Xiamen

“ If the Chinese who never have left the land of their birth, the centuried home of their race, love China as no other country is loved, the Chinese who have left her, lost her a little in exile, as exiles must, and have found her again, washing their homesick eyes in her beauty and joy, laving their souls in her soul, must love China even more. Comparison is the acid test. China stands it.
And so Sên King-lo loved China now. ”

“ Although Sir Aurel liked the Chinese so well, he said that he was glad to return to Turkestan, where the inhabitants are most hospitable and always ready to place houses and gardens at the disposal of strangers. In fact they are so open-handed that they offer food to any one who comes to the house at any hour; the well-to-do apparently eating at short intervals all day long. But in China, with its old civilization, the custom is very different, the people allowing no one to enter their doors unless he be armed with introductions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet, in days still more remote, a peaceful conquest of Japan had been effected by the swarming hive of human beings located in the great plain which forms the heart of China. The Chinese dwelling in that rich valley of the Yangstye-keang appear from the earliest ages to have been the prey of their neighbours, or else to have been constantly over-run by fresh inroads from those wide plains of Mongolia whence they derived their origin. ”

“ But I hope to deal more fully elsewhere with the psychological side of China. At present I only want to give a hasty sketch of its capital.
One can scarcely imagine a more systematically laid out city than Pekin. The throne is in the centre; thence radiates every street, thither leads every road. It is the focus of the city, the heart of the empire, but—forbidden ground. The man who sets foot therein forfeits his life, so sacred and inviolable is it. Within the second wall the Imperial Family and the Court reside, precious stones set in gold, as the bards say. ”

“ The religious not only of this province, but of España and Nueva España, have had their hearts [87] set upon the conversion of the kingdom of China, the population of which is of incredible vastness, and the people there exhibit very acute intelligence and have an excellent civilization and government. They even establish their authority in all the neighboring kingdoms: Corea, Siam, Camboja, Cochinchina, and others; and they communicate their system to these as far as possible. Their character and their moral doctrines also fit them for the gospel. ”

“ Hunting and pastoral peoples adopted the agricultural mode of life, and with it the elements of a complex civilization which had its origin in those areas where grew wild the cereals first cultivated by man.
The Chinese are a mixed race. In the north the oblique-eyed, yellow-skinned element predominates. Like the Semites, who overran Sumeria and adopted Sumerian modes of thought and life, so did the Mongoloid tribes overrun northern China and became a sedentary people. Petty kingdoms grew up, and in time found it necessary to unite against the hordes who invaded and plundered their lands. ”

“ Our own antiquities sink into insignificance in comparison. As early as the reign of Edward the First, fire-arms were invented in China. The art of printing was discovered there in the reign of our Saxon king Athelstan. Paper was first made about A.D. 150; and gunpowder about the commencement of the Christian era. While the inhabitants of our now highly-favoured island were wandering about, painted savages, the Chinese were a settled people, living under the same form of constitutional government as they at present possess. ”

“ The different countries of our Continent are inhabited by peoples who are only remotely related to each other, and who are merely united by the ties of a common civilization, whereas amongst the subjects of the Son of Heaven the ties are much stronger and the physical resemblance is more marked. I am, of course, speaking of the inhabitants of China proper only—of the eighteen provinces, to which might be added a nineteenth, Ching-king, or Southern Manchuria, now in process of colonization by the Chinese. ”

“ Japan, who may be said to have borrowed the civilization of China, lock, stock and barrel—her literature, her moral code, her arts, her sciences, her manners and customs, her ceremonial, and even her national dress—invented the folding fan, which in the early part of the fifteenth century formed part of the tribute sent from Korea to Peking, and even later was looked upon by the Chinese as quite a curiosity. ”

“ People generally disregard everything connected with China, considering the policy towards that empire, and its affairs, of but small moment to themselves or state. Unless engaged in the China trade, in a selfish and narrow-minded point of view it may be so; but if we reflect upon the immensity [281] of the Chinese empire, its direct population of one-third of the human race, and its indirect brotherhood with about one-half (including Malays, Tartars, Eluths, Mongolians, Thibetians, Cochin-Chinese, Anamese, &c.) ”

“ The annals of China illustrate the state and revolutions of the pastoral tribes, which may still be distinguished by the vague appellation of Scythians, or Tartars; the vassals, the enemies, and sometimes the conquerors, of a great empire; whose policy has uniformly opposed the blind and impetuous valor of the Barbarians of the North. From the mouth of the Danube to the Sea of Japan, the whole longitude of Scythia is about one hundred and ten degrees, which, in that parallel, are equal to more than five thousand miles. ”

“ Small at first and surrounded by savages, the baby kingdom soon began to grow. Like the tiny tent of the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, which unfolded until an army could rest beneath the roof, China spread until, a thousand years before the time of Our Lord, its borders on the north and west were pretty much what they are to-day, and it had crept southwards many miles beyond the Yellow River. ”

“ From the time that our first trading vessels touched the coasts of China, closely followed by men-of-war, the Chinese have been on the losing side, both economically and politically. One great Power after another came upon the scene of action, and seized and occupied provinces, many of them larger than their own European [362] dominions. When a Chinese schoolboy of today studies the map of his country, and considers how much smaller it has become in the course of the last hundred years, how can it fail to make him sad? ”

“ Neither Aryan India nor Turanian China belongs to the antiquity which we have defined, and as for Indo-China and Japan they are but annexes to those two great nations; religion, written characters, the industrial and plastic arts—all came to them from one or the other of those two great centres of civilization.
So far as China is concerned no doubt or hesitation is possible. Down almost to our own days China and its satellites had no dealings with the western group of nations. It is a human family which has lived in voluntary isolation from the rest of its species. ”

“ Was the will of the ruler to prevail and North China to become a country of pasturage, or was the country to keep to the agrarian tradition of the people under this rule? The Turkish and Mongol conquerors had recently given up their old supplementary agriculture and had turned into pure nomads, obtaining the agricultural produce they needed by raiding or trade. The conquerors of North China were now faced with a different question: if they were to remain nomads, they must either drive the peasants into the south, or make them into slave herdsmen, or exterminate them. ”

“ As soon as the army was landed and drawn up in line, Ximenes mounted his mule and rode along its front, dressed in his priestly robes, but with a sword by his side. A group of friars followed, also with monastic garbs and weapons of war. The cardinal, ascending a rising ground, made an animated address to the soldiers, rousing their indignation by speaking of the devastation of the coast of Spain by the Moslems, and awakening their cupidity by dwelling on the golden spoil to be found in the rich city of Oran. ”

“ There is not in Siam, at least there is not in the same degree, that obstinate conceit behind which, as behind a barrier, the Chinese have stood for centuries, resisting stubbornly the entrance of all light and civilization from without. I do not know what possible power could extort from a Chinese official the acknowledgment which this king freely made, that his people were "half civilized and half barbarous, being very ignorant of civilized and enlightened customs and usages." ”

“ Gibson translates the following passage from a Chinese historian as illustrative at once of China's haughty contempt of outsiders and of her reasons for it:
``The former kings in measuring out the land put the Imperial territory in the centre. Inside was the Chinese Empire, and outside were the barbarous nations. The barbarians are covetous and greedy of gain. Their hair hangs down over their bodies, and their coats are buttoned on the left side. They have human faces, but the hearts of beasts. They are distinguished from the natives of the Empire both by their manners and their dress. ”

“ Chia-ting is the great point of departure for Mount Omei, thirty miles away, and I stayed only long enough to rearrange my kit and hire coolies for the trip. Again I had a chance to see the strength that the Chinese have through organization. Each quarter of Chia-ting has its coolie hong, and woe betide you if you fall out with your own; you will have difficulty in getting served elsewhere. ”

“ The stories we have already told have much to say of the relations of China with the nomads of the north. Against these foes the Great Wall was built in vain, and ages of warfare passed before the armies of China succeeded in subduing and making tributary the people of the steppes. We first hear of Tartar raids upon China in the reign of the emperor Muh Wang, in the tenth century B.C. As time went on, the tribes combined and fell in steadily greater [Pg 230] numbers upon the southern realm. ”

“ The kingdom of China is immense, being even a thousand leagues in extent, with such a multitude of inhabitants that the whole kingdom seems one mighty city. The Chinese are fair of color, with small eyes, much given to trafficking, sharp-witted, and masters at trade, though in matters that concern the safety of soul exceedingly dull and senseless. ”

“ China, save for a few port cities, was as impenetrable as when in 1552 the dying Xavier had cried—``O Rock, Rock, when wilt thou open!'' Siam excluded all foreigners until the century's first quarter had passed, and Laos saw no white man till 1868. ”

“ It was undoubtedly the practice of semi- Chinese states, such as Ts'u, Wu, Yueh, and Shuh (the last is the modern Sz Ch'wan province, and its history was only discovered long after Confucius' time) , to call themselves "Kings," "Emperors," and "Sons of Heaven," in their own country (just as the tributary King of Annam always did until the French assumed a protectorate over him; and just as the tributary Japanese did before they officially announced the fact to China in the seventh century A.D.) ”

“ What about China? Here there are vague resemblances between the buildings of the two peoples; but at most they are those features in which one might trace a similarity between the productions of any two building races. As in Japan, ritual and customs are all distinct from those found among the Mayans. Those who would have us believe that Central American civilisation was of Chinese origin have been much influenced by that fable promulgated by the Chinese historian [Pg 262] Li Yen, who lived in the seventh century. ”

“ These places, as the inhabitants bathed every day, were well frequented, and the attendants accustomed to the business from their childhood exceedingly skilful in the performance of their duties. A trait which marks the voluptuous temperament of the Chinese occurs in the account of this city. An incredible number of courtesans, splendidly attired, perfumed, and living with a large establishment of servants in spacious and magnificent houses, were found at Kinsai; and, like their sisters in ancient Greece, were skilled in all those arts which captivate and enslave enervated minds. ”

“ Shanghai, May 3.
Some one told us when we were on the boat that the Japanese cared everything for what people thought of them, and the Chinese cared nothing. Making comparisons is a favorite, if dangerous, indoor sport. The Chinese are noisy, not to say boisterous, easy-going and dirty—and quite human in general effect. They are much bigger than the Japanese, and frequently very handsome from any point of view. The most surprising thing is the number of those who look not merely intelligent but intellectual among the laborers, such as some of the hotel waiters and attendants. ”

“ Wars with the Huns were a constant preoccupation of the Chinese until, in the first century B.C., they began to take most vigorous action in Chinese Turkestan. By 59 B.C. the entire province was conquered and a strong government was established. In 51 B.C. the nomads of Central Asia, exhausted by internecine strife, appealed to China, whose supremacy—so Chinese historians declare—was acknowledged in some form, however slight, from the province of Shensi to the Caspian Sea. Owing to the wide range of nomadic tribes the statement is not as fantastic as at first sight it would seem to be. ”