China

“ CHINA AND THE CHINESE THE CHINESE LANGUAGE
If the Chinese people were to file one by one past a given point, the interesting procession would never come to an end. Before the last man of those living to-day had gone by, another and a new generation would have grown up, and so on for ever and ever.
The importance, as a factor in the sum of human affairs, of this vast nation,—of its language, of its literature, of its religions, of its history, of its manners and customs,—goes therefore without saying. Yet a serious attention to China and her affairs is of very recent growth. ”

“ China is an example in point. No one can deny its civilization; its diligent care of the soil, its cultivation of silk and of the tea-tree, its populousness, its canals, its literature, its court ceremonial, its refinement of manners, its power of persevering so loyally in its old institutions through so many ages, abundantly vindicate it from the reproach of barbarism. ”

“ By all means let everyone visit China first, with its dirty mud villages, devoid ever of picturesqueness, its swarming, grasping, sullen people, and leave Japan—dear, clean, little Japan, with its picturesque streets, and charming, willing little fairies to the last. ”

“ Enjoying all the advantages which have come naturally to her, China, we must remember, is as old as all history. One sees the legend of age repeated again and again in the hard enduring things of time, and equally as much in the great conflict that had China in its grip for many months. Every symbol of the common life, every action of the common people, everything in the land points with powerful significance to fundamental enduring things. ”

“ Small at first and surrounded by savages, the baby kingdom soon began to grow. Like the tiny tent of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, which unfolded until an army could rest beneath the roof, China spread until, a thousand years before the time of Our Lord, its borders on the north and west were pretty much what they are to-day, and it had crept southwards many miles beyond the Yellow River. ”

“ Does there exist, beyond this intense love of old customs and of an immutable civilization, any bond of union among the three or four hundred millions of human beings who constitute the population of China? ”

“ China is like the Yangtze, which is fed by five hundred streams and yet remains unchanged, the river of golden sand, majestic, turbulent, indifferent, and everlasting. What power have you to swim against that mighty current? You can wear European clothes and eat European food, but in your heart you are a Chinawoman. ”

“ Statesmen seriously say that three or four months' extra study will enable the educated Chinaman to learn all that is necessary of Western civilisation, and then those who have acquired this knowledge can return to China and teach their fellow-countrymen; and it is impossible to convince the Chinese that the uniting together of two different webs of thought is a matter of extreme difficulty, and, it may be added, of extreme risk. The pleasing dream that you can arbitrarily select the good points of West and East and weave them into one is the very reverse of the truth. ”

“ The kingdom of China is immense, being even a thousand leagues in extent, with such a multitude of inhabitants that the whole kingdom seems one mighty city. The Chinese are fair of color, with small eyes, much given to trafficking, sharp-witted, and masters at trade, though in matters that concern the safety of soul exceedingly dull and senseless. ”

“ Or do the Chinese people enjoy in real life the recognition which should be accorded to them by the terms of the Confucian Canon?
Every one who has lived in China, and has kept his eyes open, must have noticed what a large measure of personal freedom is enjoyed by even the meanest subject of the Son of Heaven. Any Chinaman may travel all over China without asking any one's leave to start, and without having to report himself, or be reported by his innkeeper, at any place at which he may choose to stop. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. CHINA'S AWAKENING.
In what I have said of the Chinese government, system of education, religion and superstitions, I have referred to the nation as it has been for some twenty centuries—chained to tradition, stagnant, asleep. Society was stratified; those in power seemed to have no higher aspiration than to live upon the labor of the masses, and the masses seemed to entertain no thought of emancipation. ”

“ As I write the Powers, lynx-eyed as ever, are observing China. During the last four months China has been watched as no other nation was ever watched, and she has rushed through her great national drama with appalling speed. She is breathless. Nervously, with a wonderful confidence coming from her newly won emancipation, China is looking questioningly to the West. She knows that all the Powers are closely scrutinising her every movement through political eyeglasses. ”

“ Someone has said that China is not real, that it is only an imagined country. Perhaps that is what makes it a Mecca for world-weary travelers. China is a bizarre country of legend and song, of poetry and mystery, of moon-bridges and carved jade. There you may find your sight again. For in China there are many singular characters, wizards, soothsayers, tea-masters. ”

“ PREFACE Every intelligent person that I have met whose good fairy has led him to the Celestial Empire has fallen under the spell of that marvellous people and marvellous land. I am fired with the ambition to cast that spell even on those who have never been there, by showing them as accurately and vividly as I can, with pen and brush, what the face of China actually is. ”

“ Japan, who may be said to have borrowed the civilization of China, lock, stock and barrel—her literature, her moral code, her arts, her sciences, her manners and customs, her ceremonial, and even her national dress—invented the folding fan, which in the early part of the fifteenth century formed part of the tribute sent from Korea to Peking, and even later was looked upon by the Chinese as quite a curiosity. ”

“ The Chinese are under the impression that there is no nation equal to theirs. They suppose themselves the centre of civilization for the last 2000 years, and claim that China knew the art of printing, invented gunpowder, and was learned in astronomy, long before us. They consider that China is the middle of the Universe, as is shown by the name, which, in their language, signifies "The Middle Kingdom." They look upon themselves as superior to us, as we think ourselves to them, calling us Barbarians, and considering all European nations as such. ”

“ China was never so much in the world’s thought as to-day, nor is there any apparent likelihood that the position of this empire will be less conspicuous at the opening of the twentieth century. Whatever helps to a better understanding of the Chinese people, is an aid to a comprehension of the Chinese problem. ”

“ In the history books of ancient China, often still influencing the style and way of thought in today’s textbooks, there are: generalizations; generalizations; the thought that China is a single entity; more generalization; the idea that all Chinese think and feel the same; that all China is ‘one’, all people are ‘one’, all have ‘one’ moral code; and that ‘China’ pins itself and all of its history against the ‘Other’ barbarians surrounding China (Nolde, 1966, Huan et. al, 1997) . ”

“ Facts which cannot lie have proved that these three Powers have long cherished designs upon the territory of China. No doubt they flatter themselves with the belief that their rule over such portions of Chinese soil as may come under their control would be a blessing to mankind, an opinion which it would serve no good purpose to controvert. And they reckon that, in addition to the higher civilisation which they propose to confer on the Chinese people and Government, they will secure material advantages for their own populations. ”

“ After a residence of twelve years in various parts of the country I instinctively feel that while military occupation by the Great Powers may be possible, not only is China in a sense unconquerable, but that she is eminently a conquering nation, though not by clash of arms. ”

“ The first Traveller to reveal 107China in all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities, its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell us of the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship; of Tibet with its sordid devotees; of Burma with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of Laos, of Siam, of Cochin China, of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces ”

“ The vast Empire of China with its hundreds of millions of toiling slaves, with its old, old civilisation reaching back for untold years prior to the dawn of history in the West, with its manners and customs [vi] so worn into the national character that they almost form the character itself, with its fertile plains, its sandy deserts, its lofty mountains, its mighty rivers, its torrid heat and arctic cold, its devastating floods, its cruel famines and loathsome epidemics, represents a mass, the contemplation of which staggers the mind and makes one ask, "What is Europe trying to do here? ”

“ China has always been governed after Chinese methods, and although she has occasionally been conquered by foreigners, she has invariably absorbed them into her own civilization, and obliged them to observe her traditions. ”

“ Let the West come to China with all its modern inventions and its politics and educational policies, but let us always be able to find within its quiet courtyards the quiet, sweet-faced woman of China. ”

“ Chinese may be called the Latin of the Far East. For, just as Rome through her higher civilisation lent thousands of words to the semi-savages hovering along her borders, so China has furnished all the surrounding peoples with their scientific, legal, philosophical and religious terminology. ”

“ The Great Wall seems to me to express a national characteristic of the Chinese race. All along that people loved to dwell in their own land in seclusion, pursuing the industries and the arts of peace, and to them China has ever been the central flowery land. Within it everything worth having is concentrated, and outside of it, on narrow and unproductive soils, dwell scattered tribes of barbarians ever bent on predatory excursions into the paradise of the Celestial Empire. ”

“ Virtually every adaptation in China must be thought through from the beginning by the Chinese; and even in thinking there are varying styles. Are the Chinese to think after the fashion of the West—scientifically and logically—or are they to think in their accustomed traditional and empirical manner? ”

“ But I must again assert, that the great secret of the popularity of China, and the Chinese people, lies in the manner in which foreigners allowed themselves to be treated in former days, and in the mystery with which the Chinese, from principle, enveloped every thing relating to their country. ”

“ We are told by many observers that theory and practice in China are often widely divergent, but in one matter at least they absolutely coincide. The Chinese hold that the greatest treasure their country can possess consists not in gold and silver, mines and railways, factories and shipping, but in an ever-increasing army of healthy boys and girls—the future fathers and mothers of the race. ”

“ But the Government was not the people, and the Chinese are neither worn out nor unsound.
I think it must be because everything seems finished in China that people talk about her decay. The whole thing impresses you as having been made and completed, after a fashion, a long time ago. Nowhere, save where the touch of the West has been felt, do you see things being tried for the first time. Everything has been done in China so many, many times, for so many centuries, and the results have spread abroad all over the empire ”

“ Had even the whole population of China been miraculously converted to Christianity, as suggested by Sir Robert Hart ('Fortnightly Review,' November 1900) , it is not permissible to assume that they would have continued turning the other cheek to so many smiters. If we suppose the case of any Western nation subjected to the experiences through which the Chinese have had to pass at the hands of foreign dictators, the mode in which it would act may afford us some measure by which to gauge the excesses of the Chinese. ”

“ In foreign affairs these ninety years were marked by the steadily growing influence of the Western powers, aimed at turning China into a colony. Culturally this period was that of the gradual infiltration of Western civilization into the Far East; it was recognized in China that it was necessary to learn from the West. In home affairs we see the collapse of the dynasty and the destruction of the unity of the empire; of four great civil wars, one almost brought the dynasty to its end. North and South China, the coastal area and the interior, developed in different ways. ”

“ Here then was the great empire of China, bounded by the Four Seas, and stretching to the confines of the habitable earth, except for a few barbarian islands scattered on its fringe, with its refined and scholarly people, heirs to a glorious literature more than twenty centuries old, in the power of a wild race of herdsmen, whose title had been established by skill in archery and horsemanship. ”