Herbert Allen Giles

“ In marriage, we find the Chinese aiming, like the Greeks, at equality of rank and fortune between the contracting parties, or, as the Chinese put it, in the guise of a household word, at a due correspondence between the doorways of the betrothed couple. As in Greece, so in China, we find the marriage arranged by the parents; the veiled bride; the ceremony of fetching her from her father's house; the equality of man and wife; the toleration of subordinate wives, and many other points of contact. ”

“ Those are strong words, especially when we consider that they come from one of China's most sacred books, regarded by the Chinese with as much veneration as the Bible by us,—a portion of that Confucian Canon, the principles of which it is the object of every student to master, and should be the object of every Chinese official to carry into practice.
But those words are mild compared with another utterance by Mencius in the same direction.
"The people are the most important element in a nation; the gods come next; the sovereign is the least important of all." ”

“ To be among the fortunate three hundred out of about twelve thousand candidates, who contend once every three years for the highest degree, is to be enrolled among the Immortals for ever; while the Senior Classic at a final competition before the Emperor not only covers himself, but even his remote ancestors, his native village, his district, his prefecture, and even his province, with a glory almost of celestial splendour. ”

“ In the accompanying picture we see his dream,—a thin curl, as it were of vapour, coming forth from the top of his head and broadening out as it goes, until wide enough to contain the representation of a man, in feature like himself, surrounded by an admiring crowd, who acclaim him Senior Classic. With a start the illusion is dispelled, and the dreamer awakes to find himself famous. ”

“ I have often been asked if Chinese is, or is not, a difficult language to learn. To this question it is quite impossible to give a categorical answer, for the simple reason that Chinese consists of at least two languages, one colloquial and the other written, which for all practical purposes are about as distinct as they well could be.
Colloquial Chinese is a comparatively easy matter. It is, in fact, more easily acquired in the early stages than colloquial French or German. A student will begin to speak from the very first, for the simple reason that there is no other way. ”

“ A proclamation is issued, describing the tax, or the change, or whatever it may be, and the people, if their interests are sufficiently involved, prepare to resist.
Combination has been raised in China to the level of a fine art. Nowhere on earth can be found such perfect cohesion of units against forces which would crush each unit, taken individually, beyond recognition. Every trade, every calling, even the meanest, has its guild, or association, the members of which are ever ready to protect one another with perfect unanimity, and often great self-sacrifice. ”

“ Here stands the Imperial Geography of the Empire, in twenty-four large volumes, with maps, in the edition of 1745. Here, too, stand many of the Topographies for which China is justly celebrated. Every Prefecture and every District, or Department,—and the latter number about fifteen hundred,—has its Topography, a kind of local history, with all the noticeable features of the District, its bridges, temples, and like buildings, duly described, together with biographies of all natives of the District who have risen to distinction in any way. ”

“ From time immemorial it has been the rule in China that men and women should not pass things to one another,—for fear their hands might touch. A local Pharisee tried to entangle the great Mencius in his speech, asking him if a man who saw his sister-in-law drowning might venture to pull her out. "A man," replied [197] the philosopher, "who failed to do so, would be no better than a wolf."
The Chinese lady may go out to pay calls, and even visit temples for religious purposes, unveiled, veils for women having been abolished in the first years of the seventh century of our era. ”

“ Many petty offences which are often dealt with very harshly in England, pass in China almost unnoticed. No shopkeeper or farmer would be fool enough to charge a hungry man with stealing food, for the simple reason that no magistrate would convict. It is the shopkeeper's or farmer's business to see that such petty thefts cannot occur. Various other points [89] might be noticed; but we must get back to taxation, which is really the crux of the whole position.
All together the Chinese people may be said to be lightly taxed. There is the land-tax, in money and in kind; a tax on salt ”

“ Of course infanticide is known in China, just as it is known, too well known, in England and elsewhere. What I hope to be able to show is that infanticide is not more prevalent in China than in the Christian communities of the West.
Let me begin by urging, what no one who has lived in China will deny, that Chinese parents seem to be excessively fond of all their children, male and female. A son is often spoken of playfully as a little dog,—a puppy, in fact; a girl is often spoken of as "a thousand ounces of gold," a jewel, and so forth. Sons are no doubt preferred ”

“ The mass of Chinese poetry is so vast, that it is hopeless for the general reader to do much more than familiarise himself with the best specimens of the greatest poets. It is interesting to note that all the more extensive anthologies include a considerable number of poems by women, some of quite a high order.
Two years ago, an eminent scientist at Cambridge said to me, "Have the Chinese anything in the nature of poetry in their language?" In reply to this, I told him of a question once put to me by a friendly Mandarin in China: "Have you foreigners got books in your honourable country?" ”

“ To begin with, there is in China, certainly at all great centres, a large criminal population without friends,—men who have fallen from their high estate through inveterate gambling, indulgence in opium-smoking, or more rarely alcohol. No one raises a finger to protect these from the utmost vengeance of the law.
Then again, the Chinese, just as they tax themselves, so do they administer justice to themselves. Trade disputes, petty and great alike, are never carried into court, there being no recognised civil law in China beyond [103] custom ”

“ In another passage Mencius says: "The tyrants of the last two dynasties, Chieh and Chou, lost the Empire because they lost the people, by which I mean that they lost the hearts of the people. There is a way to get the Empire;—get the people, and you have the Empire. There is a way to get the people;—get [86] their hearts, and you have them. There is a way to get their hearts;—do for them what they wish, and avoid doing what they do not wish." ”

“ Long centuries had fixed so firmly in the minds of our forefathers a belief, and no doubt to some extent a justifiable belief, in the perfect character of the languages, the literatures, the arts, and some of the social and political institutions of ancient Greece and Rome, that a century or so ago there seemed to be nothing else worth the attention of an intellectual man. The comparatively recent introduction of Sanskrit was received in the classical world, not merely with coldness, but with strenuous opposition ”

“ Besides these, there is in the market a huge quantity of fiction which appeals to the less highly educated classes, and even to those who are absolutely unable to read. For the latter, there are professional readers and story-tellers, who may often be seen at some convenient point in a Chinese town, delighting large audiences of coolies with tales of love, and war, and heroism, and self-sacrifice. These readers do not read the actual words of the book, which no coolie would understand, but transpose the book-language into the colloquial as they go along. ”

“ There has been in existence now for some years a well-meaning association, known as the Natural Foot Society, supported by both Chinese and foreigners, with the avowed object of [203] putting an end to the practice of foot-binding. We hear favourable accounts of its progress; but until there is something like a national movement, it will not do to be too sanguine.
We must remember that in 1664 one of China's wisest and greatest Emperors, in the plenitude of his power issued an Imperial edict forbidding parents in future to bind the feet of their girls. ”

“ A man will talk with pleasure about his children, especially if his quiver is well stocked with boys.
In this connection I may say that the position of women in China still seems to be very widely misunderstood. Not only that, but a very frightful crime is alleged against the Chinese people as a common practice in everyday life, which, if not actually approved, meets everywhere with toleration.
I allude to the charge of infanticide, confined of course to girls, for it has not often been suggested that Chinese parents do away with such a valuable asset as a boy. ”

“ As a matter of fact, that is, so far as my own observations go, the Chinese people value life every whit as highly as we do, and a substitute of the kind would be quite unprocurable under ordinary circumstances. It is thinkable that some poor wretch, himself under sentence of death, might be substituted with the connivance of the officials, to hoodwink foreigners; but even then the difficulties would be so great as to render the scheme almost impracticable.
For in China everything leaks out. ”

“ When the Tartars conquered China two hundred and fifty years ago, there was at first a strenuous fight against the queue, and it has been said that the turbans still worn by the [180] Southern Chinese were originally adopted as a means of concealing the hateful Manchu badge. Nowadays every Chinaman looks upon his queue as an integral and honourable part of himself. If he cannot grow one, he must have recourse to art, for he could not appear tailless, either in this world or the next. ”

“ Those mental gymnastics, of such importance in the training of youth, which were once claimed exclusively for the languages of Greece and Rome, may be performed equally well in the Chinese language. The educated classes in China would be recognised anywhere as men of trained minds, able to carry on sustained and complex arguments without violating any of the Aristotelian canons, although as a matter of fact they never heard of Aristotle and possess no such work in all their extensive literature as a treatise on logic. ”

“ The answer to that question will be somewhat of a staggerer to those who from distance, or from want of close observation, regard the Chinese as a down-trodden people, on a level with the Fellahin of Egypt in past times. For the answer, so far as my own experience goes, is that only so much can be got out of the Chinese people as the people themselves are ready and willing to pay. In other words, with all their show of an autocratic ruler and a paternal government, the people of China tax themselves. ”

“ Dyeing the hair, too, has been practised in China certainly from the Christian era, if not earlier, chiefly by men whose hair and beards begin to grow grey too soon. One of the proudest [181] titles of the Chinese, carrying them back as it does to prehistoric times, is that of the Black-haired People, also a title, perhaps a mere coincidence, of the ancient Accadians. In spite, however, of the universality of black hair in both men and women, there are exceptions to the rule, and I myself have seen a Chinese albino, with the usual light-coloured hair and pink eyes. ”

“ The fact is that we students of Chinese at the present day know very little beyond the vague outlines of what there is to be known. Students of Greek have long since divided up their subject under such heads as pure scholarship, history, philosophy, archæology, and then again have made subdivisions of these. In the Chinese field nothing of the kind has yet been done. The consequence is that the labourers in that field, compelled to work over a large superficies, are only able to turn out more or less superficial work. ”

“ One hundred years after Confucius came Mencius, China's second sage. In all his pages of political advice to feudal nobles, and all his conversations with his disciples, much more voluminous than the Discourses of Confucius, there is equally no allusion to Lao Tzŭ, nor to the treatise.
It has been pointed out by an eminent Chinese critic of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, that Mencius spent his life chiefly in attacking the various heterodox systems which then prevailed, [148] such as the extreme altruistic system of Mo Ti and the extreme egoistic system of Yang Chu ”

“ Certainly it is altogether desirable that a foreigner going to China, whether in an official capacity, or as merchant, missionary, or traveller, should have some acquaintance with the ordinary rules and ceremonial of Chinese social life. Such knowledge will often go far to smooth away Chinese prejudices against the barbarian, and on occasions might conceivably aid in averting a catastrophe. ”

“ The sceptre is indeed the symbol of rule; but the tile too has an honourable signification, a tile being used in ancient China as a weight for the spindle,—and consequently as a symbol of woman's work in the household.
Then, again, even a girl has a market value. Some will buy and rear them to be servants; others, to be wives for their sons; while native foundling hospitals, endowed by charitable Chinese, will actually pay a small fee for every girl handed over them. ”

“ If the Emperor rules wisely and well, with only the happiness of his people at heart, there will be no sign from above, beyond peace and plenty in the Empire, and now and then a double ear of corn in the fields—a phenomenon which will be duly recorded in the Peking Gazette. ”

“ The written or book language, on the other hand, may fairly be regarded as a sufficient study for a lifetime; not because of the peculiar script, which yields when systematically attacked, but because the style of the book language is often so extremely terse as to make it obscure, and sometimes so lavishly ornate that without wide reading it is not easy to follow the figurative phraseology, and historical and mythological allusions, which confront one on every page. ”