Shensi

“ A command was issued in Tungche's name to the effect that all those who persisted in following the creed of Islam should perish by the sword. From Shensi the outbreak spread into the adjoining province of Kansuh; and the local garrisons were vanquished in a pitched battle at Tara Ussu, beyond the regular frontier. The insurgents did not succeed, however, in taking any of the larger towns of Shensi, and after threatening with capture the once famous city of Singan, they were gradually expelled from that province. ”

“ The raids of the Hsiung-nu from the Ordos region and from northern Shansi had shown themselves to be a direct menace to the capital and to its extremely important hinterland. Northern Shansi is mountainous, with deep ravines. A considerable army on horseback could penetrate some distance to the south before attracting attention. Northern Shensi and the Ordos region are steppe country, in which there were very few Chinese settlements and through which an army of horsemen could advance very quickly. ”

“ London University. Arrived in China, 1884, at time of Franco-Chinese War; has spent six years in Sianfu, Shensi, and was there during Boxer trouble, and was frequently in danger from excited mobs; left Sianfu under escort provided by H.E. Tuan Fang about a month after Taiyuanfu Massacres, of which sent first telegraphic news to coast; with exception of furlough and period spent in Shensi has lived throughout in Shansi; engaged in evangelical, educational and translating work. Publication: Translations into Chinese of books on science, etc; articles in "North China Daily News." ”

“ But remembering that both these Princes are our near kinsmen, we mitigate their sentence to exile to Turkestan, where they will be kept in perpetual confinement. The Governor of Shensi, Yü Hsien, already cashiered, believed in the Boxers at the time when he held the Governorship of Shantung; when he subsequently came to Peking, he sang their praises at our Court, with the result that many Princes and Ministers were led astray by his words. As Governor of Shansi he had put to death many missionaries and native converts, proving himself to be an utterly misguided and bloodthirsty man. ”

“ The horse has always been a "luxury", a valuable animal which needed special care. For their economic needs, these tribes depended on other animals, probably sheep, goats, and cattle. The centre of this culture, so far as can be ascertained from Chinese sources, were the present provinces of Shensi and Kansu, but mainly only the plains. The people of this culture were most probably ancestors of the later Turkish peoples. It is not suggested, of course, that the original home of the Turks lay in the region of the Chinese provinces of Shensi and Kansu ”

“ A robber band alone is a heavy load for a community to carry, and a robber band pursued by soldiers more than doubles the burden.
Still the soldiers held Tungkwan, the gate into Shensi, the mountains on either side blocked the way, and Hsi An Fu breathed for a moment till it was discovered that Pai Lang in strategy was equal to anyone who had been sent against him. ”

“ Surely, you men of Shensi, enlightened and high-principled, will not fall so low as this. There are, I know, among you some evil men who, professing patriotic enmity to foreigners and Christians wax fat on foreign plunder. But the few missionary chapels in this province offer but meagre booty and it is safe to predict that those who begin by sacking them will certainly proceed next to loot the houses of your wealthier citizens, from the burning of foreigners' homes the conflagration will spread to your own, and many innocent persons will share the fate of the slaughtered Christians. ”

“ The plunderers will escape with their booty, and the foolish onlookers will pay the penalty of these crimes. Is it not a well-known fact that every anti-Christian outbreak invariably brings misery to the stupid innocent people of the district concerned? Is not this a lamentable thing? As for me, I care neither for praise nor blame; my only object for preaching peace in Shensi is to save you, my people, from dire ruin and destruction."
Tuan fang was a member of the Mission to Foreign Countries in 1905, and has received decorations and honours at the hands of several European sovereigns. ”

“ Shammi Shah Shaíthing was one of the founders of the Shín rule. His wife, although she sees her husband surrounded by women anxious to gain his good graces, rests secure in the knowledge of his affections belonging to her and of her being the mother of his children. She, therefore, ridicules the pretensions of her rivals, who, she fancies, will, at the utmost, only have a temporary success. ”

“ Why shouldst thou fear, lady? I have ridden with my lord in the battle and felt no fear. But look! a thousand thanks and blessings be upon thee! Yes, they go, Raheem Khan and all the spearmen. Dost thou not see them, Zyna?"
"Yes, to bring my father and Fazil," cried Zyna, in her turn clapping her hands exultingly. "Yes, they will repay thee, O my queen—my mother; they will repay thee with their lives."
"Nay, no tears now, girl," said Fyz-ool-Nissa gaily. "Look out over the cavaliers yonder, and wait patiently. Inshalla! your people will return speedily." ”

“ Daigoro Goh, a former secretary of the Japan Society, says:—‘Shinto or ancestor-worship being the creed of the ancient inhabitants.’ The same9 view is held by some European scholars, notably the late Lafcadio Hearn, whose interesting and valuable work, Japan, an Interpretation, is greatly marred by this misconception. It is quite true that there is a large element of ancestor worship in modern Japanese religious practices, but a very little examination shows that all the great deities of the older Shinto are not Man, but Nature gods. ”

“ Too, there were stones in the bowl—blue lapis lazuli, and green jade, and yellow topaz (precious stones, as befitted a palace garden) , for that is the way sacred lilies are grown—in bowls filled with water and pretty pebbles. ‘You are quite welcome to it,' reiterated the King. The Shen shook their heads half in despair. ‘It is too little,' groaned they, ‘far too little.' ‘But,' said Chieh Chung, ‘you are demons—hence magicians. Why do you not make yourselves smaller? Why not change yourselves into red hung pao shih and recline in the bowl amid the lily roots? ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We must now see what the Japanese conceive this soul to be. Now Shintō philosophy is not the faith's strong point. The Japanese are artists, not scientists. And in their revelations their gods show the same simple and attractive character. If, therefore, the Shintō scheme of things seem at times incompatible with itself, the gods themselves are responsible, not I, errors and omissions on my part excepted. For I have it all from one whose authority is nothing short of the god's own words, vouchsafed to him in trance, my friend the high priest of the Shinshiu sect. ”

“ THE SUBSERVIENCE OF SHINTO That the disciples of the Shinto cult so readily endorsed a doctrine which relegated their creed to a subordinate place has suggested various explanations, but the simplest is the most convincing, namely, that Shinto possessed no intrinsic power to assert itself in the presence of a religion like Buddhism. At no period has Shinto produced a great propagandist. No Japanese sovereign ever thought of exchanging the tumultuous life of the Throne for the quiet of a Shinto shrine, nor did Shinto ever become a vehicle for the transmission of useful knowledge. ”

“ They did not dash over the walls, calling on their sea to follow, and so drown all the people of Kua Hai. Demons though they be, the Shen that time had mercy in their hearts. While the night dew lay upon the fields of Wa Tien, those demons, to the number of seven, made their way into Kua Hai. There they waited in the garden of the palace.
"When King Chieh Chung, who ruled over Wa Tien, took him to the garden for an early morning stroll, he discovered the demons waiting. He knew at once they were no ordinary men. Not once did they kou tou (knock their heads on the ground) as men should do. ”

“ For Shansi is worth raiding. There is oil and there is wheat in abundance. There is money too, much of which comes from Mongolia and Manchuria. The bankers (the Shansi men are called the Jews of China) wander across and trade far into Russian territory while still their home is in agricultural Shansi, and certain it is that any disturbances in these countries, even in Russia, affect the prosperity of Shansi. I wonder if the Russian Revolution has been felt there. ”

“ The land of the Zinji lies opposite to that of Sind; between the two intervenes the breadth of the Sea of Persia. The inhabitants are the blackest of the negro race. They worship idols, are brave, hardy and fight in battle riding on oxen, as their country supplies neither horses, mules, nor camels. Massoudi [2] says, 'I have seen their oxen kneel like camels, to be laden, and they travel as fast with their burthens.' Their habitations extend from the extremity of the gulph, (supposed Gardafui) to the low land of gold (Sofala 't il Dhab.) ”

“ Motoöri thought that moral codes were good for Chinese, whose inferior natures required such artificial means of restraint. His pupil Hirata denounced systems of morality as a disgrace to the country which produced them. In 'Japan,' a recent work published in English by Japanese authors, we are told that "Shinto provides no moral code, and relies solely on the promptings of conscience for ethical guidance. If man derives the first principles of his duties from intuition, a schedule of rules and regulations for the direction of every-day conduct becomes not only superfluous but illogical." ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Shinto deities figured as avatars of Buddha in the cult of Ryobu-Shinto. Even the Mikados came under the spell of Buddhism.
In the eighteenth century began the movement known as the “Revival of Pure Shinto”. It was promoted chiefly by Motöori and his disciple Hirata. In time it did much to bring about the revolution which restored to supreme political power, as the hereditary high priest and living representative of the sun-goddess, the Mikado of Japan. Shinto is the official religion of modern Japan; but Buddhism, impregnated with Shinto elements, is the religion of the masses. ”

“ In all I was received with the same courtesy, but a few of the people asked Shinondi not to take me into their houses, as they did not want me to see how poor they are. In every house there was the low shelf with more or fewer curios upon it, but, besides these, none but the barest necessaries of life, though the skins which they sell or barter every year would enable them to surround themselves with comforts, were it not that their gains represent to them sake, and nothing else. They are not nomads. ”

“ Shinto is now only a cult, but it embodies the principle on which the moral teaching of the Japanese substantially is based, and it still has for its chief function the performance of rites in memory of the imperial ancestors. Shintoism has neither creed nor dogma,—it inculcates patriotism and loyalty. It enjoins upon all the virtue of courage, the cultivation of the strictest sense of honour, and the universal practice of courtesy and consideration. ”

“ The Shinto Do-itsu, a modern Shinto manual, frankly adopts the Chinese views of the soul. A manual of this sect has the following: "The kom-paku are in China the animal and rational souls. When a man dies, his kon goes up to Heaven and his haku returns to Earth. Man at birth derives his breath (or life) from Heaven and Earth. Therefore when he dies it returns to Heaven and Earth. The kon is the yang or male, positive spirit; the haku is the yin or female, negative spirit (tama) . In everything there is [Pg 53] the yin and the yang heart. ”

“ When he used not to speak, neither did they speak, and there was nothing to be heard from them but the long heavy breathing and the tapping of the little hammers and the drawing and the tightening of the waxed thread. You would think if you saw them that they were working for a wager. When people used to pass by the house they used to stop and listen to the sounds of the work. And then, when they went on their way they used to say to each other, "It's little wonder Shiana has money! We never saw workmen working so hard. ”