who was to accompany
us as far as Ching-chou-fu. To-day, the traveller can journey
to Chinan-fu, the capital, in a comfortable railway
car, but I shall always be glad that my visit occurred in the old
days when the native methods of transportation were the sole
dependence, for at that time the new German railway was in
operation only forty-six miles to the old city of Kiao-chou.
The modes of conveyance in the interior of China are five--
the donkey, the sedan chair, the wheelbarrow, the cart and the
shendza (mule litter), and naturally the first problem of the
traveller is to decide which one he shall adopt.
The donkey is all right to one accustomed to horseback
riding. But there is no protection from the sun and rain and
foreign saddles are scarce. The traveller piles his bedding
on the animal's back and climbs on top, sitting either astride
or sideways. In either case, the feet dangle unsupported by
stirrups. It is hard to make long trips in this way, to say
nothing of the consideration that a man feels like an idiot in
such circumstances. ``The outside of a horse is indeed good
for the inside of a man,'' but a mattress on top of a donkey is
a different matter.
The chair is comfortable for short distances, but it is comparatively
expensive and, as no change of position is possible,
one soon becomes tired sitting in the fixed attitude. In pity to
your coolies, you walk up-hill and you are exposed to inclement
weather unless you hire a covered chair. This, however,
is not only hot and stuffy, but it makes people think you an
aristocrat, as only officials or the rich use such chairs in the
country, though in cities they are a common means of conveyance.
Besides, I had travelled in a chair in Korea and I
wished to try something else in China.
The Chinese wheelbarrow is a clumsy affair with a narrow
seat on each side of a central partition. When large and with
an awning, it is not so uncomfortable, but it is not well adapted
to a long journey as it is slow and toilsome. When the mud is
deep, progress is almost impossible. Moreover, the labour of
the barrow-men constantly excites the sympathy of the humane
traveller and the dismal screech of the wheel revolving upon
its unoiled axle is worse than the rasp of filing a saw. The
Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how
the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his
nerves wear out much faster than the wooden axle. In Tsing-
tau, that agonizing screech proved too much even for the stolid
Germans and they posted an ordinance to the effect that all
barrow axles must be greased. The Chinese demurred, but a
few arrests taught them obedience, so that now the streets of
the German metropolis no longer resound with the hysterical
wails and moans so dear to the heart of the Celestial.
The Chinese cart is a curious affair. There are no roads in
the interior of China, except the ruts that have been made by
the passing of many feet and wheels for generations. In dry
weather, they are thick with dust and in the wet season they
are fathomless with mud. Almost everywhere they are distractingly
crooked, and in many places they are plentifully bestrewn
with boulders of varying sizes. Instead of spending
money in making roads, the Chinese have applied their ingenuity
to making an indestructible cart. They build it of heavy
timbers, with massive wheels, thick spokes and ponderous hubs,
and as no springs could survive the jolting of such a vehicle,
the body of the cart is placed directly upon the huge axle.
Then a couple of big mules are hitched up tandem and driven
at breakneck speed. A runaway in an American farmer's
wagon over a corduroy road but feebly suggests the miseries of
travel in a Chinese cart. It may be good for a dyspeptic, but
it is about the most uncomfortable conveyance that the ingenuity
of man has yet devised. The unhappy passenger is
hurled against the wooden top and sides and is so jolted and
bumped that, as the small boy said in his composition, ``his
heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, stomach, bones and brains are all
mixed up.'' I tried the cart for a while and gently but firmly
intimated that if nothing better was available, I would walk. I
am satisfied that nothing short of a modern battleship under
full steam could make the slightest impression on the typical
Chinese cart. In my humble opinion, a Chinese cart is like
any other misfortune in life. When necessary, it should be
taken uncomplainingly. But the person who takes it unnecessarily
has not reached the years of discretion and should be
assigned a guardian.
I therefore turned to the shendza. All things considered, it
is the best conveyance for a long interior journey in China.
It consists of a couple long poles with a rope basket work in the
middle and a cover of matting. It is borne by two mules, and
has the advantage of protecting the traveller from the sun and
from light rains. An opening in the back gives him the benefit
of any breeze while it is possible to get occasional relief by
changing position, as he can either sit upright or lounge.
Moreover, he can keep his bedding and a little food with him.
He need not walk up hills in mercy to weary coolies and he
can make the longer daily journeys which the superior endurance
of mules permits. In ordinary conditions on level ground,
my mules averaged about four miles an hour. The motion is a
kind of sieve-and-pepper-box shaking that is not so bad,
provided the mules behave themselves, which is not often.
My rear mule had a meek and quiet spirit. He was a discouraged
animal upon which the sorrows of life had told
heavily and which had reached that age when he appeared to
have no ambition in life except to stop and think or to lie down
and rest. The lead mule, however, was a cantankerous beast
that wanted to fight everything within reach and went into
hysterics every time any other animal passed him. As this occurred
a score of times a day, the uncertainties of the situation
were interesting, especially when the rear mule paused or
laid down without having previously notified the lead mule.
At such times, the sudden stoppage of the power behind and
the plunging of the power in front threatened the dislocation
of the entire apparatus, and as there is no way for the traveller
to get out except over the heels of a mule, life in a shendza is
not always uneventful. But I soon got used to the motion and
to the mules, and even learned to read and to doze in comparative
comfort while the long-eared animals plodded and
jerked on in their own way.
The most trying thing to the humane traveller is the soreness
of the mules' backs. I insisted on having mules whose
backs were sound, but was told by both missionaries and
Chinese that they could not be had, especially in summer, as
the swaying and jerking of the shendza and the sweat and
dust under the heavy pack-saddle always make sores. It was
all too true. I examined scores of mules and every one had
raw and bleeding abrasions and, in some cases, suppurating
ulcers. For a Chinese, our head muleteer was careful of his
animals and washed them occasionally, but no practicable care
apparently can prevent a shendza from making a sore back.
The only solace I had was the evident indifference of the
mules themselves. They had never known anything better,
and seemed to take misery as a matter of course.
Our party, with the goods we had to carry, for my missionary
friends were returning to their stations with the expectation
of remaining, included three shendzas, two carts and a
pack-mule for our provisions. But the ``mule'' turned out to
be a donkey and unable to carry all we had planned for a larger
animal. While wondering how we were to get our supplies
carried, we learned that a construction train was about to start
for the end of the track, which was said to be Kaomi, fifty-
five li[14] beyond Kiao-chou. We got permission to ride on the
flat car. In the hope that we might be able to secure a mule or
another donkey in Kaomi, we got aboard, leaving our shendzas
and carts to follow. After a lovely ride of an hour through
wheat-fields interspersed with villages, our train stopped twelve
li from Kaomi, an unfinished culvert making further progress
impossible. As our caravan had gone by a different route and
as no coolies could be hired where we were, the question was
how to get our goods transported. Fortunately, a German
Roman Catholic priest, who was also on the construction
train and who had wheelbarrows for his own goods, cordially
told us to pile our luggage on top of his. We gratefully accepted
this kind offer, and giving his coolies some extra cash
for their labour, they good-naturedly accepted the additional
burden, while we footed the twelve li to Kaomi.
[14] A li is about a third of a mile.
But the progress of the barrows was slow and it was half-
past eight when we reached Kaomi. In the darkness we could
not find the inn which the magistrate had set aside for foreigners
and the Chinese whom we met gave conflicting replies.
But at that moment, two resident Roman Catholic priests,
Austrians, appeared and one of them recognized Mr. Laughlin
as the associate of Dr. Van Schoick, a Presbyterian medical
missionary who had sympathetically treated a fellow priest during
a long and dangerous illness several years before. He
promptly invited us to go with him, declaring that Dr. Van
Schoick had saved the life of his dearest friend. He was
so cordially insistent that we accepted his invitation. Our
shendzas, carts and pack-mule were we knew not where, and
we were hungry after our long day. Warned by my experience
in Korea that the traveller should never trust to the
punctuality of natives and pack-animals, I had insisted on
taking our bedding and a little food on the flat car. It was
well that I did, for we did not see our shendzas that night as
they arrived after the city gates had been shut so that they
could not get in. But we had a little cocoa, tinned corn beef,
condensed milk, butter and marmalade. Same German soldiers
sent three loaves of coarse bread. Our priestly host added
some Chinese bread, and so had a good supper and afterwards
a sound sleep.
At half-past four the next morning, Mr. Laughlin remarked
in a forty-horse power tone of voice that it was time to get up.
By the time the reverberations had died away, we were so wide
awake that further sleep was out of the question. Our cook
was nowhere in sight, so we prepared our own breakfast from
the remains of last night's meal.
Bidding a grateful farewell to our hospitable priests, we rode
across an ancient lake bottom, low, flat, wheat-covered and hot
enough to broil meat. At half-past ten o'clock, we reached
Fau-chia-chiu, the boundary of the hinterland, where, near a
temple just outside the wall, we found Governor Yuan Shih
Kai's military escort awaiting us. It was after sundown when
we reached Liu-chia-chuang, and we felt half inclined to spend
the night there with some genial German military engineers,
but our party had become separated during the day and as
the others had taken a road that did not pass through Liu-
chia-chuang, we pushed on to Hsi-an-tai, which we reached by
a little after ten o'clock. By that time, it was so dark that it
was impossible to go further and we found lodgment in a good-
sized building which smelled to heaven. The odour was like
that of a decomposing body. However, it was too late and we
were too weary either to hunt up smells or to seek another lodging
place. So after a hasty supper out of our tinned food, we
put up our cots and went to bed, Mr. Chalfant making a few
pleasant remarks about the bedbugs that always swarm in such
a building, the centipedes that sometimes crawl into the ears or
nostrils of sleepers and the scorpions that occasionally fall from
the millet-stalk ceiling on to the bed or scuttle across the floor
to bite the person who unwarily walks in his bare feet. Under
the influence of such a soporific, I soon fell asleep. The next
morning we rose early, and while the cook was preparing our
coffee and eggs, we followed the trail of that awful odour to a
corner of the building, where, under some millet stalks, we
found a rude coffin which we had not noticed in the dim candlelight
of the night before. A Chinese of whom we inquired
said that it was empty. We could not in courtesy open a
coffin before dozens of interested Chinese, but it was very
plain to our olfactories that such an odour required a prompt
funeral.
As usual, a great but silent crowd watched me as I wrote
while the mules were being fed and at Hsien-chung, where
we stopped at noon to repair a shendza, Mr. Chalfant translated
a proclamation on a wall stating that an indemnity of
110,000 taels had to be paid for damage to the railway during
the Boxer outbreak and that 14,773 taels had been assessed on
Wei County. The people read it with scowling faces, but they
said nothing to us, though they looked as if they wanted to.
At two o'clock, we entered the ruined Presbyterian compound,
a mile southeast of the city of Wei-hsien. It was
thrilling to hear on the scene of the riot Mr. Chalfant's
account of the attack by about a thousand furious Boxers;
to see the place just outside the gate where single-handed and
with no weapon but a small revolver, he had heroically held
the mob at bay for several hours until the swarming Boxers,
awed by his splendid courage, divided, and while several
hundred held his attention, the rest climbed over the wall at
another place and fired the mission buildings. That the three
missionaries escaped with their lives is a wonder. But Mr.
Chalfant quickly ran to the house where Miss Hawes and Miss
Boughton were awaiting him, hurried them down-stairs,
and while the Boxers were smashing the furniture on the other
side of a closed door, snatched up a ladder, assisted them over
the compound wall at a point that was providentially unguarded
and hid them in a field of grain until darkness
enabled them to make their way exhausted but unhurt to a camp
of German soldiers and engineers nine miles distant and to
escape with them to Tsing-tau. It was a remarkable experience.
If that door had not happened to be closed, and if
a ladder had not been carelessly left by a servant beside the
house, and if the attack itself had not occurred just before
dark, undoubtedly all three would have been killed. On each
of those three ifs, lives depended.
Mr. Fitch cordially welcomed us. Mr. Chalfant killed a
centipede and various insects crawling on the walls near my
cot and a little after nine I was asleep. The next day we
took a walk through the city, impressed by its imposing wall
and the throngs of people who followed us and watched every
movement. Outside the wall, we saw a ``baby house,'' a
small stone building in which the dead children of the poor
are thrown to be eaten by dogs! I wanted to examine it, but
was warned not to do so, as the Chinese imagine that
foreigners make their medicine out of children's eyes and
brains, and our crowds of watching Chinese might quickly become
an infuriated mob.
Immediately on our arrival, we had sent our cards to the
district magistrate and in the afternoon he sent us an elaborate
feast. As we were about to retire that evening, he called in a
gorgeous chair with a retinue of twenty attendants. He stayed
half an hour and was very cordial, and we had a pleasant interview.
Wei-hsien is famous for its embroideries, and great
quantities are made, the women workers receiving about fifty
small cash a day (less than two cents). It was not necessary
to go to the stores as in America. The shopkeepers brought a
great number of pieces to our inn, covering the kang and every
available table, chair and box with exquisite bits of handiwork.
Lured by the sight I became reckless and bought four
handsome pieces for 19,800 small cash ($6.06).
Resuming our journey on a warm, sunny day, we entered
Chiang-loa at noon. It was market day, and the greatest
crowd yet fairly blocked the streets. The soldiers had difficulty
in clearing a way for us. But while much curiosity
was expressed, there was no sign of hostility. Then we
journeyed on through the interminable fields of ripening wheat.
Soon, mountains, which we had dimly seen for several hours,
grew more distinct and as we approached Ching-chou-fu towards
evening, the scene was one of great beauty--the yellowing
grain gently undulating in the soft breeze, the mountains
not really more than 3,000 feet in height, but from our stand
on the plain looking lofty, massive and delightfully refreshing
to the eye after our hot and dusty journeying. The city has a
population of about 25,000 and its numerous trees look so invitingly
green that the traveller is eager to enter.
But in this case also, distance lent enchantment, for within,
while there was not the filth of a Korean village, yet the narrow
streets were far from clean. Not a blade of grass relieved the
bare, dusty ground trampled by many feet, while the low, mud-
plastered houses were not inviting. A Chinese seldom thinks
of making repairs. He builds once, usually with rough stone
plastered with mud or with sun-dried brick. The roof is
thatched and the floor is the beaten earth, although in the
better houses it is stone or brick. In time, the mud-plaster
or, if the walls are of sun-dried brick, the wall itself begins to
disintegrate. But it is let alone, as long as it does not make
the house uninhabitable, while paint is unknown. So the general
appearance of a Chinese town is squalid and tumbledown.
Even the yamen of a district magistrate presents
crumbling walls, unkempt courtyards, rickety buildings and
paper-covered windows full of holes. The palaces of the rich
are often expensive, but the Asiatic has little of our ideas of
comfort and order.
The Rev. J. P. Bruce and Mr. R. C. Forsyth, of the English
Baptist mission, the only members of the station who were
present, gave us a hearty welcome. The green shrubbery,
the bath-tub, the dinner of roast beef and the clean bedroom,
were like a bit of hospitable old England set down in China.
None of the buildings here were injured by the Boxers. But
the marauders took whatever they could use, as dishes, utensils,
glass, linen, clothes, silver and plated ware, jewelry, etc., the
total loss being <Pd>4,000, including <Pd>1,000 for machinery.
That machinery has an interesting history. One of the members
of the mission, Mr. A. G. Jones, conceived the idea of
relieving the poverty of the Chinese by introducing cotton
weaving. Having some private means and being a mechanical
genius, he spent two years and <Pd>1,000 in devising the
necessary machinery, much of which he made himself. He
had completed the plant and was trying to induce the Chinese
to organize a company of Christians who would operate the
factory, when the building was burned by the Boxers and the
machinery reduced to a heap of twisted scrap-iron.
The women we met in these interior districts had only
partially bound feet, though they were still far from the natural
size. It was surprising to see how freely the women walked,
especially as several that I saw were carrying babies. But it
was rather a stumpy walk. Women of the higher class have
smaller feet and never walk in the public streets.
We left Ching-chou-fu Monday morning, our genial hosts,
including Mr. Shipway, who remained here, accompanying us
a couple of miles. The trees were more numerous, and as the
weather was cool, I greatly enjoyed the day. But the next
day, we plodded under dripping skies and through sticky mud
to Chang-tien, where a night of unusual discomfort in an inn
literally alive with fleas and mosquitoes prepared us to enjoy a
tiffin with a lonely English Baptist outpost, the genial Rev.
William A. Wills, at Chou-tsun, which we reached at noon
the following day, and then, thirty li further on, the gracious
hospitality of the main station at Chou-ping. Only three men
were present of the regular station force of seven families and
two single women, but they gave us all the more abundant
welcome in their isolation and loneliness. Of the 2,577
Chinese Christians of this station, 132 were murdered by the
Boxers and seventy or more died from consequent exposure and
injuries.
A vast, low lying plain begins forty li north of Chou-ping
and extends northeastward as far as Tien-tsin. This plain is subject
to destructive inundations from the Yellow River and the
scenes of ruin and suffering are sometimes appalling. Our unattractive
inn the next night was a two-story brick building
with iron doors, stone floors, walls two and a-half feet thick and
rooms dark, gloomy, ill-smelling as a dungeon and of course
swarming with vermin, as savage bites promptly testified. My
missionary companion said that it was probably an old pawnshop.
Pawnbroking is esteemed an honourable, as well as
lucrative, business in China, and the brokers are influential
men and often have considerable property in their shops. The
people are so poor that they sometimes pawn their winter clothes
in summer and their summer ones in winter.
At noon the next day, we reached Chinan-fu, having made
seventy li in six hours over muddy roads. Dr. James B. Neal
of the Presbyterian mission was alone in the city and gave us
hospitable welcome to his home and to the splendid missionary
work of the station, though he rather suggestively stopped our
coolies when they were about to carry our bedding into the
house. He was wise, too, for that bedding had been used in
too many native inns to be prudently admitted to a well-
ordered household.
As we walked through the city, the narrow streets were
literally jammed, for it was market day. Foreigners had been
scarce since the Boxer outbreak a year before. Besides, many
of the people were from the country where foreigners are
seldom seen anyway. So we made as great a sensation as a
circus in an American city. A multitude followed us, and
wherever we stopped hundreds packed the narrow streets.
Our soldiers cleared the way, but they had no difficulty, for
though the people were inquisitive they were not hostile.
Three magnificent springs burst forth in the heart of the city,
one as large as the famous spring in Roanoke, Virginia, which
supplies all that city with water. It was about a hundred feet
across. The water might easily be piped all over Chinan-fu.
But this is China, and so the people patiently walk to the
springs for their daily supply.
VI
AT THE GRAVE OF CONFUCIUS
WE were now approaching the most sacred places of
China. On a hot July afternoon of the second day
from Chinan-fu, the capital of the province, we saw
the noble proportions of Tai-shan, the holy mountain. The
Chinese have five sacred mountains, but this is the most venerated
of all. Its altitude is not great, only a little over 4,000
feet, but it rises so directly from the plain and its outlines are
so majestic that it is really imposing. To the Chinese its
height is awe-inspiring, for in all the eighteen provinces there
is no loftier peak.
Stopping for the night at the ancient city of Tai-an-fu at the
base of the mountain, we set out at six the next morning in
chairs swung between poles borne by stalwart coolies. My
curiosity was aroused when I found that they were Mohammedans
and, as they cordially responded to my questionings, I
found them very interesting. Centuries ago, their ancestors
came to China as mercenaries, and taking Chinese wives settled
in the country. But they have never intermarried since.
They have adopted the dress and language of the Chinese, but
otherwise they continue almost as distinct as the Jews in
America. They instruct their children in the doctrines of
Islam, though the Mohammedan rule that the Koran must not
be translated has prevented all but a few literati from obtaining
any knowledge of the book itself. They have done little
proselyting, but natural increase, occasional reenforcements
and the adoption of famine children have gradually swelled
their ranks until they now number many millions in various
parts of China. In some provinces they are very strong, particularly
in Yun-nan and Kan-su where they are said to form a
majority of the population. They are notorious for turbulence
and are popularly known as ``Mohammedan thieves.'' It
must be admitted that they not infrequently justify their reputation
for robbery, murder and counterfeiting. More than
once they have fomented bloody revolutions, one of them, the
great Panthay rebellion of 1885-1874, costing the lives of no
less than two million Moslems before it was suppressed.
But those who bore me up the long slope of Tai-shan were
as good-natured as they were muscular. There is no difficulty
about ascending the mountain, for a stone-paved path about
ten feet wide runs from base to summit. The maker of this
road is unknown as the earliest records and monuments refer
only to repairs. But he builded well and evidently with ``an
unlimited command of naked human strength,'' for the blocks
of stone are heavy and the masonry of the walls and bridges is
still massive.
As the slope becomes steeper, the path merges into long
flights of solid stone steps. Near the summit, these steps
become so precipitous that the traveller is apt to feel a little
dizzy, especially in descending, for the chair coolies race down
the steep stairway in a way that suggests alarming possibilities
in the event of a misstep or a broken rope. But the men are
sure-footed and mishaps seldom occur. The path is bordered
by a low wall and lined with noble old trees. Ancient temples,
quaint hamlets, numerous tea-houses and a few nunneries with
vicious women are scattered along the route. A beautiful
stream tumbles noisily down the mountainside close at hand,
alternating swift rapids and deep, quiet pools, while as the
traveller rises, he gains magnificent vistas of the adjacent mountains
and the wide cultivated plain, yellow with ripening wheat,
green with growing millet, and thickly dotted with the groves
beneath which cluster the low houses of the villages.
Up this long, steep pathway to the Buddhist temples on the
summit, multitudes of Chinese pilgrims toil each year, firmly
believing that the journey will bring them merit. We reflected
with a feeling of awe that
``The path by which we ascended has been trodden by the feet of men for
more than four thousand years. One hundred and fifty generations have
come and gone since the great Shun here offered up his yearly sacrifice to
heaven. Fifteen hundred years before the bard of Greece composed his
Epic, nearly one thousand years before Moses stood on Pisgah's mount
and gazed over into the promised land, far back through the centuries
when the world was young and humanity yet in its cradle, did the children
of men ascend the vast shaggy sides of this same mountain, probably
by this same path, and always to worship.''[15]
[15] The Rev. Dr. Paul D. Bergen, pamphlet.
After a night at Hsia-chang, we resumed our journey a little
after daylight. The early morning air was delightfully cool
and bracing, but the sun's rays became fierce as we entered the
dry, sandy bed of the Wen River. By the time we reached the
broad, shallow stream itself, I envied the two mules and the
donkey that managed to fall into a hole, though I would have
been happier if they had been thoughtful enough to discard my
spare clothes and my food box before they tumbled into the
muddy water. The whole day was unusually hot so that by
the time we reached Ning-yang, we were ready for a night's
rest which even fighting mules, vicious vermin, and quarrelling
Chinese gamblers in the inn courtyard could not entirely
destroy.
As we approached Chining-chou, the country became almost
perfectly flat, a vast prairie. It was carefully cultivated
everywhere, the kao-liang and poppy predominating. The soil was
apparently rich, and the landscape was relieved from monotony
by the green of the cultivated fields and the foliage of the village
trees. Dominating all is the rather imposing walled city
of Chining-chou. The high, strong wall, the handsome gates
and towers, the trees bordering the little stream and the
crowded streets looked quite metropolitan. With its imme-
diate suburbs built Chinese fashion close to the wall, Chining-
chou has 150,000 inhabitants. It is a business city with a
considerable trade, the produce of a wide adjacent region
being brought to it for shipment, as it is on the Grand Canal
which gives easy and cheap facilities for exporting and importing
freight. There is, moreover, no loss in exchange as the
danger of shipping bullion silver makes the Chining business
men eager to accept drafts for use in paying for the goods they
buy in Shanghai. Consequently there is a better price for
silver here than anywhere else in Shantung. The main street
is narrow, shaded by matting laid on kao-liang stalks and
lined with busy shops. Along the Grand Canal, there is a
veritable ``Vanity Fair'' filled with clothing booths and deafening
with the cries of itinerant vendors.
But the loneliness of the missionary in Chining-chou is
great, for he is far from congenial companionship. The tragedies
of life are particularly heavy at such an isolated post.
Mr. Laughlin showed me the house where his wife's body lay
for a month after her death in May, 1899. Then, with his
nine-year old daughter, he took the body in a house-boat down
the Grand Canal to Chin-kiang, a journey of sixteen days.
What a heart-breaking journey it must have been as the clumsy
boat crept slowly along the sluggish canal and the silent stars
looked down on the lonely husband beside the coffin of his
beloved wife. Yet he bravely returned to Chining-chou and
while I travelled on, he remained with only Dr. Lyon for a
companion. I was sorry to part with them for we had shared
many long-to-be-remembered experiences, while at that time
there was believed to be no small risk in remaining at such an
isolated post. But Dr. Johnson and I had to go, and so early
on the morning of June 17, we bade the brave fellows an affectionate
good-bye and left them in that far interior city, standing
at the East Gate till we were out of sight.
Fortunately, the day was fine for rain would have made the
flat, black soil almost impassible. But as it was, we had a
comfortable, dustless ride of sixty li to Yen-chou-fu, a city of
unusually massive walls, whose 60,000 people are reputed to be
the most fiercely anti-foreign in Shantung. Comparatively few
foreigners had been seen in this region and many of them had
been mobbed. The Roman Catholic priests, who are the only
missionaries here, have repeatedly been attacked, while an English
traveller was also savagely assaulted by these turbulent conservatives.
But the Roman Catholics with characteristic determination
fought it out, the German consul coming from
Peking to support them, and at the time of my visit, they were
building a splendid church, the money like that for the Chining-chou
cathedral, coming from the indemnity for the murder
of the two priests in 1897, which was in this diocese. Though
great crowds stared silently at us, no disrespect was shown.
On the contrary, we found that by order of the district magistrate
an inn had been specially prepared for us, with a plentiful
supply of rugs and cushions and screens, while a few minutes
after our arrival, the magistrate sent with his compliments a
feast of twenty-five dishes. Another stage of nine miles
brought us at four o'clock to the famous holy city of China,
Ku-fu, the home and the grave of Confucius.
Leaving our shendzas at an inn, we mounted the cavalry
horses of our escort and hurried to the celebrated temple which
stands on the site of Confucius' house. But to our keen
disappointment, the massive gates were closed. The keeper, in
response to our knocks, peered through a crevice, and explained
that it was the great feast of the fifth day of the fifth
month, that the Duke was offering sacrifices, and that no one,
not even officials, could enter till the sacrifices were completed.
``When will that be?'' we queried. ``They will continue all
night and all day to-morrow,'' was the reply. We urged the
shortness of our stay and solemnly promised to keep out of the
Duke's way. The keeper's eyes watered as he imagined a
present, but he replied that he did not dare let us in as his
orders were strict and disobedience might cost him his position
if not his life. So we sorrowfully turned away, and pushing
through the dense throng which had swiftly assembled at the
sight of a foreigner, we rode through the city and along the far-
famed Spirit Road to the Most Holy Grove in which lies the
body of Confucius. It is three li, about a mile, from the city
gate. The road is shaded by ancient cedars and is called the
Spirit Road because the spirit of Confucius is believed to walk
back and forth upon it by night.
The famous cemetery is in three parts. The outer is said to
be fifteen miles in circumference and is the burial-place of all
who bear the honoured name of Confucius. Within, there is
a smaller enclosure of about ten acres, which is the family burial
place of the dukes who are lineal descendants of Confucius,
mighty men who rank with the proudest governors of provinces.
Within this second enclosure, is the Most Holy Cemetery itself,
a plot of about two acres, shaded like the others by fine old
cedars and cypresses. Here are only three graves, marked by
huge mounds under which lie the dust of Confucius, his son
and his grandson. That of the Sage, we estimated to be
twenty-five feet high and 250 feet in circumference. In front
of it is a stone monument about fifteen feet high, four feet wide
and sixteen inches thick. Lying prone before that is another
stone of nearly the same size supported by a heavy stone
pedestal. There is no name, but on the upright monument are
Chinese characters which Dr. Charles Johnson, my travelling
companion, translated: ``The Acme of Perfection and Learning-
Promoting King,'' or more freely--``The Most Illustrious
Sage and Princely Teacher.''
Uncut grass and weeds grew rankly upon the mounds and all
over the cemetery, giving everything an unkempt appearance.
One species is said to grow nowhere else in China and to have
such magical power in interpreting truth that if a leaf is laid
upon an abstruse passage of Confucius, the meaning will immediately
become clear. There are several small buildings in
the enclosure, but dust and decay reign in all, for there is no
merit in repairing a building that some one else has erected.
As with his house, the Chinese will spend money freely to build
a temple, but after that he does nothing. So even in the most
sacred places, arches and walls and columns are usually crumbling,
grounds are dirty and pavement stones out of place.
A feeling of awe came over me as I remembered that, with the
possible exception of Buddha, the man whose dust lay before
me had probably influenced more human beings than any other
man whom the world has seen. Even Christ Himself has thus
far not been known to so many people as Confucius, nor has
any nation in which Christ is known so thoroughly accepted
His teachings as China has accepted those of Confucius. Dr.
Legge indeed declares that ``after long study of his character
and opinions, I am unable to regard him as a great man,''
while Dr. Gibson ``seeks in vain in his recorded life and words
for the secret of his power,'' and can only conjecture in explanation
that ``he is for all time the typical Chinaman; but
his greatness lies in his displaying the type on a grand scale,
not in creating it.'' But it is difficult even for the non-Chinese
mind to look at such a man with unbiassed eyes. Surely we
need not begrudge the meed of greatness to one who has
moulded so many hundreds of millions of human beings for
2,400 years and who is more influential at the end of that period
than at its beginning. Grant that ``he is for all time the
typical Chinaman.'' Could a small man have incarnated ``for
all time'' the spirit of one-third of the human race? All over
China the evidences of Confucius' power can be seen. Temples
rise on every hand. Ancestral tablets adorn every house.
The writings of the sage are diligently studied by the whole
population. When, centuries ago, a jealous Emperor ruthlessly
burned the Confucian books, patient scholars reproduced
them, and to prevent a recurrence of such iconoclastic fury, the
Great Confucian Temple and the Hall of Classics in Peking
were erected and the books were inscribed on long rows of stone
monuments so that they could never be destroyed again. As a
token of the present attitude of the Imperial family, the Emperor
once in a decade proceeds in solemn state to this temple
and enthroned there expounds a passage of the sacred writings.
For more than two millenniums, the boys of the most numerous
people in the world have committed to memory the Confucian
primer which declares that ``affection between father and son,
concord between husband and wife, kindness on the part of the
elder brother and deference on the part of the younger, order
between seniors and juniors, sincerity between friends and associates,
respect on the part of the ruler and loyalty on that of
the minister--these are the ten righteous courses equally binding
on all men;'' that ``the five regular constituents of our
moral nature are benevolence, righteousness, propriety, knowledge,
and truth;'' and that ``the five blessings are long life
wealth, tranquillity, desire for virtue and a natural death.''
Surely these are noble principles. That their influence has
been beneficial in many respects, it would be folly to deny.
They have lifted the Chinese above the level of many other
Asiatic nations by creating a more stable social order, by inculcating
respect for parents and rulers, and by so honouring the
mother that woman has a higher position in China than in most
other non-Christian lands.
And yet Confucianism has been and is the most formidable
obstacle to the regeneration of China. While it teaches some
great truths, it ignores others that are vital. It has lifted the
Chinese above the level of barbarism only to fix them almost
immovably upon a plane considerably lower than Christianity.
It has developed such a smug satisfaction with existing conditions
that millions are well-nigh impervious to the influences
of the modern world. It has debased respect for parents into
a blind worship of ancestors so that a dead father, who may
have been an ignorant and vicious man, takes the place of the
living and righteous God. It has fostered not only premature
marriages but concubinage in the anxiety to have sons who
will care for parents in age and minister to them after death.
It makes the child virtually a slave to the caprice or passion of
the parent. It leads to a reverence for the past that makes
change a disrespect to the dead, so that all progress is made
exceedingly difficult and society becomes fossilized. ``Whatever
is is right'' and ``custom'' is sacred. Man is led so to
centralize his thought on his own family that he becomes selfish
and provincial in spirit and conduct, with no outlook beyond
his own narrow sphere. Expenditures which the poor can ill-
afford are remorselessly exacted for the maintenance of ancestral
worship so that the living are often impoverished for the sake
of the dead. $151,752,000 annually, ancestral worship is said
to cost--a heavy drain upon a people the majority of whom
spend their lives in the most abject poverty, while the development
of true patriotism and a strong and well-governed State has
been effectively prevented by making the individual solicitous
only for his own family and callously indifferent to the welfare
of his country. Confucianism therefore is China's weakness
as well as China's strength, the foe of all progress, the stagnation
of all life.
Confucianism, too, halts on the threshold of life's profoundest
problems. It has only dead maxims for the hour of deepest
need. It gives no vision of a future beyond the grave. It is
virtually an agnostic code of morals with some racial variations.
Wu Ting Fang, formerly Chinese Minister to the
United States, frankly declares that ``Confucianism is not a religion
in the practical sense of the word,'' and that ``Confucius
would be called an agnostic in these days.'' To ``the
Venerable Teacher'' himself, philosophy opened no door of
hope. Asked about this one day by a troubled inquirer, he
dismissed the question with the characteristic aphorism--
``Imperfectly acquainted with life, how can we know death?''
And there the myriad millions of Confucianists have dully
stood ever since, their faces towards the dead past, the future
a darkness out of which no voice comes.
But just because their illustrious guide took them to the
verge of the dark unknown and left them there, other teachers
came in to occupy the region left so invitingly open. Less
rational than Confucius, their success showed anew that the
human mind cannot rest in a spiritual vacuum and that if
faith does not enter, superstition will. Taoism and Buddhism
proceeded to people the air and the future with strange and
awful shapes. Popular Chinese belief as to the future is gruesomely
illustrated in the Temple of Horrors in Canton with its
formidable collection of wooden figures illustrating the various
modes of punishment--sawing, decapitation, boiling in oil,
covering with a hot bell, etc. At funerals, bits of perforated
paper are freely scattered about in the hope that the inquisitive
spirits will stop to examine them and thus give the body a
chance to pass. In any Chinese cemetery, one may see little
tables in front of the graves covered with tea, sweetmeats and
sheets of gilt and silver paper, so that if a spirit is hungry,
thirsty or in need of funds, it can get drink, food or money
from the gold or silver mines (paper).
In the Temple for Sickness, in Canton, where multitudes of
sufferers pray to the gods for healing, we saw an old woman
kneeling before a statue of Buddha, holding aloft two blocks of
wood and then throwing them to the floor. If the flat side of
one and the oval side of the other were uppermost, the omen
was good, but if the same sides were up, it was bad. Others
shook a box of numbered sticks till one popped out and then
a paper bearing the corresponding number gave the issue of the
disease. The stones of the court were worn by many feet and
the pathos of the place was pitiful.
Theoretically, ``Confucianism is a system of morals, Taoism
a deification of nature and Buddhism a system of metaphysics.
But in practice all three have undergone many modifications.
With every age the character of Taoism has changed.
The philosophy of its founder is now only an antiquarian curiosity.
Modern Taoism is of such a motley character as almost
to defy any attempt to educe a well-ordered system from its
chaos.''[16] As for Buddhism, its founder would not recognize
it, if he could visit China to-day. The lines:--
``Ten Buddhist nuns, and nine are bad;
The odd one left is doubtless mad----''
are suggestive of the depth to which the religion of Guatama
has fallen.
[16] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 62, 72.
Indeed, it would be a mistake to suppose that the Chinese
people are divided into three religious bodies as, for example,
Americans are divided into Protestants, Roman Catholics and
Jews. Each individual Chinese is at the same time a Confucian,
a Buddhist and a Taoist, observing the ceremonies of
all three faiths as circumstances may require, a Confucian
when he worships his ancestors, a Buddhist when he implores
the aid of the Goddess of Mercy, and a Taoist when he seeks
to propitiate the omnipresent fung-shuy (spirits of wind and
water), and he has no more thought of inconsistency than an
American who is at the same time a Methodist, a Republican
and a Mason. Dr. S. H. Chester says that when he was in
Shanghai, he saw a Taoist priest conducting Confucian worship
in a Buddhist temple. Even if inconsistency were proved to
the Chinese, he would not be in the least disturbed for he cares
nothing for such considerations. ``Hence it is that the Chinese
religion of to-day has become an inextricable blending of
the three systems.''[17] ``The ancient simplicity of the state religion
has been so far corrupted as to combine in one ritual
gods, ghosts, flags and cannon. It has become at once essentially
polytheistic and pantheistic.''[18]
[17] Gibson, ``Mission Methods and Mission Policy in South China.''
[18] Williams, ``Middle Kingdom.''
The result is that the average Chinese lives a life of terror
under the sway of imaginary demons. He erects a rectangular
pillar in front of his door so that the dreaded spirits cannot
enter his house without making an impossible turn. He gives
his tiled roof an upward slant at each of the eaves so that any
spirit attempting to descend will be shunted off into space.
Nor is this superstition confined to the lower classes. The
haughty, foreign-travelled Li Hung Chang abjectly grovelled
on the bank of the Yellow River to propitiate an alleged demon
that was believed to be the cause of a disastrous flood, and as
late as June 4, 1903, the North-China Daily News published
the following imperial decree:
``Owing to the continued drought, in spite of our prayers for rain, we
hereby command Chen Pih, Governor of Peking, to proceed to the Dragon
temple at Kanshan-hsien, Chih-li Province, and bring from thence to
Peking an iron tablet possessing rain-producing virtues, which we will
place up for adoration and thereby bring forth the much-desired rain.''
And so the followers of the most ``rational'' of teachers are
among the most superstitious people in the world. In attempting
to clear the mind of error, the great agnostic simply left it
``empty, swept and garnished for seven other spirits worse than
the first.''
As in the deepening twilight we thoughtfully left the last
resting-place of the mighty dead, a platoon of thirty Chinese
soldiers approached, drew their swords, dropped upon one
knee and shouted. The movement was so unexpected and the
shout so startlingly strident that my horse shied in terror and I
had visions of immediate massacre. But having learned that
politeness is current coin the world over, as soon as I could
control my prancing horse, I raised my hat and bowed.
Whereupon the soldiers rose, wheeled into line and marched
ahead of us to our inn in the city. Dr. Johnson explained that
the words shouted in unison were: ``May the Great Man have
Peace,'' and that the platoon was an escort of honour from the
yamen of the district magistrate!
On the way, we stopped to visit the temple of Yen, the
favorite disciple whose early death left Confucius disconsolate.
The grounds are spacious. There is a remarkably fine
tree, tall, graceful and with silvery white bark. A huge stone
turtle was reverently kissed by one of our escort, who fondly
believed that he who kissed the turtle's mouth would never be
ill. But as usual in China, the temple itself, though originally
it must have been beautiful, is now crumbling in decay.
It was late when we returned, and as we were about to retire,
wearied with the toils of the day, the district magistrate called
with an imposing retinue and cordially inquired whether we
had seen all that we wished to see. When we replied that we
had been unable to enter the great temple, he graciously said
that he would have pleasure in informing the Duke, who would
be sure to arrange for our visit. The result was a message at
two o'clock in the morning to the effect that we might visit the
temple at daylight in the interval between the cessation of the
sacrifices of the night and their resumption at seven o'clock in
the morning. Accordingly we rose at three o'clock, and after
a hurried breakfast by candle-light, we proceeded to the temple.
About a hundred Chinese were awaiting us, among them two
men in official dress. We did not deem it courteous to ask
who or what they were, but we supposed them to be from the
magistrate's yamen, and as they were evidently familiar with
the temple, we gladly complied with their cordial invitation to
follow them.
I wish I had power to describe adequately all we saw in that
vast enclosure of about thirty acres, with its stately trees, its
paved avenues, its massive monuments, and, above all, its
imposing temple and scores of related buildings. One was the
Lieh Kew Kwei Chang Tien, the Temple of the Wall of the
Many Countries. Here are 120 tablets, each about sixteen by
twenty-two inches, and in the centre three larger ones measuring
two feet in width by four and a-half feet in height. In
front of these is a stone three and a-half feet by four and a-half,
and bearing the inscription: ``Tribute from the Ten Thousand
Countries of the World.'' The Chinese solemnly believe that
in these tablets all the nations of the earth have acknowledged
the preeminence of Confucius.
Then we visited three gloomy buildings where the animals for
sacrifice are killed--one for cattle, one for sheep and one for
pigs. Beyond them, we entered temples to the wife of Confucius,
to his parents and to the ``Five Generations of
Ancestors,'' though the last-mentioned contains tablets to nine
generations instead of five. On every side are scores of monuments,
erected by or in honour of famous kings, some of them
by the monarchs of dynasties which flourished before the Christian
era.
Most notable of all is the great temple of the sage himself,
standing well back on a spacious stone-paved terrace, around
which runs a handsome marble balustrade. The eye is at once
arrested by the twenty-eight noble marble pillars, ten in front,
ten in the rear and four at each end. The ten in front are
round and elaborately carved, as magnificent a series of columns
as I ever saw. The others are smooth, octagonal pillars, but
traced with various designs in black.
Within, there are twelve other columns about four feet in
diameter and twenty-five feet high, each cut from a single tree
and beautifully polished. Naturally, the central object of
interest is a figure of Confucius of heroic size but impossible
features. In front is the tablet with costly lacquered ornaments
and pedestals, and an altar on which were a bullock and
two pigs, each carefully scraped and dressed and lying with
heads towards the statue and tablet. In several other temples,
notably in the one to the Five Generations of Ancestors, other
animals were lying, some evidently offered the day before and
others awaiting the worship of the day now beginning.
Altogether I counted nineteen sacrificial animals--one bullock,
eight sheep and ten pigs. The great temple is of noble proportions,
with an overhanging roof of enormous size but constructed
on such graceful lines as to be exquisitely beautiful.
But within dust reigns, while without as usual the grass and
weeds grow unchecked.
Last of all we visited the library, though the name is a
misnomer, for there are no books in it and our courteous guides
said there never had been. We ascended the narrow stairs
leading from the vast, empty, dusty room on the lower floor
through an equally empty second story to the third and topmost
story, which is the home of hundreds of doves. Going
out on the narrow balustrade under the eaves in the gray dawn
of the morning, I looked upon the gorgeous gilded roof of the
temple near by and then down upon the many ancient buildings,
the darkly solemn pines, the massive monuments resting
on ponderous stone turtles, and the group of Chinese standing
among the shadows and with faces turned curiously upward.
Suddenly a dove flew over my head and then the sun rose
slowly and majestically above the sombre tree-tops, throwing
splendid floods of light upon us who stood aloft. But the
Chinese below were in the sombre shades of a night that for
them had not yet fully ended. I would fain believe that the
physical was a parable of the spiritual. All the maxims of the
Acme of Perfection and Learning-Promoting King have not
brought the Chinese out of moral twilight. After all these
centuries of ceaseless toil, they still remain amid the mists and
shadows. But their faces are beginning to turn towards the
light of a day whose sun already touches the mountain-tops.
Some even now are in that ``marvellous light,'' and it cannot
be long before shining hosts of God shall pour down the
mountain-sides, chasing on noiseless feet and across wide plains
the swiftly retreating night ``until the day dawn and the
shadows flee away.''
At the outer gate, we bade good-bye to the dignified officials
who had so hospitably conducted us through this venerable and
historic place and who had taken such kindly pains to explain
its ancient relics and customs. Who were they? we secretly
wondered. Imagine our feelings when the lieutenant in command
of our escort afterwards informed us that they were the
guardian of the temple and the Duke himself!
Leaving the city of the mighty dead, we journeyed through
a lovely region guarded by distant mountains. At the walled
city of Si-sui, sixty li distant, soldiers met us and apparently
the whole population lined the streets as we rode to our inn,
where the yamen secretary was awaiting us with a feast.
This inn, too, had been specially cleaned, and there were
cushions, red cloths for the seats, and a screen for the door.
In the afternoon, the country became rougher. But while the
soil was thinner, the scenery was finer, an undulating region
traversed by a shining river and bounded by mountains
which gradually drew nearer. One hundred and ten li from
Ku-fu, we stopped for the night at Pien-kiao, a small city with
an unusually poor inn but a magnificent spring. It gushed up
over an area twenty-five feet square and with such volume that
the stream ran away like a mill-race. The Emperor Kien Lung
built a retaining wall about the spring and a temple and summer-
house adjoining. The wall is as solid as ever, but only a
few crumbling pillars and fragments remain of the temple and
pavilion. The Emperor affirmed that he was told in a vision
that if he would build a stone boat, the waters of the spring
would float it to Nanking whither he wished to go. So he
built the boat of heavy cut stone, with a twelve-foot beam and
a length of fifty-five feet. It is still there with the prow five
feet above the ground, but the rest of the boat has sunk almost
to the level of the earth about it. Is the old Emperor's idea any
more absurd to us than our iron boats would have been to him?
The sun struggled long with heavy mists the following morning
and the air was so cool that I had to wrap myself in a
blanket in the shendza. By eight, the sun gained the victory
and we had another breezy, perfect June day. But the road
was stony and trying beyond anything we had yet seen. The
villages were evidently poorer, as might be expected on such a
rocky soil. The people stared silently and did not so often return
my smiles. Whether they were sullen or simply boorish
and unaccustomed to foreigners I could only conjecture. Few
white men had been seen there.
A hard day's journey of 140 li through a rocky region
brought us to Fei-hsien. Rain was falling the next morning
and the Chinese muleteers do not like to travel in rain. But
the prospect was for a steady pour and as we were in a wretched
inn and only ninety li from Ichou-fu, we wanted to go on.
A present of 600 small cash for each muleteer (twenty
cents) overcame all scruples. Just as I had comfortably
ensconced myself in my shendza with an oilcloth on top and a
rubber blanket in front, I saw a centipede on my leg, but I
managed to slay him before he bit me. By nine, the rain
ceased and though the clouds still threatened, we had a cool
and comfortable ride through hundreds of fields of peanuts,
indigo and millet to I-tang, where we stopped for tiffin at a
squalid inn kept by a tall, dilapidated looking Chinese, who rejoiced
in the name of Confucius. He was really a descendant
of the sage and was very proud of the fact that his bones were
in due time to rest in the sacred cemetery at Ku-fu.
By 5:40 P. M. we reached Ichou-fu, where the solitary Rev.
W. W. Faris was glad to see another white man. A
stay of several days was marked by many pleasant incidents.
There was much of interest for a visitor to see. The mission
work at Ichou-fu, Presbyterian, includes two hospitals, one for
men and one for women, a chapel and separate day schools for
boys and girls. The church has about a hundred members
and in the outstations there are ten other organized churches
besides ten unorganized congregations. All these churches
and congregations provide their own chapels and pay their own
running expenses. Here also the officials were most courteous.
The Prefect, who promptly called with a retinue of fifty
soldiers and attendants, was a masterful looking man who
conversed with intelligence on a wide variety of topics. The
day before our departure, we gave a feast to the leading men
of the city in return for their many courtesies. Every invitation
was accepted and thirty-five guests were present. They
remained till late and were apparently highly pleased.
Late in the evening, a youth who had painfully walked 180
li, came to Dr. Johnson's dispensary and presented the following
note of introduction:
``Our office a servant who getting a yellow sick, which
suffered a few year and cured for nothing. he trusted me to
beg you to save his sick and I now ordered him to going before
you to beg you remedy facely. With many thanks to you,
``Yours sincerely,
``V. T. GEE.''
Having done all that was possible in so short a time to
``save his sick,'' we resumed our journey, thirty Chinese
Christians accompanying us to the River I, a li from the city.
The atmosphere was gloriously clear and on the second day
out, crossing some high ridges, we had superb views of wide
cultivated valleys, and of Ku-chou, a famous city that is said
to contain more literary graduates than any other city of its
size in the province.
Then followed a more level country with interminable fields
of kao-liang and many orchards of walnuts, pears and cherries,
while low mountains rose in the background. Men and horses
were tired after our long and hard journey, and the mules'
backs were becoming very sore. But the end drew near and
the fifth day from Ichow-fu we reached Yueh-kou, the border
of the German hinterland. The German line is near Kiaochou,
but the rule is that Chinese soldiers must not come beyond
this point, 100 li from the line, and that German
soldiers shall not cross it going the other way except on the line
of the railroad. Here therefore our escort had to leave us, as
Chinese and Germans have agreed that any armed men crossing
the line may be fired on, and even if there should be no
casualty, both the German and Chinese authorities might justly
have protested if Americans violated the compact. I suggested
going on without an escort to our proposed night stop thirty
li further. But my more experienced companions thought it
dangerous to spend the night alone at an inn within this belt,
as the villagers near the line were as bitter against foreigners
as any in the province, the German brusqueness and ruthlessness
having greatly exasperated them.
So we spent the night at Yueh-kou. No one interfered with
us the next day and by getting an early start, we covered ninety
long li to Kiao-chou by noon. After five weeks in a mule
litter, it seemed wonderful to make 138 li in three hours in a
railway car. By 6:50 P. M., we reached Tsing-tau, having,
the missionaries said, succeeded in ``hustling the East to a
remarkable degree.'' My note-book reads--``A bath, clean
clothes, a hot supper and a good night's sleep removed the
last vestige of weariness.''
VII
SOME EXPERIENCES OF A TRAVELLER--FEASTS,
INNS AND SOLDIERS
THE hardships of interior travelling were less than I
had supposed. It is true that there were many
experiences which, if enumerated, would make a formidable
list. But each as it arose appeared insignificant. As a
whole, the trip was as enjoyable as any vacation tour. The
weather was as a rule fine. The sun was often hot in the
middle of the day, but cool breezes usually tempered the heat
of the afternoon, while the nights required the protection of
blankets. There was some rain at times, but not enough to
impede seriously our progress. It was altogether the most
perfect May and June weather I have ever seen. Nor was it
exceptional, according to Dr. Charles Johnson who has spent
many years in North China. But of course I saw Shantung
at its most favourable period. July and August are wet and
hot, while the winters are clear and cold.
I found a trunk an unmitigated nuisance. Though it was
made to order for a pack-mule, no pack-mules could be hired in
that harvest season, and the trunk was too heavy for one side
of a donkey, even after transferring all practicable articles to
the shendza. So it had to be put in a cart, and as a cart cannot
keep up with a shendza, I was often separated from my
trunk for days at a time. Besides, a couple valises would have
held all necessary clothing anyway. I took a light folding cot
and a bag held a thin mattress, small pillow, sheets and two
light blankets, so that I had a very comfortable bed under the
always necessary mosquito net.
We also took a supply of tinned food to which we could
usually add by purchase en route chickens and eggs, while occasionally
in the proper season, we could secure string-beans,
onions, cucumbers, apricots, peanuts, walnuts and radishes.
So we fared well. The native food cannot be wisely depended
upon by a foreigner. He cannot maintain his strength, as the
poorer Chinese do, on a diet of rice and unleavened bread,
while the food of the well-to-do classes, when it can be had, is
apt to be so greasy and peculiar as to incite his digestive apparatus
to revolt. Indeed, a Chinese feast is one of his most
serious experiences. Most heartily, indeed, did I appreciate
the kindly motives of the magistrates who invited me to these
feasts, for their purpose was as generously hospitable as the
purpose of any American who invites a visitor to dinner. But
the Chinese bill-of-fare includes dishes that are rather trying to
a Christian palate, and good form requires the guest to taste at
least each dish, for if he fails to do so, he makes his host
``lose face''--a serious breach of etiquette in China. For
example, here is the menu of a typical Chinese feast to which
I was invited, the dishes being served in the order given,
sweets coming first and soup towards the last in this land of
topsy-turveydom:
- Small cakes (five kinds), sliced pears, candied peanuts,
raw water-chestnuts, cooked water-chestnuts, hard-boiled ducks'
eggs (cut into small pieces), candied walnuts, honied walnuts,
shredded chicken, apricot seeds, sliced pickled plums, sliced
dried smoked ham (cut into tiny pieces), shredded sea moss,
watermelon seeds, shrimps, bamboo sprouts, jellied haws. All
the above dishes were cold. Then followed hot:
2. Shrimps served in the shell with vinegar, sea-slugs with
shredded chicken, bits of sweetened pork and shredded dough
--the pork and sea-slugs being cooked and served in fragrant
oil.
3. Bamboo sprouts, stewed chicken kidneys.
4. Spring chicken cooked crisp in oil.
5. Stewed sea-slugs with ginger root and bean curd,
stewed fungus with reed roots and ginger tops (all hot).
6. Tarts with candied jelly, sugar dumplings with dates.
7. Hot pudding made of ``the eight precious vegetables,''
consisting of dates, watermelon seeds, chopped walnuts, chopped
chestnuts, preserved oranges, lotus seeds, and two kinds of rice,
all mixed and served in syrup--a delicious dish.
8. Shelled shrimps with roots of reeds and bits of hard-
boiled eggs, all in one bowl with fragrant oil, biscuits coated
with sweet seeds.
9. Glutinous rice in little layers with browned sugar between,
minced pork dumplings, steamed biscuits.
10. Omelette with sea-slugs and bamboo sprouts, all in oil,
bits of chicken stewed in oil, pork with small dumplings of
flour and starch.
11. Stewed pigs' kidneys, shrimps stewed in oil, date pie.
12. Vermicelli and egg soup.
13. Stewed pork balls, reed roots, bits of hard-boiled yolks
of eggs, all in oil.
14. Birds' nest soup.
The appetite being pretty well sated by this time, the following
delicacies were served to taper off with:
15. Chicken boiled in oil, pork swimming in a great bowl
of its own fat, stewed fish stomachs, egg soup.
16. Steamed biscuit.
Tea was served from the beginning and throughout the feast.
It was made on the table by pouring hot water into a small pot
half full of tea leaves, the pot being refilled as needed. The
tea was served without cream or sugar, and was mild and delicious.
Rice whiskey in tiny cups is usually served at feasts,
though it was often omitted from the feasts given to us. The
Chinese assert that the alcohol is necessary ``to cut the grease.''
There is certainly enough grease to cut.
The guests sit at small round tables, each accommodating
about four. There are, of course, no plates or knives or forks
though small china spoons are used for the soups. All the
food is cut into small pieces before being brought to the table,
so that no further cutting is supposed to be necessary. Each
article of food is brought on in a single dish, which is placed
in the centre of the table, and then each guest helps himself
out of the common dish with his chop-sticks, the same chop-
sticks being used during the entire meal. It is considered a
mark of distinguished courtesy for the host to fish around in
the dish with his own chop-sticks for a choice morsel and place
it in front of the guest. With profound emotion, at almost
every feast that I attended in China, I saw my considerate
hosts take the chop-sticks which had made many trips to their
own mouths, stir around in the central dish for a particularly fine
titbit and deposit it on the table before me. And of course,
not to be outdone in politeness, I ate these dainty morsels with
smiles of gratified pride. As each of the Chinese at the table
deemed himself my host, and as the Chinese are extremely
polite and attentive to their guests, the table soon became wet
and greasy from the pieces of pork, slugs and chicken placed
upon it as well as from the drippings from the chop-sticks in
their constant trips from the serving bowls.
However, two small brass bowls, fitting together, are placed
beside each guest, who is expected to sip a little water from the
upper one, rinse his mouth with it and expectorate it into the
lower one. The emotion of the foreign visitor is intensified
when he learns that it is counted polite to make all the noise
possible by smacking the lips as a sign that the food is delicious,
sucking the tea or soup noisily from the spoon to show
that it is hot, and belching to show that it is enjoyed. Often,
a dignified official would let his tea stand until it was cold, but
when he took it up, he would suck it with a loud noise as if it
were scalding hot, as he was too polite to act as if it were cold.
But the American or European, who inwardly groans at a
Chinese repast and who felicitates himself on the alleged
superior methods of his own race, may well consider how his
own customs impress a Celestial. A Chinese gentleman who
was making a tour of Europe and America wrote to a relative
in China as follows:
``You cannot civilize these foreign devils. They are beyond redemption.
They will live for weeks and months without touching a mouthful
of rice, but they eat the flesh of bullocks and sheep in enormous quantities.
That is why they smell so badly; they smell like sheep themselves.
Every day they take a bath to rid themselves of their disagreeable odours
but they do not succeed. Nor do they eat their meat cooked in small
pieces. It is carried into the room in large chunks, often half raw, and
they cut and slash and tear it apart. They eat with knives and prongs.
It makes a civilized being perfectly nervous. One fancies himself in the
presence of sword-swallowers. They even sit down at the same table with
women, and the latter are served first, reversing the order of nature.''
So I humbly adapted myself as best I could to Chinese customs
and learned to like many of the natives' dishes, though to
the last, there were some that I merely nibbled to ``save the
face'' of mine host. Some of the dishes were really excellent
and as a rule all were well-cooked, although the oil in which
much of the food was steeped made it rather greasy. My digestive
apparatus is pretty good, but it would take a copper-
lined stomach to partake without disaster of a typical Chinese
feast. But for that matter so it would to eat a traditional New
England dinner of boiled salt pork, corned beef, cabbage, turnips,
onions and potatoes, followed by a desert of mince pie
and plum pudding and all washed down by copious draughts
of hard cider.
Chinese inns do not impoverish even the economical traveller.
Our bill for our tiffin stop was usually 100 small cash, a little
more than three cents, for our entire party of about a score of
men and animals. For the night, the common charge was 700
cash, twenty-three cents. Travellers are expected to provide
their own food and bedding and to pay a small extra sum for
the rice and fodder used by their servants and mules, but even
then the cost appears ridiculously small to a foreigner. Still,
the most thoroughly seasoned traveller can hardly consider a
Chinese inn a comfortable residence. It is simply a rough,
one-story building enclosing an open courtyard. The rooms
are destitute of furniture except occasionally a rude table. The
floor is the beaten earth, foul with the use of scores and perhaps
hundreds of years. The windows are covered with oiled
paper which admits only a dim light and no air at all. The
walls are begrimed with smoke and covered with cobwebs.
Across the end of the room is the inevitable kang--a brick platform
under which the cooking fire is built and on which the
traveller squats by day and sleeps by night. The unhappy
white man who has not been prudent enough to bring a cot
with him feels as if he were sleeping on a hot stove with ``the
lid off.''
The inns between Ichou-fu and Chining-chou were the poorest
I saw, and if a man has stopped in one of them, he has been
fairly initiated into the discomforts of travelling in China. But
wherever one goes, the heat and smoke and bad air, together
with the vermin which literally swarms on the kang and floor
and walls, combine to make a night in a Chinese inn an experience
that is not easily forgotten. However, the foreign
traveller soon learns, perforce, to be less fastidious than at home
and I found myself hungry enough to eat heartily and tired
enough to sleep soundly in spite of the dirt and bugs. But the
heat and bad air as the summer advanced were not so easily
mastered, and so I began to sleep in the open courtyard, finding
chattering Chinese and squealing mules less objectionable
than the foul-smelling, vermin-infested inns, since outside I had
at least plenty of cool, fresh air.
There is no privacy in a Chinese inn. The doors, when
there are any, are innocent of locks and keys, while the Chinese
guests as well as the innkeeper's family and the people of the
neighbourhood have an inquisitiveness that is not in the least
tempered by bashfulness. But nothing was ever stolen, though
some of our supplies must have been attractive to many of the
poverty stricken men who crowded about us. On one occasion,
an inn-employee, who was sent to exchange a bank-note
for cash, did not return. There was much excited jabbering,
but Mr. Laughlin firmly though kindly held the innkeeper responsible
and that worthy admitted that he knew who had taken
the money and refunded it. So all was peace. The innkeeper
was probably in collusion with the thief. This was our
only trouble of the kind, though we slept night after night in
the public inns with all our goods lying about wholly unprotected.
Occasionally, especially in the larger towns, there was
a night watchman. But he was a noisy nuisance. To convince
his employers that he was awake, he frequently clapped
together two pieces of wood. All night long that strident
clack, clack, clack, resounded every few seconds. It is an odd
custom, for of course it advertises to thieves the location of the
watchman. But there is much in China that is odd to an
American.
On a tour in Asia, the foreigner who does not wish to be ill
will exercise reasonable care. It looks smart to take insufficient
sleep, snatch a hurried meal out of a tin can, drink unboiled
water and walk or ride in the sun without a pith hat or an
umbrella. Some foreigners who ought to know better are careless
about these things and good-naturedly chaff one who is
more particular. But while one should not be unnecessarily
fussy, yet if he is courageous enough to be sensible, he will not
only preserve his health, but be physically benefited by his
tour, while the heedless man will probably be floored by dysentery
or even if he escapes that scourge will reach his destination
so worn out that he must take days or perhaps weeks to recuperate.
I was not ill a day, made what Dr. Bergen called
``the record tour of Shantung,'' and came out in splendid
health and spirits just because I had nerve enough to insist on
taking reasonable time for eating and sleeping, boiling my
drinking water, and buying the fresh vegetables and fruit with
which the country abounded. From this view-point, Dr.
Charles F. Johnson, who escorted me from Chining-chou to
Tsing-tau, was a model. With no loss of time, with but trifling
additional expense and with comparatively little extra trouble,
he had an appetizing table, while water bottles and fruit tins
were always cooled in buckets of well water so that they were
grateful to a dusty, thirsty throat. It is not difficult to make
oneself fairly comfortable in travelling even when nearly all
modern conveniences are wanting and it pays to take the necessary
trouble.
Throughout the tour, we were watched in a way that was
suggestive. When United States Consul Fowler first told me
that Governor Yuan Shih Kai would send a military escort
with me, I said that I was not proud, that I did not care to go
through Shantung with the pomp and panoply of war, that I
was on a peaceful, conciliatory errand, and preferred to travel
with only my missionary companions. But he replied that
while the province was then quiet, no one could tell what an
hour might bring forth, that in the tension that existed even a
local and sporadic attack on a foreigner might be a signal for a
new outbreak, that the Governor was trying to keep the people
in hand, and that as he was held responsible for consequences
he must be allowed to have his own men in charge of a foreign
party that purposed to journey so far into the interior. So, of
course, I yielded.
When I lifted up my eyes and looked on the escort at Kiao-
chou, I felt that my fears of pomp and panoply had been
groundless, for the ``escort'' consisted of two disreputable-
looking coolies who had apparently been picked up on the
street and who were armed with antiquated flint-locks that
were more dangerous to their bearers than to an enemy. I am
sure that these ``guards'' would have been the first to run at
the slightest sign of danger. We did not see them again till
we reached Kaomi, where we gave them a present and sent
them back, glad to be rid of them. We afterwards learned
that they were only the retainers of the local Kiao-chou yamen
to see us to the border of the hinterland, which Governor
Yuan's troops were not permitted to cross.
But the men who met us at the border were soldiers of
another type--powerful looking cavalrymen on excellent horses.
Remembering the stories we had heard regarding the murder
of foreigners by Chinese troops who had been sent ostensibly
to guard them, we were relieved to find that there were only
three of them, and as there were three of us, we felt safe, for we
believed that in an emergency we could whip them. When
on leaving Wei-hsien the number increased to five and then to
six, we became dubious. But we concluded that as we were
active, stalwart men, we might in a pinch manage twice our
number of Chinese soldiers or, if worst came to worst, as we
were unencumbered by women, children or luggage, we could
sprint, on the old maxim,
``He that fights and runs away
Will live to fight another day.''
But when a little later, the force grew to eleven and then to
fifteen, we were hopelessly out-classed, especially as they were
well-mounted and armed not only with swords but with modern
magazine rifles.
The result, however, proved that our fears were groundless,
for the men were good soldiers, intelligent, respectful, well-
drilled, and thoroughly disciplined. They treated us with
strict military etiquette, standing at attention and saluting in
the most approved military fashion whenever they spoke to us
or we to them. I was not accustomed to travelling in such
state. Our three shendzas meant six mules and three muleteers,
one for each shendza. Our cook and ``boy'' each had
a donkey, and a pack-mule was necessary for our food supplies.
So including the men and horses of the escort, we
usually had nineteen men and twenty animals and a part of the
time we had even a larger number. We therefore made quite
a procession, and attracted considerable attention. I suspect,
however, that some of those shrewd Chinese were not deceived
as to my humble station at home for one man asked the missionary
who accompanied me whether I travelled with an escort
in America!
The lieutenant commanding our escort said that he received
forty-two taels a month,[19] the sergeants eleven taels, and the
privates nine taels. The men buy their own food, but their
clothing, horses, provender, etc., are furnished by the Government.
This is big pay for China. The lieutenant further said
that Governor Yuan Shih Kai had thirty regiments of a nominal
strength of 500 each and an actual strength of 250, making
a total of 7,500, and that the soldiers had been drilled by
German officers at Tien-tsin. There are no foreign officers
now connected with the force, but there are two foreign educated
Chinese who receive 300 taels a month each. He further
said that all the men with us had killed Boxers and that he
was confident that they could rout 1,000 of them. An illustration
of the reputation of these troops occurred during my
visit in Paoting-fu a little later. A messenger breathlessly
reported that the Allied Villagers, who had banded themselves
together to resist the collection of indemnity, had captured a
city only ninety li southward and that they intended to march
on Paoting-fu itself. Three thousand of Yuan Shih Kai's
troops had been ordered to go to Peking to prepare for the
return of the Emperor and Empress Dowager, but the French
general at Paoting-fu had forbade them coming beyond a point
a hundred li south of Paoting-fu, so that they were then encamped
there awaiting further orders. The Prefect hastily wired
Viceroy Li Hung Chang in Peking asking him to order these
troops to retake the recaptured city, as the Imperial troops were
``needed here,'' a euphemism for saying that they were useless.
Li Hung Chang gave the desired order and the seasoned troops
of Yuan Shih Kai made short work of the Allied Villagers.
[19] A tael equals sixty-five cents at the present rate of exchange.
At any rate, those who escorted me through Shantung were
certainly good soldiers. They had splendid horses and took
good care of them, while several evenings they gave us as fine
exhibitions of sword drill as I ever saw. I was interested to
find that seven of them belonged to a total abstinence society,
though none of them were Christians. I became really attached
to them. They were very patient, although my journey
compelled them to make a long and hard march for which they
received no extra pay. On the last evening of the trip, I gave
them a feast in the most approved Chinese style. I made a
little farewell address and gave the officer in charge the following
letter which seemed to please them greatly:--
``June 27th, 1901.
``To His Excellency,
``General Yuan Shih Kai,
``Governor of the Province of Shantung, China,
``SIR:
``In completing my tour of the Province of Shantung, I have pleasure
in expressing my high appreciation, and that of the missionaries of the
Presbyterian Church who accompanied me, of the excellent conduct of the
soldiers who formed our escort under the command of (Lieutenant) Wang
Pa Chung. Both he and his troopers were courteous and faithful, attentive
to every duty and meriting our admiration for the perfection of their
discipline.
``We regret the death of one of their horses, but we are satisfied that
the soldier was in no way to blame. The animal died in the inn courtyard
early in the morning.
``I have had pleasure in giving the officer and his men a feast. In
addition I offered them a present, but the Wang Pa Chung declined to
accept it.
``Thanking you for your courtesy in detailing such good soldiers for
our escort,
``I have, sir, the honour to be
``Your obedient servant,
(Signed) ``ARTHUR J. BROWN.''
I was impressed by the refusal to accept the present, which
was a considerable sum to Chinese. But the men were evidently
under strict orders. The lieutenant was polite and
grateful, but he said that he ``could not accept a gift if it were
ten thousand taels.''
During the whole tour, these soldiers watched us with a fidelity
that was almost embarrassing at times. Not for a moment
did they lose sight of us except when we were in the mission
compounds. If we took a walk about a village, they followed
us. Eating, sleeping or travelling, we were always watched.
Several times we tried to escape such espionage, or to induce
the soldiers to turn back. We did not feel our need of them,
nor did I desire my peaceful mission to be associated with military
display. Besides, if hostility had been manifested, a
dozen Chinese soldiers would have been of little avail among
those swarming millions. But our efforts and protests were
vain and we had no alternative but to submit with the best
grace possible.
Nor was this all, for many of the magistrates whose districts
we crossed en route added other attentions. Indeed, they appeared
to be almost nervously anxious that no mishap should
befall us. I had sent no announcement of my coming to any
one except my missionary friends, nor had I asked for any favour
or protection save the usual passport through the United States
Consul. But the first Tao-tai I met politely inquired about my
route, and, as I afterwards learned, sent word to the next
magistrate. He in turn forwarded the word to the one beyond,
and so on throughout the whole trip. As we approached a
city, uniformed attendants from the chief magistrate's yamen
usually met us and escorted us, sometimes with much display
of banners and trumpets and armed guards, to an inn which
had been prepared for our reception by having a little of its
dirt swept into the corners and a few of its bugs killed. Then
would come a feast of many courses of Chinese delicacies. A
call from the magistrate himself often followed, and he would
chat amicably while great crowds stood silently about.
There was something half pathetic about the attentions we
received. Our journey was like a triumphal procession. For
example, twenty li from Chang Ku a messenger on horseback
met us. He had evidently been on the watch, for after kneeling
he galloped back with the news of our approach. Soon
a dozen soldiers in scarlet uniforms appeared, saluted, wheeled
and marched before us to an inn where we found rugs on the
floor and kangs, a cloth on the table and two elevated seats
covered with scarlet robes. Attendants from the yamen with
their red tasselled helmets were numerous and attentive.
Basins of water were brought and presently the magistrate sent
an elaborate feast. As we finished the repast, the magistrate
himself called. He was very affable and made quite a long
call. In like manner the district magistrate of Fei-hsien sent
his secretary, personal flags and twenty soldiers twenty li to
meet us. They knelt as we approached and shouted in
unison--``We wish the great man peace!'' So as usual we
entered the town with pomp and circumstance, our own escort
added to the local one making a brave show.
And these were typical experiences. We could not prevent
them and to resent them would have made the official ``lose
face'' and so embittered him. At Pien-kiao, where a hundred
of Governor Yuan Shih Kai's troops were stationed, the whole
garrison turned out, meeting us a couple of miles from the city
and escorting us to our inn with blares of trumpets which
Dr. Johnson said were only sounded for high officials.
We were awakened at three o'clock the next morning by the
bellowing of calves and the braying of mules in the inn courtyard,
and as we had our longest day's journey ahead of us, we
rose, breakfasted at four by candle-light and were on the road
at a quarter of five. But in spite of the early hour, the whole
garrison again turned out and lined the road at ``present
arms'' as we passed.
Think of the mayor of an American city of fifty or a hundred
thousand habitants hastening to call in state on three
unknown travellers, who were simply stopping for luncheon at a
hotel, and sending a couple dozen policemen to escort them in
and out of town! The Shantung Chinese are a strong, proud,
independent people, and it must have cost them something to be
so effusive to foreigners. There was doubtless in it some real
regard for Americans and American missionaries. But policy
was probably also a factor. The officials felt that any further
attack on foreigners would be a pretext for further foreign
aggression, an excuse for Germany to advance from Kiao-chou,
and they were anxious not to give occasion for it. Each
official was apparently determined to make it plain that he was
doing his duty in trying to protect these foreigners so that if
they got hurt it would not be his fault. Perhaps, too, he was
not averse to showing the populace that foreigners had to be
guarded. I was half ashamed to travel in that way. But I
could not help myself. Sometimes I felt that the guard was not
so much for us as for the Chinese, assuring nervous officials that
foreigners should have no further excuse for aggression and
warning the evil-disposed that they must not commit acts
which might get the officials into trouble.
Whatever the reasons were, they were plainly impersonal.
No one of us had any official status nor were we as individuals
of any consequence whatever to Chinese officials. We were
simply white men and as such we were regarded as representatives
of a race which had made its power felt. Perhaps
the soldiers and the orders of Governor Yuan Shih Kai had
much to do with the quietness of the people, but some way
I felt perfectly safe. Whether any attack would have been
made if I had been allowed to journey quietly with my one or
two missionary companions, I am not competent to judge.
Foreigners who had lived many years in China told me before
starting that my life would not be safe beyond rifle shot.
They have told me since that the profuse attentions that we received
were mere pretence, that the very officials who welcomed
us as honoured guests probably cursed our race as soon
as our backs were turned, and that if the people had not understood
from the presence of troops and from the magistrates'
marked personal attentions that we were not to be molested,
we might have met with violence in a dozen places. The
opinions of such experienced men were not to be lightly set
aside.
All I can say is that on these suppositions the Chinese are
masters of the art of dissimulation, for in all our journeyings
through the very heart of the region where the Boxers originated,
and where the anti-foreign hatred was said to be bitterest,
we saw not a sign of unfriendliness. The typical official received
us with the courtesy of a ``gentleman of the old school.''
The vast throngs that quickly assembled at every stopping
place, while silent, were respectful. We tried to behave decently
ourselves, to speak kindly to every man, to pay fair
prices for what we bought; in short, to act just as we would
have acted in America. And every man to whom we smiled,
smiled in return. Wherever we asked a civil question we got
a civil answer. Coolies would stop their barrows, farmers
leave their fields to direct us aright. In all our travelling in
the interior, amid a population so dense that we constantly
marvelled, we never heard a rude word or saw a hostile sign.
I naturally find it difficult to believe that those pleasant,
obliging people would have killed us if they had not been restrained
by their magistrates, and that the officials who exerted
themselves to show us all possible honour would have gladly
murdered us if they had dared.
And yet less than a year before, the Chinese had angrily destroyed
the property and venomously sought the lives of foreigners
who were as peaceably disposed as we were, ruthlessly
hunting men and women who had never done them wrong, and
who had devoted their lives to teaching the young and healing
the sick and preaching the gospel of love and good will. Why
they did this we shall have occasion to observe in a later
chapter.
PART II
The Commercial Force and the Economic
Revolution
VIII
WORLD CONDITIONS THAT ARE AFFECTING CHINA[20]
[20] Part of this chapter appeared as an article in the American Monthly
Review of Reviews, October, 1904.
SEVERAL outside forces have pressed steadily and heavily
upon the exclusiveness and conservatism of the
Chinese, and though they have not yet succeeded in
changing the essential character of the nation, they have set
in motion vast movements which have already convulsed great
sections of the Empire and which are destined to affect stupendous
transformations. The first of these forces is foreign
commerce.
To understand the operation of this force, we must consider
that its impact has been enormously increased by the extension
of facilities for intercommunication. The extent to which these
have revolutionized the world is one of the most extraordinary
features of our extraordinary age. It is startlingly significant
of the change that has taken place that Russia and Japan, nations
7,000 miles apart by land and a still greater distance by
water, are able in the opening years of the twentieth century
to wage war in a region which one army can reach in four
weeks and the other in four days, and that all the rest of the
world can receive daily information as to the progress of the
conflict. A half century ago, Russia could no more have sent
a large army to Manchuria than to the moon, while down to
the opening of her ports by Commodore Perry in 1854, the few
wooden vessels that made the long journey to Japan found an
unprogressive and bitterly anti-foreign heathen nation with an
edict issued in 1638 still on its statute books declaring--``So
long as the sun shall continue to warm the earth, let no Christian
be so bold as to come to Japan; and let all know that the
King of Spain himself, or the Christian's God, or the great God
of all, if He dare violate this command, shall pay for it with
his head.''
Nor were other far-eastern peoples any more hospitable.
China, save for a few port cities, was as impenetrable as when
in 1552 the dying Xavier had cried--``O Rock, Rock, when
wilt thou open!'' Siam excluded all foreigners until the century's
first quarter had passed, and Laos saw no white man till
1868. A handful of British traders were so greedily determined
to keep all India as a private commercial preserve that,
forgetting their own indebtedness to Christianity, they sneered
at the proposal to send missionaries to India as ``the maddest,
most expensive, most unwarranted project ever proposed by a
lunatic enthusiast,'' while as late as 1857, a director of the
East India Company declared that ``he would rather see a band
of devils in India than a band of missionaries.'' Korea was
rightly called ``the hermit nation'' until 1882; and as for
Africa, it was not till 1873 that the world learned of that part
of it in which the heroic Livingstone died on his knees, not till
1877 that Stanley staggered into a West Coast settlement after
a desperate journey of 999 days from Zanzibar through Central
Africa, not till 1884 that the Berlin Conference formed the
International Association of the Congo guaranteeing that which
has not yet been realized ``liberty of conscience'' and ``the
free and public exercise of every creed.''
Even in America within the memory of men still living, the
lumbering, white-topped ``prairie schooner'' was the only
conveyance for the tedious overland journey to California.
Hardy frontiersmen were fighting Indians in the Mississippi
Valley, and the bold Whitman was ``half a year'' in bearing a
message from Oregon to Washington.
The Hon. John W. Foster tells us in his ``Century of American
Diplomacy'' that ``General Lane, the first territorial governor
of Oregon, left his home in Indiana, August 27, 1848,
and desiring to reach his destination as soon as possible, travelling
overland to San Francisco and thence by ship, reached his
post on the first of March following--the journey occupying
six months. At the time our treaty of peace and independence
was signed in 1783, two stage-coaches were sufficient for all the
passengers and nearly all the freight between New York and
Boston.'' It is only seventy years since the Rev. John Lowrie,
with his bride and Mr. and Mrs. Reed, rode horseback from
Pittsburg through flooded rivers and over the Allegheny
Mountains to Philadelphia, whence it took them four and
a-half months to reach Calcutta.
Nor was this all, for scores of the conveniences and even
necessities of our modern life were unknown at the beginning
of the nineteenth century. To get some idea of the vastness
of the revolution in the conditions of living, we have but to
remind ourselves that ``in the year 1800 no steamer ploughed
the waters; no locomotive traversed an inch of soil; no photographic
plate had ever been kissed by sunlight; no telephone
had ever talked from town to town; steam had never driven
mighty mills and electric currents had never been harnessed
into telegraph and trolley wires.''[21] ``In all the land there was no
power loom, no power press, no large manufactory in textiles,
wood or iron, no canal. The possibilities of electricity in
light, heat and power were unknown and unsuspected. The
cotton gin had just begun its revolutionary work. Intercommunication
was difficult, the postal service slow and costly,
literature scanty and mostly of inferior quality.''[22]
[21] The Rev. Dr. Theodore Cuyler.
[22] Address of the Bishops of the M. E. Church, 1900.
How marvellously the application of steam as a motive
power has united once widely separated regions. So swiftly
have the changes come and so quickly have we adapted ourselves
to them that it is difficult to realize the magnitude of the
transformation that has been achieved. We can ride from
Pittsburg to Philadelphia in eight hours and to Calcutta in
twenty-two days. The journey across our own continent is no
longer marked by the ox-cart and the campfire and the bones
of perished expeditions. It is simply a pleasant trip of less
than a week, and in an emergency in August, 1903, Henry P.
Lowe travelled from New York to Los Angeles, 3,241 miles, in
seventy-three hours and twenty-one minutes. Populous states
covered with a network of railway and telegraph lines invite
the nations of the world to join them in celebrating at St.
Louis the ``Purchase'' of a region which a hundred years ago
was as foreign to the American people as the Philippines now
are. The Rev. Dr. Calvin Mateer, who in 1863 was six
months in reaching Chefoo, China, on a voyage from whose
hardships his wife never fully recovered, returned in a comfortable
journey of one month in 1902. To-day, for all practical
purposes, China is nearer New York than California once
was.
No waters are too remote for the modern steamer. Its smoke
trails across every sea and far up every navigable stream. Ten
mail steamers regularly run on the Siberian Yenisei, while the
Obi, flowing from the snows of the Little Altai Mountains,
bears 302 steam vessels on various parts of its 2,000-mile
journey to the Obi Gulf on the Arctic Ocean. Stanley could
now go from Glasgow to Stanley Falls in forty-three days.
Already there are forty-six steamers on the Upper Congo.
From Cape Town, a railway 2,000 miles long runs via Bulawayo
to Beira on the Portuguese coast, while branch lines reach
several formerly inaccessible mining and agricultural regions.
June 22, 1904, almost the whole population of Cape Town
cheered the departure of the first through train for Victoria
Falls, where the British Association for the Advancement of
Science has been invited to meet in 1905. Uganda is reached
by rail. Five hundred and eighty miles of track unite Mombasa
and Victoria Nyanza. Sleeping and dining cars safely
run the 575 miles from Cairo to Khartoum where only five
years ago Lord Kitchener fought the savage hordes of the
Mahdi. The Englishman's dream of a railroad from Cairo to
the Cape is more than half realized, for 2,800 miles are already
completed. In 1903, Japan had 4,237 miles of well managed
railways which in 1902 carried 111,211,208 passengers
14,409,752 tons of freight. India is gridironed by 25,373
miles of steel rails which in 1901 carried 195,000,000 passengers.
A railroad parallels the Burmese Irrawaddy to Bhamo and
Mandalay. In Siam you can ride by rail from Bangkok northward
to Korat and westward to Petchaburee. The Trans-
Siberian Railway now connects St. Petersburg and Peking. In
Korea, the line from Chemulpho to Seoul connects with lines
under construction both southward and northward, so that ere
long one can journey by rail from Fusan on the Korean Strait
to Wiju on the Yalu River. As the former is but ten hours by
sea from Japan and as the latter is to form a junction with the
Trans-Siberian Railway, a land journey in a sleeping car will
soon be practicable from London and Paris to the capitals of
China and Korea, and, save for the ferry across the Korean
Strait, to any part of the Mikado's kingdom. The locomotive
runs noisily from Jaffa to venerable Jerusalem and from Beirut
over the passes of Lebanon to Damascus, the oldest city in the
world. A projected line will run from there to the Mohammedan
Mecca, so that soon the Moslem pilgrims will abandon
the camel for the passenger coach. Most wonderful of all is
the Anatolian Railway which is to run through the heart of
Asia Minor, traversing the Karamanian plateau, the Taurus
Mountains and the Cilician valleys to Haran where Abraham
tarried, and Nineveh where Jonah preached, and Babylon
where Nebuchadnezzar made an image of gold, and Bagdad
where Haroun-al-Raschid ruled, to Koweit on the Persian Gulf.
In a single month forty-five Philadelphia engines have been
ordered for India. The American locomotive is to-day speeding
across the steppes of Siberia, through the valleys of Japan,
across the uplands of Burmah and around the mountainsides
of South America. ``Yankee bridge-builders have cast up a
highway in the desert where the chariot of Cambyses was
swallowed up by the sands. The steel of Pennsylvania spans
the Atbara, makes a road to Meroe,'' and crosses the rivers of
Peru. Trains on the two imperial highways of Africa--the
one from Cairo to the Cape and the other from the upper Nile
to the Red Sea--are to be hauled by American engines over
American bridges, while the ``forty centuries'' which Napoleon
Bonaparte said looked down from the pyramids see not the
soldiers of France, but the manufacturing agents of Europe and
America. Whether or not we are to have a political imperialism,
we already have an industrial imperialism.
Walter J. Ballard declares[23] that the aggregate capital invested
in railways at the end of 1902 was $36,850,000,000 and
that the total mileage was 532,500 distributed as follows:--
Miles
United States ................... 202,471
Europe .......................... 180,708
Asia ............................ 41,814
South America ................... 28,654
North America (Except U. S.) .... 24,032
Australia ....................... 15,649
Africa .......................... 14,187
[23] New York Sun, July 13, 1903.
Jules Verne's story, ``Around the World in Eighty Days''
was deemed fantastic in 1873. But in 1903, James Willis
Sayre of Seattle, Washington, travelled completely around the
world in fifty-four days and nine hours, while the Russian
Minister of Railroads issues the following schedule of
possibilities when the Trans-Siberian Railroad has completed its
plans:--
From St. Petersburg to Vladivostok ..... 10 days
`` Vladivostok to San Francisco ....... 10 ``
`` San Francisco to New York .......... 4<1/2> ``
`` New York to Bremen ................. 7 ``
`` Bremen to St. Petersburg ........... 1<1/2> ``
Total ............................. 33 days
As for the risks incident to such a tour, it is significant that
for my own journey around the world, a conservative insurance
company, for a consideration of only fifty dollars, guaranteed
for a year to indemnify me in case of incapacitating accident to
the extent of fifty dollars a week and in case of death to pay
my heirs $10,000. And the company made money on the
arrangement, for I met with neither illness nor accident. With
a very few unimportant exceptions, there are now no hermit
nations, for the remotest lands are within quick and easy reach.
And now electricity has ushered in an era more wondrous
still. Trolley cars run through the streets of Seoul and
Bangkok. The Empress Dowager of China wires her decrees
to the Provincial Governors. Telegraph lines belt the globe,
enabling even the provincial journal to print the news of the
entire world during the preceding twenty-four hours. We
know to-day what occurred yesterday in Tokyo and Beirut,
Shanghai and Batanga. The total length of all telegraph
lines in the world is 4,908,921 miles,--the nerves of our
modern civilization. And it is remarkable not only that
Europe has 1,764,790 miles, America 2,516,548 miles and
Australia 277,419 miles, but that Africa has 99,409 miles and
Asia 310,685 miles, Japan alone having, in 1903, 84,000 miles
beside 108,000 miles of telephone wires.
I found the telegraph in Siam and Korea, in China and the
Philippines, in Burma, India, Arabia, Egypt and Palestine.
Camping one night in far Northern Laos after a toilsome ride
on elephants, I realized that I was 12,500 miles from home, at
as remote a point almost as it would be possible for man to
reach. All about was the wilderness, relieved only by the few
houses of a small village. But walking into that tiny hamlet, I
found at the police station a telephone connecting with the
telegraph office at Chieng-mai, so that, though I was on the
other side of the planet, I could have sent a telegram to my
New York office in a few minutes. Nor was this an exceptional
experience, for the telegraph is all over Laos, as indeed
it is over many other Asiatic lands.
From the recesses of Africa comes the report that the Congo
telegraph line, which will ultimately stretch across the entire
belt of Central Africa, already runs 800 miles up the Congo
River from the ocean to Kwamouth, the junction of the
Kassai and Congo Rivers. A Belgian paper states that ``a
telegram dispatched from Kwamouth on January 15th was
delivered at Boma half an hour later. For the future, the
Kassai is thus placed in direct and rapid communication with
the seat of Government, and Europe is also brought close to the
centre of Africa. Only a few years ago, news took at least two
months to reach Boma from the Kassai, and the reply would
not be received under another two months, and this only if the
parties were available and the steamer ready to start.''
More significant still are the submarine cables which aggregate
1,751 in number and over 200,000 miles in length and
which annually transmit more than 6,000,000 messages,
annihilating the time and distance which formerly separated
nations. When King William IV of England died in 1837,
the news was thirty-five days in reaching America. But when
Queen Victoria passed away January 22, 1901, at 6:30 P. M.,
the afternoon papers describing the event were being sold in
the streets of New York at 3:30 P. M. of the same day! As I
rose to address a union meeting of the English speaking residents
of Canton, China, on that fateful September day of 1901,
a message was handed me which read, ``President McKinley is
dead.'' So that by means of the submarine cable, that little
company of Englishmen and Americans in far-off China bowed
in grief and prayer simultaneously with multitudes in the home
land.
Not only Europe and America, but Siberia and Australia,
New Zealand and New Caledonia, Korea and the Kameruns,
Laos and Persia are within the sweep of this modern system of
intercommunication. The latest as well as one of the most
important links in this world system is the Commercial
Pacific Cable between Manila and San Francisco.
President Roosevelt gave a significant illustration of the perfection
of this system when, on the completion of the
Commercial Pacific Cable July 4, 1903, he flashed a message
around the earth in twelve minutes, while a second message
sent by Clarence H. Mackay, President of the Pacific Cable
Company, made the circuit of the earth in nine minutes.
What additional possibilities are involved in the wireless
system of telegraphy we can only conjecture, but it is already
apparent that this system has passed the experimental stage
and that it is destined to achieve still more amazing results. A
startling illustration of its possibilities was given by the
Japanese fleet March 22, 1904. A cruiser lay off Port Arthur
and by wireless messages enabled battleships, riding safely
eight miles away, to bombard fortifications which they could
not see and which could not see them.
Commerce has taken swift and massive advantages of these
facilities for intercommunication. Its ships whiten every sea.
The products of European and American manufacture are
flooding the earth. The United States Treasury Bureau of
Statistics (1903) estimates that the value of the manufactured
articles which enter into the international commerce of the
world is four billions of dollars and that of this vast total, the
United States furnishes 400,000,000, its foreign trade having
increased over 100 per cent. since 1895. While the bulk of
the foreign trade of the United States is with Europe, American
business men are gradually awaking to the greatness of their
opportunity in Asia. A characteristic example of their aggressiveness
was given when President James J. Hill, of the Great
Northern Railroad, testified before a Government Commission,
October 20, 1902:--
``We arranged with a line of steamers to connect with our road so that
we could get the Oriental outlet. I remember when the Japanese were
going to buy rails, I asked them where they were going to buy, and they
said in England or Belgium. I asked them to wait until I telegraphed.
I wired and made the rates, so that we made the price $1.50 a ton lower
and sold for America 40,000 tons of rails. Then I got them to try a little
of the American cotton, telling them if it was not satisfactory I would pay
for the cotton, and the result was satisfactory.''
In these ways, the interrelation of nations is becoming
closer and closer, their separation from the world's life more
and more difficult. Dr. Josiah Strong well observes:--
``Until the nineteenth century, there was but little contact between
different peoples throughout the world. They were separated, not only
by distances hard to overcome, but by differences of speech, of faith, of
mental habit and mode of life, of custom and costume, of government and
law, and isolation tended steadily to emphasize the divergence which already
existed. Thus increasing differences of environment perpetuated
and intensified the differences of civilization which they had created. In
other words, until the nineteenth century, the stream of tendency down
all the ages was towards diversity. Then came the change, the results
of which are, in their magnitude and importance, beyond calculation.
Steam annihilated nine-tenths of space, and electricity has cancelled the
remainder. Isolation is, therefore, becoming impossible, for the world is
now a neighbourhood. This means that differences of environment will,
from this time on, become constantly less. The swift ships of commerce
are mighty shuttles which are weaving the nations together into one great
web of life.''
IX
THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION IN ASIA[24]
THE result of the operation of this commercial force is
an economic revolution of vast proportions. When
ever I went in Asia, I found wider interest in this subject
than in the aggressions of European nations. The reason
is obvious. The common people in Asia care little for politics,
but the price of food and raiment touches every man, woman
and child at a sensitive point. Almost everywhere, the old
days of cheap living are passing away. Steamers, railways,
telegraphs, newspapers, labour-saving machinery, and the introduction
of western ideas are slowly but surely revolutionizing
the Orient. Shantung wheat, which formerly had no market
beyond a radius of a few dozen miles from the wheat-field, can
now be shipped by railroad and steamship to any part of the
world, and every Chinese buyer has to pay more for it in consequence.
In like manner new facilities for export have doubled,
trebled and, in some places, quadrupled the price of rice in
China, Siam and Japan. The Consul-General of the United
States at Shanghai reports that the prices of seventeen staple
articles of export have increased sixteen per cent. in twenty
years while in Japan the increase in the same articles for the
same period was thirty-one per cent.[25]
[24] Part of this chapter appeared as an article in the Century Magazine,
March, 1904.
[25] ``Commercial China,'' p. 2902.
The depreciation in the value of silver has still further complicated
the situation. The common Chinese tael, which formerly
bought from 1,500 to 1,800 cash (the current coin of
China), now buys only 950 cash. The Shanghai tael brings
897 cash, and the Mexican dollar only 665. This of course,
means that the common people, who use only cash, have to pay
a larger number of them for the necessaries of life. The same
difficulty is being felt to a greater or less extent in many other
countries of Asia, while in China, an already serious advance
in prices is being heightened by the heavy import taxes which
have been levied to meet the indemnity imposed by the Western
Powers on account of the Boxer outbreak.
The prices of labour and materials have sharply advanced in
consequence of the enormous demands incident to the construction
of railways, with their stations, shops and round-houses,
the vast engineering schemes of the Germans at Tsing-tau, the
British at Wei-hai Wei and the Russians at Port Arthur, the
extensive scale on which the Legations have rebuilt in Peking,
the reconstruction of virtually the entire business portions of
both Peking and Tien-tsin, as well as the coincident rebuilding
of the mission stations of all denominations, Protestant and
Catholic. It will be readily understood what all this activity
means in a land where there are as yet but limited supplies of
the kind of skilled labourers required for foreign buildings, and
where the requisite materials must be imported from Europe
and America by firms who ``are not in China for their health.''
It is futile to hope that the competition will be materially less
next year, or the year after, or the year after that. Commerce
and politics are planning works in China which will not be completed
for many years. Railway officials told me of projected
lines which will require decades for construction. China has
entered upon an era of commercial development. The Western
world has come to stay, and while there may be temporary
reactions, as there have been at home, prices are not likely to
return to their former level. There are vast interior regions
which will not be affected for an indefinite period, but for the
coast provinces, primitive conditions are passing forever.
The knowledge of modern inventions and of other foods
and articles has created new wants. The Chinese peasant is no
longer content to burn bean oil; he wants kerosene. In
scores of humble Laos homes and markets I saw American
lamps costing twenty rupees apiece, and a magistrate proudly
showed me a collection of nineteen of these shining articles.
Forty thousand dollars worth of these lamps were sold in Siam
last year. The narrow streets of Canton are brilliant with German
chandeliers and myriads of private houses throughout the
Empire are lighted by foreign lamps. The desire of the
Asiatic to possess foreign lamps is only equalled by his passion
for foreign clocks. I counted twenty-seven in the private
apartments of the Emperor of China and my wife counted
nineteen in a single room of the Empress Dowager's palace,
while cheaper ones tick to the delighted wonder of myriads of
humbler people. The ambitious Syrian scorns the mud roof
of his ancestors and will only be satisfied with bright red tiles
imported from France. In almost every Asiatic city I visited,
I found shops crowded with articles of foreign manufacture.
``Made in Germany'' is as familiar a phrase in Siam as in
America. Many children in China are arrayed only in the atmosphere,
but when I was in Taian-fu, in the far interior of
Shantung, hundreds of parents were in consternation because
the magistrate had just placarded the walls with an edict announcing
that hereafter boys and girls must wear clothes and
that they would be arrested if found on the streets naked. At
a banquet given to the foreign ministers by the Emperor and
the Empress Dowager in the famous Summer Palace twelve
miles from Peking, the distinguished guests cut York ham with
Sheffield knives and drank French wines out of German glasses.
Everywhere articles of foreign manufacture are in demand,
and shrewd Chinese merchants are stocking their shops with
increasing quantities of European and American goods. The
new Chinese Presbyterian Church at Wei-hsien typifies the elements
that are entering Asia for it contains Chinese brick,
Oregon fir beams, German steel binding-plates and rods, Belgian
glass, Manchurian pine pews, and British cement.
India is eagerly buying American rifles, tools, boots and
shoes, while vast regions which depend upon irrigation are becoming
interested in American well-boring outfits. Persia is
demanding increasing quantities of American padlocks, sewing-
machines and agricultural implements. German, English and
American machinery is equipping great cotton factories in
Japan. I saw Russian and American oil tins in the remotest
villages of Korea. Strolling along the river bank one evening
in Paknampo, Siam, I heard a familiar whirring sound and
entering found a bare-legged Siamese busily at work on a sewing-
machine of American make. Nearly five hundred of them
are sold in Siam every year, and I found them in most of the
cities that I visited in other Asiatic countries. When I left
Lampoon on an elephant, six hundred miles north of Bangkok,
a Laos gentleman rode beside me for several miles on an American
bicycle. There are thousands of them in Siam. His
Majesty himself frequently rides one and His Royal Highness,
Prince Damrong, is president of a bicycle club of four hundred
members. The king's palace is lighted by electricity and the
Government buildings are equipped with telephones, and as the
nobles and merchants see the brilliancy of the former and the
convenience of the latter, they want them, too. In many
parts of Asia people, who but a decade or two ago were satisfied
with the crudest appliances of primitive life, are now
learning to use steam and electrical machinery, to like Oregon
flour, Chicago beef, Pittsburg pickles and London jam, and to
see the utility of foreign wire, nails, cutlery, drugs, paints and
chemicals.
Many other illustrations of a changed condition might be
cited. Knowledge increases wants and the Oriental is acquiring
knowledge. He demands a hundred things to-day that his
grandfather never heard of, and when he goes to the shops to
buy his daily food, he finds that the new market for it which
the foreigner has opened has increased the price.
Americans are the very last people who can consistently
criticise this tendency in Asia. It is the foreigner who has
created it, and the American is the most prodigal of all foreigners.
I never realized until I visited other lands how extravagant
is the scale of American life, not only among the
rich, but the so-called poor. My morning walk to my New
York office takes me along Christopher Street, and I have often
seen in the garbage cans of tenement houses pieces of bread
and meat and half-eaten vegetables and fruit that would give
the average Asiatic the feast of a lifetime. In Europe, Americans
are notorious as spendthrifts. In the Philippine Islands,
they have thrown about their money in a way which has inaugurated
an era of reckless lavishness comparable only to the
California days of ``forty-nine.'' In the port cities of China,
the porters asked me extortionate prices because I was an
American. Two or three coolies would seize a suit case or
change it from man to man every few minutes, on the pretense
that it was heavy. In Tien-tsin, you hire a jinrikisha and
presently you find a second man pushing behind, though the
road is smooth as a floor. In a few minutes a third appears to
push on the other side, and once a fourth took hold between
the second and third. All of course demand pay, and it is
difficult to shake them off. They do not understand your protests,
or they pretend not to, and you have to be emphatic to
get rid of them. At Tong-ku, my sampan men calmly insisted
on two dollars for a service that was worth but forty cents.
Everywhere, I found that it was wiser to make all purchases
and bargains through trusty native Christians, or to ascertain
in advance what a given service was really worth, pay it and
walk off, deaf to all protestations and complaints, even though
as in Seoul, Korea, the men plaintively sat around for hours.
In Cairo, a certain hotel charged me on the supposition that
because I was an American, I was a millionaire or a fool--perhaps
both. True, we have hack-drivers and hotel-keepers in
America who are equally rapacious, and a New Yorker in particular
need not go away from home to be overcharged. But
it is just because we have become so accustomed to this careless
profusion at home that we exhibit it abroad.
But it is useless to protest against the increased cost of living
in Asia. It is as much beyond individual control as the tides.
The causes which are producing it are not even national but
cosmopolitan.
Nor should we ignore the fact that this movement is, in
some respects at least, beneficial. It means a higher and
broader scale of life and such a life always costs more than a
low and narrow one. This economic revolution in Asia is a
concomitant of a Christian civilization which brings not only
higher prices but wider intellectual and spiritual horizons, a
general enlarging and uplifting of the whole range of life.
There are indeed some vicious influences accompanying this
movement, as brighter lights usually have deeper shadows.
But surely it is for good and not for evil that the farmers of
Hunan can now ship their peanuts to England and with the
proceeds vary the eternal monotony of a rice-diet; that the
girls of Siam are being taught by missionary example that
modesty requires the purchase of a garment for street wear
which will cover at least the breasts; that the Korean should
learn that it is better to have a larger house so that the girls of
the family need not sleep in the same room as the boys; and
that all China should discover the advantages of roads over
rutty, corkscrew paths, of sanitation over heaps of putrid garbage
and of wooden floors over filth-encrusted ground. Christianity
inevitably involves some of these things, and to some
extent the awakening of Asia to the need of them is a part of
the beneficent influence of a gospel which always and everywhere
renders men dissatisfied with a narrow, squalid existence.
To make a man decent morally is to beget in him a
desire to be decent physically.
The native Christians, especially the pastors and teachers,
are the very ones who first feel this movement towards a
higher physical life. Nor should we repress it in them, for it
means an environment more favourable to morals and to the
stability of Christian character as well as a healthful example
to the community in which they live. To say, therefore, that
the average annual income of a Hindu is rupees twenty-seven
(nine dollars) is not to adduce a reason for holding the pastors
and evangelists of India down to that scale. They should, indeed,
live near enough to the plane of their countrymen to keep
in sympathetic touch with them. But they should not be expected
or allowed to huddle in the dark, unventilated hovels of
the masses of the people, or, by confining themselves to one
scanty meal a day, have that gaunt, half-famished look which
makes my heart ache every time I think of the walking skeletons
I saw in India. I am not ashamed but proud of the fact
that it costs the average Christian more to live in Asia than it
costs the average heathen, that the houses of the Laos Christians
are better than the single-roomed sheds about them, that
the graduates of our Siam mission schools for girls wear shirt
waists instead of sunshine, that the members of any one of our
Korean churches spend more money on soap than a whole village
of their heathen neighbours whose bodies are caked with
the accumulations of years of neglect, that the sessions of our
Syrian churches are Christian gentlemen in appearance as well
as in fact, and that the houses of our Chinese Christians do not
mix pigs, chickens and babies in one lousy, malodorous
company.
But these altered conditions have not yet brought the ability
to meet them. The cost of living has increased faster than the
resources of the people. Only France and Russia are primarily
political in their foreign policy. England, Germany and
the United States are avowedly commercial. They talk incessantly
about ``the open door.'' Their supreme object in Asia
is to ``extend their markets.'' They are producing more than
they can use themselves, and they seek an opportunity to dispose
of their surplus products. They are less concerned to
bring the products of Asia into their own territories.
Indeed, Germany and particularly the United States have
built a tariff wall about themselves, expressly to protect
home industries from outside competition, and not a few
American manufacturers have recently been on the verge of
panic on account of Japanese competition. Europe and America
are trying to force their own manufactures on to Asia and
to take in return only what they please.
In time, this will probably right itself, in part at least.
While the farmers of the Mississippi Valley find living much
more expensive than it was two generations ago, they also find
that they get more for their wheat and that they eat better food
and wear better clothes and build better houses than their
grandfathers. The era of railroads ended the days of cheap
living, but it ended as well days when the farmer had to confine
himself to a diet of corn-bread and salt pork, when his
home was destitute of comforts and his children had little
schooling and no books. So the American working man of today
has to pay more for the necessaries of life than the working
man of Europe, but he is nevertheless the best paid, the
best fed, the best clothed and the best housed working man in
the world, a far better and more intelligent citizen because of
these very conditions.
The same changes will doubtless take place in Asia. That
great continent is capable of producing enormous quantities of
food, minerals and both raw and manufactured articles which
the rest of the world will sooner or later want. Already this
foreign demand is bringing comparative wealth to the rug
dealers of Syria, the silk embroiderers of China and the cloisonne'
and porcelain makers of Japan. But only an infinitesimal
part of the total population has thus far profited largely by
this wider market. Where one man amasses wealth in this
way, 100,000 men find that aggressive foreign traders exploit
their wares by flooding the shops with tempting articles which
they can ill-afford to buy. The difficulty is rapidly becoming
acute. My inquiries in Japan led me to the conclusion that
while the cost of the staple articles of living has increased
nearly 100 per cent. in the last twenty years, the financial ability
of the average Japanese has not increased thirty per cent.
In China, Siam, India, the Philippine Islands, and Syria I
found substantially similar anxieties though the proportions
naturally varied. ``True, there has been commerce since the
early ages, but caravans could afford to carry only precious
goods, like fine fabrics, spices and gems. These luxuries did
not reach the multitude, and could not materially change environment.
But modern commerce scatters over all the world
the products of every climate, in ever increasing quantities.''
So the economic revolution in Asia is characterized, as such
revolutions usually are in Europe and America, by wide-spread
unrest and, in some places, by violence. The oldest of continents
is the latest to undergo the throes of the stupendous
transformation from which the newest is slowly beginning to
emerge. The transition period in Asia will be longer and perhaps
more trying, as the numbers involved are vaster and more
conservative; but the ultimate result cannot fail to be beneficial
both to Asia and to the whole world.
It is therefore too late to discuss the question whether the
character and religions of these nations should be disturbed.
They have already been disturbed by the inrush of new ideas
and by the ways as well as by the products of the white man.
Like their ancient temples, the religions of Asia are cracking
from pinnacle to foundation. The natives themselves realize
that the old days are passing forever. India is in a ferment.
Japan has leaped to world prominence. The power of the
Mahdi has been broken and the Soudan has been opened to
civilization. The King of Siam has made Sunday a legal holiday
and is frightening his conservative subjects by his revolutionary
changes, while Korea is changing with kaleidoscopic
rapidity.
Whereas the opening years of the sixteenth century saw the
struggle for civilization, of the seventeenth century for religious
liberty, of the eighteenth century for constitutional government,
of the nineteenth century for political freedom, the
opening years of the twentieth century witness what Lowell
would have called:--
``One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt
Old systems and the word.''
X
FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN VICES
THE influences that are thus surging into the Middle
Kingdom are tremendous. The beginnings of China's
foreign trade date back to the third century, though
it was not until comparatively recent years that it grew to large
proportions. To-day the leading seaports of China have many
great business houses handling vast quantities of European and
American goods. The most persistent effort is made to extend
commerce with the Chinese. That the effort is successful is
shown by the fact that the foreign trade of China increased
from 217,183,960 taels in 1888 to 583,547,291 taels in 1904.
This shows the enormous gain of 168 per cent., though this is
slightly modified by the fact that the report for 1904 includes
goods to the value of 402,639 taels carried by Chinese vessels
which, though plying between native and foreign ports, were
not formerly reported through the customs. According to
official reports,[26] the foreign trade of China has been growing
rapidly during recent years, the only falling off having been
in the Boxer outbreak year 1900. In 1891, the imports into
China were, in round numbers, 134,000,000 taels and the
exports were 101,000,000, a total of 235,000,000, and an
excess of imports of 33 per cent. In 1904 the imports had
advanced to 344,060,608 taels and the exports to 239,486,683
taels, a total of 583,547,291 taels, an increase of 148 per cent.
and an excess of imports of 44 per cent. In 1899 the total
foreign trade of China had reached 460,000,000 taels. The
next year it dropped to 370,000,000 taels, but in 1901 it sprang
to 438,000,000 taels, and has advanced nearly 150,000,000
taels within the past three years.[27]
[26] ``Returns of Trade for 1904,'' published by the Maritime Customs
Department of China.
[27] ``Returns of Trade for 1904,'' published by the Maritime Customs
Department of China.
The share of the United States is larger than one might infer
from the reports, as no inconsiderable part of our trade goes to
China by way of England and Hongkong and is often credited to
the British total instead of to ours. American trade has, moreover,
rapidly increased since 1900. We now sell more cotton
goods to China than to all other countries combined, the exports
having increased from $5,195,845 in 1898 to $27,000,000
in 1905.[28] In the year 1904, 63,529,623 gallons of kerosene
oil valued at $7,202,110 were shipped from the United States
to China. The development of the flour trade has been extraordinary,
the sales having risen from $89,305 in 1898 to
$5,360,139 in 1904.
[28] Year ending June, 1905.
In Hongkong, I found American flour controlling the
market. I learned on inquiry that years before, a firm in
Portland, Oregon, had sent an agent to introduce its flour.
The rice-eating Chinese did not want it, but the agent stayed,
gave away samples, explained its use and pushed his goods so
energetically and persistently that after years of labour and the
expenditure of tens of thousands of dollars a market was created.
Now that firm sells in such enormous quantities that its
numerous mills must run day and night to supply the demand,
and the annual profits run into six figures. That city of Portland
alone exported to Asia, chiefly China, in 1903:--
849,360 barrels flour $2,974,620
522,887 bushels wheat 413,901
46,847,975 feet lumber 647,355
Miscellaneous merchandise 352,879
Total $4,414,651
While cotton goods, kerosene oil and flour are our chief exports
to China, there is a growing demand for many other
American products. The utility of the American locomotive
has become so apparent that in 1899, engines costing $732,212
were sent to China and additional orders are received every
few months. With the enormous forests bordering the Pacific
Ocean in the states of Oregon and Washington, and with the
development of cheap water transportation, there is a rapidly
widening market in China for American lumber. Eastern Asia
is too densely peopled to have large forests, and those she has
are not within easy reach. Native lumber, therefore, is scarce
and often small and crooked. That in common use comes
from Manchuria and Korea. I was impressed in Tsing-tau to
find that the Germans are using Oregon lumber and to be told
that it is considered the best, and in the long run, the cheapest.
Oregon pine costs more than the Korean and Manchurian, but
it is superior in size and quality. The transportation charges
to the interior, however, are a heavy addition. Manchurian
pine can be delivered at such an interior city as Wei-hsien, via
the junk port of Yang-chia-ko and thence by land, for twenty
dollars, gold, per thousand square feet, which is considerably
less than the Tsing-tau retail price for Asiatic lumber. Oregon
lumber costs in Shanghai, thirty-two dollars gold, per thousand,
but an importer estimated that it could be delivered at Tsingtau
for twenty-five dollars gold per thousand in large quantities.
The exports of the United States to China, according to the
reports of Consul-General Goodnow of Shanghai, increased
from $11,081,146 in 1900 to $18,175,484 in 1901 and $22,698,282
in 1902, while for 1904 they reached the total of about
$24,000,000, a gain of nearly 125 per cent. since 1900 and of
several hundred per cent. as compared with 1894.
Meantime, the United States imported from China goods to
the value of $30,872,244 in 1904, which is an increase of $14,255,956
over the imports for 1901. Silk and tea are the principal
items in this trade, the figures for the former being $10,220,543
and for the latter $7,294,570, though of goatskins we
took $2,556,541, wool $2,325,445, and matting $1,615,838.
The United States is now the third nation in trade relations
with China. This is the more remarkable when we consider
the statement of the late Mr. Everett Frazar of the American
Asiatic Association that in January, 1901, there were only four
American business firms in all China. When our business men
establish their own houses in China instead of dealing as now
through European and Chinese firms, it is not unreasonable to
expect that the United States will outstrip its larger rivals Great
Britain and France, though, as I have already intimated, it is
one thing to ship foreign goods to China and quite another
thing to control them after their arrival, for the Chinese are
disposed to manage that trade themselves and they know how
to do it.
Unfortunately the stream of foreign trade with China has
been contaminated by many of the vices which disgrace our
civilization. The pioneer traders were, as a rule, pirates and
adventurers, who cheated and abused the Chinese most flagrantly.
Gorst says that ``rapine, murder and a constant appeal
to force chiefly characterized the commencement of Europe's
commercial intercourse with China.'' There are many
men of high character engaged in business in the great cities
of China. I would not speak any disparaging word of those
who are worthy of all respect. But it is all too evident that
``many Americans and Europeans doing business in Asia are
living the life of the prodigal son who has not yet come to himself.''
Profane, intemperate, immoral, not living among the
Chinese, but segregating themselves in foreign communities in
the treaty ports, not speaking the Chinese language, frequently
beating and cursing those who are in their employ, regarding
the Chinese with hatred and contempt,--it is no wonder that
they are hated in return and that their conduct has done much
to justify the Chinese distrust of the foreigner. The foreign
settlements in the port cities of China are notorious for their
profligacy. Intemperance and immorality, gambling and Sabbath
desecration run riot. When after his return from a long
journey in Asia, the Rev. Dr. George Pentecost was asked--
``What are the darkest spots in the missionary outlook?'' he
replied:--
``In lands of spiritual darkness, it is difficult to speak of `darkest
spots.' I should say, however, that if there is a darkness more dark
than other darkness, it is that which is cast into heathen darkness
by the ungodliness of the American and European communities that
have invaded the East for the sake of trade and empire. The corruption
of Western godliness is the worst evil in the East. Of course there are
noble exceptions among western commercial men and their families, but
as a rule the European and American resident in the East is a constant
contradiction to all and everything which the missionary stands for.''
Most of the criticisms of missionaries which find their way
into the daily papers emanate from such men. The missionaries
do not gamble or drink whiskey, nor will their wives and
daughters attend or reciprocate entertainments at which wine,
cards and dancing are the chief features. So, of course, the
missionaries are ``canting hypocrites,'' and are believed to be
doing no good, because the foreigner who has never visited a
Chinese Christian Church, school or hospital in his life, does
not see the evidences of missionary work in his immediate
neighbourhood. The editor of the Japan Daily Mail justly
says:--[29]
[29] April 7, 1901
``We do not suggest that these newspapers which denounce the missionaries
so vehemently desire to be unjust or have any suspicion that they
are unjust. But we do assert that they have manifestly taken on the colour
of that section of every far eastern community whose units, for some
strange reason, entertain an inveterate prejudice against the missionary
and his works. Were it possible for these persons to give an intelligent
explanation of the dislike with which the missionary inspires them, their
opinions would command more respect. But they have never succeeded
in making any logical presentment of their case, and no choice offers except
to regard them as the victims of an antipathy which has no basis in
reason or reflection, That a man should be anti-Christian and should de-
vote his pen to propagating his views is strictly within his right, and we
must not be understood as suggesting that the smallest reproach attaches
to such a person. But on the other hand, it is within the right of the
missionary to protest against being arraigned before judges habitually hostile
to him, and it is within the right of the public to scrutinize the
pronouncements of such judges with much suspicion.''
Charles Darwin did not hesitate to put the matter more
bluntly still. He will surely not be deemed a prejudiced witness,
but he plainly said of the traders and travellers who attack
missionaries:--
``It is useless to argue against such reasoners. I believe that,
disappointed in not finding the field of licentiousness quite so open as
formerly, they will not give credit to a morality which they do not wish to
practice, or to a religion which they undervalue or despise.''
These facts are a suggestive commentary on the popular notion
that civilization should precede Christianity. The Rev. Dr.
James Stewart, the veteran missionary of South Africa, says that
it is an ``unpleasant and startling statement, unfortunately
true, that contact with European nations seems always to have
resulted in further deterioration of the African races. . . .
Trade and commerce have been on the West Coast of Africa
for more than three centuries. What have they made of that
region? Some of its tribes are more hopeless, more sunken
morally and socially, and rapidly becoming more commercially
valueless, than any tribes that may be found throughout the
whole of the continent. Mere commercial influence by its example
or its teaching during all that time has had little effect
on the cruelty and reckless shedding of blood and the human
sacrifices of the besotted paganism which still exists near that
coast.'' Of his experience in New Guinea, James Chalmers
declared:--``I have had twenty-one years' experience among
natives. I have lived with the Christian native, and I have
lived, and dined, and slept with cannibals. But I have never
yet met with a single man or woman, or with a single people,
that civilization without Christianity has civilized.''
Substantially similar statements might be made regarding
other lands.
``The more we open the world to what we call civilization, and the more
education we give it of the kind we call scientific, the greater are the
dangers to modern society, unless in some way we contrive to make all
the world better. Brigands armed with repeating rifles and supplied with
smokeless gunpowder are brigands still, but ten times more dangerous than
before. The vaste hordes of human beings in Asia and Africa, so long as
they are left in seclusion, are dangerous to their immediate neighbours;
but, when they have railroads, steamboats, tariffs, and machine guns, while
they retain their savage ideals and barbarous customs, they become dangerous
to all the rest of the world.''[30]
[30] Christian Register, December 3, 1903.
A Christless civilization is always and everywhere a curse
rather than a blessing. From the Garden of Eden down, the
fall of man has resulted from ``the increase of knowledge and
of power unaccompanied by reverence.... No evolution
is stable which neglects the moral factor or seeks to shake
itself free from the eternal duties of obedience and of faith.
. . . The Song of Lamech echoes from a remote antiquity
the savage truth that `the first results of civilization are to
equip hatred and render revenge more deadly, . . . a
savage exultation in the fresh power of vengeance which all the
novel instruments have placed in their inventor's hands.' ''[31]
[31] The Rev. Dr. George Adam Smith, D. D., ``Yale Lectures,'' pp. 95-97.
What is civilization without the gospel? The essential elements
of our civilization are the fruits of Christianity, and the
tree cannot be transplanted without its roots. Can a railroad
or a plow convert a man? They can add to his material comfort;
they can enlarge the opportunities of the gospel, but are
they the gospel itself? What does civilization without Christianity
mean? It means the lust of the European and American
soldiers which is rotting the native Hawaiians, the European and
American liquor which is debauching the Africans, the opium
which is enervating the Chinese, 6,000 tons a year coming from
India at a profit of $32,000,000 to the English Government.[32]
[32] The Rev. Dr. Henry van Dyke, Sermon.
How can such a civilization prepare the way for Christianity?
As a matter of fact, the Chinese already have a civilization,
and if our civilization is considered apart from its distinctively
Christian elements, it is not so much superior to the Chinese
as we are apt to imagine. The differences are chiefly matters
of taste and education. The truth is that always and everywhere,--
``civilization, so far from obliterating iniquity, imports into the world
iniquities of its own. It changes to some degree the aspects of iniquity, but
does not make them less. Further than that its effect is rather regularly
to dress iniquity in a less repulsive and more attractive form, and in that
way makes it more difficult to get rid of than before. There is no sin so
insinuating as refined and elegant sin, and of that civilization is the expert
patron and champion. The sin that is the devil's chief stock in trade
is not what is going on in Hester Street, but on the polite avenues.
. . . Evangelization conducts to civilization, but civilization has no
necessary bearing on evangelization; that is to say, there is in civilization
no energy inherently calculated to yield gospel facts. By carrying schools
and arts, trade and manufacture, among people that are now savages you
may be able to refine the quality of their deviltry, but that is not even
the first step towards making angels, or even saints of them.''[33]
[33] The Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, Sermon.
Lowell is said to have administered the following stinging
rebuke to the skeptical critics who sneered about missionaries
and declared the adequacy of civilization without them:--
``When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the
heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has
turned its attention to human society and has found a place on this planet
ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort and
security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted;
a place where age is reverenced, manhood respected, womanhood honoured,
and human life held in due regard; when skeptics can find such
a place ten miles square on this globe where the gospel of Christ has
not gone and cleared the way, and laid the foundation and made decency
and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati
to move thither and there ventilate their views.''
But we may add Darwin's conjecture that ``should a voyager
chance to be at the point of shipwreck on some unknown
coast, he will devoutly pray that the lesson of the missionary
may have extended thus far.'' Bishop Thoburn says that no
nation without Christianity has ever advanced a step, and that
while in Washington there are 6,000 models of plows invented
by Americans, India is using the same plow as in the days of
David and Solomon. But wherever Christ's gospel goes, true
civilization appears. ``A better soul will soon make better
circumstances; but better circumstances will not necessarily make
a better soul.''[34]
[34] The Rev. Dr. James H. Snowden.
``We must be here to work,
And men who work can only work for men,
And not to work in vain must comprehend
Humanity, and so work humanly,
And raise men's bodies still by raising souls.''
XI
THE BUILDING OF RAILWAYS[35]
[35] Part of this chapter appeared as an article in the American Monthly
Review of Reviews, February, 1904.
THE extension of trade has naturally been accompanied
not only by the increase of foreign steamship
lines to the numerous port cities of China, but by the
development of almost innumerable coastwise and river vessels.
Many of these are owned and operated by the Chinese themselves,
but as steamers came with the foreigners and as they
drive out the native junks and bring beggary to their owners,
the masses of the Chinese cannot be expected to feel kindly
towards such competition, however desirable the steamer may
appear to be from the view-point of a more disinterested
observer. But this interference with native customs has been far
less revolutionary than that of the railways.
The pressure of foreign commerce upon China has naturally
resulted in demands for concessions to build railways, in order
that the country might be opened up for traffic and the products
of the interior be more easily and quickly brought to the coast.
The first railroad in China was built by British promoters in
1876. It ran from Shanghai to Woosung, only fourteen miles.
Great was the excitement of the populace, and no sooner was
it completed than the Government bought it, tore up the road-
bed, and dumped the engines into the river. That ended
railway-building till 1881, when, largely through the influence
of Wu Ting-fang, late Chinese Minister to the United States,
the Chinese themselves, under the guidance of an English
engineer, built a little line from the Kai-ping coal mines to
Taku, at the mouth of the Pei-ho River and the ocean gate
way to the capital. Seeing the benefit of this road, the Chinese
raised further funds, borrowed more from the English, and
gradually extended it 144 miles to Shan-hai Kwan on the
north, while they ran another line to Tien-tsin, twenty-seven
miles from Tong-ku, and thence onward seventy-nine miles
direct to Peking. This system forms the Imperial Railway and
belongs to the Chinese Government, though bonds are held by
the English, who loaned money for construction, and though
English and American engineers built and superintended the
system. The local staff, however, is Chinese.
No more concessions were granted to foreigners till 1895,
but then they were given so rapidly that, in 1899 when the
Boxer Society first began to attract attention, there were, including
the Imperial Railway, not only 566 miles in operation,
but 6,000 miles were projected, and engineers were surveying
rights of way through whole provinces. Much of the completed
work was undone during the destructive madness of the
Boxer uprising, but reconstruction began as soon as the tumult
was quelled. According to the Archiv fur Eisenbahnwesen of
Germany, the total length of the railways in use in 1903 in
China was 1,236 kilometers or about 742 miles.
Several foreign nations have taken an aggressive part in this
movement. In the north, Russia, not satisfied with a terminus
at cold Vladivostok where ice closes the harbour nearly half
the year, steadily demanded concessions which would enable
her Trans-Siberian Railway to reach an ice-free winter port,
and thus give her a commanding position in the Pacific and a
channel through which the trade of northern Asia might reach
and enrich Russia's vast possessions in Siberia and Europe.
So Russian diplomacy rested not till it had secured the right to
extend the Trans-Siberian Railway southward from Sungari
through Manchuria to Tachi-chao near Mukden. From there
one branch runs southward to Port Arthur and Dalny and
another southwestward to Shan-hai Kwan, where the great
Wall of China touches the sea. As connection is made at that
point with the Imperial Railway to Taku, Tien-tsin and Peking,
Moscow 5,746 miles away, is brought within seventeen days of
Peking. Thus, Russian influence had an almost unrestricted
entrance to China on the North, while a third branch from
Mukden to Wiju, on the Korean frontier, will connect with a
projected line running from that point southward to Seoul, the
capital of Korea. A St. Petersburg dispatch, dated November
26, 1903, states that a survey has just been completed from
Kiakhta, Siberia, to Peking by way of Gugon, a distance of
about a thousand miles. This road, if built, will give the Russians
a short cut direct to the capital.
In the populous province of Shantung, a German railroad,
opened April 8, 1901, runs from Tsing-tau on Kiao-chou Bay
into the heart of the populous Shantung Province via Weihsien.
The line already reaches the capital, Chinan-fu, while
ulterior plans include a line from Tsing-tau via Ichou-fu to
Chinan-fu, so that German lines will ere long completely encircle
this mighty Province. At Chinan-fu, this road will meet
another great trunk line, partly German and partly English,
which is being pushed southward from Tien-tsin to Chin-kiang.
An English sydicate, known as the British-Chinese Corporation,
is to control a route from Shanghai via Soochow and
Chin-kiang to Nanking and Soochow via Hangchow to Ningpo,
while the Anglo-Chinese Railway Syndicate of London is said
to be planning a railway from Canton to Cheng-tu-fu, the provincial
capital of Sze-chuen. Meanwhile, the original line from
Shanghai to Wu-sung has been reconstructed by the English.
One of the most valuable concessions in China has been obtained
by the Anglo-Italian Syndicate in the Provinces of
Shan-si and Shen-si for it gives the right to construct railways
and to operate coal mines in a region where some of the most
extensive anthracite deposits in the world are located. A beginning
has already been made, and when the lines are completed,
the industrial revolution in China will be mightily advanced.
An alleged Belgian syndicate, to which was formed with then
wholly disinterested assistance of the French and Russian legations,
obtained in 1896 a concession to construct the Lu Han
Railway from Peking 750 miles southward to Hankow, the
commercial metropolis on the middle Yang-tze River. It is significant,
however, that while the Belgian syndicate was temporarily
embarrassed, the Russo-Chinese Bank of Peking aided
the Chinese Director-General of Railways to begin the section
running from Peking to Paoting-fu. The road is open to
Shunte-fu, 300 miles south of Peking and to Hsu-chou, 434
kilometers north of Hankow. The Russo-Chinese Bank is
building a branch line from Ching-ting via Tai-yuen-fu to Singan-fu
in Shen-si, where it will be well started on the beaten
caravan route between north China and Russian Central Asia.
On November 13, 1903, the Belgian International Eastern
Company signed a contract to construct a railway from Kai-
feng-fu, the capital of the Province of Honan, 110 miles west
to Honan-fu.
I found the line running south from Peking well-built with
solid road-bed, massive stone culverts, iron bridges, and heavy
steel rails. The first and second class coaches are not attractive
in appearance, and though the fare for the former is double
that of the latter, the chief discernible difference is that in the
first class compartment, which is usually in one end of a second-
class car, the seats are curved and the passengers fewer in
number, while in the second-class the seats are straight boards
and are apt to be crowded with Chinese coolies. Neither class
is upholstered and neither would be considered comfortable in
America, but after the weeks I had spent in a mule-litter, anything
on rails seemed luxurious. Our train was a mixed one,--
the first-class compartments containing a few French officers,
the second-class filled with Chinese coolies and French soldiers,
while a half-dozen flat cars were loaded with horses and mules.
A large Roger's locomotive from Paterson, New Jersey, drew
our long train smoothly and easily, though the schedule was so
slow and the stops so long that we were seven hours and a half
in making a run of a hundred miles.
Railway-building in South China, outside of French territory,
began with a line from Canton to Hankow which was projected
in 1895 by Senator Calvin S. Brice, William Barclay
Parsons being the engineer. The usual governmental difficulties
were encountered, but in 1902 an imperial decree gave the
concession to the American-China Development Company.
American capital was to finance the road, though with some
European aid. The company had the power, under its concession,
to issue fifty-year five per cent. gold bonds to the amount
of $42,500,000, the interest being guaranteed by the Chinese
Government. The main line will be 700 miles long, and
branches will increase the total mileage to 900. On November
15, 1903, a section ten miles long from Canton to Fat-shan was
formally opened for traffic in the presence of the Hon. Francis
May, colonial secretary and registrar-general of the Hongkong
Government, a large number of Europeans and Americans, and
immense crowds of Chinese who manifested their excitement by
an almost incessant rattle of fire-crackers. By October, 1904,
trains were running regularly to Sam-shui, about twenty-five
miles beyond Fat-shan. This is a branch line. The main
line will run on the other side of the West River. In 1905,
the government decided to complete the line itself and cancelled
the concession, paying the company as indemnity $6,750,000.
A line from Kowloon to Canton has been planned for some
time and it is likely to be hastened by the announcement in the
South China Morning Post, May 12, 1904, that an American-
Chinese syndicate had obtained a concession, granted to the
authorities of Macao by China through a special Portuguese
Minister, to construct a railway from Macao to Canton. The
syndicate hopes to secure American capital and the British
merchants of Hongkong are a little nervous as they think of the
possibility of an independent outlet for the Canton-Hankow
Railway at Macao.
It will thus be seen that if these vast schemes can be realized
there will not only be numerous lines running from the
coast into the interior, but a great trunk line from Canton
through the very heart of the Empire to Peking, where other
roads can be taken not only to Manchuria and Korea but to
any part of Europe.
In the farther south, the French are equally busy. By the
Franco-Chinese Convention of June 20, 1895, a French
company secured the right to construct a railroad from Lao-
kai to Yun-nan-fu. The French had a road from Hai-fong in
Tong-king to Sang-chou at the Chinese frontier, and in 1896
they obtained from China a concession to extend it to Nanning-
fu, on the West River. This privilege has since been enlarged
so that the line will be continued to the treaty port of Pak-hoi
on the Gulf of Tong-king. The French fondly dream of the
time when they can extend their Yun-nan Railway northward
till it taps and makes tributary to French Indo-China the vast
and fertile valley of the upper Yang-tze River. Meanwhile,
the English talk of a line from Kowloon, opposite Hongkong,
to Canton, and of connecting their Burma Railroad, which
already runs from Rangoon to Kun-long ferry, with the
Yang-tze valley, so that the enormous trade of southern interior
China may not flow into a French port, as the French so
ardently desire, but into an English city.
It would be impossible to describe adequately the far-
reaching effect upon China and the Chinese of this extension of
modern railways. We have had an illustration of its meaning
in America, where the transcontinental railroads resulted in
the amazing development of our western plains and of the
Pacific Coast. The effect of such a development in China can
hardly be overestimated, for China has more than ten times the
population of the trans-Mississippi region while its territory is
vaster and equally rich in natural resources. As I travelled
through the land, it seemed to me that almost the whole
northern part of the Empire was composed of illimitable fields
of wheat and millet, and that in the south the millions of paddy
plots formed a rice-field of continental proportions. Hidden
away in China's mountains and underlying her boundless
plateaus are immense deposits of coal and iron; while above
any other country on the globe, China has the labour for the
development of agriculture and manufacture. Think of the
influence not only upon the Chinese but the whole world,
when railroads not only carry the corn of Hunan to the famine
sufferers in Shantung, but when they bring the coal, iron and
other products of Chinese soil and industry within reach of
steamship lines running to Europe and America. To make
all these resources available to the rest of the world, and in turn
to introduce among the 426,000,000 of the Chinese the products
and inventions of Europe and America, is to bring about
an economic transformation of stupendous proportions.
Imagine, too, what changes are involved in the substitution
of the locomotive for the coolie as a motive power, the
freight car for the wheelbarrow in the shipment of produce,
and the passenger coach for the cart and the mule-litter in the
transportation of people. Railways will inevitably inaugurate
in China a new era, and when a new era is inaugurated for
one-third of the human race the other two-thirds are certain to
be affected in many ways.
That the transformation is attended by outbreaks of violence
is natural enough. Even such a people as the English and the
Scotch were at first inimical to railroads, and it is notorious
that the great Stephenson had to meet not only ridicule but
strenuous opposition. Everybody knows, too, that in the
United States stage companies and stage drivers did all they
could to prevent the building of railroads, and that learned
gentlemen made eloquent speeches which proved to the entire
satisfaction of their authors that railways would disarrange all
the conditions of society and business and bring untold evils
in their train. If the alert and progressive Anglo-Saxon took
this initial position, is it surprising that it should be taken with
far greater intensity by Orientals who for uncounted centuries
have plodded along in perfect contentment, and who now find
that the whole order of living to which they and their fathers
have become adapted is being shaken to its foundation by the
iron horse of the foreigner? Millions of coolies earn a living
by carrying merchandise in baskets or wheeling it in barrows
at five cents a day. A single railroad train does the work of a
thousand coolies, and thus deprives them of their means of
support. Myriads of farmers grew the beans and peanuts out
of which illuminating oil was made. But since American
kerosene was introduced in 1864, its use has become well-nigh
universal, and the families who depended upon the bean-oil and
peanut-oil market are starving. Cotton clothing is generally
worn in China, except by the better classes, and China
formerly made her own cotton cloth. Now American manufacturers
can sell cotton in China cheaper than the Chinese can
make it themselves.
All this is, of course, inevitable. It is indeed for the best interests
of the people of China themselves, but it enables us to
understand why so many of the Chinese resent the introduction
of foreign goods. That much of this business is passing into
the hands of the Chinese themselves does not help the matter,
for the people know that the goods are foreign, and that the
foreigners are responsible for their introduction.
Nor are racial prejudices and vested interests the only foes
which the railway has to encounter in China. As we have
seen, the Chinese, while not very religious, are very superstitious.
They people the earth and air with spirits, who, in their
judgment, have baleful power over man. Before these spirits
they tremble in terror, and no inconsiderable part of their
time and labour is devoted to outwitting them, for the Chinese
do not worship the spirits, except to propitiate and deceive
them. They believe that the spirits cannot turn a corner, but
must move in a straight line. Accordingly, in China you do
not often find one window opposite another window, lest the
spirits may pass through. You will seldom find a straight
road from one village to another village, but only a distractingly
circuitous path, while the roads are not only crooked, but
so atrociously bad that it is difficult for the foreign traveller to
keep his temper. The Chinese do not count their own inconvenience
if they can only baffle their demoniac foes. It is the
custom of the Chinese to bury their dead wherever a geomancer
indicates a ``lucky'' place. So particular are they about
this that the bodies of the wealthy are often kept for a considerable
period while a suitable place of interment is being
found. In Canton there is a spacious enclosure where the
coffins sometimes lie for years, each in a room more or less
elaborate according to the taste or ability of the family. The
place once chosen immediately becomes sacred. In a land
which has been so densely populated for thousands of years,
graves are therefore not only innumerable but omnipresent.
In my travels in China, I was hardly ever out of sight of these
conical mounds of the dead, and as a rule I could count hundreds
of them from my shendza.
Every visitor to Canton and Chefoo will recall the hilly
regions just outside of the old city walls that are literally covered
with graves, those of the richer classes being marked by
small stone or brick amphitheatres. Yet these are cemeteries
not because they have been set apart for that purpose, but because
graves have gradually filled all available spaces.
The Chinese reverence their dead and venerate the spots in
which they lie. From a Chinese view-point it is an awful thing
to desecrate them. Not only property and those sacred feelings
with which all peoples regard their dead are involved but
also the vital religious question of ancestral worship. Accordingly
Chinese law protects all graves by heavy sanctions, imposing
the death penalty by strangling on the malefactor who
opens a grave without the permission of the owner, and by decapitation
if in doing so the coffin is opened or broken so as
to expose the body to view. Imagine then their feelings
when they see haughty foreigners run a railroad straight as an
arrow from city to city, opening a highway over which the
dreaded spirits may run, and ruthlessly tearing through the
tombs hallowed by the most sacred associations.
No degree of care can avoid the irritations caused by railway
construction. In building the line from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou,
a distance of forty-six miles, the Germans, as far as practicable,
ran around the places most thickly covered with graves.
But in spite of this, no less than 3,000 graves had to be removed.
It was impossible to settle with the individual owners,
as it was difficult in many cases to ascertain who they were,
most of the graves being unmarked, and some of the families
concerned having died out or moved away. Moreover, the
Oriental has no idea of time, and dearly loves to haggle,
especially with a foreigner whom he feels no compunction in
swindling. So the railway company made its negotiations
with the local magistrates, showing them the routes, indicating
the graves that were in the way, and paying them an
average of $3 (Mexican) for removing each grave, they to
find and settle with the owners. This was believed to be fair,
for $3 is a large sum where the coin in common circulation
is the copper ``cash,'' so small in value that 1,600 of them
equal a gold dollar, and where a few dozen cash will buy a
day's food for an adult. But while some of the Chinese were
glad to accept this arrangement, others were not. They wanted
more, or they had special affection for the dead, or that particular
spot had been carefully selected because it was favoured
by the spirits. Besides, the magistrates doubtless kept a part
of the price as their share. Chinese officials are underpaid,
are expected to ``squeeze'' commissions, and no funds can
pass through their hands without a percentage of loss. Then,
as the Asiatic is very deliberate, the company was obliged to
specify a date by which all designated graves must be removed.
As many of the bodies were not taken up within that time,
the company had to remove them.
In these circumstances, we should not be surprised that
some of the most furiously anti-foreign feeling in China was in
the villages along the line of that railroad. Why should the
hated foreigner force his line through their country when the
people did not want it? Of course, it would save time, but,
as an official naively said, ``We are not in a hurry.'' So the
villagers watched the construction with ill-concealed anger,
and to-day that railroad, as well as most other railroads in
North China, can only be kept open by detachments of foreign
soldiers at all the important stations. I saw them at almost
every stop,--German soldiers from Tsing-tau to Kiao-chou,
British from Tong-ku to Peking, French from Peking to Paoting-fu,
etc.
Nevertheless, railways in China are usually profitable. It is
true that the opposition to the building of a railroad is apt to
be bitter, that mobs are occasionally destructive, and that locomotives
and other rolling stock rapidly deteriorate under native
handling unless closely watched by foreign superintendents.
But, on the other hand, the Government is usually forced to
pay indemnities for losses resulting from violence. The road,
too, once built, is in time appreciated by the thrifty Chinese,
who swallow their prejudices and patronize it in such enormous
numbers, and ship by it such quantities of their produce, that
the business speedily becomes remunerative, while the population
and the resources of the country are so great as to afford
almost unlimited opportunity for the development of traffic.
As a rule, on all the roads, the first-class compartments,
when there are any, have comparatively few passengers, chiefly
officials and foreigners. The second-class cars are well filled
with respectable-looking people, who are apparently small merchants,
students, minor officials, etc. The third-class cars,
which are usually more numerous, are packed with chattering
peasants. The first-class fares are about the same as ordinary
rates in the United States. The second-class are about half
the first-class rates, and the third-class are often less than the
equivalent of a cent a mile. This is a wise adjustment in a
land where the average man is so thrifty and so poor that he
would not and could not pay a price which would be deemed
moderate in America, and where his scale of living makes him
content with the rudest accommodations. Very little baggage
is carried free, twenty pounds only on the German lines, so
that excess baggage charges amount to more than in America.
The freight cars, during my visit, were, for the most part,
loaded with the materials and supplies necessitated by the work
of railway-construction and by the extensive rebuilding of the
native and foreign property which had been destroyed by the
Boxers. But in normal conditions the railways carry inland a
large number of foreign manufactured articles, and in turn
bring to the ports the wheat, rice, peanuts, ore, coal, pelts,
silk, wool, cotton, matting, paper, straw-braid, earthenware,
sugar, tea, tobacco, fireworks, fruit, vegetables, and other
products of the interior. Short hauls are the rule, thus far,
both for passengers and freight. This is partly because the
long-distance lines within the Empire are not yet completed,
and partly because the typical Chinese of the lower classes in
the interior provinces has never been a score of miles away from
his native village in his life, and has been so accustomed to
regard a wheelbarrow trip of a dozen miles as a long journey
that he is a little cautious, at first, in lengthening his radius of
movement. But he soon learns, especially as the struggle for
existence in an overcrowded country begets a desire to take advantage
of an opportunity to better his condition elsewhere.
Once fairly started, he is apt to go far, as the numbers of
Chinese in Siam, the Philippines, and America clearly show.
The literary and official classes are less apt to go abroad, but
they are more accustomed to moving about within the limits
of the Empire, as they must go to the central cities for their
examinations, and as offices are held for such short terms that
magistrates are frequently shifted from province to province.
When this vast population of naturally industrious and commer-
cial people becomes accustomed to railways and gets to moving
freely upon them, stupendous things are likely to happen,
both for China and for the world.
And so the foreign syndicates relentlessly continue the work
of railway-construction. Trade cannot be checked. It advances
by an inherent energy which it is futile to ignore. And
it ought to advance for the result will inevitably be to the advantage
of China. A locomotive brings intellectual and physical
benefits, the appliances which mitigate the poverty and
barrenness of existence and increase the ability to provide for
the necessities and the comforts of life. In one of our great
locomotive works in America I once saw twelve engines in construction
for China, and my imagination kindled as I thought
what a locomotive means amid that stagnant swarm of humanity,
how impossible it is that any village through which it has
once run should continue to be what it was before, how its
whistle puts to flight a whole brood of hoary superstitions and
summons a long-slumbering people to new life. We need regret
only that these benefits are so often accompanied by the
evils which disgrace our civilization.
PART III
The Political Force and the National
Protest
XII
THE AGGRESSIONS OF EUROPEAN POWERS
THE political force was set in motion partly by the
ambitions of European powers to extend their
influence in Asia, and partly by the necessity for protecting
the commercial interests referred to in the preceding
chapters. The conservatism and exclusiveness of the Chinese,
the disturbance of economic conditions caused by the introduction
of foreign goods, and the greed and brutality of foreign
traders combined to arouse a fierce opposition to the lodgment
of the foreigner. The early trading ships were usually armed,
and exasperated by the haughtiness and duplicity of the Chinese
officials and their greedy disposition to mulct the white
trader, they did not hesitate to use force in effecting their purpose.
But the nations of Europe, becoming more and more convinced
of the magnitude of the Chinese market, pressed resolutely
on; and with the hope of creating a better understanding
and of opening the ports to trade, they sent envoys to
China. The arrival of these envoys precipitated a new controversy,
for the Chinese Government from time immemorial
considered itself the supreme government of the world, and,
not being accustomed to receive the agents of other nations except
as inferiors, was not disposed to accord the white man
any different treatment. The result was a series of collisions
followed by territorial aggressions that were numerous enough
to infuriate a more peaceably disposed people than the
Chinese.
The Portuguese were the first to come, a ship of those ven-
turesome traders appearing near Canton in 1516. Its reception
was kindly, but when the next year brought eight armed
vessels and an envoy, the friendliness of the Chinese changed
to suspicion which ripened into hostility when the Portuguese
became overbearing and threatening. Violence met with
violence. It is said that armed parties of Portuguese went into
villages and carried off Chinese women. Feuds multiplied and
became more bloody. At Ningpo, the Chinese made awful reprisal
by destroying thirty-five Portuguese ships and killing 800
of their crews. The execution of one or more of the members
of a delegation to Peking brought matters to a crisis, and in
1534, the Portuguese transferred their factories to Macao,
which they have ever since held, though it was not till 1887
that their position there was officially recognized. Portuguese
power has waned and Macao to-day is an unimportant place
politically, but it is significant that this early foreign settlement
in China has been and still is such a moral plague spot that
the Chinese may be pardoned if their first impressions of the
white man were unfavourable.
The Spaniards were the next Europeans with whom the
Chinese came into contact. In this case, however, the contact
was due not so much to the coming of the Spaniards to China
as to their occupation in 1543 of the Philippine Islands, with
which the Chinese had long traded and where they had already
settled in considerable numbers. Mutual jealousies resulted
and Castilian arrogance and brutality ere long engendered such
bitterness that massacre after massacre of the Chinese occurred,
that of 1603 almost exterminating the Chinese population of
Manila.
The growing demand for coffee, which Europeans had first
received in 1580 from Arabia, brought Dutch ships into Asiatic
waters in 1598. After hostile experiences with the Portuguese
at Macao, they seized the Pescadores Islands in 1622. But the
opposition of the Chinese led the Dutch to withdraw to Formosa,
where their stormy relations with natives, Chinese from
the mainland and Japanese finally resulted in their expulsion in
1662. Since then the Dutch have contented themselves with a
few trading factories chiefly at Canton and with their possessions
in Malaysia, so that they have been less aggressive in China
than several other European nations.
A more formidable power appeared on the scene in 1635,
when four ships[36] of the English East India Company sailed up
the Pearl River. The temper of the newcomers was quickly
shown when the Chinese, incited by the jealous Portuguese,
sought to prevent their lodgment, for the English, so the record
quaintly runs, ``did on a sudden display their bloody ensigns,
and . . . each ship began to play furiously upon the forts
with their broadsides . . . put on board all their ordnance,
fired the council-house, and demolished all they could.''
Then they sailed on to Canton, and when their peremptory demand
for trading privileges was met with evasion and excuses,
they ``pillaged and burned many vessels and villages . . .
spreading destruction with fire and sword.'' Describing this
incident, Sir George Staunton, Secretary of the first British
embassy to China, naively remarked--``The unfortunate circumstances
under which the English first got footing in China
must have operated to their disadvantage and rendered their
situation for some time peculiarly unpleasant.''[37] But as early
as 1684, they had established themselves in Canton.
[36] Parker, ``China,'' p. 9, places the number of ships at five and the date
as 1637.
[37] Foster, ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 5.
June 15, 1834, a British Commission headed by Lord Napier
arrived at Macao, and the 25th of the same month proceeded
to Canton empowered by an act of Parliament to negotiate
with the Chinese regarding trade ``to and from the dominions
of the Emperor of China, and for the purpose of protecting and
promoting such trade.''[38] The government of Canton, however,
refused to receive Lord Napier's letter for the character-
istic reason that it did not purport to be a petition from an inferior
to a superior. In explaining the matter to the Hong
merchants with a view to their bringing the explanation to the
attention of Lord Napier, the haughty Governor reminded them
that foreigners were allowed in China only as trading agents,
and that no functionary of any political rank could be allowed
to enter the Empire unless special permission were given by the
Imperial Government in response to a respectful petition. He
added:--
[38] Foster, p. 57.
``To sum up the whole matter, the nation has its laws. Even
England has its laws. How much more the Celestial Empire! How
flaming bright are its great laws and ordinances. More terrible than
the awful thunderbolts! Under this whole bright heaven, none dares
to disobey them. Under its shelter are the four seas. Subject to its
soothing care are ten thousand kingdoms. The said barbarian eye (Lord
Napier), having come over a sea of several myriads of miles in extent to
examine and have superintendence of affairs, must be a man thoroughly
acquainted with the principles of high dignity.''[39]
[39] Foster, p. 59.
As might be expected, the equally haughty British representative
indignantly protested; but without avail. He was asked
to return to Macao, and was informed that the Governor could
not have any further communication with him except through
the Hong merchants, and in the form of a respectful petition.
The Governor indignantly declared:--
``There has never been such a thing as outside barbarians sending a
letter. . . . It is contrary to everything of dignity and decorum. The
thing is most decidedly impossible. . . . The barbarians of this nation
(Great Britain) coming to or leaving Canton have beyond their trade
not any public business; and the commissioned officers of the Celestial
Empire never take cognizance of the trivial affairs of trade. . . . The
some hundreds of thousands of commercial duties yearly coming from the
said nation concern not the Celestial Empire to the extent of a hair or a
feather's down. The possession or absence of them is utterly unworthy
of one careful thought.''[40]
[40] Ibid, p. 60.
Whereupon the proud Briton published and distributed a review
of the case, as he saw it, which closed as follows:--
``Governor Loo has the assurance to state in the edict of the 2d instant
that `the King (my master) has hitherto been reverently obedient.' I
must now request you to declare to them (the Hong merchants) that His
Majesty, the King of England, is a great and powerful monarch, that he
rules over an extent of territory in the four quarters of the world more
comprehensive in space and infinitely more so in power than the whole
empire of China; that he commands armies of bold and fierce soldiers,
who have conquered wherever they went; and that he is possessed of
great ships, where no native of China has ever yet dared to show his face.
Let the Governor then judge if such a monarch will be `reverently obedient'
to any one.''[41]
[41] Foster, pp. 61, 62.
The result of the increasing irritation was a decree by the
Governor of Canton peremptorily forbidding all further trade
with the English, and in retaliation the landing of a British
force, the sailing of British war-ships up the river and a battle
at the Bogue Forts which guarded the entrance of Canton. A
truce was finally arranged and Lord Napier's commission left
for Macao, August 21st, where he died September 11th of an
illness which his physician declared was directly due to the
nervous strain and the many humiliations which he had suffered
in his intercourse with the Chinese authorities. The
Governor meantime complacently reported to Peking that he had
driven off the barbarians!
The strain was intensified by the determination of the
British to bring opium into China. The Chinese authorities
protested and in 1839 the Chinese destroyed 22,299 chests
of opium valued at $9,000,000, from motives about as
laudable as those which led our revolutionary sires to empty
English tea into Boston Harbor. England responded by
making war, the result of which was to force the drug upon an
unwilling people, so that the vice which is to-day doing more
to ruin the Chinese than all other vices combined is directly
traceable to the conduct of a Christian nation, though the
England of to-day is presumably ashamed of this crime of the
England of two generations ago.
It would, however, be inaccurate to represent Chinese objection
to British opium as the sole cause of the ``Opium War''
of 1840, for the indignities to which foreign traders and foreign
diplomats were continually subjected in their efforts to establish
commercial and political relations with the Chinese were rapidly
drifting the two nations into war. Still, it was peculiarly
unfortunate and it put foreigners grievously in the wrong before
the Chinese that the overt act which developed the long-
gathering bitterness into open rupture was the righteous if irregular
seizure by the Chinese of a poison that the English
from motives of unscrupulous greed were determined to force
upon an unwilling people. The probability that war would
have broken out in time even if there had been no dispute
about opium does not mitigate the fact that from the beginning,
foreign intercourse with China was so identified with an iniquitous
traffic that the Chinese had ample cause to distrust and
dislike the white man.
This hostility was intensified when the war resulted in the
defeat of the Chinese and the treaty of Nanking in 1842 with
its repudiation of all their demands, the compulsory cession of
the island of Hongkong, the opening of not only Canton but
Amoy, Foochow, Shanghai, and Ningpo as treaty ports, the
location of a British Consul in each port, and, most necessary
but most humiliating of all, the recognition of the extra-territorial
rights of all foreigners so that no matter what their crime,
they could not be tried by Chinese courts but only by their
own consuls. This treaty contributed so much to the opening
of China that Dr. S. Wells Williams characterized it as ``one
of the turning points in the history of mankind, involving the
welfare of all nations in its wide-reaching consequences.'' It
was therefore a lasting benefit to China and to the world. But
the Chinese did not then and do not yet appreciate the benefit,
especially as they saw clearly enough that the motive of the
conqueror was his own aggrandizement.
Unhappily, too, the next war between England and China,
though fundamentally due to the same conditions as the
``Opium War,'' was again precipitated by a quarrel over
opium, the lorcha Arrow loaded with the obnoxious drug and
flying the British flag being seized by the Chinese. Once
more they suffered sore defeat and humiliating terms of peace
in the treaty of 1858. The effort of the Peking Government to
close the Pei-ho River against an armed force caused a third
war in 1860 in which the British and French captured Peking,
and by their excesses and cruelties still further added to the
already long list of reasons why the Chinese should hate their
European foes.
Nor did foreign aggression stop with this war. In 1861,
England, in order to protect her interests at Hongkong, wrested
from China the adjacent peninsula of Kowloon. In 1886, she
took Upper Burma, which China regarded as one of her dependencies.
In 1898, finding that Hongkong was still within
the range of modern cannon in Chinese waters seven miles
away, England calmly took 400 square miles of additional territory,
including Mirs and Deep Bays.
The visitor does not wonder that the British coveted Hongkong,
for it is one of the best harbours in the world. Certainly
no other is more impressive. Noble hills, almost mountains,
for many are over 1,000 feet and the highest is 3,200, rise on
every side. Crafts of all kinds, from sampans and slipper-
boats to ocean liners and war-ships, crowd the waters, for this
is the third greatest port in the world, being exceeded in the
amount of its tonnage only by Liverpool and New York. The
city is very attractive from the water as it lies at the foot and
on the slopes of the famous Peak. The Chinese are said to
number, as in Shanghai, over 300,000, while the foreign population
is only 5,000. But to the superficial observer the proportions
appear reversed as the foreign buildings are so spa-
cious and handsome that they almost fill the foreground. The
business section of the city is hot and steaming, but an inclined
tramway makes the Peak accessible and many of the
British merchants have built handsome villas on that cooler,
breezier summit, 1,800 feet above the sea. The view is superb,
a majestic panorama of mountains, harbour, shipping, islands,
ocean and city. By its possession and fortification of this
island of Hongkong, England to-day so completely controls
the gateway to South China that the Chinese cannot get access
to Canton, the largest city in the Empire, without running the
gauntlet of British guns and mines which could easily sink any
ships that the Peking Government could send against it, and
the whole of the vast and populous basin of the Pearl or West
River is at the mercy of the British whenever they care to take
it. When we add to these invaluable holdings, the rights that
England has acquired in the Yang-tze Valley and at Wei-hai
Wei in Shantung, we do not wonder that Mr. E. H. Parker,
formerly British Consul at Kiung-Chou, rather naively remarks:--
``In view of all this, no one will say, however much in matters of detail
we may have erred in judgment, that Great Britain has failed to secure
for herself, on the whole, a considerable number of miscellaneous commercial
and political advantages from the facheuse situation arising out
of an attitude on the part of the Chinese so hostile to progress.''[42]
[42] ``China,'' pp. 95, 96.
France, as far back as 1787, obtained the Peninsula of
Tourane and the Island of Pulu Condore by ``treaty'' with
the King of Cochin-China. The French soon began to regard
Annam as within their sphere of influence. In 1858, they
seized Saigon and from it as a base extended French power
throughout Cochin-China and Cambodia, the treaty of 1862
giving an enforced legal sanction to these extensive claims.
Not content with this, France steadily pushed her conquests
northward, compelling one concession after another until in
1882, she coolly decided to annex Tong-king. The Chinese
objected, but the war ended in a treaty, signed June 9, 1885,
which gave France the coveted region. These vast regions,
which China had for centuries regarded as tributary provinces,
are now virtually French territory and are openly governed as
such.
The beginnings of Russia's designs upon China are lost in
the haze of mediaeval antiquity. Russian imperial guards are
frequently mentioned at the Mongol Court of Peking in the
thirteenth century.[43] In 1652, the Russians definitely began
their struggle with the Manchus for the Valley of the Amur, a
struggle which in spite of temporary defeats and innumerable
disputes Russia steadily and relentlessly continued until she
obtained the Lower Amur in 1855, the Ussuri district in 1860
and finally, by the Cassini Convention of September, 1896,
the right to extend the Siberian Railway from Nerchinsk
through Manchuria. How Russia pressed her aggressions in
this region we shall have occasion to note in a later chapter.
[43] Parker, ``China,'' p. 96.
XIII
THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA
THE relations of the United States with China have,
as a rule, been more sympathetic than those of
European nations. Americans have not sought territorial
advantage in China and on more than one occasion, our
Government has exerted its influence in favour of peace and
justice for the sorely beset Celestials.
The flag of the United States first appeared in Chinese
waters on a trading ship in 1785. From the beginning, Americans
had less trouble with the Chinese than Europeans had
experienced, partly because they had recently been at war with
the English whom the Chinese hated and feared, and partly
because they were less violently aggressive in dealing with the
Chinese. By the treaties of July and October, 1844, the
United States peacefully reaped the advantages which England
had obtained at the cost of war. November 17, 1856, two
American ships were fired upon by the Bogue Forts, but in
spite of the hostilities which resulted, the representatives of the
United States appeared to find more favour with the Chinese
than those of any other power in the negotiations at Tien-tsin
in 1858, and their treaty was signed a week before those of the
French and the British. Article X provided that the ``United
States shall have the right to appoint consuls and other commercial
agents, to reside at such places in the dominions of
China as shall be agreed to be opened''; and Article XXX
that,
``should at any time the Ta-Tsing Empire grant to any nation or the
merchants or citizens of any nation any right, privileges or favour connected
with either navigation, commerce, political or other intercourse which is
not conferred by this treaty, such right, privilege and favour shall at once
freely inure to the benefit of the United States, its public officers,
merchants and citizens.''
In the settlement of damages, the Chinese agreed to pay to
the United States half a million taels, then worth $735,288.
When the adjustments with individual claimants left a balance
of $453,400 in the treasury, Congress, to the unbounded and
grateful surprise of the Chinese, gave it back to them. Mr. Burlingame,
the celebrated United States Minister to China, became
the most popular foreign minister in Peking within a
short time after his arrival in 1862, and so highly did the
Chinese Government appreciate his efforts in its behalf that
during the American Civil War it promptly complied with his
request to issue an edict forbidding all Confederate ships of
war from entering Chinese ports. Mr. Foster declares that
``such an order enforced by the governments of Europe would
have saved the American commercial marine from destruction
and shortened the Civil War.''[44]
[44] Foster, ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 259.
The treaty of Washington in 1868 gave great satisfaction to
the Chinese Government as it contained pacific and, appreciative
references to China, an express disclaimer of any designs
upon the Empire and a willingness to admit Chinese to the
United States. The treaty of 1880, however, considerably
modified this willingness and the treaty of 1894 rather sharply
restricted further immigration. But in the commercial treaty
of 1880, the United States, at the request of the Chinese Government,
agreed to a clause peremptorily forbidding any citizen
of the United States from engaging in the opium traffic with
the Chinese or in any Chinese port.
Our national policy was admirably expressed in the note sent
by the Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States Minister at
Peking, to the Tsung-li Yamen, March 20, 1871:--
``To assure peace in the future, the people must be better informed of
the purposes of foreigners. They must be taught that merchants are
engaged in trade which cannot but be beneficial to both native and
foreigner, and that missionaries seek only the welfare of the people, and
are engaged in no political plots or intrigues against the Government.
Whenever cases occur in which the missionaries overstep the bounds of
decorum, or interfere in matters with which they have no proper concern,
let each case be reported promptly to the Minister of the country to which
it belongs. Such isolated instances should not produce prejudice or engender
hatred against those who observe their obligations, nor should
sweeping complaints be made against all on this account. Those from
the United States sincerely desire the reformation of those whom they
teach, and to do this they urge the examination of the Holy Scriptures,
wherein the great doctrines of the present and a future state, and also the
resurrection of the soul, are set forth, with the obligation of repentance,
belief in the Saviour, and the duties of man to himself and others. It is
owing, in a great degree, to the prevalence of a belief in the truth of
the Scnptures that Western nations have attained their power and prosperity.
To enlighten the people is a duty which the officials owe to the
people, to foreigners, and themselves; for if, in consequence of ignorance,
the people grow discontented, and insurrection and riots occur, and the
lives and property of foreigners are destroyed or imperilled, the Government
cannot escape its responsibility for these unlawful acts.''
Referring to this note, the Hon. J. C. B. Davis, acting
Secretary of State, wrote to Mr. Low, October 19, 1871:--
``The President regards it (your note to the Tsung-li Yamen) as wise
and judicious. . . . Your prompt and able answer to these propositions
leaves little to be said by the Department. . . . We stand upon
our treaty rights; we ask no more, we expect no less. If other nations
demand more, if they advance pretensions inconsistent with the dignity
of China as an independent Power, we are no parties to such acts. Our
influence, so far as it may be legitimately and peacefully exerted, will be
used to prevent such demands or pretensions, should there be serious reason
to apprehend that they will be put forth. We feel that the Government
of the Emperor is actuated by friendly feelings towards the United
States.''
But while the Government of the United States has been
thus considerate and just in its dealings with the Chinese in
China, it has, singularly enough, been most inconsiderate and
unjust in its treatment of Chinese in its own territory, and its
policy in this respect has done not a little to exasperate the
Chinese. The Chinese began to come to America in 1848,
when two men and one woman arrived in San Francisco on
the brig Eagle. The discovery of gold soon brought multitudes,
the year 1852 alone seeing 2,026 arrivals. There are
now about 45,000 Chinese in California and 14,000 in Oregon
and Washington. New York has about 6,300 Chinese, Philadelphia
1,150, Boston 1,250, and many other cities have little
groups, while individual Chinese are scattered all over the
country, though the total for the United States, excluding
Alaska and Hawaii, is only 89,863.
The attitude of the people of the Pacific coast towards the
the Chinese is an interesting study. At first, they welcomed
their Oriental visitors. In January, 1853, the Hon. H. H.
Haight, afterwards Governor of California, offered at a representative
meeting of San Francisco citizens this resolution--
``Resolved that we regard with pleasure the presence of greater
numbers of these people (Chinese) among us as affording the
best opportunity of doing them good and through them of
exerting our influence in their native land.'' And this resolution
was unanimously adopted. Moreover in a new country,
where there was much manual labour to be done in developing
resources and constructing railways, and where there were
comparatively few white labourers, the Chinese speedily proved
to be a valuable factor. They were frugal, patient, willing,
industrious and cheap, and so the corporations in particular
encouraged them to come.
But as the number of immigrants increased, first dislike,
then irritation and finally alarm developed, particularly among
the working classes who found their means of livelihood
threatened by the competition of cheaper labour. The newspapers
began to give sensational accounts of the ``yellow
deluge'' that might ``swamp our institutions'' and to enlarge
upon the danger that white labourers would not come to California
on account of the presence of Chinese. The ``sand
lot orator'' appeared with his frenized harangues and the
political demagogue sought favour with the multitudes by
pandering to their passions. Race prejudice, moreover, must
always be taken into account, especially when two races
attempt to live together. The terms Jew and Gentile, Greek
and barbarian, Roman and enemy are suggestive of the distrust
with which one race usually regards another. Christianity
has done much to moderate it, but it still exists, and let the
resident of the North and East who remembers the recent race
riots in Illinois and Ohio and New York think charitably of
his brethren who are confronted by the Chinese problem in
California. So May 6, 1882, Congress passed the Restriction
Act, which, as amended July 5, 1884, and reenacted in
1903, is now in force.
There are thousands of high-minded Christian people who
are unselfishly and lovingly toiling for the temporal and
spiritual welfare of this Asiatic population in America. They
rightly feel that the people of the United States have a special
duty towards these Orientals, that the purifying power of
Christianity can remove the dangers incident to their presence
in our communities, and that if we treat them aright they will,
on their return to China, mightily influence their countrymen.
But the kindly efforts of these Christian people are unfortunately
insufficient to offset the general policy of the American people
as a whole, especially as that policy is embodied in a stern law
that is most harshly enforced.
Americans are apt to think of themselves as China's best
friends and the facts stated show that there is some ground
for the claim. But before we exalt ourselves overmuch, we
might profitably read the correspondence between the Chinese
Ministers at Washington and our Secretaries of State regarding
the outrages upon Chinese in the United States. Many
Chinese have suffered from mob violence in San Francisco and
Tacoma and other Pacific Coast cities almost as sorely as
Americans have suffered in China. Some years ago, they
were wantonly butchered in Rock Springs, Wyoming, and it
was as difficult for the Chinese to get indemnity out of our
Government as it was for the Powers to get indemnity out of
China for the Boxer outrages.
President Cleveland, in a message to Congress in 1885, felt
obliged to make an allusion to this that was doubtless as humiliating
to him as it was to decent Americans everywhere. The
Chinese Minister to the United States, in his presentation of
the case to Secretary of State Bayard, ``massed the evidence
going to show that the massacre of the subjects of a friendly
Power, residing in this country, was as unprovoked as it was
brutal; that the Governor and Prosecuting Attorney of the Territory
openly declared that no man could be punished for the
crime, though the murderers attempted no concealment; and
that all the pretended judicial proceedings were a burlesque.''
All this Mr. Bayard was forced to admit. Indeed he did not
hesitate to characterize the proceedings as ``the wretched
travesty of the forms of justice,'' nor did he conceal his
``indignation at the bloody outrages and shocking wrongs inflicted
upon a body of your countrymen,'' and his mortification
that ``such a blot should have been cast upon the record of our
Government.'' There was sarcastic significance in the cartoon
of the Chicago Inter-Ocean representing a Chinese reading a
daily paper one of whose columns was headed ``Massacre of
Americans in China,'' while the other column bore the heading,
``Massacre of Chinese in America.'' Uncle Sam stands at his
elbow and ejaculates, ``Horrible, isn't it?'' To which the
Celestial blandly inquires, ``Which?''
In the North American Review for March, 1904, Mr.
Wong Kai Kah, an educated Chinese gentleman, plainly but
courteously discusses this subject under the caption of ``A
Menace to America's Oriental Trade.'' He justly complains
that though the exclusion law expressly exempts Chinese
merchants, students and travellers, yet as a matter of fact a
Chinese gentleman is treated on his arrival as if he were a
criminal and is ``detained in the pen on the steamship wharf
or imprisoned like a felon until the customs officials are
satisfied.''
The Hon. Chester Holcombe, formerly Secretary of the
American Legation at Peking and a member of the Chinese
Immigration Commission of 1880, cites some illlustrations of
the harshness and unreasonableness of the exclusion law.[45] A
Chinese merchant of San Francisco visited his native land and
brought back a bride, only to find that she was forbidden to
land on American soil. Another Chinese merchant and wife,
of unquestioned standing in San Francisco, made a trip to
China, and while there a child was born. On returning to
their home in America, the sapient officials could interpose no
objection to the readmission of the parents, but peremptorily
refused to admit the three-months old baby, as, never having
been in this country, it had no right to enter it! Neither of
these preposterous decisions could be charged to the stupidity
or malice of the local officials, for both were appealed to the
Secretary of the Treasury in Washington and were officially
sustained by him as in accordance with the law, though in the
latter case, the Secretary, then the Hon. Daniel Manning, in
approving the action, had the courageous good sense to write:
``Burn all this correspondence, let the poor little baby go
ashore, and don't make a fool of yourself.''
[45] Article in The Outlook, April 23, 1904.
Still more irritating and insulting, if that were possible, was
the treatment of the Chinese exhibitors at the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition at St. Louis in 1904. Our Government
formally invited China to participate, sending a special
commission to Peking to urge acceptance. China accepted in
good faith, and then the Treasury Department in Washington
drew up a series of regulations requiring
``that each exhibitor, upon arrival at any seaport in this country, should
be photographed three times for purposes of identification, and should
file a bond in the penal sum of $5,000, the conditions of which were that
he would proceed directly and by the shortest route to St. Louis, would
not leave the Exposition grounds at any time after his arrival there, and
would depart for China by the first steamer sailing after the close of the
Exposition. Thus a sort of Chinese rogues' gallery was to be established
at each port, and the Fair grounds were to be made a prison pen for
those who had come here as invited guests of the nation, whose
presence and aid were needed to make the display a success. It is only
just to add that, upon a most vigorous protest made against these courteous(?)
regulations by the Chinese Government and a threat to cancel their acceptance
or our invitation, the rules were withdrawn and others more decent
substituted. But the fact that they were prepared and seriously presented
to China shows to what an extent of injustice and discourtesy our mistaken
attitude and action in regard to Chinese immigration has carried
us.''
No right-minded American can read without poignant shame,
Luella Miner's recent account[46] of the experiences of Fay Chi
Ho and Kung Hsiang Hsi, two Chinese students who, after
showing magnificent devotion to American missionaries during
the horrors of the Boxer massacres, sought to enter the United
States. They were young men of education and Christian
character who wished to complete their education at Oberlin
College, but they were treated by the United States officials at
San Francisco and other cities with a suspicion and brutality
that were ``more worthy of Turkey than of free Christian
America.'' Arriving at the Golden Gate, September 12, 1901,
it was not until January 10, 1903, that they succeeded in
reaching Oberlin, and those sixteen months were filled with indignities
from which all the efforts of influential friends and of
the Chinese Minister to the United States were unable to protect
them. Whatever reasons there may be for excluding
coolie labourers, there can be none for excluding the bright
young men who come here to study. ``An open door for our
merchants, our railway projectors, our missionaries, we cry,
and at the same time we slam the door in the faces of Chinese
merchants and travellers and students--the best classes who
seek our shores.''
[46] ``Two Heroes of Cathay,'' p. 223 sq.
The fear that the Chinese would inundate the United States
if they were permitted to come under the same conditions as
Europeans is not justified by the numbers that came before the
exclusion laws became so stringent, the total Chinese population
of the United States up to 1880, when there was no obstacle
to their coming except the general immigration law, being
only 105,465--the merest handful among our scores of
millions of people. The objections that they are addicted to
gambling and immorality, that they come only for temporary
mercenary purposes and that they do not become members of
the body politic but segregate themselves in special communities,
might be urged with equal justice by the Chinese
against the foreign communities in the port cities of China.
Segregating themselves, indeed! How can the Chinese help
themselves, when they are not allowed to become naturalized
and are treated with a dislike and contempt which force them
back upon one another?
As for the charge that they teach the opium habit to white
boys and girls, it may be safely affirmed that all the Americans
who have acquired that dread habit from the Chinese are not
equal to a tenth of the number of Chinese women and girls
who have been given foul diseases by white men in China.
Mr. Holcombe declares:--
``Our unfair treatment of China in this business will some day return
to plague us. Entirely aside from the cavalier and insulting manner with
which we have dealt with China, and the inevitably injurious effect upon
our relations and interests there, it must be said that our action has been
undignified, unworthy of any great nation, a sad criticism upon our sense
of power and ability to rule our affairs with wisdom and moderation, and
unbecoming our high position among the leading governments of the
world. . . . We have treated Chinese immigrants--never more than
a handful when compared with our population--as though we were in a
frenzy of fear of them. We have forsaken our wits in this question,
abandoned all self-control, and belittled our manhood by treating each
incoming Chinaman as though he were the embodiment of some huge and
hideous power which, once landed upon our shores, could not be dealt
with or kept within bounds. Yet in point of fact he is far more easily
kept in bounds and held obedient to law than some immigrants from Europe.
. . . It must be admitted as beyond question that the coming
of the Chinese to these shores should be held under constant supervision
and strict limitations. And so should immigration from all other countries.
The time has come when we ought to pick and choose with far
greater care than is exercised, and to exclude large numbers who are now
admitted.... It is this discrimination alone which is unjust to
China, which she naturally resents, and which does us serious harm in our
relations with her people.''
Commenting on the regulations promulgated by the Secretary
of Commerce and Labour, July 27, 1903, regarding the
admission of Chinese, the Hon. David J. Brewer, Associate
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, declared:--
``Can anything be more harsh and arbitrary? Coming into a port of
the United States, as these petitioners did into the port of Malone, placed
as they were in a house of detention, shut off from communication with
friends and counsel, examined before an inspector with no one to advise or
counsel, only such witnesses present as the inspector may designate, and
upon an adverse decision compelled to give notice of appeal within two
days, within three days the transcript forwarded to the Commissioner-
General, and nothing to be considered by him except the testimony obtained
in this star chamber proceeding. This is called due process of
law to protect the rights of an American citizen, and sufficient to prevent
inquiry in the courts....
``Must an American citizen, seeking to return to this his native land, be
compelled to bring with him two witnesses to prove the place of his birth
or else be denied his right to return, and all opportunity of establishing
his citizenship in the courts of his country? No such rule is enforced
against an American citizen of Anglo-Saxon descent, and if this be, as
claimed, a government of laws and not of men, I do not think it should
be enforced against American citizens of Chinese descent....
``Finally, let me say that the time has been when many young men
from China came to our educational institutions to pursue their studies
when her commerce sought our shores and her people came to build our
railroads, and when China looked upon this country as her best friend.
If all this be reversed and the most populous nation on earth becomes the
great antagonist of this Republic, the careful student of history will recall
the words of Scripture, `they have sown the wind, and they shall reap
the whirlwind,' and for cause of such antagonism need look no further
than the treatment accorded during the last twenty years by this country
to the people of that nation.''[47]
[47] Dissenting opinion in the case of the United States, Petitioner vs.
Sing Tuck or King Do and thirty-one others, April 25, 1904.
It is not surprising that while Chinese students are turning
in large numbers to other lands, there are only 146 in the
United States. It is a serious matter and it may have a far
reaching effect upon the future of China and of mankind when
the coming men of the Far East, desiring to place themselves in
touch with modern conditions, are compelled to avoid the one
Christian nation in all the world which boasts the most enlightened
institutions and the highest development of liberty.
Meanwhile, Mr. E. H. Parker rather sarcastically remarks:--
``The United States have always been somewhat prone to pose as the good
and disinterested friend of China, who does not sell opium or exercise any
undue political influence. These claims to the exceptional status of all
honest broker have been a little shaken by the sharp treatment of Chinese
in the United States, Honolulu and Manila.''[48]
[48] ``China,'' p. 105.
The Chinese Government long expostulated against the barbarity
and injustice of the exclusion laws and finally, finding
expostulations of no avail, the scholars and merchants of China
organized in 1905 a boycott against American trade. This
quickly brought public feeling in the United States to its
senses. President Roosevelt sternly ordered all local officials
to be humane and sensible in their enforcement of the law under
pain of instant dismissal, and the press began to demand a new
treaty. It is gratifying to know that in the future Chinese
immigrants are likely to be more justly treated, but it is not
pleasant to reflect that the American people apparently cared
little about the iniquity of their anti-Chinese laws until Chinese
resentment touched their pockets.
XIV
DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS--TREATIES
IN view of some of the facts presented in the two preceding
chapters, it is not surprising that the efforts of foreign
powers to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese
Government were rather tempestuous. A full account of the
negotiations would require a separate volume. For two generations,
nation after nation sought to protect its growing interests
in China and to secure recognition from the Chinese Government,
only to be met by opposition that was sometimes courteous
and sometimes sullen, but always inflexible until it was
broken down by force. Each envoy on presenting his letters
was politely told in substance that the Chinese official concerned
was extremely busy, that to his deep regret it would not
be possible to grant an immediate conference, but that as soon
as possible he would have pleasure in selecting a ``felicitous
day'' on which they could hold a ``pleasant interview'';[49] and
when the envoys, worn out by the never-ending procrastination,
finally gave up in disgust and announced their intention of returning
home, the typical Chinese official blandly replied, as
the notorious Yeh did to United States Minister Marshall in
January, 1854,--``I avail myself of the occasion to present my
compliments, and trust that, of late, your blessings have been
increasingly tranquil.''[50]
[49] Foster, ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' p. 205,
[50] Foster, p. 213.
Scores of European and American diplomatic agents had
substantially the same experience. United States Minister
Reed, in 1858, truly said that the replies of the Chinese to the
memorials and letters of the foreign envoys were characterized
by ``the same unmeaning profession, the same dexterous
sophistry; and, what is more material, the same passive resistance;
the same stolid refusal to yield any point of substance.''[51]
[51] Foster, p. 236.
Nor can it be denied that the Chinese had some ground for
holding foreign nations at arms' length as long as they could,
for with a few exceptions, prominent among whom were some
American ministers, notably Mr. Burlingame, the foreign
envoys were far from being tactful and conciliatory in their
methods of approach to a proud and ancient people. Mr.
Foster reminds us that in the negotiations which terminated in
the treaty of 1858,
``The British were pushing demands not insisted upon by the other
Powers, and they could only be obtained by coercive measures. The reports
in the Blue Books and the London newspapers show that Mr. Lay,
who personally conducted the negotiations for Lord Elgin, when he found
the Chinese commissioners obdurate, was accustomed to raise his voice,
charge them with having `violated their pledged word,' and threaten
them with Lord Elgin's displeasure and the march of the British troops to
Peking. And when this failed to bring them to terms, a strong detachment
of the British army was marched through Tien-tsin to strike terror
into its officials and inhabitants. Lord Elgin in his diary records the climax
of these demonstrations: `I have not written for some days, but they
have been busy ones. We went on fighting and bullying, and getting the
poor commissioners to concede one point after another, till Friday the
25th.' The next day the treaty was signed, and he closes the record as
follows: `Though I have been forced to act almost brutally, I am China's
friend in all this.' There can be no doubt that notwithstanding the seeming
paradox, Lord Elgin was thoroughly sincere in this declaration, and
that his entire conduct was influenced by a high sense of duty and by
what he regarded as the best interests of China.''[52]
[52] ``American Diplomacy in the Orient,'' pp. 241, 242.
But can we wonder that the Chinese were irritated and humiliated
by the method adopted?
That treaty of 1858 gave some notable advantages to foreigners,
for it conceded the rights of foreign nations to send diplomatic
representatives to Peking, the rights of foreigners to
travel, trade, buy, sell and reside in an increasing number of
places, and on the persistent initiative of the French envoy,
powerfully supported by the famous Dr. S. Wells Williams,
Christianity was especially recognized, and the protection, not
only of missionaries but all Chinese converts to Christianity,
was specifically guaranteed. Of course, by the convenient
``most favoured nation clause'' any concession obtained by
one country, was immediately claimed by all other countries.
It was this treaty which included the famous Toleration
Clause regarding Christian missions as follows:
``The principles of the Christian religion, as professed by the Protestant
and Roman Catholic Churches, are recognized as teaching men to do good,
and to do to others as they would have others do to them. Hereafter
those who quietly profess and teach these doctrines shall not be harassed
or persecuted on account of their faith. Any person, whether citizen of the
United States or Chinese convert, who, according to these tenets, shall
peaceably teach and practice the principles of Christianity shall in no
case be interfered with or molested.''
The charge has been made that the toleration clauses were
smuggled into the treaties without the knowledge of the Chinese,
so that the claims to recognition and protection which were
subsequently based upon it rest upon an unfair foundation. It
is indeed possible, as Dr. S. Wells Williams, the author, frankly
admits[53] ``that if the Chinese had at all comprehended what
was involved in these four toleration articles, they would never
have signed one of them.'' But perhaps the same thing might
be said of most treaties that have been signed in Asia. The
fact remains, however, that the articles referred to were not
placed in them without the knowledge of the Chinese. Dr.
Williams explicitly states that he and the Rev. Dr. W. A. P.
Martin, called upon the Chinese Commissioners and that
``some of the articles of our draft were passed without objection, those
relating to toleration (of Christianity in China) and the payment of claims
were copied off to show the Commissioner, those permitting and regulating
visits to Peking were rejected, and others were amended, the colloquy
being conducted with considerable animation and constant good humour
on his part.''[54]
[53] ``The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL. D.,'' p. 271.
[54] ``The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL. D.,'' p. 261.
In a letter written many years afterwards and dated New
Haven, September 12, 1878, Dr. Williams states that the first
draft of the Toleration Clauses was rejected by the Chinese
Commissioners, as he believes at the instigation of the French
Legation, because the clause recognized Protestant missions.
Dr. Williams then states that as soon as he could, he drew up
another form of the same article and laid it before the Chinese
Imperial Commissioners. He writes:--
``It was quite the same article as before, but they accepted it without
any further discussion or alteration; however, the word `whoever' in
my English version was altered by Mr. Reed to `any person, whether citizen
of the United States, or Chinese convert, who'--because he wished
every part of the treaty to refer to United States citizens, and cared not
very much whether it had a toleration article or not. I did care, and was
thankful to God that it was inserted. It is the only treaty in existence
which contains the royal law.''
In Dr. Williams' Journal for June 18, 1858, the following
record appears:
``I went to sleep last night with the impression that after such a reply
from the Minister it would be vain to urge a new draft, but after a restless
sleep I awoke to the idea of trying once more, this time saying nothing
about foreign missionaries. The article was sketched as soon as I could
write it and sent off by a messenger before breakfast; it was a last
chance, and every hope went with it for success. At half-past nine an
answer came. Permission for Christians meeting for worship and the distribution
of books was erased, while the words open ports were inserted
in such a connection that it was rendered illegal for any one, native or
otherwise, to profess Christianity anywhere else. The design was merely
to restrict missionaries to the ports, but the effect would be detrimental in
the highest degree to natives. I decided at once to go to see the Viscount
and try to settle the question with him personally. Chairs were
called, whose bearers seemed to Martin and me an eternity in coming, but
at last we reached the house where Captain Du Pont and his marines so
unexpectedly turned up last Saturday. Our amendment was handed to
Chang, who began to cavil at it, but he was promptly told that he must
take it to the Commissioners for approval as it stood, since this was the
form we were decided on. Our labour and anxiety were all repaid, and
ended by his return in a few minutes announcing Kweilang's assent to
the article as it now stands in the treaty.''
In order to settle this point beyond all possible doubt, I recently
wrote to the Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, now in China,
asking him to give me his recollection of the incident. He replied
as follows:--
``The charge that the toleration article was `smuggled into the treaty
of 1858' is so far from the truth that those who make it can be shown to
be either superficial or uncandid. If it means that `the Chinese did not
know what they were agreeing to, I answer that they could have no
excuse for ignorance. An edict granting toleration had been issued as
early as 1845. This had been followed by more than ten years of missionary
work at the newly opened ports--quite sufficient to make them
acquainted with the character of Protestant missions. Of Roman Catholic
missions prior to the edict, they had centuries of experience. Moreover,
during our negotiations at Tien-tsin, they had ample time for a fresh study
of the subject, the draft of our treaty being under daily discussion for more
than a week before it was signed. Nor was our draft the first to bring up
the question of toleration. The Russian Treaty signed on June 13th (five
days in advance of ours) contained one explicit provision for the toleration
of Christianity under the form of the Greek Church; but it made no
reference to Protestant or Roman Catholic. Not only was the American
Treaty the first to give these a legal status, it gives the Chinese a sample
of Christian teaching in the Golden Rule, which Dr. Williams inserted in
the article expressly to show them what they were agreeing to. Never
were negotiations more open and above board. In their earlier stages I
gave a copy of my book on the Evidences of Christianity to Jushon, one of
the deputies, who was so much pleased with it, that he became my friend
and greeted me warmly on my removal to Peking. That the Chinese
Ministers had any conception of the new force they were admitting into
their country, I do not assert; but I hold strongly that this spiritual force
is the only thing that can raise the Chinese people out of their present
state of semi-barbarism.
``W. A. P. MARTIN.
``Wuchang, China, February 18, 1904.''
It was not until 1861, that legations were established in
Peking. But while this gave foreign nations a solid foothold
at the capital, it did not by any means give them the recognition
that they demanded, for their intercourse with the court
was still hedged about with innumerable exactions and indignities.
The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, British Minister at
Peking, in a long note to the Chinese Minister Wen Hsiang,
dated June 18, 1871, discussing the troubles that had arisen
between the Chinese and foreigners, justly said:
``It is quite impossible that China should ever attain to a just appreciation
of what foreign Powers expect of her, or that she should insure from
foreign Powers what she conceives due to her, until she have honestly
accepted the conditions of official intercourse which are the sole guarantees
against international differences. The chief of these is an interchange
of representatives. I do not say that it is a panacea for all evil; but it is
incontestable that without it wars would be of far more frequent recurrence,
and till China is represented in the West, I see no hope of our ever
having done with the incessant recriminations and bickerings between the
Yamen and foreign legations, by which the lives of diplomatic agents in
Peking are made weary. If China is wronged, she must make herself
heard; and, on the other hand, if she would abstain from giving offense,
she must learn what is passing in the world beyond her.''
The Chinese Government was slow in coming to this view,
but western nations steadily persisted. One by one new concessions
were wrung from the reluctant Chinese. Mr. E. H.
Parker[55] has tabulated as follows the treaties of foreign powers
with China from 1689 to 1898:--
[55] ``China,'' pp. 113-115.
{Pages 171 to 173 are these tables... They are formatted landscape-wise on
the pages and should be typed in a viewable format or added as an image file.}
XV
RENEWED AGGRESSIONS
NOT content with innumerable aggressions and
extorted treaty concessions, Western nations boldly
discussed the dismemberment of China as certain to
come, and authors and journalists disputed as to which country
should possess the richest parts of the Empire whose impotence
to defend itself was taken for granted. Chinese ministers in
Europe and America reported these discussions to their superiors
in Peking. The English papers in China republished
some of the articles and added many effective ones of their
own, so that speedily all the better-informed Chinese came to
know that foreigners regarded China as ``the carcass of the
East.''
Nor was all this talk empty boasting. China saw that France
was absorbing Siam and had designs on Syria; that Britain was
already lord of India and Egypt and the Straits Settlements;
that Germany was pressing her claims in Asiatic Turkey; that
Russia had absorbed Siberia and was striving to obtain control
of Palestine, Persia and Korea; and that Italy was trying to
take Abyssinia. Moreover the Chinese perceived that of the
numerous islands of the world, France had the Loyalty, Society,
Marquesas, New Hebrides and New Caledonia groups, and
claimed the Taumotu or Low Archipelago; that Great Britain
had the Fiji, Cook, Gilbert, Ellice, Phoenix, Tokelan and New
Zealand groups, with northern Borneo, Tasmania, and the
whole of continental Australia, besides a large assortment of
miscellaneous islands scattered over the world wherever they
would do the most good; that Germany possessed the Marshall
group and Northeast New Guinea, and divided with England
the Solomons; that Spain had the Ladrones, the 652 islands
of the Carolines, the 1,725 more or less of the Philippines,
beside some enormously valuable holdings in the West Indies;
that the Dutch absolutely ruled Java, Sumatra, the greater part
of Borneo, all of Celebes and the hundreds of islands eastward
to New Guinea, half of which was under the Dutch flag; that
the new world power on the American continent took the
Hawaiian Islands and in two swift campaigns drove Spain out
of the West Indies and the Philippines, not to return them to
their inhabitants but to keep them herself; and that in the
Samoan and Friendly Islands, resident foreigners owned about
everything worth having and left to the native chiefs only what
the foreigners did not want or could not agree upon. As for
mighty Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884 was the signal
for a game of grab on so colossal a scale that to-day out of
Africa's 11,980,000 square miles, France owns 3,074,000,
Great Britain 2,818,000, Turkey 1,672,000, Belgium 900,000,
Portugal 834,000, Germany 864,000, Italy 596,000, and Spain
263,000,--a total of 10,980,000, or ten-elevenths of the whole
continent, and doubtless the Powers will take the remaining
eleventh whenever they feel like it. Well does the Rev. Dr.
James Stewart call this ``the most stupendous and unparalleled
partition of the earth's surface ever known in the world's
history. . . . The vast area was partitioned, annexed, appropriated,
or converted into `spheres of influence,' or `spheres
of interest'; whatever may be the exact words we may use,
the result is the same. Coast lands and hinterlands all went
in this great appropriation, and mild is the term for the deed.''[56]
[56] ``Dawn in the Dark Continent,'' pp. 17, 18.
``Gobbling the globe,'' this process has been forcefully if
inelegantly termed. No wonder that the white race has been
bitterly described as ``the most arrogant and rapacious, the
most exclusive and intolerant race in history.''
We can understand, therefore, the alarm of the Chinese as
they saw the greedy foreigners descend upon their own shores
in such ways as to justify the fear that what remained of the
Celestial Empire, too, would be speedily reduced to vassalage.
Germany, which was among the last of the European powers
to obtain a foothold in China, but which had been growing
more and more uneasy as she saw the acquisitions of her rivals,
suddenly found her opportunity in the murder of two German
Roman Catholic priests in the province of Shantung, December
1897, and on the 14th of that month Admiral Diedrich landed
marines at Kiao-chou Bay. At that time nothing but a few
straggling, poverty-stricken Chinese villages were to be seen at
the foot of the barren hills bordering the bay. But the keen
eye of Germany had detected the possibilities of the place and
early in the following year, under the forms of an enforced
ninety-nine year lease, Germany took this splendid harbour
and the territory bordering it, and at Tsing-tau began to push
her interests so aggressively that the whole province of Shantung
was thrown into the most intense excitement and alarm.
Knowing how recently the city had been founded, I looked
upon it with wonder. It was only three years and a half since
the Germans had taken possession, but no boom city in the
United States ever made more rapid progress in so short a
period. Not a Chinese house could be seen, except a village
in the distance. But along the shores rose a city of modern
buildings with banks, department stores, public buildings, comfortable
residences, a large church and imposing marine barracks.
Landing, I found broad streets, some of them already
well paved and others being paved by removing the dirt to a
depth of twelve inches and then filling the excavation solid
with broken rock. The gutters were wide and of stone, the
sewers deep and, in some cases, cut through the solid rock.
The city was under naval control, the German Governor
being a naval officer. Several war-ships were lying in the harbour.
A large force of marines was on shore, and the hills
commanding the city and harbour were bristling with cannon.
The Germans were spending money without stint. No less
than 11,000,000 marks were being expended that year for
streets, sewers, water and electric light works, barracks, fortifications,
wharves, a handsome hotel and public buildings, while
the Government had appropriated 50,000,000 Mex. (5,000,000
a year for ten years) for deepening and enlarging the inner
harbour. But in addition to these Government expenditures,
many enterprising business men were undertaking large enterprises
on their own account. It was apparent to the most
casual observer that Germany had entered Shantung to stay
and that she considered the whole vast province of Shantung
as her sphere of influence. The railway, already referred to
in a former chapter, was being constructed into the interior
with solid road-bed, steel ties and substantial stone stations.
German mining engineers were prospecting for minerals and
everything indicated large plans for a permanent occupation.
The site of Tsing-tau is beautiful and exceptionally healthful.
While the ports of Teng-chou and Chefoo are also in Shantung,
the first is now of little importance, for it is on the northeastern
part of the promontory with a mountain range behind
it so that it is difficult of access from the interior. Chefoo,
which was not opened as a port until later, rapidly superseded
Teng-chou in importance and continues to grow with great
rapidity. But it is plain that the Germans intend to make
Tsing-tau, only twenty hours distant by steamer, the chief port
of Shantung, and as they have the railroad, they will doubtless
succeed.
From hundreds of outlying villages, the Chinese are flocking
into Tsing-tau, attracted by the remunerative employment
which the Germans offer, for of course, tens of thousands of
labourers are necessary to carry out the extensive improvements
that are planned. The thrifty Chinese are quite willing to
take the foreigner's money, however much they may dislike
him. Since the white man is here, we might as well get what
we can out of him, the Celestials philosophically argue. And
so the Germans, who had ruthlessly destroyed the old, unsani-
tary Chinese villages which they had found on their arrival,
laid out model Chinese villages on the outskirts of the city.
The new Chinese city is about two and a half miles from the
foreign city and is connected with it by a splendid macadamized
road for which the Germans filled ravines, cut through
the solid rock of the hillsides and made retaining walls and
culverts of solid masonry. Some of the old stone houses were
allowed to remain, but many of the poorer houses were demolished,
streets were straightened and the whole city placed under
strict sanitary supervision. The Chinese as they came in were
told where and how their houses must be erected on the regularly
laid out streets. The houses are numbered and many
of the stores have signs in both German and Chinese. At the
time of my visit, the Chinese city had a population of 8,000,
the streets were crowded, and marketing, picture and theatrical
exhibitions and all the forms of life, so common in Chinese
cities, were to be seen on every side. Since then, the population
has greatly increased, while another Chinese city has been
laid out on the open ground on the other side of the foreign
city. There is every indication that Tsing-tau is to become
one of the great port cities of China, and the opportunities for
trade, the coming of steamships and the construction of the
railway are making it an attractive place to multitudes of
ambitious Chinese.
The German Government owns all the land in and about
Tsing-tau, and will not sell save on condition that approved
buildings are erected within three years. The single tax
plan has been adopted, that is, there is no tax on buildings
but there is a six per cent. tax on all land that is sold. This
shuts out the land speculator who has injured so many American
cities. No man can buy cheap land and let it lie idle while
it rises in value as the result of his neighbour's improvements and
the growth of the community. The German Government will
do its own speculating and reap for itself the increment of its
costly and elaborate improvements. It is making a noble city.
Streets, sewers, buildings, docks, sea walls, harbour-dredging,
tree planting--all point to great and far-reaching plans, while
under pretext of guarding the railroad, troops are being gradually
pushed into the interior. The Kaomi garrison, in the hinterland
eighteen miles beyond the Kiao-chou city line and sixty-
four from Tsing-tau, consisted of 100 men when I was there
in the spring of 1901. A few months later it was 1,000.
Plainly the Germans are moving in.
The ease and dispatch with which Germany succeeded in
obtaining an enormously valuable strategic point in the rich
province of Shangtung aroused the cupidity of rival nations,
and they threw off all pretense to decency in their scramble for
further territories. Russian statesmen had long ago seen that
the Pacific Ocean was to be the arena of world events of colossal
significance to the race. We have noted in a former chapter
how she had already extended her territory till she touched
the Pacific Ocean on the far north and how, partly that she
might develop it, but primarily that she might have a highway
through it to the great ocean which lies beyond, she had begun
the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway, the late Czar,
Alexander III, guaranteeing out of his own private funds
350,000,000 rubles towards the necessary expense. The most
southern port of Russia on the Pacific Ocean was Vladivostok,
which was therefore made the terminus of the line and rapidly
and strongly fortified. But Russia was not content with a
harbour which is closed by ice six months in the year. She
therefore began to press her way southward through Manchuria.
In November, 1894, Japan had wrested from China the peninsula
terminating in Port Arthur, and the treaty of Shimonoseki,
at the close of the war, had given Japan the Liao-tung peninsula,
opened four Manchurian ports to foreign trade, and conceded
to Japan valuable commercial rights in Manchuria,
rights which gave the Japanese virtual ascendancy. Ostensibly
in the interests of China, but really of her own ambition,
Russia gravely said that it would never do to permit Japan to
remain in Manchuria, virtuously declaring that ``the integrity
of China must be preserved at all costs.'' She persuaded
France and Germany to join her in notifying the Japanese
Government that ``it would not be permitted to retain permanent
possession of any portion of the mainland of Asia.''
Japan, feeling at that time unprepared to fight three European
powers, was forced to relinquish the prize of victory. The
solicitude of Russia for the integrity of helpless China was
quite touching, but it did not prevent her from making one
encroachment after another upon the coveted territory until
March 8, 1898, to the rage and chagrin of Japan, she peremptorily
demanded for herself and March 27th of the same year
obtained Port Arthur including Ta-lien-wan and 800 square
miles of adjoining territory. She speciously declared that
``her occupation of Port Arthur was merely temporary and
only to secure a harbour for wintering the Russian fleet.'' But
grim significance was given to her action by the prompt appearance
at Port Arthur of 20,000 Russian soldiers and 90,000
coolies who were set to work developing a great modern fortification
almost under the eyes of the Chinese capital.
As it was expedient, however, to have a commercial city on
the peninsula as well as a fortification, as the harbour of Port
Arthur was not large enough for both naval and commercial
purposes, and as the Russians did not wish anyway to make
their fortified base accessible to the rest of the world, they decided
to build a city forty-five miles north of Port Arthur and
call it Dalny, which quite appropriately means ``far away.''
Most cities grow, but this was too slow a method for the
purpose of the Slav, and therefore, a metropolis was forthwith
made to order as a result of an edict issued by the Czar,
July 30, 1899.
The harbour of Dalny is an exceptionally fine one with over
thirty feet of water at low tide so that the largest vessels can
lie alongside the docks and transfer their cargoes directly to
trains for Europe. Great piers were constructed; enormous
warehouses and elevators erected; gas, electric light, water and
street-car plants installed; wide and well-sewered streets laid
out; and a thoroughly modern and handsome city planned in
four sections, the first of which was administrative, the second
mercantile, the third residence, and the fourth Chinese. The
Russians were sparing neither labour nor expense in the construction
of this ambitious city which, by January, 1904, already
had a population of over 50,000, and represented a reported
expenditure of about $150,000,000. April 9, 1902,
Russia solemnly promised to evacuate Manchuria October 8,
1903. But when that day came, she remained, as every one
knew that she would, under the unblushing pretext that Manchuria
was not yet sufficiently pacified to justify her withdrawal
from a region where her interests were so great. As
Manchuria was at the time as quiet as some of Russia's
European provinces, the reason alleged reminds one of the
Arab's reply to a man who wished to borrow his rope--``I
need it myself to tie up some sand with.'' ``But,'' expostulated
the would-be borrower, ``that is a poor excuse for you
cannot tie up sand with a rope.'' ``I know that,'' was the
calm rejoinder, ``but any excuse will serve when I don't want
to do a thing.'' So to the concern of China, the envy of
Europe and the wrath of Japan, Manchuria practically became
a Russian province until Japan, unable to restrain her exasperation
longer and feeling that Russia's plans were a menace to
her own safety, had developed her army and navy and begun
the war which not only arrested the advance of the Slav but
expelled him from most of the territory he had seized.
Not to be outdone by Germany and Russia, other nations
made haste to seize what they could find. April 2, 1898,
England secured the lease of Lin-kung, with all the islands
and a strip ten miles wide on the mainland, thus giving the
British a strong post at Wei-hai Wei. April 22d, France peremptorily
demanded, and May 2d obtained, the bay of Kwangchou-wan,
while Japan found her share in a concession for
Foochow, Woosung, Fan-ning, Yo-chou and Chung-wan-tao.
By 1899, in all China's 3,000 miles of coast line, there was not
a harbour in which she could mobilize her own ships without
the consent of the hated foreigner.
A clever Chinese artist in Hongkong grimly drew a cartoon
of the situation of his country as he and his countrymen
saw it. The Russian Bear, coming down from the north,
his feet planted in Manchuria and northern Korea, sees
the British Bulldog seated in southern China, while ``The
Sun Elf'' ( Japan), sitting upon its Island Kingdom,
proclaims that ``John Bull and I will watch the Bear.''
The German Sausage around Kiau-chou makes no sign of life,
but the French Frog, jumping about in Tonquin and Annam
and branded ``Fashoda and Colonial Expansion,'' tries to
stretch a friendly hand to the Bear over the Bulldog's head.
Then, to offset this proffered assistance to the Bear, the Chinese
artist, with characteristic cunning, brings in the New World
power. He places the American Eagle over the Philippines,
its beak extended towards the Bulldog, and writes upon it the
phrase, ``Blood is thicker than water.''[57]
[57] Reproduced in the Newark, N. J., Evening News, January 9, 1904
As far as Americans have any sympathy at all with European
schemes for conquest in China, they naturally look with more
favour on England and Germany than on France and Russia.
The reason is apparent. England establishes honest and
beneficent government wherever she goes and makes its advantages
freely accessible to the citizens of other nations, so
that an American is not only as safe but as unrestricted in all
his legitimate activities as he would be in his own land.
Germany, too, while not so hospitable as England, is nevertheless
a Teutonic, Protestant power under whose ascendancy in
Shantung our missionaries find ample freedom. But France
and Russia are more narrowly and jealously national in their
aims. Their possessions are openly regarded as assets to be
managed for their own interests rather than for those of the na-
tives or of the world. The colonial attitude of the former towards
all Protestant missionary work is dictated by the Roman
Catholic Church and is therefore hostile to Protestants, while
the Russian Greek Church tolerates no other form of religion
that it can repress. A recent traveller reports that Russia has
put every possible obstruction in the way of reopening the mission
stations that were abandoned during the Boxer outbreak.
She has already put Manchuria under the Greek archimandrite
of Peking, and has sought to limit all Christian teaching to the
members of the Orthodox Greek Church. It is significant that
Russia is strenuously opposing, under a variety of pretexts, the
``open door'' which Secretary Hay obtained from China in
Manchuria, while there is ground for suspecting that Russian
influence in Constantinople is preventing, or at least delaying
as long as possible, that legal recognition of American rights
in Turkey which the Sultan has already granted to several
other nations. As for Russian ascendancy in Manchuria,
everybody knows that it is inimical to the interests of other
countries and that there will be little freedom of trade if Russia
can prevent it.
XVI
GROWING IRRITATION OF THE CHINESE--THE
REFORM PARTY
THE effect of the operation of these commercial and
political forces upon a conservative and exclusive
people was of course to exasperate to a high degree.
A proud people were wounded in their most sensitive place by
the ruthless and arrogant way in which foreigners broke down
their cherished wall of separation from the rest of the world and
trampled upon their highly-prized customs and institutions.
It must be admitted that the history of the dealings of the
Christian powers with China is not altogether pleasant reading.
The provocation was indeed great, but the retaliation was
heavy. And all the time foreign nations refused to grant to the
Chinese the privileges which they forced them to grant to others.
We sometimes imagine that the Golden Rule is peculiar to
Christianity. It is indeed in its highest form, but its spirit
was recognized by Confucius five centuries before Christ. His
expression of it was negative, but it gave the Chinese some
idea of the principle. They were not, therefore, pleasantly impressed
when they found the alleged Christian nations violating
that principle. Even Christian America has not been an exception.
We have Chinese exclusion laws, but we will not
allow China to exclude Americans. We sail our gunboats up
her rivers, but we would not allow China to sail gunboats into
ours. If a Chinese commits a crime in America, he is amenable
to American law as interpreted by an American court. But if
an American commits a crime in China, he can be tried only
by his consul; not a Chinese court in the Empire has jurisdiction
over him, and the people naturally infer from this that
we have no confidence in their sense of justice or in their
administration of it.
This law of extra-territoriality is one of the chief sources of
irritation against foreigners, for it not only implies contempt,
but it makes foreigners a privileged class. Said Minister Wen
Hsiang in 1868:--``Take away your extra-territorial clause,
and merchant and missionary may settle anywhere and everywhere.
But retain it, and we must do our best to confine you
and our trouble to the treaty ports.'' But unfortunately this
is a cause of resentment that Western nations cannot prudently
remove in the near future. While we can understand the resentment
of the Chinese magistrates as they see their methods
discredited by the foreigner, it would not do to subject Europeans
and Americans to Chinese legal procedure. The language
of Mr. Wade, the British Minister, to Minister Wen
Hsiang in June, 1, is still applicable:--
``Experience has shown that, in many cases, the latter (law of China)
will condemn a prisoner to death, where the law of England would be
satisfied by a penalty far less severe, if indeed, it were possible to punish
the man at all. It is to be deplored that misunderstandings should arise
from a difference in our codes; but I see no remedy for this until China
shall see fit to revise the process of investigation now common in her
courts. So long as evidence is wrung from witnesses by torture, it is
scarcely possible for the authorities of a foreign power to associate
themselves with those of China in the trial of a criminal case; and unless the
authorities of both nationalities are present, there will always be a suspicion
of unfairness on one side or the other. This difficulty surmounted,
there would be none in the way of providing a code of laws to affect
mixed cases; none, certainly, on the part of England; none, in my belief,
either, on the part of any other Power.''[58]
[58] Correspondence Respecting the Circular of the Chinese Government
of February 9, 1871, Relating to Missionaries. Presented to both
Houses of Parliament by command of Her Majesty, 1872.
Meantime, as the Hon. Frederick F. Low, United States
Minister at Peking, wrote to the State Department at Wash-
ington, March 20, 1871:--``The dictates of humanity will
not permit the renunciation of the right for all foreigners that
they shall be governed and punished by their own laws.''
But the Chinese do not see the question in that light. Their
methods of legal procedure are sanctioned in their eyes by immemorial
custom and they fail to understand why forms that,
in their judgment, are good enough for Chinese are not also good
enough for despised foreigners. When we take into consideration
the further fact that the typical white man, the world
over, acts as if he were a lord of creation, and treats Asiatics
with more or less condescension as if they were his inferiors, we
can understand the very natural resentment of the Chinese,
who have just as much pride of race as we have, and who indeed
consider themselves the most highly civilized people in
the world. The fact that foreign nations are able to thrash
them does not convince them that those nations are superior,
any more than a gentleman's physical defeat by a pugilist would
satisfy him that the pugilist is a better man. It is not without
significance that the white man is generally designated in China
as ``the foreign devil.''
The natural resentment of the Chinese in such circumstances
was intensified by the conduct of the foreign soldiery. Army
life is not a school of virtue anywhere, particularly in Asia where
a comparatively defenseless people open wide opportunities for
evil practices and where Asiatic methods of opposition infuriate
men. In almost every place where the soldiers of
Europe landed, they pillaged and burned and raped and
slaughtered like incarnate fiends. Chefoo to-day is an illustration
of the effect. It is a city where foreigners have resided
for forty years, where there are consuls of all nations and
extensive business relations with other ports, where foreign
steamers regularly touch and where war-ships frequently lie.
There were five formidable cruisers there during my visit.
Surely the Chinese of Chefoo should understand the situation.
But during the troubles of 1860, French troops were quartered
there and their conduct was so atrociously brutal and lustful
that Chefoo has ever since been bitterly anti-foreign. The
Presbyterian missionaries have repeatedly tried to do Christian
work in the old walled city, but have never succeeded in gaining
a foothold, and all their local missionary work is confined
to the numerous population which has come from other parts of
the province and settled around Chefoo proper. Nothing but
battleships in the harbour kept that old city from attacking
foreigners during the Boxer outbreak. Even to-day the cry
``kill, kill'' is sometimes raised as a foreigner walks through
the streets, and inflammatory placards are often posted on the
walls.
With the record of foreign aggressions in China before us,
can we wonder that the Chinese became restive? The New
York Sun truly says: ``It was while Chinese territory was
thus virtually being given away that the people became uneasy
and riots were started; the people felt that their land had been
despoiled.'' The Hon. Chester Holcombe truly remarks:--
``Those who desire to know more particularly what the Chinese
think about it, how they regard the proposed dismemberment of the
Empire and the extinction of their national life, are referred to the
Boxer movement as furnishing a practical exposition of their views. It
contained the concentrated wrath and hate of sixty years' slow growth.
And it had the hearty sympathy of many, many millions of Chinese, who
took no active part in it. For, beyond a doubt, it represented to them a
patriotic effort to save their country from foreign aggression and ultimate
destruction.... The European Powers have only themselves to
thank for the bitter hatred of the Chinese and the crash in which it
culminated. Governmental policies outrageous and beyond excuse,
scandalous diplomacy, and unprovoked attacks upon the rights and
possessions of China, have been at the root of all the trouble.''[59]
[59] Article in The Outlook, February 13, 1904,
And shall we pretend innocent surprise that the irritation of
the Chinese rapidly grew? Suppose that after the murder of
the Chinese in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a Chinese fleet
had been able to seize New York and Boston Harbours, and
suppose our Government had been weak enough to acquiesce.
Would the American people have made any protest?
Would the lives of Chinese have been safe on our streets? And
was it an entirely base impulse that led the men of China violently
to oppose the forcible seizure of their country by aliens?
The Empress Dowager declared in her now famous edict:--
``The various Powers cast upon us looks of tiger-like voracity, hustling
each other in their endeavours to be first to seize upon our innermost
territories. They think that China, having neither money nor troops, would
never venture to go to war with them. They fail to understand, however,
that there are certain things which this Empire can never consent to, and
that, if hard pressed, we have no alternative but to rely upon the justice
of our cause, the knowledge of which in our breasts strengthens our resolves
and steels us to present a united front against our aggressors.''
That would probably be called patriotic if it had emanated
from the ruler of any other people.
When with Russia in Manchuria, Germany in Shantung,
England in the valleys of the Yang-tze and the Pearl, France
in Tonquin and Japan in Formosa, the whole Empire appeared
to be in imminent danger of absorption, the United States again
showed itself the friend of China by trying to stem the tide.
Our great Secretary of State, John Hay, sent to the European
capitals that famous note of September, 1899, which none of
them wanted to answer but which none of them dared to refuse,
inviting them to join the United States in assuring the
apprehensive Chinese that the Governments of Europe and
America had no designs upon China's territorial integrity, but
simply desired an ``open door'' for commerce, and that any
claims by one nation of ``sphere of influence'' would ``in no
way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest''
within that sphere, but that all nations should continue to enjoy
equality of treatment. In response, the Russian Government,
December 30, 1899, through Count Mouravieff, suavely declared:--
``The Imperial Government has already demonstrated its firm intention
to follow the policy of the `open door.' . . . As to the ports now
opened or hereafter to be opened to foreign commerce by the Chinese
Government, . . . the Imperial Government has no intention whatever
of claiming any privileges for its own subjects to the exclusion of
other foreigners.''
The other Powers also assented. But it was all in vain.
Matters had already gone too far, and, beside, the Chinese
knew well enough that the Powers were not to be trusted beyond
the limits of self-interest.
Some of the Chinese, it is true, had the intelligence to see
that changes were inevitable, and the result was the development
of a Reform Party among the Chinese themselves. It
was not large, but it included some influential men, though,
unfortunately, their zeal was not always tempered by discretion.
The war with Japan powerfully aided them. True, many of
the Chinese do not yet know that there was such a war, for
news travels slowly in a land whose railway and telegraph lines,
newspapers and post-offices are yet few, and whose average
inhabitant has never been twenty miles from the village in which
he was born. But some who did know realized that Japan had
won by the aid of Western methods. An eagerness to acquire
those methods resulted. Missionaries were besieged by Chinese
who wished to learn English. Modern books were given a
wide circulation. Several of the influential advisers of the
Emperor became students of Occidental science and political
economy. In five years, 1893-1898, the book sales of one
society--that for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge
Among the Chinese--leaped from $817 to $18,457, while
every mission press was run to its utmost capacity to supply the
new demands.
A powerful exponent of the new ideas appeared in the great
Viceroy, Chang Chih-tung. He wrote a book, entitled
``China's Only Hope,'' exposing the causes of China's weakness
and advocating radical reforms. The book was printed
by the Tsung-li Yamen, and by royal command copies were
sent to the high officials of the Empire. Big yellow posters advertised
it from the walls of leading cities, and in a short time
a million copies were sold. It is hardly an exaggeration to say
that ``this book made more history in a shorter time than any
other modern piece of literature, that it astonished a kingdom,
convulsed an Empire and brought on a war.''
The Reform Party urged the young Emperor to use the imperial
power for the advancement of his people. He yielded to
the pressure and became an eager and diligent student of the
Western learning and methods. In the opening months of the
year 1898, he bought no less than 129 foreign books, including
a Bible and several scientific works, besides maps, globes, and
wind and current charts. Nor did he stop with this, but with
the ardour of a new convert issued the now famous reform
edicts, which, if they could have been carried into effect, would
have revolutionized China and started her on the high road to
national greatness. These memorable decrees have been summarized
as follows:
- Establishing a university at Peking.
- Sending imperial clansmen to study European and American Governments.
- Encouraging art, science and modern agriculture
- Expressing the willingness of the Emperor to hear the objections
of the conservatives to progress and reform.
5. Abolishing the literary essay as a prominent part of the Government
examinations
6. Censuring those who attempted to delay the establishment of the
Peking Imperial University.
7. Directing that the construction of the Lu Han railway be carried
on with more vigour.
8. Advising the adoption of Western arms and drill for all the Tartar
troops.
9. Ordering the establishment of agricultural schools in the provinces
to teach improved methods of agriculture.
10. Ordering the introduction of patent and copyright laws.
11. Ordering the Board of War and the Foreign Office to report on
the reform of the military examinations.
12. Offering special rewards to inventors and authors.
13. Ordering officials to encourage trade and assist merchants.
14. Ordering the foundation of school boards in every city in the
Empire.
15. Establishing a Bureau of Mines and Railroads.
16. Encouraging journalists to write on all political subjects.
17. Establishing naval academies and training ships.
18. Summoning the ministers and provincial authorities to assist the
Emperor in his work of reform.
19. Directing that schools be founded in connection with all the Chinese
legations in foreign countries for the benefit of the children of Chinese
in those countries.
20. Establishing commercial bureaus in Shanghai for the encouragement
of trade.
21. Abolishing six useless Boards in Peking.
22. Granting the right to memorialize the Throne by sealed memorials.
23. Dismissing two presidents and four vice-presidents of the Board
of Rites for disobeying the Emperor's orders that memorials should be
presented to him unopened.
24. Abolishing the governorships of Hupeh, Kwang-tung and Yun-nan
as a useless expense to the country.
25. Establishing schools for instruction in the preparation of tea and
silk.
20, Abolishing the slow courier posts in favour of the Imperial
Customs' Post.
27 Approving a system of budgets as in Western countries.
But, alas, it is disastrous to try to ``hustle the East.'' The
Chinese are phlegmatic and will endure much, but this was a
little too much. Myriads of scholars and officials, who saw
their hopes and positions jeopardized by the new tests, protested
with all the virulence of the silversmiths of Ephesus, and
all the conservatism of China rallied to their support.
Meantime, the Yellow River, aptly named ``China's Sorrow,''
again overflowed its banks, devastating a region 100
miles long and varying from twenty-five to fifty miles wide.
Three hundred villages were swept away and 1,000,000 people
made homeless. Famine and pestilence speedily followed, so
that the whole catastrophe assumed appalling proportions.
Even American communities are apt to become reckless and
riotous in time of calamity, and in China this tendency of human
nature was intensified by a superstition which led the people
to believe that the disaster was due to the baleful influence
of the foreigners, or that it was a punishment for their failure
to resist them, while in the farther north a drought led to
equally superstitious fury against ``the foreign devils.''
The virile and resolute Empress-Dowager headed the reaction
against the headlong progressiveness of the young
Emperor. September 22, 1898, the world was startled by an
Imperial Decree which read in part as follows:--
``Her Imperial Majesty the Empress-Dowager, Tze Hsi, since the first
years of the reign of the late Emperor Tung Chih down to our present
reign, has twice ably filled the regency of the Empire, and never did her
Majesty fail in happily bringing to a successful issue even the most difficult
problems of government. In all things we have ever placed the
interests of our Empire before those of others, and, looking back at her
Majesty's successful handiwork, we are now led to beseech, for a third
time, for this assistance from her Imperial majesty, so that we may benefit
from her wise and kindly advice in all matters of State. Having now
obtained her Majesty's gracious consent, we truly consider this to be a great
boon both to ourselves as well as to the people of our Empire. Hence we
now command that from henceforth, commencing with this morning, the
affairs of state shall be transacted in the ordinary Throne Hall, and that
to-morrow (23rd) we shall, at the head of the Princes and Nobles and
Ministers of our Court, attend in full dress in the Ching-cheng Throne
Hall, to pay ceremonial obeisance to her Imperial Majesty the Empress-
Dowager. Let the Board of Rites draw up for our perusal the ceremonies
to be observed on the above occasion.''[60]
[60] Pott, ``The Outbreak in China,'' pp. 56, 57.
The youthful son of Toanwong was appointed heir to the
throne and the ambitious father immediately proceeded to use
his enhanced prestige to set the Empire in a blaze.
XVII
THE BOXER UPRISING
THE now famous Boxers were members of two of the
secret societies which have long flourished in China.
To the Chinese they are known as League of United
Patriots, Great Sword Society, Righteous Harmony Fists'
Association and kindred names. Originally, they were hostile
to the foreign Manchu dynasty. When Germany made the
murder of two Roman Catholic missionaries a pretext for pushing
her political ambitions, the Boxers naturally arrayed themselves
against them. As the champions of the national spirit
against the foreigners, the membership rapidly increased.
Supernatural power was claimed. Temples were converted into
meeting-places, and soon excited men were drilling in every
village.
The real ruler of China at this time, as all the world knows,
was the Empress Dowager, who has been characterized as
``the only man in China.'' At any rate, she is a woman of
extraordinary force of character. She was astute enough to
encourage the Boxers, and thus turn one of the most troublesome
foes of the Manchu throne against the common enemy,
the foreigner. Under her influence, the depredations of the
Boxers, which were at first confined to the Shantung Province,
spread with the swiftness of a prairie fire, until in the spring of
1900 the most important provinces of the Empire were ablaze
and the legations in Peking were closely besieged. In the
heat of the conflict and under the agonizing strain of anxiety
for imperilled loved ones, many hard things were said and
written about the officials who allied themselves with the
Boxers. But Sir Robert Hart, who personally knew them and
who suffered as much as any one from their fury, candidly
wrote after the siege: ``These men were eminent in their own
country for their learning and services, were animated by
patriotism, were enraged by foreign dictation, and had the
courage of their convictions. We must do them the justice of
allowing that they were actuated by high motives and love of
country,'' though he adds, ``that does not always or necessarily
mean political ability or highest wisdom.''
And so the irrepressible conflict broke out. It had to come,
a conflict between conservatism and progress, between race
prejudice and brotherhood, between superstition and Christianity,
the tremendous conflict of ages which every nation has
had to fight, and which in China was not different in kind,
but only on a more colossal scale because there it involved
half the human race at once. Of course it was impossible
for so vast a nation permanently to segregate itself. The river
of progress cannot be permanently stayed. It will gather force
behind an obstacle until it is able to sweep it away. The
Boxer uprising was the breaking up of this fossilized conservatism.
It was such a tumultuous upheaval as the crusades
caused in breaking up the stagnation of mediaeval Europe. As
France opposed the new ideas, which in England were quietly
accepted, only to have them surge over her in the frightful
flood of the revolution, so China entered with the violence always
inseparable from resistance the transition which Japan
welcomed with a more open mind.
Though missionaries were not the real cause of the Boxer
uprising, its horrors fell most heavily upon them. This was
partly because many of them were living at exposed points in
the interior while most other foreigners were assembled in the
treaty ports where they were better protected; partly because
the movement developed such hysterical frenzy that it attacked
with blind, unreasoning fury every available foreigner, and
partly because in most places the actual killing and pillaging
were not done by the people who best knew the missionaries
but by mobs from the slums, ruffians from other villages, or,
as in Paoting-fu and Shan-si, in obedience to the direct orders
of bigoted officials.
And so it came to pass that the innocent suffered more than
the guilty. Dr. A. H. Smith[61] concluded after careful inquiry
that ``the devastating Boxer cyclone cost the lives of 135 adult
Protestant missionaries and fifty-three children and of thirty-
five Roman Catholic Fathers and nine Sisters. The Protestants
were in connection with ten different missions, one being
unconnected. They were murdered in four provinces and in
Mongolia, and belonged to Great Britain, the United States and
Sweden. No such outbreak against Christianity has been
seen in modern times. The destruction of property was on
the same continental scale. Generally speaking, all mission
stations north of the Yellow River, with all their dwelling-houses,
chapels, hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and buildings of every
description were totally destroyed, though there were occasional
exceptions, of which the village where these pages are written
was one. The central and southern portions of the Empire
were only partially affected by the anti-foreign madness, not
because they were under different conditions, but mainly
through the strong repressive measures of four men, Liu Kun
Yi and Chang Chih-tung, Governors-General of the four great
provinces in the Yang-tse Valley; Yuan Shih Kai in Shantung,
and a Manchu, Tuan Fang, in Shen-si. The jurisdiction of
this quartette made an impassable barrier across which the
movement was unable to project itself in force, but much mischief
in an isolated way was wrought in nearly every part of
China not rigorously controlled.''
[61] ``Rex Christus,'' p. 210.
So many volumes have been written about the Boxer Uprising
that it is not necessary to double the size of this book in
order to recount the details. For the full narrative, the reader
is referred to the books mentioned below.[62] But I cannot for-
bear some description of the scenes of massacre that I personally
visited. I was unable to go to the remoter province of
Shan-si where so many devoted men and women laid down
their lives and where many who escaped death endured indescribable
hardships. But in the province of Shantung, where
the Boxer Uprising originated, I was witness to the ruin that
was wrought in many places, though the iron hand of the
great Governor, Yuan Shih Kai, prevented much bloodshed.
Then I turned to the northern province of Chih-li where official
hands, instead of restraining, actually guided and goaded the
maddened rioters.
[62] ``China in Convulsion,'' Arthur H. Smith; ``The Outbreak in China,''
F. L. Hawks Pott; ``The World Crisis in China, 1900,'' Allen S. Will;
``Siege Days,'' A. H. Mateer; ``The Siege of Peking,'' Wm. A. P.
Martin; ``The Providence of God in the Siege of Peking,'' C. H. Fenn;
``The Tragedy of Paoting-fu,'' Isaac C. Ketler; ``The China Martyrs of
1900,'' Robert C. Forsythe; ``China,'' James H. Wilson, ``China's Book
of Martyrs,'' Luella Miner; ``Two Heroes of Cathay,'' Luella Miner;
``Through Fire and Sword in Shan-si,'' E. H. Edwards; ``Chinese
Heroes,'' I. T. Headland; ``Martyred Missionaries of the C. I. M.,''
Broomhall; ``The Crisis in China,'' G. B. Smith and others.
After a delightful voyage of eighteen hours from Chefoo
over a smooth sea, we anchored outside the bar, nine miles
from shore, the tide not permitting our steamer to cross with
its heavy load. A tug took us off and entering the Pei-ho
River, we passed the famous Taku forts to the railway wharf at
Tong-ku. It was significant to find foreign flags flying over the
Taku forts and also over the mud-walled villages near by.
Scores of merchant steamers, transports and war vessels were
lying off Taku as well as hundreds of junks. The river was
full of smaller craft among which were several Japanese and
American gunboats. The railroad station presented a motley
appearance. A regiment of Japanese had just arrived and
while we were waiting, three train-loads of British Sikhs and
several cars of Austrian marines and British ``Tommy Atkins''
came in. The platform was thronged with officers and soldiers
of various nationalities, including a few Russians.
Nothing could be more dreary than the mud flats that the
traveller to the imperial city first sees. The greater part of the
way from Taku to Peking, the soil is poor and little cultivated.
But as we advanced, kao-liang fields were more frequent,
though the growth was far behind that in Shantung at the same
season. Small trees were numerous during the latter half of
the trip. The soil being too thin for good crops, the people
grow more fuel and fruit.
Evidences of the great catastrophe were seen long before
reaching the capital. Burned villages and battered buildings
lined the route. At Tien-tsin several of the foreign buildings
had shell holes. One corrugated iron building near the railway
station was pierced like a sieve and thousands of native
houses were in ruins. The city wall had been razed to the
ground and a highway made where it had stood--an unspeakable
humiliation to the proud commercial metropolis. The Japanese
soldiers teased the citizens by telling them that ``a city
without a wall is like a woman without clothes,'' and the
people keenly felt the shame implied in the taunt.
In Peking, the very fact that the railroad train on which we
travelled rushed noisily through a ragged chasm in the wall of
the Chinese city, and stopped at the entrance of the Temple of
Heaven, was suggestive of the consequences of war. The
city, as a whole, was not as badly injured as I had expected to
find it, but the ravages of war were evident enough. Wrecked
shops, crumbled houses, shot-torn walls were on every side,
while the most sacred places to a Chinese and a Manchu had
been profaned. At other times the Purple Forbidden City,
the Winter and Summer Palaces, the Temple of Heaven and
kindred imperial enclosures are inaccessible to the foreigner.
But a pass from the military authorities opened to us every door.
We walked freely through the extensive grounds and into all
the famous buildings--including the throne rooms which the
highest Chinese official can approach only upon his knees and
with his face abjectly on the stone pavement--and the private
apartments of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager. I was
impressed by the vastness of the Palace buildings and grounds,
the carvings of stone and wood, and the number of articles of
foreign manufacture. But thousands of Americans in moderate
circumstances have more spacious and comfortable bedrooms
than those of the Emperor and Empress Dowager of
China. All the living apartments looked cheerless. The
floors were of artificial stone or brick in squares of about
20 x 20 inches and of course everything was covered with dust.
The far-famed Temple of Heaven is the most artistic building
in China, a dream of beauty, colour and grace. For a generation
before the siege of Peking, no foreigner except General
Grant had entered that sacred enclosure, and the Chinese raised
a furore because Li Hung Chang admitted even the distinguished
American. As I freely walked about the place, photographed
the Temple and stood on the circular altar that is supposed to
be the centre of the earth and where the Emperor worships
alone at the winter solstice, British Sikhs lounged under the
trees, army mules munched the luxuriant grass and quartermasters'
wagons stood in long rows near the sacred spot
where a Chinese would prostrate himself in reverence and fear.
We rode past innumerable ruined buildings and through
motley throngs of Manchus, Chinese, German, French, Italian,
British and Japanese soldiers to the Presbyterian compound at
Duck Lane, which, though narrow, is not so unimportant a
street as its name implies. But where devoted missionaries
had so long lived and toiled, we saw only shapeless heaps of
broken bricks and a few tottering fragments of walls. At the
Second Street compound there was even greater ruin, if that
were possible. Silently we stood beside the great hole which
had once been the hospital cistern and from which the Japanese
soldiers, after the siege, had taken the bodies of a hundred
murdered Chinese. Not all had been Christians, for in that
carnival of blood, many who were merely suspected of being
friendly to foreigners were killed, while foes took advantage of
the tumult to pay off old scores of hate.
The first reports that had come to New York were that four-
fifths of the Chinese Christians and three-fourths of the boys and
girls in the boarding-schools had been killed or had died under
the awful hardships of that fatal summer. But as the months
passed, first one and then another and another were found.
Husbands searched for wives, parents for children, brothers
for sisters, until a considerable number of the missing ones had
been found, though the number of the lost was still great.
About two hundred of these surviving Christians and their
families were living together in native buildings adjoining the
residence in which we were entertained. Their history was
one of agony and bereavement. Including those who fell at
Paoting-fu, 191 of their fellow Christians had received the
crown of martyrdom, so that almost every survivor had lost
father or mother, brother or sister or friend. The Chinese are
supposed to be a phlegmatic people and not given to emotion.
But never have I met a congregation more swiftly responsive
than this one in Peking as I bore to them kindly messages from
many friends in other lands.
The Roman Catholic Cathedral was immortalized by Bishop
Favier's defense during the memorable siege. The mission
buildings occupy a spacious and strongly-walled compound in
the Manchu city. Hundreds of bullet and shell holes in the roofs
and walls were suggestive evidences of the fury of the Boxer
attack, while great pits marked the spots where mines had
been exploded.
I called on the famous Bishop. He was, for he has since
died, a burly, heavily-bearded Frenchman of about sixty-five
apparently. He received us most cordially and readily talked
of the siege. He said that of the eighty Europeans and 3,400
Christians with him in the siege, 2,700 were women and children.
Four hundred were buried, of whom forty were killed
by bullets, twenty-five by one explosion, eighty-one by another
and one by another. Of the rest, some died of disease but the
greater part of starvation. Twenty-one children were buried
at one time in one grave. Beside these 400 who were killed
or who died, many more were blown to pieces in explosions so
that nothing could be found to bury. Fifty-one children disappeared
in this way and not a fragment remained.
The first month of the siege, the food allowance was half a
pound a day. The first half of the second month, it was reduced
to four ounces, but for the second half only two ounces
could be served and the people had to eat roots, bark and the
leaves of trees and shrubs. Eighteen mules were eaten during
the siege. The Bishop said that in the diocese outside of
Peking, 6,000 Chinese Catholics, including three native priests,
were killed by the Boxers. Only four European priests were
killed, one in Peking and three outside. ``Not one foreign
priest left the diocese during the troubles,'' a statement that is
equally true of the Presbyterian missionaries and, so far as I
know, of those of other churches.
Clouds lowered as we left Peking, July 6th, on the Peking and
Hankow Railway for Paoting-fu, that city of sacred and painful
interest to every American Christian. Soon rain began to
fall, and it steadily continued while we rode over the vast level
plain, through unending fields of kao-liang, interspersed with
plots of beans, peanuts, melons and cucumbers, and mud and
brick-walled villages whose squalid wretchedness was hidden
by the abundant foliage of the trees, which are the only beauty
of Chinese cities. At almost every railway station, roofless
buildings, crumbling walls and broken water tanks bore painful
witness to the rage of the Boxers. At Liang-hsiang-hsien the
first foreign property was destroyed, and all along the line
outrages were perpetrated on the inoffensive native Christians.
Nowhere else in China was the hatred of the foreigner more
violent, for here hereditary pride and bigoted conservatism,
unusually intense even for China, were reinforced by Boxer
chiefs from the neighbouring province of Shantung, and were
particularly irritated by the aggressiveness of Roman Catholic
priests and by the construction of the railroad. It is only 110
miles from Peking to Paoting-fu. But the schedule was slow
and the stops long, so that we were six hours in making the
journey. Arriving at the large, well-built brick station, we
bumped and splashed in a Chinese cart through narrow, muddy
streets to the residence of a wealthy Chinese family that had
deemed a hasty departure expedient when the French and
British forces entered the city, and whose house had been
assigned by the magistrate as temporary quarters for the Presbyterian
missionaries.
Protestant mission work at Paoting-fu was begun only about
thirty years ago by the American Board. The station was
never a large one, the total nominal force of missionaries up
to the Boxer outbreak being two ordained married men, Ewing
and Pitkin, one physician, Dr. Noble, and two single women,
the Misses Morrill and Gould. In the whole station field
including the out-stations, there were not more than 300 Christians
and those were south of a line drawn through the centre
of the city of Paoting-fu. There were two boarding-schools,
one for boys and one for girls, both small, and a general
hospital.
The China Inland Mission had no mission work at Paoting-fu,
but as the city is at the head of navigation of the Paoting-fu
River from Tien-tsin and was also at that time the terminus of
the Peking and Hankow Railway, the Mission made it a point
of trans-shipment and of formation of cart and shendza trains
for its extensive work in the Shan-si and Shen-si provinces, and
kept a forwarding agent there, Mr. Benjamin Bagnall.
The Presbyterian station was not opened till 1893, and the
force at the time of the outbreak consisted of three ordained
men, the Revs. J. Walter Lowrie, J. A. Miller, and F. E.
Simcox, two medical men, George Yardley Taylor and C. V. R.
Hodge, and one single woman, Dr. Maud A. Mackay. All
of the men except Lowrie and Taylor were married, and the
former had his mother, Mrs. Amelia P. Lowrie, with him.
With the exception of a dispensary and street chapel in rented
quarters in the city, the station plant was at the compound
where, on a level tract 660 feet in length by 210 feet in width,
there were four residences and a hospital and chapel combined,
with, of course, the usual smaller outbuildings. The only
educational work, beside one out-station day-school, was a small
boarding-school for girls recently started and occupying a little
building originally intended for a stable.
This was the situation up to the fateful month of June, 1900.
Rumours of impending trouble were numerous, but missionaries
in China become accustomed to threatening placards and
slanderous reports. Though it was evident that the opposition
was becoming more bitter, the missionaries did not feel that
they would be justified in abandoning their work. Several,
however, were temporarily absent for other reasons. Of the
Congregational missionaries, Dr. and Mrs. Noble and Mrs.
Pitkin were on furlough in America and Mr. and Mrs. Ewing
were spending a few weeks at the seaside resort, Pei-tai-ho,
so that Mr. Pitkin, Miss Morrill and Miss Gould were the only
ones left at the station. Of the Presbyterian missionaries
Mr. and Mrs. Miller were also at Pei-tai-ho, Mrs. Lowrie had
sailed for America the 26th of May, and Mr. Lowrie, who had
accompanied her to Shanghai, was at Tien-tsin on his way
back to Paoting-fu. The missionaries remaining at the station
were thus five,--Dr. Taylor, Mr. and Mrs. Simcox and their
three children, and Dr. and Mrs. Hodge. The China Inland
forwarding agent, Mr. Bagnall, with his wife and little girl,
was in his house south of the city wall near the American Board
compound, and with him was the Rev. William Cooper, who
was on his way to Shanghai after a visit to the Shan-si Mission
and whose family was then at Chefoo.
It is impossible to ascertain all the details of the massacre.
None of the foreigners live to tell the painful story. No other
foreigners reached Paoting-fu until the arrival of the military
expedition in October, three and a half months later. The
Chinese who had participated in the massacre were then in
hiding. Spectators were afraid to talk lest they, too, might be
held guilty. Most of the Chinese Christians who had been
with the missionaries were killed, while others were so panic-
stricken that they could remember only the particular scenes
with which they were directly connected. Moreover, in those
three and a half months such battles and national commotions
had occurred, including the capture of Peking and the flight of
the Emperor, that the people of Paoting-fu had half forgotten
the murder of a few missionaries in June.
In these circumstances, full information will probably never
be obtained, though additional facts may yet turn up from
time to time. But from all that can be learned, and from the
piecing together of the scattered fragments of information carefully
collected by Mr. Lowrie, who accompanied the expedition,
it appears that Thursday, June 28th, several Chinese young men
who had been studying medicine under Dr. Taylor came to
him at the city dispensary, warned him of the impending
danger and urged him to leave. When he refused they besought
him to yield, and though several of them were not
Christians, so strong was their attachment to their teacher that
they shed tears.
Dr. Taylor placed the dispensary and its contents, together
with the adjacent street chapel, in charge of the district magistrate
and returned to the mission compound outside the city.
That very afternoon startling proof was given that foreboding
was not ill-founded, for the Rev. Meng Chi Hsien, the native
pastor of the Congregational Church, was seized while in the
city, his hands cut off, and the next morning he was beheaded.
The missionaries then decided to leave, drew their silver
from the local bank and hired carts. But an official assured
them that there would be no further trouble, and they concluded
to remain. It is doubtful whether they could have escaped
anyway, for the very next afternoon, Saturday, June 30th,
a mob left the west gate of the city, and marching northward
parallel to the railroad, turned eastward through a small village
near the mission compound, which has always been the resort
of bad characters, and attacked the mission between five and
six o'clock.
The first report that all the missionaries were together in the
house of Mr. Simcox is now believed to have been erroneous.
The Hodges were there, but Dr. Taylor was in his own room
in the second story of Mr. Lowrie's house. Seizing a magazine
rifle belonging to Mr. Lowrie, he showed it to the mob and
warned them not to come nearer. But the Boxers pressed furiously
on, in the superstitious belief that the foreigner's bullet
could not harm them. Then, being alone, and with the traditions
of a Quaker ancestry strong within him, he chose rather
to die himself than to inflict death upon the people he had
come to save. The Boxers set fire to the house, and the beloved
physician, throwing the rifle to the floor, disappeared amid
the flame and smoke. But the body was not consumed, for a
Chinese living in a neighbouring village said afterwards that
he saw it lying in the ruins of the house several days
later, and that he gave it decent burial in a field near by. But
there are hundreds of unmarked mounds in that region, and
when the foreign expedition arrived in October, he was unable
to indicate the particular one which he had made for Dr. Taylor's
remains. Mr. Lowrie made diligent search and opened a
number of graves, but found nothing that could be identified.
In the Simcox house, however, the two men were charged
with the defense of women and children, and to protect them if
possible from unspeakable outrage, when they realized that persuasion
was vain, they felt justified as a last desperate resort
in using force. The testimony of natives is to the effect
that at least two Boxers were killed in the attack, one of them
the Boxer chief, Chu Tu Tze, who that very day had received
the rank of the gilt button from the Provincial Judge as a recognition
of his anti-foreign zeal and an encouragement to continue
it. He was shot through the head while vociferously
urging the assault from the top of a large grave mound near
the compound wall.
The story that little Paul and Francis Simcox, frightened
by the heat and smoke, ran out of the house and were despatched
by the crowd and their bodies thrown into a well
now appears to be unfounded. All died together, Mr. and
Mrs. Simcox and their three children, and Dr. and Mrs.
Hodge; Mr. Simcox being last seen walking up and down
holding the hand of one of his children.
It is at least some comfort that they were spared the outrages
and mutilations inflicted on so many of the martyrs of
that awful summer, for unless some were struck by bullets,
death came by suffocation in burning houses--swiftly and
mercifully. No Boxer hand touched them, living or dead, but
within less than an hour from the beginning of the attack, the
end came, and the flames did their work so completely that,
save in the case of Dr. Taylor, nothing remained upon which
fiendish hate could wreak itself. Husbands and wives died as
they could have wished to die--together, and at the post of
duty.
The next morning the Boxers, jubilant over their success of
the night before, trooped out to the American Board compound
in the south suburb. The two ladies took refuge in the chapel,
while Mr. Pitkin remained outside to do what he could to keep
back the mob. But he was speedily shot and then decapitated.
His body, together with the bodies of several of the members
of the Meng family, was thrown into a hastily-dug pit just outside
the wall of the compound, but his head was borne in
triumph to the Provincial Judge, who was the prime mover in
the outbreak. He caused it to be fixed on the inside of the
city wall, not far from the southeast corner and nearly opposite
the temple in which the remaining missionaries were imprisoned.
There, the Chinese say, it remained for two or
three weeks, a ghastly evidence of the callous cruelty of a
people many of whom must have known Mr. Pitkin and the
good work done at the mission compound not far distant.
When sorrowing friends arrived in October, the head could
not be found, but it has since been recovered and buried with
the bodies of the other martyrs.
The fate of the young women, Miss Morrill and Miss Gould,
thus deprived of their only protector, was not long deferred.
After the fall of Mr. Pitkin, they were seized, stripped of all
their clothing except one upper and one lower garment, and
led by the howling crowd along a path leading diagonally from
the entrance of the compound to the road just east of it. Miss
Gould did not die of fright as she was taken from the chapel, as
was at first reported, but at the point where the path enters the
road, a few hundred yards from the chapel, she fainted. Her
ankles were then tied together, and another cord lashed her
wrists in front of her body. A pole was thrust between legs and
arms, and she was carried the rest of the way, while Miss Morrill
walked, characteristically giving to a beggar the little money at
her waist, talking to the people, and with extraordinary self-
possession endeavouring to convince her persecutors of their folly.
And so the procession of bloodthirsty men, exulting in the
possession of two defenseless women one of them unconscious,
wended its way northward to the river bank, westward to the
stone bridge, over it and to a temple within the city, not far
from the southeast corner of the wall.
Meantime, Mr. Cooper, Mr. and Mrs. Bagnall and their little
daughter had begun the day in Mr. Bagnall's house, which
was a short distance east of the American Board compound,
and on the same road. Seeing the flames of the hospital,
which was the first building fired by the Boxers, they fled eastward
along the road to a Chinese military camp, about a
quarter of a mile distant, whose commanding officer had been
on friendly terms with Mr. Bagnall. But in the hour of need
he arrested them, ruthlessly despoiled them of their valuables,
and sent them under a guard to the arch conspirator, the Provincial
Judge. It is pitiful to hear of the innocent child cling-
ing in terror to her mother's dress. But there was no pity in
the heart of the brutal judge, and the little party was sent to
the temple where the Misses Morrill and Gould were already
imprisoned.
All this was in the morning. A pretended trial was held,
and about four in the afternoon of the same day, all were
taken to a spot outside the southeast corner of the city wall,
and there, before the graves of two Boxers, they were beheaded
and their bodies thrown into a pit.
Months passed before any effort was made by the foreign
armies in Peking to reach Paoting-fu. Shortly after the occupation
of the capital, I wrote to the Secretary of State in Washington
reminding him again of the American citizens who at
last accounts were at Paoting-fu, and urging that the United
States commander in Peking be instructed to send an expedition
there, not to punish for I did not deem it my duty to discuss
that phase of the question, but to ascertain whether any
Americans were yet living and to make an investigation as to
what had happened.
Secretary Hay promptly cabled Minister Conger, who soon
wired back that all the Americans at Paoting-fu had been
killed. The United States forces took no part in the punitive
expeditions sent out by the European commanders, partly, no
doubt, because our Government preferred to act on the theory
that it would be wiser to give the Chinese Government an opportunity
to punish the guilty, and partly because the Administration
did not desire the United States to be identified with
the expeditions which were reputed to equal the Boxers in the
merciless barbarity of burning, pillaging, ravishing and
killing.
Still, it is not pleasing to reflect that though there was an
ample American force in Peking only 110 miles away, we
were indebted to a British general for the opportunity to acquire
any accurate information as to the fate of eleven Americans.
An expedition of inquiry, at least, might have been sent. But
as it was, it was not till October that three columns of Europeans
(still no Americans) left for Paoting-fu. One column was
French, under General Baillard. The second was British and
German under Generals Campbell and Von Ketteler, both of
these columns starting from Tien-tsin. The third column left
Peking and was composed of British and Italians led by General
Gaselee. The plan was for the three columns to unite as
they approached the city. But General Baillard made forced
marches and reached Paoting-fu October 15th, so that when
General Gaselee arrived on the 17th, he found, to his surprise
and chagrin, that the French had already taken bloodless possession
of the city. The British and German columns from
Tien-tsin did not arrive till the 20th and 21st. With them
came the Rev. J. Walter Lowrie, who had obtained permission
to accompany it as an interpreter for the British.
The allied Generals immediately made stern inquisitions into
the outrages that had been committed, which, of course, included
those upon Roman Catholics as well as upon Protestants.
Mr. Lowrie, as the only man who could speak Chinese,
and the only one, too, who personally knew the Chinese, at
once came into prominence. To the people, he appeared to
have the power of life and death. All examinations had to be
conducted through him. All accusations and evidence had to
be sifted by him. The guilty tried to shift the blame upon the
innocent, and enemies sought to pay off old scores of hatred
upon their foes by charging them with complicity in the massacres.
It would have accorded with Chinese custom if Mr.
Lowrie had availed himself to the utmost of his opportunity to
punish the antagonists of the missionaries, especially as his
dearest friends had been remorselessly murdered and all of his
personal property destroyed. It was not in human nature to
be lenient in such circumstances, and the Chinese fully expected
awful vengeance.
Great was their amazement when they saw the man whom
they had so grievously wronged acting not only with modera-
tion and strict justice, but in a kind and forgiving spirit.
Every scrap of testimony was carefully analyzed in order that
no innocent man might suffer. Instead of securing the execution
of hundreds of smaller officials and common people, as is
customary in China in such circumstances, Mr. Lowrie counselled
the Generals to try Ting Jung, who at the time of the
massacre was Provincial Judge but who had since been promoted
to the post of Provincial Treasurer and acting Viceroy;
Kwei Heng the commander of the Manchu garrison, and Weng
Chan Kwei the colonel in command of the Chinese Imperial
forces who had seized the escaping Bagnall party and sent them
back to their doom. The evidence plainly showed that these
high officials were the direct and responsible instigators of the
uprising, that they had ordered every movement, and that the
crowd of smaller officials, Boxers and common people had simply
obeyed their orders. The three dignitaries were found
guilty and condemned to death.
Was ever retributive justice more signally illustrated than in
the place in which they were imprisoned pending Count von
Waldersee's approval of the sentence? The military authorities
selected the place, not with reference to its former uses, of
which indeed they were ignorant, but simply because it was
convenient, empty and clean. But it was the Presbyterian
chapel and dispensary in which Mr. Lowrie had so often
preached the gospel of peace and good will and the martyred
Dr. Taylor had so often healed the sick in the name of Christ.
Not long afterwards, the three officials were led to a level,
open space, just east of a little clump of trees not far from the
southwest corner of the city wall, and as near as practicable to
the place where the missionaries had been beheaded, and there,
in the presence of all the foreign soldiers, they were themselves
beheaded.
Nor was this all, for Chinese officials are never natives of the
cities they govern, but are sent to them from other provinces.
Moreover, they usually remain in one place only a few years.
The people fear and obey them as long as they are officials, but
often care little what becomes of them afterwards. They had
not befriended them during their trial and they did not attend
their execution. The Generals therefore felt that some punishment
must be inflicted upon the city. A Chinese city is proud
of the stately and ponderous towers which ornament the gates
and corners of its massive wall and protect the inhabitants
from foes, human and demoniac. All of these, but two
comparatively small ones, were blown up by order of the
foreign generals. The temples which the Boxers had used for
their meetings, including the one in which the American
Board and China Inland missionaries had been imprisoned,
were also destroyed, while the splendid official temple of the city,
dedicated to its patron deity, was utterly wrecked by dynamite.
Not till March 23d could memorial services be held. Then
a party of missionaries and friends came down from Peking.
The surviving Christians assembled. The new city officials
erected a temporary pavilion on the site of the Presbyterian
compound, writing over the entrance arch: ``They held the
truth unto death.'' Within, potted flowers and decorated
banners adorned the tables and walls. The scene was solemnly
impressive. Mr. Lowrie, Dr. Wherry and Mr. Killie and
others made appropriate addresses to an audience in which
there were, besides themselves, fifteen missionaries representing
four denominations, German and French army officers, Chinese
officials and Chinese Christians. A German military band
furnished appropriate music and two Roman Catholic priests
of the city sent flowers and kind letters. The following day
a similar service was held on the site of the American Board
compound.
We sadly visited all these places. It was about the hour of
the attack that we approached the Presbyterian compound. Of
the once pleasant homes and mission buildings, not even ruins
were left. A few hundred yards away, the site could not
have been distinguished from the rest of the open fields if my
companions had not pointed out marks mournfully intelligible
to them but hardy recognizable by a stranger. The very
foundations had been dug up by Chinese hunting for silver, and
every scrap of material had been carried away. Even the
trees and bushes had been removed by the roots and used
for firewood. In front of the site of the Simcox house are a
few unmarked mounds. All but one contain the fragments of
the bodies of the Chinese helpers and Christians, and that one,
the largest, holds the few pieces of bones which were all that
could be found in the ruins of the house in which the missionaries
perished. A few more may yet be found. We ourselves
discovered five small pieces which Dr. Charles Lewis afterwards
identified as human bones. But their charred and
broken condition showed how completely the merciful fire had
done its work of keeping the sacred remains from the hands of
those who would have shamefully misused them. The
American Board and China Inland Mission compounds were
also in ruins, a chaos of desolation. But as the martyred
missionaries and native Christians were beheaded and not
burned, their bodies have been recovered and interred in a long
row of twenty-three graves.
The negotiations of foreign Powers with the Chinese regarding
the payment of indemnity were, as might be expected, protracted
and full of difficulties. Some of the Powers favoured
extreme demands which, if acceded to, would have ruined the
Empire or resulted in its immediate partition, even if they did
not cause a new and more bitter outbreak of hostilities. Other
Powers, notably the United States, favoured moderate terms,
holding that China should not be asked to pay sums that were
clearly beyond her ability. After almost interminable disputes,
the total sum to be paid by China was, by the final protocol
signed September 7, 1901, fixed at 450,000,000 taels to be
paid in thirty-nine annual installments with interest at four per
cent. on the deferred payments and to be distributed as follows:
Country taels
Germany 90,070,515
Austria-Hungary 4,003,920
Belgium 8,484,345
Spain 135,315
United States 32,939,055[63]
France 70,878,240
Portugal 92,250
Great Britain 50,712,795
Italy 26,617,005
Japan 34,793,100
Netherlands 782,100
Russia 230,371,120
International (Sweden and Norway, $62,820) 212,490
450,000,000
[63] The equivalent of $24,168,357.
The treaty was not calculated to make the Chinese think
more kindly of their conquerors. Besides the payment of the
heavy indemnity, the Powers exacted apologies to Germany
for the murder of its minister and to Japan for the assassination
of the chancellor of its legation, the erection of monuments in
foreign cemeteries and the making of new commercial treaties.
The Chinese were cut to the quick by being told, among other
things, that they must not import firearms for two years;
that no official examinations would be held for five years in the
cities where foreigners had been attacked; that an important
part of the imperial capital would be added to the already
spacious grounds of the foreign legations and that the whole
would be fortified and garrisoned by foreign guards; that the
Taku forts which defended the entrance to Peking would be
razed and the railway from the sea to the capital occupied by
foreign troops; that members of anti-foreign societies were to be
executed; that magistrates even though they were viceroys
were to be summarily dismissed and disgraced if they did not
prevent anti-foreign outbreaks and sternly punish their ring-
leaders; that court ceremonies in relation to foreign ministers
must be conformed to Western ideas; that the Tsung-li Yamen
(Foreign Office) must be abolished and a new ministry of
foreign affairs erected, the Wai-wu Pu, which must be regarded
as the highest of the departments instead of the lowest.
China's cup of humiliation was indeed full.
PART IV
The Missionary Force and the Chinese
Church
XVIII
BEGINNINGS OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE--
THE TAI-PING REBELLION AND THE LATER
DEVELOPMENT
THE first definite knowledge of the true God appears
to have come to China with some Jews who are said
to have entered the Empire in the third century.
Conjecture has long been busy with the circumstances of that
ancient migration. That the colony became fairly numerous
may be inferred from the fact that in 1329 and again in 1354,
the Jews are mentioned in the Chinese records of the Mongol
dynasty, while early in the seventeenth century Father Ricci
claimed to have discovered a synagogue built in 1183. In
1866, the Rev. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, then President of the
Tung-wen College at Peking, visited Kai-fung-fu, the centre of
this Jewish colony, and on a monument he found an inscription
which included the following passage:--
``With respect to the religion of Israel, we find that our first ancestor
was Adam. The founder of the religion was Abraham; then came Moses
who established the law, and handed down the sacred writings. During
the dynasty of Han (B. C. 200-A, D. 226) this religion entered China.
In the second year of Hiao-tsung, of the Sung dynasty (A. D. 1164), a
synagogue was erected in Kai-fung fu. Those who attempt to represent
God by images or pictures do but vainly occupy themselves with empty
forms. Those who honour and obey the sacred writings know the origin
of all things. Eternal reason and the sacred writings mutually sustain
each other in testifying whence men derived their being. All those who
profess this religion aim at the practice of goodness and avoid the commission
of vice.''[64]
[64] Martin, ``A Cycle of Cathay,'' p. 275.
Dr. Martin writes that he inquired in the market-place:--
``Are there among you any of the family of Israel?'' ``I am one,''
responded a young man, whose face corroborated his assertion; and then
another and another stepped forth until I saw before me representatives
of six out of the seven families into which the colony is divided. They
confessed with shame and grief that their holy and beautiful house had
been demolished by their own hands. It had for a long time, they said,
been in a ruinous condition; they had no money to make repairs; they
had, moreover, lost all knowledge of the sacred tongue; the traditions of
the fathers were no longer handed down and their ritual worship had
ceased to be observed. In this state of things they had yielded to the
pressure of necessity and disposed of the timbers and stones of that venerable
edifice to obtain relief for their bodily wants. . . . Their number
they estimated, though not very exactly, at from three to four hundred.
. . . No bond of union remains, and they are in danger of being
speedily absorbed by Mohammedanism or heathenism.''[65]
[65] Martin, ``A Cycle of Cathay,'' pp. 275, 276, 277.
There is something pathetic about that forlorn remnant of the
Hebrew race. ``A rock rent from the side of Mount Zion
by some great national catastrophe and projected into the central
plain of China, it has stood there while the centuries rolled
by, sublime in its antiquity and solitude.''[66]
[66] Martin, p. 278.
In his Life of Morrison, Townsend reminds us that the Christian
Church early realized that it could not ignore so vast a
nation, while its very exclusiveness attracted bold spirits. As
far back as the first decade of the sixth century (505 A. D.),
Nestorian monks appear to have begun a mission in China.
Romance and tragedy are suggested by the few known facts
regarding that early movement. Partly impelled by conviction,
partly driven by persecution, those faithful souls travelled beyond
the bounds of the Roman Empire, and rested not till they
had made the formidable journey across burning deserts and
savage mountains to the land of Sinim. That some measure
of success attended their effort is probable. Indeed there are
hints in the ancient records of numerous churches and of the
favour of the great Emperor Tai Tsung in 635. But however
zealous the Nestorians may have been for a time, it is evident
that they were finally submerged in the sea of Chinese superstition.
A quaint monument, discovered in 1625 at Hsi-an-fu,
the capital of Shen-si, on which is inscribed an outline of the
Nestorian effort from the year 630 to 781, is the only trace that
remains of what must have been an interesting and perhaps a
thrilling missionary enterprise.
The Roman Catholic effort began in 1293, when John de
Corvino succeeded in reaching Peking. Though he was elevated
to an Archbishopric and reinforced by several priests,
this effort, too, proved a failure and was abandoned.
Two and a-half centuries of silence followed, and then in
1552, the heroic Francis Xavier set his face towards China,
only to be prostrated by fever on the Island of Sancian. As
he despairingly realized that he would never be able to set his
foot on that still impenetrable land, he moaned: ``Oh, Rock,
Rock, when wilt thou open!'' and passed away.
But in 1581, another Jesuit, the learned and astute Matteo
Ricci, entered Canton in the guise of a Buddhist priest. He
managed to remain, and twenty years later he went to Peking
in the dress of a literary gentleman. In him Roman Catholicism
gained a permanent foothold in China, and although it
was often fiercely persecuted and at times reduced to feebleness,
it never became wholly extinct. Gradually it extended
its influence until in 1672 the priests reported 300,000 baptized
Chinese, including children. In the nineteenth century,
the growth of the Roman Church was rapid. It is now
strongly entrenched in all the provinces, and in most of the
leading cities its power is great. There are twenty-seven bishops
and about six hundred foreign priests. The number of communicants
is variously estimated, but in 1897 the Vicar Apostolic
of Che-kiang, though admitting that he could not secure
accurate statistics, estimated the Roman Catholic population
at 750,000.
It is not to the credit of Protestantism that it was centuries
behind the Roman Church in the attempt to Christianize
China. It was not till 1807, that the first Protestant missionary
arrived. January 31st, of that year, Robert Morrison, then a
youth of twenty-five, sailed alone from London under appointment
of the London Missionary Society (Congregational). As
the hostile East India Company would not allow a missionary
on any of its ships, Morrison had to go to New York in order
to secure passage on an American vessel. As he paid his fare
in the New York ship owner's office, the merchant said with
a sneer: ``And so, Mr. Morrison, you really expect that you
will make an impression on the idolatry of the great Chinese
Empire?'' ``No, sir,'' was the ringing reply, ``I expect God
will.''
The ship Trident left New York about May 15th and did
not reach Canton till September 8th. For two years Morrison
had to live and study in Canton and the Portuguese settlement
of Macao with the utmost secrecy, dreading constantly that he
might be forced to leave. For a time, he never walked the
streets by daylight for fear of attracting attention, but exercised
by night. His own countrymen were hostile to his purpose
and his Chinese language teachers were impatient and insolent.
It was not till February 20, 1809, the date of his marriage to
Miss Morton, that his employment as translator by the East
India Company gave him a secure residence. Still, however,
he could not do open missionary work, but was obliged to present
Christianity behind locked doors to the few Chinese whom
he dared to approach. In these circumstances, he naturally
gave his energies largely to language study and translation,
and in 1810 he had the joy of issuing a thousand copies of a
Chinese version of the Book of Acts.
Seven weary, discouraging years passed before Morrison baptized
his first convert, July 16, 1814, and even then he had to
administer the sacrament at a lonely spot where unfriendly eyes
could not look. At his death in 1834, there were only three
Chinese Christians in the whole Empire. Successors carried
on the effort, but the door was not yet open, and the work was
done against many obstacles and chiefly in secret till the treaty
of Nanking, in 1842, opened the five ports of Amoy, Canton,
Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. Missionaries who had been
waiting and watching in the neighbouring islands promptly entered
these cities. Eagerly they looked to the great populations
in the interior, but they were practically confined to the
ports named till 1858, when the treaty of Tien-tsin opened
other cities and officially conceded the rights of missionary residence
and labour.
The work now spread more rapidly, not only because it was
conducted in more centres and by a larger force of missionaries,
but because it was carried into the interior regions by
Chinese who had heard the gospel in the ports.
The Tai-ping Rebellion soon gave startling illustration of the
perversion of the new force. Begun in 1850 by an alleged
Christian convert who claimed to have a special revelation from
heaven as a younger brother of Christ, it spread with amazing
rapidity until in 1853 it had overrun almost all that part of
China south of the Yang-tze-kiang, had occupied Nanking and
Shanghai, and had made such rapid progress northward that it
threatened the capital itself. It was the most stupendous revolution
in history, shaking to its foundations a vast and ancient
empire, involving the destruction of an almost inconceivable
amount of property and, it is said, of the lives of twenty millions
of human beings.
If this great rebellion had been wisely guided, it would
undoubtedly have changed the history of China and perhaps, by
this time, of the greater part of Asia, for it proposed to overthrow
idolatry, to unseat the Manchu dynasty, and to found an
empire on the principles of the Christian religion. So nearly
indeed did it attain success that if it had not been opposed by
European nations, it would probably have attained its object.
But the weight of their influence was thrown in favour of the
Government. The American Frederick T. Ward and the
English Charles George Gordon organized and led the ``Ever
Victorious Army'' of Chinese troops against the revolutionists.
Most significant of all, the leaders of the rebellion itself, freed
from the restraint which foreigners might perhaps have exerted,
quickly discarded whatever Christian principles they had started
with and rapidly demoralized the movement at its centre by
giving themselves up to an arrogance, vice, and cruelty which
were worse than those of the government they sought to overturn.
Mr. McLane, then United States Minister, truly
reported to Washington:--
``Whatever may have been the hopes of the enlightened and civilized
nations of the earth, in regard to this movement, it is now apparent that
they neither profess nor apprehend Christianity, and whatever may be the
true judgment to form of their political power, it can no longer be doubted
that intercourse cannot be established or maintained on terms of equality.''
The recapture of Nanking in 1864 marked the final turning
of the tide, and in an incredibly short time the whole insurrection
collapsed. The rebellion, vast as it was, is now after
all but an episode in the history of the great Empire. But the
fact that any man on such a platform could so quickly develop
an insurrection of such appalling proportions significantly
suggests the possibilities of change in China when new movements
are rightly directed.
Freed from this gigantic travesty of its true character, the
growth of Christianity in China became more rapid. The
following table is eloquent:
1807 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 communicants
1814 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ``
1834 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ``
1842 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 ``
1853 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350 ``
1857 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 ``
1865 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000 ``
1876. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13,515 ``
1886 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28,000 communicants
1889 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37,287 ``
1893 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55,093 ``
1887 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80,682 ``
1903 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112,808 ``
The number of Protestant missionaries is 2,950, of whom
1,233 are men, 868 are wives and 849 are single women. Of
the whole number, 1,483 are from Great Britain, 1,117 from
America and 350 from continental Europe. Other interesting
statistics are 5,000,000 adherents, 2,500 stations and out-
stations, 6,388 Chinese pastors and helpers, 1,819 day-schools and
170 higher institutions of learning, twenty-three mission presses
with an annual Output Of 107,149,738 pages, thirty-two periodicals,
124 hospitals and dispensaries treating in a single year
1,700,452 patients; while the asylums for the orphaned and
blind and deaf number thirty-two.
It will thus be seen that Christian missions in China are
being conducted upon a large scale. It would be difficult to
overestimate the silent and yet mighty energy represented by
such work, steadily continued through a long series of years,
and representing the life labours of thousands of devoted men
and women and an annual expenditure of hundreds of thousands
of dollars.
True, the number of Christians is small in comparison with
the population of the Empire, but the gospel has been aptly
compared to a seed. It is indeed small, but seeds generally
are. Lodged in a crevice of a rock, a seed will thrust its
thread-like roots into fissures so tiny that they are hardly
noticeable. Yet in time they will rend the rock asunder and
firmly hold a stately tree. Now the seed of the gospel has been
fairly lodged in the Chinese Empire. It is a seed of indestructible
vitality and irresistible transforming power. It has taken
root, and it is destined to produce mighty changes. It was not
without reason that Christianity was spoken of as a force that
``turned the world upside down,'' though it only does this
where the world was wrong side up. It is significant that the
word translated ``power'' in Romans 1:16, ``The gospel is
the power of God,'' is in the Greek the word that we have
anglicized in common speech as ``dynamite.'' We might,
therefore, literally translate Paul's statement: ``The gospel is
the dynamite of God.'' That dynamite has been placed under
the crust of China's conservatism, and the extraordinary
transformations that are taking place in China are, in part at least,
the results of its tremendous explosive force.
The scope of this book does not permit an extended account
of the missionary movement in China. It has been given in
many volumes that are easily accessible.''[67] Nearly all of the
Protestant churches, European and American, are represented
and their missionaries are teaching the young, healing
the sick, translating the Word of God, creating a wholesome
literature, and preaching everywhere and with a fidelity beyond
all praise the truths of the Christian religion. Self-sacrificing
devotion and patient persistence in well-doing are written on
every page of the history of missions in China, while emergencies
have developed deeds of magnificent heroism. Men and
women have repeatedly endured persecution of the most virulent
kind rather than forsake their converts, and a number ``of
whom the world was not worthy'' have laid down their lives
for conscience' sake. There are few places in all the world
that are more depressing to a white man than a Chinese city.
The dreary monotony and squalor of its life are simply indescribable.
Chefoo is usually considered one of the most attractive
cities in China, and the missionaries who reside there
are regarded as fortunate above their brethren. But even a
brief stay will convince the most sceptical that nothing but the
strongest considerations of duty could induce one who has
freedom of choice to remain any longer than is absolutely
necessary. Yet for forty-two years, missionaries have lived
and toiled amid these unattractive surroundings, their houses
on Temple Hill in the midst of the innumerable graves which
occupy almost every possible space not actually covered by the
mission buildings and grounds. But steadily the missionaries
have toiled on, with faith and courage and love, and they are
slowly but surely effecting marked changes. One by one, the
Chinese are being led to loftier views of life and while the old
city still continues to live in the ancient way, hundreds of
Chinese families, amid the numerous population outside of the
walls and in the outlying villages, have begun to conform
themselves to the new and higher conditions of life represented
by the Christian missionaries.
[67] The reader is referred to ``The Middle Kingdom,'' Williams;
``Christian Progress in China,'' Foster (1889); ``Story of the China Inland
Mission,'' Guinness; ``China and Formosa,'' Johnston (1897);
Record of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of
China held in Shanghai, 1890; Report of the Ecumenical Missionary
Conference held in New York, 1900; ``Mission Problems
and Mission Methods in South China,'' Gibson; ``Mission Methods in
Manchuria,'' Ross; ``Women of the Middle Kingdom,'' McNabb;
``Among the Mongols,'' Gilmour; ``East of the Barrier,'' Graham; ``In
the Far East,'' Guinness; ``The Cross and the Dragon,'' Henry; ``From
Far Formosa,'' Mackay; ``Dawn on the Hills of T'ang,'' Beach; ``China
and the Chinese,'' Nevius; ``Our Life in China,'' Mrs. Nevius; ``Life of
John Livingston Nevius,'' Nevius; ``Rex Christus,'' Smith; ``John
Kenneth Mackenzie,'' Bryson; ``Princely Men in the Heavenly Kingdom,''
Beach; ``James Gilmour of Mongolia,'' Lovett; ``Griffith John,''
Robson; ``Robert Morrison,'' Townsend; ``With the Tibetans in Tent
and Temple,'' Rijnhart.
Several schools, a handsome church, a hospital, the only
institution for deaf mutes in China and a wide-reaching itinerating
work, are features of the mission enterprise in Chefoo.
The visitor will be particularly interested in Dr. Hunter Corbett's
street chapel and museum. The building is situated
opposite the Chinese theatre and is well adapted to its purpose.
Dr. Corbett and a helper stand at the door and invite passers-by,
while a blind boy plays on a baby organ and sings.
The chapel, which holds about sixty or seventy, is soon filled.
Dr. Corbett preaches to the people for half an hour and then ad-
mits them to the museum which occupies several rooms in the
rear. It is a wonderful place to the Chinese who never weary
of watching the stuffed tiger, the model railway and the scores
of interesting objects and specimens that Dr. Corbett has collected
from various lands. Then the people leave by a door
opening on the back street, another service being held with
them in the last room. Several audiences a day are thus
handled. It is hard work, for the men as a rule are from many
outlying villages, unaccustomed to listening and knowing nothing
of Christianity. But Dr. Corbett speaks with such animation
and eloquence that not an eye is taken from him. Few
are converted in the chapel, but friendships are gained, doors
of opportunity opened, tracts distributed, men led to think,
and on country tours Dr. Corbett invariably meets people who
have been to the museum and who cordially welcome him to
their homes. He declares that after thirty years' experience,
he thoroughly believes in such work when followed up by
faithful itineration. Seventy-two thousand attended the chapel
and museum in the year 1900 in spite of the Boxer troubles.
The chapel is open every day, except that the museum
is closed on Sundays, and the attendance is now larger than
ever.
After dinner, we strolled down to Dr. Nevius' famous orchard.
It is a beautiful spot. Here the great missionary
found his recreation after his arduous labours. Yet even in his
hours of rest, he was eminently practical. Seeing that the
Chinese had very little good fruit and believing that he might
show them how to secure it, he brought from America seeds
and cuttings, carefully cultivated them and, when they were
grown, freely distributed the new seeds and cuttings to the
Chinese, explaining to them the methods of cultivation. Today,
as the result of his forethought and generosity, several
foreign fruits have become common throughout North China.
But the orchard is deteriorating as the Chinese will not prune
the trees. They are so greedy for returns that they do not like
to diminish the number of apples or plums in the interest of
quality.
At sunset, I made a pilgrimage with Mrs. Nevius to the
cemetery, where, after forty years of herculean toil, the mighty
missionary sleeps. We sat for a long time beside the grave, and
the aged widow, speaking of her own end, which she appeared
to feel could not be far distant, said that she wished to be buried
beside her husband and that for this reason she did not want
to go to the United States, preferring to remain in Chefoo until
her summons came.
The scene was very beautiful as the sun set and the moon
rose above the quiet sea. Standing beside the grave of the
honoured dead and under the solemn pines, the traveller gains
a new sense of the beneficence and dignity of the missionary
force that is operating through such consecrated lives of the
living and the dead.
XIX
MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE LAWSUITS
IN considering the effects of the operation of this missionary
force, we are at once confronted by the complaint of
many Chinese that missionaries interfere on behalf of their
converts in lawsuits. This complaint has been taken up and
circulated by foreign critics until it has become one of the most
formidable of the objections to missionary work. The difficulty
will be understood when we remember that, though the Chinese
are not a warlike people, they are litigious to an extraordinary
degree. The struggle for existence in such a densely populated
country often results in real or fancied entanglements of rights.
So the Chinese are forever disputing about something, and the
magistrates and village headmen are beset by clamorous hordes
who demand a settlement of their alleged grievances. Naturally
the Chinese Christians do not at once outgrow this national
disposition. Whether they do or not, their profession of Christianity
makes them an easy mark for the greedy and envious.
Jealousy and dislike of the native who abandons the faith of his
fathers and espouses ``the foreigner's religion'' frequently
hale him into court on trumped-up charges and the notorious
prejudice and corruption of the average magistrate often
result in grievous persecution. The terrified Christian naturally
implores the missionary to save him. It is hard to
resist such an appeal. But the defendant is not always so
innocent as he appears to be, and whether innocent or guilty,
the interference of the foreigner irritates both magistrate
and prosecutor, while it not infrequently arouses the resentment
of the whole community by giving the idea that
the Christians are a privileged class who are not amenable
to the ordinary laws of the land. When, as sometimes happens,
the Christians themselves get that idea and presume upon
it, the difficulty becomes acute. Speaking of the Chinese
talent for indirection, the Rev. Dr. Arthur H. Smith
says:--
``It is this which makes it so difficult for the most conscientious and
discreet missionary to be quite sure that he is in possession of all the
needed data in any given case. The difficulty in getting at the bottom
facts frequently is that there are no facts available, and, as the pilots say,
`no bottom.' Every Protestant missionary is anxious to have his flock of
Christians such as fear God and work righteousness, but in the effort to
compass this end he not infrequently finds that when endeavouring to
investigate the `facts' in any case he is chasing a school of cuttlefish
through seas of ink.''[68]
[68] ``Rex Christus,'' pp. 103, 107.
An illustration of this occurred during my visit in Ichou-fu.
A magistrate who needed some wheelbarrows sent out his men
to impress them. The rule in such cases is that only empty
barrows can be seized. But the yamen underlings found the
father of a mission helper with loaded barrows at an inn, stole
his goods and forced him to pay them a sum of money for the
privilege of keeping his barrows. The helper complained and
Dr. C. F. Johnson yielded only so far as to write a guarded
letter to the magistrate simply stating his confidence that if the
magistrate found that injustice had been done, he would
remedy it. But that letter brought the missionary into the
case and he found himself forced to see it through or ``lose
face'' with the Chinese Christians and especially the helper
who was the son of the man robbed. He soon discovered,
moreover, that the wronged man was telling contradictory
stories about the value of goods stolen and the amount of
money he had to pay to save his barrows. The situation
speedily became embarrassing and the sorely-tried missionary,
though he had acted from the best of motives and in the most
conservative way, vowed that he would never interfere again
in such disputes, as irritation and harm were almost certain to
result.
I asked Sir Robert Hart whether in his opinion a missionary
should seek to obtain justice for a persecuted man or should
remain silent? He replied:--
``Intervention in matters litigated ought to be absolutely eschewed. Let
the missionary content himself with making his disciples good men and
good citizens, and let him leave it to the duly authorized officials to
interpret and apply the law and administer their affairs in their own way.
Individual Christianity has as many shades and degrees as men's faces.
There are converts and converts, but even the most godly of them may
give his neighbour just reason to take offense, and the most saintly among
them may get involved in the meshes of the law. In such cases let the
missionary stand aloof. There is, too, such a thing as hypocrisy, much
better let the schemer get his deserts than hurt the church's character by
following sentiment into interference. You ask what is to be done when
there is persecution to be dealt with? First of all, I would advise the
individual or the community to live it down, and, as a last resort, report
the fact with appropriate detail and proof to the Legation in Peking for
the assistance and advice of the minister. `Watch thou in all things,
endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, make full proof of thy
ministry.' ''
It is customary for the friends of Protestant missionaries to
answer the critic's charge of interference in native lawsuits by
stating that it does not justly lie against them, but only against
the Roman Catholics, the rule of the Protestant missionaries
being to avoid such interference save in rare and extreme cases.
Mr. Alexander Michie, however, declares that Protestant missionaries
are not entitled to such exemption, and that, while
they may not interfere so frequently as the Catholics, they
nevertheless interfere often enough to bring them under the
same condemnation.[69]
[69] Address in Shanghai, 1901.
There are undoubtedly cases of imprudence, but after diligent
inquiry, I am persuaded that the Protestant missionaries
as a class are keenly alive to the risks of interference in native
lawsuits and that they are increasingly careful in this respect.
They feel with the Rev. J. C. Garritt of Hangchow that ``the
most important form which prejudice has taken of late is the
belief that foreigners aid or at least countenance their converts
in the carrying of lawsuits through the yamens, or in the
business of private settlement of disputes, and that if we can
only practically demonstrate to the public that we are not in
that business, we shall have overcome one very serious obstacle
to our work.''
``The policy of the Chinese Government during the past
few years has been to avoid trouble by letting the foreigner
have his own way whenever possible. More than once the
Chinese official has said in substance to non-Christian litigants:
`You are right and your Christian accusers are wrong; but if
I decide in your favour the foreigner will appeal the case to the
Governor or to the Peking foreign office and I shall suffer.'
Such things are charged, justly or unjustly, to the account of
both Protestant and Romanist.''[70]
[70] The Rev. Dr. L. J. Davies, Tsing-tau.
A broad induction as to the facts has been made by the
Rev. Dr. Paul D. Bergen, President of Shantung Protestant
University. He wrote to a large number of missionaries representing
all Protestant denominations as to their practice and
convictions regarding this subject. Seventy-three answered
and Dr. Bergen tabulated their replies. As to the results of
the concrete cases of intervention cited, fifty-three are reported
to have been beneficial, twenty-six are characterized as doubtful,
four as mixed and sixty-seven as bad. This leaves the
remaining cases ``suspended in the air,'' and Dr. Bergen conjectures
that ``perhaps the missionary felt in such a confused
mental state at their conclusion, that he was quite unable to
work out the complicated equation of their results.''
``But surely the result that only fifty-three cases are reported
to have been of unmistakable benefit, while sixty-seven are set
down as resulting in evil, ought to give us thought. In short,
in the yamen intercession in behalf of prosecuted Christians,
it is the deliberate opinion of seventy-three missionaries that, as
a matter of personal experience, sixty-seven cases have wrought
only evil, while only fifty-three have been productive of good.
The balance is on the wrong side. We must decide, in view
of these replies, that there exists in general rather a pessimistic
opinion as to the advantages of applying to the yamen in behalf
of Christians.''
Summing up briefly the results of this inquiry, we note the
following points, which will embody the views of a very large
majority of the Protestant missionaries of experience in the
Empire:--
``First,--That it is highly desirable to keep church troubles out of the
yamen, but that there are times when we cannot do so without violating
our sense of justice and our sense of duty towards an injured brother.
``Second,--Official assistance is to be sought in such troubles only when
all other means of relief have been tried in vain. Always seek to settle
these difficulties out of court.
``Third,--When official assistance is requested, our bearing should be
friendly and courteous in the spirit, at least in the first instance, of asking
a favour of the official, rather than demanding a right.... We
should be extremely careful about trying to bring pressure to bear on an
official.
``Fourth,--In the presence of the native Christian, and especially of
those chiefly concerned, as well as in our own closets, we should cherish
a deep sense of our absolute dependence on heavenly rather than on
earthly protection, and remind the Christians that, as Dr. Taylor has so
tersely put it, their duty is `to do good, suffer for it and take it patiently.'
``Fifth,--Only in grave cases should matters be pushed to the point of
controversy or formal appeal.
``Sixth,--Christians and evangelists should be solemnly warned against
betraying an arrogant spirit upon the successful termination of any
trouble.
``Seventh,--Previous to the carrying of a case before the official, let the
missionary be sure of his facts. Each case should be patiently, thoroughly
and firmly examined. Receive individual testimony with judicious reserve.
Be not easily blinded by appeals to the emotions. Be especially
ready to receive any one from the opposition, and give his words due
weight. Do not be too exclusively influenced by the judgment of any one
man, however trusted.
``Eighth,--In the course of negotiation beware of insisting on monetary
compensation for the injured Christian. In greatly aggravated cases this
may occasionally be unavoidable. But should it be made a condition of
settlement, see to it that the damages are under, rather than over, what
might have been demanded. It is almost sure to cause subsequent
trouble, both within and without, if a Christian receives money under
such circumstances.
``Ninth,--When unhappily involved in a persecution case with the official,
we should remember that we are not lawyers, and therefore make no
stand on legal technicalities, nor allow ourselves to take a threatening
attitude, although we may be subjected to provocation; we should be
patient, dignified and strong in the truth, making it clear to the official that
this is all that we seek in order that the ends of justice may be satisfied.
``Tenth,--It would be well on every fitting occasion to exhort those under
our care to avoid frequenting yamens or cultivating intimacy with
their inhabitants, unless, indeed, we feel assured that their motive is the
same as that animating our Lord when He mingled with publicans and
sinners.''
A widely representative conference of Protestant missionaries
issued in 1903 the following manifesto and sent copies in
Chinese to all officials throughout the Empire:
``Chinese Christians, though church-members, remain in every respect
Chinese citizens, and are subject to the properly constituted Chinese
authorities. The sacred Scriptures and the doctrines of the church teach
obedience to all lawful authority and exhort to good citizenship; and these
doctrines are preached in all Protestant churches. The relation of a missionary
to his converts is thus that of a teacher to his disciples, and he
does not desire to arrogate to himself the position or power of a magistrate.
``Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that unworthy men, by making insincere
professions, enter the church and seek to use this connection to
interfere with the ordinary course of law in China. We all agree that
such conduct is entirely reprehensible, and we desire it to be known that
we give no support to this unwarrantable practice
``On this account we desire to state that for the information of all that:
(a) The Protestant Church does not wish to interfere in law cases. All
cases between Christians and non-Christians must be settled in the courts
in the ordinary way. Officials are called upon to administer fearlessly and
impartially justice to all within their jurisdiction. (b) Native Christians
are strictly forbidden to use the name of the church or its officers in the
hope of strengthening their positions when they appear before magistrates.
The native pastors and preachers are appointed for teaching and exhortation,
and are chosen because of their worthy character to carry on this
work. To prevent abuses in the future, all officials are respectfully requested
to report to the missionary every case in which letters or cards using
the name of the church or any of its officers are brought into court.
Then proper inquiry will be made and the truth become clear.''
The policy of the British Government on this subject was
clearly expressed by Earl Granville in his note of August 21,
1871, to the British Minister at Peking:
``The policy and practice of the Government of Great Britain have been
unmistakable. They have uniformly declared, and now repeat, that they
do not claim to afford any species of protection to Chinese Christians
which may be construed as withdrawing them from their native allegiance,
nor do they desire to secure to British missionaries any privileges
or immunities beyond those granted by treaty to other British subjects.
The Bishop of Victoria was requested to intimate this to the Protestant
missionary societies in the letter addressed to him by Mr. Hammond by
the Earl of Clarendon's direction on the 13th of November, 1869, and to
point out that they would `do well to warn converts that although the
Chinese Government may be bound by treaty not to persecute, on account
of their conversion, Chinese subjects who may embrace Christianity,
there is no provision in the treaty by which a claim can be made on behalf
of converts for exemption from the obligations of their natural allegiance,
and from the jurisdiction of the local authorities. Under the creed
of their adoption, as under that of their birth, Chinese converts to Christianity
still owe obedience to the law of China, and if they assume to set
themselves above those laws, in reliance upon foreign protection, they
must take the consequence of their own indiscretion, for no British authority,
at all events, can interfere to save them.' ''
The policy of the United States Government was stated with
equal clearness in a note of the Hon. Frederick F. Low,
United States Minister at Peking, to the Tsung-li Yamen, dated
March 20, 1871:
``The Government of the United States, while it claims to exercise, under
and by virtue of the stipulations of treaty, the exclusive right of judging
of the wrongful acts of its citizens resident in China, and of punishing
them when found guilty according to its own laws, does not assume to
claim or exercise any authority or control over the natives of China. This
rule applies equally to merchants and missionaries, and, so far as I know,
all foreign Governments having treaties with China adhere strictly to this
rule. In case, however, missionaries see that native Christians are being
persecuted by the local officials on account of their religious opinions, in
violation of the letter and spirit of the twenty-ninth article of the treaty
between the United States and China, it would be proper, and entirely in
accordance with the principles of humanity and the teachings of their religion,
to make respectful representation of the facts in such cases to the
local authorities direct, or through their diplomatic representative to the
foreign office; for it cannot be presumed that the Imperial Government
would sanction any violation of treaty engagement, or that the local officials
would allow persecutions for opinion's sake, when once the facts are
made known to them. In doing this the missionaries should conform to
Chinese custom and etiquette, so far as it can be done without assuming
an attitude that would be humiliating and degrading to themselves.''
The question is one of the most difficult and delicate of all
the questions with which the missionary must deal. On the
one hand, every impulse of justice and humanity prompts him
to befriend a good man who is being persecuted for righteousness'
sake. But on the other hand, sore experience has
taught him the necessity of caution. The pressure upon him is
so frequent and trying that it becomes the bete noire of his life.
The outsider may wisely hesitate before he adds to that pressure.
The citations that have been given show that the missionaries
themselves understand the question quite as well as
any one else and that they are competent to deal with it.
XX
MISSIONARIES AND THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS
THE relation of the missionary to the consular and
diplomatic representatives of his own government is
another topic of perennial criticism. Some European
Governments have persistently and notoriously sought to advance
their national interest through their missionaries. France
and Russia have been particularly active in this way, the
former claiming large rights by virtue of its position as ``the
protector of Catholic missions.'' The result is that the
average Chinese official regards all missionaries as political
agents who are to be watched and feared. Dr. L. J. Davies, a
Presbyterian missionary, says that he has been repeatedly asked
his rank as ``an American official,'' whether he ``reported in
person'' to his ``emperor'' on his return to his native land,
how much salary his government allowed him, and many
other questions the import of which was manifest.
The typical consul and minister, moreover, find that no
small part of their business relates to matters that are brought to
their attention by missionaries. Sometimes they manifest impatience
on this account. One consul profanely complained to
me that three-fourths of his business related to the missionary
question. He forgot, however, that nine-tenths of the nationals
under his jurisdiction were missionaries, so that in proportion to
their numbers, the missionaries gave him less trouble than the
non-missionary Americans. In answer to an inquiry by the
Rev. Dr. Paul D. Bergen, of the Presbyterian Mission, seventy-
three missionaries, of from five to thirty years' experience, and
representing most of the Protestant boards, reported a total of
only fifty-two applications through consul or minister. The
Hon. John Barrett, formerly Minister of the United States to
Siam, writes: ``Let us be fair in judging the missionaries.
Let the complaining merchant, traveller or clubman take the
beam from his own eye before he demands that the mote be
taken from the missionary's eye. In my diplomatic experience
in Siam, 150 missionaries gave me less trouble in five years
than fifteen merchants gave me in five months.''
Doubtless some diplomats would be glad to have the missionaries
expatriate themselves. In the United States Senate
the Hon. John Sherman is reported to have said that ``if our
citizens go to a far-distant country, semi-civilized and bitterly
opposed to their movements, we cannot follow them there and
protect them. They ought to come home.'' Is, then, the
missionary's business less legitimate than the trader's? Is a
man entitled to the protection of his country if he goes to the
Orient to sell whiskey and rifles, but does he forfeit that protection
if he goes there to preach the gospel of temperance and
peace?
Critics may be reminded that missionaries are American citizens;
that when gamblers and drunkards and adventurers and
distillery agents in China claim the rights of citizenship, the
missionary does not forfeit his rights by a residence in China
for the purpose of teaching the young, healing the sick, distributing
the Bible and preaching the gospel of Christ, particularly
when treaties expressly guarantee him protection in the
exercise of these very privileges. It is odd to find some people
insisting that a dissolute trader should be allowed to go
wherever he pleases and raising a tremendous hubbub if a hair
of his head is injured, while at the same time they appear to
deem it an unwarranted thing for a decent man to go to China
on a mission of peace and good-will.
While the individual missionary is, of course, free to
renounce his claim to the protection of home citizenship,
such renunciation is neither necessary nor expedient. There
is not the slightest probability that our Government will require
it, and if it should, the public sentiment of the United States
would not tolerate such an order for a week. No self-respecting
nation can expatriate its citizens who go abroad to do good.
The policy of the United States was indicated in the note of
the Hon. J. C. B. Davis, acting Secretary of State, to the
United States Minister at Peking, October 19, 1871.
``The rights of citizens of the United States in China are well defined
by treaty. So long as they attend peaceably to their affairs they are to
be placed on a common footing of amity and good-will with subjects of
China, and are to receive and enjoy for themselves, and everything appertaining
to them, protection and defense from all insults and injuries.
They have the right to reside at any of the ports open to foreign commerce,
to rent houses and places of business, or to build such upon sites
which they have the right to hire. They have secured to them the right
to build churches and cemeteries, and they may teach or worship in those
churches without being harassed, persecuted, interfered with, or molested.
These are some of the rights which are expressly and in terms granted to
the United States, for their citizens, by the Treaty of 1858. If I rightly
apprehend the spirit of the note of the Foreign Office, and of the regulations
which accompany it, there is, to state it in the least objectionable
form, an apprehension in the yamen that it may become necessary to curtail
some of these rights, in consequence of the alleged conduct of French
missionaries. This idea cannot be entertained for one moment by the
United States.''
This position was given new emphasis by the note sent by
Secretary of State John Hay to the Hon. Horace Porter, United
States Ambassador to France, in response to a communication
from the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris in 1903.
In this note Mr. Hay said:
``The Government holds that every citizen sojourning or travelling
abroad in pursuit of his lawful affairs is entitled to a passport, and the
duration of such sojourn the department does not arrogate to itself the right
to limit or prescribe.''
The governments of continental Europe have repeatedly
shown themselves quick to resent an infringement upon the
treaty rights of their subjects who are in China as missionaries.
The Hon. Thomas Francis Wade, British Minister at Peking,
wrote to Minister Wen Hsiang in June, 1871:--``The British
Government draws no distinction between the missionaries and
any other of its non-official subjects.'' This sentiment was emphatically
reiterated by Earl Granville in a note from the foreign
office in London to Mr. Wade dated August 21, 1871:
``Her Majesty's Government cannot allow the claim that the missionaries
residing in China must conform to the laws and customs of China to
pass unchallenged. It is the duty of a missionary, as of every other British
subject, to avoid giving offense as far as possible to the Chinese authorities
or people, but he does not forfeit the rights to which he is entitled under
the treaty as a British subject because of his missionary character.''
But while this is the only possible policy for a government,
it is surely reasonable to expect that the persons concerned will
exercise moderation and prudence in their demands. The
China Island Mission does not permit its missionaries to appeal
to their Government officials without special permission from
headquarters. Many missionaries of other societies would
probably resent such a limitation of their liberty as citizens.
But as the act of the individual often involves others, it might
be well to make the approval of the station necessary, and,
wherever practicable, of the mission. Nine-tenths of the
missionaries do not and will not unnecessarily write or
telegraph for the intervention of minister or consul. But the
tenth man may be benefited by the counsel of his colleagues
who know or who may be easily acquainted with the facts.
The American Presbyterian Board in a formal action has expressed
the wise judgment that ``appeals to the secular arm
should always and everywhere be as few as possible.'' It is
not in the civil or military power of a country to give the
missionary success. In the crude condition of heathen
society, the temptation is sometimes strong to appeal for aid to
``the secular arm'' of the home government. Occasions may
possibly arise in which it will be necessary to insist upon rights.
Nevertheless, as a rule, it will be well to remember that ``the
weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through
God,'' and that ``the servant of the Lord must not strive, but
be gentle unto all men.'' The argument of the sword is
Mohammedan, not Christian. The veteran Rev. J. Hudson
Taylor holds that in the long run appeals to home governments
do nothing but harm. He says he has known of many riots
that have never been reported and of much suffering endured
in silence which have ``fallen out rather to the furtherance of
the gospel,'' and that ``if we leave God to vindicate our
cause, the issue is sure to prove marvellous in spirituality.''
The critics have vociferously charged that after the suppression
of the Boxer uprising, the missionaries greatly embarrassed
their governments by demanding bloody vengeance
upon the Chinese. It may indeed be true that among the
thousands of Roman Catholic and Protestant missionaries in
China, some temporarily lost their self-control and gave way to
anger under the awful provocation of ruined work, burned
homes, outraged women and butchered Chinese Christians.
How many at home would or could have remained calm in
such circumstances? But it is grossly unjust to treat such
excited utterances as representative of the great body of
missionary opinion. The missionaries went to China and
they propose to stay there because they love and believe in the
Chinese, and it is very far from their thought to demand undue
punishment for those who oppose them. They sensibly
expected a certain amount of opposition from tradition,
heathenism, superstition and corruption, and they are not disposed
to call for unmanly or unchristian measures when that
trouble falls upon them which fell in even greater measure on
the Master Himself.
It is true that some of the missionaries felt that the ring-
leaders of the Boxers, including those in high official position
who more or less secretly incited them to violence, should be
punished. But they were not thinking of revenge, so much as
of the welfare of China, the restoration to power of the best element
among the Chinese, and the reasonable security of
Chinese Christians and of foreigners who have treaty rights.
Many missionaries feel that there is no hope for China save in
the predominance of the Reform Party, and that if the reactionaries
are to remain in control, the outlook is dark indeed,
not so much for the foreigner as for China itself. The men
who were guilty of the atrocities perpetrated in the summer of
1900 violated every law, human and divine, and some of the
missionaries demanded their punishment only in the same
spirit as the ministers and Christian people of the United
States who with united voice demanded the punishment of the
four young men in Paterson, New Jersey, who had been
systematically outraging young girls.
Nevertheless, as to the whole subject of the policy which
should be adopted by our Government in China, I believe that
it would be wise for both the missionaries and the mission
boards to be cautious in proffering advice, and to leave the
responsibility for action with the lawfully constituted civil
authorities upon whom the people have placed it. Governments
have better facilities for acquiring accurate information
as to political questions than missionaries have. They can see
the bearings of movements more clearly than those who are
not in political life and can discern elements in the situation
that are not so apparent to others. Moreover, they must bear
the blame or praise for consequences. They can ask for
missionary opinion if they want it. Generations of protest
against priestly domination, chiefly by Protestant ministers
themselves, have developed in both Europe and America a disposition
to resent clerical interference in political questions.
This is particularly true of matters in Asia, where the political
situation is so delicate. The opinions publicly expressed by
the missionaries as to the policy, which, in their judgment,
should be adopted by our Government and by the European
Powers have included not only many articles of individual
missionaries in newspapers and magazines, but formal communications
of bodies or committees of missionaries. Conspicuous
examples are the protests of missionaries assembled in
Chefoo and Shanghai in 1900 against the decision of the
American Government to withdraw its troops from Peking, to
recognize the Empress Dowager and to omit certain officials
from the list of those who were to be executed or banished, and,
in particular, the letter addressed by ``the undersigned
British and American missionaries representative of societies
and organizations that have wide interests in China to their
Excellencies the Plenipotentiaries of Great Britain and the
United States accredited to the Chinese Government.''
These actions were taken by men whose character, ability
and knowledge of the Chinese entitle them to great weight, and
who were personally affected in the security of their lives and
property and in the interests of their life-work by the policy
adopted by their respective Governments. All were citizens who
did not abdicate their citizenship by becoming missionaries,
and whose status and rights in China, as such, have been
specifically recognized by treaty. All, moreover, expressed
their views with clearness, dignity and force. From the viewpoint
of right and privilege, and, indeed, political duty as
citizens, they were abundantly justified in expressing their
opinions.
On the other hand, there are many friends of missions who
doubt whether formal declarations of judgment ``as missionaries,''
on political and military questions, were accorded much
influence by diplomats; whether they did not increase the
popular criticism of missionaries to an extent which more than
counterbalanced any good that they accomplished; whether
they did not identify the missionary cause with ``the consul
and gunboat'' policy which Lord Salisbury charged upon it;
and whether they did not prejudice their own future influence
over the Chinese and strengthen the impression that the mis-
sionaries are ``political emissaries.'' In reply to my inquiry as
to his opinion, Sir Robert Hart expressed himself as follows:--
``As for punitive measures, etc., I have really no personal knowledge
of the action taken by American missionaries, and hearsay is not a good
foundation for opinion. It is said that vindictive feeling rather than tender
mercy has been noticed. But even if so, it cannot be wondered at, so
cruel were the Chinese assailants when they had the upper hand. The
occasion has been altogether anomalous, and it is only at the parting of
the ways the difference of view comes in. That what was done merited
almost wholesale punishment is a view most will agree in--eyes turned to
the past--but when discussion tries to argue out what will be best for the
future, some will vote for striking terror, and others for trusting more to
the more slowly working but longer lasting effect of mercy. I do not believe
any missionary has brought anybody to punishment who did not
richly deserve it. But some people seem to feel it would have been wiser
for ministers of the gospel to have left to `governors' the `punishment of
evil-doers.' For my part, I cannot blame them, for without their assistance
much that is known would not have been known, and, although numbers
of possibly innocent, inoffensive and non-hostile people may have been
overwhelmed in this last year's avalanche of disaster, there are still at
large a lot of men whose punishment would probably have been a good
thing for the future. One can only hope that their good luck in escaping
may lead them to take a new departure, and with their heads in the right
direction.''[71]
[71] Letter to the author with permission to print, July, 1901.
Wisely or unwisely--the former, I venture to think--the
interdenominational conference of American mission boards having
work in China, held in 1900, declined to make representations
to our Government on questions of policy during the Boxer
uprising. They necessarily had much correspondence with
Washington regarding the safety of missionaries during the
siege, but when I inquired of Secretary of State Hay as to the
accuracy of the later newspaper charges that mission boards
were urging the Government to retaliatory measures, he promptly
replied: ``No communications of this nature have been received
from the great mission boards or from their authorized
representatives.''
But let us hear the missionaries themselves on this subject.
An interdenominational committee, headed by the Rev. Dr.
Calvin W. Mateer, prepared a reply to this criticism, which has
been circulated throughout China and has received the assent
of so large a number of missionaries of all churches and nationalities
that it may be taken as representing the views of fully
nine-tenths of the whole body of Protestant missionaries in the
Empire. This letter should be given the widest possible currency,
as expressing the views of men who are the peers of any
equal number of Christian workers in the world. It is dated
May 24, 1901, and, after discussing the question of the responsibility
for the Boxer uprising, the letter continues:
``With reference to the second point--that we have manifested an unchristian
spirit in suggesting the punishment of those who were guilty of
the massacre of foreigners and native Christians--we understand that the
criticism applies chiefly to the message sent by the public meeting held in
Shanghai in September last.
``1. It should, in the first place, be borne in mind that the resolutions
passed at that meeting were called for by the proposal of the Allies to
evacuate Peking immediately after the relief of the Legations. It was
felt, not only by missionaries but by the whole of the foreign residents in
China, that such a course would be fraught with the greatest disaster, inasmuch
as it would give sanction to further lawlessness.
``2. Further it must be remembered that, while suggesting that a satisfactory
settlement `should include the adequate punishment of all who
were guilty of the recent murders of foreigners and native Christians,'
it was left to the Powers to decide what that `adequate punishment'
should be. Moreover, when taking such measures as were necessary,
they were urged to `make every effort to avoid all needless and
indiscriminate slaughter of Chinese and destruction of their property.'
``3. By a strange misunderstanding we find that this suggestion has
been interpreted as though it were animated by an unchristian spirit of
revenge. With the loss of scores of friends and colleagues still fresh upon
us, and with stories of cruel massacres reaching us day by day, it would
not have been surprising had we been betrayed into intemperate expressions;
but we entirely repudiate the idea which has been read into our
words. If governments are the ministers of God's righteousness, then
surely it is the duty of every Christian Government not only to uphold the
right but to put down the wrong, and equally the duty of all Christian
subjects to support them in so doing. For China, as for Western nations,
anarchy is the only alternative to law. Both justice and mercy require
the judicial punishment of the wrong-doers in the recent outrages. For
the good of the people themselves, for the upholding of that standard of
righteousness which they acknowledge and respect, for the strengthening
and encouragement of those officials whose sympathies have been throughout
on the side of law and order, and for the protection of our own helpless
women and children and the equally helpless sons and daughters of
the Church, we think that such violations of treaty obligations, and such
heartless and unprovoked massacres as have been carried out by official
authority or sanction, should not be allowed to pass unpunished. It is
not of our personal wrongs that we think, but of the maintenance of law
and order, and of the future safety of all foreigners residing in the interior
of China, who, it must be remembered, are not under the jurisdiction of
Chinese law, but, according to the treaties, are immediately responsible to,
and under the protection of, their respective Governments.''
The reply rather pathetically concludes:
``It is unhappily the lot of missionaries to be misunderstood and spoken
against, and we are aware that in any explanation we now offer we add
to the risk of further misunderstanding; but we cast ourselves on the forbearance
of our friends, and beg them to refrain from hasty and ill-formed
judgments. If, on our part, there have been extreme statements, if individual
missionaries have used intemperate words or have made demands
out of harmony with the spirit of our Divine Lord, is it too much to ask
that the anguish and peril through which so many of our number have
gone during the last six months should be remembered, and that the whole
body should not be made responsible for the hasty utterances of the
few?''
A perplexing phase of the relation of missionaries to their
own governments develops in times of disturbance. Should
missionaries remain at their stations when their minister or consul
think that they ought to withdraw to the port where they
can be more easily protected? Should they make journeys
that the consul deems imprudent or return to an abandoned
station before he regards the trouble as ended? This question
became acute in connection with the Boxer outbreak when mis-
sionaries sometimes differed with ministers or consuls as to
whether they should go or stay. On the one hand it may be
urged that missionaries are under strong obligations to attach
great weight to the judgment of their minister or consul. If
they receive the benefits and protection of citizenship, and if
by their acts they may involve their governments, they should
recognize the right of the authorized representatives of those
governments to counsel them. The presumption should be in
favour of obedience to that counsel, and it should not be disregarded
without clear and strong reasons.
But the fact cannot be ignored that, whatever may be the
personal sympathies of individual ministers or consuls, diplomacy
as such considers only the secondary results of missions,
and not the primary ones. Government officials, speaking on
missionary work, almost invariably dwell on its material and
civilizing rather than its spiritual aspects. They do not, as
officials, feel that the salvation of men from sin and the command
of Christ to evangelize all nations are within their sphere.
Moreover, diplomacy is proverbially and necessarily cautious.
Its business is to avoid risks, and, of course, to advise others to
avoid them. The political situation, too, was undeniably uncertain
and delicate. The future was big with possibility of peril.
In such circumstances, we should expect diplomacy to be anxious
and to look at the whole question from the prudential viewpoint.
But the missionary, like the soldier, must take some risks.
From Paul down, missionaries have not hesitated to face them.
Christ did not condition His great command upon the approval
of Caesar. It was not safe for Morrison to enter China, and for
many years missionaries in the interior were in grave jeopardy.
But devoted men and women accepted the risk in the past, and
they will accept it in the future. They must exercise common
sense. And yet this enterprise is unworldly as well as worldly,
and when the soldier boldly faces every physical peril, when
the trader unflinchingly jeopardizes life and limb in the pursuit
of gold--I found a German mining engineer and his wife living
alone in a remote village soon after the Boxer excitement--
should the missionary be held back?
If, however, after full and careful deliberation, missionaries feel
that it is their duty to disregard the advice of their minister or
consul, they should consult their respective boards and if the
boards sustain them, all concerned should accept responsibility
for the risks involved.
But if missionaries do not permit governments to control
their movements, they should not be too exacting in their
demands on them when trouble comes. The Rev. Dr. Henry
M. Field once said:--
``A foreign missionary is one who goes to a strange country to preach
the gospel of our salvation. That is his errand and his defense. The
civil authorities are not presumed to be on his side. If he offends the
sensibilities of the people to whom he preaches, he is supposed to face
the consequences. If he cannot win men by the Word and his own love
for their souls, he cannot call on the civil or military powers to convert
them. Nor is the missionary a merchant, in the sense that he must have
ready recourse to the courts for a recouping of losses or the recovery of
damages. Commercial treaties cannot cover all our missionary enterprises.
Confusion of ideas here has confounded a good many fine plans
and zealous men. It is a tremendous begging of the whole question to
insist on the nation's protection of the men who are to subvert the
national faith. Property rights and preaching rights get closely entwined,
and it is difficult to untangle them at times, but the distinction
is definite and the difference often fundamental. By confusing
them we weaken the claims of both. And when our Christian preachers
get behind a mere property right in order to defend their right to preach
a new religion, they dishonour themselves and defame the faith they
profess. To get behind diplomatic guaranties in order to evangelize the
nations is to mistake the sword for the Spirit, to rely on the arm of flesh
and put aside the help of the Almighty.''
That is, in my judgment, stating the case rather strongly.
Doubtless Dr. Field did not mean that governments would be
justified in discriminating against missionaries and he would
probably have been one of the first to protest if they had done
so. He was addressing missionaries, reminding them that they
could do in liberty what the governments could not do in law,
and exhorting against any disposition to depend unduly upon
the sword of the secular arm. At any rate, he was a devoted
friend of missions and as such his words are deserving of
thoughtful consideration.
XXI
RESPONSIBILITY OF MISSIONARIES FOR THE
BOXER UPRISING
CRITICS vociferously assert that the missionaries were
chiefly responsible for the Boxer uprising and for most
of the prejudice of the Chinese against foreigners. As
to the general accuracy of this charge, the reader has doubtless
formed some impression from what has been said in the preceding
chapters regarding the objects and methods of foreign
trade and foreign politics. Still, it is but fair to remember that
there are 3,854 missionaries in China, representing almost every
European and American nationality and no less than nine
Roman Catholic and sixty-seven Protestant boards.[72] As might
be expected, the standard of appointment varies. A few
boards, while insisting upon high spiritual qualifications, do
not insist upon equal qualifications of some other kinds, while
in all societies an occasional missionary proves to be visionary
and ill-balanced. But in the great majority of the boards,
the standard of appointment is very high, and while occasional
mistakes are made, yet as a rule the missionaries represent the
best type of Protestant Christianity. They are, as a class,
men and women of education, refinement and ability--in every
respect the equals and as a rule the superiors of the best class
of non-missionary Europeans and Americans in China.
[72] The Chinese Recorder.
Now it is manifest that criticisms which may be true of some
missionaries may not be true of the missionary body as a
whole. As a matter of fact, the average critic has in mind
either the Roman Catholic priests or the members of some
independent society. This is notably true of Michie. Many
of the charges are not true even of them, but of the charges
that I have seen that have any foundation at all, nine-tenths
do not apply to the missionaries of church boards. It is always
fair, therefore, to ask a critic, ``To which class of missionaries
do you refer?''
The clearest line of distinction is between the Protestants
and the Roman Catholics. The latter number 904. They
have been in China the longest. They have the largest following,[73]
and their methods are radically different from those of the
Protestant missionaries. It is not denied that some of the
priests are high-minded, intelligent men and that some of the
Protestants lack wisdom. But comparing the two classes
broadly, no one who is at all conversant with the facts will regard
the Protestants as inferior. I do not wish to be unjust to
the Roman Catholic missionaries in China. Many good things
might be said regarding the work which some of them are doing.
I personally called at several Roman Catholic stations in
various parts of the Empire and I have vivid recollections of
the kindness with which I was received, while more than once
I was impressed by the unmistakable evidences of devotion and
self-sacrifice. It was pleasant to hear many Protestant missionaries
declare that they had never heard a suspicion as to the
moral character of the priests. I did not hear any in all north
China. The lives of the Roman Catholic missionaries are hard
and narrow and they have no relief in the companionships of
wife and children, in furloughs or in medical attendance, for
they have no medical missionaries, while not infrequently the
priest lives alone in a village. Dead to the world, with no
families and no expectation of returning to their native land,
trained from boyhood to a monastic life, drilled to unquestioning
obedience and to few personal needs, their ambition is not
to get anything for themselves but to strengthen the Church
for which the individual priest unhesitatingly sacrifices himself,
content if by his complete submergence of his own interests he
has helped to make her great. With such men, Rome is a
mighty power in Asia. But the sincere, devoted man may be
even more dangerous if his zeal is wrongly directed, and the
question under discussion now is not the personal character of
individuals, but the general policy of the Church. As to
the character and effects of this policy I found a remarkable
unanimity of opinion in China, and I could easily produce
from my note-books the names of scores of credible witnesses
to the substantial accuracy of my position.
[73] 720,540 Roman Catholics--compare p. 223 for Protestants.
Whatever may be said in favour of the Roman Catholics, it
is unquestionable that their methods are far more irritating to
the Chinese than the methods of the Protestants. Led by able
and energetic bishops, the priests acquire all possible business
property, demand large rentals, build imposing religious plants,
and baptize or enroll as catechumens all sorts of people. It is
notorious that the Roman Catholic priests quite generally
adopt the policy of interference on behalf of their converts.
Through the Minister of France at Peking they obtained an
Imperial Edict, dated March 15, 1899, granting them official
status, so that the local priest is on a footing of equality with
the local magistrate, and has the right of full access to him at
any time. Whether or not intended by the Roman Catholic
Church, the impression is almost universal in China among
natives and foreigners alike that, if a Chinese becomes a
Catholic, the Church will stand by him through thick and
thin, in time and in eternity. There are, indeed, exceptions.
Dr. Johnson, of Ichou-fu, told me of a Roman Catholic Christian
who, during the Boxer troubles, stealthily moved his goods
into Ichou-fu, burned his house, and then put in a claim for
indemnity. The heathen neighbours, when asked to pay, informed
the priest. He summoned the man, who confusedly
said that if he had not burned the house, the Boxers would have
done so, and he thought he had better do it at a convenient
time as it was sure to be burned anyway. The priest promptly
decided that he must suffer the loss himself. So the priests do
not always stand by their converts whether right or wrong.
No one, however, who is familiar with the general course of
the Roman Catholic Church in China, will deny that, as a
rule, the priests boldly champion the cause of their converts.
This is one secret of Rome's great and rapidly growing power
in China, and unquestionably, too, it is one of the chief causes
of Chinese hostility to missions. After many years of observation,
Dr. J. Campbell Gibson writes:--
``In the missions of the Church of Rome, they (treaty rights) are
systematically, and I am afraid one must say unscrupulously, used for the
gathering in of large numbers of nominal converts, whose only claim to
the Christian name is their registration in lists kept by native catechists,
in which they are entered on payment of a small fee, without regard to
their possession of any degree of Christian knowledge or character. In
the event of their being involved in any dispute or lawsuit, the native
catechists or priests, and even the foreign Roman Catholic missionaries,
take up their cause and press it upon the native magistrates. Not infrequently
a still worse course is pursued. Intimation is sent round the
villages in which there are large numbers of so-called Catholic converts
and these assemble under arms to support by force the feuds of their
co-religionists. The consequence is that the Catholic missions in southern
China, and I believe in the north also, are bitterly hated by the Chinese
people and by their magistrates. By terrorizing both magistrates and
people, they have secured in many places a large amount of apparent
popularity; but they are sowing the seeds of a harvest of hatred and bitterness
which may be reaped in deplorable forms in years to come.''[74]
[74] ``Mission Problems and Mission Methods in South China,'' pp. 309,
310.
In my own interviews with Chinese officials, it was my custom
to lead the conversation towards the motives of those who had
attacked foreigners during the Boxer uprising, and without exception
the officials mentioned, among other causes, the interference
of Roman Catholic priests with the administration of
the law in cases affecting their converts. In several places in
the interior, this was the only reason assigned.
Said an intelligent Chinese official in Shantung: ``The
whole trouble is not with the Protestants but with the Catholics.
Protestant Christians do not go to law so often, and when they
do, the Protestant missionary does not, as a rule, interfere unless
he is sure they are right. But the Catholic Christians are
constantly involved in lawsuits, and the priests invariably stand
by them right or wrong. The priests seem to think that their
converts cannot be wrong. The result is that many Chinese
join the Roman Catholic Church to get the help of the priests
in the innumerable lawsuits that the Chinese are always waging.
And it is not surprising in such circumstances that Catholic
Christians are a bad lot.'' When I asked the magistrate of
Paoting-fu why the people had killed such kindly and helpful
neighbours as the Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries,
he replied:--``The people were angered by the interference
of the Roman Catholics in their lawsuits. They felt
that they could not obtain justice against them, and in their
frenzy they did not distinguish between Catholics and Protestants.''
The Roman Catholic Mission in the prefecture of
Paoting-fu, it should be remembered, is about two centuries
old, and the Catholic population is about 12,000, so that the
few hundreds of converts who have been gathered in the recent
work of the Protestants are very small in comparison, while the
splendid cathedral of the Roman Church, the spectacular character
of its services and the official status and aggressiveness
of its priests intensify the disproportion. The term Christian,
therefore, to the average man of Paoting-fu naturally means a
Roman Catholic rather than a Protestant.
Perhaps we should make some allowance for Oriental forms
of statement to one who was known to be a Protestant. The
politeness of an Oriental host to a guest is not always limited
by veracity, and it is possible that to Roman Catholics the
officials may blame the Protestants. But such unanimity of
testimony among so many independent and widely separated
officials must surely count for something, especially when the
grounds for it are so notorious. Undoubtedly, there are many
sincere Christians among the Roman Catholic Chinese, but
judging from the almost universal testimony that I heard in
China, the Roman Church is a veritable cave of Adullam for
unscrupulous and revengeful Chinese.
The evidence does not rest upon the testimony of Protestants
alone. If any one will take the trouble to look up the diplomatic
correspondence on this subject, he will find ample and
convincing testimony. February 9, 1871, the Tsung-li Yamen
addressed to the Foreign Legations at Peking a memorandum
together with eight propositions, the whole embodying the
complaints and objections of the Chinese Government to missionaries
and their work in China, and suggesting certain regulations
for the future. This memorandum included the following
paragraph:--
``The missionary question affects the whole question of pacific relations
with foreign powers--the whole question of their trade. As the Minister
addressed cannot but be well aware, wherever missionaries of the Romish
profession appear, ill-feeling begins between them and the people, and for
years past, in one case or another, points of all kinds on which they are
at issue have been presenting themselves. In earlier times when the
Romish missionaries first came to China, styled, as they were, `Si Ju,'
the Scholars of the West, their converts no doubt for the most part were
persons of good character; but since the change of ratifications in 1860,
the converts have in general not been of a moral class. The result has
been that the religion that professes to exhort men to virtue has come to
be lightly thought of; it is in consequence, unpopular, and its unpopularity
is greatly increased by the conduct of the converts who, relying on the
influence of the missionaries, oppress and take advantage of the common
people (the non-Christians): and yet more by the conduct of the missionaries
themselves, who, when collisi