Arthur H. Smith

“ Measured by Chinese standards, the construction of a perfect essay is one of the noblest achievements of which the human mind is capable. The man who knows all that has been preserved of the wisdom of the ancients, and who can at a moment’s notice dash off essays of a symmetrical construction, lofty in sentiment, elevated in style, and displaying a wide acquaintance not only with the theme, but also with cognate subjects, such a man is fit not only to stand before kings, but before the very Son of Heaven himself. ”

“ The real difficulty is that to educate a girl is like weeding the field of some other man. It is like putting a gold chain around the neck of some one else’s puppy, which may at any moment be whistled off, and then what will have become of the chain? It is a proverbially mean man in China, who, when marrying his daughter, wants to be paid for the food he has wasted upon her up to the date of marriage. But the expression illustrates clearly one of the underlying assumptions of Chinese society, that it is the body of the girl for which the parents are responsible, and not the mind. ”

“ The cries of the director become shrieks, the responses are tumultuous and discordant, every one adding his own emendations according to his own point of view, and no one paying any attention to any one else. Thus, amid the explosion of more crackers and bombs, the fiercer wails of the mourners, the shouts of the bearers and the grave-diggers, and the buzz of the curious spectators, the Chinese is at last laid away to his long rest. ”

“ It is impossible to contemplate with equanimity the deliberate, persistent, and uniform propagation of poverty, vice, disease and crime, which ought rather to be surrounded with every restriction to prevent its multiplication, and to see this propagation of evil and misery done, too, with an air of virtue, as if this were of itself a kind of religion, often indeed the only form of religion in which the Chinese take any vital interest. ”

“ As a theatre seldom lasts less than three days, and sometimes more than four, it can be imagined what a tax is laid upon the village which is overrun. When it is considered that every married woman who returns to her home, as well as every woman who visits any relative, always brings all of her young children, and that the latter consider it their privilege to scramble for all that they can get of whatever is to be had in the way of food, it is obvious that the poor housekeeper is subjected to a tremendous strain, to which the severest exigencies of Western life afford very few analogies. ”

“ To a foreigner nothing is more amazing than the reckless manner in which a debt is contracted which subsequently proves to have within it the fruitful seeds of ruin for the whole family. It is vain to ask why the money was borrowed. One might as well inquire why one is so wet who has been out all night in a Scotch mist. Ages of experience have made the Chinese relentless creditors, and woe to him who owes but cannot pay. China is full of small dealers with a limited capital, who do well enough in ordinary years. ”

“ A new bride introduced into a family has visible relations with no one less than with her “husband.” He would be ashamed to be seen talking with her, and in general they seem in that line to have very little to be ashamed of. In those unique instances in which the young couple have the good sense to get acquainted with each other, and present the appearance of actually exchanging ideas, this circumstance is the joke of the whole family circle, and an insoluble enigma to all its members. ”

“ XXVI INSTABILITY FROM FAMILY DISUNITY To give a correct diagnosis of the inner causes of the disunity of Chinese social and family life without at the same time grossly misrepresenting both the Chinese character and society, is a hopeless undertaking. Merely to note even the most authentic and typical facts is to convey an impression which is incorrect because it is not proportional. Every family contains within itself the seeds of disunity, and if they do not in all cases produce their appropriate harvest, it is because they are mercifully blighted or counteracted in their development. ”

“ In China there is no other way to bury the dead, and there never has been any other way. Ceremony is the very life of the Chinese race, and on no other occasion is ceremony so triumphantly tyrannical as at a Chinese funeral. ”

“ Unlike his representative in Western lands, the Chinese village scholar is not a centre or source of illumination to others. His life is the ideal of “subjectivity”—the quintessential essence of selfishness. It is a venerable superstition of the Chinese that though the graduate does not emerge from his own door, he knows the affairs of all under heaven. As we have already had occasion to point out, among the many rhetorical exaggerations of Chinese proverbial philosophy this aphorism may be held to take the lead. The typical scholar knows nothing whatever about all-under-heaven. ”

“ In each case the necessity turns out upon investigation to be so real, and the pressure of the combination of circumstances so powerful, that we are, in a manner, forced to do violence to our own judgment, in order to avert the imminent ruin of those who are in our employ, and in whom we feel, perhaps, some interest. But it is a long time before it occurs to us to look into the matter more deeply than sufficiently to ascertain what everybody knew before, that Chinese New Year is preceded by a universal season of debt-paying from which no one is exempt. ”

“ The consequence of so much roaring on the part of the scholars is that every Chinese school seems to an inexperienced foreigner like a bedlam. No foreign child could learn, and no foreign teacher could teach, amid such a babel of sound, in which it is impossible for the instructor to know whether the pupils are repeating the sounds which are given to them, or not. As the effect of the unnatural and irrational strain of such incessant screaming upon their voices, it is not uncommon to find Chinese scholars who are so hoarse that they cannot pronounce a loud word. ”

“ One of the most melancholy phenomena of Chinese life is the suddenness, the spontaneity, the inexorableness with which natural affection and all kindly relations under certain conditions seem absolutely to wither up. If a member of a clan comes into collision with the prejudices of the generation above his own, or even with that to which he himself belongs, his grandfather, father, great uncles, uncles, cousins, and brothers often promise to break his legs, rub out his eyes with quick-lime, and the like, and not infrequently carry these threats into execution. ”

“ During the celebration of a Chinese wedding it does not strike the spectator that the bridegroom is the centre of interest, and the bride is so only for the time being, and in consequence of the curiosity which is felt to see what sort of a bargain the family has made in getting her. The young man is ordered out of the apartment where he has been kept in ambush—according to the custom in some regions—like an ox for the sacrifice. He is to fall upon his knees at a word of command, and kotow with intermittent sequence to a great variety of persons, until his knees are stiff and his legs lame. ”

“ But as the placid surface of many lakes is often lashed into fury by sudden and violent winds pouring down through mountain gorges, so the equilibrium of the Chinese is liable to be destroyed by gusts of terrible passion, instantly transforming him from a quiet member of a well ordered society, into an impressive object-lesson on the reality of demon possession. Whether life is worth living has been thought “to depend upon the liver.” In China one might rather affirm that it hinges upon the spleen. ”

“ The intricate constitution of Chinese society is such that there is a great variety of acts which, while they may not be directly hostile, must be understood in the light of a challenge. If for example a bully has let it be known that he is determined that a theatrical representation shall take place the next autumn in his village, for some one to oppose it might not improbably be such an act of hostility as to amount to a challenge. The bully must then see that the theatre is engaged, or his “face” is lost, which one may be sure will never happen as long as he is able to prevent it. ”

“ A Chinese bride, handsome at the age of eighteen, will be faded at thirty, and at fifty wrinkled and ugly.
It has been already remarked that the life of the Chinese village woman is an apt illustration of the inherent impossibility that woman’s work should ever be done. Before her own children have ceased to be a constant care by day and by night, grandchildren have not improbably made their appearance, giving the grandmother little peace or rest. The mere preparation of the food for so many in the single kettle which must serve for everything, is a heavy task incessantly repeated. ”

“ His eyes are fixed upon the ground, as if in deepest humility, and the most awkward Chinese youth will perform the details of this trying ordeal with a natural grace, with which the most well-bred Occidental youth could scarcely hope to vie, and which he assuredly could not hope to surpass.
When the complicated protracted ceremonies are all over, our young lad is, it is true, a married man, but he is not the “head” of any family, not even of his own. ”

“ No Chinese ever pays cash down, unless he is obliged to do so. To us this may appear a most eccentric habit, but it seems to be almost a law. The Chinese has learned by ages of experience, that he no sooner pays away money to satisfy one debt, than he needs that same money to liquidate other debts. In their own figuratively expressive phrase, a single cup of water is wanted in three or four places at once, and the supply is always as inadequate, as the classical “cup of water to put out the fire in a cart-load of fuel.” ”

“ It is strange to meet with a custom of the same kind in China, but there is an ancient district in Shan-tung, known as P‘ing-yüen, or Level-plains, where the Danish custom flourishes in full force, but minus the very important concluding feast. For where is the Chinese who would have the courage or indeed the means to welcome the countless swarms of his country-side to enjoy the pleasure of eating at somebody else’s expense? ”

“ To a foreigner there is a mixture of the ludicrous and the pathetic in the attitude of the average parent, in regard to a marriage of a son who has nearly reached the age of twenty and is still single. It is a Chinese aphorism of ancient times that when sons and daughters are once married, “the great business of life has been despatched.” Chinese parents look upon the marriage of their sons just as Western parents look upon the matter of taking young boys out of their early dresses and putting them into trousers. ”