Manchu people

“ It was henceforth to be lawful for Manchus, even of the Imperial family, to send their sons abroad to be educated,—a step which no Manchu would be likely to take unless forcibly coerced into doing so. Any spirit of enterprise which might have been possessed by the founders of the dynasty had long since evaporated, and all that Manchu nobles asked was to be allowed to batten in peace upon the Chinese people. ”

“ It is not so easy for those who are in possession of the loaves and fishes to admit others to an equal share. If to these were added the abolition of a degrading Page 279 badge, the Manchu dynasty might hope to be perpetual, because the Manchus would cease to exist as a people. ”

“ With some ex-ceptions, they are less secluded than their Chinese sisters, and have an air of far greater freedom.
Most of the Manchu customs have disappeared along with the language, which is only spoken in a few remote valleys, and is apparently only artificially preserved because the ruling dynasty is Manchu. It is only those students who are aspir-ants for literary degrees and high office in the viceroyalty who are obliged to learn it.
People of pure Manchu race are chiefly met with in the north. Manchus, as kinsmen of the present Imperial dynasty, enjoy various privileges. ”

“ In more than one crisis, the heart of the nation has cleaved to the Manchu house as the embodiment of law and order. The people chose to adhere to a tolerably good government rather than take the chance of a better one emerging from the strife of factions. ”

“ More than once I have demanded the expulsion of the Manchus, and the partition of China. That they deserved it no one who knows the story of 1900 will venture to deny. It was not without reason that Mene tekel and Ichabod were engraved on the medal commemorating the siege in Peking. If I seem to recant, it is in view of the hopeful change that has come over the spirit of the Manchu Government. Under the leadership of Dowager Empress and Emperor, the people were more likely to make peaceful progress than under a new dynasty or under the Polish policy of division. ”

“ The uniqueness of the story lies [15] in the fact that when the Manchus conquered China they were merely a horde of savages attacking a highly educated people, infinitely their superiors in number and resources. They not only conquered them, but for centuries they imposed their yoke upon them, always hated, yet always obeyed. As the centuries elapsed the Manchus grew weaker in their own country, and never fused with the conquered race. In China proper they still live apart; walled Manchu cities may be found within many walled Chinese cities ”

“ Teach him his duty to his people. Then it depends much upon the sort of wife he marries. I begin to think there is not a suitable girl to marry him. He has to marry a Manchu, and the Manchu girls have no education. Any Manchu girl would be out of place as Empress. My idea is that no matter how they change they must keep their little old-fashioned law. They cannot remove that at once. I know Manchus who lived in America for years and they even after that thought that the customs in their own country were best. ”

“ Manchuria is a province of China; though the latter was a province of the former three hundred and fifty years ago, for then it conquered China, whose present emperor is the descendant of the conquering Manchu monarch. Manchuria has an area of 280,000, and a population of 21,000,000; but not more than one million of the people are Manchus, who wear the costume and speak the language of the Chinese. The rest of the people are emigrants from China or other countries, and are as industrious and prosperous as any other in the vast empire. ”

“ In the beginning, the feet were not bound so early nor so tightly as to-day, and the custom now varies greatly in different parts of the empire. The present, the Manchu government, has made efforts to prevent the practice of foot binding among the people, but with little or no success. ”

“ The aim of this Society was to move the people of China to realise the shame of being ruled by aliens, and to stir them up to win their freedom. We published a weekly magazine, the People, in which we showed how corrupt, tyrannical, and impotent was the Manchu Government, giving instances of the inhumanity and injustice with which the Manchus had treated our people in the past. We urged reasons why the Chinese people should take revenge on behalf {52} of their ancestors, thus proving their filial piety. ”

“ Anciently, Le Comte tells us, these triple gates were to be met with crossing the trade routes of the interior, when they were inscribed with directions for the traveller regarding the route to be followed, and the distance to different towns.
MANCHU FUNERALS, PEKING.
THE Manchus, like the Chinese, deem it their duty when they are advanced in years to make provision for their own decease. ”

“ In four centuries of ease and sloth they have lost the wild courage, the spirit of adventure that inspired them to overrun China, and the hardihood and skill at arms that brought success to their venture. But if they have lost the warlike instincts of their savage ancestors, they have retained all their pride, their ignorance, their cruelty, and their superstition. All these qualities a Manchu possesses far in excess of the liberal share that nature has bestowed on the Chinese. ”

“ The way the mob and the soldier-bandits got into the city is a story that makes any tale of the Arabian Nights fade away into dull myth.
Some years ago a Manchu official, high in command, espied a beautiful flower-girl on the street and forthwith attached her as his private property. So great was her fascination, the tables were turned and he became the slave—till he grew tired. He not only scorned her, but he deserted her. Though a Manchu maid, the Revolution played into her tapering fingers the opportunity for the sweetest revenge that ever tempted an almond-eyed beauty. ”

“ But on that day he, the despised Chinese coolie, had had the whip-hand.
"A Manchu you are!" he had said; and his eyes had glistened triumphantly through meager almond slits. "A Manchu indeed! A Pao-i bannerman, an aristocrat—sloughing your will and your passions as snakes cast their skin, brooking no master but yourself and the black desert thunder! ”

“ Like all minorities that try to intrench their privileges, the Manchu is much of a “snob”. It is not uncommon to hear this sneer at Peking regarding the Chinese women of the south: “Oh, she’s a woman from the southern provinces; you can’t expect manners from her.” The fact is that the Chinese women of Nanking, Hangchow, Soochow, Canton and other southern cities have more refined manners314 than the rough-riding Manchus, the daughters of raiders. The wearing of the queue and the skull cap is a Manchu custom, imposed in the seventeenth century upon the conquered Chinese. ”

“ Surely the city that was for centuries the chief Manchu stronghold of the west, almost their second capital, which had welcomed the cantankerous old dowager fleeing before the justifiable wrath of the Western world, which had seen such cruel and unnecessary bloodshed during the birth of the republic, which had so often been the outpost on the edge of a great Mohammedan rebellion, might at least have had some faint thrill, some little hint of hidden danger, left to cheer up the jaded wanderer. ”

“ So large a percentage of Manchus in the highest positions tends to indicate a retrograde administration, as the Manchus are, as a race, very inferior to the Chinese in intelligence and capacity, and their appointment to important positions is viewed with disfavour by the Chinese themselves. The Dowager-Empress has sent special instructions both to Moukden and Kirin to raise the present standard of the Manchu schools in those towns to that existing in the ordinary schools in Peking."- Great Britain, Papers by Command, China, Number 1, 1900, page 129. ”

“ There was to be a university in Peking, and the temples, which cover the empire in all directions, were to be closed to religious services and opened for educational purposes. The Manchus, indeed, have never shown any signs of a religious temperament. There had not been, under the dynasty in question, any such wave of devotional fervour as was experienced under more than one previous dynasty. Neither the dreams of Buddhism, nor the promises of immortality held out by the Taoist, seem to have influenced in a religious, as opposed to a superstitious sense, the rather Bœotian mind of the Manchu. ”

“ Not one, however, of the numerous secret societies, which from time to time have flourished in China, can compare for a moment either in numbers or organization with the formidable association known as the Heaven and Earth Society, and also as the Triad Society, or Hung League, which dates from the reign of Yung Chêng, and from first to last has had one definite aim,—the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. ”

“ During Chang's long absence, Tuan Fang, Governor of Hupeh, held the seals and exercised the functions of viceroy. He was a Manchu—one of those specimens, admirable but not rare, who, in acquiring the refinement of Chinese culture, lose nothing of the vigour of their own race. "Of their own race," I say, because in language and habits the Manchus are strongly differentiated from their Chinese subjects. ”

“ The Manchus and Mongols are chiefly Buddhist, with letters derived from the ancient Syriac. The Manchus are now said to be gradually falling under the influence of Chinese civilization, and to be losing their old nomadic habits, and even their peculiar language. The predatory habits of the Turkish, Mongolian and Manchu population of northern Asia, and their irruptions into other parts of the continent and into Europe, have produced very remarkable results in the history of the world. ”

“ The Manchus conquered China, and China began again in her time-honored way to swallow up the conquerors, until to-day there is no such thing as a Manchu nation, hardly a spoken remnant of the sonorous Manchu language, no one resembling the fierce warriors and hardy horsemen who put an end to the Ming dynasty such a little while ago. ”

“ It was then that force of circumstances changed his status from that of a religious reformer to that of a political adventurer; and almost simultaneously with the advent of Hsien Fêng to the Imperial power, the long-smouldering discontent with Manchu rule, carefully fostered by the organization of the Triad Society, broke into open rebellion. ”

“ I noticed the long flowing robe of the Manchu women, with the Manchu head-dress and a remarkable arrangement of hair on a frame, spreading at the back with a sort of elongated butterfly effect, and held in place by a bright gold hairpin. The bands of hair are brought over in a way to give the impression of long loops, and they are decorated with bright flowers. The Manchu women are taller than the Chinese women, and walk with a statelier tread, as their feet have never been bound, the present Empress many years ago having issued an edict prohibiting that custom. ”

“ He recommended to the Manchus that they keep their fighting men from demoralization by ordaining that no Manchu warrior should enter any trade or profession but those of warfare and public administration, and that they should guard the ancient heritage of their valiant blood by making miscegenation a crime. ”

“ The Manchus had gained the mastery over China owing rather to China's internal situation than to their military superiority. How was it that the dynasty could endure for so long, although the Manchus were not numerous, although the first Manchu ruler (Fu Lin, known under the rule name Shun-chih; 1644-1662) was a psychopathic youth, although there were princes of the Ming dynasty ruling in South China, and although there were strong groups of rebels all over the country? The Manchus were aliens; at that time the national feeling of the Chinese had already been awakened; aliens were despised. ”

“ In the middle of the sixteenth century there was no Manchu Empire, and the Manchus themselves were wild, uncultured barbarians without any written language, living in caves which they hollowed in the earth, and engaged in constant warfare with other tribes living like themselves in the northern part of that country which we call Manchuria, the central and southern part being inhabited by the Chinese. In the year 1559 Noorhachu was born, with the prospect of becoming ruler over six little hamlets ”

“ The Manchus have never mingled with the Chinese. All the large cities, even to distant Canton and Yunnan, 1,200 and 1,400 miles away from the center of power, have separate walled Manchu cities, or Tartar cities as they are generally called, which were taken from the original Chinese. In an effort to appease the complaints of insurgents, the Regent Prince Chun in 1909 recalled the edict which until that late year prohibited Manchus from marrying Chinese. ”

“ Nurhachu, the real founder of the Manchu power, was born in 1559, from a virile stock, and was soon recognised to be an extraordinary child. We need not linger over his dragon face, his phoenix eye, or even over his large, drooping ears, which have always been associated by the Chinese with intellectual ability. ”

“ It is a cumbrous monetary system, but well in keeping with all that is Chinese.
We are in the midst of a moving scene of life. Here the descendant of the Tartar soldiery carrying a cage of performing birds, or a stick with a chaffinch tied to it. It is the thing perhaps that he values most of all his possessions, and you will often see the Manchu kneeling on the grass, collecting grasshoppers on which to feed his favourite. Very cruel to them also they often are, sewing up their eyes so that they cannot see to escape. ”