Shantou

“ Page 30 CHAPTER VI PROVINCE OF SHANTUNG
Kiao-Chao—Visit to Confucius's Tomb—Expedition to the Jews of K'ai-fung-fu—The Grand Canal—Chefoo
In Shantung the people appear to be much more robust than their neighbours to the south. Wheat and millet rather than rice are their staple food. In their orchards apples, pears and peaches take the place of oranges.
At Kiao-chao (Kiau-Chau) the Germans, who occupied that port in 1897, have built a beautiful town opposite the Island of Tsingtao, presenting a fine model for imitation, which, however, the Chinese are not in haste to copy. ”

“ Then followed speculations on the parentage of Tamar, and old Shanty asserted that he believed her to be nothing more or less than the daughter of the gipsy hag who had laid her at his door. Some said she was much to good to be the child of a gipsy; and then Shanty asserted, that the grace of God could counteract not only the nature of a child of a vagrant of the worst description, but even that of such vagrant himself; the Spirit of God being quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword. ”

“ Dymock's tower was the nearest, and the sun was already so low that the old keep with its many mouldering walls, and out-buildings, was seen from the shed, standing in high relief against the golden sky. As the young man entered, looking boldly about him, Shanty asked him what he wanted.
"I want a horse-shoe," he replied.
"A horse-shoe!" returned the blacksmith, "and where's your horse?"
"I has no other horse than Adam's mare," he replied; "I rides no other, but I want a horse-shoe."
"You are a pretty fellow," returned Shanty "to want a horse-shoe, and to have never a horse to wear him." ”

“ It was a great day for the college, and a great occasion for the village people; but most demoralizing to language study. The gold-embroidered, scarlet banners were so many and so immense that since that one day in the church no place has been found sufficiently large to hang them.”
In the general section of China where he lived he made many journeys. Over that part of Shantung situated to the east of the Yellow River he traveled often, and far and wide. Several times he visited Peking. Once, as we have seen, he went down the Grand Canal, to Nanking, and the lower Yangtse. ”

“ For the spirit of the dead is sometimes benevolent, and even small urchins would scarcely expect charity in return for knowingly uncomplimentary titles. But there is no doubt what the people of Shantung mean by their popular expression for the Japanese, “hsiao gwei,” or “little devil.” Nor need one inquire often or listen hard to get hints of why there is much actual hatred of the efficient islanders, quite aside from the theoretical dislike built up by rumor and propaganda. When the Japanese held it one could not buy tickets on the Shantung Railway with Chinese money ”

“ The part assigned to woman, however, and the value attached to female virtue distinguish Shintō from other Oriental cults or creeds, especially from the patriarchal system of the Chinese, with which it is often confounded. In China a girl child being disqualified to conduct ancestral worship, her birth is counted a misfortune and the preservation of her life a burden. In Shintō the principal objects of national adoration, the deities worshipped at the grand shrines of Ise, are the Sun Goddess and the Goddess of Food. ”

“ The thing that makes Shantung attractive to the Japanese, of course, is not the spiritual wealth, as the world well knows. Perhaps the Japanese have never considered the latter any more than the Germans did; but the one thing that makes it most sacred to the Chinese, who are, after all, a race of idealists, is its treasuries of spiritual memories and shrines. ”

“ They never failed to pick up strong children everytime they got a chance. They educated and trained them in the use of arms, and thus added to the strength of their own community.
It was with one such community of sanyasis, that Shanti found herself. Noticing the slender body of Shanti, they at first hesitated to accept her; but when they came to know her qualities, the high culture of her mind and her ability for work, they accepted her into the order. In this community Shanti learned gymnastics and the use of arms, and soon became strong and hardy. ”

“ Far away in the southwest are the high mountains of Chinese Shantung. The old city, though within sight of Port Edward, is not like the surrounding territory under British control. Let us pay it a short visit to see what a Chinese provincial town is like. We 49 can go in by the eastern gate and look along the street and visit the temple of Confucius, the great Chinese 50 teacher and philosopher, who was a native of the Shantung province. Much of the space within the walls is not built on ”

“ That's very simple, Shanti, very simple!'
'I happen to know the nature of the atonement for such sins!' she retorted, smiling. 'But I wonder if the punishment for a single offence is the same as for a hundred such offences?'
'Why do you ask such a question?' Jiban inquired in sorrow and in surprise.
'I have only one request to make. Please do not make atonement for this breach of vow before you meet me again.'
'You may rest assured of that, Shanti. I am not going to die before seeing you again; that is certain. There is no hurry for death anyway. I must not stay here any longer. ”

“ In casting about for a location for the Anglo-Chinese college, the choice narrowed down so that it lay between Canton, Nanking, Shanghai, and Tientsin. Chefoo was mentioned, but not seriously considered, yet even the possibility of location there, although remote, was so important a matter to the Shantung College that it compelled the men at the head of that institution to be on the alert so long as the question was undetermined. ”

“ Shanti opened her eyes to see a holy sage of majestic stature standing in the moonlight before her. She stood up reverently. The sage spoke: 'Mother, please do not cry. I shall find the body of Jiban for you. Please come with me.'
The sage led her to the centre of the battlefield. Countless corpses lay there in heaps. The holy man cleared a mound of corpses to unearth a human body. Shanti instantly knew who it was. It was Jiban. Numberless wounds covered his body, which was soaked in blood. Shanti began to cry aloud like any other woman. ”

“ This movement, known as the ‘Revival of Pure Shinto,’ was first revealed to Europeans by a paper contributed by Sir E. Satow to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan in 1875. The principal promoters were Motoöri and his pupil Hirata, two earnest, able, and stupendously learned writers who devoted their lives to an endeavour by oral teaching and in a series of voluminous works to the dethronement of the established Chinese ethics and philosophy in favour of a Shinto purified from Buddhist and other foreign adulterations of later times. ”

“ The chalk-ranges to the southward provide magnificent scenery, and two miles from Sandown, but on higher ground, is Shanklin, from which its celebrated chine descends to the sea. This little ravine is about four hundred and fifty yards long and at its mouth about two hundred feet deep. It has been gradually worn in the brown sandstone rock by the action of a diminutive brook that bubbles over a little cascade at the upper end. The rich colors of the crags, the luxuriant foliage of the slopes, and the rhapsodies of guide books combine to give the Shanklin Chine a world-wide fame. ”

“ Shanty looked hard at his patron, as trying to understand what he meant by oriental and Grecian; and then repeated his question, "Gipsy or Jew, Mr. Dymock? for I am sure the little creature is not of our northern breed."
"We shall see by and bye," said Dymock, "the question is, what is to be done now? I am afraid that aunt Margaret will look prim and stately if I carry the little one up to the Tower; however, I see not what else to do. Who is afraid? But put your fire out, Shanty, and come with us. ”

“ Neither Dymock nor the young man paid her any regard, or seemed to see her, but Shanty made her welcome, and pointing to a bench which was within the glow of the fire of the forge, though out of harm's way of sparks or strokes, the woman came in, and having with the expertness of long use, slung the child from her back into her arms, she sate down, laying the little one across her knee, whilst the eldest of the two children dropped on the bare earth with which the shed was floored, and began nibbling a huge crust which the mother put into his hand. ”

“ Copyright, 1916
By Ellen Coit Elliott
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
PRESS
I
THE DREAM
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
⁠A stately pleasure-dome decree;
It vanished or ever it began:
A singer glimpsed it in a vision
And then the miracle of rare device,
The sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice,
The greenery enfolded spots, the fields elysian,
Sank to a sunless sea.
The sighs of mourners breathe across the courts
⁠And faint along the aisles of Xanadu;
The lost, the lost is found, the vision lives again,
⁠But, sweet and fleeting, vanishes anew. ”

“ Stanchon turned abruptly and plunged into the great, dim leather-hung apartment. He always felt as if he were entering into some vast cave under the sea, when he crossed the threshold of this room, and the peculiar odour of the leather always caught at his breath and choked him for a moment. Edmund looked sulkier and more futile than usual, even, and the cigarette that dropped from his trimmed and polished hand had a positively insolent angle. ”

“ I think that I never before quite realized just what the loss of Shantung meant to these Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day, [171] when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan, which is also in Shantung.
"It is the oldest worshiping-place in the world," said the historian of the party. "There is no other spot on earth where continuous worship has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty centuries before Christ was born men and women were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest history of China down to the present time have all visited this mountain to worship. ”

“ Yet although this is our opinion, it is but fair, and it is our duty, to judge every religion by its ideals and not by its failings. The ideal of Shintō is to make people pure and clean in all their personal and household arrangements; it is to help them to live simply, honestly and with mutual good will; it is to make the Japanese love their country, honor their imperial house and obey their emperor. Narrow and local as this religion is, it has had grand exemplars in noble lives and winning characters. ”

“ For a while Shanti could not utter a word. She thought intently, and said: 'Shame on you! You are a hero! The greatest happiness in my life is that I am the wife of a hero. And you want to renounce the path of heroism just for the sake of a wife? Do not love me so. I am willing to deprive myself even of that happiness, but never forsake your path of duty. Now tell me, what is the price for this violation of your vow?'
Atonement — oh, that is very simple. It is by fasting a little ”

“ I remembered Shan-Yu’s present, given to me when he died. His very words came back to me: The Garden of Happiness in the Valley of the Thousand Temples, [45] with its promise of love, of seven years of happiness, and the prophecy that I should follow his body towards the Sunrise and meet my destiny.
“This memory I took home with me into my lonely little one-storey house upon the hill. My servants did not sleep there. There was no one near. ”

“ I thought all the Chinese and Japanese were followers of Confucius," said Jean.
"Shinto is the legalized religion," the colonel told her. "It is ancestor worship, to describe it briefly, but you will find that the doctrines of Confucius are accepted as philosophies rather than as religious dogmas. Shintoism means 'the way of the gods.' To quote one writer, 'it is a mixture of nature worship and the worship of ancestors.' It has its own mythological gods, heroes and traditions. The god, Izanagi, and the goddess, Isanami, are supposed to be the parents of the Japanese Islands. ”

“ Nimi understood Shanti's mood.
'Isn't it nice, Shanti, that you met my brother?' Nimi asked. Shanti said nothing. Nimi felt that her sister was not in a mood to give expression to her thoughts. She knew too that Shanti was never fond of speaking out her inner thoughts. So she changed the topic of conversation by asking: 'Look here, sister, how do you like my child?'
'Where did you get the child, sister?' Shanti asked. 'When did you give birth to a baby?'
'Good gracious! You should be ashamed of your ignorance. The child is not mine. ”

“ But the Shantak flew on past the fires and the stone huts and the less than human dancers, and soared over sterile hills of grey granite and dim wastes of rock and ice and snow. Day came, and the phosphorescence of low clouds gave place to the misty twilight of that northern world, and still the vile bird winged meaningly through the cold and silence. At times the slant-eyed man talked with his steed in a hateful and guttural language, and the Shantak would answer with tittering tones that rasped like the scratching of ground glass. ”

“ In skeleton the modern procedure is all there. In these old Shintō biblical narratives you see the same features that you mark in the Ryōbu-Shintō trances now. The conservatism is quite far-orientally complete, which is another proof, not only that the thing is Shintō, but that the Buddhists brought with them from China nothing akin to it. For we may be sure the gods would not have been behind their people in the great national trick of imitation, and had there been any foreigners to copy they would assuredly have copied them, and not have stayed starchedly Shintō to the present day. ”