Chinese people

“ Normalization of U.S.-China relations in 1979, combined with economic reforms and opening, transformed the Chinese people's lives. ”

“ It would give a very false idea of the Chinese if great stress were not laid on the good side of their civilisation. They have many fine qualities, and in more than one point they are superior to the nominal Christianity of some Western countries. The first thing perhaps that strikes a foreigner when he is brought into contact with the Chinese is their great courtesy; their literati are such gentlefolk. Even the less cultured people have most refined manners; no one is ever rude; and one of the things they cannot understand is how we can esteem a rough, frank, honest man. ”

“ The Chinese, though the most docile people in the world when under fair government, proved utterly intractable whenever the Executive or the Legislature of the Colony rushed into any unreconciled conflict with deep-seated national customs of the Chinese people. ”

“ Never doubting that it is our first duty as a Christian nation to disseminate those truths that come from an inspired source, why should we, under the influence of a false sympathy, strive to do for the Chinese what so many of our own people yet require. The Chinese have an advantage over many of our lower classes; they are intelligent and reflective, and have Confucian maxims daily brought even in the highways before their notice, that enjoin most of the social duties that render man’s life more in accordance with the Divine wish. ”

“ What the youth has been at home, in his habits of thought, in his purpose and spirit, in his manifestation of action, will largely determine his after life. Chinese mental and moral history has so stamped certain ineffaceable marks on the language, and the thought and character of her people, that China will never—even were she so inclined—obliterate her Oriental features, and must always and inevitably remain Chinese. The conflict, however, is not racial, it is a question of civilization. ”

“ There are, of course, great differences—China has more people—she has a more developed internal trade, her citizens have more intelligence and certain inventive and business qualities, and there are other very material features too obvious to mention, which distinguish the Chinese from the American aborigines, but in the sense in which I am speaking, the comparison is correct. ”

“ One hundred and twenty years ago the Western nations were only a stage removed from the barbaric civilisation the Chinese had reached two or three thousand years before, but still they were moving onward, and they felt they must combine if they would trade with this rich land, and yet protect their subjects and their goods. And so they did combine, and there arose that curious state of affairs between the foreigners and the people of the land that has held for many years, that holds in no other land, and that has crystallised in the Legation Quarter of Peking. ”

“ CHINESE SHOPS—THE GOD OF RICHES—CHINESE SHOP-KEEPERS—CHINESE WATCHMEN. The Chinese have an antipathy to everything like symmetry in the decoration of an apartment. Anyone, on seeing the inside of their rooms, would say that diversity is their only motto; in everything, however, relating to costume and the exteriors of their habitations, the Chinese restrict themselves to fixed rules, which impart the most monotonous character to their apparel and architecture. People following the same profession, and having the same social habits, are dressed uniformly, and housed uniformly. ”

“ The Chinese are one of the strongest races of people in existence. They have only been conquered twice but in both cases they absorbed their conquerors and made Chinese of them. Although old, out of date and slow, they have principles in their civilization that will last as long as time, and China will be a great nation long after some of the so-called great nations now in existence are forgotten. ”

“ For more than an hour we wandered about, poking into all sorts of dark corners, finally reaching the consulate at half-past nine instead of an hour earlier, and nowhere, either in thoroughfare or alley, was there any rowdyism, and this though it was the night of the Dragon Festival when all the people were making holiday. But then under ordinary conditions the Chinese is a peaceable man; he has his own interpretation of the rule of life: in order to live, let others live. ”

“ The Chinese are the most democratic people in the world. No ruler can long resist the quiet force of the scores of thousands of villages and neighborhoods of the empire.
“They are the most reasonable people in the world. You can no more judge them from the so-called Tongs in New York and San Francisco, made up of a few Cantonese expatriates, than you can judge the culture of England by the beachcombers of the South Seas. ”

“ Indeed, thus much may undoubtedly be asserted, that in artifice, falsehood, and an attachment to all kinds of lucre many of the Chinese are difficult to be paralleled by any other people. But then the particular application of these talents, and the manner in which they operate on every emergency, are often beyond the reach of a foreigner's penetration: so that though it may be surely concluded that the Chinese had some interest in thus amusing the commodore, yet it may not be easy to assign the individual views by which they were influenced. ”

“ The Chinese are universally conceded to be excellent people, honest, honorable, industrious, trustworthy, kind-hearted, and all that—leave them alone, they are plenty good enough just as they are; and besides, almost every convert runs a risk of catching our civilization. ”

“ That, I am sure, you will all agree with me, is a very interesting subject, especially at the present moment, when from what we see going on around us in China today, it would seem that the Chinese type of humanity — the real Chinaman — is going to disappear and, in his place, we are going to have a new type of humanity — the progressive or modern Chinaman. ”

“ I have already had occasion to observe that the natural disposition of the Chinese should seem to have suffered almost a total change by the influence of the laws and maxims of government, an influence which, in this country more than elsewhere, has given a bias to the manners, sentiments, and moral character of the people ”

“ Literature and Learning in China.—The Chinese are a reading people, and the number of their published works is very considerable. In the departments of morals, history, biography, the drama, poetry, and romance, there is no lack of writings, such as they are. The Chinese materia medica comprises forty octavo volumes; of statistical works the number is very large. Their novels are said to be excellent pictures of the national manners. China is full of books. New authors are continually spring up; the press is active, and the traffic in books is a lucrative and most honorable branch of trade. ”

“ Many of the houses of the better class of people, not deserted entirely by their owners, were visited by our officers, who generally met with a very courteous reception. Indeed, the Chinese well know how to make a virtue of necessity, and to conciliate your good graces by the offer of tea, cakes, tobacco, or flowers, rather than run the chance of exciting your ill-will, or your less friendly visits, by an affectation of independence or rude indifference. The Chinese of the respectable classes are capable of being extremely courteous, are well-bred, and even elegant in their manners ”

“ Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great English Devil, Consul X."
The Chinaman may love you, but you are a devil all the same. It is most natural that he should think so. For generation upon generation China was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people of her vast empire grew up under influences unchanged by contact with other peoples. ”

“ More than one fourth of the people of the earth are Chinese, and their country at the present time is more primitive, in the scarcity of railways, telegraphs, public utilities, and every provision conducing to comfort and common-sense living, than any other land pretending to civilization. It is a fact that outside of Shanghai, Canton, Pekin and Tientsin, the people do not want many of the products of the outer world ”

“ In fact, consideration for an individual's feelings is one of the great Chinese virtues. The Chinese loves his home and his family. He is sen­timental about his children and his old parents. He loves his own bit of ground and his own roof, even if it is poor, and he never forgets his own people. ”

“ The serene and blesed mood which enables us to see into the life of things: that is imaginative reason, that is the Spirit of the Chinese People. ”

“ The Chinese are a great nation, incapable of permanent suppression by foreigners. They will not consent to adopt our vices in order to acquire military strength; but they are willing to adopt our virtues in order to advance in wisdom. I think they are the only people in the world who quite genuinely believe that wisdom is more precious than rubies. That is why the West regards them as uncivilized. ”

“ Many Europeans not only hold the view that Chinese civilisation is inferior to that of Europe—which is doubtless to a great extent true, though there is another aspect of that question—but they are strongly convinced that the Chinese represent a lower type of humanity—that they are, in fact, less far advanced in the scale of evolution than Europeans. An educated Englishman once told me that the Chinese were evidently a mean and inferior people, because when you whacked a Chinese coolie in the streets of Canton400 he did not hit you back. ”

“ There is one element common to all these religions, and that is the worship of ancestors. Every Chinese, whether he be a Confucianist, a Taoist, or a Buddhist, reverences his ancestors, and prays and makes offerings to their spirits.
POLICY OF NON-INTERCOURSE.—The Chinese have always been a very self- satisfied and exclusive people. They have jealously excluded foreigners and outside influence from their country. The Great Wall with which they have hedged in their country on the north, is the symbol of their policy of isolation. ”

“ The Chinese being every day brought into contact with drunken sailors and unscrupulous traders from the west, new lessons are constantly learned from them in the school of duplicity and immorality. The Chinese of this class are no fitting type of the race. It is an accepted fact that the great seaports of the world, where international trade holds sway, are the worst centers of vice, and no estimate of a people formed from these cities can be just.
The Chinese as a race are of a phlegmatic and impassive temperament, and physically less active and energetic than European and American nations. ”

“ Their industry is the result of the quick sense of gratification which they derive from the indulgence of the more grovelling passions and animal appetites, and where these can be indulged without labour, the Chinese [66] will be found to indicate their full share of Asiatic indolence.
It must be confessed however that the Chinese are, in a political point of view at least, by far the most useful class of people to be found in the Indian Seas or Archipelago. Their robust frames, their industrious habits, and their moderate conduct, place them beyond competition. ”

“ In the third century Chinese ambassadors mention palaces, towers, and theatres having been erected for the reception and amusement of the guests, and meeting merchants in the ports from countries as far west as the Roman Empire. The people were described by the Chinese as an active and robust small black race, with long hair knotted on the top of the head; the rich wearing only a silk loin-cloth, and the poor one of cotton. ”

“ The commercial man will tell you that the Chinese are materialists—people who have no faith; and yet with glorious inconsistency he will explain that the difficulty of using Chinese labour abroad is that even the commonest coolie demands that his body shall be repatriated and shall lie in some place which will not hinder his son doing filial {148} worship to his spirit. ”

“ Spoken as well as written Chinese is, in one sense, a very difficult language. It is difficult, not because it is complex. Many European languages such as Latin and French are difficult because they are complex and have many rules. Chinese is difficult not because it is complex, but because it is deep. It is difficult because it is a language for expressing deep feeling in simple language. That is the secret of the difficulty of the Chinese language. In fact, as I have said else where, Chinese is a language of the heart: a poetical language. ”

“ in fact the language of a child. Now as a proof of this, we all know how easily European children learn colloquial or spoken Chinese, while learned philogues and sinologues insist in saying that Chinese is so difficult. Chinese, colloquial Chinese, I say again is the language of a child. My first advice therefore to my foreign friends who want to learn Chinese is "Be ye like little children, you will then not only enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but you will also be able to learn Chinese." ”

“ The Chinese are emphatically not a religious people, though they are very superstitious. Belief in a God has come down from the remotest ages, but the old simple creed has been so overlaid by Buddhism as not to be discernible at the present day. Buddhism is now the dominant religion of China. It is closely bound up with the lives of the people, and is a never-failing refuge in sickness or worldly trouble. It is no longer the subtle doctrine which was originally presented to the people of India, but something much more clearly defined and appreciable by the plainest intellect. ”