Herbert Allen Giles

“ Until with the last two or three centuries, nature itself was always appealed to as the one source of true inspiration; then came the artist of the studio, since which time Chinese art has languished, while Japanese art, learned at the feet of Chinese artists from the fourteenth century onwards, has come into prominent notice, and is now, with extraordinary versatility, attempting to assimilate the ideals of the West. ”

“ Chinese poetry, of which there is in existence a huge mass, will be searched in vain for suggestions of impropriety, for sly innuendo, and for the other tricks of the unclean. This extraordinary purity of language is all the more remarkable from the fact that, until recent years, the education of women has not been at all general, though many particular instances are recorded of women who have themselves achieved success in literary pursuits. ”

“ If a long landscape, it will be gradually unwound from its roller, and a portion at a time will be submitted for the enjoyment and criticism of his visitors; if a religious or historical picture, or a picture of birds or flowers, of which the whole effort must be viewed in its completeness, it will be studied in various senses, during the intervals between a chat and a cup of tea. Such concentration is absolutely essential, in the eyes of the Chinese critic, to a true interpretation of the artist's meaning, and to a just appreciation of his success. ”

“ The Chinese people reverence above all things literature and learning; they hate war, bearing in mind the saying of Mencius, "There is no such thing as a righteous war; we can only assert that some wars are better than others;" and they love trade and the finesse of the market-place. China can boast many great soldiers, in modern as well as in ancient days ”

“ A scientific training, enabling us to annihilate time and space, to extend indefinitely the uses and advantages of matter in all its forms, and to mitigate the burden of suffering which is laid upon the greater portion of the human race, still requires to be effectively supplemented by a moral training, to teach man his duty towards his neighbour. From the point of view of science, the Chinese are, of course, wholly out of date, though it is only within the past hundred and fifty years that the West has so decisively outstripped the East. ”

“ Of high-class Chinese literature, it is not possible to give even the faintest idea in the space at disposal. It must suffice to say that all branches are adequately represented, histories, biographies, philosophy, poetry and essays on all manner of subjects, offering a wide field even to the most insatiate reader. ”

“ Surgery, even of an elementary kind, has never had a chance; for the Chinese are extremely loath to suffer any interference with their bodies, believing, in accordance with Confucian dogma, that as they received them from their parents, so they should carry them into the presence of their ancestors in the next world. Medicine, as still practised in China, may be compared with the European art of a couple of centuries ago, and its exceedingly doubtful results are fully appreciated by patients at large. ”

“ There is a distinct tradition of flying cars at a very remote date; and rough woodcuts have been handed down for many centuries, showing a car containing two passengers, flying through the clouds and apparently propelled by wheels of a screw pattern, set at right angles to the direction in which the travellers are proceeding. But there is not a scrap of evidence to show what was the motive power which turned the wheels. Similarly, iron ships are mentioned in Chinese literature so far back as the tenth century, only, however, to be ridiculed as an impossibility ”

“ Overwork, in the feverish desire to get into the Government service, is certainly responsible for the mental break-down of a large proportion of the comparatively few lunatics found in China. There being no lunatic asylums in the empire, it is difficult to form anything like an exact estimate of their number; it can only be said, what is equally true of cripples or deformed persons, that it is very rare to meet them in the streets or even to hear of their existence. ”

“ In the domain of painting, we are only just beginning to awake to the fact that in this direction the Chinese have reached heights denied to all save artists of supreme power, and that their art was already on a lofty level many centuries before our own great representatives had begun to put brush to canvas. ”

“ It seems to have come along with the Mongols from Central Asia, when they conquered China in the thirteenth century, and established their short-lived dynasty. Some novels, in spite of their low moral tone, are exceedingly well written and clever, graphic in description, and dramatic in episode; but it is curious that no writer of the first rank has ever attached his name to a novel, and that the authorship of all the cleverest is a matter of entire uncertainty. ”

“ The Chinese, who make no attempt to conceal or excuse, in fact rather exaggerate any corruption in their public service generally, do not hesitate to declare with striking unanimity that the conduct of their examination system is above suspicion, and there appears to be no valid reason why we should not accept this conclusion. ”

“ Chinese medical literature is on a very voluminous scale, medicine having always occupied a high place in the estimation of the people, in spite of the fact that its practice has always been left to any one who might choose to take it up. ”

“ The Chinese have always been a great reading people, systematic education culminating in competitive examinations for students going back to the second century A.D. This is perhaps a suitable place for explaining that the famous Peking Gazette, often said to be the oldest newspaper in the world, is not really a newspaper at all, in that it contains no news in our sense of the term. ”

“ The Chinese course, too, has certainly brought to the front in its time a great many eminent men, who have held their own in diplomacy, if not in warfare, with the subtlest intellects of the West.
Their system of competitive examinations has indeed served the Chinese well. It is the brightest spot in the whole administration, being absolutely above suspicion, such as attaches to other departments of the state. Attempts have been made from time to time to gain admission by improper means to the list of successful candidates, and it would be absurd to say that not one has ever succeeded ”

“ The low-class novel is purposely pitched in a style that will be easily understood; but even so, there is a great deal of word- and phrase-skipping to be done by many illiterate readers, who are quite satisfied if they can extract the general sense as they go along. The book-language, as cultivated by the best writers, is to be freely understood only by those who have stocked their minds well with the extensive phraseology which has been gradually created by eminent men during the past twenty-five centuries, and with historical and biographical allusions and references of all sorts and things. ”

“ It is very noticeable that the Chinese, who are extraordinarily averse to novelties, and can hardly be induced to consider any innovations, when once convinced of their real utility, waste no further time in securing to themselves all the advantages which may accrue. ”

“ Every Chinese boy may be said to have his chance. The slightest sign of a capacity for book-learning is watched for, even among the poorest. Besides the opportunity of free schools, a clever boy will soon find a patron; and in many cases, the funds for carrying on a curriculum, and for entering the first of the great competitions, will be subscribed in the district, on which the candidate will confer a lasting honour by his success. ”

“ Without going so far back as the famous picture in the British Museum, by an artist of the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., the point may perhaps be emphasized by quotation from the words of a leading art-critic, referring to painters of the tenth and eleventh centuries:—"To the Sung artists and poets, mountains were a passion, as to Wordsworth. The landscape art thus founded, and continued by the Japanese in the fifteenth century, must rank as the greatest school of landscape which the world has seen. ”

“ Great Chinese artists unite in dismissing fidelity to outline as of little importance compared with reproduction of the spirit of the object painted. To paint a tree successfully, it is necessary to produce not merely shape and colour but the vitality and "soul" of the original. ”

“ There is no age limit, and men of quite mature years are to be found competing against youths hardly out of their teens; indeed, there is an authenticated case of a man who successfully graduated at the age of seventy-two. Many compete year after year, until at length they decide to give it up as a bad job.
At an early hour on the appointed day the candidates begin to assemble, and by and by the great gates of the examination hall are thrown open, and heralds shriek out the names of those who are to enter. ”

“ The Confucian teachings, which are of the very highest order of morality, and which have moulded the Chinese people for so many centuries, helping perhaps to give them a cohesion and stability remarkable among the nations of the world, should not be lightly cast aside. ”

“ A promising young graduate, who has won his first degree with honours, is at once an object of importance to wealthy fathers who desire to secure him as a son-in-law, and who will see that money is not wanting to carry him triumphantly up the official ladder. ”

“ It is only when we come to the novel, to the short story, or to the anecdote, which are not usually written in high-class style, and are therefore not recognized as literature proper, that this exalted standard is no longer always maintained. ”

“ When all have taken their seats, the Grand Examiner burns incense, and closes the entrance gates, through which no one will be allowed to pass, either in or out, dead or alive, until the end of the third day, when the first of the three sessions is at an end, and the candidates are released for the night. In case of death, not unusual where ten or twelve thousand persons are cooped up day and night in a confined space, the corpse is hoisted over the wall ”

“ Chinese parents have never, until recent days, willingly trained their sons for the army. They have always wished their boys to follow the stereotyped literary curriculum, and then, after passing successfully through the great competitive examinations, to rise to high civil office in the state. ”

“ Boys without any gifts of the kind required, remain to fill the humbler positions; those who advance to a certain point are drafted into trade; while hosts of others who just fall short of the highest, become tutors in private families, schoolmasters, doctors, fortune-tellers, geomancers, and booksellers' hacks. ”

“ The long strain of three bouts of three days each has often been found sufficient to unhinge the reason, with a variety of distressing consequences, the least perhaps of which may be seen in a regular percentage of blank papers handed in. On one occasion, a man handed in a copy of his last will and testament ”