Southern China

“ Successive conflagrations have co-operated with the march of sanitary reform and the advance in their worldly circumstances in so improving the dwellings of the population, that their housing now compares not unfavourably with that of the native cities of India. The Southern Chinese are naturally cleanly, and appreciative of good order 280 when it is judiciously introduced among them, even from a foreign source. ”

“ Expansion of Races from North to South The theory of a southern origin (to which a further serious objection will be stated presently) implies a gradual infiltration of Chinese immigrants through South or Mid-China (as above indicated) toward the north, but there is little doubt that the movement of the races has been from north to south and not vice versa. In what are now the provinces of Western Kansu and Ssŭch’uan there lived a people related to the Chinese (as proved by the study of Indo-Chinese comparative philology) who moved into the present territory of Tibet and are known as Tibetans ”

“ CHINA, a country of eastern Asia, the principal division of the Chinese empire. In addition to China proper the Chinese Empire includes Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet and Sin-kiang (East Turkestan, Kulja, Dzungaria, &c., i.e. all the Chinese dependencies lying between Mongolia on the north and Tibet on the south) . Its most southern point is in 18° 50′ N.; its most northern in 53° 25′ N.; its most western in 74° E., and its most eastern in 135° E. It lies, however, mainly between 20° and 50° N. and 80° and 130° E. It is considerably larger than the whole of Europe. ”

“ This great, featureless, windswept plateau keeps but a scanty population of less than three millions. [253] On the northern and southern borders a few among the people have adopted the settled ways of the Chinese; but elsewhere they live as their fathers lived before them, their fields the land where the flocks are grazing, their home the spot where the yurts are temporarily set up. Nomads they are, but within definite limits, moving no long distance nor very often. Over them rule their native princes or khans, subject, up to last year, nominally to China ”

“ China had now been split up into three separate empires, but was reunited towards the close of the third century : the founder of this new unifying Tsin dynasty ordered quarterly suovetaurilia, both at the imperial capital and at the village. In the fifth century China was again divided into northern and southern empires. Though the northerners were Tartars of nomadic origin, they it was who first erected a Confucian temple in their capital, which was near the Tenduc of Marco Polo's time ; and they also conferred a new title upon the philosopher. ”

“ At this time there is still no trace of a Chinese realm; we find instead on Chinese soil a considerable number of separate local cultures, each developing on its own lines. The chief of these cultures, acquaintance with which is essential to a knowledge of the whole later development of the Far East, are as follows:
(a) The north-east culture, centred in the present provinces of Hopei (in which Peking lies) , Shantung, and southern Manchuria. The people of this culture were ancestors of the Tunguses, probably mixed with an element that is contained in the present-day Paleo-Siberian tribes. ”

“ What may be called the old, but by no means the obsolete school, regards the Chinese populations as the direct descendants of the aborigines who during the Stone Ages entered the Hoang-ho valley probably from the Tibetan plateau, there developed their peculiar culture independently of foreign influences, and thence spread gradually southwards to the whole of China proper, extirpating, absorbing, or driving to the encircling western and southern uplands the ruder aborigines of the Yang-tse-Kiang and Si-Kiang basins. ”

“ The Chinese Sub-region.—The Chinese Sub-region includes the whole of China from its southern frontier up to and including the basin of the Blue or Yang-tse River, together with the coast district, including Corea, perhaps as far north as Vladivostok, and the outlying islands of Hainan, Formosa, the Loo-Choo and Bonin groups, and Japan to the north of Niphon. ”

“ In the south there were only peoples in a very low state of civilization, who could offer no serious menace to the Chinese. The trading colonies that gradually extended to Canton and still farther south served as Chinese administrative centres for provinces and prefectures, with small but adequate armies of their own, so that in case of need they could defend themselves. In the north the position was much more difficult. In addition to their conquest within China, the rulers of Ch'in had pushed their frontier far to the north. ”

“ Nor is this all; immense tracts in the north and west of the province have lain waste since the Mohammedan rebellion, and owing to the antipathy of the Chinese to settle on lands which they look upon as the property of people who may still be living, or whose descendants may still be living, it must be many years before the [206] agriculture of the province is properly developed. It will be said that I take a gloomy view of the south-western corner of China ”

“ Economically, our present period witnessed an adjustment in South China between the Chinese way of life, which had penetrated from the north, and that of the natives of the south. Large groups of Chinese had to turn over from wheat culture in dry fields to rice culture in wet fields, and from field culture to market gardening. In North China the conflict went on between Chinese agriculture and the cattle breeding of Central Asia. ”

“ In 436 the armies of Yiieh marching north through Ho Nan called the Chinese places lying to their west the "left" towns; but that was perhaps because Yiieh came marching from the south. In 221 B.C., when for the first time South China to the sea became part of the imperial dominions, the Emperor's territory was described as extending southward to the "north-facing houses." Hong Kong and Canton are just on the tropical line; but the island of Hainan, and also Tonquin, are actually in the tropics. ”

“ It was learned from these men that China is a very important country and that its people are highly civilized, engage extensively in trade, and have a well-ordered government. They tell of thirteen cities called Chincheo, Cantun, Huechiu, Nimpou, Onchiu, Hinan, Sisuan, Conce, Onan, Nanquin, and Paquin. ”

“ Fancy a country of four million square miles, with a population of as many millions as there are days in the year, with but one single railway of a few miles! Yet such is the case; China is still in the shadow of the dark ages.
The morning mists gather into a thin vapour and roll upwards, showing miles of fields, cultivated like kitchen gardens, interspersed with mud villages, where the houses are made of wattles plastered over with the earth they stand on, with chimneys formed of a cone of mud, and paper windows. ”

“ Consider that the eighteen provinces alone, with an area about equal to that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, have eight times the population of that part of our country.
``There are twice as many people in China as on the four continents— Africa, North and South America and Oceanica. Every third person who toils under the sun and sleeps under God's stars is a Chinese. Every third child born into the world looks into the face of a Chinese mother. Every third pair given in marriage plight their troth in a Chinese cup of wine. ”

“ The most interesting part of China, from a geographical and ethnological point of view, is the West—geographically, because its recesses have not yet been thoroughly explored, and ethnologically, because a great part of it is peopled by races which are non-Chinese, and one at least of which, though nominally owing allegiance to the Great Khan, is in reality independent. ”

“ The plain between these hills and the town is very beautiful. It is thickly studded with farmsteads, knolls of trees, and tombs, which are always the prettiest spots in China, for as a balance against the dirt and squalor in which they pass their lives, the Chinese choose the most romantic and delightful places for their final habitations. The soil is wonderfully fertile, and yields two crops in the year, so that [88] usually the plain bears every appearance of prosperity ”

“ The history of China is so closely connected with that of the nomad tribes that one cannot be given [Pg 229] without the other, and before telling the story of the Mongols a brief outline of the history of these tribes is desirable. China is on three sides abundantly defended from invasion, by the ocean on the east, and by mountains and desert on the south and west. Its only vulnerable quarter is in the north, where it joins on to the vast region of the steppes, a country whose scarcity of rain unfits it for agriculture, but which has sufficient herbage for the pasturage of immense herds. ”

“ Yes, Shanghai on a spring afternoon is a most interesting place; and yet as you turn your eyes to the river and catch sight of the dark grey warship, you realise that beneath all this peace and busy commerce lies the fear of the grim realities of war. China may assimilate the adjuncts of Western life, but she will never welcome the Western. The racial gulf that divides them is far too deep. ”

“ Yet the Chinese have long had a civilization identical in many of its constituents with our own: civil government, rimed poetry, painting, trousers, wheat and barley, our common domestic animals, bronze and iron, for instance. Since most of these culture elements are wanting in Africa and Oceania, as well as in native America, there is no inherent reason why they should be expectable in China. ”

“ Across the Yellow River, whose course northwards, as already stated, lay considerably to the west of the present channel, was the extensive state of Tsin; and south was the highly ritual and literary Weimar of China, the unwarlike principality of Lu, destined in future times to be glorified by Confucius.
Scarcely anything is recorded of a nature to throw specific light upon the international development of these far-eastern parts. ”

“ China, with her teeming millions, is separated from western Asia by the whole bulk of the broadest and least hospitable portion of the system of lofty plateaux with peripheral ranges. The echelon of chains, which seam the continent in a north-easterly direction, are the nurseries of the hardiest tribes. The valleys which space these ranges are the arteries of human movement, and they lead from west to east, from east to west. ”

“ Western China consists of highlands often sparsely, and eastern China of lowlands densely peopled. Western China contains the only provinces where the population is under 100 per sq. m. From the Tibetan and Mongolian tablelands project mountain ranges which, ramifying over the western region, enclose elevated level tracts and lower basins and valleys. ”

“ The Chinese also know perfectly well how to appreciate European administration, and three hundred thousand Chinese live upon the French, English, and American concessions at Shanghai, two hundred thousand at Hong-Kong, which was 232only inhabited by a few fishermen before the English occupation, and all the large towns belonging to the European colonies in the vicinity of China—Vladivostok, Manila, Saigon, Singapore, Batavia—are practically Chinese towns. ”

“ In the north and east the realm was also protected by difficult mountain country. The south lay relatively open, but at that time there were few Chinese living there, but only natives with a relatively low civilization. The kingdom could only be seriously attacked from two corners—through the north-west, where there was a negotiable plateau, between the Ch'in-ling mountains in the north and the Tibetan mountains in the west, a plateau inhabited by fairly highly developed Tibetan tribes; and secondly through the south-east corner, where it would be possible to penetrate up the Yangtze. ”

“ When that time arrives, the Chinese will find the elements of all they are in search of at the foreign settlements in Shanghai, where the schools, the splendid commerce, the merchant palaces, the fleets of steamers, the local foreign government, the opulence of the inhabitants, and the condition of the streets and dwellings, offer an instructive contrast to the condition of the Chinese walled city which lies to the south of the foreign settlements. The labour of centuries has brought this city to its present state, and the result is little to the credit of the authorities who rule there. ”

“ While conditions of a settled existence were in course of attainment within the region which is now known as China Proper, the spectacle of a prosperous civilisation, reacting upon the uncouth instincts of tribes dwelling among the grassy uplands of Mongolia and the plains of Manchuria or amid the ice-clad fastnesses of the mountains and forest-strewn valleys of the farthest north, was presently to be responsible for the rise of predatory races, who, in the zenith of their strength, regarded the teeming cities of the south as lawful prizes. ”

“ The foreign concession is surrounded by streams and ditch from the rest, and is virtually an island isolated. The river bounds one side, and brooks the others; one crossed bridges and ditches, and finds change and decay! There is an Anglo-Chinese settlement, but all the foreign side is clean, well lighted by lamps and electricity, with fine houses, warehouses, and public buildings. Shanghai is no longer China in the settlements.
In the American settlement my friend Eagan, whom I suspected was an American bred, had indicated the hotel on the Broadway. ”