Zhejiang

“ Garrisons, accorded honourable terms, ruthlessly butchered; princes, who threw themselves on their mercy, deported to Pekin to be hanged or tortured out of life: these are frequent occurrences in the history of China, and of her career in Central Asia the tale is identical. Yet, while drawing a veil over these blots on an otherwise brilliant surface, should we not desire to conceal them wholly from the view. It is necessary that they should be stated to understand what Chinese domination means as a whole; of its great benefits there can be no doubt, if the people will remain quiescent. ”

“ Standing on the walls of Peking, a city of the plain, you look down upon twelve square miles of grey-tiled roofs, the roofs of one-storied houses hidden in the summertime by a forest of trees, but in the heart of the city are high buildings that stand out not only by reason of their height but because the roofs of golden-brown tiles, imperial yellow, gleam and glow in the sunlight. This is the Forbidden City where has dwelt for hundreds of years the Emperor of China, often he must have been the only man in it, and always it was closed to all save the immediate following of the Son of Heaven. ”

“ Beginning in 1850, it had by 1853 swept over and occupied the provinces south of the Yang-tse-Kiang, except the open ports, had captured the Chinese city of Shanghai and the ancient capital Nankin, had crossed the great river, was threatening Tientsin, and even Peking was in danger of falling into rebel hands. It constitutes one of the most extensive, bloody, and curious insurrections in the annals of time. It threatened the existence of the oldest and most populous empire of the world; it is estimated that twenty millions of lives were sacrificed by it ”

“ No Imperial Commissioner ever conducts business at Shanghai. There being a particular sphere of duty allotted to every official on the establishment of the Celestial Empire, and the principle that between them and the foreigner there is no intercourse being one ever religiously adhered to by the servants of our Government of China, it would not be proper for me to reply in person to the letter of the English Minister. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though no other 'settlement' or 'concession' in China approaches Shanghai in importance, it would be easy to show that many others reproduce on a smaller scale results similar to those which British energy and the British aptitude for self-government have achieved in the 'Model Settlement.' I have dwelt at some length on this aspect of British interests in China because it is not easily realized by those who have not had an opportunity of seeing with their own eyes these robust offshoots of the British tree transplanted with all their indigenous vitality on to Chinese soil. ”

“ Nowhere is the transitional period through which China is passing more obvious than in the cities of China; many towns are still completely Chinese, but as you approach the ports you find more and more Western development. The contrast between towns is extremely marked. Shanghai or Tientsin are Western towns and centres of civilisation; the difference between them and such towns as Hangchow or Ichang is very great. The true Chinese city is not without its beauty—in fact, in many ways it is a beautiful and wonderful place. But to appreciate it eyes only are wanted, and a nose is a misfortune. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One hundred and twenty years ago the Western nations were only a stage removed from the barbaric civilisation the Chinese had reached two or three thousand years before, but still they were moving onward, and they felt they must combine if they would trade with this rich land, and yet protect their subjects and their goods. And so they did combine, and there arose that curious state of affairs between the foreigners and the people of the land that has held for many years, that holds in no other land, and that has crystallised in the Legation Quarter of Peking. ”

“ China has done this with whole nations, and, to the very end of time, whatever nation sets out to rule and conquer that new republic must make up its mind to be lost.
And so behind Shanghai is Chinese City, and behind that there is China, out upon the flat plains. There is another China yet beyond, and still another and as many as there are billows on the sea. Build modern buildings and cities, and the Chinese take them and turn them inside out, and they are what he wants them to be. This plastic people,—what is their destiny? ”

“ The opening of the Yangtze River, which is navigable as far as Kingchau, on the borders of Szechwan province, commanding the trade of at least six or seven provinces along its whole course of nearly three thousand miles to the ocean, presents a spectacle of unbounded possibilities for the amelioration of nearly a third of the human race, if only the grasping ambition of the West will let the territorial integrity and the independent sovereignty of China remain intact. ”

“ The first division comprises the holders of high office in Peking; the second the governors of the eighteen provinces in which China proper is comprehended, and of the three provinces of the district loosely termed Manchuria, which stretches north-eastward of Peking. In the third class we may place the officials resident in those vast regions known as Inner and Outer Mongolia, in the country between Mongolia and Thibet, and lastly In Thibet itself. Every Manchu mandarin of high standing has military as well as civil rank. ”

“ Europeans who have experienced the biting winds of Peking, the damp heat of Canton, or the gray skies of Chengtu find in the bright days and cool breezes of Yunnan some mitigation of their exile to this remote corner of the empire. The city itself is not very attractive in spite of its many trees, for it seems a network of narrow lanes, only broken here and there by a temple enclosure or a stretch of waste land, the whole shut in by sound thirty-foot high walls ”

“ Later dynasties in the Central Plains, some strong, some weak, kept closer or looser contact with the Western Regions, and the central authorities exercised tighter or slacker administration over Xinjiang. But all of these dynasties regarded the Western Regions as part of Chinese territory and exercised the right of jurisdiction over Xinjiang. Through the long formative process of turning China into a unified multiethnic country, many ethnic groups worked together to develop its vast territories and build the diverse Chinese nation. ”

“ At that time the few European merchants who had settled there were confined to the Chinese town, the filthiest and most offensive of all the filthy places wherein celestials love to congregate. Now in 1863, the "settlement," that necessary adjunct of every treaty port in China, had been made over to foreigners, laid [15] out in streets, and a spacious quay and promenade on the river bank formed, faced riverwards with solid masonry, the finest thing of the kind in China, throwing into the shade altogether the famous "bund" at Shanghae. ”

“ In Marco Polo's time the middle door of the great portal was never opened save to admit the emperor, and that was still true a few months ago, but last winter a day came when the bars rolled back, and there entered no emperor, no ruler, but the representative of the People's Assembly, and then a placard was posted announcing that hereafter the door was open to every one, for all China belonged to the people. For a matter-of-fact man the Chinese has a very dramatic way of doing things. ”

“ 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. ”

“ China's eighteen provinces are represented by the red line, Manchuria by the yellow, Mongolia by the blue, Ili, Chinghai, and Sinkiang by the white, and Thibet by the black; the ideal of the Chinese republic, a united territory, being indicated.
Soldiers in semi-foreign uniform lined up on each station platform to salute the train, remaining at [200] their posts until the puffing monster was out of sight. At Taiyüanfu were further surprises. No man wearing a queue could enter the city. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I trust that the moral influence of this great city will always be exerted in that direction. In addressing the merchants of Shanghai some three years ago, at the time when I announced to them that it was my intention to seek a treaty in Pekin itself if I could not get it before I arrived there, I made this observation—that when force and diplomacy should have effected in China all that they could legitimately accomplish, the work which we had to do in that empire would still be only in its commencement. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The present province of Szechwan, in the west, had belonged to Fu Chien's empire. At the break-up of the Tibetan state that province passed to the southern Chinese empire and gave the southern Chinese access, though it was very difficult access, to the caravan route leading to Turkestan. The small states in Kansu, which dominated the route, now passed on the traffic along two routes, one northward to the Toba and the other alien states in north China, the other through north-west Szechwan to south China. ”

“ We have here a very curious system: a foreign municipality established on Chinese soil and governing itself, subject only to the control of the foreign Consuls and the Ministers at Peking. It is responsible for a few thousand Europeans and over half a million Chinese. At Hongkong we are supreme in everything; but at Shanghai, though the citizens of foreign nations are subject to their own laws, the city is still legally part of China, so that the natives are under the jurisdiction of Chinese officials. ”

“ The mention of “the Liaotung peninsula” in the protest of the three Powers is the first we hear of the term. It was not used by the Chinese, nor did it occur in the Shimonoséki Treaty. There the ceded territory is called “the southern portion of the province of Fêng-t’ien” (otherwise known as Shengking, and Moukden, though the latter is really the name of the provincial Capital) , the Treaty frontier (never delimited) running roughly from Yingkow on the river Liao to the Yalu river, and to the north of the towns of Fenghwangcheng and Haicheng. ”

“ The modern Chinaman dresses in Western fashion; the loose flowing garment of China acts as a sort of barometer by which the extent of European pressure can be tested; up-country they are as loose as ever, but in Shanghai, wherever Chinese dress is still preserved, it has grown tight. A change typical of what may happen if the union between the civilisations takes place without any guidance may now be seen in the streets of Shanghai ”

“ Shanghai and Tientsin are white men's cities; the first sight of Shanghai makes one wonder what is the use of travelling, because there is so little change from what one is used to. Treaty Ports, each of which is a centre of European influence, exist practically all over China, not only on the sea coast. Hankow, a very important Treaty Port, is almost exactly in the centre of China. North and South China are divided by the Yangtze; East and West China are divided by the route from Peking to Canton. ”