Mandarin (official)

“ Starting from the province of Kwang-tung in the south, where the Cantonese and farther inland the Hakka dialects are spoken, and proceeding northwards, we pass in succession the following dialects: Swatow, Amoy—these two may almost be regarded as one—Foochow, Wenchow and Ningpo. Farther north we come into the range of the great dialect popularly known as Mandarin (Kuan hua or “official language”) , which sweeps round behind the narrow strip of coast occupied by the various dialects above-mentioned, and dominates a hinterland constituting nearly four-fifths of China proper. ”

“ The “mandarin language” is the Chinese, which is spoken in official and legal circles; it is also spoken over a considerable portion of the country, particularly the northern and central parts, though not perhaps with the same purity. ”

“ The young man did not know what was meant by a colonel, so the merchant told him it was the title of a Chinese mandarin. “And what is a mandarin?” asked the youth. “A mandarin,” replied the merchant, “is one who goes out with a chair and horses; who at home sits upon a dais in the hall; whose summons is answered by a hundred voices; who is looked at only with sidelong eyes, and in whose presence all people stand aslant;—this is to be a mandarin.” ”

“ It is desirable that this word be expunged from all works on China and eastern Asia, and the proper words officers, authorities, magistrates, &c., be used instead. Every officer, from a prime minister to a constable or tide-waiter, is called a mandarin by foreigners, partly because those who write do not know the rank of the person, and partly from the common custom of calling many things in China by some peculiar term, as if they were unlike the same things elsewhere. ”

“ What strange Oriental mystery had caught her in its web? What intrigue had she but half unearthed?
“Bah!” She took a strong grip on herself. “It is nothing. This place, it gives me strange ideas.”
“These banners on the wall?” She spoke in the casual tone of an inquisitive visitor. “Are they also very old?”
“Many are very old.” The mandarin was smiling again. “These were made by rich Chinese ladies who wish to have the gods be very good to them. They are all made by hand, embroidered with gold and silver thread. Worth many dollars, very, very many dollars, each one of these.” ”

“ To go further and reveal facts which will presently become the reader's in the logical unfolding of this chronicle, the mandarin was none other than Tsan Ti, discredited guardian of the Honam joss house, situated on an island suburb of the city of Canton. He of the slant, [Pg 2] lawless gleaming eyes was Sam Wing, the mandarin's trusted and treacherous servant.
A Chinaman, like his Caucasian brother, is not always proof against temptation when the ugly opportunity presents itself at the right time and in the right way. ”

“ Barrow, that a puppet-show was one species of entertainment given to Lord Macartney and his suite at the Emperor’s palace of Gehol in Tartary.
China—Plate 26
Plate XXVI.
A MANDARIN’S PAGE. We have not much to observe with respect to the annexed figure. He is the page or body servant of a mandarin, to carry his papers, his writing apparatus, the cushion on which he sits, or lays his head; he takes care of his areca-box and his tobacco pipe, attends him on all occasions, fans him while asleep; and, if report speaks truth, serves him for other unworthy purposes. ”

“ Each man goes to the rostrum to speak, and each has much to say. Soon another impression deepens—that the Northerners with their clear-cut speech and their fuller voices have an advantage over the Southerners of the kind that all public performers know. The mandarin language of Peking is after all the mother-language of officialdom, the madre linqua, less nervous and more precise than any other dialect and invested with a certain air of authority which cannot be denied. ”

“ For Japan has stopped short at nothing; not content with adopting the cocked hat, which as we all know is the very marrow of all good government, giving the entrée to the comity of nations, she has actually invented a full and complete peerage. Far more astute is the mandarin. Such wily anachronisms as Li Hung Chang and his compeers know full well that under the sun of Western civilisation they must melt away, and it is no matter for surprise that they die hard. ”

“ He summarized the chief characteristics of the proper style thus: that words should be employed which the people who commonly use Mandarin can understand; that sentences should conform to the [263] model of the spoken language; and, concerning both of these requisites, that such care should be taken as to brevity, the order of words and clauses, the connective particles, and the evident movement of thought as expressed, that the Chinese would recognize in it a people’s book; and yet one that is free from undignified colloquialisms and localisms. ”

“ In their own minds they had never realised the existence of English officials in China, and now there appeared a veritable Englishman speaking Chinese fluently, and versed in the use of chopsticks and all other points of etiquette. This Petching meng, or Pekin mandarin, moreover, was attended, besides the rest of his retinue, by a most imposing literate, whose huge round spectacles gave him an aspect of wonderful wisdom, and commanded the greatest respect from his countrymen at Bhamô. ”

“ When two mandarins of equal rank find [186] themselves face to face in their sedan-chairs, those attendants among their retinues who carry the enormous wooden fans rush forward and insert these between the passing chairs, so that their masters may be presumed not to see each other and consequently not be obliged to get out.
No subordinate can ever meet a higher mandarin in this way; the former must turn down some by-street immediately on hearing the approaching gong of his superior officer. ”

“ Hing-hwa fu (Heng-hoà) , between Fuh-chau and Chinchew, has also a language of its own, though containing only two Hien districts. It is alleged to be unintelligible both at Amoy and at Fuhchau.
“To the other languages of China that of Amoy is less closely related; yet all evidently spring from one common stock. But that common stock is not the modern Mandarin dialect, but the ancient form of the Chinese language as spoken some 3000 years ago. The so-called Mandarin, far from being the original form, is usually more changed than any. ”

“ A man of rank who is a jockey at Newmarket rises no higher in my estimation than the lowest mechanic. Men of literature are the only nobility known in China: In other countries the laws inflict punishment on criminal actions: there, they do more; they reward virtue. If the fame of a generous action is spread in a province, the mandarin is obliged to acquaint the emperor, who presently sends a badge of honor to the person who has so well deserved it. Be their birth ever so low, they become mandarins of the highest rank, in proportion to the extent of their worth or learning. ”

“ For it must be noted that a considerable proportion of words much used in Chinese ports, and often ascribed to a Chinese origin, such as mandarin, junk, chop, pagoda, and (as I believe) typhoon (though this is a word much debated) are not Chinese at all, but words of Indian languages, or of Malay, which have been precipitated in Chinese waters during the flux and reflux of foreign trade. ”

“ Chinese prosody is a very difficult thing for an Occidental to understand. Chinese is a monosyllabic language, and this reduces the word-sounds so considerably that speech would be almost impossible were it not for the invention of tones by which the same sound can be made to do the duty of four in the Mandarin dialect, five in the Nankingese, eight in the Cantonese, etc., a different tone inflection totally changing the meaning of a word. ”

“ Again and again came the birdlike notes, until in the distance they ceased in a silvery echo.
“Call her!” shouted the mandarin, rushing to the door.
The old man bowed excitedly.
“Call her! Get her!” cried the mandarin, turning fiercely on the old farmer.
“What can I do?” he mumbled pathetically. “She is gone. You do not understand, she moves as the kin deer, she is as wild as the pheasant.”
The mandarin returned to the doorway and remained for a long time in moody silence. Presently he turned to the farmer.
“Let it be known that Ho Ling, Mandarin of the Fifth Rank, will depart.” ”

“ Another curious experience was to find a Cantonese Chinaman teaching a science class in English because he did not know Mandarin. It will be one of the limitations to the usefulness of the Hong-Kong {286} University that the bulk of the students who attend it will be Cantonese-speaking Chinamen, and they will therefore be inefficient as teachers to the great mass of the Chinese empire. A University which hopes to produce teachers which shall teach the whole of China must be a University situated in Mandarin-speaking China. ”

“ There is, as a rule, only one guest-chamber, with one long kang or couch on which to lie, and since the Chinese are none too clean in their persons you would find such quarters most unpleasant, besides laying yourselves open to robbery. In the big towns you will at once ask for the residence of the mandarin, and this letter which I shall entrust to you will certainly obtain a lodging under a fine roof and with comfortable surroundings, unless, of course, the mandarin happens to be bigoted, and hates all foreign devils. ”

“ If the mere melody of the voice had so charmed the mandarin, how much more was he captivated by the wit and learning of the youth, who, thus poorly appareled, and humbly employed, seemed to share wisdom with the gods! ”

“ It has been said that you can learn a Chinese woman’s rank from her feet. I have even seen it recorded in good, honest-looking type that the feet of all the Chinese women are bound.
Excepting only the descendants of Confucius there is no Chinese nobility, save the momentary nobility of personal merit. A mandarin who is “noble” because he is able is most probably rich; being rich he can afford to bind the feet of his daughter. There is no necessity for her to work. He can go further; he can secure her in perpetual idleness. Her feet are bound, and her bowl of rice is placed before her ”

“ It is usual for the people, while including the dialects of so wide a territory under the designation kwan hwa, to distinguish them from local names; e. g. Shantung kwan hwa, the mandarin spoken in Shantung ”

“ We had been here somewhere about ten days when the Chinese governor came on board, attended, as is the custom in China, by a numerous suite of lesser mandarins and their retainers. Chefoo is an important military command, as well as one of the chief naval ports in the empire; hence the governor is a high military mandarin. From the governor downwards they were all dressed pretty much alike. The mandarins were distinguishable only by a button, worn on the top of their mushroom hats. ”

“ Foreign intercourse in any shape is the bugbear of the mandarin, as being the one standing danger threatening abolition of himself and his privileges, of which the two most dearly prized are robbery and cruelty. ”

“ The Chinese, being essentially a contemplative and intellectual nation, care very little for military ability, so that the lowest civil mandarin feels a thorough contempt for the highest military mandarin, because the active life of the latter precludes him from following up those peculiar studies which can raise a Chinese from the state of a peasant to that of the highest in the land. Especially do the Chinese despise their intellectual capacities, though they may appreciate and utilize their bodily strength and military prowess. ”

“ Through political and temporary arrangements, Peking as the capital is the standard of Kwan-hwa, but true philology must embrace in its researches the whole territory, where in its essential characteristics, the same spoken language prevails. Accordingly, a third mandarin system must here be introduced. The Nanking and Peking dialects are at least as wide apart, as that of Sï-c‘hwen is from either of them. In fact, the three are varieties of the same great dialect.
In western mandarin, taking C‘heng-tu-fu the capital of Sï-c‘hwen as the standard, there are four tone-classes ”

“ Always at night the mandarin selected a native house and turned the inhabitants out that we might use it for our own accommodation. I suppose his authority as a governor allowed him to do such arbitrary things, for even the fierce Tartars humbly submitted to his will. Sometimes we passed the night at villages, where there may be always found comfortable inns; but wherever we slept Nux and Bryonia by turns guarded the slumbers of us three Americans, while the withered little imp of a Chinaman who rode with Mai Lo upon his elephant performed the duty of guarding the mandarin. ”

“ I began to feel a certain respect and affection for the "Old Mandarin" who was dimly emerging as their Oriental spokesman. I began to realize that the mind speaks many languages, and some of its sudden intuitions and exclamations are truly as enigmatic to us as Chinese writing. We all like to imagine that somewhere, in some far-away Orient of our spirit, there is a philosophy and a Way (as Lao-Tse would say) that views with smiling bland composure the sad antics of men under the pressure of conflicting desires. ”