The Project Gutenberg eBook of China Revolutionized, by John Stuart Thomson.

A republic in place of the oldest monarchy! Preposterous. It would involve making a yellow man think as a white man, and that had never occurred, not even in the case of the prodigy, Japan. It would involve free intercourse with the whole wide world, and China had opposed such an innovation stubbornly for 400 years. It meant that the proudest and most self-contained nation should treat others as equals and interchange with them. It involved throwing 4,000 years of continuous history and agglomerated pride and precedent to the winds, and humbly beginning anew as a tyro for a while. It meant the dealing with 400,000,000 kings, instead of one, and asking: “My lord, what is your will?” An educational system 2,000 years old to be forgotten at once! A religion 5,000 years old at least, whereby every man had his own god (his father), to be made as cheap as the paltry sacrifices of wine, rice and the painted stick of Confucianism were in reality! The taking up of individual and national responsibility for 400,000,000 people, and entrance upon a wide path of world-influence, with its divided shame2 and fame! The taking and giving of blows for wrong and right! The giving up of the triple eternal Nirvana of father, self and son, in exchange for an exciting rôle limited to fifty-five crowded years in the individual! The scale of action! A land as large as all Europe, and a people as numerous as the Caucasic race! The thunderous knock on the long-locked doors of science and medicine by 400,000,000 people who had bowed to idol and charm alone! It shook the world. It was pregnant with paradisal possibilities for mankind, because of the vastness of the movement and the depth of its well-spring. The launching of this new leviathan ship of state could not but raise a wave that would lift the already floating hulks of Europe and America, and give them added impetus, though temporary alarm. The rearrangement of commerce, manufacture, labor, finance, taxation, learning, agriculture, art and possibly religion for the whole world. The adding of the most difficult language to the tongues and pens of men, and the call on the English speech to rise once more greater than the mighty stranger, or die. The challenge to Palestine’s Bible to conquer by truth, or retreat with half a world lost. The uprising again of the yellow ghosts of Kublai Khan, Batu, Timurlane, and the Khans of the Golden Horde. What would be the Caucasian’s answer to Emperor William’s question: “The Yellow Peril”? It will be remembered that the kaiser once painted a picture showing the nations of Europe gathering to defend the cross and civilization against an incendiary Buddha lowering in the eastern sky. Would the stranger within the gates be protected even while republican and imperialist fought out their argument? Would leadership arise, and would the great Mongolian mass be intellectualized now that it was energized? Since the vast body was suddenly displaced, would it henceforward move by mere gravity, or sympathetic volition?3 Could it collectivize and not disintegrate? What would be the effect on the scores of trembling thrones, where Rominoff, Hapsburg, Savoy, Hohenzollern, Ottoman, Mikado, Billiken, etc., said they ruled by “divine right”, which is quite a different thing from noble England’s “constitutional right”? Sun Yat Sen and the Chinese republicans sent out this challenge: “Tien ming wu chang” (the divine right lasts not forever).

All these questions presented themselves when the reformers startled the world with the announcement that there was to be a republic in China. It was to be a republic—not a monarchy—said even those Chinese who had been educated in Japan, where lately a Japanese editor educated in America and ten others had been tried and executed in secret, the papers sealed, and the press censored. They wanted pitiless publicity in the new republican China. Had there been no abatement of the opium habit through America’s leadership of sentiment, and Britain’s sacrifice of revenue from 1909 to 1911, there could have been no rebellion in 1911. The reform cleared the befogged heads of the nation, added a million men to agitation, and furnished a hundred million dollars directly and indirectly toward the independence of the agitators. How great a stone America and Britain set rolling in that Opium Conference of 1909 at Shanghai!

The great revolution of October, 1911, did not drop as a bolt from a clear sky. The clouds had been gathering, though many at home and abroad did not, or would not see them. In September, 1911, the imperial viceroy of Canton, Chang Ming Chi, sent spies along the new Canton-Hongkong railway to apprehend smugglers of arms. In the same month troops under the command of Marshal Lung Chai Kwong, suddenly surrounded the office of the4 Shat Pat Po newspaper, at Canton, and arrested several reformers. General Luk Wing Ting, of Kwangsi province, came down the Si Kiang (West River) in September, 1911, in the gunboat Po Pik to Canton and took back with him from the Canton arsenal, machine guns and ammunition to attack the “anarchists”, as the Manchus persistently called all reformers. In the month previous, the Ministry of Posts and Communications at Peking stopped the use of private codes, so as to censor messages to the reformers. Several viceroys, in secret sympathy with the reformers, had as early as August, 1911, wired for gunboats, so as to disperse the fleet from the Yangtze basin, where the revolution was to strike, and the largest cruiser, the splendid Hai Chi, well-known in New York, these viceroys suggested should be sent to King George’s coronation review at Spithead. Even as far back as July, 1907, the Chinese government approached the powers, requesting that they make espionage on arms consigned to South China. Rather to our amusement, they used to arrive at Hongkong as boxed pipes, condensers, bar iron, crockery, etc.—anything but guns, but that was the humor of the freight classification which the shippers used! In December, 1906, the scholars of the middle class in Wuchow, Kwangsi province, at the head of navigation on the West River, decided to cut off their queues, and adopted khaki uniform, military drill and track races. They were independently preparing for strenuous times five years before the outbreak, and these boys were found in the first line of the attack in October, 1911, up at Hankau, led by the Chinese Colonel Wen, who had graduated from West Point Military Academy, in America, in 1909. In August, 1911, the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation reported that a large part of its $9,000,000 gold note issue was being held, instead of circulated5 by the Chinese of Kwangtung and other southern provinces. This hoarding of safe securities always indicates lack of faith as to the business and political future.

The celebrated Manchu, Tuan Fang, director-general of railways, was ordered by the Ministry of Communications to proceed to Canton and Kung Yik, the new town of the Americanized Chinese, in August, 1911, to “pacify the people”. Tuan replied that he would not go, and gave as his excuse: “Canton is infested with anarchism”. In the same month the regent, Prince Chun, asked Prince Ching to recommend an energetic general to be sent to quell disturbances in Kwangtung province, and the Tartar general, Fung Shan, was sent. Spying was not uncommon, impersonators going to a province ahead of new appointees and reciting a record at the yamen which seemed to identify them. In August, 1911, the cabinet at Peking decided to send photographs of new officials in a sealed envelope, so as to prevent this impersonating.

As an indication of the new spirit which was moving among the Chinese of Canton for better things at this time, take the inception of the model town of Heungchow. Chinese returned from America, Singapore and Hongkong could not bear the municipal restraint of the old city. They chose a site ten miles up the inner harbor of Macao. Dredging and a breakwater were begun for a harbor. Broad streets, drains, fine stores, temples, police and fire stations and equipment, water-works, libraries, parks, reforestation, chamber of commerce, tramways, electricity and gas, hospitals, schools, theaters, detached homes with gardens, launch and steamer lines, and a free port,—all were in the scheme. When a government permits monopoly of food, and riots result because of justice ineffectually exerted, history shows that the government6 is about to fall. I instance the fierce Hangchow rice riots of July, 1906, under the leadership of the Hung Pang (Red Association), and the Changsha rice riots of 1910, when Yale College, in China, was barely saved from the conflagration in the very district which in 1911 was swept by the high tide of the revolution. In 1906 text-books were issued to the modern schools (Hok Tongs) which contained a caricature of China, not as the “Middle Kingdom” of old, but as a morsel from which all the nations took a bite. The intent, of course, was to arouse resentful patriotism in place of the old inert pride. Many of these schoolboys enlisted in the two bravest corps of the republicans, the “Dare to Die” band, and the “Bomb Throwers” regiment. In April, 1911, the rebels, under two of Sun Yat Sen’s lieutenants, Hu Wai Sang and Wu Sum, operating in Kwangtung province, issued to the world almost the identical manifesto that President Sun and Foreign Secretary Wu Ting Fang issued in January, 1912, covering the following points:

2. Friendly intercourse with foreigners and protection of foreign property and person.

Desperate fighting took place, and had the rebels been sufficiently supplied with money and arms, the republic would have been declared at Canton in April instead of at Wuchang and Nanking in November. The United States gunboat Wilmington and British gunboats were rushed to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect foreigners. Admiral Li, who was killed in the October revolution, was barely7 able to conquer this April revolution in Kwangtung and Fukien provinces. For centuries the Chinese women would not associate with the Manchus, whom they called “tent women”. All through Turkestan the Chinese walled off their section of the city from the Mongolian settlements, though after the conquest the Manchu troops displaced the Chinese.

Nearly all the missions were informed by students and friends many months previous to the revolution that serious and continued disturbances would occur. The Chinese saw that individualism had arisen in America and England and was battling with the privileged. Individualism arose at last in China and resented in this rebellion the quietism taught by the superstition of Taoism, the resignation of Buddhism and the obedience of Confucianism. “I am not a clan; I am a man,” said the ambitious Chinese as he saw the new ray of hope. American diplomacy was not altogether uninformed or unprepared. The American fleet was made the largest foreign fleet in Chinese waters in the first month of the revolution, Admiral Murdock having the cruisers Saratoga (the converted New York of Spanish War fame), Albany, New Orleans, Wilmington; the gunboats Helena, El Cano, Villalobos, Samar; the monitor Monterey; and the destroyers Barry and Decatur.

As far back as June 3, 1910, a year and four months before the revolution, the Shanghai News printed the following article: “All the legations and consuls have received anonymous letters from friendly revolutionaries in Shanghai containing the warning that an extensive anti-dynastic uprising is imminent. If they do not assist the Manchus, foreigners are not to be harmed.” In August, 1911, a rebellion broke out at Sining, in far western Kansu province. The stores were raided for every bolt of foreign8 cotton to make uniforms. A boy of fifteen was named leader and he was given the significantly fanciful name of “Savior of his country” (Chiu Shih Wang). Rich men cornered the rice supply in the flooded Yangtze valley, and food riots broke out all along the river in August, 1911. On August 23, 1911, rebels boarded a Chinese gunboat on the romantic Si Kiang (West River) near Canton, shooting the commander and seizing the arms and ammunition. On September first the Navy Department strengthened the patrol of Kwangtung province waters so as to stop the smuggling of arms, and the army board required miners to get permits to import dynamite, as they feared that the “anarchists” were importing the explosive. The awful floods and famines of 1910–11 in the basins of the Yangtze River, the Hwei River and Grand Canal had created much criticism of the government, which failed to alleviate suffering; and the famine-stricken were willing to fight, because an army has a commissariat, at least. “Every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, escaped to the cave of Adullam.” Newspapers, such as the oldest reform journal, the Shen Pao, of Shanghai, related horrible illegal tortures of the “third degree” used by Manchuized officials, which I have quoted in the chapter on “Legal Practise.”

Tin was largely financing the propaganda, the 400,000 Chinese tin merchants and miners of Singapore and Penang in the Straits Settlements being the largest contributors. Following them came the 100,000 American Chinese and the 50,000 Australian Chinese. Even in 1898, Li Hung Chang was known to declare, at Canton, that it was not impossible that the spread of the proposed new education of the foreigners would overturn the Manchu dynasty, of which he, a Chinese from Hofei, in Nganhwei province,9 had been the strongest prop among the viceroys for forty-five years. Superstition was not inactive. Halley’s comet flared in the sky. It had shone when Cæsar fell; when Jerusalem fell; when Italy fell before Attila; when English Harold fell before William the Conqueror; when Rome fell in England; when Quebec fell before Wolfe; and now its awful flame must surely prophesy the fall of the Manchu dynasty. Omens were recited that red snow (snow and loess) had fallen in Honan province, and that the Hangchow tidal bore had risen twenty feet, broke over the bank and poured water into the first gallery of the Haining pagoda. This always meant the fall of the dynasty, for had it not happened on the night the beloved Mings fell, and when the scholarly Sungs fell?

As with civil servants in some other countries, the Manchuized civil service (mandarins) acted as though they were the governors and not the servants of the people by allotting to themselves high salaries and peculations. The year before the revolution the land tax yielded about $150,000,000. Only $30,000,000 reached the government exchequer. The Chinese held the Manchus responsible for this criminal neglect of audit, for at least $100,000,000 should have reached the imperial and provincial exchequers. That would have allowed $50,000,000 for the expected peculation of that kind of office holders who believe that “public office is a private graft”. In September, 1911, the month preceding the great revolution, the Chi Feng Po, a native paper of Peking, reported that all wages were in arrears and that even the tea coolies had humorously pasted an anonymous sheet on the imperial controller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our wages yet; WHY! WHY!” Taxes were increased on long-suffering Kwangtung province in the south, the brick kilns of10 Kochau, the silk sheds of Namhoi, the tea houses, and even the temple keepers being assessed “all the taxed would bear”. I shall instance a representative revolt. On September 6, 1911, the bonze at Shek Lung, near Canton, organized a revolt among the worshipers at his temple. The mob demolished the municipal yamen, the police station, the government distilleries, abattoir and fish market. As far back as 1898 the emperor, Kwang Hsu, by edict declared that the lottery at Canton should pay one-third of the upkeep of the far-away Peking University. I have related in the chapter on “Chinese Daily Life” the incident of a unique statue of a kneeling figure erected in the Kwan clan temple at San Wui, near Canton, in August, 1911, which is whipped by the worshipers to commemorate the defection of a member to the government’s railway and tax program. There was always ill feeling between Peking and Kwangtung provinces, the Manchu and Manchuized viceroys joking at Peking when they were ordered to assume charge at the yamen at Canton: “Well, I’m off to boss Miaotszes (barbarians),” which the refined and commercial Cantonese certainly were not. This superciliousness was deeply resented.

Repeated complaint had been made that an unrepresentative Manchu government gave away concessions right and left to foreigners, and that when these concessions were recalled or bought out, owing to outraged patriotic feeling in the southern and central provinces, the foreigner in instances charged immense sums for good will and franchise in addition to his outlay and interest. I shall not recite instances, as it is the system that I am denouncing, not the persons. The Chinese rightly said, if we look at the matter with his eyes, that he was not going to pay vast sums for the retrocession of his own franchise, which was in11 some instances coerced from, or wheedled out of, an effete, governing, unrepresentative clique, the members of which never consulted the provinces that were concerned. “Taxation without representation” again. It was not like the repudiation of the bonds of the southern states, for no money had been paid. “Compensation” and “indemnity” are two words the Chinese have learned to hate, and some day they mean to build an immense navy and equip a large army to interpret these words in the way the Occident interprets them, when they are synonymous with injustice and “grab”. Bitter complaint has continually been made since 1898 that Germany monopolized the mining and railway franchises of the rich province of Shangtung.

On the subject of railways, concessions, etc., the following remarks will be recalled in the American General J. H. Wilson’s book, China (1887): “The Chinese will build railroads, open mines, etc., whenever they can be shown that this can be done with their own money, obtained at first by private subscription, and by their own labor, under the direction of foreign experts who will treat them fairly and honestly. They will not for the present grant concessions or subsidies to foreigners. They will not even take money from any syndicate by mortgage.” Complaint was also made that the Ming dynasty, 268 years ago, left as a heritage to the Manchu dynasty, a land full of public works, bridges, roads, temples, pagodas, canals, and that while the Manchu collected large taxes, he seldom or never repaired a temple, canal or road, so that China is now desolate. Objection was also made that the government shipyards, like the Kiangnan, at Shanghai, were building luxurious ocean steam yachts for Prince Tsui and others of the imperial clan, an expense which the nation could not afford.

Two years before the famous revolution of October 10,12 1911, the author, in his book, The Chinese, picked out five men as the leaders of changing China: Sun Yat Sen, as the anti-Manchu rebel, who would take up arms in the endeavor to establish a republic; Kang Yu Wei, who would go almost as far in reform, but would retain the Manchu dynasty under a strict constitutional monarchy; Liang Chi Chao, as the translator of reform books and a probable secretary of a reformed state; Wu Ting Fang, as a secret reformer at heart, “who would bear sympathetic watching”, and Yuan Shih Kai, to a degree an Occidentalized opportunist of great ability, who was most favored by the Peking and Tientsin foreigners, though distrusted by the Chinese and foreigners in the south and Yangtze valley of China. The revolution was in full sway by November, 1911, with Sun Yat Sen named as probable president of a Chinese republic (Republic of Han); Kang in the exact place prophesied; Liang as secretary of justice of Yuan’s first trial cabinet of a constitutional monarchy; Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of a provisional republic at Shanghai; and Yuan called from his two years’ exile at Chang Te in Honan province to be the first minister of the reformed constitutional monarchy.

This most wonderful of revolutions seemed to break as a bolt from a clear sky on October 10, 1911, at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, in the center of the land, under the very guns of the United States gunboats Helena and Villalobos which were steaming by. It was, as I have attempted to show, rather a carefully planned matter, the propaganda going on abroad and at home under bands and leaders, all of whose views did not stop at the same place, but whose opinions had one source in patriotic reform. Kang, the oldest and first of the reformers, commenced in 1897 by winning with his book, Japan’s Reform, the emotional13 Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu. But when the emperor fell in 1898 before the reactionary dowager, Tse Hsi, Kang, the Cantonese with a Hongkong education, was driven to British Singapore and Penang, from which places he has planned his travels and propaganda of the “Pao Huang Hwei” (Empire Reform Association), which contemplated a revolution of reform, but the retention of the Manchu dynasty as constitutional monarchs for the time being. This association was quite different from the Kao-lao-hwei, “Ko Ming” and “Sia Hwei” (reform associations) of Sun Yat Sen, which aimed at a republic. In other words Kang was a Taft “standpatter” medium reformer, and Sun a thorough-going advanced reformer of the Roosevelt type. Kang’s associations grew up in China, America and England, and Kang visited them, recommending the drilling of companies to attack the troops of the reactionary literati of the Hanlin academy.

Liang Chi Chao, the writer and translator, went first to the Straits Settlements and then to Kobe and Yokohama, Japan, where he edited the reform Chinese papers, the Hsi Pao (Western paper), and the Ming Pao, and flooded his country with translations of parts of the great books of British and American liberty. Liang, too, tolerated the retention of the Manchu monarchs for the time being. Doctor Macklin, an American missionary of Nanking had translated Henry George’s Progress and Poverty into Chinese, and this book was in the hands of the reformers, and particularly appreciated by Sun Yat Sen. Chang Yuan Chi’s Commercial Press of Honan Road, Shanghai, had, since 1898, been translating a million dollars a year of Western text-books for Chinese schools. The American Presbyterian Press at Suchow, and at 18 Peking Road, Shanghai, the American Episcopal Press, the presses of the14 other American and British missions and Bible societies, had for years been issuing telling books of truth in Chinese. Rich compradores of foreign houses at Hongkong, like Ma Ying Pui, presented $1,000 to patriotic lecturing societies like the “Wan Yung.” Hæmon’s argument with his father, King Creon, in Sophocles’ Antigone, brilliantly denouncing absolute rule as only fitted for the monarch of a desert, was recited by the foreign-trained students.

Yuan Shih Kai was deposed by the regent, Prince Chun, in 1909, but from his exile at Chang Te in Honan province, he kept in dignified touch with the formation of the new forces of opinion and arms, and with his backers, the northern foreigners. Yuan is a mighty man, quite on the style of Li Hung Chang, his preceptor, whom we of the West knew so well. At Tientsin, the foreigners assisted Yuan, previous to 1909, with instruction in Occidental organization, and the best troops of the empire, as well as the best schools, and almost the best mills, were organized by Yuan. The reformers who dare the most, however, look upon Yuan by his past, as a temporizer, opportunist and dictator largely under foreign influence; too much Occidentalized, and out of touch with the spirit of “China for the Chinese”, and the “Sia Hwei” (reform associations). They look upon him as, in the past, a Manchuized Chinese who fears to work for himself as a republican, but must have an employer like a Manchu emperor or some other head; great as a Richelieu is great, but not as a Washington is great. They say that while he is thorough of mind, he is not yet vehemently sincere in heart. They fear that Yuan, if left to himself, would concede too much to foreign concession seekers. They bitterly recall that but for Yuan, the reformers of 1897–8 would have swept the kingdom peacefully. Yuan is the most popular Chinese with foreigners at Peking,15 Tientsin, Chifu, Newchwang, Tsingtau and other ports of the north. He is not so much in touch with the heart of the reform spirit in Western, Central or Southern China, nor with the foreigners of the great educational treaty ports of those sections, and of the brilliant British colony of Hongkong in South China, which, with British and American Shanghai, has done most for a reformed China. Yuan’s only experience outside of China proper was when as a youth he served twelve years with the army in Korea. Yuan’s temperament is cold. A noted southern statesman, referring to him, said: “What can you expect of a man who is so cold that he has to carry three braziers up his sleeve?” In the Korean campaign of 1884 against Japan, Yuan is said to have objected to Red Cross operations, jesting that the surgeons didn’t need to take the trouble, for “while they had remade the man, they hadn’t remade the soldier”. Yuan was a ruthless decapitator in that and other campaigns. However, “to err is human, and to forgive, divine”, and if Yuan serves a united republican China with full heart in the future, the mistakes of the past will be forgotten in the joys of the glorious deeds that are possible.

Doctor Sun Yat Sen (let us Latinize him as Sunyacius) is a Hongkong product, and has been a revolutionist and a republican from the beginning. As a boy he was fed on thrilling stories of the Taiping rebellion by his uncle, who had served as an officer in that rebellion. He was born at Fatshan, seven miles west of Canton, in 1866. From 1884–87 he was assisted by Doctor Kerr, of the Anglo-American Mission, Canton, in whose office he studied medicine and English. He studied medicine and surgery under Doctor Cantlie at Hongkong, of which colony he became a citizen (that is, a British citizen), though of course, he has now returned to his Chinese citizenship. Doctor Cantlie was16 then teaching in the Hongkong School of Medicine, which is now a part of the Hongkong University. In 1892 Sun became the first Chinese practising physician at Macao, and met with great opposition from the Portuguese doctors, who, in 1894, drove him to Canton. His father was a Chinese Christian evangelist, a Congregationalist (London Mission) by denomination, and Sunyacius looks upon the study of the Christian Bible as the greatest necessity in China’s education. Even two years before Kang’s work at Peking, Doctor Sunyacius, in 1895, smuggled arms into Canton, got his revolutionary forces at work, and received his first baptism of fire, in which he showed, as on subsequent occasions, absolute fearlessness regarding his life. Sunyacius also lived for a while with his brother and sympathizers in Honolulu, and his studies in Hawaii and in America committed him to the republican form of government. Owing to the Swatow men not meeting the Hongkong men at Canton, Sunyacius’ plans collapsed in 1895. By the advice of Mr. Dennis, a prominent solicitor of Hongkong, Sunyacius fled to Kobe, Japan; to Honolulu and to San Francisco. This incisive, good-looking little man of about five feet five inches in height, who dresses and looks like an American or a Briton, has for years been traveling incognito in America, England and Japan, organizing drill, educational and contributing corps of the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the money and men going to Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main revolution broke out on that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General Hwang Hing was Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this aid. All of Sunyacius’ helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling this money, except one, and of him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will meet with his due reward.”

17 Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus, to have his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a thousand pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland Street in London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation. Sunyacius’ rescue came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong teacher, Doctor Cantlie, was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave to a British secretary in the Chinese Legation a note addressed to Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was fortunately delivered in the British spirit of fair play and through the pleas of a woman, the Briton’s wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in “noble scorn of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to Lord Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened, surrounding the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking). Sunyacius was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese. Only for Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the mother and teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.

Sunyacius’ headquarters have been at British Singapore and at Hongkong, but he is as well known at San Francisco, Chicago, New York, London, Vancouver and Yokohama. He has walked into dormitories of Columbia College, New York, and talked revolution and reform with some of the students under the unconscious eye of so prominent a conservative as President Butler. One of his student protégés was Wellington Koo, now the Chinese secretary to Yuan Shih Kai. Sunyacius is a thorough-going scholar, propagandist, organizer and republican, like the book he carried,18 a man of “Progress and Poverty”. The world’s great bankers, especially two London firms long connected with Chinese progress, knew him, his disguises as a salesman, etc., and his careful plans of government and finance, and he has not been timid in America, or in London, Hongkong and the Straits Settlements in asking for loans for his propaganda and revolution. He has handled a million dollars honestly, and lived most frugally. The greatest luxury he ever allowed himself was a “Prince Albert” coat and a rose-bouttonière, but that was so that he might appear acceptably before an audience of Occidentals! When in Singapore, Doctor Sun had his picture taken in white ducks and a topey hat, so that he is a modern in tonsorial as well as other matters! “This conference must be secret and our correspondence must be anonymous, and upon receipt, burned,” said Sun to the bankers. “Why?” they asked. “Because I am shadowed night and day. Look across the way when I suddenly lift the curtain.” He raised the curtain, and the bankers saw two “sleuths” in the cowardly shadow, one of them a Chinese, lurking in a recess of a money capital of the Occident, many thousand miles from the Manchu cabal in Peking, who had Oriental and Occidental detective agencies in their blacklisting pay.

Dr. Sun is a brilliant and enthusiastic speaker in Chinese and in English. His speeches to the Chinese often extend into hours. His small copper-plate handwriting in English is better than his Chinese chirography. He is a polished writer, having published in 1904 in London a book on “The Chinese Question”. The Manchus have kept Doctor Sun out of China, and he is therefore not yet thoroughly known to the Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who fired the first successful shot, but he is the pick of the southern and the alien Chinese, who are the best educated of their race,19 and have largely financed reform: the Chinese of Canton, Singapore, Penang, noble Hongkong, Macao, America, England, Japan, Australia, and brilliant Shanghai. He has never held office under the Manchus at home or abroad, and is therefore not well known to foreigners in the salons of diplomats, in the capitals of the Caucasic race, or to the masses of the Chinese in the north and west provinces, but he is a coming man, and perhaps the most consistent and steady of the reformers, as he is certainly the most promising, intellectual and coolly daring. Sun Yat Sen’s name may some day be Latinized into Sunyacius, just as Kung Fut Tse’s name became popular as Confucius. Why not also Latinize Yuan Shih Kai’s name into the more popular Yuanshius? The following incident will throw a light on Sun’s character: On February 22nd his elder brother, Sun Mei, a man ordinary in equipment, was almost elected governor of the great province of Kwangtung as a popular tribute to Sun Yat Sen. The latter wired from Nanking, disapproving of the choice for the province’s good, and urging “brother Mei” to confine himself to business, for which he was more fitted. Such frankness in family relations when public preferment is at stake, is scarcely common.

Wu Ting Fang, a Cantonese trained at Hongkong, London and Washington, blossomed out suddenly at Shanghai in November, 1911, as foreign minister of the provisional Chinese republican government of the fourteen central, eastern and southern rebel provinces. The western world stopped its breath in tremendous astonishment. Wu! the brilliant, fashionable and evasive Chinese minister at Washington, who would put you off on politics to discuss vegetarianism, a rebel! He was secretive beyond parallel, and had never talked revolution. The writer tried to get him to talk reform in 1909 in connection with20 the reform prophecies in his book, The Chinese, and though Wu had then fully decided on the part he would take in the coming revolution, he would only repeat what the writer said, and would express absolutely no opinion of his own. I have known writers who have flayed him for this abrupt evasion, calling him a “rice Christian” of yore, a temporizer, etc., but I admire him for his calmness, fixed resolves, and patience in waiting for the prodigious hour to strike. Wu knew what was coming, and was heartily, though secretly, in favor of it. He was the first of the rebels to insist on foreign acknowledgment of the rebel government, and he formulated the most brilliant move of the revolution—the announcement that if foreigners advanced money to the imperialists, and the republicans won, the latter would repudiate such loans. This really won the revolution, for numbers of the foreign syndicates, especially the Russian, were at first heartily in favor of the Manchu status quo. Wu has already codified the reform and penal laws of China, and is prepared to enter upon that difficult question, extraterritoriality. Watch Wu; he is not afraid to take the side of “China for the Chinese”, although he is the most polished in western culture of all Chinese officials. He aims to interpret the East to the West. Wu risked vast preferment, and therefore he is a more sincere man than doughty Yuan, and he will grow in power with the masses of the Chinese nation. His brother-in-law is the exceedingly able Doctor Ho Kai, Commander of the Order of Michael and George, the Chinese member of the Legislative Council of the royal colony of Hongkong Island, a thorough legislator, a lovable and brilliant man. Wu is a member of a worthy Canton family. He is a graduate of the Middle Temple, London; has practised before the Hongkong bar; and he21 served Li Hung Chang for many years as legal adviser at Tientsin and Peking, in drawing up foreign treaties, etc.

There were other reformers in China and abroad at work from 1898 to 1911, although the western press gave no attention to the really astonishing matter. The bitter Hunanese republican rebel, the irrepressible Hwang Hing, was also exiled by the empress dowager, Tse Hsi, in 1898. He fled to Japan, with a price on his head also, and could hardly be restrained from calling the psychic moment for a revolution into immediate declaration. He was a fast organizer, and being nearer the ground, was in close enough touch with the Chinese of the central provinces to be at Wuchang in October, 1911, shortly after the first blow was struck. He had much to do with the gentry of the Hupeh and Hunan province guilds, who largely financed and precipitated the main revolution. Hwang is considered by the extremists of his party as presidential timber. He is a fervent talker, and like Sun, the last man in the world to be an opportunist, which is the great Yuan’s one fault in the minds of many of the Chinese people. Hwang Hing is the one reformer who has some Japanese sympathies, on account of his education in Japan. He was born at Changsha in Hunan, where Yale College has a branch.

In America the editors of the Chung Sai Yat Po, the Chinese World, and Free Press in San Francisco; the Chinese Students’ Club in New York (225 East Thirty-first Street), which publishes a journal, and the Chinese Reform News in New York, often visited by Sun Yat Sen’s American representative, Wong Man Su, ably took up the propaganda, which was carried on in their own way by a thousand newspapers which arose throughout China from 1906 onward, first in the treaty ports, and later in Chinese22 cities, especially Canton, Hankau and Shanghai. Much reference was made to the fact that while China, the largest Oriental country, was without a real parliament, other Oriental countries had successfully overthrown despotism and oligarchism, and had popular assemblies, which granted some representation in return for the privilege of taxation. Japan had a Diet; even black Russia had a Duma; the Filipinos had an Assembly; Turkey had an Assembly; little Persia had a representative Mejliss; native members had at last been admitted into the Viceroy’s Council in India; and Hongkong, with its 500,000 Chinese had long had two Chinese as brilliant members of the Legislative Council.

Viceroy Seu Ki Yu’s essay of 1866, praising Washington and republicanism as ideal, was reissued and distributed, and had great influence. By 1909 and 1910 the reformers had compelled the Manchus to heed the howling of the wind, and see the shadow of a cloud, at least as big as a man’s hand, on the horizon of internal politics. The dowager empress, Tse Hsi, and later, Prince Ching, and the regent, Prince Chun—all Manchus—granted provincial and national assemblies; but they were called and considered only “Tsecheng Yuan” (advice boards), and not legislative bodies in the free and full sense of the word. The pensions of the Manchus and bannermen in the various Chinese cities were decreased, and land was offered them so that they might enter the industrial body. Many Manchus rebelled, as at Chingtu City in September, 1911. Argument increased. The cloud on the horizon grew larger. Objection was made to the court’s monopoly of the rich copper mines of Yunnan province, and complaint was reiterated that while the southern provinces mainly supported the imperial authority in taxes paid, these provinces were the least consulted, and the weakest in representation in any governmental consultations23 that were held at Peking. The government developed the armies and schools of the three northern provinces of Pechili, Shangtung and Shansi with taxes collected mainly in the southern provinces, where the government neglected schools, police and army divisions. It was hard to get the Stuart kings to call Parliaments, and when at a belated date they did, complaint was louder than ever, for there was something to complain of, and at last a constitutional place to complain in.

These Chinese assemblies gave little representation directly to the masses, a high property or high tax qualification debarring them as in Japan; but the gentry of the guilds, in many cases, espoused the reform sentiment of the masses, exactly as the Stuart Parliaments did to the disgust of the Stuarts who hoped for monarchic support, and as the barons of the “Magna Charta” did at Runnymede to the disgust of Plantagenet John. One provincial assembly president we must note at this point. He is Tang Hua Lung, of the Hupeh Assembly. When Hankau was taken on October 10, 1911, Tang jumped to the front as organizer of the first rebel provincial government; the “province of Hupeh of the Republic of Han”, with headquarters at Wuchang on the Yangtze River, the ancient viceregal capital of the illustrious Chang Chih Tung. With Tang Hua, Sun Yu, brother of Sun Yat Sen, came into prominence. In the mother province of reform, the most progressive province politically of all the twenty-one, Kwangtung, Wu Hon Man agitated in his assembly for reform, and when the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming Chi, fled to Hongkong, because he could find no other refuge, Wu Hon Man rushed into the yamen at Canton with the rebelling Sixteenth, and other regiments, and took charge of that great province for the republican rebels. In its nationalization-of-railways scheme, the Manchus24 confiscated the Kwangtung railways, promising to pay the owners only sixty per cent. of their investment. Title deeds of mines in Kwangtung and other provinces were also confiscated by the tyrannical Manchu government.

China’s army was a territorial one. Troops raised in this way are hard to control in local emergencies, but they are easier to recruit, mobilize, drill and discipline at the beginning than mixed corps. Among the Generals of Divisions, transferred from the Navy Department, was Li Yuan Heng, on whom the revolutionaries largely fixed their hopes as the man trained and true for the real deeds of deadly arms, which make new governments possible. Propaganda and patience are all right in their places, but powder needs a special man of a stern mold, fit to deal with merciless and terrible enemies. General Li was one of these men, and General Hwang, Sun Yat Sen’s special representative at the Hankau and Hanyang battles, was another. General Ling, on the rebels’ right wing and the republican commander-in-chief, General Hsu Shao Ching, at Shanghai, were others. General Li’s proclamation of the “Republic of Han”, with military headquarters at Wuchang, covered the following points:

General Li, a Hupeh man, was the Marlborough of the revolution, a young, dashing, Christian soldier, used to courts, fine-looking, full of humor, traveled, approachable. General Hsu, as the successful siege of Nanking was later to prove, was the Grant of the revolution, steady, reasonable, persistent, a spender of men, a strategist and a pounder. General Li was educated at the Pei Yang naval colleges at Tientsin and Chifu, and at Japanese military and naval schools at Tokio, Kure and Yokosuka, where the name of China’s one naval hero of the China-Japan War, Admiral Ting, of the famous battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen, is held in considerable respect. Li passed through the terrific fire of the naval engagements of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei in 1894. He is a Protestant Episcopalian. He traveled round the world with Li Hung Chang in 1896, so that America and Britain were then entertaining unawares one of the Washingtons of republican China.

As general of the Twentieth Division of the northern army, camped at Lanchow, just east of Peking, was General Chang Shao Tsen (we shall call him Chang the First to distinguish him from two other generals Chang of the Manchu camp at Nanking and elsewhere in the northeastern provinces). Chang the First was well trained by the revolutionists in26 their doctrines of liberty, and was told to watch two camps, the so-called People’s National Assembly at Peking and the Manchu Court at Peking. Chang the First was trained in war by Yuan Shih Kai and the Manchu general-in-chief, Yin Tchang, both of whom were effective men, the former schooled by Tientsin and Peking foreigners, the latter well trained in the Austrian ranks and before the line of guards at Berlin. In old Canton, the mighty stanch Wu Hon Man was president of the provincial assembly of Kwangtung province. He, too, was ready to declare for rebellion, despite the imperial viceroy, Chang Ming, and the loyal Tartar general, who were quartered on his province. In the north, Governor Sun Hao Chi, of classic old Shangtung province (the home of Confucius), was ready to go over. In the province where Shanghai is located, the president of the assembly, Chang Chien, who proposes to visit American chambers of commerce, and who is well known as the host in China of visiting Pacific coast chambers of commerce, was more than ready to declare for reform. He, with Wu Ting Fang, was insistent on the abdication of the Manchu dynasty and the declaration of a republic.

At Lhasa, in far-away Tibet, was an imperial resident who had been trained in reform at Shanghai and in law at Yale College, in America. He was the eminent Wen Tsung Yao, destined to be the assistant foreign minister of the first rebel government, and whose son (a West Point graduate) was slated to lead the most daring charges at Hankau and Nanking. Even in the home of the Manchus, at Mukden, Wu Yun Lien, a Chinese immigrant, president of the Manchuria Assembly, was filled with the doctrine and ready to declare for reform. Great viceroys, who had served China long in official positions under the Manchus, were ready to go over, but for the most part the radical reformers27 were new men, unknown to the world, as the Manchus had naturally never given office to them.

Many causes, all important, helped to precipitate the crisis. Sheng Kung Pao and others at Peking, Tientsin and Hankau, both Chinese and Manchus whom foreigners know well, had, partly under foreign advice and Japan’s example, planned to compel the provinces and the gentry of the guilds to sell out their many little railroads, a number of which were paying well, to the central government, which intended to nationalize the railroads quickly under immense loans from the banking nations of the Occident and Japan. These loans meant to the local gentry the extinction of distributed small fortunes and opportunities; concessions of mines to foreigners, such as the immense gifts of franchises to the British “Peking Syndicate” in Shansi province, to the London and China syndicate in Hupeh province, to Belgian, German, French, Italian and other syndicates; heavy interest; continuation of the unscientific Likin system of customs as a security, and payment of obnoxious bonuses, as when Hupeh province, under Chang Chih Tung, in 1904, had to pay a bonus to buy back a Chinese railway concession; and in 1911, when China had to buy the bonds which represented by an excess payment of $3,750,000 a Chinese railroad which existed only on paper; and as Professor Ross points out in The Changing Chinese, when Shansi province had to pay a syndicate over two millions to relinquish an undeveloped concession in China which cost them almost nothing. The bitter complaint, written in blood, of the Hunanese of Changsha City on this subject is quoted in the New York Railway-Age Gazette of October 13, 1911, and includes this sentence: “When a piece of meat is in the traitorous railway thief’s mouth, it is hard to take it out.” All may not agree with the Chinese position, but all should duly consider28 the Chinese side of the question as expressed in their words. “Peking has betrayed Wuchang,” cried the Hupeh men.

There were many more instances from the Sungari to the Yangtze basins, yea, to the Mekong basin, through 2,500 miles of mine and men, traffic and trade, of the hard bargain driven by the foreign lender, generally under bad foreign advice.

No foreign house should ever send a representative to China unless it is willing to send an enlightened and humane man, who intellectually appreciates the able Chinese as much as he appreciates the foreigner, and whose sympathies are equally divided between Cathay and his own nation. Only such a man can deal fairly and give impartial advice, which alone in the end will win for the foreigner what properly is his of the profit and prestige. “Why should we, with the richest mines on earth; the richest passenger, freight and labor field; with lands plethoric of water power and grain; and the lowest debt, if unjust coerced indemnities were wiped out, pay foreigners such immense bonuses, interest and concessions, discounts and profits to go out of our country”; rang the cry, not only in Hupeh, Hunan, Szechuen, Shansi and Kwangtung provinces, but even in native papers printed under the shadow of the foreign banks on the bund at Tientsin in the north.

There was one large meeting of protest held by the Chinese of British Hongkong in the Chui Yin Hotel on September 3, 1911, delegates attending even from distant Szechuen province. Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s memorial was recalled: “The wealth of the country is being monopolized by foreigners”. The Railroad Protective Association, of Chingtu City, in August, 1911, issued a famous placard in which the four banking nations in caricature were made29 to say: “The wealth of the four provinces of Szechuen, Kwangtung, Hunan and Hupeh, all is given to us four foreign nations to swallow down at one gulp”. Chinese men, women and children, bound together before the ancestral graves, are made to say: “Bound helplessly; it is unbearable. We are bound in one bunch to be given to foreigners. Come quickly, friends of the Railroad Protective Association, and deliver us.” The loot, lying ready for the syndicates of the four nations to take away, is pictured as cash money, bullion sycee, bank bills, and books of China’s Confucian classics and history. Other caricatures were prepared so as to inflame patriotism in the breasts of the new students, the foreigner being made to say cynically: “The venal students only want their up-keep, purchased diplomas, political office, four chair bearers, free theatricals and they’ll hush up. The mask may be brave as a dragon’s head, but the tail is cowardly as a crawling snake.”

Remembering that Russia and Japan, in 1896, etc., first sought for railway control and then practically occupied the three Manchurian provinces, we can understand the patriot’s side of the following article objecting to the three nations’ railway loan, published in Chinese in a Hankau paper: “The merchants of Hupeh urge the people to take shares in the Szechuen, Canton and Hankau railways. The people of China are in a sad plight. Why is China so poor that every foreigner is eager to come to her aid? You Chinese say you have plenty of money, but you are unwilling to loan it. Why do you not use your money to construct these railway lines? If you do not, the foreigners will come under false pretenses, destroy your nationality, and cut off your supplies. England has used this diabolical system to obliterate Egypt; otherwise how could she have got it?” Even if a foreign banker, statesman or merchant30 does not fully agree with the local feeling of the Chinese, it is wise to look frankly at their side of the argument in making educational, financial and political plans in the future.

There was much complaint also of the private hoards of the Manchu princes, both in strong-boxes and in foreign banks. The taxes levied in the southern provinces mainly supported the empire, and these taxes were increased. Something then was brewing, especially in the southern and central provinces. The word went forth, “We are not Boxer murderers if we cry China for the Chinese, and it is not fair to put a stone around China’s neck with indemnities just because you are ahead of us in possessing fleets. We love the American and British peoples, and their glorious books on Liberty, even if we do not love some of your unregulated trusts any more than you and your Supreme Court’s decisions do! We are willing to pay a fair rate of interest. Not a hair of a foreigner is to be touched. We appreciate the education and lovable alienation of the missionaries, and especially the miracle of Occidental medicine and surgery.”

Here is the guarantee of the “Sia Hwei” (reform association), of Fuchau, to the Methodist and other missionaries of Fukien province. “We have just heard that the missionaries, on account of the uprising of the New China revolutionary associations, with their just cause, have been requested by your foreign consuls to go to the provincial capital, Fuchau, to be protected. The Chinese people have become very much enlightened and their old customs have changed. The Chinese people and the missionaries’ church are at peace, because your church has opened schools, hospitals, orphanages and similar31 good institutions. Not one of these but is held deep in the hearts of the Chinese people. Although we are a humble folk, still we have seen and appreciated these things. This reform association requests that you missionaries remain at your posts throughout the province. Should anything unforeseen occur, we should, of course, exert ourselves to protect you and your property. We are quite sure that we can afford efficient protection from mobs and imperialists.” These Fukien people were as good as their word, for besides sending levies to the revolution, the “hsiang lao” (head men) of the villages organized home guards for the protection of both foreigners and natives. When the revolution broke out at Wuchang, the soldiers of the thirtieth regiment escorted the American missionaries out of the line of fire from Serpent Hill. The American Episcopal missionaries crowded aboard the German freighter Belgravia, bound for Shanghai, the American gunboat Helena, Commander Knepper, standing by. The revolutionary soldiers of Generals Li and Hwang shouted a peace message: “American republicans are brothers of ours; good-by!”

A cry went through the vast nation that the Manchu dynasty of usurpers was signing away the land with hardly a struggle: Tonquin to France; Formosa and vast Korea to Japan; rich Manchuria, and possibly Jungaria, to Russia; Kiaochou to Germany; and so on, even little Portugal wanting more of Heungshan Peninsula; the effete nations of Europe, with only paper ships, “bluffing” like the monster nations, all demanding “your provinces or your life”, and getting the provinces. The articles in the independent press in America were translated in many instances into Chinese, and the spirit of protest in America, Britain and Germany was emulated in awakened China. The minority Manchus32 could not be trusted to control the Chinese, and “pack” boards (Pus), ministries, and even assemblies, to suit themselves. Government by “privileged minority” was being called in question throughout the earth as unconstitutional; why not in China? There must be true popular government, which the Manchus postponed from month to month with “standpat” doctrines, and while a deliberative body was formed at Peking, the ministries, boards and the majority of the National Assembly were appointed in “machine” style by the Manchus from their set, which, of course, included many of the Manchuized Chinese, as well as Manchus and Mongols. The Chinese officials—the old literati—are the viceroys, ministers and members of the governing boards, whom we foreigners best know. Many of them are very able, and some of them love reform, but few of them dared anything for the revolution except Wu Ting Fang. Give him that credit as often as possible.

The heavy indemnities, amounting to the awful sum of $250,000,000, for the massacres of 1900, which the “Boxer” empress dowager, Tse Hsi, a Manchu, approved, have been a heavy load upon the Chinese people of the southern and central provinces, who had nothing to do with the persecution of foreigners. The Chinese of the taxed south greatly appreciated, therefore, American and British action in returning part of their indemnities. But other nations should do likewise. The Westminster Gazette, of London, now supports this position.

Histories of peoples, not dynasties and oligarchies, such as John Richard Green’s History of the English People; books which helped to bring about the American revolution; the American missionary, Doctor Macklin’s, Chinese translation of Henry George’s Progress and Poverty; great pæans33 of liberty and political pain the world over; editorials from the progressive American press; chapters from American and English books which sympathized with the Chinese, were translated and read. The notable book Service was re-read. It was written in 1897 by Tan Sze Tung, the son of a governor of Hupeh province. Tan was one of the martyrs of 1898 who were beheaded by the dowager, Tse Hsi. Tan’s book criticized absolute monarchy and recommended reform in politics and commerce. Sin Chin Nan, by translating parts of Dickens, had shown the Chinese people that the common man endured wrongs that should be righted. Thomas Paine’s The Crisis, which was read before the American regiments of 1776, was translated to be read to revolutionary societies like Sun Yat Sen’s “Ka Ming Tang” and the “Sia Hwei.” Special note was taken of the establishment of a Duma even in oligarchic Russia; the success of the Young Turk party in even such a terrific oligarchy as Turkey; the successful revolt in Mexico, where a practical oligarchy gave lands to favorites and would not grant real popular government; and the representation of the Oriental race in the legislative bodies of Hongkong, India, Straits Settlements and the Philippines.

The preliminary dance was opened in September, 1911, by far western Szechuen province, Peking issuing this edict in the yellow Peking Gazette: “Whoever shall serve us by killing rebels or by capturing and binding members of the rebellion party, shall be rewarded regardless of rules.” The Peking government had practically confiscated the railways of the Szechuenese, as the paper which they were given in exchange bore no guarantee of interest, and no reliance was put upon the value of the security by the provincial gentry, bankers and farmers. When provinces and states lose confidence34 in the sincerity of a fixed central government that is not run by parties, that government totters to its fall. A national anthem was given to the nation to sing:

The south only sang it in parodies. The railway board (Yuchuan Pu) was putting through its nationalization-of-railways scheme, in accordance with the $50,000,000 gold loan from the syndicates of four of the banking nations. To back up arguments, troops were increased under the various generals, Tartar and Manchuized Chinese. Some of these troops were from the federal army, northern divisions, and had been trained by Yuan and General Yin Tchang. Some were provincial viceroys’ troops, trained both under foreign and native systems, like the splendid army of the Yunnan viceroy, Li Chin Hsi. The small railway owners, the small mine owners, the contractors of man-transportation, the noted farmers and river men of Szechuen province, were ordered to consent to the new scheme of a national railway to break across Szechuen province from Ichang to Chingtu, and for other railways in the province. The terms of the foreign loan, the price at which the bankrupt federal government would pretend to buy out the provincial gentry and guilds, the heavy new taxes on the west and south, were all partly explained, and the men of Szechuen (by blood largely Hupeh and Hunan provinces’ emigrants) rebelled and “fired the shot that was heard around the world”.

A noted, partially loyal Chinese general was shortly put in command of the imperial troops in the ancient capital, Chingtu. His name was General Chao Ehr Feng, the35 famous commander who did the astonishing thing, both from a religious and military point of view, in 1910, of driving the Dalai Lama out of Lhasa and Tibet into Darjeeling, in India, and thus putting Buddhism and its pope at the feet of Confucian China. China also brought up her bloodiest general, Tsen Chun Hsuan, infamous for putting out the last terrific Mohammedan rebellion in mountainous Yunnan province of the clouds, in unnecessary rivers of blood. Foreigners scowled at the employment of this man, and Manchu China was a little uncertain. Promises meant nothing to Tsen. He was a man-eating tiger, the bloodiest man in the world, who pretended and looked to be nothing else, and was descended from as bloody generals. Peking meant business, and the railway policy, which was as much a war policy, seemed to be going through.

It was not long, however, before General Chao’s forces were cooped up in Chingtu, which was besieged by the rebelling province of Szechuen under the leadership of the president of assembly, Pu Tien Chun, and in the engagements General Chao was captured and decapitated. The strategic importance of the railways already built then appeared like the flash of a saber at the bare neck of the victim. Modern troops were hurried down to Hankau by rail in twenty-four hours and up the river to Ichang by steamer, in the rear and on the flank of the besiegers. Then something like thunder happened among the divisions which had been mobilized at the triple cities of Wuchang, Hanyang and Hankau. The Eighth Division, under General Li Yuan Heng, territorial troops of the modern army, hoisted the rebel tri-color sun flag of red, white and blue over the yellow dragon of the Manchus, put white bands on their arms and rebelled for the new-born republic of Han. They captured the leading36 arsenal, steel and coal plant at Hanyang, the populous commercial city of Hankau, and the luxurious viceregal capital of Wuchang on October 13, 1911. This put a high standard on the rebellion, for Li was a young well-trained general of the new school, a diplomat, a sturdy man in the field, a patriot who could not be bought and who was organizer enough to see that his men were not bought. Admiral Sah, with a fleet of gunboats and small cruisers, aided the imperial divisions under the bloody general, Chang Piao Tuan, which tried to retake the native city of Hankau. Li’s troops, especially his “Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) Brigade of shaven round-heads, fought bravely, although their artillery was only equipped with percussion shells, as compared with the time-fuse shells brought down from Peking, Tientsin and Kiaochou to supply the imperial troops. When ammunition ran out, the rebel troops used the bayonet charge with reckless daring. It was a new era in fighting in China when yellow men would charge, with only cold steel, across an area swept by machine guns. On October 21st, Generals Li and Hwang, with 15,000 ill-equipped rebels, won the battle of Kwang Shili in Hupeh against General Yin Tchang, the Manchu minister of war and commander-in-chief, with 20,000 finely equipped loyalists. Part of General Li’s force was a section of an army division which had gone over. Others of his new troops were recruited from the most famous boatmen of the world, the Szechuen trackers of the wild rapids and sublime gorges of the glorious Yangtze River, and from the indefatigable, cheerful mountain coolies of Hupeh province, who are as agile as a chamois.

The propaganda of the rebels now bore fruit in rapid succession. On October 22nd the rebels, under the leadership of Tan Yen Kai, president of the Hunan Assembly, took Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. Yale College37 has a branch in this long forbidden city. Hunan has always been notable for honest, sturdy, independent men. It is the proudest province and the sternest in China. “What way Hunan goes, that way goes China.” It was the last province to permit missionary activity. Nanchang, the capital of Kiangsi province, the land of pottery, was taken on the same day, completing the occupation of the four adjoining central Yangtze provinces, which was all that Sun (Sunyacius) first planned to do, as a beginning and a basis on which to solicit foreign loans. It was rebellion indeed, and not a riot. The Tartars, Manchus and loyalists fled. New provincial governments were set up, each with a popular assembly. Peking was desperate, for China was almost split in half by the political earthquake. Peking felt sure that she held the north, however, with a well-equipped army of about twenty divisions. The reformers, however, had breathed into the ear of the troops, and pay was overdue in the impoverished condition of the central government.

On October 24th, ancient Singan, the capital of the north-western province of Shensi, the original capital of China, where the empress dowager, Tse Hsi, fled in 1900, went over to the rebels, despite the threats of the bloody Mongol governor, General Sheng Yun. This really meant a fifth seceding province, as far as the populace was concerned. On the same day, Kowkiang on the Yangtze went over. Then Kweilin, the capital of Kwangsi province, went over on October 25th. This was the first of the southern provinces to join the movement openly. On October 25th noble Fuchau, the famous seaport capital of old Fukien province, went over, and we have already quoted a wonderful message to the white man from their “Sia Hwei” (reform association). On October 26th, Ngan-king, capital of Nganhwei province, declared for the rebels, and on the same day General Li was38 suggested as provisional president of the forming republic of Han, with six of China’s twenty-one provinces already seceding. Reform was as hot as a prairie fire, and almost as hard to manage.

On October 29th a remarkable thing occurred among the divisions being massed for an attack on the rebels’ capital at Wuchang. The Twentieth Division was at Lanchow camp, east of Peking, under General Chang Shao Teng. They formed the famous Army League, and made reform demands on the packed National Assembly at Peking, just as Cæsar’s immortal Thirteenth Legion, before the rebellion, sent demands to the Roman Senate, whose orders they were supposed to take. In consternation, the packed National Assembly granted the Nineteen Constitutional Articles, and the Manchu regent, Prince Chun, an able and traveled man (he went to Germany in 1901) daily issued edicts and yellow Peking Gazettes, full of tearful promises, in which, however, the central and southern rebellious provinces had no confidence. They said: “Edicts are like the wings of day and night; it all depends on which side the sun is.” This action of the Twentieth Division halted the government’s war measures, and plans were laid to get loyal divisions near the Lanchow camp, and get rid of General Chang the First. This general was not strong enough to attack Peking on his own account, for there were imperial divisions between him and Generals Li and Hwang of the revolutionists. But he was strong enough to be stubborn, and not move forward. Peking was largely in panic. The railroad station was piled high with household goods, and excursion trains for the flight of the Manchus were running to Tientsin as fast as they could be switched. The streets of Peking were crowded with mule carts, bearing bullion39 sycee and coins to be stored in the vaults of foreign banks in the legation quarter. No one half guessed before the wealth which the pensioned and privileged Manchus had in cache. Proud princes of the blood were even willing to stand up all the way to Tientsin in open coal cars. Foreigners, legations, railways and banks were popular as never before in the north, as a very present refuge in time of trouble! Marvelous treasures of vases, tapestries, and jade were entrusted to foreigners for safe-keeping, and the treasures of the Mukden and Peking palaces were sacrificed, foreign agents taking advantage of the opportunity. Where could a Manchu take them: to Jehol, to Kalgan where the Russ waited, to Mukden where the Japanese waited? That was only like running from the door to be caught on the roof. Before long, treasures next in wonder to those looted at Peking in 1900 will find their way into the palaces, mansions and museums of the Occident, and artistic China will be robbed bare as a bone; for Peking has long been robbing China of art. The hotels and khans of Peking were crowded to the roofs, and the refugees overflowed into the cellars and stables and moats. Merchantmen were chartered, and held with steam up at Tientsin, ready to afford a refuge for panic-stricken Manchu princes, or disgraced Chinese officials like Sheng. Missionaries in the outskirts trusted the promises of the “Sia Hwei”, and stayed at their posts. Alarmed consuls arrested them in order to bring them into the capital, and the Chinese forgot the dignity due to their arms and laughed at the humorously incongruous situation!

On November 3rd, the Imperial Third Division under General Wong Chou Yuen, with the assistance of Admiral Sah’s fleet, attacked the rebels in native Hankau City. The vast flat city is not adapted for defense, and the loyalists were infinitely better equipped. General Li was short of ammunition.40 His troops, however, put up a brave fight, time and again charging hopelessly with cold steel against machine guns, and eliciting the unqualified admiration of the foreigners. On that day the Imperial Third Division made a bloody name for itself in the respect of massacre of non-combatants and arson. A prosperous city of nearly a million was reduced to the appearance of nearly a wrecked village. Both rebels and loyalists saved the foreign quarter along the Yangtze Bund, with its palatial consulates and business houses, and the American Episcopal St. Paul’s cathedral and St. Peter’s church, which were turned into hospitals by Doctors Glenton and MacWillie, and nurse Miss Clark of the Red Cross. Across the river at Wuchang, the buildings of the American Episcopal Boone University were turned into a hospital by Doctors Merrins, Paterson and others of the brave. Heroic missionaries held up their hands against the Third Division, and pleaded the rules of the Red Cross, but the Manchus, especially Prince Tsai Tao and others of the Tsai princes, desired by a massacre to induce the rebels to massacre the first time they had a victory, and thus bring on foreign intervention to save the dynasty. A dynasty that can not stand without foreign intervention will never stand, for true strength is in the hearts of the people alone. It was the old Boxer trick of the dowager empress, Tse Hsi, in 1900.

The rebels, however, meant to keep their heads, even under such terrific provocation as that bloody Race Track field of Hankau, over which the machine guns of the Imperial Third Division swept, and those bloody streets, maloos and walls where non-combatants were butchered if they wore a piece of white, or had their queues severed, both of which were hated rebel signs. To and fro the tide of war surged. On November 3rd, a great change occurred, for on41 that day the rebels’ great misfortune in having no fleet, was to a large degree nullified. Shanghai arsenal, which supplied Admiral Sah’s fleet, and Shanghai’s native walled city, went over to the revolutionists. This was the second great step forward. The rebels secured the well-known Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister of the republic of Han, and their organization spread and strengthened in everything except money and a modern equipped force.

On the same day, the far southwestern capital and province, Yunnan, with its splendid army and police, declared for the red, white and blue sun flag of the republic. Two days after, on November 5th, the famous bore-city, Hangchow, the center of culture, and capital of the coast province of Chekiang, was captured by assault, the Manchu general putting up a strong defense in the Tartar walled section of the city. Ningpo, in the same province, and Suchow, another ancient capital of culture in Kiangsu province, went over on the same day.

On November 6th, Admiral Sah’s sailors handed part of the imperial fleet over to the rebels at Shanghai, and the rebels were now able to reform their center line. This also gave the republicans their first nucleus of a navy. Admiral Sah Chen Ping received his baptism of fire in the battle of the Yalu, under the brave Admiral Ting and Commander Teng. He commanded in suppressing riots at Changsha in 1910, when Yale College branch was barely saved, and he is well known as the host of Admiral Emery’s American fleet at Amoy, when the white squadron was girdling the world under the surprised eyes of Japan, whose mixed-school and emigration “bluffs” were called by President Roosevelt in this significant but quiet way. It was most important to win Kiangsu province, and Chinkiang City was therefore talked over on November 6th. The same day, in the far north, the42 coaling city and naval base of Chifu in Shangtung province, declared for reform.

Up to this time the cultured old Ming capital of Nanking, the most beloved city in China, had held out under a concentrated force of 12,000 imperialists, who were unusually well equipped. After Wuchang, Hanyang and Shanghai, it was next in importance to capture Nanking on the right wing of the rebels. The imperialists knew that to hold Nanking was worth an army of 200,000 men, and General Chang Hsun (we will call him Chang the Second) was in equipment and temper a man to their minds. His second in command was General Chao, and it was rumored that bloody General Chang Piao was within the walls. The civil viceroy of Nanking was the well known Chang Jen Chung, who instituted the first Chinese industrial exhibition at Nanking in 1910. On the northeast of the walled city are the peaks of Purple Mountain, 1,400 feet high, dominating with its huge Armstrong and Krupp guns the north gate, Ta Ping Men, and the east gate, Chao Yang Men, and the great capital, around which the mighty Yangtze flows, yellow flooded to the brim. This hill, and the Tartar section of the city, Chang the Second fortified, so that it would take a hundred to one to drive him out. On November 8th, the dauntless rebels, led by General Ling, under the protection of fire from the Canton artillery, took the armory, arsenal and powder mills outside the south wall, rushed the outworks, and held part of the southern city with insufficient force. One of the cannon balls went crashing through the “North Pole” pagoda in the Tartar City. On November 9th, the imperialists at the strong south fort (Nan Men) hoisted a white flag of apparent surrender, and as the republicans came up, “near enough to see the white of their eyes,” they opened a treacherous fire upon them. The Manchu troops,43 under General Tieh Liang, looted their own fine military school in the city. There let us leave the rebel lines and pickets for a few days, while General Li and General Hwang on the far left wing were being appealed to for men, and above all, for siege and machine guns and ammunition.

On November 9th, Fuchau had to be stormed again, for the imperialists had been reinforced. On that same day, Canton, always stanch for a modern China, and mother of nearly all the reformers, went over to the rebels under President of Assembly Wu Hon Man, General Chan Kwang Ming, and Wong Ching Wai, and drove the imperial viceroy to Hongkong near by, where the British government pleaded with the great Chinese body to spare their unwelcome hostage, who had fled in Chinese custom “to a city of refuge”. All over China, as in the Palestine of the Bible, are towers of refuge for this very purpose. The American cruiser New Orleans, Captain Miller, had steamed up to Nanking and taken on board hundreds of foreigners, including seventy-five Americans, and records. On November 10th, bloody Chang the Second gave orders, in the old “Boxer” trick plan, for the awful massacre of Nanking. The aim was first to incite the imperial soldiery with the sight of blood, as tigers baited. On the lovely bright afternoon, the prison was opened and 200 prisoners were sent into the yamen courtyard, “to their freedom,” as they thought. There they were made to kneel in a row, while their necks were stretched out by the queue. An executioner, with a mercury weighted Taifo shortsword, hurried along the long line, using only one practised blow to sever each head. The heads were elevated on bamboo poles. The Manchu troops then tasted the blood in the belief that human blood would make them brave and invulnerable. They even dipped their coarse biscuits in the gory44 pools. They were then ready for anything that was merciless.

In force, Chang’s trained troops, with machine guns, swept down from Purple Mountain, Tiger fort, Lion fort and the Tartar section of the city, on the small force of republicans, and the innocent population of Nanking the Refined. Shame on the Ninth Division of Shangtung territorial troops and the old-style turbaned “braves”. Every man who had no queue; every woman who had the rebel sign of white in her apparel or hair; every man, woman or child who was a Nankingese was slaughtered without opposition, and the odious Ninth Division waded back to Tiger, Lion and Purple Hills through the bloody shambles. This was not war; not even hell; this was an insane massacre of the innocents. The few republican troops under the indomitable General Ling fought until their ammunition was spent, and then with cold steel set, they awaited the rain of bullets from machine guns across the lead swept spaces of the immense, half-built-up city. It availed nothing. Peking breathed with hope. Chang the Second was a general after the “Boxer” Manchu heart. Manchu princes—yea, even those who had visited America and England, like the dashing Prince Tsai Tao and Prince Tsai Chun, and who should have known better—had been urging massacres, and Chang the Second had apparently understood them. General Chang the Second was heartily backed up by the merciless Tartar general, Tieh Liang.

On November 11th, Amoy, the famous port of Fukien province, where American officers have been so often entertained by Admiral Sah and other Chinese admirals, was taken, the American cruiser Saratoga (the old New York of Santiago fame) and the American gunboat Quiros steaming out of the harbor so as to be non-combatants in fact and in45 influence. The American monitor Monterey, so as to protect foreigners, later steamed into the harbor, where she was often struck by stray bullets. On November 13th, the most remarkable thing thus far in the revolution occurred, though the impulse was not permanently fixed. Mukden, the home capital of the Manchu race, the mausoleum of their founder, and of many of their dead emperors, under the influence of Chinese immigrants, declared its independence under General Wuh Hsiang Chen, and the reform speaker of the Mukden Assembly, Wu Lun Lien. During all this turmoil, Pechili, Shansi, and Honan provinces were strongly held by Manchu and Mongol “banner” troops, but Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang of the republicans got a note through to the American minister at Peking, asking him to deliver it to the Manchu regent, Prince Chun. The note requested the Court to abdicate, and retire to Jehol, 200 miles northeast of Peking, where they were promised positive protection, and liberal pensions. In the meantime Yuan Shih Kai returned from exile at Chang Te in Honan province to Peking, and took up the reins of power as provisional premier of a limited Manchu monarchy; began treating with the republicans, solidifying the Manchu army, and soliciting foreign loans, as the empress dowager’s strong-box no longer furnished funds. Only three out of twenty-one provinces, and three territories, were now remitting to Peking, but Peking had the mighty northern army.

On November 17th, the revolutionists under Generals Li and Hwang attacked the imperial lines at Hankau, and despite their poor equipment in machine guns and artillery, led by a regiment of Roundheads called “Dare to Die” (Pu Pa Tsze) men, commanded by Colonel Wen, who graduated from West Point in 1909, they took three of the four parallels by cold steel charges, sapper work and bomb throwing.46 One of the rebel shells from Wuchang punched a hole in a 2,000,000-gallon tank of oil in Hankau, and the streets were flooded two feet deep with kerosene. It was the first time that Chinese had met Chinese in scientific modern war, and it marked the entrance of China into the modern arena, where Might strikes for Right, instead of only arguing for it. China had begun to find herself. Meanwhile there was distress in Singan in the north, which city had declared for reform on October 24th. The Manchus had retaken the suburbs of the city, for it was in their sphere of control, and had begun, with their mobs, to massacre missionaries, as was expected. The China Inland Mission outside the city was attacked, and the English Baptist, Scandinavian and American missions throughout the province were struck at. Blame was put on the Mohammedans wherever possible.

Let us go down to Nanking for a moment, to see how the war is progressing. To keep Nanking and Shanghai in touch, the Americans had brought up their beautiful cruisers New Orleans and Albany, for the American Vice-consul Gilbert and the intrepid American missionaries, Doctor Macklin, President Bowen, Mr. Blackstone, Mr. Garrett and others were in the city. General Hsu of the imperialists, with the Thirty-fifth Regiment of Infantry, on November 21st, hoisted the red, white and blue flag and left the strong lines of Purple Mountain and the Tartar city to join the rebel ranks, which were being reinforced from Canton and other directions also. Bloody General Chang the Second, the imperial commander, immediately had all General Hsu’s relatives in Nanking murdered in revenge.

In far-away London, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, with an American adviser and friend, “General” Homer Lea, set sail for Shanghai on the same day. He first went to Paris, and then47 took the liner Martha at Marseilles for Hongkong, from which place he planned safely to reach Shanghai to complete the rebel government. On November 22nd, when the imperialists with all their foreign friendships were unable to consummate their loans, the rebels at Shanghai opened a Republic of Han Central Bank, with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The title of the bank was the “Chung Hua”, and the first notes were dated in the 4609th year of Huang Ti (august sovereign), he being the mythical first emperor of China, and the inventor of the Chinese ideograph. The notes were printed in English on one side and entitled “The Republican China Military Bank Note”. Other notes were issued by the provincial rebels and read as follows in English and Chinese: “The Chinese Revolutionary Government promises to pay the bearer —— dollars after one year of its establishment in China on demand at the Treasury of the said government in Canton, or its agents abroad. 1st January, 1911. For President (sd.) Sun Wen.” It will be noted that the Christian calendar had now come into effect. The shops immediately took the notes at a premium, something unique in China, the land of financial discounts and chaotic exchange. Enthusiasm grew. For the first time in the history of modern China, a company of women took up arms and advanced with the lines. There were also many Red Cross corps of women, from Canton, Fuchau, Wuchang, Shanghai, etc.

We shall return to Nanking. On November 25th, by hard scraping at Canton, the rebels under General Ling brought up twelve field guns for six hours and fired on the imperial position on Tiger Hill and Lion Hill on the northwest, near the famous Ming tombs, which are outside the walls of Nanking (not to be confounded with the remainder of the Ming dynasty tombs which are at Nankou, northwest48 of Peking). Then 1,500 troops, led as usual by companies of queueless “Dare to Die” boys, many of whom were students in Nanking Protestant University (American), charged, and drove twice their number of imperialists from the strong lines, which were supplied with heavy Armstrong and Krupp four-point-seven and six-inch guns. Unfortunately, many shots struck the gate of the tombs, behind which the imperialists had also fortified themselves. The rebel navy now came nearer, despite the fire of Lion Hill, and prepared for the attack, as the rebel infantry drew their lines closer around the largest walled city of China. Guns were immediately brought up to breach the heavy walls and high gates and train on the Lion Hill and Tiger forts, which were within the Tartar city, and keeping the navy back.

On the left wing at Hankau the rebels were gaining successes. At an armistice, on November 24th, Yuan Shih Kai’s representatives told General Li (whom they met at the British consulate on the bund) that he had better trust the Manchus, as they could secure the hated Russian or Japanese intervention as in the old notorious days of 1896 and 1900. Li replied that the republicans had no trust any more in Manchu promises of reform or real permanent constitutionalism; that the usual relapse of the “Boxer sickness” would come! At Manila, Hongkong and Singapore, the Americans and British were preparing troops to be ready, as in 1900, to rush them to Tientsin to save the Peking legations and missionaries, if the Manchus, or Hunghutz, or Mongol brigands brought on a massacre to secure foreign intervention. Though America and Britain emphatically stand for non-intervention and non-partition of China, both these nations feared Russia and other powers which were hard to restrain. Britain’s action at this time in restraining ambitious Japan (greedy with the taste of Formosa,49 Korea and South Manchuria) can not be praised too highly. Wu Ting Fang, Doctor Sun and General Li of the republicans, from Shanghai, London and Wuchang respectively, issued proclamations that foreigners and missionaries were to be respected highly as the best friends of New China. In Shansi province the republicans, separated from their base, were having a hard time against the Imperial Sixth Division under General Sheng Yun, which had every advantage of succor by railway from Peking and the junction at Ching Ting. The imperialists bribed soldiers to assassinate General Wu of the republican forces operating in these northwest provinces. This was a terrible blow to reform.

On November 26th, the rebels, under General Ling Chang, attacked the strong hill forts above Nanking with determination. There was much firing of heavy guns from the river also, as the new navy of fifteen small vessels came up. Dogged charges were made across the open and up the zigzag of Purple Hill. The rebel losses were tremendous, and Chang the Second, of the imperialists, proved himself as grim a defense fighter as he was a ruthless leader of massacre. The rebel attack under General Ling Chang was brilliant and reckless. Who will sing the feats of the new Chinese arms,—yes, the Chinese, who the world said would never make soldiers, even if they had a great cause at heart. The fighting was not as magnificently solid and desperate as Pickett’s gray charge at Gettysburg, the Cuirassiers’ wild ride into the valley of death at Waterloo, Linievitch’s grim defense of Putiloff Hill, the shouting sweep of Oku’s dwarf Japanese up Nanshan Heights, or the silent plunge of Oyama’s ranks into the Liaoyang valley, or against the black Mukden lines. It was as determined, daring and brilliant, however, as any land engagement in the South African or50 Spanish-American Wars, and far braver and stronger than the theatrical engagements, with air-ship accessories, of the Italy-Tripoli War. The world’s critics must now change their criterions. A strong cause WILL make a strong battle anywhere the world over, no matter what the color of the soldier, or the cut or tint of his battle flag. The fighting now closed in on Nanking, the old capital of the Mings, the high-water city of the Taiping rebellion, and the rebels had a great deal to avenge, and a great deal to gain. To fail in the attack on Nanking meant a tremendous setback to the rebellion. Few reinforcements could come, for the fighting was in half a dozen provinces, and along a broken front extending from Chingtu to Hankau and Nanking, 1,000 miles, with railway transport service, foreign ammunition, money and sympathy, favoring the imperialists; and sea and river transport, and the sympathy of the British and American peoples favoring the rebels, who, of course, had no navy worth counting as yet.

The alarmed Manchu regent, Prince Chun, at Peking, now gave out his oath, in the name of the child emperor, Pu Yi (throne name, Hsuan Tung), sworn before the open heaven to God (Tien), before the Confucian ancestral tablets, and before Buddha’s image, as follows: “My policy and choice of officials have not been wise; hence the recent troubles. Fearing the fall of the sacred Manchu dynasty, I accept the advice of the National Assembly. I swear to uphold the Nineteen Constitutional Articles (demanded by the 20th Army Division at Lanchow) and organize a parliament, excluding the Manchu and Mongol nobles from administrative posts. The heavenly spirits of your forefathers will see and understand.” They understood! The educated Chinese of the central and southern provinces laughed; they had heard the like before, and besides, this oath was taken under51 compulsion of the Army League. The new rebel government in Kwangtung province, under Wu Hon Man, its president, was as yet unable to police the notorious pirate waters of the Si Kiang (West River), running far up country from Canton, and the large British tonnage, though armed, suffered. Chief Officer Nicholson, of the steamer Shui On, was killed in a private attack at Junction Creek on November 30th, which infuriated British Hongkong, which was holding its gunboats in leash. The large Chinese tonnage in fear tied up to the wharves and bund of Canton and the riverine ports. A trick of the West River pirates was to anchor a deserted stoneboat across the channel, and as the steamer slowed up, the snake boats and motor launches of the pirates dashed alongside from the creeks and cane-brakes. The most daring of these brigand chiefs was the notorious Luk, from whom we shall hear later. Everywhere else, however, as we have shown, for instance at Fuchau, the republicans were splendidly protecting foreign traders and missionaries.

I have said that the revolutionists’ line was too long to defend, with two principal sieges taking place three hundred miles apart. Peking understood this, and while the rebels reinforced their attack on the right flank at Nanking, the imperialists brought down reinforcements by railway to General Feng Kwo Chang, at Hankau, who at once attacked the rebel left flank in force, aiming to cripple the rebels by taking back the essential Hanyang arsenal. Hei Shan, Meit Zu and Tortoise forts were taken by machine and field gun fire and charges, and General Li’s rebel ranks fell back under severe loss. The retreating ranks didn’t carry their bird cages with them as the gentlemen soldiers of Chifu did in the China-Japan War of 1894! General Feng’s and General Wong’s imperialist troops, after breaking through52 the Tung Chi (East Messenger) gate and looting, now put the torch to the rest of Hankau, destroying the homes of a million people, and burning a hundred million dollars’ worth of property. Such an uncalled for, accursed outrage, such an unjustifiable act of wholesale arson against non-combatants has never been known. What would history have said had the Germans burned Paris, the British, Pretoria or the Americans, Manila? What should be said when the Manchu imperialists burned Hankau? Why didn’t they rather sell its tiles, its silk, its oils, its mountains of tea? They admitted that they needed money. At least there would have been no world’s loss of property. Hankau belonged to the world as much as to China. The Manchu must yet answer for this arson, for arson and murder are unjustifiable world crimes. Arson makes it harder and costlier for an American, a Briton, a German, a Frenchman, to live, as the wave of cost rolls on, as much as it makes it harder for the Chinese to live. In these days of world conservation, no nation should be allowed to put the firebrand to property because men are fighting or arguing over an idea. Shame on the sack and burning of Hankau by the Manchus. The British, Americans, volunteers and jackies, and other foreigners on the long bund, heaped up breastworks of even rice bags, and swept the riverside and race track on either flank in defense of the palatial foreign concessions. Here a blue-jacket, there a marine, and between an ununiformed volunteer clerk, the boys shouldered their Springfields, Lee-Enfields and Mausers, and held brave guard at the thinnest part of the long-stretched line of the white man’s empire of influence and trade.

On the same day the rebels were doing better on the right flank at Nanking, despite their long front of fifteen miles wide. The Ta Ping Men (North) gate of the city, and53 Tiger Hill fort within the walls were bombarded, and General Ling brought up the rebel guns to bombard General Chang the Second, who had contracted his lines to Purple, Lion, Tiger and Pei Che Kao forts in the northeast of the city, as far away as possible from the rebel fleet, part of which had to be recalled to Wuchang to assist General Li in his extremity. The imperialists held the strong Nan Men gate in the south of the city, and the Chao Yang fort at the east gate, which was fortified with two six-inch, two four-point-seven, and two three-inch guns, as well as Maxims, surely a deadly armament. In wise patience America and Britain still held their troops at Manila and Hongkong, respectively, but Japan was allowed, on the 26th of November, to rush 1,000 more legation and railway guards to Tientsin, and the railway guards along the Japanese railways in Manchuria were reinforced far beyond international conventions. Captain Sowerby, with the newly organized Foreign Frontier Guards, started from Peking to help the harassed missionaries who were being murdered in Singan and Taiyuen in the north. This astonishing expedition was remarkable for its intrepidity and its success. Within a month and a half Captain Sowerby’s men had gone from Taiyuen to Singan, gathered together forty missionaries, and following the course of the Wei and Yellow Rivers through the famous Tongkwan pass, brought his charges safely to Honan City on the Honan railway, from which place they could easily reach Tientsin. Lies began to spread like wildfire. Pirates committed atrocities along the West River section of Kwangtung province, and the Manchus and their sympathizers blamed it on the ineffective rebel organization of Canton. In the north, Hunghutz, Mongol and Boxer brigands murdered missionaries, rebels and non-combatants, and the republican sympathizers blamed it on the ineffective54 Manchu government. This is certain: the rebels desperately disliked foreign intervention, and only pleaded for time to win and organize, while the Manchus saw that, if driven to the last wall, massacre and lawlessness would help the retention of the dynasty by causing foreign interventions; and the Manchus were willing to lose all Manchuria to Japan and all Mongolia and Turkestan to Russia, to bring this about. The reader will note that none of the many old generals has appeared on the imperial side, as the battles narrowed down to engagements with modern weapons of precision and power, requiring generals trained in modern war. Generals Li and Hwang, of the rebels, opposed Generals Feng and Wong at Hankau, and Generals Ling and Hsu opposed Generals Chang and Tieh of the imperialists at Nanking. More foreign officers, especially Japanese and Germans incognito, served in the loyalist ranks than in the rebel ranks, and German ammunition and guns were freely served to the imperialists. After the battle of Hanyang, two Germans were found among the imperialists’ dead, and two of the imperialists’ wounded were Germans, one of them a colonel in the German army. The Japanese trusts, the princes of the Choshiu and Satsuma clans, who control the House of Peers and the Genro Council, and thus run the government by veto, did not want a republic in China. They feared it would bring about the control of the budget by the House of Representatives and real popular government in Japan, which country is now absolutely controlled by the aristocracy; for the Japanese Diet is no more representative of the overtaxed people than is the Russian Duma. They feared also that if the Chinese pope-emperor could fall, so could the Japanese pope-emperor who was no more holy. The German syndicates were also anxious55 to maintain their confiscatory privileges in Shangtung province, which were obtained from the Manchus. Dictator Yuan always preferred German instructors in his Pechili, Honan and Shangtung armies.

On November 27th, Yuan Shih Kai, the premier-dictator at Peking, had poured out the treasures of the Manchu empress dowager’s private chest, and well paid and well armed troops were rushed to Hankau. Generals Feng and Wong Chou Yuen had 30,000 modern drilled and equipped men, and the divisions were heavily supplied with precise artillery. Hankau City and Hanyang arsenal across the river were bombarded mercilessly, and the imperialists of Wong’s bloody third division, under cover of this artillery practise, crossed the Han River thirty miles up and flanked the left wing of the rebels, whose old Armstrong artillery, using percussion shells, was no match for the modern three and four-inch guns of the imperialists, who had the arsenals of the north and the Germans at Kiaochou to draw on. Neither was the rebel infantry equal, as half of their regiments had been drawn back to Nanking, 400 miles away, by river. The best the rebels could do was to oppose 15,000 men, with weak artillery, to 30,000 excellently equipped imperialists. The result was that the all-important Hanyang arsenal and world-wide known iron works were lost, and Generals Li and Hwang Hing had to retreat to Wuchang, the rebel capital across the Yangtze River, which is a difficult place to defend, as its flanks and rear are vulnerable. The result of this great reverse was that the lukewarm viceroys in the northern provinces, who had gone over to the rebels’ cause in the first flush of success, began to declare again for the Manchus. Shangtung province went back, and Yuan Shih Kai by the telegraph on this day got his own province of Honan to return to the imperial fold. Both of these are56 northern provinces. Premier Yuan now began rushing reinforcements down the Grand Canal and railway to Yangchow and Pukow, nearly opposite Nanking, so as to succor redoubtable General Chang the Second at Nanking, and enable him to again occupy Tiger fort. General Feng came over from Hankau to advise Chang. The plan was, by taking back the Hankau cities and Nanking, to turn both the left and right flanks of the revolutionists, rush their capital of Wuchang, and crumple up the rebellion in Shanghai. Everything in equipment, transportation, foreign men, money and artillery favored the imperialists. Everything in daring and enthusiasm favored the rebels, whose American-trained students recited the dictum of Herodotus on republicanism: “The Athenians, when governed by tyrants, were superior in war to none of their neighbors, but when freed from tyrants, became by far the first. This then shows that as long as they were oppressed they purposely acted as cowards, as laboring for a master, but when they were free every man was zealous to labor for the State.”

There was one thing the rebels were weak or uncertain in. If they destroyed China’s religion of aristocracy and king worship, what would they give in its place? Would they give Christianity (their leaders, Doctor Sun and General Li, being Christians), and a permanent satisfaction with the rule of a native president and congress over twenty-one provincial presidents and assemblies? It was a mighty task,—the greatest the world has known,—and few of the old viceroys and Manchuized Chinese literati of the Hanlin were at heart prepared for its radical solution. True, the rebels could staff the twenty-one provinces with advanced Kwangtung, Szechuen, Hupeh, Hunan and Kiangsu province men, but that was not republican home rule.

The aim and difficulty of the rebels was to maintain57 the new ideas against reverses in the provinces, which had developed few modern thinkers among the officials, who, like the troops, were looking for salary first and country afterward. Yuan, the premier-dictator, who had weighed it all up in Honan, said to himself, according to some southern critics: “Give me money enough for 100,000 splendid, modern-drilled northern men, and give me trunk railways. I’ll find men who will fight for whichever side pays their wages; we must have order, which is civilization’s first law.” Yuan was a believer in that truism that the radical reformers do all the work, and bear all the risk of reform, and that the “standpatters”, the moderate progressives and reactionaries, enjoy all the fruit and political offices. Differently from Sun, Yuan wanted office first and influence afterward. He was now active in soliciting foreign loans, securing $1,000,000 from Russia and Belgium, and the promise of $30,000,000 from Russia, Belgium and Japan, these being the pro-Manchu powers, while America and Britain represented pro-Chinese sympathies. The rebels were just as active in soliciting private subscriptions in America and the Straits Settlements, and 70 per cent. of the Chinese abroad sent a quarter of their fortunes to Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai for the republican cause.

However, it must be admitted that when the Manchus recruited Yuan Shih Kai, the Honanese, they secured a tower of strength, another Li Hung Chang, to a large degree a dictator, a believer in money, troops, quick trial by drumhead, and decapitation, a good servant of any master who would steadily employ him; a believer in dynasties more than peoples, a modern progressive but not an idealist or natural republican, a man who hated the words “turbulent liberty”, but who loved the word “order”; a statesman more like Diaz, Bismarck or Richelieu than like Washington or Lincoln.58 He had never traveled abroad like thousands of other Chinese officials. He could not speak or read English, and so knew little of the great documents of liberty and idealism in their first fire of the original. He knew that he was smashing rapid progress for the second time, just as he had gone against the reform Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and the palace reformers from Canton: Kang Yu Wei, Liang Chi Choa, etc., in 1898, and joined the reactionary “Boxer” dowager empress, Tse Hsi. He feared the rebel sympathizers might assassinate him, and he rode as dictator about Peking with a cavalry escort. His headquarters were in the modern Wai Wu Pu Building, which is fitted with steam heat, elevators, electric light, etc. There he gave regular interviews to the foreign press representatives, in emulation of the methods long practised by Sunyacius and Wu Ting Fang at Shanghai. He made the Manchus weak, too, for he matched their troops at Peking with his old Shangtung and Honan territorial troops, man for man. He also sent the turbulent, stubborn twentieth division, shorn of its commander, Chang, far to the eastward. The majority of the National Assembly had fled, and the Manchu princes would not come out of their bedrooms. If the rebels were to win now, they must produce even a stronger man than Yuan. Who was that man; where was he in the making?

It is quite orthodox not to despair ever of immemorial China, and to expect a great man to arise when politics is at its worst, for Confucius arose from the rivalry of sixteen states, and he formulated his political philosophy when he was a persecuted exile from his own state of Lu. When the republicans were most dejected, that great republican, the American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, in season and out of season, unofficially beseeched them to quit themselves like men. So large-hearted a man could59 not stand by and see men who were fighting for liberty droop at their guns. He cheered them; he talked to their students; he gave megaphone interviews to the world press and supported the discouraged propaganda, fearing naught the criticism which arose. He was a missionary, but more than that, he was a man, and an American. Some British missionaries, too, came in for criticism because they could not refrain from whispering in the ear of liberty the Cromwellian encouragement: “Be of good cheer.”

By November 29th the lack of money was thinning the lines of the rebel forces, and Dictator Yuan, at Peking, was growing in strength with small foreign loans and arms from Russia, Japan and Germany. The rebels, at Wu Ting Fang’s suggestion, in desperation, threatened to boycott the commerce of any nation making loans to the Manchu government, and a German compradore was shot down at Hankau as he was in the act of delivering arms over to the imperialists. The Manchu Tsai princes sold their art treasures for arms. The rebels melted the idols of the nation to make coin. In accord with the protocol of 1901, America now formally offered the Peking government 2,500 troops to assist in keeping the railway from Peking to Tientsin open to the sea. The Japanese had already landed their quota of this foreign force. Naturally the rebels looked on this landing of foreign troops in the Manchu section of the country as, to a degree, foreign aid to the Manchus, as it increased their prestige and sources of advice in the north. More subtle forces than those of arms began to work now on some of the rebel leaders, and the cause lapsed into darker days because of the lack of money. Dictator Yuan, in Peking, was exultant, and said to one member of the legations: “I give the rebellion eight more days to live; I expect to have 100,000 modern troops and a railway.” Professor60 E. H. Parker, the eminent sinologue, now of Manchester University, England, when a British consul in Korea, wrote of “Yuan’s Machiavellian character” in his book, John Chinaman. Even some of the Manchus agreed in the cry of the rebels: “Yuan is making himself dictator; he may seek the throne; he may split off Northern China; Peking is too near Russian Siberia.” He had sent the Manchu troops away from Peking, and gathered his old divisions (like Cæsar with his Thirteenth Legion) of Shangtung and Honan troops around him.

Yuan appealed to the provinces to send delegates to Peking to discuss a constitution, but the rebel provinces replied: “No National Assembly can discuss constitutional government with freedom while your troops, pounding their rifle stocks, stand at the door; remember the Parliaments of King Charles.” The rebels cried: “If Yuan and the Manchus win now, it is foreign money that does it. Why can’t we get foreign money; we’re the overwhelming majority of the people.” Some of the foreign governments replied: “We are only interested in trade and order; we can’t wait for you to fight this out, and possibly kill some of our missionaries; you must win quickly or we’ll stand by the powers that be.” The rebels replied: “Cromwell and Washington, Thiers and Grant didn’t win quickly, and if you let us lose now, we’ll fight it out again. You can’t withstand the constitutional rights of 400 million people for the sake of a dynasty of raiders, who seized and entrenched their throne with five million subsidized cavalrymen, who have now grown effete by subsidy. We are opposed to entrenched privilege just as much as you are. In Roosevelt’s words: ‘The land has got to be as good for all of us as it is for some of us.’ These minority Manchus must cease to usurp office, pensions,61 privileges and concession granting. We of the south are taxed without representation. If America could go to war with this as a cause, why can’t we?”

Yuan, under certain foreign advice, planned to throw a bridge across the Yangtze River at Hankau, and get his railway down into the heart of the southern rebel provinces. He believed in quick facilities for throwing his modern troops against uprisings, for his railway from Peking to Hankau had won him the present turn in the tide of affairs by enabling him to flank the long rebel lines. Oh! at this time, some cried, for an emperor warrior of the real Chinese, a descendant of the Mings; a descendant of the house of Confucius (the Duke Kungs); or a Washington-like president of a Chinese republic, who could get foreign loans. This was the cry that was arising against the return of the Manchu ghost, and the ominous shadow of a dictator. However, something had been won. The agitation and the battles had taught the sweet themes of deathless liberty and a new Chinese nationalism to thousands who had been supine, provincial, or anarchistic in their despair. It was recalled that Tau Sze Tung, the reformer and son of a Hupeh governor, who was beheaded in 1898, said on his way to the place of execution: “Martyrdom must always precede revolution; shall I not be the first martyr?” Liberty is never defeated, for each time she falls she makes her conqueror concede something, for she only falls to her knees and rises again. The reactionary empress dowager, Tse Hsi, after her victory in 1898, conceded reforms from 1900 to 1908, and it would be so with her successors, perhaps, after this lesson of protest. A plan was laid by some foreign bankers, and some Chinese, that if the republican government was not a success, a direct descendant of Confucius, one Kung, an American62 Presbyterian Christian of Shangtung province, would be backed for the throne in the hope that the Chinese race would flock to his banner.

On November 28th, 29th and 30th, the rebels, under Generals Hsu and Ling, made a master effort on their right wing, for which purpose they had weakened their left wing, allowing the two Hankau cities to go. The Canton bomb throwing levies and artillerymen went into battle singing this new hymn to Liberty, which is certainly rugged poetry of merit:

Nanking was attached in force. The American navy withdrew, while the small rebel navy of fifteen vessels, under the protection of captured forts holding back free play of the Lion fort guns, moved up within range to support the wide rebel attack of fifteen miles frontage. It will be remembered that General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, held some of the peaks of Purple Hill outside the northeast walls, and Yuwatei fort on the south, and nearly all the63 city. The rebels took the Tiger Hill fort and four of the northwest gates and forts, after bombardment by the Cantonese, sapping, and a spirited rush. Then Purple Hill and Yuwatei forts were bombarded and rushed after a terrific engagement, the imperialists, under Generals Chang and Tieh, making a last stubborn stand behind the ninety-foot high and thirty-foot thick walls of the vast city. The scene was terrible to view. Clouds of cannon smoke, lighted by terrific flashes of gun fire, made the night of November 30th memorable. The revolutionists, practising Wolfe’s strategy before Quebec was taken, by a secret path, rushed up a peak of Purple Mountain, above the imperial position, and shelled the imperial park of guns. Then in the night a charge, led by Colonel Wen, was made by the “Dare to Die” picked brigade, who carried hand bombs and swords. A wild retreat followed down the mountain. Even boys fought with the greatest bravery. The dying down of the terrific cannonade in the south meant that the republicans had rushed the Nan Men fort, and an explosion showed that they had successfully blown it up. Just as daylight broke, the strong Chao Yang, Tiger and Lion forts were again rushed and taken. The rebels were bitter, and there was great slaughter of the imperialists in revenge for General Chang’s merciless massacre of innocents when he declared a state of war at the beginning of the month. Great lawlessness overspread the land, the rebels as well as the imperialists being unable to establish a police force, while they fought out the reform questions. Even in British Hongkong, where 500,000 Chinese are ruled by 5,000 British, the authorities had to institute the public whipping of offenders, so as to keep disorder on the part of the lawless intimidated. Complaint increased along the Yangtze valley that the Germans were supplying64 arms to the imperialists at Hankau, as well as in the northern provinces, from their colony base of Kiaochou. Bitter complaint was also made that Baron Cottu was the go-between in asking Russia, France and Belgium for a $30,000,000 loan for the Manchus and Yuan Shih Kai, which would give the Russo-Asiatique Bank the same intrusive excuses that Russia availed of in 1898. The rebels were weak in Shensi province, and American missionaries were killed by the mob in Singan. Dictator Yuan threw the Sixth Division from Honan into Shensi to take the province back.

On Saturday, December 2nd, at ten o’clock, a memorable scene occurred at Nanking. General Chang the Second escaped across the Yangtze River through the Ta Ping gate on the morning of December 1st to Pukow, the northern railway terminus, after planting a mine under the Tartar General’s yamen, which was to be blown when the rebel General Hsu was caught in the trap at the capitulation. He also secreted eighteen other mines in the Tartar city, which had therefore to be burned so as to make the explosion safe. General Chao succeeded in command of the imperialists. The investiture was complete, and the situation was now hopeless for the defenders. Twelve brave Americans had remained on the scene, the great missionaries, Doctor Macklin, Mr. Garrett, Doctor Blackstone, President A. J. Bowen, of Nanking University, and others, and the vice-consul, Mr. Gilbert, who dramatically, with field glasses, watched the bombardment from a high graveyard within the city. They believed in saving blood (“Chiu Ming,” as the Chinese say), much provocation for revenge as there was on the side of General Hsu’s victorious men. They pleaded with Hsu for the first humanitarian surrender in Chinese civil war, as a thrilling example for all time that Chinese revolutionists, like George Washington’s and Oliver Cromwell’s65 men, were patriots and gentlemen at heart, and not mere feudists fighting under the name of a great cause.

General Hsu, with the advice of Generals Ling, Li and Hwang, and Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang, rose to the high level. He agreed to a surrender with honors, even guaranteeing the life of the notorious murderer of non-combatants, General Chang the Second. The negotiations took place under the guns of historic Purple Hill, while the panting troops held enthusiasm in control. Behind the walls the imperialists breathed hard, and the great populace of shopkeepers eagerly waited and watched the republican sun flags on Purple Mountain. Hurrah! a shout went up that lives would be guaranteed (“Chiu Ming”); yes, honor, too! Fling open the pounded, riddled iron “Great Peace” gate! The steel muzzles of the hot Armstrongs, the deadly four-point-sevens, the spitting Rexer rapid fire and three-inch Krupp guns on Purple, Lion and Tiger Hills, held their smoky breath like good hounds in leash, but straining. The generals and captains marked time; the troops craned their heads; the Cantonese artillery hitched up the limbers to the gun carriages. The American missionaries thanked God and led on the way of peace for a China that would never forget the moving scene, where forgiveness towered over revenge. Here they come, General Chao riding ahead of the doughty Shangtung territorials with their yellow dragon flags flying for the last time, and the bloody turbaned men of escaped Chang’s army. Ground arms and mark time! The victorious rebels kept their places, and under the fluttering red, white and blue sun flags of the new republic, looked on at the impressive acts. The great column of imperialists deployed with music playing, saluted and piled their arms before the feet66 of the victors, General Hsu sitting on horseback where the pacificators stood. Sun flags and white flags fluttered everywhere as the sign of rebel dominance. Who are these who now come up with reversed arms? They do not wear the German peaked caps, and the khaki uniform of modern troops, but the old turban and slovenly blue uniform of the ancient troops of China. They are Chang’s bloody old-style warriors, 1,000 of them, wearing white bands in deep contrition and as a seal of their lives from massacre. They, too, salute Hsu, the giver of their lives, some of them giving the unmilitary kotow instead of the modern salute. A cheer went up, the bands playing with greater spirit. Hold open the “Great Peace” gate! Victorious Generals Hsu and Ling, and their men, they of a hundred cold steel and bomb charges, blowing hot the trumpets of victory, and led by the shaven heroes, the “Dare to Die” regiment of immortal night charges, are on the ringing, clanging march for the ancient Ming city, which they have conquered, Nanking the cultured; Nanking the proud capital of capitals; Nanking where was the yamen of the illustrious Viceroy Liu Kun Yih; Nanking of the Taipings, and Nanking of the world’s widest republic! A friendly hand had touched off the mine under the Tartar general’s yamen, and the eighteen other dastardly mines, so that the victors should not be blown up treacherously in the crowning hour of their rejoicing. White flags flutter everywhere. Once the sign of death in China, they are now the sign of peace in China, as well as in the rest of the world. A shout of welcome goes up from the populace, who from the beginning, like all the rest of the central and southern provinces, have been in sympathy with the revolution. Generals Hsu, Ling and Hwang at Nanking then have indeed balanced for the rebels the imperialist victory at Hanyang won by General Feng.67 The rebels lost their left wing, which was turned. The imperialists have also now lost their left wing, which has been thus crumpled up at Nanking. New moves must now be made on the checker-board by Dictator Yuan at Peking.

Governor Chan Kwang Ming and President Wu Hon Man, of the Canton Assembly, sent out their torpedo-destroyers Wu Ying and Wupang, and with the British gunboats Robin, Sandpiper and Moorhen from Hongkong, and the American gunboat Callao, attacked the West River pirates, and patrolled that romantic river as far as the shadow of Wuchow Pagoda, 220 miles of varied temples, islands, gorges, reaches and river peaks. Mercantile vessels steamed up two by two, their wheel-houses sheathed with steel, their gun racks full, the barred hatches, which let air in but no smuggled pirates out, nailed down on the ’tween decks, a guard at each hatch and over each port, and double quartermasters manning the wheel. Commerce had gone back to medieval conditions, and it was exciting. Rich compradores of Hongkong, like Chan Kang Yu, of Douglas, Lapraik and Company, contributed 2,000 uniforms and outfits to equip a regiment of President Wu’s provincial troops. Part of the rebel navy now made a four-hundred-mile dash at forced draught to Wuchang and Hanyang, from Shanghai, to try to keep the successful right wing of the imperialists from crossing to the rebels’ temporary capital. If the gunboats could keep the loyalists engaged at Hanyang, it was not impossible that the rebels, if greatly reinforced from Canton, could turn the flank and strike the loyalists’ supply railway in the rear.

On December 5, 1911, new moves were made at Peking. Prince Chun, the regent father of the baby Emperor Pu Yi (his real and not his throne name), resigned in favor of two co-regents, one a Manchu, Prince Tsai Su, and the68 other a Chinese, Hsu Shao Ching. This was a buffer move to save the throne from the republican demands. For the first time in the three hundred years’ history of the Manchu dynasty, a Chinese was thus brought to share the regent’s power. Prince Tsai Su had been a grand councilor in the old days; and when a national assembly was granted he was put in as its president by Manchu power. Later he was president of the Navy Board, and president of the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board). He is a moderate progressive, a Manchu of the Manchus and related to the emperor. Hsu Shao Ching, a Pechili Chinese, is well known as a former minister to Russia and Germany, and the first president of the Chinese Eastern Railway. He was a grand councilor in the old days, a viceroy of Manchuria, and president of the Railway Board (Yu Chuan Pu) in charge of loans. He has visited America. The appointment of this republican general-in-chief was, of course, mere flattery, and he did not serve.

These moves on the recommendation of Dictator Yuan, who was an old enemy of Regent Chun, who exiled him, did not satisfy the rebels, who named Nanking as their permanent capital, called for delegates from all the rebel provinces, and pressed on the war. “The name is changed at Peking, but it is the same old game,” they said. A republican loan of ten million taels, bearing twelve per cent. interest, and sold at about eighty per cent. of face value, was sought at Shanghai, Wu Ting Fang seeking American subscriptions especially, for he kept reminding Americans: “You are the mother of republics; the greatest republic, as we will be the largest republic.” Wu also wired prominent American and British financiers and their governments, pleading that loans should not be made to the Manchu government, and respectfully warning that: “The republican rebels would remember69 if loans were made to fight their cause.” This really had a deterrent influence, for Americans and Britons were able to influence France to suspend financial action for a while. The American-educated Tang Shao Yi, Dictator Yuan’s chief assistant, now went to the rebel headquarters at Wuchang and Shanghai to interview General Li, Minister Wu and General Hsu regarding peace, and the rebels held sessions of delegates from the Yangtze, southern and western provinces. Kwangtung province began its republican organization, and sent up another quota of 3,000 modern troops from Canton, added to 10,000 previously sent, to reinforce General Li, who stood marking time at Wuchang against General Feng of the imperialists at Hanyang.

By this time the fine Tyne-built, gray Chinese cruiser Hai Chi, which sailed from New York in October, arrived at Shanghai, and amid wild rejoicing, such as only the southern Chinese can express, ran down the triangular yellow dragon and hoisted the square tri-color sun flag of the republican revolution. She was at once ordered to report at the arsenal with her heavy load of ammunition, which was a godsend to the revolutionists. This cruiser was the best known abroad of Chinese war vessels, and at once became the flagship of the rebel navy. She is armed with two eight-inch, and ten four-point-seven guns. On December 14th, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), with the American, Homer Lea, arrived safely at Penang, Straits Settlements, a hotbed of Chinese reform, which has from time to time sheltered all the reformers like Sun, Kang, etc., since the coup d’état in 1898. The rich foreignized Cantonese owners of tin mines have been loyal to reform from the beginning. When Sun arrived at Singapore on December 16th, a band of Chinese girls met him, each waving the tri-color of the revolution and of the emancipation of Chinese womanhood,70 and singing the Chinese Marseillaise, Chung Kwan. The Chinese wore no queues, and the caricatures which they distributed showed the pig, the dog, the monkey and the Manchu as all belonging to the races which wear queues! Who will say that the Chinese are not distinguished for humor! I have for years been trying to point out this quality in them.

The first wave of the revolution, which had died down somewhat by the Hankau defeat, had rolled on even into far mountainous Tibet, and Gyangze, a walled and fortified town on the trade route between Lhasa and Darjeeling, fell before the revolutionists on December 14th. Gyangze will be remembered for the stand it made against Sir Francis Younghusband’s brilliant campaign in 1904 to open up the way from India to Lhasa, and also for the operations in its neighborhood by General Chao Ehr Feng, who drove the sacred plotting Dalai Lama for the first time out of China into India in the startling campaign of 1910.

During this week the Yangtze River for six hundred miles presented a remarkable scene, as Tang Shao Yi, the emissary of Dictator Yuan, sailed down to Shanghai to discuss peace terms with the revolutionists at the Town Hall at Shanghai, which was guarded by British, Sikh and other troops of the international settlement. At Hankau the last yellow dragon flag of the imperialists was seen, as the imperial legates, Tang Shao Yi, Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chih, on the steamer Tung Ting, sailed between the new navy of the rebels on patrol of the great river, which was now their six hundred miles of front. The fine cruiser Hai Chi, with New York Chinese among the crew, the companion cruisers Hai Yung and Hai Sun, the gunboats Kwang Kang, Kwang Poa, On Nam, etc., headed the republican fleet, which flew the red, white and blue sun flag. The armistice was not kept in Shansi71 or Shensi provinces by the imperialist general, Sheng Yun. When the pourparler opened, the six powers, at America’s suggestion, informed Wu and Tang that they would appreciate a settlement, because neither side seemed to be able to keep down piracy, it being as bad along the Liao River in the north as along the Si valley in the distant south. It will be recalled that the Manchus of Shansi province early in the campaign assassinated the great rebel general, Wu Lu Cheng. It was now rumored that the Chinese had induced Tuan Fang’s troops in the same province to murder that noble Manchu, who was the greatest friend the foreigners had among the Manchu officials in the dark “Boxer” days of 1900. Tuan had been governor of Pechili and Szechuen provinces, head of the railway development in the Yangtze basin, and above all head of the famous constitutional committee (Hsien Cheng Pien Cha Kuan), which, in 1906, went abroad to study foreign parliaments and congresses. He was the noblest of the Manchus, a repetition in character of Prince Kung of Victorian days, and he died like a modern hero. “Kneel and be decapitated,” his troops demanded. “You’ll shoot or cut me down where I stand,” he declared. Individual virtue does not belong exclusively to any organization.

The rebels went on with their work in calling up troops from Premier Wu Hon Man at Canton, and in equipping aeroplanes, run by Americanized Chinese, for a possible air attack on Peking, if the peace conference should break up in failure, and Hankau could be won back. The missionaries agreed to flee to the Methodist compound which adjoined the legation quarter in the Tartar city of Peking, on a signal being given by rocket. The foreigners in the northern provinces were dubious that a republican government could be established, but it must be remembered that many of72 these foreigners were more surprised than the rest of the world that the reformers ever shouldered arms for reform and declared for a republic on October 10, 1911. The foreigners of the northern provinces were accordingly at first largely in sympathy with the retention of the Manchu, under a limited monarchy system, and the election of Yuan as premier. Many of the foreigners of Peking and Tientsin tried to impose their views upon the foreigners of Shanghai and Hongkong, who naturally knew more about the reform and republican movement in China, for the initial reformers of China all came from Canton, Penang, Manila and Shanghai, where they were influenced by British Hongkong, Singapore and America. The income of the imperial authority had been levied mainly on the southern provinces, which had least representation on the Peking Boards (Pus) since the coup d’état of 1898. Taxation again without representation! The doubt in the minds of the reformers was that if the Manchu was retained, he might revert to his old faults of by turns oppressing China, and by turns looting it, for certain foreign concessionaires. True, said some, peace could be fixed up now, and matters fought out again, if faith was not kept. But, said others, by that time certain foreigners will have given Yuan Shih Kai an army of forty divisions with a fortified base at Peking in touch with the Russian railway, a navy of battleships, 2,500 miles of new flanking railways down into the south, and a full exchequer box, while the new parliaments may be without a Cromwell, a Pym, a Hampden, a Jefferson, a Franklin, a Lincoln. It was a great question, the largest any nation has ever handled, and the one answer was: “Well, then, develop your Cromwells, Pyms, Hampdens, Jeffersons, Franklins, Lincolns, out of such timber as you have in Sun, Wu, Kang, Li, etc., and let us have peace.”

73 There are two things that the writer believes and prays for, viz.: that China will remain a republic, and will become a republic based on the worship of Christ and the study of the Christian’s Bible. Such a wonderful nation of four hundred millions, preserved from the immemorial past as one people, must have been preserved for some providential purpose, to put irresistible might behind certain altruistic world ideas. Are those ideas the giving of a truer republicanism, and a more unselfish Christianity than we have exemplified, to mankind? Japan made one irremediable and lamentable mistake; she has ignored the fact that the strength of the West is not in fleets, but in Bible knowledge, certain trusts and occasional wars notwithstanding. It will be remembered that the secretary of the Board of Rites, Wang Chao, recommended to the reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, in 1898, that Christianity should be named as the state religion. President Sun and General Li of the republicans are, as I have said before, a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian.

As the friendly note from the six powers to the imperialists and revolutionists at Shanghai was, at America’s and Britain’s suggestion, identical, it was virtually a tentative recognition by the powers of the belligerents, which happy result the latter had been trying to obtain at Minister Wu’s urgency for over two months. Yuan threatened to fight if a republic was insisted on, and he seized a great part of the Manchu hoards at Peking and Tientsin, under the name of a forced loan. He needed two million dollars a month to pay the Manchu and northern bannermen. Four of the powers were in favor of lending Yuan money, but the rebels said, if you don’t also lend us money, we will boycott your trade in the central and southern provinces, and you know that most of the foreign trade emanates from Southern74 China, that is, your tea and silk come from that section, and your exports go there in exchange. If you want to know what a trade boycott by us means, ask the Japanese, who will recall the “Tatsu Maru” incident. The rebels also threatened that if loans were made by foreigners to the imperialists, and the rebels were successful, the latter would repudiate these loans. This was the most brilliant move to date of the republican diplomacy. The rebels now made a surprising and broad-minded move. They wanted to save bloodshed. They knew that a Paul converted had been made out of a stubborn Saul unconverted; that some reformers were in their day stanch “standpat machine” men! They offered Yuan the presidency of a republic, with Sunyacius as vice-president possibly, and Wu as a possible foreign minister, until real elective assemblies could form parties, and elect their nominees. Yuan’s emissary at the Shanghai Conference, Tang Shao Yi, was impressed with the fact that Yuan and others in North China had no idea how strongly the republican idea had seized on the rebel provinces. Tang, it will be remembered, is a graduate of an American university, and he is even more progressive than his patron, Yuan. In making overtures to Yuan, Sunyacius and Wu of the rebels were showing that they were strong and calm diplomats, who could waive a detail to win a general cause. Recent Occidental politics exhibit no such example of the suppression of factiousness. Wu, however, did not hesitate a minute to tell the six powers that if they loaned money to the north, or interfered, they would only prolong the war indefinitely.

On December 21, 1911, the line-up was as follows. Yuan, three of the powers and some of the world’s financial syndicates, in favor of a monarchy or war, with a loan to the north, arrayed against the republicans. Wu, ever persistent75 in demanding a republic, or renewing the war, with a trade boycott in the southern and central provinces, against any foreign nation that loaned the north money. Some of the American journals, surprisingly, opposed the republic. For instance, on the very day that Doctor Sunyacius was named president, the New York Outlook (December 30, 1911), with snap judgment, stated that a Chinese republic could, would and should not be set up at present, and further that “Americans would do well to throw all their influence on the side of a constitutional monarchy”. Nine-tenths of the Outlook’s readers doubtless thought that if Homer could sometimes nod, such surprising retrogressive words as these might be forgiven the generally progressive Outlook. Similarly in England, the large London house of Montagu, which has been prominent in very profitable railway loans to China under the Manchu régime, issued a circular stating its “satisfaction” when the republicans lost Hankau to General Feng, under atrocious circumstances of unforgivable massacre and unnecessary arson. Memoria longa, lingua brevis! Some of Britain’s diplomatic force, arguing like the reactionaries of George the Third’s day, said that they favored a monarchy because India might want a greater share in self-government than she had, forgetting that a wide-awake and fully developed India meant greater trade for Britain. Three monarchical nations said that they would favor destroying the American doctrine of the “non-partition of China” and splitting the four dependencies and the eight provinces north of the Yellow River from the rebel provinces.

Now, if ever, was the time for America to act, to give the largest and oldest nation on earth true freedom, and stop massacre and the sowing of eternal hate between the yellow and the white races. If the republican idea was76 decapitated by three of the monarchical nations willingly, and two of the constitutional nations unwillingly, revulsion would sweep through the camp of the republicans, and foreigners and missionaries would be slain by the mobs, who always act before they think the important second time. This was just what the plotting Manchus had been endeavoring to bring about since October 10, 1911. “Make the republicans, or the mob in their provinces, massacre; that will bring in foreign interference, which will save the Manchu dynasty.” In return, the Manchus promised certain foreign interests almost any concessions which they might ask for. They could loot China, the mineral Eldorado of the ages, and exploit the labor host of a new Goshen. Perfide! ye who are retroactive at this late day after all the lessons of the crowded past, and who love Money more than Man. Hail! American republic, the mother of republics, and hail, too, the germinating Chinese republic! Even Count Okuma, the most liberal of the Japanese, the founder of the enlightened Waseda University, of whom most sympathy was expected with China’s effort for freedom, came out with a pessimistic article at this time, prophesying the “failure of the republic, years of degeneration, and an inevitable new dynasty”. Did he mean that Japan would supply one, after first absorbing two provinces of Manchuria?

Yuan, the dictator, began moving his divisions, the Twentieth, now rid of its reform general, Chang Shao Tsen, being sent from the Lanchow camp to a point north of Tientsin, to split the republicans of the three provinces of Manchuria from joining the republicans of Shangtung. Sunyacius, with Premier Wu Hon Man, of Canton, now left Hongkong for Shanghai, and the world stood back and waited for the lightning to come out of the clouds. The77 half million Chinese of British Hongkong gave them a rousing send-off, which was at heart approved by the five thousand British merchants and troops of Hongkong, for Hongkong knew what a trade boycott in the southern provinces meant. Canton had now struck a swinging pace, and Premier Wu had sent bodies of troops, particularly his fine artillery and bomb-throwers, to strengthen the two wings of the rebels under Generals Li, Ling and Hsu at Wuchang and Nanking, respectively. Among these troops were one thousand students recruited by the Fong Yuen College at Canton. God send great things to earth! God save liberty for China, and keep progress from slipping back a thousand years!

So far, the strongest move in the rebellion was the declaration of Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang that if Britain joined the three monarchical powers in loaning Yuan money, a trade boycott would be instituted in the southern and central provinces against foreign trade, of which Britain held the largest share. This won Hongkong, and Hongkong was able to hold British diplomacy on Downing Street, London, and indirectly on Legation Street, Peking. It was a master move, as brilliantly effective as Napoleon’s Berlin Decree of November 21, 1806, blockading British commerce, and only for it the rebellion would have been swamped by four of the six nations arming and provisioning Yuan, the Manchu and the north. Whatever comes in the next few years, this cry surely is forever in the heart of Lincoln’s and Washington’s America: “Long live the republican idea of distributed wealth and distributed liberty in good old China, America’s yellow brother across the narrowing purple Pacific.” On Christmas day, 1911, the steamship Cleveland, from New York and San Francisco, with78 five hundred American world tourists, arrived at Hongkong. The republican army immediately invited them to Canton to see their barracks at the Five Hundred Genii Temple and elsewhere, the resolution saying: “as America was the first country to become a republic.” Auspiciously on December 26th, Sun Yat Sen arrived at Shanghai, two war-ships escorting his launch up the river from the Wusung bar. He immediately took an automobile at the bund wharf and proceeded to Wu’s residence, where conferences were held, and Nanking decided on as the provisional capital of the fighting republic. The republican Chinese were delighted that the Americans had eleven war-ships at Shanghai.

On December 26th, Yuan and the Manchu princes wired Tang Shao Yi from Peking that they would leave the decision as to a form of government to a national convention of the twenty-one provinces, the delegates to meet as soon as possible. The harmony which prevailed in the conferences at Shanghai between Sun, Wu and Li’s representatives was delightful to those interested in Chinese progress. The harmony which prevailed between the missionaries and the revolutionists was also inspiring. In a village of Hupeh province (Taiping) the people insisted that Mr. Landahl, of the Netherlands Mission, should head the local Safety League which was maintaining order, and they pushed that astonished gentleman to the head in the successful pursuit of notorious pirates who were injuring the causes of both revolutionists and imperialists. One notorious brigand of Honan province, named Wang, collected a band of 2,000 robbers, and at Harbin in Manchuria a band of Hunghutz captured an imperial treasure train with half a million of money. Vast preparations should now have been made to protect Chinese and foreigners in the north from massacre,79 if the National Assembly should on convening declare for a republic. There could not but be bitterness when only 17 million Manchus abdicated the rule of 400 millions Chinese, and the widest and most absolute throne the earth has known, wider than Pharaoh’s, Alexander’s, Xerxes’, Cæsar’s, Charlemagne’s, Baber Mogul’s, or Tsar’s. The problem of ruling 17 million Manchu discontents was a greater one than the long dominion which the subsidized Manchus had enjoyed over 400 millions of disunited and supine Chinese. The republic of China has mighty problems before it. Let all the world help her; above all, let education, hope and creature comforts be bestowed as quickly as possible. There is glorious altruistic work ahead of everybody for the whole of one’s life.

As the republicans solidified their government about Nanking, the enemies of China—the land-grabbing nations—who forgot their old antipathies and quarrels and acted in accord in their scheme of aggrandizement, prepared to strip her of her vast dependencies, Russia towering over Turkestan, Mongolia and Northern Manchuria, and Japan gathering about Lower Manchuria, a secret treaty between the two having been effected. No place was to be reserved for the great Chinese people to accommodate their emigration, as the size of farms should be necessarily increased throughout the land. The American and British doctrine of the “non-partition of China” was to be struck down. America, Britain and China will remember, for a Chinese republic can yet gather an army of millions to take these provinces back, and American and British naval forces, as a world’s altruistic police, can, if necessary, stand at the doors of the Baltic and Black Seas and remind Russia of her broken promises and greed. What a conflict there will yet be, won either by a80 swamping emigration, or by an engulfing army, as Russia, Japan and China come nearer together in the old Chinese dependencies of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. Mongolia, with her capital at Urga, and Turkestan, with her capital at Kashgar, practically seceded on December 29th under Russian intrigue. Religious Khans and Lamas, named by Russia, drove the Chinese ambans out and took charge, a Russian railway policy to break across country and control Peking being at once planned. The Manchu dynasty, with a following of from ten to seventeen million Manchus, sheltered in either Mongolia, Pechili province, Shangtung or Manchuria, under the egis of either Russia, Japan, or other nations, will always be a covert weapon for intrigue, which the bureaucrats of those nations can use against a Chinese republic.

On December 29th, the military convention at Nanking—one vote to a province—voted unanimously for Sun Yat Sen as the first president of the provisional republic, until elective assemblies could meet. The civil delegates from fourteen of the provinces, meeting at Shanghai, also agreed on Sun Yat Sen as provisional president. The armistice was now extended, President Sun calling upon the imperialists to respect the neutral zone between the opposing armies. The rise of President Sun was astounding and his task immense. From an impoverished propagandist and exile, wandering over the earth for a whole lifetime, with the Bible in one hand and Progress and Poverty in the other, he suddenly became the head of the largest nation upon the earth, and the government of that nation he was expected to change from being the most absolute monarchy into the freest of republics. His career is the most inspiring example that was ever presented to reformers in the world’s history.81 They say of typhoons and of troubles, that when things are at their worst, only a change for the better can be looked for, and so it has been with President Sun’s career.

At the peace conferences at Shanghai, the imperialists pressed for some northern city as the venue of the convention of provincial delegates, and the republicans pressed as strongly for Shanghai, because in distinction from Peking, it was removed from Russian influence. Yuan refused to disband his army and gave notice that if the republicans advanced, he would order an attack. The imperialists then tried to get the republicans to agree to pay the northern troops a sum of money in return for laying down their arms, but the republicans wisely refused to provision the imperialists in this way for a continuance of the fighting. They did, however, offer to pay for the surrender of artillery and ammunition. Yuan held many fruitless conferences with the Manchu princes and dowager, offering to continue the war if they would give up their hoards, but of the hundreds of millions of dollars of their wealth, all he could get was a subscription of $100,000 from the old lion, Prince Ching, who has been the mentor of the Manchus since Prince Kung died in the 60’s. The whole of the south, in emulation of the Christian president, Doctor Sun (Sunyacius), began cutting off their queues and wearing khaki, as a sign that servility to the Manchus was ended. Committees of persuasion, the members of which carried shears, operated even in Yaumati and Kowloon (mainland sections of Hongkong colony). The Chinese were approached and asked to go to the barbers. If they refused, shears were drawn and the ancient badge of servitude to the Manchu, the queue, was severed. The Chinese of Bangkok, Siam, were humorous in their methods. The republican tri-color was hoisted to82 the peak, and two hundred sheared queues were hoisted under it, up the flagpole! Doctor Sun, president, named the following as his provisional cabinet:

Minister of Justice, Wu Ting Fang, formerly Minister to the United States, and reformer of the Chinese penal code;

Minister of Communications, Posts and Commerce, Wen Tsung Yao, American educated, formerly Amban in Tibet, unusually able official;

Ministers of Finance, Chin Tao Chen, and M. Y. Sung, Manager Chung Hua rebel bank. I know both well.

Minister of Navy and Marine, General Hwang Hing, second in command at Hankau, and Sun’s personal representative while he was absent in America and England;

The subject of adopting the Christian calendar was discussed and decided on, though it was decided to please Chinese pride by letting the republican bank-notes, issued in December, stand. These notes went back to mythological times, and named 1911 as the 4609th year since the first Emperor Huang Ti! The custom of dating the year with each Manchu emperor’s succession was of course at once discarded in fourteen of the rebelling provinces. President Sun assumed charge at Nanking and immediately collected a strong garrison in the old capital of China. In his former83 work, The Chinese, the author strongly recommended the change of the capital of China farther south so as to be nearer the center of China, closer in touch with the majority of the people who popularly desire the change, and safely removed from Russian influence and possibility of attack by Mongolian railway. Preparations were at once made to bring finance, education, army, navy and a federal government under the control of the coming parliament, the provincial parliaments already being in tentative operation in half of the provinces. We have already quoted the text of notes issued by the republican government of Kwangtung province. Dictator Yuan, at Peking, in a temporary huff, wired that he would not recognize Tang Shao Yi as his representative any more at the Shanghai and Nanking conferences, and that he would only confer by telegram. He demanded that Peking, and not Nanking, should be named as the meeting place of the proposed national assembly, which was to select the form of government. This really broke up the peace conferences, and Wu Ting Fang so informed the foreign governments.

Yuan then called upon the Manchu princes and royalty for money, saying that if they would draw two millions a month for six months from their foreign banks, he could carry on the war. Fearing that the republicans would send an army by sea from Shanghai to Chin Wang Tao (where the Great Wall and Peking railway meet the sea, and the only ice free port in the north) to break Manchuria from the north, and march on Peking, Yuan sent an army to Chin Wang Tao, but several of the Chinese regiments rebelled. The republicans had arranged for such a transport service, as they had seized the ships of the government steamship line, the China Merchants’ Steamship Company. At the Lanchow camp east of Peking, several84 Chinese regiments also rebelled, and there was much bloodshed in putting down the riots. Yuan had five strong northern armies, one under General Feng at Hanyang, one under Chang the Second north of Nanking on the railway, one under Sheng Yun operating in Shensi and Shansi provinces, and an army in both Shangtung and Honan provinces. It looked as though the war would continue, the republican strength being mainly in that they threatened, if successful, to repudiate any loans made after January 1, 1912, by foreigners to the Manchus. Hongkong now sent the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Indian Regiment of Baluchis, a battalion of the Yorkshires and a battery of English garrison artillery to Shameen Island, Canton, to protect the famous foreign settlement and assist President Wu, of Canton, in maintaining order. The island was fortified with sand-bags and barbed wire entanglements. The Hongkong Chinese were enthusiastic for a republic, and the British government did not prohibit their rejoicing. Their processions included the use of automobiles and brass bands. What a changed Hongkong, which used to hide its head in a monster dragon and parade the streets!

President Sun now informed foreigners that while he could employ them in all the remainder of China’s development, he could not do so in the republican army, as the republicans desired to be free of suspicion, and did not want to create foreign entanglements or embarrassments. The foreign nations divided up the Tientsin-Peking railway, and foreign men of war, independent of the republican navy, patrolled the whole rebel front from Shanghai to Hankau. Germany despatched another full regiment to Tsingtau in addition to the large garrison already there, America alone up to January 7, 1912, had held her troops at Manila. When the imperialists were evacuating Hanyang on January 4th,85 a regiment broke parole, necessitating an attack by General Li’s republicans, which attack was promptly and effectively sent in. On the right wing the republicans advanced up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, forcing General Chang the Second to withdraw to the north. President Sun was now active in appeals to the foreigners for recognition of the republic, his manifesto of January 5th, reading as follows:

3. Foreign loans and indemnities incurred by Manchus up to October 13, 1911, will be recognized.

6. We will remodel laws; revise civic, criminal, commercial and mining codes; reform finances; abolish restrictions on trade and commerce; insure religious toleration; and cultivate better relations with foreign peoples and governments.

It will be noted that President Sun does not here take up that difficult question, the nationalization of railways, the premature forcing of which by the five banking nations on the Manchus largely precipitated the preliminary revolution in Szechuen province in September, 1911. When the republican finances will permit just compensation of provincial owners of railways, the nationalization of trunk railways will be a proper and opportune project, but confiscation of railways by a promissory note at sixty per cent. of investment, as was offered by the Manchus to the Kwangtung province owners, can only bring revolt. By the end of the first week in January, 1912, certain of the banking86 groups and powers, fearing that there would be a long civil strife, attacked the American doctrine of the “non-partition of China” and canvassed for two Chinas, the northern section to be retained by the Manchu monarchy, or a republic with Yuan at the head. Even this would bring its difficulties. To mention one of a thousand, where would the dividing line be, the Yellow River or the Yangtze River? The feeling of the republicans on this division can be gaged by asking what was the feeling of the Americans on the subject of secession. On January 8th the republicans approved a heavy bond issue, based on internal revenue (the customs being already pledged by the Manchus for foreign loans made before October 13, 1911, which loans the republicans recognized), and bearing eight per cent. It was also decided to put the currency on a gold basis, and though one-dollar, fifty-cent and subsidiary silver coins would be issued, they were to be only tokens, and their face value was to be secured by a gold reserve, as in the case of America’s and Japan’s silver coinage, which is only a token system.

On January 12, 1912, Major-General Franklin Bell despatched on the transport Logan from Manila the First Battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, to take care of that part of the Peking-to-the-coast railway allotted to the Americans. This was a confession of two things: first, that the Manchus might not be able to restrain the “Boxer” mobs in the north, and second, that it was expected that the republicans would be able to come north with their three old and two new armies when hostilities should be opened. Part of General Bell’s thrilling and characteristic American speech to the troops should be quoted: “The Chinese are worthy of a square deal. Treat them in a worthy way.” The expedition was a trying one, and was provided with cords of fire-wood. The enervated troops left the hot87 humid climate of Manila for the cold windy climate of North China. The news that came from the Lanchow camp at this time was most distressing, to the effect that Yuan’s imperialists were massacring and torturing republicans by the fiendish lin chee (cutting into a thousand pieces, the victim being placed in a cage). Men who had adopted the republican badge of the New China by cutting off their queues were being slain. Even the Red Cross attendants were attacked. Clearly the Manchu troops at Lanchow had gone out of hand and become a mob. The American Bishop Bashford now telegraphed from Shanghai to Dictator Yuan, urging the Manchus to abdicate for humanity’s sake. General Hwang Hing, minister of war, was now arranging for five republican armies to march north and converge on Peking. These armies were:

Generals Hsu and Ling, with the right wing, from Nanking, through Kiangsu and Shangtung provinces, along the railway.

A new army, by transport and cruisers, from Shanghai to Chifu, or some northern port.

The combined republican forces of Shensi and Shansi provinces to march northeast.

The Chinese are exceedingly excitable when aroused from their usually placid state. This is because their experience is limited, and they have not yet learned to adapt themselves rapidly to new conditions. They therefore commit suicide in surprising numbers under the sudden pressure of anger, shame, poverty, trouble, uncertainty and fear. At this time of revolution, especially in the northern provinces88 of Shensi and Shansi where the republicans were strongly opposed, many officials, widows of soldiers and the poor, jumped into wells, swallowed balls of opium, or begged their friends to strangle them.

On January 15th, the republicans sent three cruisers and three transports, with three battalions, machine and mountain guns, from Shanghai to Chifu, in preparation for a converging attack on Peking, America sent in the cruiser Cincinnati, and the Japanese sent in two cruisers to watch proceedings and protect the foreign colony, which, however, was not menaced. On January 19th, Foreign Minister Wang Chung Wei sent a despatch to the powers, requesting recognition of the republic “to avoid a disastrous interregnum”. On the same day the republic from Shanghai sent the following drastic demand to Yuan and the Manchus:

2. No Manchu to participate in the provisional government until the country is quiet.

4. Yuan can not participate in the provisional government until the republic has been recognized.

1. I have taken an oath to oust the Manchu rulers and restore peace to the country before resigning.

2. I have taken an oath to establish a republic in China, and if I consented to the proposal laid down by Yuan (to resign and put him in charge) I would be foresworn. I am convinced that a republic is not only practicable, but that it would be the best thing for China. Those (monarchical nations and syndicates) asserting otherwise know nothing about the Chinese. This republic is now an established fact. Nothing can swerve me from what I consider my duty to89 my fellow countrymen. Undoubtedly the best thought unanimously supports the republic.

5. We are confident of the righteousness of our cause and the superiority of the military strength of the republicans. If Yuan Shih Kai persists in obstructing, our armies will be instructed to march northward.

On January 21st the Manchus persisted in not abdicating, and contemplated appointing the minister of war, Yin Tchang, and the president of the War Board, Tieh Liang, both Manchus of the ultra type, as dictators over Yuan. This was in contravention of the agreement of Nineteen Constitutional Articles between the Manchus and the old National Assembly, pressed by the soldiers of the Lanchow camp in October, 1911, that no Manchus were to be placed in authority until a constitutional government was established.

While the world was watching the camps of war, where the men stamped eager for blood, two million women and children, in three other parts of the land were starving from flood, famine and the absence of their bread providers. Look on the map at the old bed of the Yellow River across the middle of Kiangsu province; the valley of the Hwei River across northern Nganhwei province, emptying into Lake Hangsu; and Wuhu, on the Yangtze, where the flooded river tried to break east across the flat country to Shanghai, instead of arching north to Nanking. Not since 1906 have crops or homes been long above water in these crowded districts. What the missionaries mainly, and others (native90 and foreign) of the Central China Relief Committee, with headquarters at Shanghai, have done, a library of books could not adequately tell. Part of the story would be the relief trains of gift flour which left Minneapolis and was transported free across the Pacific by the United States army transport Buford; and more of the story would be the work of the American Red Cross; the grand missionary periodicals of America; and the Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce, which put business aside for philanthropy. Their altruism, their manly effectiveness, their human kindness that has been so deeply Christian and Confucian (as you look at it from both an Occidental and an Oriental standpoint) has been moving beyond words, and it is largely owing to this action on the part of America that the hand of the war-inflamed Chinese was stayed against foreigners in this campaign. Their women said: “Don’t strike the white physicians and bread-givers; the men who speak in mercy and are clothed in altruism.” The soldiers of the Eighth Division of Hupeh men, under General Li, at Wuchang, in bidding the American Episcopal missionaries good-by, cheered them with these words: “Americans are our brothers.” Never had such a scene of suppressed emotion and earnestness occurred in China. I have already recited General Li’s manifesto to his men concerning the treatment of missionaries. None was more surprised than the good missionaries themselves. From their experience in the “Boxer” campaign of 1900, the missionaries expected unflinching loyalty from their converts, but they did not look for the highest Geneva Convention amenities from the new levies of the revolutionary soldiers. It was really astonishingly delightful. But on second thought, it might have been seen that it was only the first fruits of the seed sown long ago by the missionaries91 themselves, and now being garnered after many days when the sowing had been almost forgotten.

Reports came from Peking that the boy emperor, Pu Yi, was utterly unconscious of trouble and the tottering of the oldest and widest throne on earth, in all this ebb and flow of war and intrigue. Deserted by his guardians, parent and tutors, he was left most of the time in the Forbidden City with eunuchs, who humored his every whim, with the result that his temper took on true Manchu characteristics. When opposed, he threw the first thing at hand at those near him. When the food displeased him, he cracked the dishes over the heads of his kneeling servitors. The Break-Up of China indeed, but by another author than Lord Charles Beresford!

On January 26, 1912, the armies got in motion again, one corps leaving Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, to checkmate the republican expedition which had landed at Chifu. Up the Nanking-Tientsin railway, General Chang the Second, of the imperialists, and General Hsu met in an engagement at Kucheng, in northern Nganhwei province, and the former was defeated. At Wuchang, General Li’s Hupeh forces, reinforced with Cantonese troops, got in motion to meet General Feng’s imperialists up the Peking-Hankau railway. Large consignments of Mauser and Krag rifles and ammunition for Krupp guns, ordered from German firms for the imperialists, on this day passed through St. Petersburg on their way to Peking by the Siberian railway. On January 28th, the provisional republican Senate of forty-two members (three each from fourteen rebel provinces) convened at Nanking in foreign clothing and without queues. A remarkably enthusiastic scene occurred at the close of President Sun’s address,92 which address urged unity. The members all rose and cheered for the republic, while a modern band played martial music. The republicans for the first time in modern history instituted the use of a remarkable regiment of bomb-throwers. They went to the front with large canvas bags of dynamite bombs hanging from their shoulders. It required exceptional bravery to enlist in such a corps, as when a bag was hit by an imperialist’s bullet, the explosion not only shattered the bomb-thrower, but detonated the bags of his fellows if they were near. This corps was uniformed in the British military peaked cap, and they wore tunics and puttees, and had no queues.

By February 3, 1912, the Manchus had fully discussed abdication. It was proposed that the sacerdotal succession should be maintained, thus continuing the famous Chou and Confucian sacrifices and ancestor worship among the Manchus. This would reduce the Manchu emperor to a Confucian pope, similar to the Mikado before he conquered the Shoguns, and similar to the Taoist pope at Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province, and the Buddhist popes at Urga, in Mongolia, and Lhasa, in Tibet. The Manchus also stipulated that their hereditary titles should remain. This was a foolish move, as it removed them more than ever from participation and influence in the social body, just as the private retention of titles keeps the descendants of the old French nobility hopelessly divorced from power in republican France. The republicans again offered Yuan Shih Kai the presidency, with Sun Yat Sen as premier, this being a union of the democratic principles in the American and British systems. Yuan was inclined to insist on a dual republic, but the Nanking republicans insisted that Yuan should come to Nanking. The republicans under Generals Hsu and Ling now advanced their right wing, striking General93 Chung Fung of the imperialists, at Siuchow, in northern Kiangsu province, and winning a great victory.

I have said that the most brilliant diplomatic move of the republicans was that by Wu Ting Fang, who announced in December, 1911, that if any foreign syndicate or nation made loans to the Manchus, the republicans, if successful, would repudiate those loans. The most brilliant strategic move of the republicans was made in November, 1911, when General Li induced Admiral Sah’s navy to join the republican cause. This enabled the republicans to hold the large commercial fleet of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, and it was on this latter fleet that the republicans were able to raise a loan in February, 1912, from Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, when they were at their wits’ end where to find money to balance the subscriptions which the Manchus had made from their hoards, and the money which they were drawing from the cash tills of the rich imperial railways of North China. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha tried to buy out the China Merchants’ Steamship Company so as to give Japan dominance in the China coastal trade, but Britain interposed. The republicans had only one little railway from Shanghai to Hangchow, 104 miles, whose surplus earnings could help them, as compared with the 4,000 miles of successful railway in the territory controlled by the Manchus.

As neither Manchu nor Yuan could hold Manchuria, Japan now advanced a battalion to Mukden, a measure pregnant with precedents and controversy in the future. America maintained her reputation for altruism, Secretary Knox, on February 3rd, addressing the German ambassador a note to the effect that America’s idea was that all the powers should restrain their nationals from interfering with loans as much as with arms in China. The powers which94 were inclined to break leash were Japan, Russia and Belgium. The southern republican navy found the international forces and legations a bar in the way of the capture of Peking. The navy was off Chin-wang-tao, the only open port on the Liaotung Gulf, in February, 1912, and was ready to transfer the fifth republican army from Chifu. As long as Peking was dignified with the legation staffs of foreigners, the prestige of the foreigner supported to that extent the cause, or rather the integrity of the imperial north, and the rebels hesitated to send their attack home on account of international complications. Again and again the republicans asked for recognition and the transfer of the legations to Nanking. America only gave any attention to this request, sending Doctor Tenny, of the Peking legation staff, to pay an unofficial call on and make unofficial inspection of the republican government at Nanking. Japan and Russia closed their fists tighter on South and North Manchuria, respectively, lending money right and left to industrials and mines and thus establishing a mortgage and excuse for remaining in case of a break-up.

Wherever the capital is to be, whichever faction is to control, whatever style of government is to win, it does not seem impossible that the free China of the future will have fewer internecine conflicts and rows than the England, America or France of history. Liberty goes through about the same birth pangs whether she is born white, brown, black or yellow! On February 11, 1912, (probably at Yuan’s private suggestion), forty-eight generals of the imperial army wired Yuan that they would fight no more for the Manchus, so that the seed of the Lanchow camp had finally spread into a whole forest. The official birth of the Chinese republic came on Lincoln’s birthday (think of it, America!), February 12, 1912, the95 abdication decree of the Manchus including the following sentence: “Let Yuan organize to the full the powers of the provisional republican government, forming a great republic with the union of Manchus, Chinese, Mongols, Mohammedans and Tibetans.” President Sun Yat Sen telegraphed Canton in particular to accept Yuan, and another telegram instructed all Chinese consuls abroad to adopt foreign dress. The United States at once arranged to recognize unofficially both the northern and southern provisional Chinese republics under Presidents Yuan and Sun respectively, until a national assembly could form a united government.

On February 15th, the Christian Chinese provisional president, Sun Yat Sen, performed a remarkable act of self-sacrifice to win the north for republicanism and induce Yuan to join the great cause. He also was able to induce the vehement south to accept the former reactionary Yuan. Doctor Sun resigned as provisional president in favor of Yuan. The National Assembly at Nanking paid him this tribute: “Such an example of purity of purpose is unparalleled in history. It was solely due to your magnanimity and modesty, Doctor Sun, that northern China was won over to republicanism.” Here was the man who had achieved republicanism, laying by all its honors in favor of the man who had longest and most powerfully withstood republicanism. Yet Sun was happy. China was happy. Yuan and his aide Tang were happy. The Chinese republican navy at Chifu, Shanghai and Nanking saluted the republic with a broadside, and the Chinese legations throughout the world hoisted the new sun flag. With the least bloodshed ever known, Sun and his cabinet had achieved the greatest revolution ever known, and had established a republic of twenty-one republics, four times the population of96 America. They will be managed by a combination of the British and American systems, as their bulk is too great for the strong centralization which is now becoming popular in America to correct certain corporation evils. The provincial republics will develop largely as units, until the individual is educated sufficiently for greater cohesion. Sun Yat Sen will go down to history as the greatest dreamer, prophet, organizer, altruist and political philosopher the modern world has known, not that he is brainier than the white man, but being a yellow man, he has been able to accomplish more than any white man. His reception, certainly the reception of his cause, by the hearts of men should be enthusiastic. He stands not alone. The scores of idealists and fighters of his cabinet made the way for the constructive men who will now take hold. Above all, he converted Yuan by his self-obliteration, and Yuan converted the obstructionist north. What if the Honanese Yuan is at the head of affairs for a while instead of the Kwangtungese Sun? They are both Chinese and both republicans. China now has the center of the world’s stage, and America has built the Panama canal to reach quickly a front seat at the stage. The actors will have long and strenuous parts, and the house is filling up rapidly to hear, and see, and applaud, if all is done well, as it should be. Doctor Sun has done the most for a republic. Long years ago he planned it, and he has been persecuted most by the Manchus for opinion’s sake. When the assemblies succeed each other, his turn as president or premier will doubtless come.

Kang Wu Wei had dropped into astonishing silence during all these strenuous days, but on February 18, 1912, he suddenly and insanely (allow the emphasis) burst out in rebellion against the republic in Manchuria. Yuan he opposed; Sun he opposed. Did he, and the rebelling governor,97 Chao Ehr Sun, plot then for the Manchus or the Japanese in Manchuria? Why did not this first reformer Kang repress himself? Why did not Yuan and Sun repress themselves somewhat and win him? A bas, personal jealousies, antipathies or overleaping ambitions! Surely there is room for all in twenty-one republics, which are to be bound as one commonwealth. The Chinese are intense in feeling and clannish in spirit, and they often turn vehemently on one another; their Tong wars in New York and San Francisco for instance. Thus Yuan might hate Kang, and Kang have none of Yuan, whereas, according to Macaulay, “both should serve the state”. It is this repression of individual resentment and ambition which has made England and America so governable, and it is something China will learn as the years of stress surge about the ship of state. The title of captain or president amounts to very little in the light of patriotism; all are equal when it comes to manning the pumps and shortening or letting out sail according to the winds that blow. Parties will arise; provincial feeling will be assertive; leaders and their followings will clash, but the Chinese must learn, as we all have to learn, that the striving must be one way o’ the rope and not a tug against each other because of personal greed, low ambition or unruliness. In hundreds of documents issued during the rebellion, the republicans held up two men, Washington and Napoleon, as representing successful protest against tyrant kings. But Washington laid the sword by the minute statesmanship could win. Napoleon used his sword to advance himself and crush every will except his own; the way of an egotist. If China needs a foreign model to look at occasionally, let it be that of Washington, with his moderation, his unselfishness, his charity, his honor, his true republicanism, which sees in every citizen (man or98 woman) a king equal to himself, for the ballot and tax receipt have made all men equal kings!

I have pointed out the inconsistencies of character in Yuan and Kang. They may develop in other leaders from whom we expect much. It will be recalled that the great Empress Tse Hsi alternated “Boxer” and reform edicts; the lopping off of heads, and unbinding of women’s feet; the composing of poems on gentleness, and teaching her sleeve dogs to run at foreigners. The greatest viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, wrote books recommending modern gun foundries and steel mills one day, and the compulsory enthronement of worn-out Confucianism the next day, in the land which had always declared that any man could perform all religious rites. The genial Manchu Tsai princes who were the most affable of men when the Army, Navy and Constitutional Commissions visited England and America in recent years, were the irreconcilable Ruperts who insisted on the slaughter of foreigners and non-combatants in the northern provinces during the rebellion. The venerable and cultured viceroy of Nanking, Chang, who was the first official to open a modern exposition in China, was the very man who helped to hurl that awful slaughter on the innocents, with the ruthless division of Shangtung troops on November 10, 1911, at Nanking. The reform emperor, Kwang Hsu, the father of the immortal progressive edicts of 1898 in the Peking Gazette, the possessor of the sweetest face that ever graced a Chinese, was known to beat his waiters over the head with dishes, and his aunt, the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi, whose private ambition was to be the best painter of plum blossoms in the land, was known, according to Ching Shan, the comptroller of her household, to dance in rage that was awful to behold, and which left its wake in broken crockery and clocks. They have not as99 yet “lunacy commissions of three” in China, whose infallible tests are walking the chalk-line without a corkscrew motion, record of screaming and throwing vases, talking to one’s self and having wigglety eyes at times, or men of tawny color might have been incarcerated long before fame came to them! In the same inconsistent way the Japanese Prince Ito was a constitutionalist when a student in England, and a red imperialist as a statesman in Japan and Korea. With the Oriental it often is, “who pays for my ration, his is the flag I fly”. The larger sentimentality and altruism of republicanism will doubtless equip the new Chinese with deeper conviction and more enduring sentiment and devotion to ideals. We call a man who is not a good republican out of office, or a good Liberal on the left side of the speaker’s desk at Westminster, not much of a patriot in America or England, and China and Japan must learn the Pauline admonition to Timothy regarding manliness: “Be instant in season and out of season.”

Owing to deferred pay, some of General Li’s republican troops at Wuchang, and General Wu’s republican troops at Canton mutinied in the middle of February, and on February 29, 1912, regiments of the notorious Third Division of Yuan’s northern troops mutinied at Peking, partly for the same reason, partly because they did not want Yuan to go to Nanking; but mainly all this was a recrudescence of the tricks of the Manchus to bring in foreign interference. The Manchus had received part of their pension from the foreign loans and were illegally using it to stir up sedition. The mutineers burned a mile of houses, stretching from the Manchu’s Forbidden City to the new Wai Wu Pu Building, which is Yuan’s headquarters, and millions of dollars of treasures were destroyed, including the historic Wu Men gate leading to the imperial purple and yellow city. Many100 shopkeepers hung out signs, “Already looted; now empty” in an effort to save their buildings. The houses occupied by Mr. Straight, the representative of the Morgan Syndicate, and by Mr. Menocal, of the American International Bank, were looted, as were other foreign houses, but personal affront was not offered to foreigners. The quarters occupied by the delegates from the Union Assemblies of the south, who came from Nanking, were fired. The reactionary troops of Yuan showed their hate of the southerners on every possible occasion. This was his punishment for raising an army mainly in the two Manchu provinces, instead of generally enrolling it throughout the country. These troops wanted to support the rule of the nation by an unconstitutional Privileged Minority. It would be folly to agree with their politics, and it would mean terrible bloodshed to disagree with them.

The question they have raised is far from settled. One shell was dropped into the American legation compound. For strategic purposes, American soldiers took possession of the Chien Men gate and pagoda tower, and the German troops occupied the Hatamen gate and pagoda tower, both of which overlooked the legation and Methodist Mission quarters. One thousand more foreign troops were brought up from Tientsin to guard the legations. During the burning the Manchu eunuchs, who had witnessed the 1900 siege, could be seen in the moonlight gathered on the glistening yellow roofs of the imperial palaces. It will be recalled that this Imperial Third Division under General Feng, committed the uncalled-for and awful arson of Hankau in November, 1911. The Muse of History will in vain turn the pages of her index to find a record in her volumes of incendiaries who surpass the reactionary Third Division, whom Yuan now locked up in their barracks. He101 then called upon the old-style Chang Ku turbaned troops to defend the city. Yuan was continually showing distrust and fear of his troops; neither would he permit the southern delegates to bring up southern troops to defend the constitution and their liberty, nor would he permit the empress dowager and the emperor to retire from the imperial city to the summer palace, some twelve miles distant, or to Jehol:—he said he feared to arouse the northern troops. The southern delegates replied: “It is too bad that we deferred thoroughly whipping these northerners while we were at it.”

On February 29, 1912, the first partial recognition of the republican government was made by the American House of Representatives, unanimously passing the Sulzer resolution congratulating the “people” of China on assuming the responsibilities of self-government. All throughout Pechili, at Paoting, where the Anglican missionary, Mr. F. Day, was killed by a mob which was looting with the Sixth Division, at Tientsin, and throughout Shangtung province, the revolt spread, as a recrudescence of the Manchuized anti-foreign or “Boxer” movement. Native Christians were assassinated or had their eyes put out. Doctor Sun, at Nanking was distressed, and promised to stand by Yuan and republicanism. He sent telegrams to all the assemblies requesting them to be steady, and generously saying that Yuan had rendered a service by inducing the Manchus to abdicate. The situation reminded one of Burke’s description of the French revolution: “The National Assembly is surrounded by an army not raised either by the authority of their crown or by their command, and which, if they should order to dissolve itself, would instantly dissolve them.” The new Tientsin mint was looted. Doctor Schreyer, an eminent German physician of Tientsin, was assassinated. The American102 legation guard got through to Peking to the delight of the foreigners. Foolishly none of the foreign guards brought artillery, and the legations were therefore at the mercy of any artillery attack that the northern troops might direct against them. At Fengtai, the British Somerset regiment was on guard when 1,500 Chinese modern soldiers stopped the eastbound train. The Somersets, with the traditional bravery of the British, gave the Chinese troops one hour to clear out. By that time the 700 British Inniskilling Fusiliers, under command of the soldierly Colonel Hancock, were brought west, detrained quickly, and with the Somersets, marched at once on the positions of the obstructionist Chinese troops, who found discretion to be the better part of valor. Then the freed train started for Tientsin. There were now 3,000 foreign troops in Peking, and on March 3rd the Fifteenth American Infantry, under Major Arrasmith, led a grand march of the quarter to show Yuan’s rebelling troops that order at last could be sustained, and Japan was called upon, as in 1900, for 5,000 troops. Hongkong and Manila were also wired to send reinforcements. The troops of the north who had fought against the republic for four months, were now showing themselves to be a disgusting set of “Boxer” looters, incendiaries, murderers and “agents provocateurs” for intervention. The outcome of the whole matter might be the bringing of the remobilized southern forces north and the immediate unification of nationalism at Peking under Sun, Yuan and General Li; although the south at heart desires Nanking to be the capital, as it is removed from Russian influence and northern sectionalism.

Amid all the disturbance, another cloud, the size of a man’s hand, loomed up on the horizon. The Marquis Chu Cheng Yu, a lineal descendant of the Chinese Ming kings, began to canvass the rioting army for adherents. Two hundred103 American marines were rushed from Shanghai to Tientsin on the collier Abarenda, and the American fleet left the southern ports for Taku. The transport Warren sailed from Manila with another battalion of the Fifteenth Infantry and marines. The four-nation bankers, with the approval of six powers, came to Yuan’s help with $1,000,000 loans on nine months’ warrants, to aid him in putting down mobbing and mutiny by paying off soldiers, who, however, used the money as fuel for more mutiny. It was decided to loan the dual republican governments at Peking and Nanking about $5,000,000 a month. Some of the old-style troops were more loyal to Yuan than were the notorious Third Division at Peking, the Sixth Division at Paoting, in Pechili province, the Second Division in Honan, and the Fifth Division, in Shangtung province, which were loyal to no cause or person. At the same time the preliminary contract of February twenty-first, by which the Russo-Asiatic Bank independently was to advance Sun and the Nanking republican organization $7,000,000, was canceled, and the four banking powers advanced Sun, at Nanking, $1,500,000 to pay off Cantonese troops and hire police. The rebellion of Yuan’s troops made many confess that the southern republicans had probably made a mistake in not following Chang the Second’s imperial forces of northern troops north in January, 1912, and giving the northern army several sound thrashings until the organization was broken up.

On March 9, 1912, the irreconcilable imperial governor of Shansi and Shensi provinces, General Sheng Yun, a Mongol by blood, still had 15,000 troops (many of them Mohammedans) fomenting Manchu propaganda and slaying everywhere, while General Yin Tchang, at Japanese Dalny, Governor Chao Ehr Hsun, at Mukden, and Prince Su, at Jehol and Kalgan, were doing the same thing.104 What a confused state of affairs existed in the mutinous army, of the north, which was divided into five corps. General Sheng’s Mohammedans were setting Shansi and Shensi provinces on fire. The corps of Imperial Guards and Manchu divisions at Peking were at heart of course for the deposed Manchu dynasty. The Mongol divisions in northern Pechili looted and decapitated and laughed at President Yuan’s orders. The old-style turbaned troops of Yuan’s were loyal one day and disloyal another, and the same thing was true of divisions of territorial Shangtung, Pechili and Honan troops of Yuan’s modern army. In the southern provinces the republicans had a little more cohesion in the five armies of their recruited corps and their two territorial armies. In Yunnan province an entirely isolated army was marking time and had done nothing for either southern or northern cause of late. Oh! for a strong hand to weave and hold all these cords in one cable of some strength.

On March 10th, amid the crashing of walls and institutions, a pathetic but inspiring scene occurred in the modern Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) at Peking. Yuan Shih Kai, dressed in military uniform, was formally inaugurated provisional president of the republic of China, in the presence of the Nanking assembly delegates, military and naval officers, provincial envoys, and many foreigners. Of course, legation staffs and missionary bodies did not attend officially. Yuan read a declaration promising progress, to observe the constitution, and retire when the National Assembly appointed a permanent president for the decided term, if he himself was not chosen. Two yellow robed Lamas from the Buddhist temple stepped up, presented Yuan with two honorary scarfs and called him, in Pekingese, “Da Dsoong Toong” (in Cantonese, Ta Tsung Tung),—the great president.105 It was a businesslike military scene, there being very little of Oriental display or the gorgeous robes of old. Tang Shao Yi was named premier. President Yuan signalized his assumption of office by pardoning all prisoners, except murderers and robbers, remitting all overdue land taxes and announcing that for the present the old laws would stand, except where they were obviously contrary to the spirit of republicanism.

The new constitution provided that the supreme power was in the hands of the National Assembly; that all acts of the president required the approval of the assembly, that the cabinet was answerable to the assembly; and that the assembly was to elect the president and vice-president, and have power to pass laws over the executive veto. This was vastly different from Japan’s stultified parliamentarism, and was a union of the American system of the lower house being supreme, and of the British executive efficiency obtainable from a small cabinet. Doctor Sun promised to turn over the great seal of his office. Disorder ruled throughout the armed north, where a republic was unpopular with the mercenary troops. Republican flags were torn down wherever the merchants of Peking put them up. The rebelling troops decapitated the crowd by thousands at Peking, Tientsin, Kalgan, Paoting, and throughout Shansi, Shensi and Pechili provinces. So many heads and bodies lay on the street that the donkeys and mules refused to pass the heaps. Yuan himself had to add the head of the headtaker to the pile. He sent the tall, venerable General Chiang Kwei Tai with old-style turbaned Nganhwei troops, who mowed off heads right and left through the streets of old Peking. The famous Tongkwan pass, at the heel of the Yellow River, commanding Shensi and Honan provinces, was seized by the reactionary troops of General Sheng Yun,106 who compelled the merchant guilds to pay blackmail or have their stores looted. Clearly Pechili province, with its hosts of irreconcilable mercenary troops, was the rock on which the ship of republicanism was now stranded. Yuan had to change his body-guard from day to day, one day old-style troops, another day Manchu troops, and again the champion looters of the Third Division, but the real hand which afforded what little steadiness there was, was the magnificent body of foreign troops which amounted to 3,000 picked men.

On March 12th, Provincial President Wu Hon Man and Governor Chan Kwang Ming, at Canton, were harassed by the notorious pirate chief, Luk, who was remarkably successful. Luk, through the mutiny of the soldiers, gained the historic Bogue, Yuchu, Whampoa and Fumen forts, and the arsenal and admiralty buildings. All the foreign navies, led by the United States gunboat Wilmington and the British fleet under Commander Eyres, anchored off Shameen Island, cleared for action, and the passenger steamers, on which probably every world tourist has probably been, the Fatshan and Honan, sailed from Canton for Hongkong with two thousand passengers each. The famous old shallow draft British gunboat Moorhen, the hero of a thousand pirate chases in intricate Kwangtung province waters, had her awnings and spars torn by bullets during the night, as she protected the electric station, so that the pirates could not strike Canton into midnight, and in the dark massacre along the narrow streets, the maloos and the bund. Eight hundred British and French troops patrolled the little foreign island of Shameen.

Before the days of direct primary nominations in America we suffered from the machine system, which advanced107 the incompetent and debarred the eminent and efficient from service in the state. A saloon-keeper who brought 2,000 votes would demand, for instance, the position of secretary of state. “But you’re not fitted for it; you’re a hoodlum.” The ward-heeler would answer: “I must have it; I have to pay my 2,000 brigands the ‘graft’ which we claim is ours; otherwise, remember our revenge next election.” One Shek Kam Chuen, a young stone-cutter and human hair hawker of Canton, was very successful in smuggling arms for the revolution, and on the declaration of independence, he led a following of 2,000 nondescript men, who did effective work in fighting. They were men who loved a fight more than liberty, not liberty more than life. When the republic was victorious and his troops, after being paid, were disbanded, Shek was unsatisfied. He, a hawker, wanted high office, when even President Sun turned his brother down from politics to business in Canton because he was not eminent for political ability. Shek made demands for his men that the state could not consistently grant. He smuggled arms to take up piracy in reprisal on the harassed state. The way the governor of Canton treated Shek and his legal adviser, Chang Han Hing, was, under the constitutional pressure of public opinion, to capture them at their headquarters, and under military law, or the application of the popular “recall”, have them both shot, to the great rejoicing of good citizens and taxpayers. That ended one instance of heelerism, bossism, packed primary, professional office holding, “public office a private graft”, piracy, or whatever you like to call it, in modern China! The “Popular Recall” was a success, despite the cynicism of the standpatters in Canton, and one of those standpatters was Shek’s lawyer, Chang,108 who shared his client’s fate, much to his disgusted surprise. I am sorry William Dean Howells was not in Canton at that time to write A Modern Instance!

General Wu Sum, with 2,000 republican provincial troops, left Canton for Swatow to put down pirates operating around that noted old city, and the famous General Ling, and General Ho came down from Nanking to assist. On March 14th the irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu leader, Prince Tuan, exiled in Kansu province, raised the standard of revolt, with his son Ku Kwei, as a pretender to the throne. He had not the moral support of all of the imperial clan, because he had in 1900 plotted to displace Prince Chun’s emperor son, “Pu Yi”. Tuan is a shrewd, able and persistent leader. If he had not been a reactionary in 1900, he might have preserved to the Manchus a longer lease of power.

The battles of the international financiers still went on at Peking, Premier Tang Shao Yi’s action in raising $5,000,000 from a Russian-Belgian syndicate on the Chinese-built Peking-Kalgan railway, incensing the international group. Tang gave a laconic interview, merely saying: “China need not necessarily put herself forever in the hands of four nations; we can deal with independents where we are able to find any. The loan was first offered to American bankers, but those American bankers who are now in the Far East would not act independently of the four nations.” Russian, Japanese and Belgian bankers seemed to fall in with Russia’s plans, as in 1896, to put China under a financial thraldom. Russia did not want a loan given to China for her army, as Russia and Japan both desire a weak army in China. The four-nation bankers now offered China $300,000,000, of which $60,000,000 was to be for army purposes. If Japan joins in this loan, it will be because she does not want to be109 shut out of a share in controlling China’s finances, and an apportionment of the concessions. The National Review of Shanghai published at this time a caricature, showing Russia pushing old China, and “Foreign Grafter” pushing New China, out of the way, while North China, a clam, had shut its shell on the beak of South China, a heron. The Chinese fable of the bird and the shellfish was quoted as follows: “A bird attacked an open shellfish on the beach; but the shellfish closed his shell with a snap, and the bird was caught. Both were then helpless, and fell an easy prey to some covetous fishermen.” Nearly all the Japanese papers, including the influential Tokio Nichi and Jiji, and the Osaka Mainichi, came out attacking Yuan, and endeavoring to stir up differences between North and South China. If Japan could prove that Chinese conditions were unstable, there evidently would be more plausibility for Japan’s possible intervention in Manchuria! On March 16th, Premier Tang Shao Yi announced a provisional northern cabinet as follows, until the National Assembly of seven delegates to a province could meet. None of the appointees is a Manchu.

Army, General Tuan Chi Jui, Nganhwei man, once viceroy of Hunan, active in revolution.

Navy, Admiral Lin Kwan Hsung, a man of considerable experience in the old and new navies, at Canton, along the Yangtze, etc.

Foreign Affairs, Lou Tseng Tsiang, Minister to Russia, Netherlands, etc. In this appointment Yuan shows how natural it is for him to favor Russia, whom he fears.

Finance, Hsiung Hsi Ling, Hunan man, once in Exterior Department of Hupeh province.

Most of these are southern men, some of whom replied that they did not see how they could come without a southern army to protect their lives from the loosely-held northern troops, who had no idea what constitutional honor or promises meant. The whole of the American Pacific Navy, including the fine cruisers California, South Dakota and Colorado, left Honolulu for the Far East, and the United States steamer Monterey, on the same day, landed one hundred men at Swatow to preserve order and the tanks of the Standard Oil Company. On March 19th the republican troops at Canton and Swatow gained back after severe engagements the forts that the mutinous troops and pirates had taken. The government at Canton bought up all the food in the shops so as to starve out Luk’s pirates. Amid all the conflict of accusation and denial, it is fitting that Yuan Shih Kai should speak for himself, and therefore I quote parts from his long address to the old conservatives and to the provincial governors shortly after the abdication of the dynasty, which abdication he adroitly and successfully urged when, to use his own words, “it was well nigh impossible to make stand against the republicans.”

“From the time when I again led the troops and later when I came to court, I was animated with the purpose of establishing a constitutional monarchy, but the state of the country changed. The National Assembly and the provincial assemblies all fathered the policy of not using military force to put down the disturbances. When Hankau was111 regained, the naval forces were lost. The moment Hanyang was reconquered, Nanking fell. The power of the government over the waterways and the sea was gone, and the sources of revenue were cut off. Although in various ways I encouraged the military to greater effort, secured the revocation of Shangtung’s declaration of independence, subdued the capitals of Shansi and Manchuria, and did all in my power to prop up the North, yet the tide was too strong and swept every locality. Revolutionary societies among the people were scattered everywhere. At this time there was international intervention and it was requested that in the interests of humanity a truce be declared and negotiations undertaken. Foreigners continually uttered reproof on the scores of commercial interests and the indemnity. Because the country was in such a chaotic state politically, it was difficult to restore order. Within there was ruin; without there was furnished the possibility of foreign intervention. The revolutionary forces were coming by various routes to attack the North. The spirit of the army was shaken. Had the strife been continued, in a very short time the revolutionary army would have come north, and in that case it would have been impossible either to fight or to negotiate for peace. What of the imperial family and the livelihood of the bannermen? Recently the ministers of foreign nations, the commercial associations at the ports, the different conferences, the various troops and the provincial viceroys and governors have sent telegrams, all stating that the will of the people is bent on a republic, and that it would be well-nigh impossible to make stand against it. Should the enemy arrive at the walls of the capital, the disasters resulting would be unimaginable. How much better for the throne, of its own grace, to proclaim the republic at an early date. There was condemnation of the policy of staking the112 fate of their imperial majesties and the lives and property of the North on a single throw, trusting to luck in a single battle. An edict was issued by her Imperial Majesty directing me first to settle with the revolutionary army regarding the especial consideration to be accorded the imperial family and the treatment of the Manchus, Mongolians, Mohammedans, and Tibetans. If an agreement could be reached by the two sides, then the imperial family might enjoy glory, and the hereditary nobility among the Manchus, Mongols, Mohammedans, and Tibetans, as well as the allowances of the bannermen, might continue without interruption. An agreement was made, resulting in the present state of affairs.”

Neither Yuan nor the north has yet explained to the world the reason why the nobility of the Manchus, Mongols, Tibetans, etc., expect titles and pensions, unless it be the argument that is now wearing out over the world, in nation after nation, that it is constitutional to maintain rule by a Privileged Minority over a taxed majority! Yuan says: “An agreement was made resulting in the present state of affairs,” but the “present state of affairs” is not entirely satisfactory. At times, it seems in China that Confucius has abdicated to Confusion. The solution lies in three things: railways, education, and a real republican congress, none of the three to be interfered with by either a riotous or office-greedy army, but rather dutifully served by a patriotic army. There can be no doubt that the action of the ninety generals of the northern army in forcing the National Assembly at Peking, in July, 1912, at the sword’s point, to accept against their will the second cabinet which Yuan Shih Kai had selected, and some of his foreign-advised measures, was inimical to the vitality of constitutionalism in China. The result was the forming of a113 constitutional party in the Yangtze and southern provinces by Doctor Sun Yat Sen and his friends, called the Tung Men Hwei (Sworn Brother Society), some of whose measures were the supervision of Chinese finances, and railway and industrial development, largely by Chinese, and the discharge of more regiments of northern troops. The National Assembly and cabinet have recently put in Sunyacius’ charge the formation of a central railway board to arrange for the extension of railways.

II
WIT AND HUMOR IN CHINA

In his book Alone in China, Julian Ralph, the New Yorker, wrote in 1898 the following sentence:

“The men and women of China will live in my mind forever, here and in heaven, as the jolliest, kindest, most sympathetic and generous souls I ever found in such profusion anywhere in my roving.”

I have lived and traveled three years in China, and have found that the Chinese influence the foreigners and that the foreigners influence the Chinese, sharpening each other’s wit, and smoothing each other’s kindly humor. The jewel has many facets of view, depending on the angle of vision, and in the following I shall attempt to recall many of the angles.

Regarding the foreign custom, written of by Kipling and others, of the troubled or exiled ones of the treaty ports taking copiously to liquor for consolation, a wit remarked: “A corkscrew will never pull a man out of sorrow.”

The Manchu soldiers read little, and have been under the impression that others are like them. The “braves” on guard at the Ta Ping gate of Canton had been in the habit of extorting many a “cumshaw” from humble-looking citizens before they were allowed to go on their business. They caught a Tartar in 1910, when they seized a modern editor, who aired his complaint in his newspaper, which was read in due time by the Military Prefect Lo. What occurred between Lo and his old-fashioned braves was not reported, but115 the braves for many months before the revolution of 1911 saw in every passer-by an editor. Up to the time of free types, complaint had been smothered at the yamens.

Revolutionary spies had gone ahead of new appointees to distant provinces and impersonated them with a recitation of their record. In August, 1911, the Peking Gazette recited that the cabinet would in future despatch a photograph in a sealed envelope to the governors, so that “they could pick out the man who fitted the record by physiognomy as well as memory”.

Back in the 80’s the famous Szechuen pioneer, Archibald Little, dunned the ears of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) at Peking for permission to open the whole Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chungking to steamer service. “Yes,” said the humorously evasive board at last, “you may run your steamer, but you know that a modern steamer will cut the unwieldy junks down. Therefore all sailing craft will tie up to the bank of the great river two days of each week, and give the terrible Fung-kwei (foreign) steamer full reign on the Yangtze, but on those two days of the week only. For five days of the week the steam craft must in reciprocation, tie up to the bank.” This would require weeks longer to ascend the river than could be done by tracking and sail, and Mr. Little’s plan for fast steamer service was effectually disposed of by the wily Manchu Board, which boasted that it “never denied a foreign request”.

Two trains of coolies meet, and words or a jostle precipitate a combat. After it is all over, and your men take up again the arms of your chair, you remark that although your leader’s clothes are nearly ripped off, he is laughing about it. In astonishment, you ask him why, and he replies: “You should see the fellow I tackled; he hasn’t any left.”

116 In the country parts, if you hand a cigar to a man at an inn, he thinks it is proper manners to pass it to every one, to take a puff, just as he would do with a pipe.

The Chi Feng Pao, a native paper of Peking, reported that in the month preceding the great 1911 revolution, even the house servants of the Court had not received their wages for months, and that one morning this anonymous placard was found placed on the comptroller’s door: “Not even a shadow of our pay to be seen yet. Why?”

A Chinese merchant, who was disgusted that all his heirs died upon birth, called at a life insurance office at Tientsin, and asked if “they could insure a well and proper birth”, for if so, he would gladly take out a policy. He supposed that was what the new American life insurance meant.

A Hakka woman of the south was seldom given chicken by her husband, who complained of the expense. She obtained his permission, however, to purchase a fowl for the god in the Taoist temple. The husband came home, found his wife eagerly eating the bird, and shrieked out: “How is this? I bought it for the god, not for you.” She replied: “I offered it to the god, who ate all he could of it. I am only eating the remainder, thanks to the god, and not to you, for that.”

It is the custom for the mandarins who go into a country inn, to hang out a red card, stating that “This inn is full”. A rejected guide replied: “Rather the mandarin is full.”

I have seen a humorous drawing on a screen, which shows a cat chasing a mouse. The cat has only been able to catch a hind foot of the mouse, which keeps running, the foot lengthening in a most comical way, judging by the disgust on the face of the cat, and the laugh on the face of the mouse, which says: “That is all you get, anyway.”

“How is it that there are no one-legged men to be seen in117 China; do you have no accidents?” an intelligent official was asked, and he replied humorously: “Oh, yes, but as we know nothing of surgery, when a man’s leg gets in trouble, we bury the whole man.”

“It’s all very well to tell the priest that you are penitent, but prove it by pennies.”

A sick man, sleeping fitfully, is said to be having a “raw sleep”, and correspondingly a tired or a drunken man, enjoying deep rest, is said to be having a “ripe sleep”.

It has been the custom of the French and Germans, when a missionary or an ambassador has been unfortunately assassinated, to compel the Chinese government to erect a stone arch or pailoo, with the intent of warning the nation of the wrath of the foreigner. When you ask the common people, who can not read, if the arch is “in memory of Ambassador So-and-So” they generally reply: “Oh, no, it’s to the other fellow. It’s in memory of patriot So-and-So who was executed by a coerced government for killing a forward foreigner.”

Beheading, outside of Kwangtung province, which has recently adopted modern methods, is the punishment for far too many crimes. Scores of prisoners are often beheaded together, as they kneel in a row. The Chinese loathe this method of punishment, as no good Confucian can appear in the next world with a headless body to be worshiped as a god by his descendants. They overcome the difficulty by having the head sewed on the body before it is buried.118 There is little to identify the almost unclothed bodies, and the Doms or coolies who are hired to perform the gruesome task sometimes get the bodies and heads mixed up, delivering the right body but the wrong head to the surprised though mourning family, which stands ready with the coffin and the identifiers. The Chinese are so possessed of humor that it is not unknown for retainers to burst out laughing at the incongruous spectacle.

“The American cost of living is nothing compared to the Chinese cost of loving,” said the demure mandarin, as he pointed to his five wives, et cetera!

Here is a story that went the rounds of Peking, regarding the equipping of the First Division. A sum exactly sufficient had been allotted by the Ping Pu (War Board). The first prince was too good a worshiper of his ancestors to let such a sum of money pass through his hands without giving the tablets their share, and he loved his women folk too much not to give them a present, and then there was his own “cumshaw” or commission, patriotism being a theory and “graft” a fact. The second prince would be quite lacking in the Li code of manners if he failed to copy the elder first prince, and so the money dwindled down the line, until the Ordnance Department was supplying wooden shells to field guns and wooden cannon to ramparts. The First Division personnel was on the list all right, but there was no money to uniform or arm them. By and by a beggar was found in tatters by the wall. An orderly hurried up, shouted, “You’re the First Division, go and sew some of your patches together, and defend Peking from the enemy; here’s your ammunition.” He handed the beggar the last penny of the appropriation. The beggar grasped the penny, ran off to the first cake stand, and as he swallowed the rice, exclaimed: “Hunger is the enemy, and I’m going to buy him off, for did119 not Confucius teach that diplomacy always could defeat arms?” Such then was the famous equipping of the First Division. A traveled Manchu who heard this said: “How about your American Manchus? We read your newspapers. Why don’t you foreigners make jokes about the Quay ring of Philadelphia, and the Tammany ring of old New York, when you supplied your courts with everything but justice, even to triplicate bills for undiscoverable fixtures, and quadruplicate pay-rolls for undiscovered appointees? How about that story of the lighting of the streets of your Darktown, each official taking his perquisite, so that when the last penny reached the solitary lamplighter, that worthy concluded that it was so near morning that he would go in a saloon opposite the unlit lamp, and drink up the money, letting nature furnish daylight to atone for the weaknesses of her children of the West?”

Here is a story altered to suit any circuit in China. A stern mandarin got the name of the “Old Devil”. One day, ahead of his escort, he reached his inn, where quarters had been engaged for him. On attempting to walk into the best room, the inn-keeper, who did not know him, strenuously objected, explaining that the room was reserved for “the Old Devil himself”, and woe betide them all if the engagement was not respected. When his escort came up, the mandarin had the inn-keeper flogged for daring to speak disrespectfully of a judge who was a dignified “father and mother” of the people, and at the same time handed the man a handful of coins as a reward for keeping faith with the said mandarin.

The coolies take some of their metaphors from their dirty inns. When a fellow acts impulsively they say: “A louse is loose in his thoughts” or “a flea has found his brain.”

A conductor of a Chinese railway running out of Canton120 had his difficulties both with the English language, and possibly with certain English or American sailors on a holiday. He pasted up this notice in his coach: “Small piecee bags onlee. Shaky head, shaky tongue, crazee men, no can attain. Dirtee men must not smelee. Sick men more better die, and go freight. Onlee Number One passenger can attain this car.”

Quick transportation is not appreciated in every guild in China. In Ichang the “loata” (captain) of a Yangtze gorge junk objected to the proposed railway to Wan Hsien. As an object lesson he was asked how long it took him to take a cargo to Chungking, and he replied twenty days. When he was told that a railway could deliver it in a day, he asked with a grimace, half between a sneer and a smile: “What would my men and I do with the other nineteen days?”

Yunnan, the capital of the great southwest province, was the first city of China, under the progressive Viceroy Li Chin Hsi, to erect a sanitary modern prison, with workshops, commissary, etc. Yunnan, though an extremely rich province in minerals, is so mountainous that the people, who live on agriculture, are reduced to great poverty, and are in constant slavery to oppressive landlords who are really foray chiefs. Now that the comparatively palatial prison has been erected, there is a rush to commit life-sentence crimes, so that the boarders may be sure of a fine bed, good food, medical care, personal security, and interesting work in the various workshops for the rest of their happy lives, as compared with the unbearable penury and danger of their lives among the hills. The Miaos, Lolos, Shans, and Chinese of Yunnan know a good thing when they see it, and penology is a fad which is spreading like a fire among their mountain terraces at present.

Here is a story of merry days at Peking. The legation121 ladies had informed the Manchu princess that she must be modern since the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi had decreed it; that she must learn English, music and dancing. As it was the trend of the hour, the suggestion was accepted. The Manchu learned various things. It came to be her duty in time to receive a delegation of earnest missionary ladies, to whom she was ready to prove that she was modern, and had received the foreign branding. “I know modern American hymn; national anthem of great flowery flag country; hail to America. I will sing it and I will dance it.” She danced it and she sang it, and here is what the horrified missionary ladies heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill: Waltz Me Around Again, Willie.

“With butter at fifty cents a pound and eggs at fifty cents a dozen in your honorable country, I should think you’d move the piano out, and move the cow and hens into your best room so as to be sure of the precious creatures,” said a Chinese economist, who was reading the last American paper at the Hankau guild, and who was satisfied with three cents a dozen for his eggs.

The tea-tasters employed are all foreigners, and it is essential that the taster shall abstain from liquors and tobacco. When the first man among them is seen at the bar in a foreign club at Canton or Hankau, it is a surer sign than the calendar that July 1st is around again.

Mencius relates the story of a thief who, when apprehended, promised that if he was not punished, he would gradually reduce his peculations until he reached the stage of honesty; that it was cruelty to stop him short; that as he had been used to the privilege so long, he did not know any other way in which to gain his livelihood. If Grover Cleveland were living he might say that this Chinese was the first attorney for the tariff, and its progeny.

122 The humorous pirate, who infests Kwangtung province waters near Hongkong, seldom kills his victims now, as he has as effective a way of escape with the loot, while the helpless bark drifts at the mercy of the waves to the wonder of the foreign navigator, who afar off spies its strange actions because of the unmanned rudder. Lately at Mui Shah, a swift snake boat pulled up in the darkness alongside a slow-sailing junk, which was boarded. After robbing the crew, the pirates battened them down beneath secured hatches, and made good their escape, smiling at their aptitude in carpentry.

It is well known that Chinese doctors are only rewarded for cures and for keeping their patients well. A physician was called in to see a sick tax-collector (yamen runner). “You’ll have to call in another doctor,” said the physician. “Am I so bad that you must have a consultation?” inquired the alarmed patient. “No. You will remember, however, if you have as good a memory as I, that last week you searched high and low and taxed me the last cash on the limit of my property and maximum income. I have too much conscience to kill you, but I’m honest enough to say that I want as little as possible to do with curing you, so good-by.”

There are more Chinese Macks and Mc’s in Canton and Hongkong than in all Argyleshire, Scotland. I recall a particularly droll character, Mak, who was our godown-man at West Point, Hongkong. Mak (we never called him his personal name, which was Fun) was in full charge of the warehouse, and came to the office twice a month with proper accounts, which always checked up with the yearly inventory. When, by appointment, I went down to supervise that inventory, all was as it should be. Mak had a clean warehouse, in which neither rats nor coolies were tenants,123 and his wharf was kept free of junks and sanpans. I returned unexpectedly one day and found Mak collecting wharfage for himself from junks which he had allowed to tie up at the wharf, and rent from coolie families whom he had allowed to camp, with possibly their plague Bacillariaceæ, between the aisles of gunny bales in the godown. Longfellow speaks of “folding their tents like the Arabs and silently stealing away,” but on this occasion, the retreat of the enemy with their camp paraphernalia was accomplished with both confusion and noise, because of the haste involved. “How is this, Mak?” I shouted as a stern typan should. “Oh, cousins overnight, you sabee; plenty bobbery, but Confucius says, shelter your kin,” Mak blandly replied. I made him assure me that they were all sailing for parts known or unknown on the morrow, but I knew that if I caught them there again, they would be “other cousins” who had claimed hasty hospitality under the same law and the same necessity. There was only one way to match the blandness of Mak Fun, or any other godown-man, and that was to move in myself. As Mak was in other respects a good godown-man, I was blind in the port eye thereafter to this adaptation of the “cumshaw” by the clan of Chinese Macks, though as I passed, to quote from the same verse of Longfellow’s poem, “the night was filled with music” in Chinese Mak’s direction.

The Chinese accept the saddest thing in the world in a droll cheerful manner. A son, who had grown prosperous in Hongkong, sent his father, who lived in the silk district outside of Canton, a splendid lacquered coffin, which he was to keep before him in the best room for friends to see. The son’s letter said: “Here is something gorgeous for The Event” (that is, his father’s death).

The North China Herald gives the following as a sample124 of a Chinese boy’s request upon his employer for a recommendation, after he had been discharged by the officious butler: “Before I have leaved here the services, was troubled by here butler. He squeezes (steals), lies, and makes private of anythings, and also he said wrong of my bad conducts as a rascal. He discharged me for his brother in secret. After that you lost things which are determined in my brain. Now I beg you to request of Missy (the employer’s wife) which as possible as you can. But I am unliking at there Master to do anythings, I am much obliged to come to my new place under of your charges (recommendation) and beg you to bless me as boy or coolie business for my content at all, or please you to commence the any other places you know of. So I hope you to grant me a good report, for I am beg it to you on knees. Shall be much obediently and obliged. Address me to here as ‘No. 2 boy’. I remain, Sir, That obedient coolie servant, etc.”

For centuries there has been an amusing burglary insurance system and a droll code of courtesy between watchmen and robbers in China. If you do not wish to run the risk of being robbed, you pay the Head Thief, or Chief of the Robber Beggars, a fee, and he protects and insures you from loss and annoyance. Your watchman pounds his drum to show you that he is earning his salary, and at the same time to let the thief know where the watchman is, so that he may operate in safety if the owner has not taken out the usual insurance.

A coolie urged his cousin “for ten thousand reasons” not to go into the foreigner’s church, where the powerful orator was “sending people who stole to hell.” He was fully convinced that if no one spoke over him the dreadful words of objurgation, he could steal and run no chance of going to the inferior regions. In ignorantia salus!

125 On the subject of compressed feet, here is the Oriental side: “It’s fear, not modesty, that denies you white men more than one wife,” said the Chinese joker. “You equip your women with first-class feet, and they are as strong and swift as your men. What would one lone man do in a retreat before many claimants?”

There is a law prohibiting fortune-tellers soliciting on the streets. The Hongkong Telegraph writes that a fakir is standing at a hotel door, desiring to peer into the future of the passers-by. The paper, with its usual wit, suggests that an officer of the law should peer into the fakir’s immediate future!

The same paper coins this aphorism: “We never know how many friends we have till we don’t need them; or how few friends we have till we need them.”

A motor truck was rushing by with a load of empty barrels. “Nothing can stop them,” suggested the admiring Chan. “Nothing but corks,” replied the punnist Choi.

The Oriental has seized on Billiken, with the exaggerated mosquito-bite on his bald head, his elongated cranium, his wolf’s ears, comedian’s smile like DeWolf Hopper’s or Coquelin’s, his elephant’s feet, Buddha’s barrel-stomach, and monkey’s arms, as the god of western wealth, humor, or what-not. The idiot idol, warming his enormous feet, is installed before many a footlight of burning tapers and punk-sticks in the shrines of eclecticism in both Taoist and Buddhist China.

To show that hygiene is not fully understood yet in China, which is so anxious to learn, they tell this story. A European passenger in a coast-wise steamship, who had to share his room with an Oriental who had been modernized too quickly, found the latter using his tooth-brush in the morning ablutions. “You blankety son of the sun, that’s MY126 tooth-brush,” exclaimed the disgusted Occidental. “Me bow low for pardons; me thought it was ship’s tooth-brush,” apologized the Oriental.

The witty Hongkong Mail (was the veteran Murray Bain or the scholarly Reed the author?) explained to the fellow into whose nog glass an ancient egg was deposited by the Chinese boy that it wasn’t the fault of the Cathayan hen, but the fault of the administrators of her estate.

A visitor chided a Hongkong volunteer with the sounds of revelry which proceeded from one quarter of the camp, and a wit connected with the local Press shot out this repartee: “Oh, I know Ancient and Honorable Military Companies where you come from, whose strategy is greatest on the canteen, whose night attacks are mostly on the bottle, and whose field-glass is a wine glass.”

The Happy Valley Cemetery trustees at Hongkong were arguing over the prices of graves. One wit defended the resolution before the board by saying: “A man only dies once in the East, and surely can afford the luxury of a high-priced grave.”

The astrologer complained of thieves robbing his house. “You’re an infallible astrologer, aren’t you?” inquired the judge. “Yes, indeed,” replied the soothsayer. “Well, why didn’t you foretell the advent of the thieves?” remarked the droll mandarin. Tableau!

Said the ignorant but successful man of enormous paunch to the caustic wit: “I have no use for a man whose head is so big that he has to scratch his hair away out here.” “Nor I,” said the wit, “for the little-brained hog who has to button his vest away out here.”

The Chinese poor sleep in the open—the Great Unroofed—generally on their backs against a pillar or wall, with their knees drawn up. A new mission hospital gathered in the127 sick, the lame and the blind, who were sweetly tucked in soft clean beds, under sheets, and commended to their lullabies. In the morning the staff came upon an amusing sight. Every patient had dropped out of bed, and was sleeping in the tried and true, good old fashion against the bed post on the floor. All they would say was: “Me no sabee new fashion.”

The patient missionary at last reminded John that it was all right to eat rice “on him” and get hospital treatment, but that there was a little card which he had signed promising to be a regular contributor as well as a benefiting member of the organization. John wrote: “My venerable Rev.: Blushed am I to have been reminded of my forget in worshipping and offering. Here I enclose my apology and the sum you like if I am right in making out your multiply. Your spoiled lamb.”

Many nations have been credited with this witty repartee, and the Chinese are included in the list. The Hongkong merchant prince was showing his mountain palace, his tennis courts, his stable, his automobile, possibly his flying machine, his billiard table, his bowling alley, etc., to the Solon from Canton. “You see that when we British devote ourselves to pleasure, we do it regardless of expense.” “Rather,” replied the Chinese, whose relaxation was of a gentler kind, such as walking in gardens, and flying birds and kites, “I should say you devote yourself to expense regardless of pleasure.”

Solomon came to humorous judgment when two women of First Kings brought their case before him, and Lord Kitchener is credited with a grim humor in dealing with the Arab sheiks who wanted to enlist in the war against Italy. Here is Chinese humor of the same sort. All of the mandarin’s staff at his new station thought they would embarrass128 him by applying for promotions. Granted with gusto! Every one’s position was advanced one grade, but the salaries were all reduced one grade at the same time owing to retrenchments needed.

A freshman of Queen’s College, writing of the popularity of Sir Matthew Nathan, the indefatigable British governor of Hongkong, who died from exposure in the 1900 typhoon, said: “He is a very common man.” He, however, meant common in the Scriptural sense that the heroic governor’s fame was common to all.

Chinese women are short and soft as compared with the larger and stronger foreign women seen in the treaty ports. A Chinese student satirist, who had served as a house boy in San Francisco, thus described in an essay his former American mistress and her daughters: “The Americaness is open air breather, consequently her meat is harder than Chinese (he meant her muscle). In a dangerous melancholy acting, the young Americaness quickly traps her sorrow husband who comes to pity, but soon runs to grieve in divorce when loving voice of Americaness recovers from coyness. Bud of romance early frosted makes scandal column of paper, which is best advertising much sought and read like dog in manger by all actress without job. Cold ethics of Chinese woman in comparison sprouts not too quick ruin, consequently wears better. Americaness system much exciting is open-air theater for all to laugh and read as run. Americaness never reaches next birthday, consequently always fresh and sweet like comquat in syrup; but American poet says: ‘Beware, some sweets do cloy, but food is good each day.’ I think then China wife is like food, if plain, always satisfying, and fills the bill, as American Zoo keepers say. American man and Chinese man believe womans129 should go slow; consequently Americaness wear hobble skirt like lasso on ankle, and Chinese woman bind foot. Both mens take no chances, and exchange mutual wink. However, Chinese woman and Americaness woman, is both queenesses of talk—when once begun then heroes run. Talk then is kingdom of womens called Suffragetia, where mans sees finish and casts his weapons in humble dust.”

Describing life among his friends, the bell-boys at the Shanghai hotels who have frequently to answer calls for a B. & S. after a bath, another wit said: “The guests are ringing (wringing) wet in two spellings.”

Was this Oriental a flatterer of womankind, or a droll cynic regarding mankind? The wife of the missionary asked the native pupil to translate our maxim: “Out of sight, out of mind,” and he rendered it into these characters: “Your husband is insane when he is away from you.” Another boy wrote it: “The angels are crazy.”

At the Chinese Club a scholarly Chinese traveler warned me to follow the Royal Hongkong Golf Club’s motto, “Festina lente” (make haste slowly), in dwelling upon the wonderful traits of the Chinese, and he related the following humorous story: “In your country an enthusiastic missionary, daringly stimulated by the applause of his audience, put wonder upon wonder, Pelion on Ossa piled, in describing the vicarious virtues of the Chinese, by saying: ‘Yes, dear children, lives are cheap in China. I knew a man there who made his living by selling himself to the executioners to take the place of those condemned to death.’”

Here is a tale of facetiousness and evasion. A wag, whose appearance was against him, called at a prison, and held this dialogue with the clerk: “Is the mandarin in?”130 “No.” “Is the deputy in?” “No.” “Is the jailer in?” “No.” “Is the bamboo-wielder in?” “No.” “Oh, say, are the prisoners in, Mr. No-No-No?”

One of the modernized officials labeled his friend’s book of personal press flatteries, “The Pursuit of Egotism.”

The well-known Bankers’ Association of Tokio is called the “Eel Society”. I asked my Chinese friend for his interpretation of this, and he explained: “Because they are as slippery in the grasp of their Diet as is your Money Trust in the hands of Congress.” He further told me that they call the administration papers which say that “everything is lovely and the goose hangs high”, “official frogs”, because they only know one note, and one sets the others going on the same old thing.

Two wags met on the street of the Shansi Bankers’ Guild, Peking. One wore a sour and the other a comical expression. The cynic clenched his fist at the teak-barred windows of one bank, and with a wry face exclaimed, “I don’t know how he’s giving it away, but I do know how he got it.” The other, holding out the hush-money of a silver sycee bar, and pointing to a banker’s residence across the road, answered: “I don’t know how he got it, but I happen to know how he’s giving it away.”

A popular Chinese restaurant bears the legend of “The Quiet Woman”, and the caricature shows a standing woman, whose decapitated head lies at her feet, and wears at last, before her triumphant husband, a defeated expression. The double humor is that henpecked men may safely come to this restaurant, and enjoy that quiet and retirement which home does not afford.

The humorist tells of a stutterer who held up an old friend, and clinging to his pajama-frog (for pajamas are outside and not inside clothes in old-style China), said:131 “If-f-f-f-f y-y-you h-have an hour I’d l-l-like to h-have a m-m-minute’s c-conversation with you.”

Athletics of all sorts, except Rugby football, are popular at China’s best technical school, Pei Yang University at Tientsin. English is used for all lectures except, of course, Chinese classics. The subject of establishing a debating class or a Rugby football team came up, and a professor who defended the former said that “he preferred a man who could stand on his feet and make his head work to one who could stand on his head and make his feet work”.

A rich brute went to meet his victim whom he had impoverished. He jeered, so as to break his spirit as he had done to his estate: “My! what a come down; what poor clothes.” Quick as a flash from the never-say-die man came the repartee: “Yes, I expected to meet you, but you should see me on ordinary days.”

The practical joker has visited romantic Macao. They tell this story of the Portuguese Sé Mission Cathedral. The Macao women are short, and the fonts of holy water are placed too high on the wall for them to look into. The devil was put into the sacred waters by the bad boy, the devil this time being crabs, which unseen, nipped the fingers of the superstitious women as they searched high up for the soothing blessing.

The naming of the Chinese servants on board ship, in mess, hong, office or godown, has presented many a difficulty, and the civilian is more inconsiderately humorous than the missionary, especially when his help changes often, as is the case in Hongkong. Numbers instead of names are generally used. “Number Two piecee cook” is what you would say if you desired the second cook called. “Number One piecee topside boy” is what your wife would say if she desired the first up-stairs chamber boy called. There are132 no chambermaids. Where a woman is employed, she serves only as an amah; that is, mother-nurse, or mother-maid. In the irreverent messes and barracks, some of the men name their servants after some personal distinction or appearance, such as “The Tall One”; “One Eye”; “Melica”, because he told you that he had once sailed on a ship for America; “Jesus man”, because he told you he got converted at a mission school and preferred the name; “Governor boy”, because he was once a servant in the governor’s yamen. Sometimes the messes christen their servants according to their favorite political leaders in America or England: “Loosy Velly” is, of course, Roosevelt; “Blyan” is Bryan; “Wheel Sun” is Wilson; “Salls Belly” is Salisbury; “Loy Jo” is Lloyd George, and one boy rejoiced in the name of “Jimmy de Blaney” (Blaine). Hundreds of these silent servants are moving about the dining-room of the palatial Hongkong Club at tiffin (lunch) time, yet you will not hear a footfall, as they wear felt-soled shoes. Perhaps they are as silently giving you and me numbers, instead of names, in Chinese. Indeed, I know they do, and would be ashamed to tell my tourist friends that some of them are soon known as “Wigglety Walk”; “Always Shout”; “Fool Laugh”; “Pig Eye”; “Wine Face”; “Wine Whiskers” (red beard); “Buddha’s Belly” (stout); and when women attract them, “Tea Flower” (pale one); “Buddha’s Mother” (a sweet matron); “Flowery Flag” (American); “British Queen”; “Snow Flower” (Canadian), etc.

Kipling, Archibald Little, Price Collier and others have written that some men sometimes drink hard east of Suez. The writer himself in a former book related the bravery of a famous 11 A. M. Cocktail Brotherhood in the blazing stifling Orient, and two world-known knights of the pen took him to tournament to break a lance because of it. One133 witty evening an old hand on the club veranda admitted the soft impeachment, and gave himself and some others medals for the dangers he had passed in these words of Cicero in the immortal “Murena” oration: “If Asia does carry with it a suspicion of luxury, surely it is a praise-worthy thing, not never to have seen Asia, but to have lived temperately in Asia.” Ah! we who had weathered many a storm, sighed, and in bravery ordered one more, drinking not to the habit, but to the wit. As Archibald Little, veteran of the East, said, the tea-tasting season was over, and a mile-stone should be set to mark it!

A droll Chinese boy brought his fast running watch to Gaupp’s jewelry store on Queen’s Road, Hongkong. On being asked to explain as best he could what seemed to be the trouble, the Celestial rolled up those expressive eyes of his, which must move the gods, as they always do men, to laughter: “Oh, he too muchee to-mollow (to-morrow); you jerk back to to-day.”

“We have come here to stay,” boasted a corps of the enemy, which took up an advanced position. “Yes, they stayed,” replied doughty General Li Yuen after the battle, and his grim smile explained that they stayed as dead bodies.

Yen Tsz, an eminent premier of the Tsi principality, and a contemporary wit with Confucius, referring to the increase of crime which called for the punishment of the amputation of feet, used this ironical phrase: “False feet are cheaper than shoes these days in our market-place.”

The humor of war is grim. Shortly before Confucius’ day the prince of Tsu State had overcome the army of Tsin State. The dead lay in heaps. The Tsu prince was asked if he would not order a tablet raised over the brave enemy. “Not much,” said he, “I will have a tablet to my own ancestors134 raised over them, giving thanks that we do the crowing instead of them this time.”

A fireman on the new Canton-Hankau railway made out his report of a regrettable fatality in a collision as follows: “The engineer was died without senses.”

A consolidation of three formerly independent samshu liquor dealers of Canton advertised as follows: “This three rice bier dealers, before separate, is now amalgamated for quite economic, and glad with much public order for oblige soled more cheap to foreign friends.”

On a landing in a curio store, popular with foreigners, was the following sign: “Peoples alighted here go down stairs if curious wishing.”

A penitent convert wrote his mission school teacher as follows: “Many thoughts of unpleasant come into my mind. Many tears drop my spiritual soul not to speak of outside eyes. I break my beautiful promise. I contemps the difficults but was mistake. I was failed that time to finish the very good of God which begunned. Deep repents of my throat is blocked thickly in bearing regrets for everlasting, but I standing for your forgive and excuse of God like poor Peter in three times with handkerchief on shame face and water eyes.”

Just as humorously confused is the attempt of nine-tenths of the foreigners to make themselves understood in Chinese. Sometimes the efforts of our missionaries and translators reach the old book-shops, and are promptly thrown with a smile, which is more humorous than cynical in these days of humor and enlightenment, into the compartment entitled: “Second Hand Religion.”

I asked my Chinese friend why their ideograph for two friends was two pearls, and he explained: “Because each is equally precious, without the possibility or necessity of being135 exactly alike.” Let this answer for a picture of America and China as the new days dawn on each side of the Pacific. A Tientsin shop seems to have grasped satisfactorily the situation, its sign reading: “All languages spoken: American understood.”

The many thousand ideograms of the Chinese language are memorized, and words are often tabulated for the pupil by rhyme. They have no alphabet and therefore can never use a linotype or typewriter. The Chinese, accordingly, have wonderful memories, but their memory-method sometimes places them in humorous situations. English is now required in nearly all the new Chinese schools, though the Chinese mandarin examiners know little about the language as yet. A confident Chinese candidate appeared before the board of a Kwangtung province school as an applicant for the position of “Professor of English”. “How much English do you know?” profoundly inquired the mandarin from behind his heavy, tortoise-rimmed glasses. The amusing reply was: “Numbers, one to ten; a hundred words beginning with ‘A’, and ten words rhyming with sing.” The Chinese board accepted the Chinese teacher of English for want of a better man. The new Chinese are eminently a business race, and therefore, in their excellent business judgment, the day will come when they will be compelled to throw away their ideographs so as to avail of the business facilities of our alphabet-typewriter and linotype. The present Chinese ideograph case in a printing office has thousands of ideograph types, and it is a sadly humorous sight on a hot day in humid South China to see a Chinese typesetter darting about the room like a dragon-fly, trying to meet the editor’s demand for an “extra.”

The carriages of a funeral procession rolled along the maloo of modernized Shanghai. The mourners in the first136 carriage played cards and laughed. Every one else in the procession joked and smiled. I asked my Chinese humorist to explain the astonishing incongruity and he replied: “Why shouldn’t everybody be happy when everybody is deeply satisfied? Hop Long’s enemies believe that he has descended below to get at last the many punishments that are coming to him, and Hop Long’s friends just as confidently believe that he has ascended on high to receive his richly merited rewards; therefore, you see, all are joyful.”

The landlord made an agreement with the tenant that when the rice was harvested, he should receive one-third. Harvest was long past in its pale and sickle moon, and the landlord, receiving nothing, accosted the tenant: “Look here, thou Choi, didn’t we make an agreement that I should receive one-third of that rice?” Choi, nothing daunted, replied: “Yes, Laoye, but there was no third; there were only two baskets of rice and they are both mine.”

Two Chinese youths were discussing their ambitions. One said: “When I grow up I want to belong to a theatrical company.” His brother replied: “Humph, not I. I want the theatrical company to belong to me.”

The Chinese do not raise milch cows or goats. The following aged milk joke accordingly has been trotted out before every mess table of Treaty Port China, and been made to blush as a novice for the entertainment of every griffin. It seems that the new China hands insisted on having fresh milk in their tea. For the sake of peace the Number One boy at last procured it. The new hands said: “Of course it’s not like the June grass milk at home, but it will do in a pinch.” The Number One boy smiled blandly. At last the milk ceased and the new hands demanded an explanation, which the Number One boy gave as follows: “No molo milkee; that piecee olo pig have now got litter of lil pigs; that piecee bucket whitewash now makee finish.”

III
INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL CHINA.

The eastern states of America and Great Britain have a new slogan: “Get ready for the Panama Canal.” The western states of America, and indeed all America, should have another slogan: “Get ready for the China trade.” It is not far off; it is already on the horizon, “arising a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”. It may come with a rush any year and thousands of companies will have their headquarters at New York. There are many things to arrange, internally and externally, in currency, in a tariff of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., in provincial, inter-provincial and international politics, in loans and finances, in education, in nationalization of trunk railways, in harbor, canal and river conservancy, in reforestation, in patent, copyright and mining laws, in commercial law, in army matters, in a revenue navy, in police, in municipal organization, in hygiene, in paternalization as far as famine, flood and seed grain are concerned, in collection of taxes, in civil service, etc., but none of these difficulties is insuperable. Then comes the great trade.

On my travels and life of three years in China, I have listened, and I have glanced about for signs of the new times; and I shall relate just a few of the indications of progress, indications as different from the old manifestations as day is from night. Three years ago, yes, one year ago, few thought that these things were possible. Twenty recent138 books and five thousand newspaper articles prophesied that they were not possible. Thirty recent authors and ten thousand newspaper writers were Laodicean in attitude. Alas, ye Manchuized scribes! A few books, a few articles, many missionaries, and the October, 1911, revolution said they were possible, and the fall of Nanking proved it.

Agricultural machinery will before long be required on the great plains of Pechili, Mongolia and the three Manchurian provinces, whence America will draw much grain, meat, oil, lumber and coal. Nail, needle and glass factories are going up on a small scale. China has the iron in the mine, but she will need our machinery. Paper mills are largely increasing, and we need their pulp. Some mills use bamboo, which the Japanese successfully experimented on in Formosa. Factories for making soap, the most glaringly deficient thing in dirty China hitherto, have been erected, even in far western Chingtu City. China, like Japan, has concluded to adopt wool in the northern provinces instead of padded cotton and sheepskin. Woolen mills have been erected at Shanghai, Peking, Lanchow, Hankau, Kalgan, etc., to work up to the vast supplies of Mongolian and Pechili shearings. The old method of making winter clothing was to pad cotton and silk with cotton batting and silk waste, the wearer being transformed into a comical Falstaffian size. Modern tanneries have been erected by Mohammedan Chinese at Hankau, Lanchow, Singan, etc. Hardware and enameled ware factories have been erected at Tientsin, Canton, etc., but China can not for years take care of her needs in hardware. Flour mills abound at Harbin, Shanghai and Hongkong, and will be rapidly extended throughout the north. Cement is being heavily produced, and will increase, great factories now being run at Tongshan in Pechili, Canton and Macao in Kwangtung, and Tayeh in Hupeh139 provinces. All of these industries will need machinery. Of all municipal improvements, China has needed modern water-works the most. They are now in operation in the cities of Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Canton, Peking, Mukden, Chingtu, Nanking, Hangchow, Chinkiang, Swatow, Tsinan, Newchwang, etc. Electric cars are run at Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Hongkong, Hankau, Tientsin, Tsingtau, etc. Hongkong has a wonderful cable railway up 1,500 feet of mountain, which will be copied at Kiukiang, and other hill resorts from the heat. Telephone service is installed at Hongkong, Canton, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Chingtu, Wuhu, Hangchow, Ningpo, Nanking, etc. Electric light is furnished at Nanking, Peking, Tientsin, Tsingtau, Hankau, Swatow, Mukden, Newchwang, Shanghai, Hangchow, etc. In little of this have the Americans entered as yet, though they will on a vast scale as American finance and industry extends its agencies. The financing and the contracting often go together, and it is not unknown for the British and Germans to combine, though the British would be glad to join with the Americans, if there were Americans on the ground. Often the suppliers divide on a plant, the British furnishing the engines and boilers, and the Germans the dynamos. Gas works are also being erected, and the incandescent mantle lamps are very popular. As China has untold riches in coal, her development in gas lighting will be extensive. There is a great field for American machinery here. Her pipe foundries will grow, as she has as much iron as coal. For many years, however, her industrial, municipal and railway supplies, and certainly her machinery, must largely come from abroad. It is a great field for the manufacturing nations, and even Austria is entering it with recent success. She has increased the service of the Austrian Lloyd Steamship Company140 from Trieste, and her manufactures are seen more and more throughout the Far East. Yet Austria is not a nation that can be compared with America, Britain or Germany in potentiality.

Since China has become a purchaser of machinery, she invites the world to advertise in Chinese in her newspapers, and to open agencies in China, where Chinese is read by the compradores at least. She hates concession hunters when they are of the Pizarro and Cortez type, and desires to exploit and profit by her own wealth. I have seen the bitterest complaint in the Ching Wei Pao, an able native paper of Tientsin, that too many franchises are given free to foreigners, who pay small wages and take the profits out of the country. Can you blame them for desiring municipal ownership, if they are willing to buy our machinery and hire our instructors?

China is slowly establishing fire departments in its municipal and marine life. I have seen a fire break out on oil boats in the West River of Kwangtung province. Gongs were struck everywhere, and tugs and launches hastened to the scene and with hose poured water upon the blaze.

The Chinese engine builders of Hongkong, who were apprenticed at the British Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company, are successfully copying foreign marine engines and pumps, and for boats under one thousand tons European builders can not compete with them, except in the matter of quicker delivery, which is often important. Many motor-boats, manufactured in Hongkong, are brought across the Pacific for delivery in Canada via the C. P. R. steamships. Until recently the Szechuen and Hupeh boatmen of the upper Yangtze would not permit the competition of steam, but the Kwangtung province men of the West River—the brainiest men of modern China—have141 been quick to adopt machinery, possibly because wonderful Hongkong was so near as an example of the new era and an efficient interpreter of the West to the East. While the labor at Hongkong is Chinese, most of the capital and the expert foremanship is British.

The total taxes that a Chinese pays for national, provincial and municipal purposes is one dollar per head per year, against seven dollars in Russia, and twenty dollars in Europe and America. As most of this money is wasted on soon obsolete navies and armies, and is drawn from mines and land that can not be replenished, one can see the vast wealth with which China will some day suddenly step into the world arena, China strong, and the others impoverished in all but brain power.

In Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces, very simple methods are followed in producing cotton-seed oil. The seeds are heated, packed into a barrel and pressure is exerted by driving wedges under a hoop. Meal is made in buffalo-driven stone mills. These methods will soon change with modern industrial organization and the importation of our machinery.

At Kiating in the south of Szechuen province are the remarkable gas and salt wells, the former supplying fuel to evaporate the brine of the latter. The industry is immense, there being many thousands of wells in the opulent Min River valley of Central China. The salt is a government monopoly, and may be retained as such in the new financing, as in some features of national revenue French and Japanese methods, instead of American and British, may be followed. In that case, the federal government would be the purchaser of the new machinery.

Only north of the Yangtze River are ponies seen. Szechuen province has the most beautiful, many of them being142 black. The Mongolian pony of the provinces farther north has a heavier body and a worse temper. Japan has commenced the stocking of horses, and China will do likewise, when she widens her roads, and increases the size of her farms so as to make an animal useful, the men displaced from employment going to the new mines and railways. Moreover, China is at her wits’ end for fertilizer, which stock will furnish. She has been at her wits’ end for fuel and has been burning the field stubble and straw needed for compost. Now coal will save for her this land enricher.

The fine guild houses in the various cities are erected by subscription and are put in charge of a caretaker. Meeting halls, showrooms, restaurants, theater and sleeping quarters are provided. It is the same as if the Ohio men put up a guild house in New York, and the New York men put up a guild house in Cincinnati; or if Edinburgh traders erected a guild house in London, and London men reciprocated. It was the reciprocal working of these guilds which showed the Chinese that assemblies and parliaments were feasible, and next to the foreign-trained students, the guild men have been foremost in China’s representative political bodies. Here are some of the practical proverbs that are hung up in the guild rooms:

“He who keeps everlastingly at it will grow legs long enough to jump the highest mountain.”

“Gambling is not good, but still I have known one who risked his last penny and got his first pound.”

“Trust an orange-seller to say that his oranges are sweet, and a shoemaker to say that his shoes don’t leak.”

“A little attention to the cutting end of a chisel makes necessary only a little attention to the striking end.”

The inland Chinese are sometimes clever in working themselves into the foreigner’s personnel of staff. First the father brings his boy, and the boy brings his cousin, imploring the foreigner to let them wait around the office to pick up a little English. They insist on doing or pretending to do chores; they whisper to the staff to halve their work with them, and then they beg for or demand a wage “while they are learning English.” Seldom does the kind-hearted foreigner refuse it, and he is really spreading the commercial and literary gospel of the West by doing so.

In some of the Yangtze provinces designs are even yet stamped into the dyed cotton and silk, by stencil with lime, which takes out the color, as compared with our system of rolling the inked design on plain goods. The old will be rung out by the new, as Tennyson prophesied.

Man as a beast of burden must depart in patient earnest China, which is associated with such unique sights of physical slavery as dozens of coolies harnessed to a wagon-load of teak in Hongkong, or several hundred trackers tied to long bamboo hawsers, while they pull junks through the terrific rapids of the noble Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien. Men for thousands of years have also supplied with their legs the motive power of irrigation wheels for raising water, and of tread wheels for turning paddles. Billions of tons of freight have been carried on the backs and from the shoulders of men, women and children over the hundreds of mountain passes on the great trade routes of mountainous China, such as the steep Mei Ling pass of Kwangtung, the Tangyueh pass of Yunnan, the Tachien pass into Tibet, etc. Hongkong’s thousand144 palatial villas and châteaux eighteen hundred feet above the clouds were carried up brick by brick and stone by stone in baskets and on bamboos balanced on the bare shoulders of human beings, who panted piteously in a stifling hot and humid atmosphere in the equator region. Men have pumped the brine from the deepest brine wells in the world. Their arms have lifted the weights that have driven the wells for gas and brine. A pulley, a rope, an endless chain, have been unknown, and hearts and feet have strained up the thirteen stories of the pagodas with the coping stone and upcurled eaves. The day of labor-saving devices dawns for a China whose population is going to decrease within reason, not with the intent to starve labor, but so that labor may devote itself to better-paying work. Government officials only can supervise this condition in China or in America, government’s work being to govern the big as well as the small, as we are just discovering in the West.

Shopping has been done by a tedious system of bargaining extending over days, the contract concluding with a shout of “Mai Te” (sale attained), which corresponds with our stock exchange phrase of “Bid taken.” Doubtless the modern Chinese will adopt the Anglo-Saxon method of saving time and coming to a decision quicker. Healthy competition will bring this about.

Many guilds and Chinese merchants continue the old custom of sending letters from city to city by messenger or trusted traveler. Hongkong has attacked this competition with the government post-office by fining those who deliver private letters from out-ports, though Hongkong permits private delivery by the excellent “chit-book” system within the city.

China is finding that she can knit her own goods, and she145 will soon import yarns mainly. I shall instance the Wei San factory as a sample of five factories in Hongkong. Canton has ten factories, and Kwangtung province has many more, not to speak of the immense number of hand-knitting machines which the Japanese and the Germans are supplying. Tientsin and Shanghai have several knitting factories, and much foreign machinery will be needed throughout the land, especially in the Yangtze valley.

Up to Viceroy Chang Chih Tung’s régime in Hupeh in 1906, China scraped and raked the whole world for cargoes of old horseshoes and iron scrap, but since the blast furnaces at Hanyang have been a success, China is doing considerable smelting of ore, of which she has beds almost as rich as her coal and lime beds. The largest iron mines now worked are at Phing Ting in eastern Shansi province and Tayeh in eastern Hupeh province. The Hanyang smelters supply the rail mills of Hanyang, and also ship pig iron to the Wakamatsu iron works on Kyushu Island, Japan; 40,000 tons of pig to the Western Steel Corporation of Seattle, and to the eastern seaboard of America, as well as to Hongkong, on occasions. There is iron ore in more than half of the provinces, notably in Kiangsu (near Nanking); Nganhwei and Kiangsi, besides the provinces mentioned. China is already turning out 400,000 tons of iron ore a year, largely by primitive methods. The Han Yeh Ping Iron and Coal Company at Hanyang, Hupeh province, has three German blast furnaces, eight Siemens-Martin open-hearth furnaces, a rolling-mill of one thousand tons a day, blooming mills and a foundry. The cranes are run by electricity. The iron ore and limestone are secured at Tayeh eighty miles down the Yangtze from Hankau. Here a whole range of hills is full of hematite ore. A railway of146 fifteen miles brings the ore to the Yangtze River, where it is loaded on junks and towed by steam launches up to Hanyang.

Among the Chinese companies (stock held by Chinese and foreigners) which have been managed successfully are the Taku (Tientsin) Tug and Lighter Company; Shanghai Tug and Lighter; Shanghai Dock and Engineering; Shanghai and Hongkew Wharf Company; China Oil Company; Tientsin Iron Works; Union, Yangtze, North China and Canton Marine Insurance Company; Hongkong, Canton, Yangtze, North China and China Fire Insurance Companies; China Merchants’ Steamship Company; Ewo, Shanghai and Soy Chee Cotton Mills; Hai Ho Conservancy (Tientsin); Ching Ching Mining Company; Kiangnan Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Yangtzepoo Dock and Ship-building at Shanghai; Vulcan Iron and Car Works; Han Yeh Ping steel plant at Hanyang; colliery at Pinghsiang; iron mines at Tayeh; Commercial Press of Shanghai in publishing; Chee Hsin Cement Company (at Tayeh, Hupeh).

In joint stock organization, China will for a while suffer from two things, nepotism and graft. We have ourselves not yet emerged from staffing companies with inexperienced and dummy relatives, and from plundering the corporation exchequer. The Shanghai taotai who decamped during the rubber panic of 1910, having given several million dollars of fiduciary funds to friends, will never be forgotten in the Paris of the East. No more however will the “squeezing” Manchu mandarin come down “like a wolf on the fold” on struggling concerns or private business.

147 Kaiping (near Tientsin), in Pechili province; Wei Hsien, in Honan (anthracite).

Hungay and Kebao, in Tonquin (owned and operated by French and Hongkong capitalists).

This of course is only a beginning. On account of poor transportation by rail and canal, China imports about 2,000,000 tons of Japanese coal, and Hongkong and Shanghai import Australian and Welsh coal, some of it for admiralty purposes. The largest anthracite mines now open are, in their order, in Shansi, Honan, Pechili and Shangtung provinces; the bituminous as far as mined, in their order, in Pechili, Kiangsi, Shensi, Kansu, Shangtung, Szechuen, Yunnan, Kweichou, Hunan and Kwangsi provinces. Over a million tons of lignite are mined yearly in Manchuria. England has a coal supply for only one hundred and fifty years, and America’s supply will not last much longer. This means that China will step full-panoplied into the coal and iron arena with plethoric supplies which, with her population, will make her probably the world’s richest nation, in material resources, if not in brains. The first shipment of148 Chinese coal for America occurred in July, 1910, when the steamer Inverkip called at Ching Wang Tao on the Gulf of Pechili and loaded the famous Kaiping coal for San Francisco. The British Peking Syndicate, mining anthracite coal in Shansi province, purposes to build colliers to take coal to America. Coal costs at the mines only seventy-five cents a ton, and with machinery opulent China could reduce this cost. It is a knowledge of the potentiality of this great wealth that kindled some of the fire of the October, 1911, revolution, and led the provincial assemblies of Szechuen and Hupeh to say: “China’s mines and transportation franchises shall not be passed over to foreigners.” The Peking Syndicate, mainly British, operating hard coal and iron mines in Shansi, is capitalized at $6,000,000. The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company has a capital of $5,000,000. It has for many years operated the famous Kaiping coal mines north of Tientsin. This is the company which employed Mr. Kinder, the British engineer, who surreptitiously built the “Rocket,” the first locomotive used continuously in China.

A wonderful tin mine has been worked for many years at Kuo Chao, in the southeast corner of Yunnan province, the tin being exported through Mengtsu. It used to seek Hongkong via the Red River and Haiphong and sometimes via Nanning, the West River and Canton. The costly narrow gage railway which the French have run from Haiphong to Yunnan now catches nearly all of this product. There is much complaint regarding rates, which are based “on all the traffic will bear,” and it is proposed by the Chinese to build a railway to Nanning, and send the tin the remainder of the way by junk and launch. This rich mine produces about 15,000,000 pounds a year, valued at nearly $6,000,000, and now that German machinery and German149 experts have been introduced by the Chinese miners, a greater and a purer product will result. Until recently the product had to be resmelted at Hongkong. Of course, great as this product is, the Straits Settlements still lead in tin mining. There are 30,000 miners (mostly boys, on account of the narrow unhealthy shafts) at Kuo Chao, and owners, miners, smelters, porters and the government representatives all have their compulsory labor unions. This protection of labor must be copied in all countries, the government forcing the laborer to protect himself, and making the industry share in the cost of government supervision. Charcoal is used as fuel at the clay smelters, and the bellows are hand-worked.

As is well known, Southern China is cursed with white ants and humidity. The former eat the wooden beams, and the latter rusts iron beams. Ceilings have to be perforated to admit air and light between the floors so as to keep down the ravages of the white ant. However, Southern China is copying Hongkong’s example and risking metal beams and ceilings, the trouble being to find a suitable protective paint. China has graphite, lead for oxides, carbon, silica, and oils in abundance, and she will in time manufacture her own protective paints, but we shall supply the machinery. Brass hardware is used instead of iron on account of the humidity.

The important copper mines of Yunnan were worked as a Manchu monopoly. Hunan is perhaps the next richest province, with Szechuen, Shansi and Kweichou following, although every province has copper. Nickel mines exist in Yunnan, Kwangsi and other southern provinces.

The first engagement between the two immense sugar refineries (Butterfield’s and Jardine’s) at Hongkong and the great refiners of Formosa has been won by the latter,150 which were helped until recently by indirect Japanese subsidies. When the Sugar Trust, after the government fine and municipal suit, jumped the price two cents a pound, in 1911, if America had a Price Board at the head of affairs to induce Congress to act as was done in the coal shortage, Formosa and Hongkong sugar could have flooded the country until the price was restored to the five cents rate, or about that rate. The immense Hongkong refineries (Taikoo and China Sugar) use Javan raw sugar. The Formosa refineries use their local raw. They not only supply Japan under a protective tariff, but have enough to supply China. Formosa produces 600,000,000 pounds a year, and could handily double the amount. America has the Louisiana, Hawaii and Philippine cane fields to protect, it is true, but if sugar rises over five and one-half cents a pound retail, the insistent knockers at the high door, Formosan and Hongkong sugars, might be allowed to come in, as the tariff-enslaved countries are going to heed the new cry that food, clothing and building material must be duty-free, or nearly so.

Flake and amorphous graphite are mined in the Ping An section of northern Korea, and Japan will, therefore, enter into the manufacture of crucibles, lubricants, pencils and steel-paint.

China continues to use the earthenware jar and the paper bottle, reinforced with bamboo withes, to transport her valuable nut, bean and seed oils. Sometimes staves are brought in by foreigners and set up at Hankau, Newchwang, etc., in barrels, but it would seem that tin would eventually come into use, with the idea of conserving wood. The earthenware and bamboo paper containers are the ideal from a conservation point of view, but they are too tender and risky151 for movement abroad. The Hanyang plant will probably have the first tinware factory.

The royalty imposed in Korea for mining by the Japanese government is thirty per cent. of the net revenue. The Chinese royalty is twenty-five per cent. in general, plus an additional twenty per cent. in the case of precious stones, ten per cent. in gold, silver and quicksilver mines; five per cent. in coal and iron; and export duty of five per cent., and likin (inland customs and provincial transportation tax, literally “cash a catty”) two per cent. As China’s mines are more lucrative, this royalty is not so onerous as the comparison would seem to make it, and the tendency is to reduce it, under the new government.

The ship-building and dock facilities of the Far East have fully risen to the demands. The three largest are at Hongkong, all British owned. The Hongkong and Whampoa Dock Company on the China mainland of Hongkong (Kowloon), and at Aberdeen on Hongkong Island, over the mountains from the city of Victoria, has six docks, one of them seven hundred feet long on the keel blocks. The company builds ships, locomotives, cars, bridges, engines, motor-boats, boilers, machinery, and, indeed, anything after the steel is furnished to them, by Britain chiefly.

The Taikoo Dock (Butterfield & Swire) on the eastern end of Hongkong Island has a dock 787 feet long, and is also equipped to turn out the largest ships.

The Admiralty Dock of the British Navy on Hongkong Island was built from shore in the center of the city of Victoria, into the water by reclamation, instead of being cut out of the rock, as was done with the other docks. It is equipped to handle large battleships, and can be used by the mercantile marine in an emergency.

152 The Tanjong Pagar Dock at Singapore is equipped to handle battleships and maritime vessels. It is controlled by the Crown Colony.

The Mitsu Bishi Dock, cut out of the high rock at Nagasaki, has one dock 722 feet long. This company built the new 19,000 tons displacement ships, oil burners, of the Toyo Kisen Kaisha for the San Francisco route, and like the Hongkong and Whampoa Dock it always has large salvage steamers ready to go to the rescue of wrecks, now that wireless has been established in the Orient. There have been some wonderful expeditions of help recently on the romantic seas of the Far East.

The Kawasaki Dock Company at Dairen, South Manchuria, has a dock 380 feet long, together with the usual machine and boiler shops. There is a commercial dock at Kobe, the Harima Dock at Oh, and large government docks and arsenals at Yokosuka (near Yokohama), Kure and Sasebo. The last named dock, 777 feet long, built the dreadnought battleship Kawachi, 21,000 tons.

The Kiangnan Dock and Engineering Works, Shanghai (Chinese), built the imperial yacht once owned by Prince Tsui, and small cruisers which the republicans seized. It has a dock 575 feet long on the blocks, and has the usual machine and boiler shops. The Yangtzepoo Dock at Shanghai (Chinese and foreign owned) has a dock 455 feet long on the blocks.

The Shanghai Dock and Engineering Company (Chinese and foreign) has docks 560 feet long, where some of the vessels for the Philippine government were built in 1912.

The Tsingtauer Werft, owned by the Germans, has a floating dock at Tsingtau, Kiaochou, Shangtung, China, lifting vessels 460 feet long, and there is the immense floating dock, “Dewey”, of the American navy, at Cavite, Manila,153 which does not refuse to do a friendly act for maritime commerce, when necessary, if the ships are not over 600 feet long.

The French have small docks at Haiphong and Saigon. It will be seen that as far as taking care of battleships is concerned, only Britain and Japan have more than one string to the bow, Britain being easily in the lead. America has only one dock, and that a floating one. It could not lift a dreadnought, and therefore America has in the meantime wisely moved her first defense line, as I think the writer, Thomas Millard, a Shanghai American, recommended in his books, back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, counting on Cavite, Philippines, as a picket post. Germany at Kiaochou, and Russia at Vladivostok are as yet out of the running, with inferior docking accommodations. The Russians are spending $10,000,000 in Vladivostok on a floating dock, ice-breakers and a wharf. As far as America is concerned, she can count on Britain. Dewey fitted out at Mirs Bay, Hongkong, despite all conventions. As Commander Tatnall said at Taku in China, “Blood is thicker than water,” which was reciprocated by Admiral Seymour at Manila. When Admiral Diedrichs asked what the British would do if the Germans fired on the Americans, Seymour replied: “You had better ask Admiral Dewey, who is informed.” That is the story that goes the rounds in the East, and if it is not wholly true in fact, it is so potentially.

There is a growing number of smaller Chinese docks, machine shops and ways. Inland at the Pinghsiang colliery on the borders of Kiangsi and Hunan provinces, China has machine shops fitted to turn out almost anything, and the Hanyang Steel Works, across from Hankau, have been already described. Railway shops are opening up everywhere, and do creditable work, especially the North China railway154 at Tongshan; the Shanghai & Nanking Railway shops at Wusung, near Shanghai, and the Hongkong and Whompoa Dock shops. The Vulcan Iron Works at Shanghai construct railway and street-cars.

The immense cement works which are already in operation are the Indo-China Cement Company at Haiphong, in Tonquin (French); Tayeh, in Hupeh province (Chinese); Chee Hsin Cement Company, at Tongshan, near Tientsin (Chinese); Green Island Cement Company, at Macao and Hongkong (British and Chinese). Half of the many bridges that are being erected for the immense transportation development throughout China and the Philippines are made of this new concrete.

The Chinese furniture makers of Ningpo, Yunnan, Shanghai, Hongkong and Canton, are famous. They copy foreign models and also execute the native designs. The artistic cabinet work of Li Kwong Loong can be seen in the Shanghai and Hongkong clubs, in the Hongkong Hotel, and in Watson’s Store at Hongkong. The best effects are in the prized teakwood, which is becoming the rage in San Francisco. Vantine’s and the Metropolitan Museum, New York, exhibit specimens of the careful and strong handwork of these Chippendales of the land of Han. China can take care of herself in furniture making if time is not of the “essence of importance.” Loving art, I would not recommend sending her our machinery for furniture, but if government schools and offices are to be supplied quickly, I suppose we shall be compelled to make esthetics surrender to utility here also!

The Germans plan to meet the leadership of America, Britain and Japan in technical instruction in China. The British and Americans control the Tongshan Engineering School at Tongshan, and the Americans are powerful in155 the Pei Yang Science College at Tientsin. At Mukden the Japanese are influential. At the mechanical shops at Hongkong, Shanghai and Hankau the British are influential. The Germans plan, with the aid of Krupps, their foreign office and the Deutsche Asiatische Bank, to establish a central engineering college at Tsingtau, Shangtung province, with branches possibly at Hankau and Kaiphong. They believe that the graduates will order German machinery and material for China’s coming prodigious development.

The American government has included in its humanitarian pure food laws a prohibition on the importation of green tea, which is colored in the pot over the fire with Prussian blue, indigo, talc and gypsum. This changes the leaf from its flat state and dull yellow and green color to a ball state, colored lustrous emerald, and increases the aromatic flavor slightly. The Chinese complain of having to pot-dry the green tea longer to preserve it under the new rule, and moreover old custom dies hard in China as far as agriculture is concerned. The American government has done a world service in improving the quality of the ideal beverage, and the Chinese, who do things by wholesale, will insist in time that Australia and England, the champion tea-drinkers per capita, though not in bulk, shall take what the Americans have made “ploper fashion.” There were amusing instances of cousin John’s habit of “bluffing” laws on the maxim followed in more lands than in China, “If laws interfere with your business, why laws?” He heard of the May 1, 1912, law of the Americans, but he sent his crop over just the same, saying, “Surely America won’t put it back on my hands, as I haven’t got used to the law yet; like Mencius’ thief, I can only get used to law gradually!” Had America relented, John would have seen that his firers never got used to our laws.

156 China formulated a patent and copyright office at Peking in 1905, but it has not yet reached efficiency for various reasons, one being that the states’ rights feeling is stronger than the centralized government movement up to date. In the meantime the district or municipal taotai will, upon application of the foreign consul, issue a proclamation prohibiting all Chinese within his jurisdiction from manufacturing, selling or consuming property which is pirated; and such theft and infringement are considered unpardonable by the great body of highly moral Chinese guild merchants, as compared with the lack of similar honor in the first days of modernized commercial Japan. Prosecutions have been actually carried on in the mixed courts of foreign consuls and Chinese taotais against Chinese dealers for handling goods made in Europe and imported into China under marks similar to American marks registered with the taotai, and the dealers, whether ignorant or not, have been convicted and severely punished. Until China is able to establish an efficient patent department the method that should be followed is to register the mark or patent at the consul’s and taotai’s office in each province and port where the goods are to be sold. This will answer very satisfactorily until the growth of trade, transportation and machinery of government make the central government more familiar with modern business methods and international law. It is important in China and absolutely essential in Japan for the foreigner to register his patent promptly, for a pirate may precede him and cause irrevocable loss, in Japan at least.

I want to portray a Chinese character as a type of one interesting and powerful set of men with whom the West will now come in contact. Ah Chuk (I shall call that his name for present purposes) was a Cantonese about fifty-five years of age, though he looked much older because of157 his parchment face. He had few of his teeth, because he lived in the days before the advent of foreign-trained dentists. In his youth he did not fear to strike. His race were the men who had set in motion the greatest rebellion ever known, the Taiping scourge. My patriotic and legal duty was to obey the law in spirit and in letter, and in addition, under no circumstances to lose temper, but to treat Chuk with unfailing manners. Chuk was the only Chinese whom I ever knew who disobeyed his Confucian code of flowery courtesy (Li). He hated me, as he bitterly hated all who firmly withstood him, and he showed his feelings on every occasion. His gods were not Buddha, but money and power. On one occasion he said: “I can get you a Chinese slave girl for four hundred dollars.” I replied: “You insult me, Chuk.” He hissed, “I meant to.” He asked me why I could not obey the letter of the law and not the spirit, and I told him that an Occidental corporation employé, like the soldier, was expected to be absolutely loyal to orders. He said I was a fool because I made a god of conscience, instead of expediency; that I had no tact. I replied by quoting their maxim; “Tact is the discounting of principle in the mart of expediency.”

He feared neither the American, British or Chinese governments, nor the rich corporation. He corrupted foreign consulates in the old days when forged citizenship certificates were not unknown. He bullied the Canton viceroy. He was lord over half a dozen valleys and a hundred hamlets of Kwangtung province, whose inhabitants were his slaves, because they had signed bonds of $1,000 each for every Chinese whom he safely got into that Eldorado, America. He did not press the man in America any more than he would attempt to press a man in Mars. He pressed his father, his relatives in Kwangtung, who were on the158 bond also, for the payment of the $1,000, and it took the son in America twenty years to pay the money and the heavy interest. With his foot on the sacred bones of his grandfather he held the grandson in America in constant fear.

He was lord of the underground routes which ran to South Africa, America, Australia, Mexico, Canada and wherever Chinese laborers are not received free. He seldom dressed well; it did not do in those days to look opulent in China, and besides American inspectors might suspect a well-dressed dealer in contract slaves. His voice, unlike the usual pliable voice of his race, was deep in his raucous throat. He would not fear to take life if he had a chance in the lonely walks of his province, if his opponent was a strong obstacle to his worship of his two gods, money and power. He could not get in as many as he wanted by the direct route, so he determined to institute the first Chinese trans-Pacific steamship company, crossing the Pacific to Mexico. I told him that he never could get the money, as Queen’s Road, Hongkong, was a long way from Wall Street; that he would sink a million of the money of his beloved countrymen. He got the money from the Chinese, intensely conservative as they were, which proved the power of his persuasion, and he sank it all in two years. He could not be drawn into much expression by me, though he could speak English well. I heard him, however, speaking like a Rooseveltian tornado of storm and lightning unto his own, and once to two foreigners in whom he trusted, because they had obeyed him at their risk, and he owned them by the bribes they had accepted. His will was of iron, unyielding. His persistency was as tireless as Napoleon’s, and his swift victories were many. He could live without sleep when he planned his campaigns. He would go anywhere and to anybody159 to accomplish his aims. He loved whispering. He cast looks which wielded men. He swept like a vulture on lambs. He struck at his opponents like a tiger. He was not a Manchu, but he was Manchuized in his confidence that the Oriental was superior to the foreigner. I shall never forget the time when he told me that he had “a white man working for him.” That white man was descended in the third generation from a brother of a president of America.

Chuk was not uncomfortable when he thus wore the crown. He ruled over his subject races of the West with all the assurance which Xerxes or Kublai Khan did. He could plot; he could bribe; he could threat; he could spend with a lavish hand. One time he would travel in state at home and abroad, and on another occasion incognito like a spy. He felt he was abler than any white man because he added the easier conscience of the Orient, which he called wisdom, to an ability equal to the white man’s, and a will just as imperious. He despised all religions as he said “conscience makes faint-hearts of us all.” He had no pity for his dupes or victims. He was a Cantonese Tippo Tib. I never know, when I am speaking to an American or Cuban Chinese, if he is not a slave of Chuk’s, remitting to his old father in Kwangtung province, who will in turn remit to Chuk or Chuk’s heirs, to pay off that $1,000 and usurious interest added. Chuk is a Cantonese example of the power which may come to a money lord who has decapitalized labor, which will never catch up with the principal. His profits on the real cost were 1,500 per cent. Not even a surveillance of communications could probe Chuk’s underground methods. Three insurmountable barriers interposed, the extent of the territory, the Chinese language, and the changing codes which he used. It would be as difficult as ferreting out a criminal in the Trastevere section of Rome,160 if for one reason alone, because the Trasteverans will not turn informers. Neither will the Chinese. Therefore, with espionage of communications and informing for bribes eliminated, a secret service on Chinese law breakers, as far as we are concerned, is as yet in many respects ineffective.

IV
FINANCE AND BUDGET IN CHINA

With a reformed system of tax collection the following budget is quite feasible, and will, without any greater pressure on the individual than at present, lift China out of the slough of despond.

This proposes $330,000,000 a year for 400,000,000 people, against Japan’s $350,000,000 a year for only 55,000,000 population. This plan wipes out the obnoxious opium and likin taxes. The taxes proposed are less than half per capita what poorer India is paying, and one-tenth of what Japan is paying, and so China would remain the lowest taxed nation on the earth. The outstanding government debt of China, even including the proposed four-nation loans of $50,000,000 gold for currency reform, and $50,000,000 for new Szechuen and Hunan province railways, is, as I have detailed elsewhere in this article, only £113,000,000, whereas the present government debt of Japan, with infinitely less resources and population, is £300,000,000, not to speak of Japan’s private industrial loans abroad, which would add another £60,000,000. India’s debt is £170,000,000. The tax proposed in China is so small that room is left for each province to charge a door and head tax of 25c each a year, bringing in an additional $100,000,000 gold for provincial revenues to take care of justice, provincial public works, etc. Municipalities could then raise their ordinary taxes in the usual way. All that is wanted in China is an honest audit, the end of nepotism, and a cessation of “shaking the pagoda tree” by peculating officials. The whole central163 and provincial tax would not amount to much over $1 a head a year, and the municipal taxes would not be any larger than $1 per capita. This would not be a burden to cause complaint or revolution. With the immense sum collected China would almost at once take her place as one of the mightiest of nations. Her credit would be enormous, and her opportunity for good the greatest in the world because of her wider ethnic connections. She would not need to raise her customs much above the present five per cent. ad valorem, and thus oppressive monopolies could not grow up in the land. Free trade would flow to her with its riches, as it flowed to Britain, and every man would have enough, and no man too much; certainly an ideal condition. This budget would provide a splendid army of well-paid men ($8 gold per man per month is abundant); 100,000 strong, able to throw back any invasion at once, and always ready to keep down piracy. Riot and strikes are not unpatriotic piracy; they are the localized suppuration of an economic distress that can be cured or forestalled in a democracy by other means than a soldiery, which we have found a failure in America and Britain. The new Chinese navy could add a new dreadnought battleship each year, and provide crews, yards, and a full revenue marine. Above all, education and transportation would be taken care of lavishly, and China would not need to beg at any one’s door for a loan. She would be a land of peace, because a total tax of $2 gold a year per capita can raise not the slightest discontent in any land.

The debt of the Chinese government, contracted before October 13, 1911, which debt the republicans recognize, is as follows:

If Japan returned to China the £35,000,000 indemnity coerced from her by the Shimonoseki treaty, the Chinese165 debt would be greatly reduced. This is Japan’s moral duty, especially if she is allowed by the nations to retain Formosa, Korea, and possibly part of Manchuria, all of which she plans to retain. Several of the European nations should follow America’s example and return the excess in the Boxer indemnities. The banking nations, as long as America and Britain retain their present high standard of altruism, will never again permit any power to wheedle an indemnity out of China.

The foreign and local banks operating in China are the following. I use gold dollars for the table:

166 It will be noted that with one exception all of these banks are strong institutions. The hoary patriarch among them, endowed with exhaustless strength still, is the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, which has been operating in China since 1865.

There is a movement in Canton to establish an “Industrial Encouragement Bank”. The merchants are anxious for currency reform throughout the kingdom and the establishing of coins of fixed value on the American decimal plan, but going to a lower decimal to accommodate small trade and the lower values of China.

It is also proposed by prominent members of the Nanking Assembly to establish a Sino-American bank, plans for which were laid just before the October, 1911, revolution.

At the height of the revolution in November, 1911, the rebels did a remarkable thing successfully at Shanghai. The loyalists at Peking were unable either with their own imperial Ta-Ching bank, foreign loans, or the immense ramifications of the Shansi Bank guilds, to uphold their credit, and the chief fighter of the Manchus, General Chang Hsun Chung, could not pay his troops. The republicans at Shanghai under Sheng Wan Yung, minister of finance, and Wu Ting Fang, foreign secretary, organized the “Chung Hua” Bank at Shanghai with a capital of 5,000,000 taels. The shops immediately took the money at a high premium, doubtless to give an impetus to confidence. “Chung Hua” is the Chinese name for China. It means “central glory”.

Nothing hampers China’s interprovincial trade more than the absence of a national credit system and commercial paper. Treaty-port China gets long enough loans from the foreign manufacturer. The trouble is that the importer167 can not collect quickly from his customer, and when he does, the medium is coin, bullion and barter, unnecessarily and clumsily handled, whereas coin, bullion and barter should only be used for the balances. China needs a modern currency system, and a modern credit system as well.

It is in accord with manners and business accuracy when at a fair you are informed that an article will cost you a thousand coins (cash) to say: “I’ll pay you 500 good coins.” If you had a thousand counterfeits you could elect to pay with them, but never be so bucolic as to pay a thousand good coins when a thousand coins are asked. As suggested by America, China’s new coinage will have a silver dollar, half, quarter, dime, nickel, two cents, cent, half a cent, and one-tenth of a cent, all minted in government mints, and alone accepted as legal tender in taxes, telegraph, railway, telephone, customs, likin, stamp and other charges. Very slowly the old system of using provincial coinage of debased value, bullion (sycee) exchange, private bank notes, etc., will pass away. A central bank, like the Ta Ching, helped by a four-nations foreign loan, backed 40 per cent. by the government, and 60 per cent. by private subscriptions, with about $6,000,000 capital, could make a good beginning in taking care of the new system. Although a silver coinage, the government, like Japan’s, stands to guarantee the fixed value of the coinage as equal to half its face in gold; that is to say, the central bank will hold reserves so as to redeem or guarantee a silver dollar at fifty cents gold. The silver is to have a fixed purity standard, like the Philippine peso, or the American dollar. Japan stepped into Korea and refused to accept the old coinage. It immediately became copper bullion, and had no other value. For safety’s sake, the Japanese insisted that the coins, worth nominally one-tenth of a168 cent, should be broken at the square hole in the center. The steamer Seneca, in 1912, brought 1,400 tons of these broken Korean coins to New York, whence they were shipped to Chrome, New Jersey, to be smelted. China can not be so rigid, as she has not the police or army, but if she could safely be rigid, nothing would clear up the coinage question better than copying this Japanese example. Since the adoption of the gold standard in Mexico, the government has to accept the old Mexican dollar as legal tender for one dollar gold, which gives a profit of 100 per cent. to the lucky holders of these silver dollars. There are many of them in China; indeed the Mexican dollar was for many years the monetary standard in China, and the thrifty Chinese are smuggling the unchopped coins into Mexico as fast as they can be gathered up from the Shansi, Kwangtung and other bankers. The Mexican government anticipated this move, and placed a duty on Mexican dollars returned from abroad. The honors are even along the Rio Grande boundary; Mexican dollars are smuggled southward, and Mexican Chinese are smuggled northward! Most of the Mexican dollars in China, however, have been chopped in the banks and fan-tan houses, and the thrifty Chinese shroffs groan when they contemplate that by egotistically sinking their chop into the face of the Aztec eagle and the Texoco snake, they have now lost 100 per cent. profit. Moral: never mutilate the coin of a realm, whether it is your own country or not.

As illustrating the irregularity of the currency, let us cite the situation at Newchwang in 1912 for instance. National taxes are paid in Kuping taels; provincial taxes in Manchurian dollars. Customs duties are paid in the usual Haikwan taels; local octroi in small silver. The national post-office will only accept Mexican dollars. The national telegraph office will only accept Manchurian dollars. The national Chinese169 railway cashiers must receive payment of freight bills in either Peiyang or Kiauchou (German) dollars. The pursers of the national China Merchants’ Steamship Company demand payment of fares in either Mexican dollars or Newchwang taels. The Japanese, who run a railway, a concession, public utility works and a hotel here, demand payment of their bills in the Japanese silver yen (dollar). On their railway line they demand payment in the Japanese gold yen. The Russian demands payment in his paper ruble note. The Americans and the English demand payment respectively in eagles and sovereigns. All of these concerns will discount other moneys at a heavy profit, so that they, and the money changers, in the multiplicity of standards, soon shave the dollar down till its pride and distinction of stamp are humble and thin enough! A tael, the old monetary system, is a Chinese ounce equal to 1⅓ ounces avoirdupois. The Haikwan tael, the standard of fineness accepted by the Custom House, is rated at 100, in comparison with which are the Tientsin tael at 105; the Hankau and Newchwang at 108, and the Shanghai at 111. When new silver arrived at the old provincial mints, it was refined or adulterated to conform with these grades. The edict of October 5, 1908, suggested that if the standardization of silver was successful, a gold standard might be looked for. This would probably slightly raise wages and costs in China, and slightly decrease them elsewhere.

The national customs, heretofore called the “Imperial Customs”, managed from Peking in succession by the British knights, Robert Hart, Bredon and Aglen, continue to be the financial pillar of China, the basis of foreign loans, the payer of the hated indemnities, the provider of armies, pensions, and nearly all the machinery of government and even “graft”. Until a reorganization of the taxes is effected,170 the customs might be raised to double what they now are so as to get China on her feet. The department has been honestly managed, and is a monument to the late Sir Robert Hart, the sinologue. Where a missionary or a Buddhist monk is not at hand to take care of a needy traveler, there will be found a national customs cadet, generally a Briton, an American or a German.

How China is neglected by London, the world’s banker, is illustrated by the following investments of new capital in a normal year, 1910. China was given only $3,500,000 in 1909, and $8,000,000 in 1910, whereas to nearly a billion already loaned, Japan was given $30,000,000 more in 1910; Mexico a like amount; Argentine, $112,000,000; Russia, $20,000,000; and even little Denmark, Greece, Turkey and Cuba each received as much as dormantly opulent and vast China. The neglect of China by America reveals a similarly regrettable situation. Trade follows the loan as much as it follows the flag and the missionary, as England’s trade relation with Argentine proves.

The famous Russo-Chinese Bank, which was the catspaw for the Russians in securing from the Chinese the troublesome concession for the Chinese-Eastern railway, which largely led to the war with Japan, was absorbed in a new institution in October, 1910, called the Banque Russo-Asiatique, which is largely financed by the Banque du Nord and the Société Générale of Paris. The old Russo-Chinese Bank had a capitalization of 21,000,000 rubles, one-third of which was subscribed by China. The capitalization of the new bank is double that of the old.

China is suspicious regarding foreign loans, and many of the new China party which precipitated the October, 1911, revolution are opposed to even railway loans. Objection has been made to one American loan that it included, besides171 proper interest, a bonus of millions to take up bonds of a previous American syndicate which never performed railway work in China for those bonds; that is, they were organization paper, not property paper. Objection is also made that our loans name as security the perpetuation of the odious likin system which disjoints the trade, politics and transportation of the provinces. The Chinese of the south have constructed many short railroads, which are run at a profit without foreign loans, and it is this system which the “states’ rights” people wish to spread. Political and economical education in the provincial assemblies will in time teach them the wisdom of the nationalization of trunk railways at least. There is the same conflict in China between the states, or provinces, and the federal power, as there is in other countries. In the matter of foreign loans, the provincial papers complain that the central government has sold the nation by paying bonuses and heavy interest. The trouble with provincial loans for railways will be the mixed security offered, one province providing for the continuation of the objectionable likin, and another province withstanding it. It is a perfect curse along the magnificent Shanghai-Nanking railway built by British contractors. The strong desire of the provinces, in the first ebullition of patriotism, is to build and operate their railways without foreign aid or federal intervention.

In times of political trouble, the Chinese place vast sums in the trust, not only of foreign banks at Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, but valuables and money are placed implicitly in the care of missionaries, whose fiduciary honesty is esteemed by the Chinese, who, if they do not understand the text, understand the living example! The missionary is not only a tower of “doctrine”, to use the Chinese idiom; he is a tower of finance also. It is a remarkable thing that when172 the white man’s honesty at home in certain scandals exposed by government prosecutions, is rocking like a wooden steeple in the grasp of a tornado, the white man’s honesty in China is standing steadfast as a rock, and unmoved in the typhoon of local and international distress, and political, religious and educational change. It seems that it is a wholesome time to send some of our monopolists to China, and bring some of our missionaries back to reform things at home!

The licensed pawnshops are called Tang Po Tien and Chi Tien. The “Yah” pawnshop corresponds to our “fence” shop, to which thieves bring their plunder. The regular pawnshops are an embryo trust company. They loan on land, crops, jewels, rent, bills receivable, possessions, houses. They change money and sell notes of credit. The pawnshops of Mukden and the north loan on crops, such as beans, millet, etc. The visible grain, and not a warehouse receipt, is the security, and therefore the pawnshops of the north have yards and sheds in connection with the plant. The towering square pawnshops of Kwangtung province in the south are higher than in the other provinces, showing that capital circulates more among the active Cantonese merchants. The Chinese of America are mainly Cantonese, or Kwangtungese; that is, if they are not of the provincial capital, they are from the province.

Trained carrier pigeons are still used by the Shansi Bankers’ Guilds in carrying secret code messages stating the exchange prices of silver. This is quicker than the post, and more secret than the telegraph.

Regarding salaries that will be paid in China’s reconstruction, the following may give some indication. The salary of advisers to the privy council has been $90 per month in173 a nation of 400,000,000, compared to the salary of an American attorney-general of $1,500 a month.

It is often said that the Chinese are absolutely honest, but when an exception occurs it is as startling as a bolt from a clear sky. As an aftermath of the rubber speculation at Shanghai, the taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded in August, 1911, owing several million dollars to the government, which sum had been loaned him to assist the local banks.

“If you are rich and live in a desert, it’s never too far for your poor relatives to come.”

“There’s such a thing as drawing the line somewhere; I don’t lend my umbrella in the dog-days.”

The idiom for a lunar eclipse is: “The moon has suffered a deficit,” but the other expression of the Chinese astronomers:174 “All round again”, indicates that losses have been underwritten and solvency reestablished! May the international financial astrologers in and out of China soon bring in this happy state. Then a “cycle of Cathay” will be as good as any other cycle, despite Tennyson’s dictum, and this will redound to the good of every nation, particularly America and Britain.

V
BUSINESS METHODS OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA

The British national board of trade, partly on the advice in Admiral Lord Beresford’s book, has appointed commercial attachés separate from the diplomatic and consular bodies to work as specialists and free lances in China. In contrast with the diplomatic and consular departments, they are free to use the helpful publicity of the home newspapers in order to correct and create interest. Canada in a small way has followed Britain’s example. A consular officer is fixed to his post on account of his daily relationship with shipping, courts, visits of nationals, emigration and health inspection. A commercial attaché has more of a roving and special commission, and it is important in the nature of his office that his advice should be followed promptly in China and at home. He is in a position to strike quickly and bring trade to his flag. He is not necessarily that loathsome being which flourished in China previous to the Russo-Japanese War, a concession hunter and a looter of weak countries. His aim is to strengthen weak countries, as he knows that only a rich and contented people can trade richly with his flag. The more he is of a scholar, gentleman and Christian the better, for such a person in the long run makes an ideal trader and patriot, as the American reformers are insisting. He should be a statistician, an economist, and also an idealist, so that he may be able to formulate a176 policy amid the present confused conditions. He is not in any sense a historian, for he is not to follow his country. He is to lead it, and, moreover, he must also sympathize with the Chinese point of view to a sufficient degree.

Europe and America have been trading in China on an extended scale since in 1842 the Nanking Treaty opened up Canton and four other ports. Surprisingly few traders have learned the language. The home-rule principle has been recognized, and the Chinese have been allowed to run the trade in their own way on the compradore and shroff system. The foreign firm takes into its employ at a percentage, with a guaranteed minimum, a Chinese compradore, who speaks English, and who is bonded by the Chinese, and the compradore takes into his employ a shroff cashier, who is bonded to him by Chinese. The compradore pays the wages of his Chinese staff. The foreigner (Si Yang Jin—West Sea people) must deal with the Chinese customers only through the compradore, and the compradore must under no circumstances appeal to the head of the foreign firm in London, San Francisco, etc. He must deal with the agent or branch in the China port, in whose office he is located on the first floor, with a Chinese staff as large as the foreign staff up-stairs. One who enters the offices of the Pacific Mail, American (International) Bank, Standard Oil, P. & O., Butterfield and Swire, Jardine’s, Fearon’s, and other companies in China, might think at first that the concern was Chinese. No one but Celestials is to be seen. This system is an approximation of two views. The Chinese might desire to handle his own trade, in which case the compradore would set up for himself, and buy sewing-machines, oils, machinery, tobacco, cotton, etc., direct from the foreign agent at the treaty port, or he could ignore the foreign agent and send his Chinese buyer across to San177 Francisco, or over to London. Or the foreigner might learn the language, dismiss his compradore, and try to sell direct to the Chinese consumer and Chinese merchant.

It is a world-trade question, a terrific struggle in economics, this getting rid of the middleman, the drone, and it is therefore still an unsettled question in China. The compradore and shroff exist, although many foreign commercial travelers, especially Germans and Japanese, are selling direct to the Chinese in small lots. Many of these compradores have become notable and able men, especially those employed by the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. Again, some compradores have tricked the foreign agent and company with all the legerdemain of a conjurer. That is, instead of inducing the foreign agent to bring out large quantities of oil, flour, etc., we shall say, in time for a high market, the compradore, with his Chinese alliances (or conspirators, shall we say!) induces the agent to get stocked in godown when a low market suddenly drops on him. The compradore shifts and says the market will drop lower still, and the agent authorizes the compradore to sell quickly. The compradore sells to himself by dummy, and the oil or flour suddenly rises. The agent is mad clear through, but if he changed compradores every time this happened he would change so frequently that his concern would lose prestige with the Chinese. The Chinese compradore will bleed you, but he will not knowingly bleed you to death. Of all ornithologists of trade, he does not believe in killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. He only plucks the goose occasionally! I have heard tales which, if they are true, would indicate that the Chinese compradore is not alone expert in legerdemain, but that the foreign agent sometimes “stands in” with him. There certainly are some mountain palaces and a princely ménage on the hills of the sumptuous178 Far East that the savings from an agent’s salary, or an unexpected legacy never bought. In trade and in politics, as well as in religion, “by their fruits ye shall know” compradores, agents, and every one else!

Successful companies operating in China, with foreign managers and with the majority stock in foreign hands, but using Chinese money also, are the following incorporated or joint-stock registered companies:

The immense Taikoo Company (Butterfield & Swire), operating docks, shipyards, sugar refineries, steamship lines,179 etc.; China Sugar Refinery; Bank of Australia; Eastern and Australia Cable Company, etc., are owned mainly by British capitalists, who operate an extensive apprentice system or school in maintaining their personnel in the Far East. The Banque l’Indo-China is, of course, mainly French, as is the Anglo-French Syndicate. The Russo-Asiatique Banque is French and Russian. The Cathay Trust Company is British and Chinese. The Shell Transport (oil and shipping) is Dutch, largely. Humphreys’ Land Company is British, mainly. There are scores of rubber companies whose plantations are in Malaysia, but whose shares are actively dealt in by the Chinese and foreigners of Shanghai, Hongkong and Tientsin. Large department stores of Hongkong and Shanghai are incorporated, and their shares are actively dealt in. I refer to Lane-Crawford, Watson, Central Stores, Weeks, Moultrie, Hall & Holtz, etc.

The largest foreign commission houses, banks and agencies, with offices in the various treaty ports, are the following:

The Mutual Life Insurance Company, of New York, opened a branch in Hongkong in 1903, but it was closed in 1904, insurance companies preferring, as a rule, to act through general commission houses at present.

Foreign firms advertise in Chinese almanacs, which circulate in immense numbers throughout the land. An example is Hallock’s Miscellany, printed in a scholarly manner by the American Presbyterian Mission Press, 18 Peking Road, Shanghai. The Chinese editions of the Hongkong and Shanghai papers are excellent mediums, if one is not on the ground. Chinese travelers arrive at a station hours before the departure of a train, and foreign firms find it advantageous to display their cartoons and advertising in Chinese at railway stations. Even if some of the Chinese can not read, they become familiar with the “chop” or cartoon, which accordingly is more important than in any land, and should therefore be registered with the foreign consul and the Chinese taotai. The Asiatic Petroleum Company, of London, (Dutch-British), uses a cartoon of three182 square oil tins, with a tin lamp flaming on the top. The Standard Oil Company uses a picture of the hand lamp and some paraffin candles. Scott’s Emulsion Company shows the familiar codfish on the back of the man. Green Island Cement Company shows the famous mountain island of Macao’s inner harbor, with the cement chimneys at its foot. Barnard & Leas Company, of Moline, Illinois, use a picture of their grain sifter. Mousin et Cie, of Frankfort on Main, use a picture of a rose spray and a Chinese man and woman. The New Home Sewing-Machines use a picture of the machine and a greyhound. The Victor Talking Machines show the well-known fox-terrier listening to “His Master’s Voice”. Many of the firms draw attention by quoting an epigrammatic gem of Chinese wisdom. The Singer Sewing-Machine insists that the Chinese shall become familiar with the English letters and not the Chinese letters in the bridge of their machine, and they have had wide success. The Wheeler & Wilson Sewing-Machine Company shows Gabriel blowing his horn, or the spirit of reform telling China to wake up! The Longines Watch Company, of Paris, uses a Chinese lily in a vase and a winged hour-glass. The Chinese are becoming large buyers of time-keepers, and these trade-marks are most important. Several suits over trade-marks on watches have appeared in the courts of Hongkong. The Taussig Soap Company, of Vienna, uses a man-headed bird, which appeals to the humorous Chinese, whose hobgoblins are legion.

The get-equipped-quick advertising correspondence schools are teaching advertising pupils in America to change their advertisements constantly. This will not do in China. Nothing pays like a known “chop”, rigidly adhered to for decades. The Chinese will have nothing else than their favorite cartoon, or “chop” on cotton183 bolt, flour bag and everything else. “Once a customer always a customer” is truer in China than anywhere else in the world, but it is harder there than anywhere else to get that customer the necessary “once”, as he has probably linked up with a “chop” that preceded yours. The Harrison Knitting Machine Company, of Manchester, England, merely show cuts of their machines, and a competitor could do the same, and thus confuse the Chinese. Staedtler, the pencil manufacturer of Nuremberg, shows the man in the moon and a cock. J. H. Birch, of Library Street, Burlington, New Jersey, shows merely cuts of his rickshaws, which compete with the Japanese vehicle. The whisky houses of Britain cease neither day nor night in the attempt to give China something Occidental to take the place of the debarred opium. They try to adopt different shaped bottles to distinguish their goods, and some double bottles are now blown almost in the shape of the whisky’s “W”. The Burnese Alps Milk Company, of Stalden, has adopted a mother Teddy bear, giving a baby bear forced lactary injections. Nestle’s Milk Company, of Vevay, shows the “cow that jumped over the moon”. Aquarius Water Company shows a Chinese boy bearing a tray with the aerated water. Pathe’s French Films show the crowing cock. The United States Steel Products Export Company use the crouching tiger. Swift’s Hams show “S” in a diamond. Clarke’s Manila Coffee uses a volcano of coffee beans in imitation of Mayon volcano in the Philippines. The Chee Hsin Cement Company, of Tangshan, Pechili province, has a pony whose fiery breath has set the sun on fire. This is the weird mythological style of “chop” with which the poetical Chinese are familiar and which they like.

The Chinese are a race who have nearly as much imagination as the Greeks. The Hupeh Cement Works, of Tayeh,184 use a seventeen-storied pagoda, which is supposed to represent a very fine product, as pagodas tower only thirteen stories at the highest. The Indo-China Cement Company uses the well-known dragon of the Manchus, which tosses three medals in the air. The British-American Tobacco Company advertises a nautch girl pulling portiéres apart, a “chop” which is a little more luxuriously Mohammedan than staid China cares for. Veluvine Protective Paint has adopted a crouching bulldog. Isuan Aerated Waters, of the Philippines, use a hand pouring a bottle that fills a glass. The Toyo Kisen Kaisha uses a red circle in a white fan on a blue flag. Flags are becoming popular chops. Shields are also used by the British and the Spanish, but they are rather intricate for the Chinese to understand. There is not much competition yet, and most of the foreign firms, in their desire to educate the Chinese, are merely using photographs of their machinery and product, but as soon as John Chinaman has to choose between two dynamos, two gas engines, two pumps, etc., each of them must use a “chop” or trade-mark, just as the oil, the flour, the ham, the cement bag, the bolt of cotton, etc., have now to be chopped to maintain their position on the slogan popular throughout Canada and Britain of “what we have we hold.”

The treaty ports of China, such as Shanghai, Tientsin, Hongkong, etc., show that almost every form of business is incorporated. Doctors and dentists form companies, and bring out juniors under indenture. The share list shows active trading in the following companies among others: railway, steamship, rubber, banks; marine, life and fire insurance; oil, refineries, sugar, mining, engineering and contracting, ship-building, car building; docks, wharves and warehouse (godown); lands, hotels, clubs, buildings, cotton mills and plantations, cement, power, light, water, trams,185 millinery, telephone, telegraph, cable, tailors, dairy farm, abattoir, soda water, distilleries, flour mills, iron mills, gas, electricity, druggist, newspaper, booksellers, conservancy, athletic clubs, race course, import and export firms, jewelers, silk filatures, tea farms, matting factories and plantations, furniture factories, etc. I know of no place where the craze of men to get rich faster than savings will accumulate is indicated more than at Shanghai, Hongkong and Singapore. The bund of Shanghai is as speculatively feverous as Wall Street.

British Hongkong, like China, holds that all land is crown or state land, and therefore leases are granted instead of fee-simple deeds, American style. The British government has gone extensively into the land business at Hongkong, leveling many terraces, filling many valleys in the mountains, and reclaiming from the sea vast areas at West Point and East Point, Hongkong, and at Yaumati, Kowloon and Hunghom on the mainland section of the hilly colony. Leases for these valuable sites are then put up at auction, bringing about twice the rental that obtains in Brooklyn or Jersey City, or the outlying districts of London. In the same way the foreign concession municipalities of Shanghai, Tientsin, Fuchau, Amoy, Hankau, Newchwang, Harbin, etc., prepare land for long leases. These will in time all be strenuous questions with the new republican government of China. When the foreigner gave up the extraterritorial right in Japan, the Japanese never again permitted him to own land, unless he became a Japanese citizen. Many land companies, subletting long leaseholds, have been formed in all the treaty ports where there are foreign concessions. I do not believe that republican China desires to acquire these leaseholds for many years, and if she did she would purchase them. The foreign navies would see to that.

VI
RAILWAYS IN CHINA

In the third book of Paradise Lost, Milton humorously discussed transportation in China as follows:

but the matter has now reached a development worthy of being discussed seriously.

China had in 1912 about 5,500 miles of railway in operation, new main lines having been built from Tientsin to Nanking (Pukow) by German and British contractors, and from Nanking to Shanghai by British contractors, so that it is now possible to take cars at Shanghai and go through to Calais, France, by rail. Branch lines connect the German colony of Kiaochou and Chifu with this Tientsin trunk railway, so that a German may go straight through from his Crown colony in cars to Berlin. Before long, when the Canton-Hankau section is completed, Hongkong’s colonial secretary will be able to leave Government House, facing the wonderful Botanical Garden on the hill of Hongkong, take a chair down to the Star Ferry Wharf, cross the mile of harbor, then take his railway carriage and be whisked through to Downing Street, London, to take his orders from the secretary of state for the Crown colonies, with only one ferriage, that from Calais to Dover. Not only a northern187 railway route is available, but a southern railway route will soon be open. When the easy section through Persia, and the short railway from Yunnan City through Mung Ting pass connects with Mandalay, it will be possible for the colonial secretary of Indo-China to leave the palatial Palais at Hanoi and entrain at the Tonquin Railway Gare on the palm-lined boulevard, going straight through to the Ministré on the Quai d’Orsay, Paris, via Hyderabad, Teheran, Constantinople and the Gates of the Danube, all the way without seeing salt water. Likewise the governor of Singapore will soon be able to entrain opposite Government House for Calais and London, and cross the teeming continents, passing through the site of the Garden of Eden, on his way to Downing Street to consult with his chief. He can also pick up his traveled friend (since the entente cordiale), the Gouverneur at L’Hotel du Gouverneur, Saigon, and drop him at the Gare du Nord, Paris, on his way to the departments on the left bank of the Seine.

The Shanghai-Hangchow-Ningpo railway, built by the British and Chinese Corporation, and by the Chinese themselves, will soon be completed. The Peking-Kalgan railway (the route for the tombs of the Ming emperors) has been finely built by China’s leading engineer, Jeme Tien Yao (educated at Yale, 1883) and this road will some day, with Russian and French help, break across Gobi Desert to Kaikhta and Irkutsk, flanking two thousand miles of Manchurian railway, and saving all that distance in reaching Europe from Shanghai. The Kaifong-Singan railway will soon be ready. It is planned to open a new port at Haochow, where the Yellow River (Hoang Ho) used to meet the Yellow Sea, and to run the railway through to Kaifong, Singan, Lanchow (in Kansu province) and on to the historic Tarim valley, and Kashgar, opening up Turkestan. It is188 also proposed to open a new port at ice-free Hunshan on the Ginmen River, D’Anville Gulf, Sea of Japan, where China owns a narrow neck of land running between Northern Korea and the Vladivostok district of Siberia. From Hunshan a road would be run to Kirin, two hundred miles over difficult forest-covered country. From Kirin China has independent lines running between the Russian and Japanese lines. Hunshan would be an excellent port whence to attack commercially the two rich northern provinces of Manchuria. The road planned by America from Chin Wang Tao to Tsitsikar and Aigun is possibly more of a postponed than a dead road despite Russia and Japan.

The roads from Hankau north to Mukden have paid heavy dividends and helped the imperial exchequer during the revolution of 1911. These roads have been hindered neither by difficult construction, nor by obstacles to traffic such as the likin tax system, which has cursed the free trade and transportation of the southern part of the country. The Hanyang iron mills can supply rails at one-third the American cost, viz., nine dollars as compared with twenty-eight dollars per ton, so that China can afford to build four miles of railway to America’s one mile, and reduce rates accordingly because of the lower capital cost. The cars can be erected at Hongkong in the south, Hankau in the center, and at Tongshan in the north of China. The locomotives and trucks will be imported from America, Germany and England. The necessary coast railway from Hongkong to Ningpo has only been constructed in the neighborhood of Amoy. Something has been done on the railways from Hongkong to Yunnan City, and from Hongkong to Chungking, and from Yunnan to Chungking. American engineers have made the surveys. The railway along the ancient Ta Peh Lu (Great North189 Road) post road from Chingtu to Singan has not yet been begun. A road, too, will break across west from Chingtu to the Tibet gateway at Tachien. Mention should be made of the railway from Kidalova, following the north bank of the Amur to Blagovestchensk and Khabarovka, which Russia is building so as to have an all-Russian railway to Vladivostok. This railway is under way, although the debt of the Russo-Japan War has almost destroyed Russian railway building, and postponed Russia’s commercial (and other?) attack in India’s direction. Had it not been for that debt, Russia might to-day be striking for railway entrance to Peking, to Hankau, to Herat and Constantinople, as so many of the British imperialists like Kipling and Sir Gilbert Parker fear.

Hongkong has at last beat out Shanghai for the trade of the great western provinces of China. Transshipment is made at Hongkong for Haiphong, where the new French railway takes merchandise five hundred miles northwest to Yunnan as a distributing center. Hongkong also has the West (Si Kiang), Yu, Hong Chu, Eta and Peh Rivers as arteries into the west. Until two hundred miles of Yangtze gorges and rapids are flanked by a railway, Shanghai must lose more and more of the vast western trade which she used to control before the French railway was built. The French finished in 1910 this remarkable railway from Haiphong to Yunnan, five hundred miles, and have thus beat out the British, who, because of Colquhoun’s books, were approaching Yunnan from three points in Burma. This railway attack on Yunnan has been a battle of two imperial minds of the Kipling imperialistic type, Colquhoun and Doumer. Colquhoun, the British governor and author, began urging the construction of British railways in 1881, and followed up his arguments with a further190 book in 1898. In 1897, the famous Paul Doumer, once a printer, went to French China as governor. In 1898 he began his railway to Yunnan. The line, though narrow gage, has cost $50,000 a mile, even with cheap Oriental labor. Near the coast of Tonquin the country is that of flat rice fields and only requires trestling and banking. From Hung Hoa (Bed River) to Lao Kai no fewer than 180 bridges had to be erected (a fine contract for French structural firms) to cross the wild broken country of stream, marsh, gorge and mountain pass. The line rises from sea level to a pass of 5,000 feet altitude. Much of the Yunnan tin and other exports, which, by pack saddle and shoulder load, formerly went down to Nanning and took the Yu and Si Rivers to Hongkong, are now diverted to Haiphong, from which port the French run branch ship lines to Hongkong and Saigon, connecting with the great subsidized Messageries Maritimes line to Marseilles. The French need subsidies because the foreign trade which their bankers control is not so heavy as is that of Britain and America.

The Hongkong and Canton Railway, 106 miles, has been completed and marks a new lease of life for Hongkong as the emporium of South, West and Central China, when the railways from Canton are extended. The Hongkong Railway starts from Kowloon, across the narrow harbor, running through 19 miles of British territory, and the remainder through Chinese territory. The British section, on account of the many tunnels through mountains, cost almost as much as the entire Chinese section. The fine steamers of the Hongkong and Canton Steamboat Company, which are well known to world tourists, and many Chinese steamers and junks compete, but there is traffic for all, and when there isn’t there will be pooling for all. The Hongkong government, through the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking191 Corporation, loaned the Kwangtung province government the money for the Chinese section. (This is an illustration of a few loans which have not been made to the national government at Peking, and represents provincial as against the nationalized trunk railway scheme which helped to bring on the revolution.) The road runs through a part of the country requiring much trestle work, and bridging on account of waterways. The long Chinese section of the road cost less with one exception than any standard gage railway in the world, $35,000 per mile, the nearest approach to this in America being sections of the Great Northern Railway built years ago at $40,000 per mile. Nearly all the freight and passenger cars were made at Hongkong. The best built railway in China is the Shanghai-Nanking. In easy country it cost $55,000 per mile. It was built by British contractors on the elaborate, permanent English plan, whose maxim is, “a stitch in time saves nine”. What spoiled the Chinese in hiring foreign contractors was their experience with a section of the Shanghai-Hangchow railway. The Kiangsu and Chekiang provincial governments, hiring native contractors and engineers (who were trained in America) built a satisfactory road of 125 miles at $25,000 per mile, as compared with the British continuation north, of $55,000 per mile. The Chinese have never ceased talking of this economy, although they admit that the English road is better and worth $35,000 per mile, but not $55,000. Another objection they make is that foreign syndicates charge five per cent. commission on their purchases. In the railway from Pukow (opposite Nanking) to Tientsin, the foreign syndicate was not allowed commission on purchases, so that the “Pukow plan” is favored. In reference to the low cost, $35,000 per mile, of the difficult Peking-Kalgan railway, 140 miles, which was built by the Chinese exclusively, the192 Chinese Students’ Journal says: “In the construction of the railway, economy, which must not be confounded with cheapness, must always be kept in view. All railways built in China must be paid for by our people, and our people are poor. A railway is not a club-house on which to expend millions. The redemption of bonds must not be forgotten for a moment. On the Peking-Kalgan railway there was no temptation to spend money recklessly, as no five per cent. commission was needed to enrich the coffers of the foreign corporation. There were no foreign style residences, cement tennis-courts, ice machines, palatial house-boats, and princely salaries; no interpreters to make a fortune (i. e., compradores); no graft. There were no unpleasantnesses through the interference of foreign consuls, and no reference of insignificant incidents to ministers at Peking.”

The Siberian Railway cost $150,000 a mile through flat country, but $100,000 of that amount was for nepotism, graft, bureaucracy, boodle and sweet Roederer champagne.

The revolution and the argument over the nationalization of railways of course delayed the great Gorge Railway which runs from Ichang to Wan Hsien on the Yangtze, thus surmounting the almost impassable rapids of the gorges, which heretofore have split populous Szechuen province from Hupeh. It would be hard to say how many books have been written about these difficult rapids and the sublime scenery. The most notable are by Archibald Little, the trade pioneer of the Yangtze, and then there are interesting works by Dingle, Geil, Mrs. Kemp, Mr. Bird, Mr. Blakiston, Mr. Hart and Mrs. Bishop. The road could not possibly parallel the river along the parapets of the gorges. It breaks inland through great tunnels, some 6,000 feet long. This gorge railway was the most necessary in the whole world; it should have been the first begun in China.193 When it is running, however, the finest scenery in the world will be shut out from the wondering eyes of man, as the famous gorge boatmen and trackers will give up their work, and, as it is, many of them have been killed in the recent war of the revolution, Szechuen and Hupeh provinces being the first to recruit armies. From Wan Hsien railways will go across country to Chingtu, and up the Yangtze to Chungking, thus linking the great west with India, French China and the populous eastern and northern provinces.

General Kuroki’s military railway from Antung to Mukden has now been turned into a standard-gage road, and a bridge has been thrown across the Yalu River (famous for its great naval engagement) to Wiju. It is now possible to take a sleeping-car from Tokio to Shinonoseki, cross the strait by ferry, take another sleeper at Fusan, and go all the way through Mukden to Kuang Chang Tsu, connecting there with the Russian line for Moscow and St. Petersburg. For fast service, however, the Russians are able to favor the all-Russian line to Vladivostok, whence steamers can be taken for Hakodate, etc. Passengers from Shanghai can take two routes, one by steamer to Dalny, and thence via the South Manchurian (Japanese) railway, or via Tientsin, Newchang, etc. (Chinese railways). The Korean-Yalu route, however, is infinitely the more scenic. Most of the bridges of this route were brought from America.

The German railway of 271 miles in Shangtung province shows the effects of the iron hand in paying small wages, the working expenses in 1910 being only thirty-five per cent. of the gross earnings. The gross earnings were $8,000 a mile. In a bare country, where mining is undeveloped, the average receipts were only seventy-one cents per passenger mile, and ninety cents per ton mile. Over 90 per cent. of the traffic is third class. The average194 mixed trainload is 150 tons of freight and sixty passengers. The famous beans, straw braid, grain and petroleum predominated in the traffic, but in 1912 coal was beginning to be a growing factor. The German railway in Shangtung province has set the example of planting trees. It was copied by the Pennsylvania railway. Nearly all the railways of China are copying the reforestation methods.

At Tongshan, eighty miles northeast of Tientsin, are the modern shops, engineering college and town of the national railways of North China. Here the first Chinese locomotive, the “Rocket”, was built in stealth by the British mechanical, railway and mining engineer, Mr. C. W. Kinder, who has done so much for the railways and mines of North China. The college turns out railway engineers, and some of the instructors are American, like Mr. F. A. Foster. Other lecturers are British, like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope.

Railway cars can now be built in the Tongshan shops, the Hanyang works, the Shanghai works and the Kowloon (Hongkong) works, as well as at Dalny. The Tongshan works can and have built locomotives.

In 1910 the Department of Communications established at Peking a railway school. Three hundred of the six hundred students were under twenty-five years of age. There were eight foreign and thirty-five foreign-trained Chinese teachers. The course was three years. English, mainly, and French, German and Chinese were taught. There is no military drill, and the curriculum includes history, economics, railway bookkeeping and law, engineering, management of traffic, shops and stations, physics, chemistry, drawing, mathematics, geography, etc.

Electric tramways have been established at Peking, Tientsin, Shanghai, Canton and the Manchurian cities, the example195 having been taken from Hongkong’s tramway, built in 1905. Recent photographs show the remarkable change in the bunds and roads of the treaty ports, where the automobile, electric car, rickshaw, wheelbarrow, chair and litter all have their fight for the passenger and his nimble coin.

On new lines it is necessary to use blue instead of white glass in the coaches, as the coolies in their excitement over the scenery forget and put their heads through the white glass, to which they are not accustomed.

The old system of transportation has not altogether departed, and even if it had, its memory would linger long. Neither the Peking cart, nor the mule litter of Shansi, in which one rides between two tandem mules, is on springs. They are padded so that the passenger, who is not made of rubber, may be somewhat protected. If the conveyances were not padded, only a man dressed up for American football could survive the jolting. These are the vehicles in which dignified (on other occasions) ambassadors have ridden at Peking in all the years since foreigners were granted the legation privileges.

VII
SHIPPING AND WATER ROUTES IN CHINA

When the Panama Canal opens, many more Atlantic lines, such as the Royal Mail, International Marine, German lines, etc., will probably extend their service in time to China, and many trans-Pacific lines, especially Japanese and the Pacific Mail, will extend to America’s eastern coast, not to speak of new lines which may be formed. The British-India Steamship Company intends to extend its Calcutta line across the Pacific and to New York. The American railroads could, at small cost, by a generous pro rata of division rates, have covered the Pacific and Atlantic with American steamship lines, but they have held off, expecting the really unnecessary government subsidies. The subsidy argument would possibly have a different complexion if it were assured that the steamship lines would remain forever independent, and permit no dummy holdings of stock. In the meantime, Japanese and British vessels have been employed on the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans on account of the lower cost of officers’ wages only, the crews’ wages being the same on a Pacific mailer and a Nippon Yusen Kaisha mailer, for instance.199 Both hire Chinese mainly, who are good and cheap sailors. The American railroad, controlling the west-bound freight, and the American banker, controlling the heavier east-bound freight, could make American steamship lines on the Pacific profitable; indeed, the Pacific Mail already pays its way. The government could, of course, pay a just amount for mails on an increasing ratio for time made, but if the American railroad, American banker, American shipper and American globe-trotter will come to the aid of the American ship, we can, without subsidy, except to independent smaller owners, cover the Pacific with our starry flag.

All the large lines are building new ships for the China trade. The Osaka Shosen Kaisha, running to America in connection with the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, has ordered steamships from Armstrong, in England, and from the Japan shipyards. The Canadian Pacific Railway Steamship Company and the Pacific Mail are having twenty-knot ships built. The Hansa Steamship Company, running from Bremen, has ordered ships from the Weser Ship-building Company, of Bremen. The Russian Volunteer Fleet has ordered new ships from the Alexander-Nevski works. Wireless is to be used generally, the first shore station having been fitted at Hongkong. The Chinese Merchants and the Sino-American companies (both Chinese) intend to run ships to America, as their plans enlarge. We may yet see the Chinese flag regularly in New York. The Japanese are to run a line into the Black Sea in competition with the Russian Volunteer Fleet; they have already sent boats into Trieste in competition with the Austrians, and they have before now humbled the Germans in the Bangkok-Shanghai service. To show that the Japanese are not the least timid in declaring their maritime ambitions on the200 Pacific, I shall quote the following circular signed by Manager Iwanaga of the subsidized Nippon Yusen Kaisha (the steamship line in which the Mikado is a large shareholder) at the time of the competition with the long-established British firm of Butterfield and Swire, a firm which had been very friendly to the Japanese during the Russian War. Mr. Iwanaga says: “These foreign firms must be induced to pay respect to the Japanese mercantile flag. It is the duty of the Nippon Yusen Kaisha to check the arrogance of foreign steamers east of Suez.”

The history of China’s greatest steamship line, the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, is as follows: When Li Hung Chang was viceroy of Pechili province at Tientsin in 1871, on advice of Americans and British who were in his employ, he formed this government-controlled line, partly to carry tribute grain from the south; because the Grand Canal was allowed by the various governors to collect silt, while their pockets collected gilt (and guilt)! Merchants and guilds were invited or coerced to subscribe to some of the stock. In 1877 the company bought the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company and its dock for 2,000,000 taels silver. In 1878 Li diverted from the Grand Canal to the steamship company the Yunnan copper destined to the Peking and provincial mints. The great government university at Peking, with provincial branches, created by Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts of 1898, was to be financed partly by the revenues of this steamship company. The republicans used its revenues to aid the 1911 revolution because the imperialists used the railway revenues. The head office of the company is in Shanghai, and it has branches at Newchwang, Chifu, Tientsin, Chinkiang, Kowkiang, Hankau, Ningpo, Fuchau, Hongkong and Canton. The ships are distinguishable at the Chinese ports both by the yellow funnel,201 and by the immense Chinese characters which, in Austrian fashion, are not always borne on the bow, but midships. The fine vessels of this company were once put under the American flag in 1884 to save them from the French, who were at war with China.

One of the great movements of the future in the reforming Far East will be the Malay Peninsular Canal, about fifty miles long, which will save 1,500 miles in the voyage from Saigon to Calcutta, Madras, etc. It will not cut off and make useless the expensive garrison port of Singapore, which holds the five equatorial seas for Britain, as the Singapore-Rangoon railway will run along the entire peninsula. All these probabilities in the Far East should be considered in full by the student of world politics, finance, commerce and ethnology. A dozen Chinas, Americas, Britains and Germanies could well work many centuries before the world is restored to the economic Eden state, where each man will be free, and have enough to support him and his in peace. Every work of commerce is then a world-work, claiming the altruist’s enthusiasm, and while we often use the phrase, “war of the ports of the Far East,” we mean that joyful exhibition of strength which the wrestler, rather than the warrior, puts forth.

A movement is growing in Japan to deprive foreign ships of the right to trade between Japanese ports, which is similar to a regulation now in operation in America and Canada. Japanese vessels, of course, trade between British and China ports. Another plan that is advocated is to place on ships not built in Japan such a high duty that Japanese owners will be compelled to build in Japan, which would include a personal penalty if Japanese owners owned steamship stock under a foreign flag. All this involves considerable conflict with British interests that have loaned immense sums202 in Japan, and it is certain that the British foreign office, now so friendly to Japan, will hear from the British Board of Trade, as it is hearing every day from the consular service and such writers as Beresford, Colquhoun and Gilbert Parker.

Whampoa, the first port in China where Europeans traded, is to be opened by the Chinese as a treaty port for deep-sea trading. It is about six miles below Canton. The port will, of course, compete with Hongkong; but Hongkong opened up a railway to Canton to protect herself, and she will see that fast and cheap handling maintains her leadership. The taotai, and Chang Iu Hin who was educated and enriched at British Singapore, are representative republicans of Canton who are interested in Whampoa port. It is proposed to do dredging and make free grants of land for godowns, wharves, etc.

Portuguese Macao, the second port in China where Europeans traded, forty miles from Hongkong, is dredging her silted harbor preparatory to bidding for some of the great oversea trade that is expected. China, which has ambitions for native ports in the vicinity of Canton, frequently sends her warships into Macao waters. The natives of the Macao district (Heung Shan) do not like Portugal’s ambition, and much bitterness is shown.

The Whang Poo Conservancy Board has deepened the river from Wusung up to Shanghai, and larger ocean steamers are now able to ascend to the bund. For a long time the largest vessels must lie at Wusung bar, the “heaven sent barrier” against foreign intrusion, as the Manchus called it years ago. The Tientsin Conservancy is deepening the river up from Taku. Both of these boards are controlled by the foreign settlements, although the Chinese share in the expense. Foreign engineers are hired.

203 Other trans-oceanic ports planned by China are at Chin Wang Tao in Pechili province; Hunchun, near Vladivostok on the Japan Sea, and Haochow, near the junction of Shangtung and Kiangsu provinces. The British may also develop the port of Wei Hai Wei, now that connection with the trunk railways of China is in sight.

Few of the great Chinese ports look after the foreign seamen, but Hongkong has established a sailors’ club and seamen’s institute on a liberal scale. This idea should be copied along the long yellow coast, for the devil’s whisper is loudest and his traps are most numerous in China.

The Grand Canal as a shipping factor is grand no more, for three reasons: it has silted up; it has been paralleled by the railway from Hangchow to Peking, 1,000 miles; and it has also been paralleled by the China Merchants and other steamship services from Shanghai to Tientsin. This once noble work, with its beautiful bridges, pagodas, embankments, sluices, aqueducts and picturesque junks, passes into history, so far as its transportation feature is concerned. It may be continued in parts as an aqueduct, for conservancy purposes in relieving the water pressure on the flood districts of the Whei and Yangtze valleys, or for water power for a vast scheme of manufacturing, but that is for engineers, and not economists, to decide. Marco Polo first made this famous work known to the western world. The southern section from Hangchow, the bore city and capital of the Sung dynasty, to the Yangtze River at Chingkiang, was dug about 610 A. D. The oldest, and most important section from a conservancy point of view, from Chinkiang to the Whei River, 130 miles, was built about 485 B. C. Kublai Khan is credited with being the dreamer of the idea, the digger of the ditch, the De Lesseps of China, and the fact is that he built the northern section of about 650 miles from204 the Whei River to Peking in 1289 A. D. in order to bring the tribute rice and copper of the southern provinces to Peking. Those who are interested in the canal in its last days of picturesque use should read the works of Sir John Francis Davis, who was governor of Hongkong, and whose experience in China covered the crowded years from 1820 to 1846. The American general, J. M. Wilson, has also written a book covering his inspection of parts of the canal.

On sections of the Yellow River and on the Kia Ling River in Szechuen province, lumber boats are made up to carry produce to market, the boats being broken up at Chungking. Return freight which can not be tracked through the rapids is portaged. Although the Yellow River is 2,500 miles long, it is only navigable 150 miles from its mouth to Tsinan City, and in short broken sections in Mongolia and Honan. The loess silt which it carries, and the porous loess bed through which it flows, make it only a roaring unmanageable spring and summer drain, China’s sorrow of flood and famine. Its memorable changing of bed to mouths 300 miles apart, from Kiangsu to Shangtung province in 1854, and from banks 100 miles apart in the Gobi Desert, are well known.

Most of the riverine and coast, junk and sanpan sails are square or oblong, but at Ichang there are strange wupan boats which use the towering peaked sails seen on the Arab dahabiyehs of Aden and the Nile, the object being to coax down the high breezes of the difficult gorges of the Yangtze. This is not the only instance in China of Arab influence in crafts, arts and blood.

Chinese riverine shipping is growing heavily. All flags are seen on the Yangtze, and several flags in the lower parts of the Kan and Siang Rivers. The British and Chinese, and205 some French flags go up the West and Yu Rivers to Nanning. Chinese shipping on the Liao River to Newchwang is heavy in the ice-free season. There are scores of other rivers which will be dredged so that they may feed the steamship and railroad lines.

The Chinese have an amusing word for captain. “Lao ta” is literally “old fellow”; because the captain of the old Yangtze rapids boats was generally the oldest man on board. The captain of the Hakka sanpans of Canton is often a woman, but she is humorously called “lao ta” with the rest! China led in all inventions, including woman’s rights!

In the coming great development of Western China, the one name to inscribe on the tablets is that of the pioneer merchant writer, Archibald Little, who, after twenty years of effort, broke the veil of the Yangtze gorges and took the first steamer to open up the ports of Ichang and Chungking in 1898. This brought him within beckoning distance of British Burma and Archibald Colquhoun’s propaganda, and split China in two with the wedge of commerce, despite the obstructive Tsung Li Yamen at Manchu Peking. Mr. Little’s three books on Western China are: Through the Yangtze Gorges, To Omi Mount in Szechuen, and Across Yunnan; and he wrote, moreover, a very important geological work which places him high as a prospector and explorer.

VIII
AMERICA IN CHINA

Where the Happy Valley Road branches off, one part leading to the Royal Golf Club, and the other to the Mohammedan, Parsee and European cemeteries, and Wong Nei Chong valley, Hongkong, on a spot where Secretary William Henry Seward stood in 1869, there is a monument which has particular interest for Americans and Britons, and possibly it is a prophecy of their united work in the future in developing China. The monument tells its own story of brothers in arms in the dangers of the Far Eastern seas in lonely days as follows:

The first American treaty is dated 1844 when Caleb Cushing and Daniel Webster’s son, Fletcher, went to Hongkong,207 Canton, Macao, etc., but American trade began at a still earlier date, when the Empress of China, Captain Green, Purser Samuel Shaw, sailed from New York on Washington’s birthday, 1784. The ship Alliance sailed from Philadelphia in 1788 without charts. The ship Massachusetts sailed from Boston in 1789, armed with twenty six-pound guns, and half the cargo being useless furs for the southern Chinese! The old Philadelphia merchants interested in the China trade were of the Archer, Girard and Rulon families. The Boston merchants who despatched regular packet ships to Canton were of the Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge families. The first American consuls lived at beautiful Macao. Major Shaw, purser of the Empress of China was consul in 1786, Samuel Snow in 1794, and Edward Carrington in 1804. On November 16, 1856, just before the “Arrow” war, Captain Armstrong, U. S. S. Portsmouth, attacked the Canton (Bogue) forts. This was the only time America attacked China, except at Peking in 1900. When all Europe hesitated to befriend the northern states, China issued this edict to viceroys in 1863: “Keep a careful and close oversight, and if the Confederate steamer Alabama, or any other vessel of war, scheming how it can injure American property, shall approach that part of the coast of China under your jurisdiction, you are to prevent all such vessels entering our ports.”

The American representatives in China were first trade commissioners, and afterward diplomats, and the tendency now, at least with the British and Germans, is to have both commissioners and diplomats. The American officials were the following:

The most famous secretary of the American legation was Samuel Wells Williams, the author of the Middle Kingdom, etc., and editor of the Chinese Repository. His son serves at present in the Peking legation. It would take a volume to cover Mr. S. W. Williams’ brilliant work as interpreter of missions and legations, printer at Canton and Macao, translator, author, lecturer, secretary, dictionary compiler, professor at Yale, sinologue, money raiser for the causes of missions and letters, and diplomat.

Daniel Webster had not a little to do with America’s relations with China. He studied the subject deeply. He suggested the first mission that secured a treaty, and wrote the president’s message of December 30, 1842, to Congress suggesting the mission. Cushing’s letter of instructions was signed by Webster, and showed deep knowledge of Chinese affairs. The treaty was signed in a temple at Wanghai, outside the Porta Cerco stone gate at Macao; and I would recommend the pilgrimage to the many tourists who visit the picturesque settlement in South China.

209 In 1861 an American, Frederick G. Ward, formed the nucleus of the Manchu imperialist army which finally overcame the Taiping rebels. Another American took service with Li Hung Chang as secretary. His name was W. N. Pethick. He had served in the Civil War in America. Mr. Pethick had considerable influence with Li, assisting him in treaty making, reading to him reform and economical books, and taking a part in urging the crusade against opium. Mr. Pethick died from the hardships of the siege of Peking in 1900.

When John Hay and Philander Knox secured the assent of the nations to the American and British doctrine of the non-partition of China, they were repeating the “square deal” terms of the famous treaty of 1868, which the brilliant American, Anson Burlingame, on behalf of China, which nation he was then serving as commissioner, secured from America, stipulating the “territorial integrity of China, and disavowing any right to interfere with China’s eminent domain”.

In 1900 the American troops found a great store of silver at Tientsin, but gave it up, as America returned the Boxer indemnity of 1908, and the abstention of the American troops from looting in Peking in 1900 set the usual high standard of altruism and soldierly honor which Sun Yat Sen and Wu Ting Fang say China connects with the name America.

In 1901 Mrs. Conger and the other ladies of the American legation began the work which threw down the zenana bars which held Manchu and Chinese women in repressive exclusiveness.

Years ago prominent Chinese made some study of American leaders. Seu Ki Yu, governor of Amoy and member of the Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board at Peking) in 1866,210 to whom Secretary W. H. Seward sent a picture of Washington, composed the following essay:

“Washington was a very remarkable man. In advising plans he was more daring than our heroes, Chin Shing or Han Kwang. In winning a country he was braver than Tsau or Lin Pi. Wielding his four-foot falchion he enlarged the frontier myriads of miles, and yet he refused to usurp regal dignity or even to transmit it to his posterity; but, on the contrary, first proposed the plan of electing men to office. Where in the world can be found a mode more equitable? It is the same idea, in fact, that has been handed down to us from the three reigns of Yau, Shun and Yu (the immortal reigns of China). In ruling the state he honored and fostered good usages, and did not exalt military merit, a principle totally unlike what is found in other kingdoms. I have seen his portrait. His mien and countenance are grand and impressing in the highest degree. Who is there that does not call him a hero?” This essay was reissued by the republicans in 1911 and had a wide influence in their propaganda.

The American exports to China, including Hongkong, consisting chiefly of cotton, machinery, oil, flour and tobacco, were as follows: 1908, $34,000,000; 1909, $28,000,000; 1910, $23,000,000 (exports to China from all countries, $305,580,000); 1911, $25,000,000.

The American imports were, in their order, chiefly silk, tea, hides, wool, straw braid, pig iron, musk, hair, raw cotton, albumen, bristles, and amounted as follows: 1908, $24,000,000; 1909, $31,000,000; 1910, $38,000,000 (exports by China to all countries, $251,460,000); 1911, $32,000,000.

This is but a beginning, as it were, “a little cloud out of the sea, like a man’s hand”.

211 America should keep stocks in Manila to attack the Chinese market, where “time is of the essence of importance”. This applies to iron, hardware, tinware, structural beams, cottons, woolens, yarn, shoes, machinery, educational and military apparatus, foods, utensils, pipes, and everything necessary in municipal, industrial and domestic development. A Cantonese or Shanghai Chinese does not mind the trip to Manila to inspect, though he would prefer seeing what America has to offer in Hongkong, Shanghai, Hankau, Tientsin, Mukden, Chingtu and Yunnan, if America shortly concludes to take advantage of these seven strategic trade centers. In the meantime full stocks at Manila would be a good beginning. Even in disturbed years, such as 1911, America’s imports from China were $32,000,000, and exports $25,000,000. These figures are small compared to those that will soon obtain, and, of course, America desires first to increase her exports of machinery, drugs, novelties, utensils, loom products, tools, etc.

American food and harvester companies will doubtless yet take up land directly or indirectly in fertile Manchuria, where America must look for supplies of vegetable oil, wheat, fertilizer, oil cake for milch cows, lumber and coal, and a market for machinery and manufactures. There is a virgin territory seven hundred miles by seven hundred miles, inviting the agriculturist. The American-Chinese Railway planned in 1910, from Chin Wang Tao, the only ice-free port on the Liaotung Gulf, to Tsitsikar and on to Aigun on the Amur River, was an excellent scheme and one which may eventually be accomplished.

The Western Electric Company, of America, installed Peking’s telephone system. The American Banknote Company set up China’s central bank engraving department. American companies furnished the stamping machinery for212 the new mints. American bridges and locomotives are frequently seen throughout China. American sewing machines, oil cans and tobacco papers are on view everywhere throughout the twenty-one provinces, and the American flour bag, when empty, patches the sails of the southern junks. Some American presses have come over, but they do not as yet compete strongly with the British and German presses. American hotel and kitchen utensils would compete were it not that the palatial treaty port hotels are controlled as yet by British and German shareholders. American mining, gas, electric, cranes, sawmill, cement, flourmill and pumping machinery are coming in, excepting where foreign contractors and bankers interpose. British shipyard machinery is still ahead. American protective paints for steel are holding their own in competition with the British and German paints, especially in the Yangtze valley. American turbines are slightly ahead, but American pipes, dynamos, stationary engines, winches, heating plants, dredgers, condensers, cables, electric fans, bleaching and cotton machinery, refrigerating machinery, wood-working machinery, water meters, hauling plants, lamps, etc., are still behind the British and German article, the British trade exceeding the American four to one. American machinery, with its generally nicer finish and greater adaptation and efficiency, has a vast field. In sugar machinery, Japan leads, but America will pass her. In car wheels, rails, and in simple foundry and rolling mill output, China can not be competed with for any length of time. In shovels, ballast unloaders, coal and ore hoists, America will lead, as she leads in locomotives. In the immense telegraph development, Britain leads. In water-tube boilers, America leads. In couplers, roofing, steam hammers and drilling machinery, America has a fair chance. In military supplies, Germany and Japan lead. In motor-boats,213 America will lead, although if time is not important, the Chinese dockyards can not be competed with in steam launches, which are now used very largely to tow the cargo junks. In automobiles, America leads. In family hardware, America and Britain lead. In lubricating oils, America meets some competition from the Dutch and Russians, but in illuminating oils, America leads. In fuel oils, the Dutch probably lead at present, the Shell Company having tanks of Sumatra oil at the ports. One of them was dramatically punctured with a shell in the recent revolution. In brakes, Britain and America share the field. In elevators, America will win. In reinforcing steel, America will lead. In typewriters, she long ago won the field. In sanitary hardware, scales, safes, rubber goods, America has an excellent chance. In phonographs, she has won, but in amusement films, France is ahead. In milks, Switzerland leads, and France leads in candies. In extensive systems of harbor improvements, sewerage, water supply, municipal improvements, power and light plants, institutions, mill erecting, etc., America will win as soon as the banking department is attached to the erecting and contracting department. At present the British and Germans lead, as they have done in South America, because of the banking department being attached to the constructive and diplomatic. In sporting goods, drugs, book supplies and school furniture, America will soon close up on Britain’s lead. In jewelry and fancy goods, France, Japan, Britain, Germany and America divide the field, in which there is a fighting chance, with the Chinese themselves as apt pupils in the competition. In brewery machinery, Japan and Germany lead. In canning equipment, America could easily seize the kingdom, and give the world added table necessities and delights from a new realm of sunshine and warmth. In214 leather, felt and underwear, America could lead. In special pianos for the moist climate, Britain leads, but she could be outplayed. In types, America could win. The field is not for war, but tournament, and the most efficient should and will win the joust! There are enough events to provide honors and rewards for each and all. Those nations which have had high tariffs will suffer most at the beginning of the competition, because while a high tariff may be the mother of the trusts, it is seldom the mother of a prodigy in competitive efficiency.

America’s and Britain’s recognition of the Chinese republic might naturally raise a temporary discontent in the Philippines, India and Egypt, but in homogeneity and responsibility these patronized people can not compare with the Chinese. If it should turn out that China, like Russia and Japan, is not yet ready for republican or constitutional self-government, much less is the non-fusible muddle of Viscayan, Tagalog, Ilocano and Moro, in the lovely summer islands; Mohammedan and Bengalese and Copt, Fellahin and Sudanese. Altruism is a sane creature, walking steadily on two legs, and is not going to lose its head and permit anarchy anywhere just to humor sentimentalism. Theodore Roosevelt made this plain in his Guildhall speech at London, which landed Kitchener in Egypt again to finish his work, and it would apply as well to-day when certain overanxious Filipinos compare their organization, temperament and constitution with the superior Chinese. America, like Britain, can strike with the same hand with which she shakes hands. The civil service and a host of foreign school-teachers in the Philippines and India is the shaking of hands. Let the Philippines and India appreciate it in that way. It would be quite different for them if monarchical Germany, Japan or Russia controlled. We shall recognize215 the republican trial in China because we believe China is homogeneous, educated and patient enough to make that trial safely, but neither America nor Britain will for a long time yet permit the trial in the Philippines, India or Egypt. If those countries ask the Anglo-Saxon why, we have but one answer; “Look at your history until we managed your interests, and look at our history.” In recognition of Japan’s power, America has dropped her first line of defense back to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In a new understanding of Britain’s oneness with us; of the Philippines linking Australia, India and Canada; of China’s welcome of our style of government and altruism, let us, when we have the docks, move our advance line back to the Philippines; for we mean to have as much to say in protecting China as any other power, which policy does not involve annoying illustrious Japan. But we are going to be on the ground, for as far as Russia and Japan and some others are concerned, they have a land-grabbing appetite and tendency which is not calculated to give China fair play in bringing out the great possibilities which are in her, if we respect her most majestic history. If the complaint is listened to, and America and Britain should withdraw, consider the kind of liberty our successors would deal out: the oligarchic rule of Russia, and the Satsuma and Choshiu nepotism of Japan.

Japan, in traditional Oriental style, has been on occasions alert to play one nation against another, with the view of gaining an advantage of slow prodigious China. When the treaty with America was to expire one year ahead of the termination of treaties with other nations, Japan extended the latter treaties one year, so that her treaties with all the powers might expire together. The obnoxious emigration clause in all these treaties would mainly be taken216 advantage of, however, in America’s case, and we should have, if the treaty was insisted on by a sudden opposition which gained power, the constant strife of the Japanese labor question in Hawaii, the Philippines and the Pacific coast states, which strife served the deep purpose that America, being technically in the wrong, might neglect to press Japan on greater matters where Japan was taking advantage of treaties, as in Manchuria and Korea. Some of the adroit Japanese statesmen, instead of being wounded at our attitude, really enjoy it in secret. Certain Jingo Japanese, however, would have liked, with this excuse, to have tried America’s naval strength on the Pacific in 1908, and attempted the capture of Manchuria, Fukien province, the Philippines and Hawaii, which test was probably avoided by the dramatic master stroke in sending America’s great fleet of battleships across the Pacific as an object lesson to the Nipponite chauvinist. Japan should for the future be reasonable enough to assent sincerely to an interpretative emendation of the “most favored nation clause”, so that it will really mean the “most favored Oriental nation”, as far as the emigration of laborers is concerned. This will put Japan on a par with China. America sends no laborers to Japan; Japan has discharged American professors in Japan and Korea the very moment the Oriental understudy reported that he was ready to assume charge; America has bought from Japan vastly more than she has sold to her; the timely loans of America to Japan, as Mr. Jacob H. Schiff has said in his notable speech of 1910, enabled Japan to continue the war with Russia until victory was won; American friendship for Japan enabled that nation to secure larger treaty stipulations from Russia at Portsmouth than any other host of the negotiators would have encouraged, and above all, the tactful American, Perry, opened up Japan217 to modernity in 1854. Japan’s vaunted Confucian and Shinto manners should teach her to protect the blood of her historic friend in his own house, and to respect the greater expense the American laborer nobly goes to in providing, under greater difficulties, for the living and education of his family. There should be no more emigration to the American mainland or Hawaii of Japanese labor than there is of Chinese. Let the Japanese laborers go to Formosa and Korea, where there are wide enough opportunities and where their own government, customs and language rule.

Particularly as America has loaned Japan money, there should be an unequivocal “open door” policy in Manchuria, where Japan is operating already one double-track and one single-track trunk railway, with branches, and has intruded many bands of colonizers on old China, which bands live in settlements where Japan collects taxes against agreement and in practical contravention of China’s sovereignty. This “open door” policy should end the brigandage against foreign traders of directly or indirectly rebating to Japanese shippers on the monopolistic railway privilege to which America never agreed. Cotton and other goods for the Japanese trade colonies should not be entered free at Dalny as “railway supplies”! The Japanese government through the Yokohama Specie Bank should not lend at the ridiculous rate of two per cent. to Japanese importers and common carriers the money that came largely from America, if it affects American trade. This is interpreting an “open door” policy as it is understood at Tokio and Dalny, not as it is written at Tokio and Washington. Since generous America buys vastly more from Japan than she sells to her, Japan should lower her tariff instead of raising it. Japan wants to raise her tariff to sixty per cent. in some218 cases while we of the august righteous Occident only permit vast good-natured China a tariff of five per cent. ad valorem.

The railroads of our Pacific coast, controlling the eastern shipments, should not invite over Japanese steamship lines, and lay off American lines as was done with the Boston Steamship Company at Seattle in 1909. As it is now, our railroads have made contracts with five Japanese steamship lines, so as to force our government, many critics say, to grant a ship subsidy, which is unnecessary, as the traffic is great enough to pay, with a mail payment, the lines on the Pacific running cheaper than those on the Atlantic on account of the crews being all Chinese. Japanese merchants in Manchuria have petitioned the Japanese government for state assistance to be given Japanese manufacturers in Manchuria.

Despite Japan’s and Russia’s rejection of America’s suggestion in 1910, there will remain only one course eventually to be taken as the result of Secretary Hay’s announcement in 1899 of the “open door” policy for all time in China and Manchuria, and that is for a revivified China to secure an international five-nation loan, or preferably a four-nation loan, to take over from Russia and Japan all the railways held by those two nations in Manchuria, and clean those three provinces of Japanese and Russian troops and Achranie Straja (railway guards), Manchuria thereafter acting as a buffer Chinese state between those really irreconcilable contestants, who under present conditions promise to throw the whole world into warlike turmoil every decade. The Japanese and Russians, by blocking, in 1910, the American railway concession from Chin Wang Tao to Aigun (which America did not intend to occupy with troops) really confessed that they considered, since it so suited them, that the219 secret agreement which Russia forced from China in 1899 was of superior power to the Japan-Russia Treaty made at Portsmouth, which avowed the “open door” policy. Britain, under pressure from Russia, agreed in 1899 that the former was not to interfere north of Peking, and the latter agreed not to interfere in the Yangtze valley (as though she ever could!). In that same year John Hay secured the assent of the nations, including Russia and Britain, to the policies for all time of the “non-partition of China” and the “open door”, which policies were confirmed by the Portsmouth Treaty, and therefore Japan and Russia, in blocking the Chin Wang to Aigun railway, Chin Wang to Kailar, or any other northern or Manchurian railway, were acting ultra vires, and negotiations in the interest of China, and the development of America’s trade, might well come up again. Certainly the South Manchurian railway has all the traffic it can handle, and it can no more serve great Manchuria and Eastern Mongolia than could a railway confined to Florida serve the eastern and central states as far north as Philadelphia.

Had this Chin Wang to Aigun railway been laid, besides the vast grazing, agricultural, mineral, lumber and mining territory which would have been developed, several important centers would have been made known to the world. Hulutao and Chin Wang are new ports which are ice free longer than Newchang, which should be made the advance post, instead of Shanghai, seven hundred miles away, for America’s attack on the rich Manchurian trade. Some day we shall run steamers across the Pacific to Hulutao and Chin Wang, and thus be independent of Japan’s port of Dalny. Tsitsikar on the Nonni River is a great stock, lumber, mining and railroad center. Aigun, on the great Amur River, is the proposed northern terminus of this seven hundred220 and fifty miles of railway. Up to 1900 Aigun was the largest city in Manchuria, but during the Boxer troubles Russian troops in revenge razed it to the ground. Here, in May, 1858, was signed the famous Chinese treaty with Russia, delimiting the present bounds of Manchuria. Aigun is a most important fur, lumber, agricultural, flour, gold and general mining center, and has all the great Amur, Sungari and Shilka Rivers to draw cargoes to its docks.

Across the Amur River on Siberian soil (I can hear George Kennan revive his reminiscences) lies Blagovestchensk. This city was the scene, in 1900, of one of the most cruel massacres of the ages, which should reveal fully to the world the real heart of the oligarchal Russian army and government with which we have had to deal, afar off as yet. Thousands of unarmed Chinese shopkeepers and gold miners (who had absolutely nothing to do with Boxerism one thousand miles away) were led to the riverside, and at the word of command from General Chitchegoff the Russian troops at the point of the bayonet drove the innocent victims into the swift Amur, where many were drowned. Blagovestchensk is a thriving modern city. It is the center of the opulent Siberian gold industry, and has many live American advance agents who would welcome the American railway by a bridge over from Aigun! It is lighted by electric light, has clubs, hotels, libraries, docks, river steamers when the river is open (!), theaters, colleges, factories, flour and sawmills, splendid churches, fine brick residences, roads and horses.

Besides its exceedingly rich mines, Manchuria produces in the south, oak-leaf silk which we in America call Shangtung because it is like the silk of Shangtung, which was the first known of the wild silks; cotton, jade, maize, barley, pulse, the very valuable soy-bean, wheat, oats, the very221 valuable kaoliang (tall millet), the grain of which produces spirits and the stalk of which produces paper; hsiao mi (short millet), poppy, polygonum, used for blue dye; castor oil bean, sesamum, ginseng, paper spruce, fine fruit and flowers, salt, bean oil, famous vermicelli from loutou beans, the best tobacco produced in China, hemp (abutilon avicennæ), true hemp, charcoal, peas, fine reed matting, indigo, etc. Northern Manchuria, besides much of the foregoing, produces the famous black pigs of Kirin; soda bricks, cattle, leather, bear and deer skins; a vast amount of the world’s finest furs, including squirrels, tiger and dog skins, which last are produced on dog farms largely for the American market; gray bricks, tamara salmon, sturgeon, etc. The land is a future granary to feed the manufacturing hundreds of millions in America, who, despite intensive farming, will have exhausted the natural productiveness of their country.

IX
THE NATIVE LEADERS

In the revolution chapter of this book we have given many names of the new leaders. Others who have attained prominence are the following. Most of them have seen foreign service, or been educated in America, Britain, Germany or Japan. In March, 1912, a descendant of the Ming emperors came forward at Peking to add to the complexity of the situation. He endeavored to obtain the allegiance of Yuan’s rebelling northern troops, who seemed loyal to no cause or person. He was the so-called “Marquis” Chu Cheng Yu. A Ming claimant would more naturally make his appeal at the old Ming capital, Nanking, but Nanking was now all for the republic.

Tang Shao Yi, Yuan’s assistant, educated in America, visited America on many commissions; a superior man, worthy of special mark in the coming China; Yuan’s representative at the Shanghai peace conferences.

Yen Shih Si and Yang Shih Chi, assistants of Tang at the Shanghai peace conferences; Board of Finance and Railways, Peking, 1911.

M. Y. Sung, manager of the “Chung Hua” republican bank at Shanghai, and manager of the China Merchants’ Steamship Company.

Shih Shao Chi, known as “Alfred Sze”, American educated; served on American embassies; very popular and able.

Tang Wen Chai, Hupeh Provincial Assembly; Board of Commerce, Shanghai; head of Changsha University.

Chang Chien, Kiangsu Assembly; Board of Commerce, Shanghai; great and progressive.

Wang Shao Liang, head Pei Yang Technical University; established English as official language in science.

Li Chin Hsi, Yunnan Assembly; as Viceroy established modern army, police, industrial schools.

Chen Chun Tao, educated at Hongkong and Yale; first President Ta Ching Government Bank, 1910; one of the ablest financiers in China.

Chau Tien You (popularly “Jeme”); educated Yale; builder of Peking-Kalgan Railway; ablest engineer in China.

Doctor Wu Lien Teh, educated Cambridge University; hero of 1910 plague in Manchuria; one of the ablest modern Chinese doctors.

Admiral Chin Pih, visited New York on cruiser Hai Chi; joined republicans at Shanghai, December, 1911.

Admiral Chin Yao Huan, visited New York on Hai Chi; became republican December, 1911.

General Lau Tien Wei, republican general in Manchuria, 1911; visited West Point, 1912.

E. M. Sah, American educated; authority on municipal government; son of Admiral Sah.

The old leaders who go down to defeat are the following, and of the many who are called in the reorganization, some of the following will be found worthy, and some of the disappointed ones may possibly be found leading the discontented at times.

Hsu Shih Chang, progressive Chinese member of Manchu Council; turned General-in-chief of republicans.

Chao Ping Chun, progressive Minister of Peking Police, and Department of Interior.

Shih Tao, progressive Mongol Prince; Vice-President of National Assembly, Peking, 1911.

Admiral Sah Chen Ping, imperial Admiral who joined republicans; entertained American fleet at Amoy, in 1908.

Liang Tun Yen, American educated; head Foreign Board (Wai Wu Pu), Peking, 1911; protégé of famous Chang Chi Tung, of Wuchang.

Hu Wei Teh, progressive Vice-President of Foreign Board, 1911; Minister to Russia, etc.

226 Tang Ching Chung, Board of Education, Peking, 1911; literary chancellor Kiangsu province, 1904; learned in old and new.

Prince Pu Lun, first President Peking Parliament, 1911; visited St. Louis Exposition; a most dignified progressive; familiar with Hongkong.

Prince Tsai Tse, Manchu head Finance Board, Peking, 1911; visited America, Britain, etc., 1905.

Prince Tsai Tao, Manchu head of Army; visited America; brother of Emperor Kwang Hsu.

Prince Tsai Hsun, Manchu head of Navy; visited America, 1909; brother of famous Manchu Emperor Kwang Hsu, first reform Emperor of China.

Chang Jen Chung, Viceroy defense of Nanking; stubborn; enlightened; holder of first exposition in China; well known to Americans.

General Yin Chang, Manchu General-in-chief; director Nobles College; Minister to Germany, 1901–5; a superior theoretical man, but not a brave leader in battle.

Li Ching Mai, grandson of illustrious Li Hung Chang; visited America, 1909; a bright man.

Tan Tien Chih, University of California; Superintendent Railway College, Peking, 1910.

Wen Tsung Yao, Amban at Lhasa; helped to drive out Dalai Lama, the Pope of Buddhism.

Prince Yu Lang, Grand Councilor; Board of Police; organizer of Imperial Guard; Army Board, Peking, 1911.

Shou Chi, Minister Dependencies, Peking, 1911; Minister228 of Mongolia, 1900; Captain of Hatamen Octroi (Customs) Gate, Peking, 1909; an amusing type of old-style effective revenue man.

Lu Jun Hsiang, Grand Secretary, Peking, 1910; head of Opium Suppression Board, 1911: a really effective man, representing the best traditions of old China.

Jung Ching, President Board of Ceremonies, Peking, 1911; remarkable type of thorough-going conservative.

Sheng Yun, irreconcilable imperial Governor of Shensi and Shansi provinces, 1911–12.

Prince Tuan, irreconcilable “Boxer” Manchu; exiled in Kansu, and father of Pretender to Throne, “Ku Kwei”, 1912.

X
CHINA’S INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.

The treaties and international notes which hold China in obligations to the outside world (Wai Ih, outside foreigners), and which the republicans promise to observe, are in part as follows. The “most favored nation” clause admits nations which did not participate in the original treaty.

Treaties Affecting China

These treaties sound very well, but mean very little, excepting231 this, that if Japan or Russia persistently breaks them and invades China, Britain and America have a cause before the world, to thrash, if it is necessary, the offender’s navy, and cut Japan off from Korea and Manchuria. The treaties are a confusion. They all specify that the “open-door” theory is acknowledged, but Russia and Japan have forced China to assent to their visé on any proposed railway schemes in Manchuria and Pechili. Despite the Britain-Japan Treaty of 1905, wherein the “integrity of China” is specified as a promise to the nations, the London Times confesses as follows: “The grim facts of the economic gravitation of Manchuria toward Russian and Japanese control are beyond remedy, treaties and agreements notwithstanding.” Yet at one time the thunderer would bring on a war for the sake of a straw! If Russia continues to offend there is no way to stop her except that America and Britain shall send their navies to pound her Baltic gates until she behaves in Manchuria, Mongolia, etc., which she soon would do in fear of her Duma on the inside of the Baltic gates. Britain never again can use Japan to pound Russia, for Japan and Russia have agreed to take the Manchurian spoil, as Japan did in the case of Korea, whenever the opportunity offers through dissension among the powers. Japan and Russia are high-tariff countries, and wherever they establish themselves, Britain, America, Germany and France will knock in vain for trade entry. China, like Britain, is a low-tariff country (at present five per cent., and even the proposed twelve per cent. would be low), and the manufacturing nations therefore desire the “open door” maintained, which can only be done on America’s and Britain’s reiterated treaty stipulations of the “integrity of China”. America must always keep a Pacific fleet stronger than Japan’s. A fight is unnecessary, for Japan is checkmated232 at once by this policy. Britain and America, and, if possible, Germany, must work together in the Far East to watch both Russia and Japan, and see that China gets the “square deal” in having reserved for her expansion her immemorial preserves of Manchuria, Mongolia and Turkestan. In Premier Yuan’s difficulties, the irreconcilable former Manchu major general, Yin Tchang, fled to Dalny, where he ran a bureau which plotted for the overthrow of the republic.

China made a beginning in 1911 in the agitation for the retrocession of some of the foreign colonies. Prince Ching then suggested that commissioners should be appointed by the Cabinet to discuss with Britain the retrocession of Wei-Hai-Wei. There are other nations which hold vastly more territory than do America and Britain, whether in concessions, settlements or colonies. The other nations have done comparatively little for China as compared with America and Britain, and Prince Ching might have approached this worthy subject in proportionate order. Until China is on her feet, foreign concessions at all her ports are the best object lesson she could have in municipal government and improvements, but foreign colonies, as large as Germany’s Kiaochou and Japan’s and Russia’s spheres of occupation in Manchuria, are unjust to her.

The New China party bears as a thorn in its flesh the awful burden of 1900, the old Russian and the Japanese indemnities. America alone, under President Roosevelt’s administration, remitted her share of the 1900 (Boxer) indemnity. These punitive indemnity payments prevented China from offering relief in the terrible pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria in 1911, and in the famines which followed the floods in 1911 and 1912 in the central and eastern provinces. Half a million people starved to death,233 and China has not forgotten that the funds which the starving people needed were taken by the rich European nations as indemnity payments. Britain, however, did return part of her indemnity on condition that it should be applied to the Shansi University at Taiyuan, of which Doctor Timothy Richards was president.

China’s helpless position without a navy could not be more eloquently shown than by the following case: In the Mexican revolution of 1911, Chinese lives and property were destroyed to the estimated amount of $33,000,000. China put in a claim to satisfy the heirs and claimants, but no attention has been paid to it. How different it was when Germany and Britain held Venezuelan claims only a short time previously!

In the interim, before the establishment of an effective diplomacy and parliaments or congresses in China, the guilds, with their boycott, have to a degree acted as the foreign office of the people in obtaining concessions which armies, navies and courtiers were not yet powerful enough to obtain. Their effective boycotts are a proof that the people really ruled in China, and without the expense of armies and navies. They, moreover, proved that the Chinese people can think together, and keep their word of faith so fixedly that it is seldom necessary for the central committee of the guilds to put in effect the heavy money penalties involved. There is this conclusion among others to be drawn from the interesting history of guilds and boycotts in China, especially in the last fifteen years, that the provincial and central parliaments, or congresses, which began work in 1909 and 1910, will remain, and with some improvement each year reach ever higher toward the standards of liberty and righteousness, or, in expressive American slang, the “square deal”.

234 Who will gainsay that the Chinese is a long-suffering being even in his own land? I quote the following from the Hongkong Telegraph of September 1, 1911: “At 6.00 P. M., on August 25, a German in the employ of a British company, and an Italian priest went into a shop at Shek Ki (near Canton). The German, who disliked the demeanor of the shop employé, dealt the man a nasty cut on the head. The foreigners afterward left the shop and went to a money changer’s. As the changer was slow, the German snatched a lamp from a table, and smashed it on the ground. The German assaulted two chair coolies. A riot developed. The two foreigners rushed into the dwelling of a missionary lady doctor.” Such abuse as this leads to international troubles, and the consuls at the ports, to whom the patient Chinese turn over foreign offenders, should be more severe than they are. These foreign offenders should really be brought back to the village where they create a disturbance, and in the presence of the consul, and Chinese taotais and mandarins, should pay to the headman of the village sufficient damages. Then the Chinese would know that the foreigner is sincere in his legal measures. Thoughtless or drunken action, like that of the German, often leads to missionary and other riots before the resentment of the indignant natives cools. One brutal fool of this kind, violens in vino, can place at jeopardy the lives of thousands of foreigners and the peace of the nations. We must scrupulously show China that we are sincere. She has some cause to feel that when we established our extraterritorial courts we meant to cheat her of justice. We shall later hear from Wu Ting Fang on this subject, as he is making a specialty of codifying the laws.

The British government introduced to the foreign office (Tsung Li Yamen and Wai Wu Pu) for many years, Sir235 Walter Hillier, as adviser, but since his appointment was to a degree forced he had less influence than in the case of the voluntary appointments of the Americans, Dennison and Stevens, as advisers in the foreign offices of Japan and Korea, respectively. The four-nations bankers will have foreign advisers on the Chinese Finance and Foreign Boards, and great tact and patience with China’s difficulties will at all times be required.

Long before the revolution, as well as after it, the masses of the Chinese had commenced to think of national and international politics. Whenever missionaries opened new “tan” (preaching or “talk” halls, as the Chinese call churches) the auditors listened respectfully for a while to the “doctrine” or “tao” (way). When the missionary came down from the platform, and joined the audience on the benches for a familiar “tan” (chat), religious subjects were not the first spoken of, the following questioning being common:

“What is your real business outside of your kindly avocation of achieving merit by temporarily talking about Jesus?”

“You do not shave your head and face or change your outer clothes often, so we suppose you do not bathe often.”

“What do you think of this talk of republics, foreign loans, centralized government, armies and railways?”

There is no sycamore tree for Zacchæus to climb; he236 must come down. They know you are peaceful as an amateur, but they insist on your professional opinion, and they believe your profession is something more practical than talking religion. Are you a doctor, a government employé, a farmer, a soldier, a spy, an artisan, a merchant? If so, you must know about these practical things, and can answer the questions propounded.

The emigration treaties now stand in almost a humorous attitude in one respect. To save Japan’s “face” (the Oriental idiom for pride), Japan is granted permission to land coolies, but Japan by a secret postscriptum agrees not to let her coolies make the slightest use of this permission, as she has room for them in Korea, Manchuria, the navy, etc., at present. China is not permitted to land her coolies, but land some of them she does by the “underground”, which runs via Canada, Mexico, Central America, Cuba, etc. Our Pacific coast is correct, notwithstanding the exigencies of diplomacy, that she can not and will not absorb Oriental labor, any more than we foist Occidental labor on the Orient. The Pacific coast is quite consistent for the “square deal”, though it took her some time to trust the signing of the 1911 Japan Treaty, the immigration clause of which it is secretly understood is not to be taken advantage of. America can not welcome too many Chinese students and travelers, and a certain number of specialized merchants, agriculturalists, agents, artisans and artists, whom we can well accept as our tutors in their specialties.

On the subject of Asiatic immigration, the authority on American naval and foreign affairs, Admiral Mahan, writes as follows: “A large preponderance of Asiatics in a given region is a real annexation, more effective than the political annexations against which the Monroe doctrine was formulated. Free Asiatic immigration to the Pacific coast in its237 present condition of sparse population would mean Asiatic occupation—Asia colonized in America. This the United States government can not accept because of the violent resistance of the Pacific states, if for no other reason.”

In a former book I have recommended the immigration of a number of Chinese into the Philippines. The Straits Settlements cover only a small area. Their population is 300,000 Malays, who are akin to the Filipino. Four hundred thousand Chinese were brought in, and the little colony in 1911 exported $200,000,000 of tin and other products. Sir Frank Swettenham, the famous governor of the settlement in its formative period up to 1904, says of the Chinese: “The industrial development of the country is entirely due to the Chinese. They are the only people in the peninsula who can be depended upon. They tolerate no interruptions in the performance of their daily labor, and save their money to make prudent investments. Without the Chinese nothing would have been done in the Malay states. No progress would have been made, and the enormous natural resources of the country would still be lying dormant.” A remarkable instance of the orderliness of the Chinese was exhibited in the deportation in 1908 of 60,000 Chinese emigrants from the Transvaal gold mines to China. Such a body of any other labor would have shown many signs of rebellion against their removal from the scenes to which they had grown attached, and where they were prospering, and against the hot journey of 8,000 miles, made the more unpleasant because of the crowded quarters on shipboard. No friction or disturbance marked this unusual industrial event. Coolies though they were, they kept their word like statesmen, and said: “We promised the colony that we would only substitute black labor for four years, and as the blacks now are ready to return to the field, we are going.”

238 The nations should get together, and permit China to levy a provisional import duty of twelve per cent. instead of five per cent., and not keep her government helpless because of starvation. If she had an army and navy like Japan, she would not need to ask the permission of others to allow her own government to live. Advice should be given to her, as in the Mackay Treaty, to strike away the inter-provincial and inter-district fetters of likin (transit taxes) and export tax, by which method the provinces raise much of their revenue; and the government should divide up the customs receipts between the provinces, or permit the provinces to keep all their land tax.

France, which owns the only railway to Yunnan at present, is imposing an unjust transit tax of ten per cent. on American, British and German goods, shipped from Hongkong to Yunnan, or vice versa, and which must cross French China. Canada in the same situation bids for American freights by making no transit tax, and indeed quoting lower freight rates; this is intelligent modernism. China and the three commercial nations should have this Indo-Chinese tax removed, and demand equal rates on French railways. This rate equalization is what America has demanded of Japan and Russia on railways in Manchuria. It is the same thing that Germany, at the point of the Panther’s cannon, demanded of France in the Agadir incident in Morocco. In other words, the “square deal”, and it must be put in effect, say the Chinese people and the nations which advocate the “open door”.

The political economists of Japan are beginning to denounce the exportation of coal, and recommend the reservation of the fields as a war supply. The proposition is to use foreign coal in manufacturing. Accordingly, measures239 have been taken to develop the Manchurian, Korean, Saghalien and Formosan fields, as well as purchasing from the rich Chinese supplies. This conservation method will certainly be followed by Australia, England, Germany and America, as the years go by. The export of coal is not a benefit; it is an impoverishment. The Japanese make into briquettes the anthracite coal of Ping Yang, Korea, so as to produce a smokeless navy coal.

An interesting aftermath of the Boxer massacres in 1900 was the strange disappearance of the Manchu prince, Liang Chow, who was condemned to be strangled in private with the silver cord, which two unseen friends were to tighten behind two holes bored in a wall. Prince Liang fled to America, where he became a pauper, and was buried in the Alamosa, Colorado, cemetery. At the request of the Manchu throne his body was exhumed on November 25, 1910, and started on its way to China to the tombs of the Manchu emperors west of Peking (not the Ming tombs, which are northwest). A splendid, dragon-gilded coffin was furnished, and the Manchus sent magnificent mandarin robes, a yellow jacket, peacock feather and pearl button of honor. The Chinese whom Prince Liang found in America were not Manchus, but republican Cantonese of southern Kwangtung province.

Hongkong, the dean of foreign settlements, Shanghai, Tientsin, Singapore, Hankau, Harbin, etc., all have volunteer military companies and inter-port rifle matches. Every man in a settlement can be impressed for the protection of life and property. All these uniformed companies have seen hard active service in the taking of Kowloon, the various riots at Shanghai, the Peking Relief Expedition and the revolution which broke out at Hankau in October, 1911.240 The companies cover infantry, machine and field gun, bicycle and garrison corps trained in the use of cannon. Hongkong’s uniformed contingent at King George’s coronation in London attracted much attention for the smartness of their swinging march. “We didn’t think the jaded tropics could turn out such ambition,” was the remark of many onlookers.

The English historian, Creasy, who lived in the Far East, in writing his book, Decisive Battles of the World, as early as 1852 recognized the importance of America’s mission across the Pacific. These are his words: “The conquests of China and Japan by the fleets and armies of the United States are events which many now living are likely to witness. Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion of the old world, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over central and southern America seems a matter of secondary importance.” If we change Creasy’s favorite idea of physical conquest to that of moral, educational and commercial, with physical power only as an auxiliary in the case of the heinous jealousy of those not concerned, we shall agree with him as to America’s advance across the Pacific. It was nevertheless a wonderful prophecy, made as long ago as 1852, when the tide of America’s western advance, with the exception of one meager settlement, had not yet risen over the Rockies. All the Chinese leaders, republican and conservative, look for the growing evidence of America’s interests across the Pacific, and American affairs and history are keenly studied.

“He who doesn’t follow up his words with deeds is no more terrible than the wind on painted water.”

XI
CHINESE INTERNAL POLITICS

Almost the oldest book in China, the Chou Li, provided for village management at the same time that sacrifices were instituted, thousands of years before the Christian era. The oldest man of the clan-village, bearing the title of “hsiang lao” (village old-one) takes charge at a salary of about one hundred and fifty dollars a year, and hires say twenty police in the smaller villages. This “hsiang lao”, when necessary, deals with the district “siunkian”, who is the government’s lowest mandarin. The people express their views in an open “hsiang” meeting, which is the same as the old town meeting of New England, on which present democratic institutions in America are based; an “open primary”, for that matter.

In the guild councils of the cities, the more experienced tradesmen have had political experience in their dealings with the “taotai”, a higher class of mandarin. From “hsiang” and guild meetings, the next step was to send delegates to viceroys, or even delegates to the Board of Censors at Peking, accusing viceroys. China, therefore, had some experience in politics before the reformers of 1898 induced the impressionable young Emperor Kwang Hsu to issue his famous edicts, which started a wave that rolled on, lifting provincial assemblies, parliaments, and revolutionists into view; and the wave is rolling onward still. Kwang Hsu as early as 1891 issued an edict praising and protecting missionaries.243 He was never permitted to travel, but learned from books, brought to him by Kang Yu Wei and the other new spirits, what was going on in the outside world. In 1894 Kwang Hsu sent to the American Bible Society at Peking a request for copies of the two Testaments, “such as are sold to THE PEOPLE”. His immortal edicts began to appear in the Peking Gazette on June 23, 1898, and ended in September of that year, when he was imprisoned by the empress dowager and Yuan Shih Kai. During the issuance of the edicts the dowager was at the summer palace, eight miles northwest of Peking, where she was preparing her reactionary plans. The edicts covered the following:

Let us step into one of the meetings of the first partially formed Parliament, which opened in 1910. We would call it a Senate. They called it Tzu Cheng Yuan; that is, Property Laws Assembly, or Taxing Assembly. The Parliament buildings at Peking, not being completed, the Congress met in the law hall of the Peking University. This hall is a two-story western style building, the only Chinese feature being the heavy tiled roof. The windows are square and have modern sashes. The door is Roman and not Chinese in curve. The Lower House was not yet formed. In the front row of two hundred members were Mongol princes, Manchu princes, viceroys, governors, mandarins, appointed by the Crown, and farther back were men sent up by the provincial assemblies. The great Prince Pu Lun of the royal blood, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at Hongkong, and who was commissioner to the St. Louis Exposition in 1904, most affable, stout and progressive, opens the assembly with bland dignity. Shen Chia Pan, the temporary vice-president, sits on his left. The debate at once opens like the small fire of machine guns. It takes up appeals by the provincial assemblies on the actions of the provincial governors. Education, foreign loans, provincial versus nationalized railways, pensions to Manchus, suppression of opium, acts of departmental secretariates, the leakage in tax collection, the corruption of courts, the police to serve the people and not against the people, high tax rate against the poor and low tax rate against the rich, taxation without representation, foreign aggression in Manchuria and Turkestan,245 insults to the flag abroad, nepotism, etc., are discussed, and the secretariates have a lively time defending themselves from the critical, eloquent pure Chinese Cantonese; the independent Hunanese who have many Cromwells among them, and who are foremost for running Chinese mines and railways without foreign money; the tradition-loving Szechuen men; the literati and capitalists from Kiangsu; the traveled bankers from Shansi province; the cosmopolitan men from the imperial province of Pechili and Shangtung; the rough-rider Mongols from far west Shensi and Kansu provinces; and the Patrick Henrys from turbulent Fukien province. The Throne is compelled to promise a Lower House in 1913 instead of 1915, and at last, in its edict, gives all credit to the crushed reformer, Emperor Kwang Hsu, who learned reform from the Bible and other western books surreptitiously introduced despite the eunuch spies of the reactionary Empress Dowager Tse Hsi. This preliminary Senate stormily sends a suggestion to the oligarchic Grand Council of the Regent that reform shall be evidenced by the regent and the infant Emperor Pu Yi having their queues cut off. Thus the spirited debate rolled back and forth between the old Grand Council and the new Congress or Parliament, until the guns of the impatient revolution thundered at Hankau, like Cromwell on the doors of the Long Parliament.

Confucius himself was a politician. He lived in an age of able prime ministers of some ten highly civilized, equal states, fighting generally by diplomacy for mastery, on the pretext of the right to monopolize the succession to perform the sacred rites of the parent Chou state, which alone was weak. These prime ministers were all abler men than were the titular rulers of the states. Confucius studied diplomacy in the writings of Kwan Tsz, premier-philosopher of the adjoining246 Tsi state. Kwan Tsz’ writings are sometimes published with Lao Tsz’ works, but should not be confounded with them. Confucius was also influenced by his friend, the great diplomat, Shuh Hiang, prime minister of the Tsin state, which was situated far to the northwest of his native state of Lu; also by the very able minister Tsz Chan of the state of Cheng, which lay west of Lu. He had to keep his wits awake to save the small and weaker Lu state from succumbing to the policies of the ambitious Yen Tsz, prime minister of the Tsi state, which was situated immediately north of Lu, and from falling before the intrigue of Kupeh Yu, prime minister of Wei state, lying to the northwest. This last state afforded Confucius a long exile, when his vicious, ungrateful, new prince hounded him for fourteen years by an ancient system of “Black List” out of his positions with some thirty states, content neither to use his eminent services, nor to let him live that other states might avail of them. He knew too much about law-breaking by those who occupied the “seats of the mighty”; and “such men are dangerous”! Devoted as they are to the study of Confucius’ life, the Chinese thereby imbibed politics.

History throws light on some of the insidiousness of ancient Chinese intrigue. As long ago as 626 B. C. the ruler of the Chinese principality of Ts’in, which state was oppressed by the manly Tartars, sent to the Tartar chief two companies of singing girls “that he might be too weak to ride the saddle at the head of his cavalry”. In 486 B. C. the prince of Tsi state, lying to the north of Lu state, sent to the prince of Lu state, Confucius’ master, a company of singing girls to ensnare manliness in the lap of debauchery, with the result that Confucius in disgust left the service of his prince and became a hounded exile, laughed out of his247 court by the powerful who for the time were above the law. Where have been that most venerable family on earth, the Kungs of Shangtung province, who have lived at Kufu near Yenchow, in all the recent turbulence in China? We have heard of Manchu princes, of leaders of the Chinese like Kang and Sun, Yuan, General Li, and Wu Ting Fang; of descendants of the old Ming emperors, etc., but why have not the lineal descendants of Confucius put forward a man able to handle politics, war and literature as did their great ancestor? What an opportunity they have had recently. What an opportunity they have yet to put forward a man for the presidency, whom all China and all the world will be delighted to accept if he is only one-twentieth as able as his immortal ancestor.

The secret society, too, has played a great part in internal politics. It is not so necessary now as it was. The pitiless publicity of a democracy or constitutional monarchy makes secret duplicity unnecessary. The Kao Ming Tang was Yuan Shih Kai’s and Prince Ching’s society. At the other extreme was the Kao-lao-Hwei and other anti-Manchu secret societies. It was the union of the Triad secret society with the Taiping rebels that made that revolution powerful enough to spread from Canton to Nanking. In the Boxer days of 1900 the Buddhist secret society, Tsai Li Hwei, extended its scope to cover the new movement. Their watchword was: “Store grain for war; collect forage; revolt”. The Sia Hwei (reform association), Tung Men Hwei (sworn brother), and other secret societies established in China and throughout the world by Sun Yat Sen, had much to do with the successful preliminary work that made the revolution possible.

The old lines of political demarcation are passing away,248 and new lines will be drawn in some instances. The powerful viceroys of the fourteen main provinces were located and named as follows:

“Viceroy of Kiangnan” (i. e. Kiangsu, Nganhwei and Kiangsi provinces), at Nanking.

“Viceroy of Hu Kwang”, or “Viceroy of Liang Hu” (i. e. Hunan and Hupeh provinces), at Wuchang.

“Viceroy of Liang Kwang” (i. e. Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces), at Canton.

The favorite retreats for these retired officials are the five cities of cultured Kiangsu province: Shanghai, Suchow, Chinkiang, Yangchow and Nanking; and one city in adjoining Chekiang province, Hangchow. If the clubs of these cities could by a dictograph breathe what they have heard, volumes of wonderful interest would keep a score of publishers busy. China has entered the world arena because of her human interest on a vast scale.

The Manchu may try to come back, as the irreconcilable Major General Yin Tchang has been plotting from Japanese Dalny. The doctrine of sacred right, as strongly as the Hohenzollern has enunciated it, has been preached before in China. The Manchu, with this in view, would not abdicate until he was assured that in him would lie the ancient right to pay the sacred Chou sacrifices, which are 4,000 years old. The builder of the Great Wall, the Emperor Tsin, 200 B. C., said “Shao Ming Yu Tien” (Heaven gives249 me my decree to reign). Sunyacius and the republicans of 1911 said: “Tien Ming Wu Chang” (The divine right lasts not forever).

“A good hearer knows twice as much as a foolish talker, for he knows himself and he knows the talker, too.”

Chang Chih Tung, the famous viceroy of Wuchang in 1909, used to say, “Treachery can turn fame to everlasting stench.” May the New China not be a traitor to progress. Chang was the progressive who established, among many other modern plants, the wonderfully successful Hanyang steel plant, whose products are used in Europe, both coasts of America, Japan and in China on the roadbed from Canton to Harbin, 2,000 miles of shining steel, in that “Celestial” land that is beginning to find that it has a grand terrestrial future.

XII
SOME PUBLIC WORKS IN OLD CHINA

Will the spirit which instituted the ancient notable public works of China revive again? That is the question. The greatest irrigation work in the world, 2,100 years old, is in China at Chingtu. It was invented by Li Ping, the engineer-governor, B. C. 250. A plain seventy-five miles by forty miles is irrigated. It supports nearly 4,000,000 people. The water is taken from the Min River at Kwan Hien above Chingtu in April, and is permitted to run in the thousands of channels until November. Then the great banks of the Min are restored, as the rains are sufficient, and the river runs in its old bed to join the “father of waters”, the Yangtze River, at Sui Fu. The dikes are made of iron, cement, stone, timber and bamboo cradles. Li left this message, which is cut in the stones of his tomb outside the walls of Chingtu: “Shen Tao Tan Ti Tso Yen” (Dig deep the bars, keep low the dikes). The Chinese are going to use these works to produce power and light as well as irrigation.

At Li Ling, over the Lu Ho River in southeast Hunan province, is a high wooden cantilever bridge of six spans, four hundred and eighty feet long and twenty feet wide, paved with cobbles, and covered with an awning. The substructure is masonry, and the cantilever principle is obtained by increasing the length of the pier timbers as they are laid on one another. I want to describe a beautiful suspension bridge over the Yang Ti River near Tali251 in Yunnan province, which shows that engineering ability was generally spread throughout the provinces to reach thus far in the extreme southwest. The double piers on each side of the stream rise in great strength, and the arch is joined and roofed over most artistically in characteristic Chinese style, like a temple. Eight suspended iron chains make the floor of the bridge, which is anchored half-way up the stone piers, under the arch. From the chains arises a bamboo fence, which is kept from spreading by stanchions, under which you must stoop at regular distances. There is a commemoration statue of a recumbent water buffalo at the foot of one of the pairs of piers. It and the bridge are all that remain of the forgotten assemblage of orators, patrons, troops and society which ages ago graced the occasion, another triumph of the doers over the talkers. The engineer and the architect alone build their own monuments. As in the case of Christopher Wren at St. Paul’s, “Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.”

China thinks more of the engineer than we credit her with thinking; otherwise she would not have criticized the Manchu so much of late. Between high banks over the River Lou, in west Szechuen province, is the famous Lou Ting Haio bridge, built in 1700. It is one hundred and ninety-two feet long and has nine suspended iron chains, with loose planks laid across. At Chow Chu, near Swatow, there is a beautiful stone pier bridge over the Han River. Shops are established at each pier, and the floor of the shop protrudes, and is supported with great poles that retreat back to the piers. A daily fair is held upon the bridge, because it is the most central point for the travelers from many villages. Each village of the district has its own day for its fair. At Changchow, near Amoy, is a wonderful bridge, from engineering and artistic points of view. The252 great Chah Siang built it eight hundred years ago from voluntary subscriptions. It is one thousand yards long. There are one hundred and twenty piers, and the height above the water is forty feet. Five stones of one hundred tons each, twenty feet long, compose the roadway, each stone being several feet wide. The piers up-stream are made with a cutwater bow. At Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichau province, a massive stone bridge of ten piers, with cutwaters, shows what ancient China could execute in masonry. Near the rich coal mines at Ping Hsiang, in Kiangsi province, there is a high five-arched, pier-pinnacled, balustraded bridge, which is singularly beautiful. There are shrines on the piers, which also have cutwaters. Chinese engineers discovered the principles of the true arch; that is, a complete ring of voussoirs, and not the succession of protruding corbels invented by the Hindus. The Chinese are just discovering western industry and inventions, but we are just discovering Chinese engineering, with engineers like their Yu and Chah Siang, and the modern “Jeme”, which will cause not a little surprise and enthusiasm in the practical Occidental world.

At Yangchow, on the Yangtze River, there is a remarkable pavilion bridge. The heaviest part of the stone bridge is in the middle of the stream, which is let through the masonry in a number of half and full arch tunnels. Over these tunnels rises the heavy masonry pile, topped with an artistic balustrade. On this is a superstructure of five beautiful pavilions, with prominent up-curling eaves. The bridge descends on each side to the banks along a sloping abutment. It is an exceptional structure even for varied China, both from an artistic and engineering standpoint. The ancient Liu Ko stone bridge over the Hun River north of Peking is famous for its lion-pier terminals, its carved stone balustrade253 which is in the ornate style. After leaving Szechuen province, on the road into Yunnan, over the Niu Lan River, at Kiang Ti, is a noted suspension bridge, hung between two heavy piers in a gorge, the piers being surmounted with curve-roofed pavilions. The carvings of monkeys, lions, etc., are very fine. The bridge, which is one hundred and fifty feet by twelve feet, is made of iron chains, pulled very taut, showing the unusual strength of the anchorage. There is also a hand chain. The pavilions are, as usual, used as a restaurant and an inn for travelers.

The two most famous suspension bridges are over the Mekong River in Yunnan province, between Tali and Yungchang, and over the Salween River on the main road to Burma. These chain bridges are hung from heavy piers deep down in the vast gorges, and show that men were mighty enough in those old days to tackle so mighty a problem. The Ban Chiao bridge at Yungchang is worthy of the famous engineers of that province. Strong stone piers are sunk down into the swift stream and anchored to the high banks. A secure bridge has been laid down over this support. The abutments are raised and roofed with a glorious double pagoda, the ridge, curling eaves, flying supports and ornaments all being splendidly carved. The bridge itself is protected with a balustrade, and is roofed with tiles throughout. It is both an artistic and a substantial structure. So much for the beautiful bridges of the old régime, nearly all it will be noted in the native Chinese section of the country. Herr Dorpmuller and other German engineers are teaching the Chinese the revival of stone bridges by the massive structures which they have erected on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway.

A beginning has been made in erecting iron truss bridges. The very long pier bridge carrying the Peking-Hankau254 (Belgian built) railway across the Yellow River is well known, and has stood longer than it was thought it would because of the shifting foundation. The eight-pier steel bridge over the Hwei River on the line of the Tientsin-Pukow railway was erected by the Wright-Headson Company, of Motherwell, Scotland. At Shanghai there is the wide Garden bridge. A steel bridge has been erected over the Yellow River at Lanchow, the capital of remote Kansu province, and at Tientsin is the Chin Kung truss bridge. At Chungking a structure has been erected across the Yalung River. The Hongkong-Canton, Tientsin-Nanking, Peking-Hankau, North China and Kiachou-Tsinan railways of course have many steel culvert bridges. There are already a considerable number of remarkable steel truss bridges of eighteen to twenty-four spans over Liao, Nu Erh, Hsiao, Taling, Sha, Tawen, Yellow and other great rivers of China. The French railway, from Haiphong to Yunnan City, is built over one hundred small bridges in the crossing of the Red River, Namti and Song River valleys.

From Peking to Tungchow, at the head of navigation from the coast, about twenty miles, runs a broad road paved five hundred years ago by the Ming kings with immense blocks, three feet square by two feet thick. The road sadly needs resetting, but one can readily imagine what a splendidly substantial road it once was in those spacious days of the last of the pure Chinese kings. The Ming thought of art and public works. The Manchu has thought more of intrigue and private dinners since he gave up riding horses and living in tents. One of the strongest charges against the Manchu was that he threw the great public works which he inherited into ruin. This Tungchow Road is the road over which commerce, invasion and many a dignified embassy have gone during the recent strenuous centuries.

255 The Che Ling Road runs from Chinchow, in Hunan province, to Canton. This is the road the new railway will take. The foot road is fifteen feet wide and composed of great stone blocks one foot thick. Before traffic was gathered at Hankau and Canton by steamships, the traffic on the Che Ling foot road was very heavy, and shops lined the long stone highway. Another famous road, the Mei Ling, also composed of stone blocks, climbs the great Nan Shan (Southern Mountains) and connects Nangan in Kiansi province and Canton. This is the road that Abbé Huc took in 1849 when he made his daring journey from Tibet to Chingtu, Chungking, Hankau, Kowkiang, Nanchang, up the Kan River to Canton and Macao. There is a famous imperial road from Peking to Jehol, through Kupikan pass, where the Manchus may finally be segregated. The road from Peking to the Ming tombs is paved with a course of large stones. The “Great Road” runs from Peking to Canton along the coast, and answers to the old Japanese “Tokkaido”, which runs from Tokio to Kioto. It was a Mongol road, dating back to the Great Wall. The best Chinese roads, however, were made in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A. D., during the Sung dynasty, whose capital was Hangchow.

In 1890 the province of Szechuen built sixty-five miles of a mountain river road in the gorges of the Yangtze River, starting from Kwei-chow and running eastward. The road is from one hundred to five hundred feet above high water and is cut six feet wide and eight feet high into the limestone cliffs, truly a splendid revival of the noble works of the Ming kings, and in a sublime situation not to be equaled anywhere. The Szechuen people boast that their “road goes where a monkey couldn’t hang”. The road was planned and executed entirely on Chinese initiative. The256 best known road in China, and considering its length, the best conditioned road in the empire, runs for four hundred miles in Szechuen province from Wan Hsien on the Yangtze River, overland to Chingtu City, the capital. It is called the Siao Pen Lu (smaller north road), and is paved to the width of six feet. It has many wonderful staircases cut up mountain faces. The road could be shortened one hundred miles if bridges were built at the gorges. An internationally owned railway was planned for this route. From Chungking to Chingtu in Szechuen province, up hill and down, and across fields and marshes, runs a traveled road paved much of the way with large stone slabs. From Chungking to Sui Fu, along the Yangtze River for two hundred miles runs a notable stone road five feet wide. Along all these old roads the freight of 400,000,000 people has been carried on the backs of men and women, and even children, whether by barrow or shoulder load, during the long quiet centuries, at an awful cost of money; for too large a proportion of the nation has been engaged in the transportation as compared with the producing department, and this is one reason why China has been poor so long.

Wells have been sunk by contractors, with whom the mayor of the village (hsiang lao) dealt. A brick caisson, fitted on a bamboo frame, is dug under and sunk. On this caisson the upper wall is built. Sometimes iron-pointed bamboo pipes are driven through the bottom of the well. These old methods will give way to the new, and windmills will begin to hum in old China.

The modern water-works of Peking take the water from the Sha Ho, a clear stream in the Western Hills. There are settling tanks, pumping stations, stand-pipes, etc. One hundred and thirty thousand families are supplied from the mains. The same concession to labor has been made as at257 Hongkong, in that the cleaning of the filter sand and gravel is done by hand instead of by machine. Nearly all the treaty ports are putting in modern water-works, which have been sorely needed. China’s death rate is decreasing, and it is not necessary, even from a Chinese point of view, that there should be so many births or dual wives any more.

Electric light plants are in operation at nearly all the coast treaty ports, as well as at some of the Yangtze treaty ports and West River ports inland. In the Occident, intellectual and spiritual light preceded lighted roads and the light of science, but as everything is opposite in China, it seems that science is preceding intellectual and spiritual light. But “these twain shall meet in one equator round the globe”.

The Lighthouse Department of the National Customs is employing foreign engineers in harbor and channel work, and some improvements have been made on the coast and along the rivers, the provincial authorities making a special tax wherever possible to foot the bills. Often the boatmen, merchants’ and bankers’ guilds are required to subscribe.

The first systematized attempt to handle public works scientifically was undertaken by the provincial assemblies of Nganhwei and Kiangsu provinces in the summer of 1911, during the awful famines, which followed the great floods. America has sent large contributions of flour and money for rice. The assemblies put the men, whom the floods withheld from their fields, on railway building, canal dredging, bridge building, and road making. It was along these roads that the triumphant right wing of the republicans marched, headed by Generals Hsu and Ling, in the memorable attack on Nanking, which broke the imperial resistance, and threw the Manchu over the yamen wall!

Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have258 found that with these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press that lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings, are given to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local firms. The signs, taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have enough to interchange without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments will have to be made in some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy and altruism will in the end overcome any misunderstandings that may arise.

XIII
THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN

In 1911 Japan’s tariff agreements expired and a new high tariff was put into effect in the effort to raise $300,000,000 a year as the state’s revenue. The same result was experienced as in India. Home manufacturers operated in the smaller industries, and many larger foreign capitalists opened Japanese branches. For instance, the Lever Soap Company, of England, came to Osaka, and the Armstrong-Vickers-Maxim Company, of Newcastle, the gun-founders and warship builders, came to Muroran in Ezo Island, to be near the coal mines, the iron ore being imported largely from Tayeh, China, and much of the pig iron from Hanyang, China. Prices of living have advanced beyond wages, and in 1912 the municipalities of Tokio, etc., had to open free rice kitchens to feed crowds of the impoverished and unemployed. The poor bear the heaviest share of the new taxes and the increased prices levied by the trusts. The profits of some of the large trusts go out of the country. There is the same complaint as in China, that foreign capital and home monopoly are exploiting franchises, subsidy chests and tariffs. The new high tariff is a success for the monopolists, just as the American tariff was from 1865 to 1911. The complaint among the people of the privilege-made-wealth running the government and burdening the taxpayer is as bitter as in some other countries. The suffrage being limited in Japan to five millions out of sixty260 million people, this discontent does not yet show itself so quickly as in America and Britain. American and British newspapers, magazines and books which voice reform, and real and not deputized representation of the taxed, are translated, and widely read, not only in Japan, but in China.

The world knows the effective work of the Japanese press bureau, organized with the aid of foreign advisers, before the Japan-Russia War. This included the publication of Professor Nitobe’s book on Bushido in Philadelphia, glorifying to the highest pitch of the warm Oriental imagination everything Japanese. This had much to do with preparing the way for the Japanese advance in Manchuria. That press bureau has been strengthened, and has its inspired organs in some of the large cities of the Occident. No other country is able to color the news on occasions as Japan is able. With the cry of lèse majesté, Japan, Germany and Russia seem to be successful in stamping out much of the independent criticism of the taxed, or those to whom equal opportunity has been denied. There seems to be only one hope for real liberty in Japan and elsewhere, the rise again, as in Bunyan’s, Milton’s and Franklin’s time, of the independent pamphlet and book, whose one motto shall be, “No taxation without real representation.”

The Japanese have appointed the Koreans, Count Yi and Viscount Cho, to represent the absorbed Korean people, and these two men are expected to sign every document praising the rule of the Japanese, which document is then wired over the world by the thoroughly organized press agency. The former immense missionary influence of the Americans among the common people is slowly being choked out, and the large foreign gold and other mining industries of Korea, which promised so well, are also now under strict watch. In other words, the system of dummification has261 been applied to Korean politics, and the famous American teachers and political advisers have found it well to leave the peninsula. I would instance the long articles in the New York Times of June 6, 1912, and the New York Herald of September 1, 1912, in which the American Presbyterian and other churches charge the Japanese bureaucracy with wholesale persecution, “planting” of evidence, imprisonment and torture of thousands of Korean political prisoners as late as 1912. Two methods of colonization face each other in contrast at the threshold of China—the Japanese method in Korea, and the American method in the Philippines. Both are progressing commercially, but the latter alone is progressing educationally and altruistically, so far. It is noticeable in Korea that the Japanese are breaking down many beautiful walls and temples to build in their place ugly utilitarian houses. They pay very little respect to those whom they have conquered. They are obliterators of art, where art detains utility. The name of the land has been changed to Chosen. In Manchuria, despite conventions, the Japanese maintain ten times the railway guard of soldiers agreed upon. Japan will bear friendly watching everywhere, as the American writers, Millard and Homer Lea, are constantly urging. Her armaments cost her a heavy taxation and she is searching for ways to recoup herself. If Manchuria is to be saved to China, it will be owing more to America’s insistence than to Britain, for Britain at present is tied up to Japan, and Britain in India has given a hostage to the East. Perhaps the best way to save Manchuria is to encourage Chinese emigration, and this plan is now working out, tens of thousands of Shangtungese leaving yearly for the three rich Manchurian provinces. The American suggestion that the Russian and Japanese railways in Manchuria should be made international262 is possibly not so good a plan as to sell those roads to China with money loaned for the purpose, and clean Manchuria of Russian and Japanese troops. There seems no permanent reason why China should not run Manchurian railways and mines as well and as profitably as she has run the North China Railway and the Kaiping mine of Pechili province. To illustrate how Chinese officialdom looks upon the general subject, I quote from Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan’s memorial, approved by Li Hung Chang, written in 1893: “Japan attempts now and again to be arrogant—like a mantis when it assumes an air of defiance—and to despise China, and gives us no small amount of trouble on the smallest pretext.”

The advance party has its critics in Japan. The Tokio Nichi, the Osaka Mainichi, the Tokio Jiji and the Tokio Yorodzu take the nation to task for attempting to compete with America’s navy. They cry out against the expansionists’ slogan of “Japan’s supremacy on the Pacific”. Here is the Yorodzu’s plaint against the heavy taxes involved: “Go to the hamlets and villages, and you find the sons of our soil wearing the sad and worn appearance of the ‘man with the hoe’. Ask the shopkeepers and merchants, and they tell you that they are at a loss to know how to make ends meet. So do small manufacturers and men of moderate salaries, and in fact all who come under the general term of the middle class. Why? What else but that their taxes are too heavy, and because the price of commodities has risen too high since the war? The war has increased the wealth only of the contractors, speculators, and a small group of millionaires, which accounts for the sudden rise of the prices of the necessaries of life. Thus the chasm between the poor and the rich is widening every day. What will become of the country if the government does not bend263 all its energies to the recuperation of our national strength, which has been overtaxed during and since the late war? The only course which the government should follow at this critical moment is to curtail all the unnecessary expenses of administration, most of all, those of the army and navy.” This succinctly covers what volumes could not cover better. The average Japanese income is twenty-three dollars gold a year, out of which one-fifth goes to taxes.

Freight rates and tariffs are in some places as powerful as battleships and battalions in keeping out the commerce of a rival. When Japan and Russia rejected America’s proposition for an international control of Manchurian railways, so that the commerce of all nations would pay the same duty and receive the same car supply in Manchuria, Japan and Russia made a secret treaty regarding Manchuria on July 4, 1910, and another agreement in 1912. Among other points, it covered interchange rates. The Russian railways can by high rates keep out competitive Japanese goods, and the Japanese railways can retaliate. On non-competitive goods needed for local consumption, low through rates are accorded, Japan favoring the famous Harbin flour, timber, kaoliang spirits from the Harbin distilleries, and Amur salmon and fish. Russia accords low rates northward to Japanese (i. e., Fushun and Yentai) coal, cement, fresh food, etc. On export competitive soybeans, for instance, by low rates Japan tries to coax Russian shipments southward via Dairen, and Russia makes a similar effort to route Japanese-controlled beans via Vladivostok, but should a Russian shipper try to send ten miles in the direction of Japanese-owned Dairen he would find the soy rate higher than all the five hundred miles to Vladivostok.

By indirect methods, such as loans at low interest, rebated264 godown charges, rebated rates, and what not (for where there’s a will there’s a way) Japan can militate against the competition of American and British cottons, woolens, machinery, etc., in Manchuria. When the Chinese junks on the Liao River compete in the open season for the soy-bean traffic for Newchwang, the Japanese railways quote as low a rate as five mills per ton mile to Dalny, as compared with the lowest rate in America of eight mills. Japan is a David when she goes out to slay! Japan was the whole cause of the denial by China of an American-financed and constructed railway from Chin Wang Tao through Manchuria northward to Aigun. Yet she says she doesn’t mean to stay in Manchuria! She did not broad-gage Kuroki’s difficult Antung-Mukden railway recently in such a permanent way as to suggest that she ever intended to retire or sell out, “treaties and conventions notwithstanding,” to use the apt phrase of the London Times. Though America would under no circumstances accept a square foot of land in China or Manchuria, except on lease in an international municipal settlement, America must protect her growing and potential trade in Manchuria and in China, and that trade will always be withstood in one way or another by Japan. There is nothing now to go to war about, but there will always be a good deal to argue about, and Japan, as well as the Manchus, knows a dozen ways of presenting a smiling evasion. Have you ever proposed a difficult question to a Japanese at a curio auction, and watched his face! We have all voted that he was a success in making language hide thought; a born diplomat.

The Japanese government debt outstanding is £300,000,000, as compared with China’s debt of £93,000,000, and Japan’s industrials have borrowed privately abroad an added £60,000,000.

Great as is Japan’s debt, she can make heavy payments on it because she owns her railways, and can allot the railway surplus to the diminishing of the debt, which China and India can also do because of the nationalization of most of the railways.

In April, 1912, the Lodge Resolution in the American Senate brought out the fact that a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship company, acting doubtless on behalf of the Japan forward party, had long been endeavoring to obtain from Mexico a strategic base on Magdalena Bay, which could, as a coaling station, threaten the whole Pacific coast. How would Japan like it if America obtained a coaling station in Manchuria? She and Russia compelled China to refuse America a railway franchise in Pechili in 1910.

What is the comparative strength of the American and266 Japanese navies? The German specialist, Count von Reventlow, and the American, Homer Lea, who accompanied Sun Yat Sen to China as military adviser, though he is not a military man, have in several books prophesied that Japan will and can defeat America. Japan has four dreadnoughts, the Settsu, Kawachi, Aki and Satsuma, completed since the Russia War, but they have only half the gun-power of the ten American superdreadnoughts. Japan has eight battleships of the 15,000-ton Mikasa type, including the salvaged and repaired Russian ships, against America’s thirty battleships of the first class. America can therefore patrol the Pacific from a Philippine base as soon as she has docks enough, and if America and Britain ever approximate on world questions, the British navy can be drawn to the Atlantic and waters west of Ceylon. Two things are sure: first, that America and Britain will never fight each other; and second, that Britain’s and America’s commercial and political policies in the East are identical in destiny. As long as America maintains a two-power standard on the Pacific, that is, two ships to one of Japan’s she need fear no opposition from Japan, and Japan has certainly nothing to fear from America, as China ceaselessly praises the altruistic and non-land-grabbing policy of America over the world. It is true that Japan has an almost irresistible army, but sea power dictates, as Admiral Mahan’s brilliant books show. Japan whipped Russia because she controlled the sea. If America controls the Pacific, the Japanese army could do nothing in Korea or Manchuria.

Now, as to Russia, the navies of America and Britain pounding on the Baltic door, if necessary, as a last resort, could make Russia behave in Manchuria; but if this did not prove wholly effective, a reformed Chinese army, trained by American and British officers, could in time do to the Russian267 battalions that were left what Oyama’s, Nogi’s and Kuroki’s regiments did. China should not yet be called upon to waste her money on a navy, as she has no interests for a century beyond the great countries of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria, which America and Britain, with their navies, desire to enable her to retain. Britain and America should have a persistent, consistent policy, and there will be no naval war, the whole world over; and Germany can reduce her navy and army charges, which are a curse to her people. If Germany wants to do a noble work, let her use her army to influence parliamentary and sociological reforms in tyrannical Russia, where men are blighted by the curses of opinion-paralyzing detectivism and oligarchism. If a consistent, persistent policy is maintained there need no more be an Anglo-German feud on the Atlantic than an American-Japanese feud on the Pacific.

England needs a two-power navy because she has Africa, India and Atlantic Canada to defend. America needs a two-power Pacific navy because she has, as a foster mother of civilization, to help defend Australia, South America, the Philippines, Pacific Canada and republican China. Looked upon in this way, a navy becomes a policeman, and not a swashbuckler. Money is going to be invested to develop all these countries, and property should be protected, not looted. Those nations which have the most efficient naval police, and the most altruistic policies, are the nations which should patrol, and they are America, Britain and possibly Germany, if the last nation advances, as it seems now to be doing, in parliamentarism to real representation. America and Lloyd George’s Britain alone are essentially democracies, and therefore qualify in international altruism. With Britain’s control of the Suez Canal, and America’s ownership of the Panama Canal,268 efficiency is assured in these two nations effectively standing by to protect political progress and world commerce on a fuller and freer basis than it has ever been. In amenability and high mechanical intelligence, Britain, America and Germany alone have qualified in the management of navies.

Japan and America will not fight on the Pacific, as Count von Reventlow and Homer Lea prophesy, but America will overbuild Japan instead. Japan has been more carefully reading the new lesson taught by America and Britain that there must be no absorption of old China, and she is now thinking of a possible new rôle, as the interpreter of the East to the West, and the West to the East. The head of the First Imperial College, Doctor Nitobe, the coiner of “Bushido”, is foremost in propagating this idea. Japanese school-teachers are most numerous in Chinese government schools, especially as teachers of English, in learning which, however, they are not half so expert as the Chinese themselves. Doctor Nitobe is a Christian.

At the time of the Japanese War, Professor Nitobe, then with the Tokio University, wrote a fanciful book on the theme, Bushido (Japanese pronunciation of “Wu Shih Tao”—way of warrior). It was quite on the style of Lafcadio Hearn’s apotheosis of the Japanese. Its effect in Japan was to produce some hysteria and not a little conceit. Foreigners were led to believe that the Japanese must be right because they were reckless. The Japanese bureaucracy of the Choshiu, Satsuma and other clans used the fetish to entrench themselves. No one can say that Japan has real representative government. Her government is exactly the government that Russia has. Her Diet is no more representative than is the Duma. The ministry decides on the budget, and it is put through by steam-roller when necessary,269 and ready-made opinion is given to the press. There is no such thing as the British parliamentary system of the commons absolutely controlling supply bills, or the American principle of the Lower House being finally supreme. The extensive press bureau which was established to popularize the Japan side of the Japan-Russia War, encouraged hara-kiri and telegraphed over the world in exaggerated terms the details of every hysterical and self-advertising suicide. For instance, if the warriors could not take the fort, instead of trying again, they were to march up and blow their brains out before the moving-picture film, so to speak, leaving a letter for the Mikado as follows: “We could not do what you asked us; it is our fault. Therefore in shame we hara-kiri. Bushido! Banzai, etc.” This thing is being kept up to a degree, and as long as it is encouraged by the bureaucracy, constitutional government in Japan will be postponed, the emperor being worshiped in his old office of pope of Kioto instead of constitutional emperor at Tokio.

I quote the following of many press despatches which constantly appear in the Japanese and world press: “To give his life as an atonement because the emperor of Japan had to spend an hour in a common waiting-room, Moji Shijiro Shimidzu, a trainmaster, threw himself under a train. Shimidzu had been in charge of arrangements for a journey the emperor made from Kyushu, after witnessing the army maneuvers. The imperial train was delayed by a derailment at a misplaced switch. Shimidzu left a letter saying that he considered it his duty to pay for the emperor’s embarrassment with his life.” The spectacular suicide of the immortal captor of Port Arthur, General Nogi, and his wife at the time of the funeral of the Mikado Mutsuhito on September 13, 1912, comes under the same270 category of godless savagery forbidden mankind by the Sixth Commandment of Sinai. It is time for Japan to cease posing through her press bureau. We all admire her for many sane and grand things done, and to tell the truth, we admire the Japanese people more than their present system of a privileged government where only five millions out of sixty millions enjoy the franchise. It is a government of the people, but not sufficiently a government for the people, and certainly not a government by all the people, all of which conditions Lincoln said should obtain if liberty was to be assured. That is the aim of the whole world, and it has been accomplished now in England, America, France, China, Portugal and Switzerland. The Shimidzus, who commit suicide, do not exhibit patriotism but hysterical conceit, and the thoroughly organized Japanese press bureau, and the Choshiu, Satsuma, and other privileged clans, in their own best interests, should discourage the nonsense; and instead of elevating the man as a god in the Shinto shrine, they should exhibit him in the foyer of fools. Christianity teaches that there is only one being for whom we should give our lives, and that anything else is idolatry. It is not the emperor or the president whom we are to serve, but the emperor’s men and women; the president’s men and women; that is, the state, and a real emperor and a real president must, too, serve the state, which is all the people. Such is the modern logic Japan should teach her people, and not the hysteria of Bushido. Japan is not ignorant of her disabilities, and each of the Seiyukei, Kokuminto and Yushinkai parties are endeavoring to extend the educational system which Guido Verbeck fashioned for the favored Satsuma, Choshiu, Fujiwara, Gen, Tosa, Hizen, Kago and other clans of five millions, to the forty-eight millions of agriculturalists, miners, factorymen and fishermen, and twelve271 million Koreans and Formosans. Success to Japan’s educational extension, is America’s and Britain’s hearty wish, for it “will calm a sea of troubles”.

Japan has been the first nation in the world to attack the land taxation question, and Germany and Britain have followed recently, a long way off, however, and America will probably also follow the example. Until recently the large estates held by barons and corporations have been taxed on the old feudal medieval system of an infinitesimal valuation, while the small holder has been taxed on the full selling value. This has now been changed, and large owners in Japan can not hold at little cost to await unearned increment. They must work the land or sell it. Until this system is adopted the poor of the nations will be decapitalized by tariff, food, clothing, building material, head, war, permit, excise, export, subsidy, educational and other high taxes. Land values are about one-tenth what they are in America, and the land tax is about eight per cent. on selling value. As in China under the Manchus, land in Japan is nominally the property of the emperor. Perpetual leases can only be owned outright by Japanese subjects, or by a company which is incorporated only in Japan. A foreigner in Japan can not own land, but his Japanese incorporated company can, as the land would then be at Japan’s command, Japan having no extraterritoriality exemption law favoring the foreigner, as has China, in civil and criminal matters.

As is well known, the police are an arm of the central government and not of the municipality, which savors of despotism and Russia’s example. There is therefore no really free press in Japan, for state trials may not be reported or commented on. The police exercise a censorship of news under their Marunouchi Club of Tokio. There272 could be no Roosevelts, Wilsons, Bryans and Lloyd Georges in Japan as in America and England!

They have their money trust question in Japan, for while there are thousands of small gathering banks, they all deposit in the trust banks, which thus control the use of “other people’s money”, i. e., credit. These large banks, whose presidents confer in the meetings of the “Eel Society”, are the Bank of Japan, Yokohama Specie Bank, Hypothec Bank, Japan Credit Mobilier, Hokkaido Colonial Bank, Bank of Formosa, Bank of Korea, and Mitsui’s Bank.

Japan must have its Gifford Pinchot somewhere. She has taken quick action against states’ rights when conservation was endangered. It was found that the provinces were selling water-power concessions to speculators and dummies of the monopolies. The central government in January, 1911, immediately suspended all provincial and colonial grants until a national survey could be made, and applicants looked into. It is proposed to harness several million horsepower of waterfalls on the Switzerland, and not the Niagara plan (so as not to mar the scenery), which, with cheap labor, will be a great asset of industrial Japan.

That Japan has taken up officially the correction of complaints which have been made in scores of books and hundreds of magazines on her trickiness and lack of commercial honor is shown in the following article by Minister of Commerce Oura, in the Jitsugyo no Nihon (Industrial Japan), written after his world tour, in which he praises the sturdy honesty of old free-trade England. “I could not help regretting to find that in commercial morality Japan was too young and weak to be classed among the world’s foremost countries. Everywhere I went I heard denunciations of and complaints against Japan. Japanese business273 men not being particular about commercial morality, people could not carry on business with our merchants with confidence. I soon felt ashamed on reflecting upon the fact that we Japanese had defects, subject to attacks and complaints in the matter of commercial morality. Our merchandise can not pass the customs authorities on a mere invoice, but is subjected to a rigorous examination. British merchandise is always more substantial than is advertised. In short, British-made goods never fail to justify their advertised description. Quite the opposite is the case with Japanese goods. Complaints are raised against Japanese manufactures that they are not up to sample. It is usual, for instance, for a layer of larger-sized fruit to be arranged on top of the box. Instances of overcharging, and tricky inferior imitations of standard goods are common, and damage our reputation.” Confession and contrition are the parents of reform, and Japan is waking up.

Japan worked her mines in 1911 to the following extent: Coal, 16,000,000 tons, value, $30,000,000; copper, 120,000,000 pounds, value $15,000,000; pig iron, 60,000 tons, value, $1,500,000 (Kamishi and Sennin mines); zinc ore, 22,000 pounds, value, $300,000; lead, 8,000,000 pounds, value, $250,000. The coal came from Japan mines only, and does not include the great product of the Fushun and Yentai mines in Manchuria. The copper was mined principally at the Kune, Kosaka, Ashio and Besshi mines at a cost of nine cents, which is lower than the American cost. Japan is exhausting the ore in the islands, and is, therefore, looking to rich Korea and China for her supply of this war and industrial necessity. Her need of copper is another incentive to expand politically.

Japan is building a railway along the western length of the main island, and will need $18,000,000 of railway274 equipment for it. She will probably go abroad for half of this. Small as Japan is, this railway will open up scenic and productive districts and add vastly to the riches and strategic resources of the country.

The method by which Japan built the Kobe harbor piers out into deep water was most modern. Cement boats, or caissons, one hundred and nineteen feet long, thirty-five feet high and thirty-four feet wide were built on a floating dock (planned by a Westminster, England, concern) at the shore. They were then conveyed to sea, the dock being sunk from under the cement boat. This latter was floated into position, and gradually sunk with cement, rubble and sand in the comparatively cheap but massive piers. A tonnage of 135,000 tons can be warped alongside the dredged sea walls at one time. It is not so long ago that everything had to be lightered out to the steamers in the wind-swept roadstead of Kobe, and many days were lost waiting for smooth water. The writer recalls being held at Kobe for eighteen hours during a typhonic blow because no launch or sanpan could bring off the passengers who had gone ashore during a calm. There are now no delays. There are power-driven cranes and travelers, godowns, and every facility for the quick handling of cargo. As at Montreal, Hamburg, Liverpool, Hongkong, etc., the government directly or indirectly assists, advances, or guarantees in securing the necessary harbor works, railway connection and dock machinery at Kobe. Kobe is Japan’s great import harbor, as Yokohama is her export harbor. Tokio is to be an export harbor, as a long canal for 10,000-ton ships is now being dredged to Yokohama Bay.

Japan’s petroleum is found in the Echigo district, straight across Hondo Island from Tokio. The oil is excellent for275 illuminating and lubricating, and the industry, which is highly protected, employs 3,300 people, and pays twenty-five per cent. to the Nippon Oil Company. Fuel oils and crude oils are brought from Sumatra, America and Mexico.

Much complaint was heard in England when the Grimsby steam trawlers, owned by syndicates, drove the small owner and the hardy fisherman from the seas, affecting the recruiting of the navy, as well as driving a hardy independent class into a condition of economical and political servitude. Japan has copied this unfortunate example, and steam trawlers have been introduced in her fishing waters. The government promises to control it before it seriously affects recruiting for the navy.

The Japanese have gone into shirt-making, the duty on raw material being rebated when the shirts are exported. Foreign designs are copied. The men receive nine dollars a month and the women six dollars. The hours are nine and one-half a day. The companies, like many of the Japanese industrials, grant a few holidays, and provide theatrical entertainments, moving-picture shows, baths and tea, none of which is costly, but seem to keep the workers from realizing that their wages should be three times what they are, even in Japan, for taxes amount to one-third of the income.

Winter clothing for the masses in general, and service clothing for the navy, army, artisans, etc., under modern conditions of hard wear, has become a stern problem in both Japan and China. Silk will not do. Cotton will not answer in this field. Wool has been adopted, and the gorgeous colors and texture of the Orient begin to vanish before the requirements of a practical age. Two of the largest woolen mills in Japan are the Mousseline (Boshuku) Weaving Company, at Osaka, and the Japan Woolen Company, at Kobe. Eighty per cent. of the total area of rocky Japan is276 not under cultivation, being ruined with tough bamboo grass, which seems impossible to eradicate, and which destroys the delicate mouths and throats of sheep. Japan has, therefore, to import her wool from Mongolia, Manchuria, England, France, Germany and Australia. Not having a full supply of yarn mills, she imports yarn also from England, France and Germany. Goat’s and camel’s hair is also imported from South America and Mongolia.

The movement for the conservation of timber has taken hold in Japan, reinforced cement poles, as well as creosoted poles, being used. The largest creosote works are at Osaka, and the preserved wood is now used for Japan’s famous light buildings, railroad trestling, ties, bridges, etc. Japan has an exceedingly rich treasure forest (one of the world’s last) east of the South Manchurian Railway, and also bordering the Fusan-Mukden line. Much of the hard wood of Japan and her colonies is being brought to America for furniture-making at present.

Japanese steamers will doubtless run to the east coast of America through the Panama Canal. Micki Shonzo talks of sending twenty of his vessels through. A Japanese line now carries nitrates, hides, salt, horses, beef, wool, fish, grain, etc., from Chile, and coal, rice, tea, silk, oils, bean cake, manufactures, matting, etc., to Chile. Japanese shipping in 1912 amounted to the enormous tonnage of 1,000,000, as compared with 170,000 tons on the day before the Chinese indemnity was paid to Japan in 1895.

Perhaps the rich dividends made by the Oriental Consolidated (gold) Mining Company, at Unsan, in the Yalu district of Korea, made Japan as anxious commercially as diplomatically to secure Korea. This American company, with which Leigh Hunt was connected, and whose concession was obtained through the offices of United States Minister277 Allen, has made in a concession 500 miles square 4,000 per cent. in ten years. One hundred thousand dollars was put into the gold mining plant, and $4,000,000 has been paid in dividends, the mines themselves, instead of added capital, paying for their own development. The Unsan plant is largely self-contained, having crushers, a foundry, machine shops, a fleet, a railway and lumbering plant, hospital and barracks. The mining costs only one dollar and forty cents per ton, hand labor, the Koreans being the best miners in the Far East, owing to their docile patience. Some of the mines are one thousand feet deep. The Korean Exploration Company (half American and half Japanese) has a gold mining concession at Chicksan, south of Seoul. The new terms that will probably be imposed on foreign mining by Japan will be at least twenty-five per cent. royalty on the net profits, machinery imported and ore exported to be duty and loti taxes remitted, respectively. If Japan can do the smelting, of course ores must go there for treatment.

In Formosa the three largest Japanese sugar companies are the Niitaka, the Taihoku and the Minami Seito (Southern Sugar Company), capitalized at about $2,000,000 gold each, with an output of 300,000 tons a year. Japan can increase this, and supply the world. The government grants subsidies to the cane growers for fertilizer, and money prizes for model plantations, the high tariff against Hongkong, of course, being a subsidy for the Formosan sugar mills, as far as supplying Japan is concerned.

Japan has opened an electric-driven cotton mill, the Naigai Wata, at Suchow Creek, Shanghai, sending to America for the boilers, to Germany for the dynamos, and to England (Oldham) for the spinning machinery. The owners and foremen are Japanese, the workers Chinese. Eighty-278five per cent. of the material is local grown, and fifteen per cent. comes from India in Japanese steamers. The finished product, mainly yarns, is sent up the Yangtze River and along the coast in Japanese steamers, and is admitted into Japan preferentially as far as foreign products are concerned. The Japanese are extending their ownership of cotton mills erected in China, for the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha has bought the Hua Hsuan, the Shanghai and the San Tai mills at Shanghai, and the Wuchang Spinning Mill at Wuchang. The Mitsui Bishi Kaisha has bought the Chen Hua mill at Shanghai, and the Nippon Mill Company has bought the Jih Hsin mill in China. There is much food for thought in this situation. The Japanese also own one-third of the largest translating press in China, the Commercial Press of Shanghai.

The Japanese firm of Mitsui has established a refinery at Hankau to handle the famous nuts of Szechuen province, which produce the oil known as China wood oil. The Mitsui firm also handles the production of soy-bean oil in Manchuria, shipping the oil and the cake in great quantities in their own steamers to Europe and America. The Mitsuis do their own banking. The soy-oil is used for cooking, soap making, and as a substitute in paints for linseed oil, which is becoming scarce. The cake is used as a milk food and a fertilizer in Europe and America. To what proportions the industry has grown can be judged by the following figures: Newchwang (Chinese) shipped 230,000 tons of beans and 400,000 tons of bean cake in 1911. Dairen (Japanese) shipped 450,000 tons of beans and 300,000 tons of bean cake. Vladivostok (Russian) shipped 250,000 tons of each. The soy-bean oil amounted to about 700,000 hundredweight. This immense crop speaks eloquently of the richness of the black soil of the three provinces of vast Manchuria.279 The bean is also now being planted in Szechuen province in the rows where the nefarious poppy once bloomed, and America is using quantities of seed in the southern states in connection with enriching land which has been impoverished by cotton. The soy-bean, being nitrogenous, adds to, instead of taking from, the life of the soil. One ton of beans, besides two tons of soy hay, can be produced per acre.

Canadian and South African railways may own hotels, express, telegraph, telephone and land companies, but here is what the charter of the South Manchuria (Japan owned) Railway Company permits them to do: operate railways, cities, steamships, hotels, mines, electric light and gas plants, tramways, laboratories, laundries, shops, dormitories, go-downs (warehouses), hospitals, Y. M. C. A.’s, schools, libraries, mills, selling agencies, stockyards, forests, sawmills, farms, kaoliang distilleries, etc. This reminds one of the ancient East India Company’s powers before Warren Hastings was impeached, or of the ambition of Incoporator Dill in the palmy days of the incorporation laws of New Jersey State before the Interstate Commerce Commission got into its stride.

The pernicious influence of the yoshiwara and the demi-monde in Japan and the Japanese settlements and colonies throughout the Far East, is fully covered in the tenth chapter of Price Collier’s The West in the East. If the fire which destroyed the extensive, obtrusive yoshiwara quarter in the Susaki section of Tokio in 1911 had swept the whole institution away, womanhood throughout the world would not have the grievance against Japanese society which it now has. Neither China nor India ever sank this low in morals, despite all the talk about concubinage and slavery. The fault lies in the inherent weakness of religion in Japan.280 The Buddhism and Confucianism (Shintoism) which Japan imported, have degenerated and lost soul in the exotic state. If China needs Christianity, Japan needs it more. The Japanese women are delightfully vivacious; it is a pity so many should lose their self-respect. Possibly some of it substantiates the eternal teaching that no nation can persistently ignore poverty and not suffer in morals. The Japanese government is now doing something to remedy conditions and raise the moral tone. The fault lies largely with the people themselves; too great a love of money and too little a love of real religion, with the usual result that sacred womanhood is the first to be driven down at the wall.

XIV
PRESSURE OF RUSSIA AND FRANCE ON CHINA

Many books have been written on the Russian advance to the Pacific, and they eventually induced Britain to hurl Japan on the aggressor. These volumes include Putnam Weale’s fervid volumes, works by Lord Beresford, Senator Beveridge, Norman, Chirol, Colquhoun, Alexandria Hosie, Younghusband, Krausse, Lord Curzon and others. That advance has been pushed back as far as the borders of Shingking, the southernmost of Manchuria’s three provinces, and out of the Korean Peninsula, but it is marking time in the other two Manchurian provinces of Kirin and Helung-Kiang, and in vast Mongolia, Jungaria and Turkestan. Some critics have said that in having Russia pushed back from the Pacific, the wave has backed up on Persia. The American one-time treasurer of Persia, Mr. Shuster, believes Britain has recently lost to Russia in the buffer states of the Indian border. Certainly a new party has risen in British diplomacy, whose writers are Maurice Baring, Hardinge and others, which is not at all Russophobic. Many believe that Russia intends to try again in Manchuria, and others believe that Japan will concede to Russia the two northern Manchurian provinces; or again, that Japan will occupy all Manchuria, and support Russia’s occupation of Mongolia and part of the Pechili province. As long as there is oligarchic rule in Russia, there will be danger of the Russian advance, as the aristocracy wishes to keep an army282 employed, so as to use it when necessary on an ambitious Duma, or a people who demand real representation in return for the tax privilege. Therefore Russia will for many years press China at one spot or another, and how to checkmate this pressure is one of Britain’s hardest problems, in which America is involved because of the Hay doctrine of the “non-partition of China,” which is the Monroe doctrine of the Far East.

Early in 1911 Russia disturbed the diplomats by sending a note to the powers that she intended to make a military demonstration against Sungaria and reoccupy, as from 1871 to 1881, trade routes and frontier cities like Kuldja and Kobdo. Gullible China was induced to include in the treaty with Russia at that time permission for Russian caravaners to cross Western China under Russian arms; to trade without paying duty, and to establish Russian “imperium in imperio” settlements. The Novi Krai of Harbin admitted that these extraterritorial demonstrations in Far Western China aimed not so much at aggression in Turkestan as cajoling further privileges in Manchuria, such as navigation on the Sungari, Russian settlements, mining and railway rights, etc. On another occasion, Russia is party to the rejection of America’s proposal of the internationalization of Manchurian railways; or again Russia cites some secret coerced treaty and compels China to refuse a franchise for an American railway from Chin-Wang to Aigun, or Chin-Wang to Kailar. Yet at the same time Russia is arranging with China to drop a railway on Peking down from Irkutsk, and a railway from Semipalatinsk down on Jungaria and the headwaters of the great Tarim River. The Russian advance is not an extinct volcano; one never knows when it will be recrudescent somewhere. The party of Admiral Alexeyev, General Spiridovitch, State283 Secretary Bezobrazov and Count Bobrinsky, is not dead at St. Petersburg. Russia is to-day moving 100,000 colonists a year into Siberia. She is double-tracking the Siberian railway eastward to Lake Baikal.

The following memorial to the throne, written by Viceroy Liu Ming Chuan, and approved by Li Hung Chang in 1893, reveals China’s knowledge of Russia’s deep designs: “We feel Russia’s grip on our throat, and her fist upon our back, and our contact with her is a source of perpetual uneasiness to our minds. When a quarrel occurs, we have to yield to her demands.”

Though no one can show why, land-rich Russia considers Mongolia, Turkestan, Ili, Jungaria, and two provinces of Manchuria, and even Tibet, as her sphere. In the troubles of the revolution, during the last months of 1911, harassed China felt Mongolia dragged from under her feet. The Chinese amban at Koren (Urga) was discountenanced, and Russia set up the Buddhist Lama as an independent ruler. Plans were also laid to run a railway down from Kiakhta. The Mongolian princes frequently receive presents to retain their sympathy and increase their obligations. Russia even made demands that China should withdraw her troops from the outposts and discontinue colonization, for China is beginning to learn the strategy of emigration. The building of the all-Russian link on the north side of the Amur River from Stretyinsk to Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, is going on apace at great cost, because the Russians, in trying to settle the district, refuse to employ Chinese, and have brought out 15,000 Russian railway laborers. The river has too many shallows for successful transportation, and it would not pay yet to dredge it. The Chun Kuo Pao, a native paper of Peking, was so pusillanimous in its fear of Russia and Japan, as to recommend in 1910 the abandonment of Manchuria to284 save Mongolia. I have said pusillanimous, but I might have said venal, as an illustration that Russian money may not neglect to seek power with some Chinese editors in the northern provinces.

America desired to keep Japan and Russia separated in Manchurian aggrandisement, and instead Russia came to a secret amicable agreement with her old enemy, Japan, in June, 1912. The American, Mr. Shuster, at the desire of Persia, was satisfactorily managing the customs of Persia, but Russia successfully intrigued for his retirement. On February 22, 1912, in the Hall of the Nobility, St. Petersburg, the Nationalist Party held a meeting to denounce treaties with America. Count Bobrinsky, the president of the Constitutional Conservative Party, stood up and called Ex-president Roosevelt the “enemy of Russia,” referring to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty. Plans were laid before the meeting showing how Chinese Turkestan could supply America’s place in growing cotton for Russia. Several reasons were given why Russia opposed America. The real reason was that Russia does not like America’s and Britain’s policy of the “non-partition of China.” The aristocracy of Russia also hate the influence upon the Duma of America’s and Britain’s system of budgets and armies controlled by the lower house of the people. The oligarchy of Russia hate America’s altruism that would secure to growing China her ancient fields, mines and forests of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria. The Chinese rely on America’s altruism. There was possibly more than humor in the Tientsin shopkeeper’s sign: “All languages spoken; American understood.”

The Chinese bitterly remember the massacre at Blagovestchensk on the Amur River in 1900. When the Europeans were besieged in Peking, the Russians drove the innocent285 and unarmed Chinese inhabitants into the river at the point of the bayonet. Many were drowned, and their bodies choked the landing wharves as they floated down-stream. Yet some inquirers ask why there should be an anti-foreign feeling in China! The name of General Chitchegoff, who gave the murderous order, would live in history yoked to Nero’s if we had writers to-day as able and patriotic as fearless Seneca and Lucan. If you are an American and ask Chitchegoff in the place of his retirement why he did it, he will answer: “Ask the Bureau, and blame the oligarchical system, not the miserable agent.”

There was a time, too, when Prince Henri d’Orleans, Paul Doumer, Garnier, Leroy Beaulieu, Riviere, Loti, Petit, Bert, Imbere and Bonheur wrote, when France, as Russia’s ally, had her aggressive designs on China. Hongkong, when I lived there, was haunted by continual nightmares after France took possession of Kwangchou Bay in Kwangtung province. Since the French ran their railway from Haiphong to Yunnan City, French influence is strong in Yunnan province, and the Szechuenese are looking for France’s hand at the headwaters of the Yangtze River. In a sense this puts a barrier against the British attack on Western China from Burma, and the American attack from the Philippines. While France at home and in Tonquin is a high tariff country, there is more confidence in the republican people of France on the part of America and Britain than there is in the reliability of the other mighty diplomatic competitors. Still French aggression is potential and not to be ignored, especially as France has in Indo-China a colony of 735,000 square miles with a population of 34,000,000 people at the southern gates of old China. The heavily subsidized Messageries Maritimes mail line plies between Marseilles, Saigon and the ports as far as Japan. I once sailed half286 around the world on one of their white boats and know their service to be excellent. At present the French monopolize the Yunnan traffic with their railway, charging in addition to the rates a high transit fee on bonded traffic. This is internationally illegal, and is exactly what incensed Germany blew out of French diplomacy in Morocco at the muzzle of the Panther’s guns, when that vessel dropped anchor at Agidir one eventful morning. In desperation, the Chinese tin miners of Kuo Chia (some of whom are citizens of Hongkong) contemplate an opposition railway to Nanning, and the old water route to Hongkong. The division of Siam between France and Britain is slowly going on, France having recently taken over one of the Shan States. To protect Singapore as a world equator gate, Britain must connect the Malay states with Burma, and in time take part of Siam. At one time France had a design of pressing her Tonquin influence through Western China, and meeting the Russian advance at Peking, but by the “entente-cordiale” France is now nearer to Britain than Russia, and this is for the good of the world, including potential American trade in the Far East. The Supreme Council of Indo-China has recently raised a loan of $40,000,000 in France for irrigation, drainage, agricultural and mining development, and extended railways and roads in Annam and Tonquin.

Chinese imperial influence in the last few centuries has not extended far south of the Yangtze River. All through French China, that is, Annam, Tonquin, Cambodia, etc., and in Siam and the Shan states (now partly absorbed by British Burma), in the old days there were hundreds of petty kings and princes (a king to a hill in that land of hills), who themselves, with the exception of the brave and intelligent Black Flag Leader, Liu Jung, were really adventurers, or descendants from Chinese adventurers from Kwangtung,287 Kwangsi and Yunnan provinces. Send a Chinese to America, and he tries to become a monopolist because of the ambitious example set before him; send him to British Singapore, and he strives to become a contractor with designs on knighthood; send him to Annam or Tonquin, and in the merry old days he became a swashbuckler king, and strutted upon his ant hill. The French had to pension or dethrone a hundred of these “royal” fellows from the Si Kiang valley. The dethroned one said: “As for me now, back to the pirate waters of the West River, and the admiralty of a snake-boat fleet.” They have all recently turned up in the pirate waters of Kwangtung province, and during the revolution of 1911–12 made endless trouble for the gunboat fleet of Britain, America and China, operating in the interests of civilization and trade, from Hongkong and Canton. One brigand named Luk captured the famous Bogue forts of Canton on March 12, 1912.

The Frenchman takes Paris with him wherever he goes, and as one indication I found him in all the cafés that lined the red streets of Indo-China, dropping his absinthe on ice in a long glass, though a physician would shudder at the risk taken in such a terrifically hot and humid climate. To balance “pidgin English” he has taught the Annamese “petit negre.” He has brought his costly Parisian architecture, as in the Palais, the Opera, the Cathedrals of Saigon, Hanoi and Haiphong. Since 1873 the five provinces of Indo-China, with an area larger than Texas, have cost the French $150,000,000 for military expenses. The trade last year was $50,000,000 imports and $30,000,000 exports. The colony is only beginning to exploit its great wealth, especially in coal at Hongay, Kebao and Laokai in Tonquin.

XV
SOME FOREIGN TYPES IN CHINA, AND THEIR INFLUENCE

The mainstay of Chinese revenue, and the main security as yet for foreign loans, is the National (formerly Imperial) Customs of five per cent. duty ad valorem. The organization was started at Canton in 1859 by Sir Robert Hart, an Armagh Irishman who was transferred from the British consular service. He served as head from that year until his retirement with a fortune of $500,000 in 1910. Sir Robert Hart lived in princely style at Peking and managed the service honestly. He has been criticized for taking so large a reward from straitened China by members of the India civil service, who are satisfied to retire on $1,000 a year after even more arduous service. In 1901 Sir Robert Hart wrote his book, These from the Land of Sinim. He was a brilliant propagandist for things Chinese, the most popular Occidental who ever served China, though he was not so heroic a figure as “Chinese” Gordon. Sir Robert Bredon was next in office, and in 1911 Sir Francis Aglen was put in charge. The son of an English clergyman, a well equipped sinologue, trained under Sir Robert Hart, Mr. Aglen is a thorough leader of this great work, which includes loan departments, lighthouse service, a cadet school, a pension bureau, and an internal revenue organization to a degree. As British commerce is the largest in China, being nearly four times as large as America’s trade, the British289 name the head of the customs service. Many Americans, Germans and French are also employed, and a thorough knowledge of Chinese and its dialects is insisted upon by Sir Francis Aglen.

In the region about Shanghai and Nanking, the name of “Chinese” Gordon (General Charles) still lives for his victorious leadership of Li Hung Chang’s army, which crushed the Taiping rebellion, and saved the Manchu throne for the time. General Gordon had many bitter quarrels with Li Hung Chang, insisting that assassination and murder must not follow a victory. That the rebels of 1911 in this same region did not forget Gordon’s precepts was shown by their leniency under great provocation, after capturing Nanking from the Manchus. No foreigner who has aided in forming the ten divisions of China’s Northern army has had the personality or exercised the influence that Gordon did, and in the great trial of the revolution and the mutinies of 1911–12 the army showed frequently that no strong personality had inspired the men with a fixed purpose, honor or patriotism.

About 1869 a nephew of President Van Buren, John Sheffield Van Buren, went out to Yokohama as an assistant in the consular office of his uncle. He was soon in Hongkong as agent of the Pacific Mail, Occidental and Oriental, and Toyo Kisen Kaisha trans-Pacific steamship companies, and was in touch with the Chinese of that great crown colony for thirty-three years. He had an intimate knowledge of China, and trained many of its commercial men who have risen high in the commercial and diplomatic affairs of the new republic. In Hongkong he was looked upon as one of the ablest minds that linked the West and the East. He was devoted to Southern China, developed its trade, dry docks and shipping, and formulated China’s first trans-Pacific290 steamship line, the Chinese Merchants’ Steamship Company of 1903. The famous Chinese guilds of Kwangtung province looked upon him as a sage, and sought his aerie retreat over Robinson Road on the cliff for many a conference under the swaying punkahs. He was a very tall thin man, with a long countenance, great eyes, and a slow, full, round voice. It was impossible to irritate him to heated expression. Like the mills of the gods, he ground slow but exceedingly fine. He used to bemoan the fact that Americans who managed Oriental companies generally do so from America, before being first experienced in the Orient, and he was a strong advocate of the British system of moving partners who would serve their seven-years term in the Orient, seven at home and then back to the Orient again. He was decidedly in an inferior field in commerce. If American diplomacy had been steadier in the East, freed from the spoils system, his mentality and training were perfectly fitted for a great American minister at Peking, or a great consul-general at Canton. He was a deep student of the Filipino, as well as the Chinese, but was altogether in favor of the latter. He was more pessimistic perhaps than was justified regarding what America will be able to do with the Filipino and the Philippines. A thorough student of the Far East, and the representatives of all nations who gathered there, smiling like Buddha in his vast but reserved knowledge, nothing irritated him so much in his official duties as listening to the conversation of the official American globe-trotter, who dropped into Hongkong for a week, and then drove contrary opinions down the throats of such sinologues as he was, and wrote books, most of the prophecies of which remain as a joke when compared with events. There was one American senator and another American official who wrote books of Far East prophecies291 whose “cocksureness”, like that of the Kanaka surf-rider, used to strike to the core of the resentment of this usually placid Solon of the East, who died in the terrific heat of the Red Sea in 1910, worn out with his long life near the equator, and never having written the books that were within him, and which he really owed the world. His sister married an Austrian nobleman. The family homestead was at Englewood, New Jersey, and on his mother’s side he was connected with the Sheffields and Phelpses, of Yale College memory.

There have been other notable Americans who served in China. Colonel John S. Mosby, the Confederate guerrilla leader, was consul-general at Hongkong from 1878–85, and General E. S. Bragg, of the Wisconsin Iron Brigade of the Civil War, was consul-general at Hongkong from 1902–4. The general had a sharp wit and tongue, and is known world wide for these two phrases which got into domestic and international politics: “We love Cleveland for the enemies he has made;” and, “You can as easily make a citizen of a Cuban as a whistle out of a pig’s tail.” The contretemps can be understood when it is explained that the general was at the time consul at Havana. Like the Arabs of Longfellow, after this incident and the receipt of some mail from Washington, he “folded his tent and silently stole away” for Hongkong! General Bragg, at Antietam, was approached by General Gibbon’s aide, with orders to push the enemy as long as it was safe, and the former’s famous reply was: “It has been d—— unsafe here for the last half hour. Forward again, Wisconsin.” Mr. Rounsevelle Wildman, author of China’s Open Door, and editor of Overland Monthly, consul-general at Hongkong, where he amused the staid Britons by his energetic efforts to sell his worthy book, lost his life aboard the Pacific Mail steamer292 Rio, which sank with all on board just outside the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Daniel Webster sent his son Fletcher as secretary of the famous Cushing Commission, which visited Hongkong, Canton and Macao. Secretary William H. Seward later passed over the same waters, and I have seen Admiral Greeley, of Polar fame, picking out the great war secretary’s steps at Wanchi, Hongkong. The Tibet traveler and author, A. H. Savage Landor, I knew at Hongkong. Some of us believed his thrilling tales of escape after torture and some of us were cynical. He was a worn man then, grateful for favors that are usually accorded to the traveler, an enthusiast, a student of the Western Chinese, and a courageous fellow.

In 1911, America, Britain, Germany and France arranged to loan China about $100,000,000 for railways and new currency. A neutral financial adviser was found to be necessary, and President Vissering, of the Dutch Java Bank, was agreed upon by the four nations, with Japan favorably impressed. If the loan agreements go through, and when affairs assume their normal course in China, Doctor Vissering will have opportunity to leave his mark in a wider sphere in the Far East. Mr. Hillier has long represented the British financial interests in Peking; Mr. Straight, the American; and Doctor George E. Morrison, of the London Times staff, has been adviser to both imperial and republican governments at Peking.

One of the most remarkable imperialists who ever came to China was Paul Doumer. He was a French newspaper man, and came East as consul, later becoming governor of Indo-China, which he sealed to France with an iron hand. He made Haiphong, Hanoi and Saigon remarkable centers of civilization, sanitation, music, art, architecture, commerce and French imperialism. Cost was nothing to him. He293 seemed to make or hypnotize money after he had hypnotized governments and financiers with his eloquence and ambition. He formed Legionary troops and held a strong navy in the East. He brought the great Messageries Maritimes steamship line from Marseilles to Saigon. He grasped Kwangchou Bay in Kwangtung province, and made Hongkong tremble for her prestige over Canton and the southwest, her old imperial sphere. Then he dreamed great visions of imperialism, as Rhodes was dreaming in Africa, Curzon in India, A. Colquhoun in Burma, Kitchener in the Soudan, and some Americans like Roosevelt and Taft in Panama and the Philippines. He, “le petit Paul Doumer,” would build a six hundred-mile railway, much of the right of way where men had never been before, from Haiphong to Yunnan, in the heart of Southwest China, turn the British flank at the headwaters of the Yangtze River, and link Yunnan, and some day Chingtu, with Marseilles and Paris. What if fever, one hundred bridges in fifty miles, a cost of $100,000 a mile of road, and a little traffic had to be conquered, he would build to the center of China, dividends or no dividends. By 1910 he and his men had done it. The British, fired by Colquhoun and Curzon, raced him from Burma, but he has beat them by fifteen years. The Chinese do not love the French, and they are building from Yunnan to Nanning to reach Hongkong; but it is largely French for the present at Yunnan. Hongkong and Mandalay have been flanked. The Chinese would have preferred the Americans, or the British, who do not covet Oriental land. The French aim to push that railway up to Chingtu, and cut China in half. Yunnan City, on its high plateau, once the farthest from Peking and civilization, is now a center of remarkable modernity, the Chinese emulating the French in lighted streets, water-works,294 factories, modern prisons, trade schools, uniformed police, and a provincial army and arsenal of modern type. If you ask how has Paul Doumer influenced China, circumspice at Yunnan City. Before Paul Doumer came East, following the dream of empire, if you had been asked which was the last city of China that would adopt progress, you would have said “inaccessible Yunnan,” whereas it has been almost the first. Doumer’s most notable book on China is L’Indo Chine Française, with the emphasis on the Française!

For two decades the name of Mr. Rumor (I shall call him that for the purposes of this sketch), of Hongkong, was synonymous with the rocket which seemed to have become a fixed star. He was a Canadian, born in the little riverine town of Belleville on the St. Lawrence. Adventure found him in Hongkong, a clerk in the Public Works Department of the Colonial Government, at a child’s salary in a land costly for the foreigner. The Chinese were beginning to use wheat flour in place of rice, which had become valuable for export. Rumor acted as their adviser during lunch hours, when the fervid sun of the Orient burned up the tamarind’s shade and fried the papaw’s thick leaves. In time he himself quietly imported consignments of Oregon flour. His Chinese compradore was honest and divided the profits, though the compradore did all the work. Rumor grew richer, and became an agent for Northern Pacific American mills. As the years passed, the able and honest Chinese compradore brought him orders sufficient to load many full ships that breasted the slow waves of the Pacific. The Chinese compradore lived plainly, and saved enough money to become a financial power in the great imperial colony. Rumor then went into military, naval and diplomatic society, built one of the finest aerie295 mansions in the Far East on Hongkong’s peak of palaces near the unique tram on Barker Road, where a thousand feet of picturesque cliff fell from its foundation. He imported Kentucky saddle horses and racers, and at great expense put Canadian sheep on the foothills of old China to see if they could conquer the bamboo grass. He owned a steam yacht and a sailing yacht, gave musicales to the military of the garrison station at both his down-town chambers on the Praya and at his mountain château, and entertained an American governor of the East who became a president. He was a handsome man, the mirror of fashion and manners in the cosmopolitan colony. His was the easy bearing of those who associate with princes and know their standing. Like Beau Brummel, of Piccadilly, he could make a griffin’s social fortune by being seen walking with him down the Praya. Stories were told of his recklessness in hours of play. He was a dashing character, altogether. He made annual trips to the great cities that line the equatorial belt of the world and to capitals of the North. He seemed to have tapped the mines of Eldorado.

At last, he would add fame to riches. Hongkong was about to enter the great educational arena in the awakening of the Far East with a splendid university. Hormusjee Mody, the Prince of Parsees, gave the land. Who would give the endowment and thus perhaps secure a knighthood? Why, Rumor, who at last was truly popular and not envied alone, for he was now about to do something for others than himself. In the meantime he had started a Chinese flour mill at Junk Bay, Hongkong. He would startle the whole economic world, as Harbin did, by grinding Chinese grain on the spot, and he would import less Australian and Oregon flour. There seemed to be no end to Rumor’s extension or the glamour which he cast over his compradore296 and the Chinese bankers, as well as the American mills. Many tried to emulate him and steal his trade, or imitate his “chops” on the flour bags; but the Chinese, “olo custom”, clung to Rumor, who alone expanded, came, saw and conquered. San Francisco was shaken by an earthquake, and New York by a financial panic. The twin waves went round the world, and met in Hongkong harbor one dark night, just as Rumor, purposely unaccompanied by a white man, was returning in his yacht Canada from his flour mill at Junk Bay, all the long miles of the famous harbor to the landing under his mountain palace and the university site. No one knows much about it, except that the crew at last missed him overboard. The tidal financial wave had swamped him. He could ride its crest no more in splendor. The great university will bear many names, but probably not the name of Rumor as its endower when the accounts of the estate are balanced. Three Chinese, of Singapore, stepped forward and endowed the university with nearly $500,000 gold, although they were at the same time holding up the hands of the exhausted Chinese republican revolution.

Sir Matthew Nathan came to Hongkong as governor from hot and feverish Nigeria. Hongkong is a moist hot place, very near the direct sun of the equator, and men who wish to live long go slow in the luxuries of work, liquor, etc. It is a good place to send your victim, as David disposed of Uriah “in the forefront of the hottest battle”. Sir Matthew’s enthusiasm was to be every inch a “knower” (mandarin) of the people, and a governor. He wore his staff out. He was up at unseasonable hours in addition to his regular duties. He worked as hard on the hot Praya as another man would on cool Piccadilly in March. Every emergency and occasion found him at hand, whether an297 awful fire, a new railway, or the launching of a great ship. The memorable typhoon of September, 1906, struck the unprepared colony which has been visited so often with these circular hurricanes. Sir Matthew seemed to superintend the rescuers at every spot of the long beach and harbor. When the steamboat Hankow holocaust occurred in October he worked, axe and arm, with the firemen. Little wonder that he died, really of exhaustion. He was a typical example of the grand old British civil service in China. He was heroic, unselfish, tireless, sympathetic, a man whose example lives to fire China with zeal and altruism.

Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the American Peking legation and has served on many American political missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin, and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin, the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father wrote that noble basic work, The Middle Kingdom, but for his own work as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.

Doctor H. H. Lowry, for many years president of the298 Methodist College at the Hata Men gate, Peking, has long exercised a strong influence upon Chinese officials and students. He is a man of great tact, enthusiasm, wisdom and scholarship, and is known both to have enlisted Yuan Shih Kai on the side of religious tolerance, and to have confirmed him in modern educational methods. The American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, is a mighty militant man with the southern republicans. The students adore him. The patriots of young China worship him. Fiery zeal, idealism, and the courage of a lion are characteristics of this influential, learned and sacrificing man. Doctor F. D. Gamewell, of Peking, is a Methodist missionary who has been in China for thirty years. He is world-famous for his engineering skill in directing the fortification of the legations in the awful siege of 1900. He is a man of great physical courage, calmness of mind, and sanity of judgment, and is a tower of influence among the Chinese officials. He hails from Hackensack, New Jersey.

C. W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston. The British engineers who have established China’s great railway development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans, Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the Australian at Peking who represents the London Times, has long held the world bound to his prompt299 despatches regarding Chinese politics, of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, An Australian in China, speaks for itself.

The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language. Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc. His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and among others his book, Things Chinese, is an encyclopedic authority. The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong, where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai, too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote China in Law and Commerce, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon300 Moule wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority, the North China News and Herald. Mr. Little was succeeded by the eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The National Review, a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous Far Eastern Review, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University, a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong, married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church, does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, Three Years in Western China; Manchuria, Its People and Resources. Chester Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, The Real Chinese Question. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.

Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M. Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai301 Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of Lion and Dragon in North China, who was one of our Hongkong cadets, Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy, their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai, the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture, building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of progress and government.

Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern (Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials302 of Middle China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese, teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H. Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination. Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St. John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants, travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East, and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo303 arch, before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least 4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.

No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming political events and massacres as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, who recently died. This was partially owing to his remarkable judgment, and partially owing to his wide sources of information, as Catholic converts are four times as numerous as Protestant converts. Monsieur Favier, ahead of events, was the best informed foreigner in China regarding the “Boxer” movement of 1900, and if his advice had been followed by the legations, the foreigners would have left Peking for the coast before the siege was instituted. He did not intend to leave himself, as he felt it to be his duty to die if necessary with his converts. Every one has admired his successful defense of the Pei Tang cathedral.

304 The following prominent American educationalists in China visited America in November, 1912, and spoke for China at the World’s Oriental Congress at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts: Vice-president Williams, of Nanking University; President Edmunds, of Canton Christian College; President Goucher, of the University of Chingtu, and Professor C. W. Young, of Union Medical College, Peking. It was regretted that President Sheffield and Doctor Arthur H. Smith, the eminent author, of the American Congregational College of North China, were not present.

Late advices state that the Chinese government at the close of 1912 has taken into its employ in the administration of the salt gabelle, J. F. Oiesen, a Dane of Tientsin; and as legal adviser, Monsieur Recouse, a prominent Belgian. Wherever Belgians are used, it is generally for the purpose of hiding the hands of France, and sometimes of Russia.

When the republicans rebelled against the dynasty, the following was the indictment issued to the world’s press, and signed by Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang and Assistant Foreign Secretary Wen Tsung Yao, at Shanghai. Wu, all the world knows as the Jefferson of the new republican China. Wen is a very able modern lawyer, who made his name as a resourceful amban at Lhasa.

This Chinese Declaration of Independence first appeared306 at length in the North China Daily News, of Shanghai, on November 15, 1911. Similar complaints had been brought against the Manchu when the Taiping rebellion opened in 1850. The Manchus were a hunting tribe whose preserves lay along the wooded foothills of the Long White Mountain (Chang Pai Shan) northeast of Mukden. The region is well described by James in his Long White Mountain (1888). The chieftain who whipped the Manchus into shape for conquest was Nurha-Chu. He drilled their cavalrymen from 1559 to 1626. From scattered tribes, dwelling in felt michung-tents, he organized them as a Manchu horde with an ambition. The Great Wall was not erected against the Manchus, but against the ancient ancestors of Tartar cousins of theirs. The Manchus themselves erected a palisade-barricade against their cousins, the Khitans, on the west. It ran from Shan Hai Kwan, on the Pechili Gulf, where the Great Wall meets the sea, northward five hundred miles until it reached the Sungari River and encircled Kirin. I think it is difficult now to find any part of the stockade, but I believe that James and Younghusband found evidences of it in their exploration of Manchuria about 1886. The North China Railway embankment west of Mukden absorbed part of the historic mounds. The Manchus had no script. Nurha-Chu gave them one based upon the Mongolian, which in turn was copied from the vertical Syriac. This showed that Nurha-Chu talked with traveling priests who had come down the Tarim valley. You will note the character on the back of any Chinese cash coin, which has a square hole in the middle. Obtain one of these coins, for they will be minted no more, and they are historic; in fact, the oldest coin known. They are the oldest as far as the Chinese face is concerned; the Manchu merely put the name of the reign in Manchu on one side of the307 Chinese coin, ten of which exchange for one American cent.

The Manchus had learned that the host of Chinese people, one hundred to his one, had no transport service (ponies); that they, therefore, were not cohesive or mobile; that their capital could be held by any bold clan which would at the beginning not exact too heavy a tribute, and which would allow the people practically to rule themselves by the classical examination and democratic civil service. The Manchus informed this civil service that they could hold their places if they adopted the Manchu style of hair-dressing, which was done, and in time Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue became the official dress of honor. The Chinese women were unconquerable. They never adopted the Manchu style of dressing the hair over the ears, or of not compressing the feet. The Manchus refused to adopt the Chinese system of using family names first, making a three-named system, as Li Hung-Chang. The Manchus used merely their double names, as Na-Tung, but their family names were entered on the roster of one of the eight military banners. Gradually the Manchu garrisons bullied the Chinese out of their walled cities, and the Chinese had to build a second wall around the suburbs. The events and dates of Manchu history, as it affects their own Ta Ching (Great Pure) and foreign (Fung Kwei) civilizations, are told shortly, as follows:

One serious charge against the Manchu is that he has been continually signing away China: Formosa and Korea to Japan, Manchuria to Russia, Kwangchou Bay and Tonquin to France, Kiaochou to Germany, and Wei-Hai-Wei to Britain. The Manchus themselves are to blame for the lack of respect shown the throne and dynasty in the last fifty years. Prince Chun might have taken the throne himself, but in fear of the cabal of jealous princes he named his child Pu Yi. This system of a long regency had several times been put in force by the Manchu intriguer, especially by the Dowager Tse Hsi with Kwang Hsu. When the latter grew up and asserted himself, he was destroyed, and another child, this Pu Yi, named as his successor. The same murderous and unstable system has been followed in putting up a new child Dalai Lama at Lhasa every few years, the old Dalai being informed that “it is time for him to pass his soul on to a new incarnation”. He can commit hara-kiri or be murdered. The Chinese people felt that there was no emperor to worship and obey, but rather a cabal in usurpation at Peking, and an irreligious cabal at that. From the time of the Chou founders, 1200 B. C., to make light of the sacrifices by letting a child do a man’s duties, was a cardinal sin.

Moreover, the Manchu in his long rule at Peking debased the idea of government by women and eunuch favorites. No one concerned will ever forget the power of the notorious eunuch Li Lien Ying at Peking in the years which led to the coup d’état of 1898, when reformers and emperor were crushed to the ground.312 This notorious “grafter” really shared the throne power with the Dowager Tse Hsi, and the Emperor Kwang Hsu was in continual disgrace. The Manchus knew that it was unconstitutional to honor eunuchs. During the minority of Kang-Hi, the greatest emperor of the Manchus, the regents degraded the eunuchs and had the law engraved on iron plates of one thousand pounds each. Why did not Tse Hsi observe this law during her long regency? Did she think the people would not remember and that her successor, Prince Chun, and the dynasty would not suffer? Because of her hospitality when at the close of her life she permitted her portrait to be painted for the St. Louis Exposition by a talented American woman, and when she entertained several of the charming legation ladies at Peking, books have been written by her guests, in their womanly kindness of heart, and one book by a talented editor friend of mine at Hongkong, palliating her offenses as a tyrant, a reactionary and a murderess. The long cold history of British and American diplomacy; the domestic history of China during her period, the Boxer siege, the written testimony of the Emperor Kwang Hsu, her “dummy” policy, the experiences of the great reformers, including Yuan; her persecution over the whole world of Kang Yu Wei and Sun Yat Sen by her spy system; the national newspapers, the publications of Ching-Shan, her household controller; the statements of the American secretaries of her chief viceroy, Li Hung Chang; the republican revolution and Declaration of Independence of 1911, are all insistent that egotism and reaction sat closest to the heart of this powerful woman; that she belonged to the class of Catherine and not to the class of Elizabeth or Victoria. If this was the character for seventy years of the leader of the Manchus, what was the character of the followers!

313 Owing to the Manchu’s lack of an art sense, he has neglected the beautiful bridges and broad roads left by the Sung dynasty; the artistic towers left by the Tang dynasty; the gorgeous pagodas left by the artistically incomparable Ming dynasty; and the fine canals left by the Mongols. There should, perhaps, be less surprise over the difference in the intellectual powers of the Manchu and the Chinese. Three hundred and fifty years ago the Manchu was only a hunter, a warrior and fisherman, like his cousins, the Buriats and Tungus up in Siberia to-day; whereas for immemorial centuries the Chinese has been a merchant, a scientific agriculturalist, and a scholar, and has always earned his own living without benefit of government subsidy or class privilege in any way, which have enervated the Manchus of to-day and yesterday. The reaction of the patient Chinese in the October, 1911, rebellion against the Manchu conqueror was natural. The surprise is that it was withheld for three centuries. The Manchus have never mingled with the Chinese. All the large cities, even to distant Canton and Yunnan, 1,200 and 1,400 miles away from the center of power, have separate walled Manchu cities, or Tartar cities as they are generally called, which were taken from the original Chinese. In an effort to appease the complaints of insurgents, the Regent Prince Chun in 1909 recalled the edict which until that late year prohibited Manchus from marrying Chinese.

Like all minorities that try to intrench their privileges, the Manchu is much of a “snob”. It is not uncommon to hear this sneer at Peking regarding the Chinese women of the south: “Oh, she’s a woman from the southern provinces; you can’t expect manners from her.” The fact is that the Chinese women of Nanking, Hangchow, Soochow, Canton and other southern cities have more refined manners314 than the rough-riding Manchus, the daughters of raiders. The wearing of the queue and the skull cap is a Manchu custom, imposed in the seventeenth century upon the conquered Chinese. One of the first things the Han republicans did in the October, 1911, revolution was to cut off the queue which they declared was a sign of servitude to the dynasty which they were trying to displace. The head-dress of the Manchu women shows the bunching of the hair over each ear instead of behind the head and on the neck, as is the Chinese custom. The Manchus do not deform the feet, nor paint, both of which have been Chinese customs. The gown of the Manchu women is longer than that of the Chinese women, the latter showing the divided skirt, or rather wide trousers. Other distinctive Manchu styles are the jewel-buttons, denoting rank, worn on the peak of the conical official hat; the peacock’s feather worn at the back of the hat; the peacock design in embroidery; the yellow riding jacket.

Manchus drink kaoliang spirits in place of rice samshu. Their battle flags have been triangular instead of oblong. The peculiar daylight audiences given by the throne to the grand councilors and viceroys showed the fear of publicity, and a recognition of estrangement from the people. They seemed to think that a throne that was surrounded with a good deal of mystery, exclusiveness, smoke of incense and darkness was stronger than a throne that was clearly outlined in the love of the people. A curious worship of the Manchu leaders, who are more superstitious than religious, is that of the fox. The great Fox Temple at Mukden, the ancestral temple of the dynasty, is famous. The Chinese leaders have never been as crude as this in their grossest superstition. The Chinese, especially the hard-working southerners who pay most of the taxes, have objected to the pensions accorded to a million Manchus gathered under the315 eight banners, and quartered, with the privilege to bear arms, in walled cities, barracks and arsenals throughout the land. In the fall of the Manchus, intrenched so long behind a spy system, control of taxation, trade routes and judicial appointees, all oppressive systems and tyrants should take notice that however intrenched they may seem to be against the people, the people will in the end become supreme, with a long, long memory of the wrongs that they have endured against their will, and the theme of “Restitution” on their tongues. To quote the words of Wu Ting Fang, the Jefferson of China, well known to Americans and Britons: “The hand of the people is now at the plough, and they must of necessity push on to the uttermost end of the furrow.”

The books written on Manchuria include James’ Long White Mountain; Sir Francis Younghusband’s Narrative of Travels in Manchuria, 1896; Hosie’s Manchuria, Its People, Etc.; Howarth’s Origin of the Manchus; Doctor J. Ross’ Manchus or the Reigning Dynasty; E. H. Parker’s Manchus in China. Doctor A. Wylie translated the Manchu grammar and the Tsing Wen Keung. These are all British writers. Professor I. Zacharoff compiled a Russian-Manchu dictionary and wrote on the Manchus in 1875, and Von Mollendorff composed a Manchu grammar. It is possible that in exile from the throne the Manchus may revive the little literature and language that they possess; or, champion intriguers that they and their race are, Prince Tuan, Prince Su, the Tsai Princes, General Yin Tchang and others may continue to plot from Jehol, Kalgan, Urga, Mukden, Dalny and other places of exile. Manchu literature consists of only two hundred and fifty works, nearly all of which are translations of the Chinese classics.

What greater proof was ever given of the irreconcilable differences between the Manchus and Chinese, than the316 ominous silence of the Chinese members of the momentous meeting of the Grand Council called by the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi at Peking on June 16, 1900, to decide on the final attitude toward the “Boxers”. When the Manchus showed an insane determination to destroy their dynasty, the Chinese members by silence assented, and the republican rebellion of 1911 was only the outward manifestation of the spirit of the silence of 1900.

XVII
CHINA’S ARMY AND NAVY

The revolution of 1911 made known to the world the Chinese generals on the northern and southern sides, who were really able to command a modern army in action as well as in field maneuvers. Generals Li, Ling, Ho, Hwang, Hsu, etc., were the leading southerners. Generals Feng, Chang, Chao and Sheng were among the leading northerners in active service. All of these are Chinese. The much-heralded Manchu generals proved a failure, and few of the old-style Tartar generals, like Chiang and Chen of Pechili province; Na Yen, of Kalgan; Tuan, of the Red Banner Corps; Prince Su, of the Peking Gendarmerie, etc., were called upon to serve in the field. The latter decidedly had the ferocious temperament, but they lacked the knowledge of modern tactics. General Chao Ehr Feng, conqueror of the Tibet mutiny and the Dalai Lama in 1910, an effective old-style general, was cooped up in Chingtu City at the opening of the rebellion in September, 1911. General Yin Tchang, the Manchu general-in-chief; Brigadiers-General Ha and Liang, who visited America in 1910; Major General Ho; Prince Tsai Tao, the Manchu minister of war; Prince Yu Lang, of the dapper gray Imperial Guards, etc., never got much nearer the war than the point of mobilization, and their private car on the Hankau-Peking railway, with the engine pointed northward! The military princes of the royal blood, Tsai Pu,318 Tsai Jin, Duke Ling, Prince Pu, etc., all kept their dress uniforms innocent of the dust of field and the grime of powder. Prince Tsai Hsu, royal admiral of the navy, kept aboard his luxurious steam yacht which the Kiangnan Dock Company of Shanghai built for him, and sulked away from Admiral Sah’s service fleet, which was making a last dash to cut the rebel’s left flank between Wuchang and Hankau.

The modern Chinese army dates back to 1894 and the defeat in the China-Japan War over Korea. Viceroys Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai were bent on drilling an effective service. Chiefly German and Japanese instructors were hired, though there were a few other foreigners also. General Upton (U. S. A.), of Civil War fame, once made a trip to China and planned with Viceroy Li Hung Chang the establishment of a Chinese West Point in the north, which has been begun in the Pei Yang Military College at Tientsin. Emperor William personally instructed General Yin Tchang in Germany. An army of Imperial Guards and ten divisions, mostly territorial for facility in recruiting and mobilizing, was whipped into shape chiefly in the northern provinces, and twenty other divisions were partly formed as provided for by the famous Army Edict of April 16, 1906. Modern arsenals, headquarters offices, field maneuvers, Red Cross, foreign instructors, the Pei Yang Military College, etc., were all provided for. The old-style provincial turbaned troops allotted to each viceroy, and the pensioned soldiers of the eight Manchu banners were not all disbanded. They were quartered among the 4,000 walled cities. No conscription was necessary, as the men seemed anxious to serve for the wage, or the promise of six dollars a month. The plan was to keep the men three years with the colors, three years with the reserve, and thereafter for ten years with a landwehr on the German plan. By 1900 the new319 army was not cohesive, or the reactionary empress dowager, Prince Tuan, General Tung Fu of Kansu, and Yu Hsien, of Shangtung, would have wiped out the foreigners in the legations and Admiral Seymour’s international relief expedition at Tientsin. When the 1911 rebellion opened, the Eighth Division joined the republicans at Wuchang, and earned immortal glory. Their brothers of the Third Division opposed them at Hankau. The Ninth Division of Shangtung and Kiangsu territorials held Nanking for the imperialists, but the Kiangsu Brigade of that division later deserted. The Twentieth Division of Manchurian territorials at Lanchow Camp near Peking earned immortal glory by sending up to the National Assembly and the throne nineteen constitutional articles which they said had to be signed before they would war for the throne. This was lèse majesté with a vengeance! The Guards Division was at Peking, where it stayed, watching the hoards of bullion and sycee more than constitutional articles! The Sixth Division was in Shansi province. The First Division of Manchu troops, and the Second and Fourth Divisions at times shuttlecocked along the railway between Hankau and Peking. The Fifth Division was at Tsinan, capital of Shangtung province.

Had China’s army not been territorial, the rebellion might never have got into swing, because it would have been impossible to have intrigued with a mixed Eighth Division. Again, had China’s army not been territorial, President Yuan could have used the Third, Fourth, Sixth and Twentieth Divisions at Peking in March, 1912, to suppress the mutiny, whereas these divisions remained in sympathy with the First Manchu Division and the Imperial Guards Division, and refused to obey the constitutional head of the government at a climacteric320 time. A mixed army is not easily mobilized, but when mobilized it is more amenable to discipline, and the ignoring of local feeling in view of the larger aims of statesmanship. England’s, Germany’s and France’s armies are territorial. Italy’s and America’s regular armies are not. America’s vast militia army, however, on which she mainly depends, is, of course, territorial.

General Yin Tchang, who had much to do with organizing the effective ten divisions of the northern army, is a graduate of Peking University. He served five years in the Austrian infantry, and as minister to Germany, at Emperor William’s request, he enjoyed that unusually able and enthusiastic monarch’s private instruction in army matters. In 1900 General Yin Tchang came in contact with the allied forces at Tientsin, and held his retreat together well enough to elicit much admiration. General Yin and the regent, Prince Chun, both visited Hongkong in 1901 and there gained sympathy from us all for the great promise which they showed in guiding the New China. Yin Tchang’s excellent idea was to take the provincial armies away from the viceroys, and make the new divisions answerable to the Board of War (Ping Pu) at Peking. Prince Tsai Tse’s, the finance minister’s plan, was to inform each governor what amount he was to send to Peking as the province’s share in maintaining a central army. There was considerable conflict over this issue, many southern governors saying that they paid for two armies, one modern army which was held in the north, of which they never received their allotted division or brigade, and the old-style provincial troops which they had to maintain to preserve order. General Ha Han-Chang, a Chinese by blood, came next to Yin in drilling the new army. He is also a Pei Yang graduate, and trained with the Japanese army. General Liang-Pi, a Manchu, had an experience321 similar to that of General Ha, before accepting command of the First Brigade. None of these men is like Tieh-Liang and the other well-known old-style generals, strong in classics but weak in tactics. They reversed the order. General Li Chin Hsi at remote Yunnan City raised and drilled an excellent division. The division at Canton went all to pieces before the republican troops of General Wu Sum, but the Shansi divisions were effectually held together by General Sheng Yun, a Mongol, who later captured the Tongkwan pass, which commands the road from the west to Peking. Many soldiers of the southern divisions, in the first few weeks of the revolution, fired from the hip, as they were not used to the recoil on the shoulder. They, of course, soon did better. One of the best and most popular marksmen of the Singapore Rifle Team which competed at Bisley in 1910 was Sergeant Tan Chow Kim, a Cantonese Chinese.

The name of Frederick T. Ward should be linked with “Chinese” Gordon’s in connection with Chinese military records. General Ward, born at Salem, Massachusetts, lost his life in the service of China. He organized and led the only great army that China ever had before 1906. His name stands linked with Gordon’s as the maker of the “Ever Victorious Army,” the conqueror of the Taiping horde.

A modern rage for dull-colored new uniforms has struck gorgeously gowned old China. I shall recite an amusing instance. In the fall of 1911 a band of rebels organized in Sining, in far-western Kansu province. They chose a boy of fifteen as their prophet leader because he bore peculiar birthmarks. He was given the fanciful name of Savior of the Land (Chu Shih Waang). The generals reported that the new force should wear modern uniforms of cotton. The stores were swamped with orders, and every bolt of foreign cotton was immediately bought up, no matter what its design.322 The Imperial Guards wear gray, and the other divisions wear blue and khaki.

Aviation was introduced in China (really Indo-China) at Saigon on December 1, 1910, by the Holland-Frenchman, Vanderborn. He was followed later in the year at Shanghai by the American, “Bud” Mars. The first Chinese aviator was Fug-Yu, who was trained in America, and who experimented at the Lanchow (east of Peking) camp in 1911. During the revolution a number of Chinese students took lessons in aviation in America and left for the rebel front. Had the war continued it was the intention to destroy Peking by dynamite dropped from air-ships. Both Sun and Yuan are to be congratulated that this necessity was obviated by diplomacy.

China’s antiquity, vast population and warlikeness have been brought in question by some writers. That she had a vast population as far back as the third century before the Christian era is proved by the army records. The Ts’in clan, operating under their celebrated General Peh Ki, slew and beheaded in 293 B. C. 240,000 Hans; in 275 B. C. 40,000 Ngwheis; in 264 B. C. 50,000 Hans; in 260 B. C. 400,000 Chows, and in 256 B. C. 90,000 more Chows, thus exterminating the imperial ancestral clan which instituted the sacrifices and held the sacred tripods. Szma Tsien, the historian, writing at 100 B. C., says the allies lost a million men in fighting this Ts’in clan. After the Christian era the Chinese took fewer plural wives and fought fewer wars. Twenty years ago, an emperor who raised the despised military class to the equal of scholars, farmers and merchants, would have been decapitated. Compare one of the military edicts of the regent, Prince Chun, dated Peking, April, 1911: “We are of the opinion that militarism is the first323 thing necessary to the upbuilding and preservation of a nation.”

“A mob does not make a regiment, for a trained man is as effective as a score untrained, and much easier to save in a retreat.”

“A good general can’t blame defeat on bad soldiers, for a good general has no poor regiments.”

“The battle may not be for a cycle of years, but the soldier must awake for it every day.”

“It’s the man behind the gun more than the gun, and the man inside the fort more than the wall.”

Chinese literature is not without its stirring war songs, which breathe not only the pathos of the suffering of those at home, but the sacrificing patriotism of the ranks. The following is quoted from Confucius’ Odes, B. C. 551:

The following far older poem was written in 800 B. C. by Li Hua to commemorate a battle between the ancient Chinese tribe of Wei and the Northern Mongols:

With such Spartan poetry the early Chinese were able to fire the race with militarism. The ideograph is virile and325 laconic in the highest degree, just as the Anglo-Saxon of “Beowulf” is more condensed than our later Latinized speech.

Confucius believed in revenge upon a murderous enemy of one’s family. He replied to a question of a pupil on this matter: “Have only your weapons for a pillow.”

Two of the promising colonels in the southern republican army are graduates (1909 class) of the American West Point Academy. They were admitted on the personal recommendations of President Roosevelt. One is Colonel Wen Ying Hsing, a nephew of Wen Tsung Yao, who is assistant minister of foreign affairs of the Nanking Republican Assembly. Colonel Wen has seen hard service as military adviser of the Canton Provincial Assembly. The other “West Pointer” is Colonel Chen Ting, brother of Doctor Chen Shin Tao, minister of finance of the Nanking Republican Assembly.

On one of my rambles through the narrow streets of Canton I dropped into an artist’s shop on Yuck Tsze Street and selected some treasured, delightful opal-colored paintings, full of spirit, of the old picturesque three-masted Manchu war-junks which in the early days one saw sometimes beating into the reaches and broads of the flooded waters of Kwangtung province. The yellow shields, emblazoned with ideographs, hang over the midship bulwarks of the ship. The latticed red rudder is high above the water so that it may drag the unwieldy keelless boat around. The great blue sweeps, with yellow eyes, stretch from the galley-ports. The ship itself has eyes on the bow. The overhanging cabin in the high stern is crowded with men, stores and bronze cannon. The low red prow cuts the olive green sea into white foam. The red triangular flags flaunt challenge from all the masts. The great square brown matting sails spread326 like clouds above the blue-gowned leadsman in the bow. Dipping under the horizon are the fleeing black banners of the enemy, and the sea-gulls scatter in terror. Only the serrated blue hills are brave along the iron shores.

The first important names in connection with the building and drilling of China’s modern navy are Captain Lang, R. N. (British), and Captain Siebelin (U. S. N. and H. S. M.). These men prepared the fleet for the war with Japan in 1894, which developed Admiral Ting and Captain Teng as China’s sole naval heroes, who, however, could do little with an inefficient war board (Ping Pu) behind them. The captured battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen are in Japan’s retired list. They were very fine ships for their day, and resisted heavy punishment in the battles of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei. The navy training schools are at Tientsin, Chifu, Nanking, Fuchau, Shanghai, Amoy, and there will be another at Nimrod Bay, south of Ningpo. Admiral Beresford, on his visit to China in 1898, advised with the Chinese officials, especially Li Hung Chang, regarding navy matters, and some cruisers were built in England, though the two best battleships were built in Germany. Captain Bradley Osbon, an American, served for years in developing the Chinese navy.

The Chinese cruiser Hai Chi, painted the regulation gray, and spreading the gorgeous yellow dragon flag, took part in King George the Fifth’s coronation festivities at Spithead in July, 1911, and in September, 1911, she came to New York and anchored beneath Grant’s tomb. Conspicuous friendliness on both occasions was shown to the officers and crew as a mark of the new interest in China which has arisen in Britain and America especially. Similar cruisers, the Hai Chow and the Hai Yung; gunboats of the Po Pik class; and torpedo boats of the Wu Pang class, were in constant327 use in China in the ante-republican days. One day they were watching that Portugal did not encroach at Macao; a week later shelling rebels around the great cities which line the Yangtze River or making a dash to the Gulf of Pechili to be ready to take on board the infant emperor. The cruiser Fei Hung, the first Chinese warship built in America, was launched at Camden, New Jersey, on April 24, 1912. Larger cruisers are building in England, and when Chinese politics and finances are more settled, it is proposed to order battleships from both Britain and America, and form three fleets, the Northern, Yangtze Central and Southern fleets. Shanghai can dock the smaller vessels, but British Hongkong alone has up to this time been able to dock battleships in Chinese waters. China has as yet no submarines. The British navy maintains several submarine torpedo boats at Hongkong, and in that land-locked harbor, of all others in the world, the moral effect upon an enemy would be terrifying.

In recent years the naval policy of China has been developed by Prince Tsai Hsu. Admiral Sah Chen Ping, who commanded the Yangtze fleet which operated against the republicans in October, 1911, and against the pirates who attacked Yale College, at Changsha, in 1910, has visited America, and entertained the American round-the-world fleet at Amoy in 1908. He has a son in a western American college. General Li Yuen Heng, one of the two greatest republican generals, was really trained for the navy at Pei Yang and Chifu Colleges, and in Japan. Admirals Jiu Cheng, Li Chun, of the Canton riots of April, 1911; Tan; Ching, who entertained the American fleet at Amoy; Commander Hsu Chen Pang, who was educated at Hartford, America; Admirals Liu and Hai Chun; Admiral Chin Yao Huan and Commander Wu Chung Lin, both of whom visited New York328 on the cruiser Hai Chi, are all well known. Commanders Chen, Yang and Wong represented China when the cruiser Fei Hung was built at Camden, New Jersey, in 1912. When the republican troops took the Shanghai arsenal it discouraged the navy, which could not secure ammunition in time for effective work. The fleet then went over to the red, white and blue sun flag, and later landed a republican army in Shangtung province at Chifu to flank the imperial left wing operating at Tsinan. The fleet also made a demonstration against Chin Wang Tao on the gulf of Pechili, thus forcing the imperialists to hold several divisions in the north to protect Peking. This enabled the republicans to follow up the Nanking victory, drive General Chang out of Nganhwei province, and made the Whei River instead of the Yangtze River the republican front. If America undertakes with a Pacific fleet to back up for all time the “non-partition of China” policy, the writer is not a believer in a Chinese navy at present, outside of possibly one dreadnought a year when the finances are revised. Of course a strong revenue and police fleet for the rivers should be provided. Attention should rather be given to China’s army, so that she may be able to do her own police work as far as Russian or other intruders are concerned. Having no oversea colonies, she really has no use for a navy at present, excepting that one dreadnought a year would, if necessary, lend a little more than moral support to America’s altruistic and non-land-grabbing policy in the Far East.

The Chinese are splendid sailors, and as is well known, they invented the water-tight compartment in their junks, sanpans and wupans forgotten centuries ago. I have had much intercourse with the watermen of the southern provinces and can speak well of their seamanship. They compose the crews of the mercantile fleets which cross the Pacific,329 and have brought their ships through those awful circular typhoons which rage for days. They have also developed modern yacht designers like Ah King at Hongkong, and they are quick at the tiller and boom. I have, in writing of the Chinese, given perhaps a hundred instances of things which they do oppositely to the Occidental manner. Here is the one hundred and first: Holding their nostrils, they dive feet foremost, like the pearl fishermen of the Manaar Gulf of Ceylon! When our launch screws would get tangled with the many ropes of Blake Wharf, Hongkong, I have often seen half of the crew merrily jump overboard with knives in their teeth, and work under water for an extraordinary length of time; and though some writers call the Chinese stolid and humorless, I have always seen them highly appreciative of applause and good-natured laughter over the unexpected incidents that arise in an Oriental day’s work. On one occasion the writer, who was exhausted with the tide, was saved from drowning at Junk Bay, Hongkong, by the quick-witted efforts of a native laota (coxswain) who deftly swung his launch within reach, and whose ready arms reached out to “chiu ming” (save life).

The short story of China’s navy would not be complete without a word on the naval engagements of the China-Japan War of 1894–5 over Korea, when the whole world breathlessly watched the first trial of modern ironclads, and when the Chinese on several occasions really showed fearlessness under hopeless conditions. At the end of July, 1894, Chinese troops arrived at the Yalu River (which divides Korea and Manchuria) to reinforce General Yeh and Yuan Shih Kai, under cover of the cruiser Chi Yuen (2,300 tons, 17.5 knots), the Kuang Yi (1,030 tons, 16 knots), etc. On July 25th this fleet was met by the much superior330 Japanese fleet consisting of the Yoshino (4,100 tons, 23 knots), Akitsushima (3,150 tons, 19 knots), and Naniwa (19 knots). After a hot exchange the Chi Yuen escaped from the faster Yoshino by superior work in the stokehold. The Kuang Yi ran aground. Admiral Ting, the one big name in China’s navy, with a weak squadron, daringly sailed from Pechili Gulf on September 14th for the Yalu, landed stores, and skilfully evaded Admiral Ito’s and Rear-Admiral Tsuboi’s squadrons. On September 17th, Admiral Ting led the way with the Chen Yuen (7,400 tons, 15-knot German-built battleship) and the Ting Yuen, a twin battleship, in the center, the other vessels on the wings, to meet the Japanese fleets which were advancing in column. Ito passed wide of the right wing of the Chinese. At 6,000 yards the Chinese opened fire ineffectively, but the Japanese reserved their fire until 3,000 yards’ range was reached. The Japanese passed through to the rear, and drove off the smaller Chinese warships. The larger Chinese vessels swung to starboard to keep their bows toward the circling Japanese. The Japanese armored cruiser Fuso (3,700 tons, 13 knots), built in England, steamed in close to the Chinese line. The Hi Yei, protected Japanese cruiser (2,250 tons, 14 knots), crossed between the Chinese battleships Chen Yuen and Ting Yuen, and as could be expected, both were so damaged that they had to seek the Japanese rear. The slow Japanese Akagi, gunboat (614 tons, 13 knots), was hit by the Chinese left wing. The second Japanese squadron now came up, and at once attacked the Chinese front, the first Japanese squadron having completed the circle, attacking the Chinese rear. The Japanese then withdrew and reformed, but the Chinese were not able to reform their line. The Chinese Yuen Wei (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) on fire, headed for the Yalu, where she sank with the brave Captain331 Teng. The Chinese Chao Yuen (gunboat, 1,350 tons, 16 knots) was accidentally rammed by the unmanageable Chinese Chi Yuen (coast defense, 2,300 tons, 17 knots), and both sank, leaving only the two Chinese battleships, which kept fighting and following the Japanese as best they were able. The second Japanese squadron sank the Chinese King Yuen (coast defense, 2,900 tons, 15 knots), while the first Japanese squadron circled around the two Chinese battleships, which could not be maneuvered to advantage. The Chinese Ting Yuen cleverly planted a shell into the Japanese Matsushima (coast defense, 4,277 tons, 16 knots, French built). At 5:30 P. M., after seven and one-half hours’ fighting, the Japanese withdrew for repairs, although they had three armored coast defense, 4,200-ton, 16-knot ships in good condition, two armored and six protected cruisers, all of which answered their helms.

On October 18th, the Chinese battleship Chen Yuen struck at Wei Hai Wei and was seriously injured. On February 5, 1895, at 2 A. M., by a bold move, the first of its kind in naval war, the Japanese torpedo boats raced for an entrance to narrow Wei Hai Wei harbor. Eight boats got in under the high-pointed guns of the fort and fired eleven torpedoes. One torpedo from boat “9” struck the Chinese battleship Ting Yuen, which steamed for shallow water, where the Chinese blew her up (this is the battleship which the Japanese later raised and used against the Russians in 1904). The Japanese lost torpedo boats “9” and “22”.

On the morning of February 6th, five more Japanese torpedo boats headed for the harbor, and four entered, torpedoing the Chinese Lai Yuen (coast defense, 2,900 tons, 15 knots) German built; the Wei Yuen (corvette, 1,300) and tender Pan Fah. The332 Chinese torpedo fleet attempted to escape from the western entrance, but were captured or destroyed by the first Japanese squadron. The Japanese towed mortar platforms near the western entrance, and pounded the remaining Chinese battleship Chen Yuen, which sank, as her deck was not armored (later raised by Japanese and used against the Russians in 1904). On February 17th, Admiral Ito steamed in, and China’s one fighting naval hero, Admiral Ting, brave but unfortunate, committed suicide. The Japanese secured as prizes the Kang Chi, third-class cruiser (1,030 tons, 16 knots), built at Shanghai; the Ping Yuen (coast defense, 2,600 tons, 10 knots), built at Shanghai, and the Kuang Ping (third-class cruiser, 1,030 tons, 16 knots), built at Shanghai. The battle showed the world that a large, fast mosquito fleet, with longer-range guns, can whip even a few bulldog battleships, if the maneuvering of the latter is crippled by lucky shots early in the engagement. In other words, a fleet of faster unarmored cruisers, converted Lusitanias, for instance, whose full gun and engine power is effectively maintained, by choosing and keeping their favored range, could in the open sea finally whip poorly handled units of slower battleships.

On one other occasion the crew of a Chinese warship quitted themselves like men. That was when the gunboat Chen Wei alone engaged the whole French fleet of armor-clads at Foochow, August 23, 1884. I quote the report of an independent eye-witness, Commissioner Carrall of Sir Robert Hart’s Imperial Customs Service: “Exposed to the broadsides of the Villars and the D’Estaing, and riddled by a terrific discharge from the heavy guns of the Triomphante, the little Chen Wei fought to the last. In flames fore and aft, drifting helplessly down the stream and sinking, she plied her guns again and again, till one of the333 French torpedo boats, the Volta, dashing in through the smoke, completed the work of destruction with a well-placed torpedo.”

The successful rush of an unsupported republican torpedo boat at Hankau on November 19, 1911, past the whole line of blazing imperial shore batteries, in broad daylight, is considered by the foreigners of Hankau as dangerous and courageous a piece of work as the recent revolution exhibited.

XVIII
MODERN EDUCATION IN CHINA

There are twelve modern universities available for the education of the four hundred millions of people in China, located respectively at Hongkong, Shanghai, Nanking, Changsha, Wei Hsien (Shangtung province), Tientsin, Suchow, Tai Yuan, Peking, Hangchow, Wuchang and Canton. One of these is British, nine Mission, one Chinese, and one American Collegiate.

Hongkong University counts among its former law students Wu Ting Fang, foreign minister of the Nanking republicans; among its medical students Doctor Sun Yat Sen, president of the Nanking republican government; and Kang Yu Wei, the original reformer of China, who inspired the imperial reform edicts of 1898. The university is a growth of Queen’s College, Anglican (London Mission), and other foundations. Part of the land was given by a generous Parsee, Mr. Mody, and part of the endowment by Sir Paul Chater, both residents of the colony. One gift of $1,000 came from Chang Ming Chi, at the time viceroy of Canton (Kwangtung province). The Hongkong and Cantonese Chinese are generous contributors. The colonial government and other private founders intend to put the university on a broad basis worthy of the great colony, and equipped for the vast opportunity offered to influence China in the ways of permanent progress. The Cantonese are, and have always been, leaders of republicanism and modernity, and335 most of their advanced students will avail of the superior advantages offered by the new Hongkong University. There are nearly half a million Chinese in the crown colony itself. Chinese pupils of the London Mission Girls’ School on Bonham Road, Hongkong, have recently won high honors in the art examinations of the Royal Drawing Society, London.

The splendidly housed and equipped St John’s University at Shanghai is American Episcopal. The tourist should take a rickshaw out to Jessfield suburb, five miles from the River Bund, and see its modern buildings, with adapted Chinese roofs. Its leading spirit has for years been a New Yorker by birth, Doctor Francis Pott, son of the noted publisher. Its theological school is, of course, Episcopalian. Most important is its famous medical school, headed by Doctors Boone, Lincoln, Jefferys, Tucker, Myers, and Fullerton, whom all Central China loves. Chinese doctors, such as Tyau, Waung and Koo, assist. The school of arts is equally famous and brilliant, though perhaps not so imperative. I hope the day will soon come when this model university will have a larger science school, not of mediocre equipment, but endowed by some American at least half as richly as a standard American college would be endowed in science. The library, museum, dormitories and teachers’ school all need endowments. The university has a full-fledged modern athletic department, and it is thrilling to see the Chinese boys “play up, play up, and play the game” of American football, baseball, etc. The football team has mowed down the Municipal Police team on many occasions. Track teams and rowing teams from St. John’s are yet going to make China famous at Olympics and Henleys. Military drill is exceedingly popular, and many of the four hundred boys, who represent every province, jumped into336 the front rank in winning China’s republican revolution, though St. John’s has not yet taught politics. It should and will perhaps add a strong branch in political economy. The debating society is popular, as one could expect in the New China, and the dramatic society is successful, for the Chinese are born actors. The students also have a modern orchestra. The university is not a “griffin”, for it dates back to 1879. Five large buildings stand on the twenty acres of campus.

The Chinese pay in fees $20,000 a year, which is the record for “self help” in China. The college does a work free that it should not be compelled to do, and that is to instruct the families of missionaries. Soon schools for this purpose will be opened at Shanghai, Kowkiang (Kuling mount), and elsewhere in the Far East. Even the poor of foreign families are instructed free at St. John’s whose bowels of compassion so move for the whole East that verily she would exhaust herself in her altruistic zeal. One hundred dollars a year keeps a medical, science, art, political, pedagogical or theological student at St. John’s. St. John’s asks what added American tourists and others will take a “share”, as they call it a Jessfield. The answer is that thousands will. Six hundred dollars keeps one of the best students in America a year to finish. St. John’s asks who will thus enable America to teach the leaders of China, and forever sit closest to their hearts, as they rule the widest political and economical opportunity on earth. America and England should remember that if good does not sit on the bench in the New China, evil will. Japan coerced China out of that immense 1895 indemnity. She should morally pay part of it back, and part should go to the famous St. John’s University of Shanghai, where America has stood so long as a lighthouse amidst the dark waters of remote places.

The University of Nanking (New York State charter)337 is a union work of the American Methodists, the American Presbyterians, and the Disciples of Christ. Its strategic situation at the cultured capital of the imperial Mings, the high-water mark of the Taiping rebellion, and the capital of southern republicanism, is at once apparent. The leaders of the University took a dramatic part in bringing about the bloodless surrender of Nanking to the victorious republicans, who might have avenged the imperialist Chang’s atrocities. Doctor A. J. Bowen is president, and the following noted educational and medical leaders assist: J. E. Williams, J. W. Drummond, E. C. Lobenstine, Doctor Garritt, Alexander Paul, Frank Garrett, C. S. Settlemyer, Doctor E. Osgood, the noted Doctor J. C. Ferguson, Doctor Henke, Mr. Martin, Mr. Millward, Mr. Bailie, Doctor R. Beebe, and W. F. Wilson. This university does its immense work with only $44,000 a year, because every one works for a pittance, the salary of the president being only $1,500 in a land where life for the foreigner is expensive. That is to say, the president of the University of Nanking altruistically accepts in salary less than would the shorthand writer in the railway office at Nanking, both of whom come from America; the one a cultured gentleman of power, the other probably only a machine mind. The five hundred Chinese students themselves contribute the remarkably large sum of $13,000 a year in fees. The departments include science, arts, theology, pedagogy, athletics, and practically the all-important medical department, because the East China Medical Association (dean, Doctor Shields) works in connection with the University. Nanking will always be a political, naval, military, scientific and cultured center, and therefore the university will have a great influence in teaching the coming leaders of the New China.

338 There is nothing narrow-minded about the college, for it teaches the Chinese language, literature and philosophy. The extensive grounds cover in the aggregate forty-three acres. There are several dormitories, chapels, residences for staff, and a Y. M. C. A. The best building is the large science hall. The university, surely run economically, needs larger funds for an endowment from America, because it has not the heart to turn away many promising but poor students who must be accommodated practically free. Thirty dollars boards a worthy student for a year, and the college is always glad to hear from those who will support scholarships, increase the buildings and equipment, or add to the library and endowment. Athletes of the university are making their mark, and may extend their triumphs to the Olympic games. Football and track athletics are popular. There is a library, museum, students’ magazine, press, and of course a debating society. The college band, the largest in China, numbers seventy pieces. The boys showed their mettle in benevolent activities when they contributed five hundred dollars for the famine and flood victims, and besides volunteered for work in the stricken districts of Nganhwei province. Model farm colonies in the distressed sections have been undertaken by the university. The university now makes a special appeal for a larger library and reading room building, or institute, to throw open to the great metropolis, and in Chinese fashion, they propose to have a self-supporting tea-room which will be a college club and city institute; a people’s institute in other words. This would be a very popular move in a city which politically will remain either as the first or second city in China. The Chinese themselves prefer it for the capital; the foreigners in North China are using their influence to have Peking retained as the national capital.339 While hot Nanking is not so healthy as Peking, the writer believes that the foreigners should bow to the wish of the Chinese, and have Nanking named as capital. The higher classes of Chinese are timid as yet of the religious hall, but they are enthusiastic attendants at lecture halls, libraries and clubs. Nanking University intelligently proposes to miss no opportunity.

Yale University (Missionary Society) has its collegiate school and splendid medical school and hospital at Changsha, the capital of conservative inland Hunan province, the former center of “Darkest China.” The staff, in addition to the Chinese members, are Dean Brownell, W. J. Hail, D. H. Leavens, K. S. Latourette, Doctor E. H. Hume, Nurse Nina Gage, and the wives of the staff. All the men are from Yale University, New Haven. As might be expected, wherever a Yale man goes, there is to be found the manly athletic temperament, and Yale at Changsha has its champion football team which is repeating the Camp round-the-end runs, the Heffelfinger plunges, etc.! Yale in China agrees with the Nanking plan of including Chinese in the curriculum. While Yale College mainly supports the work, help for the hospital has come from such churches as the Broadway Tabernacle, of New York, and private donors. Chinese physicians, fully equipped from a western standpoint, like Doctors Yen and Hou, assist. This is the intelligent educational, medical and mission plan throughout all China: “Help the Chinese to help themselves.” Yale College took a leading part in curing opium habitués, and in this astonishing reform in China Yale has been prominent. That the Chinese are not parsimonious or unappreciative is proved by the following facts. Among many others, the governor of Hunan province sent his check for seven hundred dollars, covering his own and the subscriptions of the340 officials under him, though he felt free to criticize foreign intervention in financial and railway matters in his province. The governor of Chekiang province subscribed one hundred dollars, Ex-grand Councilor Chu gave one hundred dollars, Colonel Niu gave two hundred dollars.

The University of Pennsylvania has a similarly popular medical department at Canton, and Harvard University plans shortly to have a medical branch at Shanghai. Their choice of effort is perfect in wisdom.

The Shangtung Union University, now located at Wei, will probably be moved to Tsinan, the capital of the province in which Confucius and Mencius were born. It is a union of the American Presbyterian and the British Baptists, and later the Anglicans, the American Baptists, Congregationalists and Methodists will join. The total endowment of this effective university is only $35,000. There are five hundred students. There are collegiate, science, pedagogical, medical, Chinese, athletic and women’s departments. There is an attractive, towered, large main building, science hall, dormitories, museum and a unique observatory. The chief members of the faculty are the well-known Messrs. Bergen, Hayes, Bruce, Burt, Luce and Whitcher, and the college is able to draw upon the many foreign notables at Peking and Tientsin for popular lectures. China urgently needed advanced education. The individual missions, brilliant in parts, were in general endowed so poorly that they could not furnish it. Therefore they united all over China, and better results are being obtained in specialization by this intelligent method, which has established an example for the western world to follow. Subscriptions should as usual be sent to the mission favored by one’s early training or allegiance, and when they reach China they are applied in some needy department of the union work. In union, there is no lapping341 over or duplication, and the result is efficiency. When any member of the union lags, a united appeal is addressed to the home board. The high aim of this extensive University of Shangtung is to have an income of $150,000 a year. In all these universities the preparatory and pedagogical departments are not neglected. The need is urged of a large assembly hall, library, science hall, dormitories, scientific equipment, Y. M. C. A., etc., at Tsinan for this university, which stands where four great roads of influence meet and its opportunity is therefore inspiring. China, Britain, Germany and Japan come together closely in Shangtung province, and the university’s sphere is so wide a one that the present constricted income is insufficient. The students contribute nearly $2,000 in fees, though many students must necessarily be taught free. Shangtung University has always stood high for its special work in translating and printing important books into Mandarin Chinese. It is interesting that the students have developed choral work perhaps more than most of the colleges. China has neglected music in the recent centuries, but St. John’s, Nanking and Shangtung Universities are teaching it to her again.

The Pei Yang University, of Tientsin, is the leading engineering and technical institute of China. Its teachers are Americans, British and Germans. English is taught. It aims to be the Stevens Institute, or Boston Tech. of China. The Chinese board has been sometimes obstructive, depending on the intelligence of the directors. However, the school does wonderful and will do better work when affairs become settled in China. Its hope, as in every other institute, is in its graduates even more than in its professors, and certainly more than its native directors of the old type! It will soon have the fine German technical schools of Tsingtau to emulate. The Pei Yang University has sent out many342 notable graduates who have at once advanced to leadership in China. One is now vice-president of China.

The Shansi University at Tai Yuan, the provincial capital, was established in 1901 by the English Baptists with “Boxer” indemnity funds restored to China at the request of Doctor Timothy Richard, the promoter of the Red Cross in China, and president of the university for ten years. It is English and Chinese in personnel, and has passed through bloody waters in the many disturbances which have surged around it.

Peking University is also a union in educational work of the American Congregationalists, American Presbyterians and London Mission, and in medical work, of the Methodists and Anglicans in addition. This is decidedly the leading medical college in China, and includes a women’s medical college, nurses’ training school, hospital and dispensaries. World famous names in connection with the university are Doctor W. A. P. Martin, Doctor J. W. Lowrie, Doctor Smith, Doctor Wherry, Doctor Fenn, Doctor Leonard, Doctor Hall, Doctor Mackey, Doctor Young, and Doctor Lewis. The medical school led in the heroic efforts to stamp out the virulent pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1911.

At beautiful Hangchow, the “bore city,” the American Presbyterians are erecting a full college equipment on a lovely site outside the city wall, on a hill near the water. The students run the grounds, gardens, roads, etc., on a “self-help” plan. The famous mission press, which is doing wonderful work in translating and publishing, is retained, however, at cultured Soochow for the present. At Soochow the American Methodists have established a large university. It has a prominent clock tower, an unusual feature, which is highly appreciated by the modernized Chinese.

343 At Wuchang, where the republican revolution broke out in October, 1911, the American Episcopals have Boone University, and Oxford and Cambridge will establish here the extensive university on which Lord Salisbury’s son, Lord Cecil, after his visit to China, wrote a charming book in 1910. At Canton is the Canton Christian College.

These are the leading universities. The Chinese themselves intended to establish government universities, high and preparatory schools, at all the twenty-one provincial capitals, but to date only those at Peking, Paoting, Tsinan, Tai Yuen, Nanking, Shanghai, Chingtu, Yunnan, Tientsin, Hangchow, Fuchau and Canton have been established, and they have drawn mainly on the mission universities and foreign-trained students for professors. The new education was naturally organized by the government first in the metropolitan province of Pechili. It included a university at Tientsin, a provincial college at Paoting, seventeen industrial schools, three high, forty-nine elementary normal, two medical, three foreign language, eight commercial, five agricultural, thirty middle, one hundred and seventy-four upper, one hundred and one mixed, eight thousand six hundred primary, one hundred and thirty-one girls’ schools and one hundred and seventy-four night schools in the industrial cities. Is this not an inspiringly comprehensive program? Both the Board of Education and Yuan Shih Kai deserve credit for largely taking the suggestions of the foreigners at Peking and Tientsin in establishing in Pechili province this system of modern education, which stands as a model for the other twenty provinces and territories. Many modern buildings have been erected, but where sufficient money was not available, the fine old temples and barracks have been impressed, and the surprised sad gods overthrown. In many cases the gentry344 and guilds have donated buildings. The government finds its greatest difficulty in securing teachers, and they are exhausting the supply that the mission universities are able to certificate. This new proof of the friendliness of missions had much to do with the disinclination of the republicans and imperialists to take the lives of foreigners during the recent revolution. In preparing pupils to go abroad for further training, the government has maintained at Peking a special school. At Chingtu, the capital of Szechuen province, the provincial government established railway, medical, normal, mining, engineering, agricultural, foreign language and military schools, and owing to its success Szechuen led in the agitation for provincialism versus nationalization in railway and other matters, and this really opened the revolution in September, 1911, a month before the outbreak in Hupeh province. The students in the universities at the provincial capitals are clothed and boarded at government expense, the student signing for three years and promising to answer a draft for government service.

Japan has lost her grip to a degree, and America particularly and Britain have taken her place in educating China. The Chinese complain of the “enormous” cost of a foreign teacher, but have him or her they will! The American educational advance has been astonishingly brilliant. What America is doing for Chinese education can be judged by the statement that the American Presbyterian Church alone has three hundred and fifty-nine institutions of learning in China, and I believe the Methodist denomination has even more, for that church leads in world missions, as is well known. America does not pay for all of this, for no race surpasses the Chinese in generosity and “self-help.” The Hackett Presbyterian Women’s Medical College of Canton, under the charge of the celebrated345 Doctor Mary Fulton, aims “to supply each city with two modern physicians.” What a brave contract! Charities and orphanages are the special field of the Roman church; there is no work that can equal theirs in China in this regard. The Protestants and Chinese prefer to train the more advanced mind. The American Presbyterians have a beautiful high school at Fati, Canton; an academy at Ningpo, a high school at the south gate of Shanghai, and an academy at Peking. The list is too long to enumerate. The annual reports of the various Foreign Mission Boards make illuminating reading and give the names of the heroic educational pioneers. The brilliant work of the presses, like those at Shanghai, Peking, Wei Hsien (Shangtung) and Soochow, the ten thousand little rills of income, the contributions of the broad-minded Chinese officials and students, are all surprising. How much they are doing with so little money! How much they could do for American and British educational influence in China with only a little more money! It is “up to” the American and British business man, if he decides to be both kind and “wise in his generation.”

The women of America and Britain are doing their share, especially in hospitals and nurses’ and girls’ schools. The American Presbyterian women have at Canton and elsewhere model institutions, similar to many throughout the crowded land, which land is going to heal itself, with foreign help, of all its diseases: bodily, mental, economical and international. I have known several people of late who have inherited legacies, and happening to read a China book, they were curious to see what a little money, that came so easily, altruistically “invested” there, would do. They have erected a few hospitals and schools, and their joy has not ceased when they saw the wonderful results in the able hands to346 which the philanthropy was committed. The impetus they thus gave to the progress of the world was greater than the same amount would have caused anywhere else.

For the girls and women of China, St. Hilda’s School, at Wuchang, where the revolution broke out on October 10, 1911, does a great work under the auspices of the American Episcopal women of Philadelphia, a few of whom bought land outside the east gate of that old capital, where the famous Chang Chih Tung was for many years viceroy. The girls’ college sprang up under the watchful eye of Bishop Roots, who has made a noble name among the Chinese. The opportunity of this school is to be yet the Barnard College or the Girton College of China, and of the need of it, by women for women, all this volume could not say enough. No land is sure of its progressive condition until the women are freed, educated and progressive. The enjoyment of continued progress by the men is not certain until the girls and women are swinging alongside of them on the great road of life at the same pace, and with equal opportunity. There can not be real companionship between inferior and superior; women and men must be equal. Therefore the eyes of all China and America and Britain are on such institutions as St. Hilda’s. It, too, is run on the share principle, fifty dollars per girl per year, to put a modern woman as a lighthouse in China to advance the world cause of womanhood.

The Yangtze valley, in particular, is the sphere of America’s influence, and where the high tide of rebellion swept, America’s educational influence will now follow, since fate has launched her there in the colleges mentioned, and others not mentioned for want of space. Lord Cecil plans to have the vast English foundation of Oxford and Cambridge Colleges at Wuchang (see his enthusiastic book),347 and if America has its equal at the other end of the brimming Yangtze at Shanghai, honors will be equal. Germany is not going to neglect the opportunity, as she has plans for Nanking and Hankau. Much luck to her. Contentia in bona! America and England have won a vast advantage, however, over Germany and France, in that China, on recommendation of the Board of Education, has adopted English as the official language for the study of science, geography, travel and international politics in all Chinese universities, technical colleges and high schools. This victory was brought about through the influence of the Chinese students who had studied in Britain and America, and a comparison of the technical and educational books issued by the different countries, the report being that the English language had three to one in its favor. When the nations wish to study about China or any foreign country, they have to take up or translate books written in English, for the American and Briton are the most curious concerning the world’s countries and naturally the authorities on comparative ethnology and international economics.

The Y. M. C. A. has come to China, and at Tientsin maintains a school as an adjunct pf the religious, literary and athletic work. Industrial schools have been opened, and they will do a vast work in recovering China’s lost arts and extending her commerce. There is a government industrial school at Peking for the production of the famous and almost lost cloisonné, rugs, furniture, etc. The patterns for rugs are memorized. At Tientsin the pattern is hung over the worker’s head. The schoolboys of old China were most familiar with the first two lines of the Trimetrical Classic: “Man in the beginning was essentially holy.” In Mandarin this is pronounced: “Jin chi tsu, sing pun shen.” The pronunciation of the province of Szechuen is a little heavier,348 viz: “Jen dze tsou, sin pen chan.” Now the boys of New China are concluding that “Man in the beginning was essentially misinformed!”

That the Chinese can become linguists has seldom been more uniquely illustrated than in the following experience related by Prince Henri d’Orleans. He was about to travel through the territories of the aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan province. The difficulty was to find an interpreter. The general interpreter who only knew the Mandarin pronunciation of the north, or the Cantonese pronunciation of the south, would not do. The prince found at the Mission d’Etrangeres at Tali, in remote Yunnan, an interpreter who knew the Lolo dialects, and though he could not converse with the prince in French or English, he could converse fairly well in Latin, and they got along splendidly. It appears that the Catholic fathers had taught the convert from the Latin Fathers, Jerome, Chrysostom, etc!

Eager as the Chinese are to learn from text-books, they more eagerly cry for exhibits which appeal to the eye, and the establishment of museums, heretofore neglected, except in the few universities already mentioned, should be undertaken. Take one week’s records at the Hongkong Museum, for instance. Four hundred and sixteen non-Chinese and 163 Chinese used the library, but 193 non-Chinese and 3,100 Chinese studied in the museum. The resourceful Canadian government sent a traveling exhibit through China. It is what the Chinese call for. We shall yet see floating and wheeled museums, in parvo, throughout the empire, as educational bodies and merchants appreciate this as the quickest way to approach the Chinese mind.

When the revolution of 1911 had developed strength, the Chinese government found itself unable to remit to the thousands of students who were studying in foreign countries.349 The American and British universities, without exception, nobly offered to aid any needy Chinese student. The move was brilliant and humane, and will be bread scattered upon returning waters of appreciation some day.

The new representative assemblies have necessitated the introduction of shorthand in China. The Tsze Chen Yuan (National Assembly) in session at Peking as early as August, 1911, ordered night classes to be opened for learning the art, so that the civil service clerks might attend. I know that missionaries, helpless in committing to paper accurately the sounds of the scores of Lolo, Miaotsze, and other dialects in Yunnan, Szechuen and Kweichou provinces (where aborigines abound) have had recourse effectually to phonography. If the brilliant Dickens, John Hay, the American secretary of state, who founded the policy of “non-partition of China,” and many others, were phonographers, why might a missionary not be one also!

“Life is a river; if you are not going forward on it, you are falling behind.”

“Moments are more precious than jewels, for the first can not be recovered if lost; the second may be found.”

“Be as cross to yourself as you are to others; be as sweet to others as you are to yourself.”

“The downy chin goes over it; the bristly chin goes round it; or, the young head for the long jump, and the old head for the long thought.”

“If you insist on every one being like you, look nowhere but in your mirror.”

XIX
NOTES ON CHINESE LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE

Among the treasures of Buddhist monasteries are the stone tablets called “Pei Tze.” It used to be the custom of celebrated visitors to write an epigram, a witticism, a poem, or a sentence of philosophy, which the monks had a stone-cutter engrave as near the beautiful chirography as possible on these tablets, which constitute through the empire a great literary treasure which is not likely now to be renewed. Not a little of the sententiousness is humorous. A sign hanging up in a celebrated Buddhist monastery in the Chingtu plain, Szechuen province, makes this merry reference to fleas, which constitute the largest part of the present immense population of China: “There are animals with more legs than ponies at Inns other than this Inn.” Another popular humorous motto is: “One can carry kindness too far, such as the fisherman who had such pity for fish that he would only go fishing with straight hooks.” The idiom for inaction is: “keeping one’s hands in one’s sleeves.” For “eating crow” the Chinese say: “eating a dumb man’s bitterness.” More of their wisdom follows:

“Meekness and gentleness are the boat and the sail for crossing the rough stream of this world.”

“The truths that we least wish to hear are those which it is most to our advantage to know.”

352 “The way to glory lies through a palace; to riches through a market; to virtue through a desert.”

“The prison is shut night and day, yet is always full; the temples are always open, yet you find no one in them.”

“The dog in the kennel barks at his fleas, but the dog who is hunting does not feel them.”

“The wise man does not speak of all he does, but he does nothing that can not be spoken of.”

The Occidental manner of emphasizing a plea is: “If you don’t follow this advice, look out for the consequences.” Here is the Chinese phrase, as concluding Wu Ting Fang’s plea, in December, 1911, to the Prince Regent Chun to abdicate: “Our voice is hoarse and our tears are exhausted; no more can be said.” Their idiom for: “I’m not my own boss” is: “I eat another’s bread; I watch at the door.” More of their proverbs are:

“Who is he, though he never goes out, yet has seen all that is under the sky? The scholar among his books.”

“It is with human nature as with wines: age sweetens some and sours others.”

353 “Going through college doesn’t mean that the college has gone through you.”

“It is easier to escape a splinter that you see, than a beam that you don’t see.”

“Your parents died when you were a child,” is the bitterly sarcastic way in which the Chinese express that one has no manners, or up-bringing. The following repartee is credited to almost every traveled Chinese official, but it originated in the imagination of an Occidental wit, because the Chinese consider manners and forgiveness the first rule of public conduct. Official Bu was asked by an impertinent Occidental why he wore such a ludicrous appendage as a queue. “Why do you wear a mustache?” asked the Oriental, “Because I’ve such an awful mouth.” “I thought so, from your first question,” was the Oriental’s rejoinder.

Yu Yuen, a satirist of 400 B. C., when China was divided into many states, ruled by inferior princes, wrote in defense of the able prime ministers who were trying to save the states: “I, too, am glad I can not fall to the intellect and moral level of princes.”

Chang Jo Hu, A. D. 800, with Isaiah-like emphasis reminds even long-lived proud China that

Po Chuh Ih, A. D. 772, once president of the Board of War, and later an exile, wrote some Scott-like lays, including the Never Ending Wrong, and the famous Lute Girl, which is full of silver music coming over a moon-lit lake. At the lake he meets the lute-girl, once a court favorite, but now old and deserted. The poet does not try to disguise the truth. He says:

Tai Chen, a poet, speaking for the Emperor Ming Huang, who is pursued to Mount Omi, in Szechuen, by the rebel, An Lu Shen, writes: “The star of empire pales before the morning beams of conquering foes.” Some of his lyrics show pretty conceits like: “The pansies are faces of loves that have died.” His Ruined Home reads like parts of Solomon’s wisdom.

Tai Chen was preceded by the most famous poet of China, Li Po (A. D. 702). He was born in Szechuen province. His patron was the Emperor Ming Huang, then a wanderer, as we have stated. A Browning-like poet of the world, he talks of the Tang emperors of Nanking, patrons of sculptors, “calling down the dreams of the gods and imprisoning them in stone.” In an ode to Nanking, he tells about: “a woman asleep by a loom, and a beautiful dream guiding her fingers along a glorious pattern that is known only to the gods.” He believes in the355 high mission of the poet, for he sings of “the fadeless lines of fire, running back to the births of immortal poets, who now walk amidst the stars.” Like others of the Chinese, and many of the new race of American poets, he has a strong sympathy with trade unions. He addressed an ode To the Golden Presence of Guild Brothers. He sings mightily of war in a song To my Fatherland, and then lapses thus into a sadder note when he reflects upon whom the sorrows of war come: “The pensive washwoman sends her heart to the Tartar war in far Kansu province to find her conscript soldier husband who suffers in the snows.”

Kao Shih, a contemporary poet, was a tremendous believer in the personal soul. He wrote striking verse because of his love of the occult, and his tendency to give to natural phenomena dramatic personalities.

Ou Yang Hsiu, of the following dynasty, the Sung, 1007 A. D., himself a governor, and historian of the Tang dynasty, wrote a famous “Autumn” poem, which is truly a march of Elizabethan metaphors. He showed, too, a cynicism which was like the Elizabethan:

Abbé Huc’s servant, Wei Chau, picked up in the book stores of Nanchang, in Kiangsi province, pamphlets with the following brilliant epigrams, which are not surpassed in any literature, and which might have been written by Wilde:

“My books speak to my mind; my friends to my heart; all the rest speak to my ears only.”

356 We call our printed Bible the “Word of God.” The Chinese have an expression somewhat similar. Their beautiful ideographs are delightfully called “Eyes of God.” The following is an effort of the Manchus in literature, translated idiomatically, and it shows the literary feebleness of the relapsed old conquerors. It is the national anthem which the dynasty gave by edict to the Chinese to sing at the opening of the rebellion in October, 1911:

The omnivorous Goethe made some investigation of Chinese literature, and here is his opinion of what he had read: “The people think, act and feel almost entirely as we do, although with them everything is clearer, calmer and more moral. In their arrangements everything is sensible, bourgeois, without great passion or poetry. What is moral, proper and in strict moderation is considered.” Now and then more or less distinct evidences of Chinese influence on the Greeks come to view, though the thread west of the headwaters of the Tarim is now lost. Many of the doctrines of Pythagoras and Plato are similar to those of Chinese Lao Tse, and therefore they may have been instructed357 by the Chinese sage, whose book could have gone overland to Greece with the caravans of silk.

The advent of the many newspapers has made a great difference in the nerves and consciousness of the Chinese. From being the most stolid of peoples, indifferent to famine, flood, war, persecution by the officials or by the favored, poverty, pain, hardships physical and mental, they have become as restive, impatient, nervous and self-conscious as other races. Famine and flood used to sweep down and destroy millions. What was the use of complaining, since no one knew, nobody cared, and the victim might as well not care? Now, if disaster takes off not a million men, but one man, it is important, the newspapers chronicle it, and show how the lot of others may be the lot of the individual. The sufferer himself cries: “Woe is to me; isn’t this unendurable; help me; I can not, I WILL not bear it.” The newspaper has developed the ego. The Chinese has become self-conscious and nervous. He can not, he will not hereafter bear anything more than other peoples. In the August, 1911, floods and the October, 1911, revolution more fuss was made over the loss of a thousand men and women than over the loss of hundreds of thousands in the Taiping rebellion in the same region in 1853.

Not long ago, a weekly at Hongkong appealed to its public for a new name. I quote some of the names to reveal what the Far East thinks of itself in a humorous or serious light: “Bird of Freedom”; “Bubbles”; “China Answers”; “Cathay’s Looking Glass”; “Chop Sticks”; “East of East”; “Fragrant Waters” (the translation of Hongkong); “Fire Crackers”; “Murmurs and Funnosities”; “Mixed Pickles”; “Peak and Praya”; “Topical Tropical Times”; “The Griffin” (a beginner in the Orient); “The Gong”; “The Hit”; “Humming Top”; “Imperial Outpost”;358 “The Lantern”; “Merry-Go-Round”; “The Palm”; “The Pearl”; “Sun of Cathay”; “The Typhoon”; “The Ferret”; “The Colonel”; “Maskee” (the Chinese way of saying “never mind”); “Puckee” (the Oriental way of saying “O.K.”). The Chinese newspaper is a success, commercially, patriotically and educationally. Millions now read it every day. It gave the best and earliest news of the October, 1911, revolution. There are Chinese newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Vancouver, Singapore, Penang, Hongkong, Sydney, Paris and London.

Chinese plays recite the history of the clans and early states. Even the boatman and laborer are familiar with them. Every hill, valley, and reach and fall of a river north of the Yangtze has its hero and story. This would seem to prove that the race first came through the Tarim and Kansu gates to the new land. The rich, who aim to control trade routes and privileges depending upon popular tolerance, in Roman fashion give free theatricals to the village folk. The acting is excellent and spirited; the feats of memory remarkable, and the costumes gorgeous. “Once an actor always an actor,” they say, regarding the custom of youths being bought or apprenticed by the traveling troupes. Guild halls and some monasteries have theaters in connection with the compound. A restaurant is run during the long series of plays. You hurry out to dine when the play you are least interested in is rung in by cymbal. Bets and lawsuits between the guilds and villages are often settled by the loser paying for the visit of a theatrical troupe. Beautiful specimens of the blue and gold gowns of the emperor-actor can be secured at the silk shops of the treaty ports, and in some of the Oriental shops of New York, San Francisco and London.

The American and British college graduate wears a hood;359 the Chinese wears a yellow panel on his breast and back (it may be changed under the republicans to blue). When Yuan Shih recently took the oath of office as provisional president, two bonzes of the famous Lama Temple at Peking stepped up, and presented him with honorary panels of yellow silk.

The incident will be recalled in Judges, Chapter 12, where the Gileadites slew the Ephraimites who could only pronounce the word “shibboleth” as “sibboleth”. The Manchus are thicker of tongue than the Chinese. An ingenious story got about in October, 1911, that the rebels of General Li’s army were testing some disguised Manchus with the pronunciation of the numeral six, “Liu”, before killing them in retaliation for a massacre, the Manchus being unable to get the sound far enough back in their mouths and around their tongue in the proper Chinese fashion. The proper tone, lisp and aspirate makes all the difference, for the same written word “ho” means river and fire; the word “shui” means water and sleep; “chih” means gas and red, and so on.

English, and not German, has been prescribed as the language to be used in the study of science and world politics. The Chinese idiom and ideograph could not come near enough to distinct expression. For instance, the best they could do with fire-engine, steam-roller, Elijah’s chariot of fire, and automobile, was to call them all “fire carriage”; and electricity, globe, and flash-light were all three “lightning breath”. Geography, the world, and panorama were all called “All Under Heaven” (Tien Hsia). “Heavenly Literature” (Tien Wen) represented the words theology and astronomy. Lacking pronouns, the language adopts peculiar expedients. Thus an affix meaning “near” answers to “my”, and “that side” answers to “your”. That is, “near360 house” is my house; “that side house” is obviously your house. If this does not clearly convey the idea, the arbitrary ideographic affix of “honorable” and “despisable” will; that is, the “honorable house” is your house of course, and the “despisable house” with so effusively mannerly a people could only be my house. On account of their experience with the difficult and beautiful Chinese character which requires accuracy, the Chinese penman who learns to write English, does it in the most beautiful Spencerian copper-plate. The same care and skill is shown in copying drawings from our modern text-books, which have been translated for their new schools. The Chinese think in pictures. The characters for “many stars, clouds wait” means a clear night, as “clouds many, stars wait” means a gathering storm. This is why they have chosen English for its exactness, as they can not well express the word gathering. “It is bad walking” is rendered by “Walk not attain” (Tsou puh te). Passenger boats or skiffs are not so named. Those in use at Hongkong are called “san pans” (meaning three boards), and the famous light boats of the Yangtze gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien are called “wu pans” (five boards). The forcible etymology of some Chinese words is illustrated by the words for “fan tan” gambling, which literally means “turn and part”. The cup is turned over a lot of coins, and the rest of the heap is brushed aside. Then the cup is raised, and the croupier, with his separator-stick, parts four coins at a time from the lot, until four or a particle are left, this being the winning number of the game. That the old southern Chinese, as contrasted with the succeeding northern Mongol invaders, invented the language is shown in many of the words. For instance, the word for road or path is called throughout China a “dry way”, and not a road or street. Only the central and southern provinces361 flood the fields for rice culture, leaving the raised dry paths.

Samuel Pollard, a missionary working in Yunnan, is compiling an alphabet and reducing to writing the speech of the hitherto unrecorded aboriginal tribes, the Miao and Lolos. He plans then to give them some western literature in return for the ethnological riches which they give us. They are the most unique people in the world, older even than the Chinese. Their fortresses are in Szechuen, Yunnan and Kweichow provinces, and there are, perhaps, two millions of this fearless fighting race. From dimmest history they have been pressed back to the mountain tops by the Chinese, who have spread out from their original home in the Yellow River valley with four hundred million people. That the Chinese have impressed some of their language, as far as necessary trade goes, on the aborigines can be seen from the following table, there remaining only two (two and five) sounds in these eight, which have not been somewhat influenced:

The writer in the Antiquity chapter of a former book adopted the Biblical account of the creation, that the original Chinese (Chou clan’s ancestors) spread through Turkestan, along the Tarim valley, to their first known home in Shensi province. Doctor Stein has found on the site of362 the ruined temple of Hangayi Tuti at Khoten, in Chinese Turkestan, birchbark and other manuscript in an unknown language. These point the way to a further search. The Asiatic Society, of Bengal, Calcutta, has acquired from a Montenegrin gentleman, who traveled in Turkestan, five leaves of brownish yellow manuscripts eight by six inches, in an unknown language, which wait to reveal possible wonders of China’s prehistoric story. The pages show that they were one part of an extensive work now lost in the sands and camp ashes of central Asia. There is room for emulation by America, Britain and China of Russia’s archeological research in Chinese Turkestan, for the world wants to know more of ancient China, now that the New China has become important. The professors of the American colleges in China are sufficiently learned to make a beginning in preserving China’s antiquities, which are now in great danger of being lost forever. The rage, as far as the Chinese themselves are concerned, is altogether for the new and utilitarian. The modernized Chinese have already forgotten their conservative Hanlin Academy.

XX
LIFE OF FOREIGNERS IN CHINA

I know of no place where music, lanterns, romantic mountain scenery, seascapes far below and delightful society in an alien setting combine more pleasantly than at the Peak Club, Hongkong. Above the passing clouds which now and then whirl around as in Rubens’ pictures, over the purple Pacific Ocean which foams around hilly islands, over the high hills as you ascend from the royal colony of Victoria, on a terrace, they have graded a velvet lawn. Here the military and naval bands are brought for a promenade concert in the soft night of the fragrant Orient, beneath Bowring’s “wide Cathayan tree”. The band of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, from Mt. Austin barracks, plays the stirring Welsh national march, The Men of Harlech. The men sing the chorus:

Flowering plants in large colored Chinese kongs are set out everywhere. The stars and moon shine. The pictured364 lanterns gently swing, and the horn lanterns of Ningpo are opal soft. The light flashes from swords, uniforms and jewels. The blue-gowned Oriental servants noiselessly pass refreshments. Not a Chinese house is in view, though half a million Chinese live hidden in the foothills. On the hundred peaks of Hongkong Island, the lights of a hundred palaces and villas of the merchant princes shine out. Down the winding cement paths, chairs bearing lanterns and carrying guests are borne with their rhythmic swing.

Every lady and every man present has come from far, and knows much of life and geography. The conversation tires not, for there is something of great interest to tell. Kitchener’s brother (Kitchener himself would not come—he never moves in “society”); General Wood, of the United States Army; Commander Greeley, United States Navy, of North Polar fame; Admiral Scott, of the British Navy, who invented the large gun “dotter” that made the heavy marksmanship possible, and whose 4.7 gun saved Ladysmith; Nathan, the hero governor of the typhoon and Hankow holocaust; the governor of the Philippines at the far stretched-out line of America’s new fame and empire; Kipling himself full of his colored phrases; authors of books on China, many of whom live in Hongkong; German, French and Russian commanders, whose impetuous ambition has made many moves that have nearly started world wars; ordnance and commissariat colonels, who, without a hitch, have provisioned famous international military relief expeditions; prince and pauper explorers who are one in the camaraderie of adventure for science; curio collectors who are raking the world to enrich western museums with enravishing art; Ponting, the photographer who went with the intrepid Commander Scott to the South Pole; seven-year indentured “griffins” who are365 second sons of noble houses and whose inheritance of style is a millstone around the necks of their impoverished incomes; subalterns who are chafing at the bit to be let make a mark like Kitchener; visiting lieutenants from Manila who would emulate Funston in the Philippines; Japanese doctors who have beat the world in discovering Bacillariaceæ; Parsees who have founded universities and have, therefore, dined with “my friend, the king”; the merchant princes and the missionary apostles of China, whose knowledge would fill books; women of grace, beauty and learning, nibbling at sweet cinnamon, musk and lotus; international spies of both sexes from the notorious Brussels headquarters; all move over the quiet grass, listening to the haunting strains of the bewitching music, which makes the heathen hills unalien under the swinging lanterns and the white-riding moon.

When you lift your glass to say “prosit”, “here’s how”, “à bon santé”, or “here’s to you, old man”, with no national reservations, and a feeling that all traveled men are brothers; and some fraternally wider day possibly you will not shiver when John Celestial, Friend Nippon, and Aryan Bengal are admitted to the delightful company gathered under the whispering bamboos and floating sandal scent of the Peak Club of Hongkong.

It is the same interesting story on ladies’ night at the Bund Club of Canton; the Jockey Club of Shanghai; the Hankau Club; the Tientsin Club; the delightful conversazioni at Sir Francis Aglen’s on Customs Street, Peking, when the National Customs Band plays; the Gouverneur’s “Palais” at Saigon and Hué; the International Club at Harbin; Government House at Wei-Hai-Wei; or the consulate at Chifu. It whets the imagination to be dancing within sight of the stacked rifles at366 the front, and you reverse Tennyson and say in Locksley Hall: “Better one night in Cathay than a cycle of Park Lane” (or Fifth Avenue)! You recite the thrilling incidents, such as the ball which Wellington attended on the eve before Waterloo, etc.! Certainly the foreigner in recent years has never known when he would be called upon at Hongkong, Canton, Hankau, Shanghai, Tientsin, Amoy, Macao, Fuchau, etc., to rush out, in either his dress or his business suit, or possibly his night pajamas, with his gun, to defend property, some kind of government, and the white man’s rights and habits of trade and international civilization. Not only white men have suffered and borne, but the foreign heroines of diplomacy, missions and trade of Wuchang, Hankau, Canton, Peking, Tientsin, Chingtu, Chungking, Amoy, Fuchau, etc., are numbered in hundreds.

The foreigner in China enters upon his sporting and social enjoyment keenly, because his sufferings from climate, alienation and danger are also keen. Taking his life altogether, he deserves more than he receives as a reward for his work, and he and his wife are unusually interesting people to meet, as I know from three years’ life in their honored midst.

The human beasts of burden—the rickshaw coolies of Hongkong, Shanghai, and the treaty ports—are directed by little of their own language. Only a few of the mercantile men on station learn the language. The foreign tourist generally learns two words, “kwai se” (go) and “man-man” (stop-stop), and the coolies, like beasts, therefore depend for directions as they race along in the heat, on a tap on the left or right shaft to indicate which street the “fare” desires to turn up. Hongkong proposes to have printed on a large bill-board at every chair and rickshaw stand a list of fares. Hongkong and Shanghai have become367 great tourist centers, whole shiploads landing there from New York and San Francisco, and the tourist’s generosity or lack of local information permits him to pay so large a fare that the expenses of the resident are raised beyond endurance. The example of Hongkong might well be copied at every tourist center over the world. “A fair price, but not a foolish price” is the watchword in these new days of economy and efficiency, because world-waste can be tolerated no longer.

The regiments which from time to time come to garrison Hongkong reveal many interesting traits in their customs and uniform. The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, fresh from the Boer War, wore three silk ribbons down their backs. They are the only British regiment which is permitted thus to mourn the deprivation of the old “pig tail” of the bewigged regiments of the Georges, which custom they were the last regiment to discontinue. The Lincolnshires wear a band of green to show that they are foresters recruited in Robin Hood’s country. The Inneskilling Fusiliers and the Somersets at Tientsin retain their traditional territorial peculiarities. The Cameronians are the only British regiment which is allowed to bear arms into church service, as a reminder of the old strenuous days of surprise when the clans might leap like a wolf from behind even the pulpit. There are so many branches of the historic British service in Hongkong’s, Tientsin’s, etc., garrison life that American tourists are delightfully entertained and instructed in tradition that is far from uninteresting. The British have found that to recruit and fight a man as a number is not a success, as compared with the picturesque traditions in a territorial army of uniform, customs, names, fetish, romance, glory, flags, distinctive rights, etc. In other words, they humor Tommy Atkins as a boy, and he fights for them like a man, every368 time it is necessary. This was shown when the swagger regiments of the Guards of London, under Generals French, Paget and Roberts hit the Boer lines as hard as the Royal Welsh, who are recruited from sturdy fearless miners. Bret Harte’s “Caucasian showed that he was no more played out” on those occasions than he was when he rushed El Caney and San Juan Hill led by Roosevelt, Lawton, Chaffee and Wheeler. The Chinese of Peking and Tientsin in 1900 had a chance to see the brilliant performance of the American Fourteenth Infantry, Sixth Cavalry, and the marines under Captain McCalla of the cruiser Newark, and recently the fine Fifteenth Infantry, U. S. A., has renewed the very favorable gentlemanly impression at Tientsin and along the railway line to Peking.

When the military weddings take place at St. John’s Cathedral, Hongkong, and the cathedrals at Shanghai and Tientsin, it is customary for the brother officers of the groom to unsheath their swords and make an arch of steel over Mars and Venus as they make their exit from the church. This old custom is not often seen elsewhere than in India and China, and would be a pretty one to adopt for military weddings the world over. The Germans particularly would take to it with zest; in fact, they have just adopted it in their “kirche” at Tsingtau, North China, and the Americans may adopt it in the smart military life of Manila.

Important newspapers published in English are the Times, at Tientsin; the Mail, Telegraph, Press and Post, of Hongkong; the Herald, News, Mercury, Press, Far Eastern Review and Times, of Shanghai; the Post, of Hankau; the Gazette and Times, of Amoy, and the Echo, of Fuchau. The Times and the Cable News, of Manila; the Free Press and Echo, of Singapore; and the Englishman, of Calcutta,369 may be included, together with the Chronicle, of Japan, because they circulate in China ports, “nothing that is Oriental being alien” to their fascinating news columns. Their editorials are illuminating, and often exhibit in their cultured English positive genius. They are an authoritative source of information on the absorbing theme of golden Cathay, and the interest of the brave Occidental pioneer in her awakening.

Water polo, swimming, launch, golf, cricket, tennis, yacht, dramatic, polo, etc., clubs are established at nearly all the treaty ports, and inter-Hong, inter-service, international and inter-regimental contests are constantly going on to take the edge off ennui in the long day of Oriental exile in a seven-year indenture. For those inclined to literature, science and ethnology, there are notable library and Asiatic associations, and some of them superintend an indispensable press. Royalty visits Hongkong frequently and encourages every phase of life in the premier colony. On the occasion of the Duke of Connaught’s last visit with his family they received the military at the landing pier and the populace at the City Hall; unveiled statues to the late King Edward and King George; lunched with the governor and council; attended a meeting of the Scottish Rite Masons, lunched with the mess of the Indian frontier regiment camped out on the foothills of China; attended a Chinese theater; ate at a Chinese restaurant; attended a daylight try-out of the racing ponies, Indian-breds and Walers at the Wong-Nei-Chong Jockey Club; and went with “Hoi-Polloi” on a week-end trip on the steamer Fat Shan to see Canton’s sights, and “tiffin”, as does the whole world of globe-trotters, on the third veranda of the five-storied pagoda. German royalty is just as active at Tsingtau, French nobility at Saigon and Haiphong, Portugese nobility at lovely Macao, and the370 cosmopolitan world at the “Paris of the East”, Shanghai. Of Macao, the famous poet, Sir John Bowring, wrote:

In a former book, The Chinese, I have referred to the high cost of living at Hongkong, Shanghai, etc., as far as rent is concerned. This is because a navy and army have to be maintained. It is well known that Hongkong contributes to the British Budget more pro rata than any part of the long red line of British empire. The man who goes to the hot damp East to advance the cause of imperialism, and who reads Kipling and Gilbert Parker, pays high for it in money as well as health, and he deserves more than he receives. Land values are twice what they are in the suburban cities of New York, such as Brooklyn and Jersey City, and twice what they are in the outlying wards of London. Yaumati is a section of Hongkong’s colony on the China mainland, and values there are not so high as on hilly Hongkong Island. Yet a plot of land 150 by 140 feet, recently sold in Yaumati for $8,700 gold. No American or European should be sent to the treaty ports of the Far East to support any cause, diplomatic, military, commercial, scientific, academic, religious, or international customs,371 who is not given twice the emolument that he would receive at home. Yet the mission leaders in particular generously accept far less than they would receive as workers in America.

The foreigner has a larger list of supplies to pick from than was the case before modern roads were opened and the Chinese were taught to farm for the foreigner’s table. Ice houses, ice machinery, inspected markets, and water tanks for fish all have aided. Not so long ago we in the Far East were benzoate of soda and salicylic acid fiends, the men Doctor Wiley bemoaned; that is to say, our gun was a can-opener, and our game was tinned foods. We could go out into the jungle of Queens Road or the praya, Hongkong; Nanking Road, Shanghai; Kaiser Road, or the Chien Men Fair, Peking; or the bunds at Tientsin, Canton or Hankau, on our way home from office, and with our weapon bring down the foods of Europe, America and Australia, running, of course, not a little risk of ptomaine poisoning, positively ruining our stomachs forever, and becoming a permanent dyspeptic charge upon the nerves of the long-suffering community! Now things are better. Here is a list of fresh foods procurable in the larger ports. In the plague, typhoid or cholera season, some eschew fresh vegetables, and again, when they recall that the farmer is the town scavenger, some eschew fresh vegetables at all seasons! I quote the prices in gold, and give the Chinese word your lordly cook calls out to the obsequious stallsman, so that the stranger may gain an idea that Chinese does not sound unmusical:

The table is justly famous at the following, among other hotels and clubs, and the wines are as cheap as in Europe, because no duty is charged at Hongkong, and only five per cent. in China. In Japan, however, and in French China there is a heavy duty on foreign liquor. The Grand Hotel and the club, at Yokohama; the club, Kobe; Wagon Lits and club, Peking; Imperial Hotel and club, Tientsin; Astor House and club, Shanghai; Peak, Grand, Craigieburn, Hongkong and Astor Hotels and club, at Hongkong; Victoria Hotel and club, Canton; Boa Vista, Hing Kee and club, at Macao. When you go there, next time, tourist, ask for broiled samli or Sek Pan at Macao; toasted rice birds or Ap ducks at Shanghai; Mongolian mutton at Peking; roasted imperial pheasant at Tientsin; preserved comquats in ginger syrup, Hungyan almonds, and Sai Kwa watermelons at Canton; Hung Lai plums at Swatow; Tin Chun Khor apples at Chifu; fresh lichees or Phor Kai turkey at Hongkong, and ruby red persimmons at Yokohama. It is not well to be a gourmand always, but it is well to be an epicure on eminent occasions, so as to remember them forever, from fear that, as in Senator Ingalls’ poem, “Opportunity knocks but once.”

XXI
FOREIGN CITIES OF CHINA

At all the great treaty port cities and colonies, such as Hongkong, Shanghai, Canton, Macao, Tientsin, etc., the stranger is accosted by crowds of rickshaw coolies, venders, fortune-tellers, flower sellers, etc., urging his patronage. Efforts are being made to limit this noise, which is at present like the reception that a football hero gets when he wins a game. The Chinese think we like the attention, because so many of us smile, and if one looks cross, a native wit will call out: “Don’t ask Honorable Sad-Face to ride; he has just lost his white mother-in-law, and must demurely walk behind her ghost.”

The first motor-car used in China was brought to Hongkong by an American dentist in 1900. It was a storage electric vehicle, as the authorities prohibited for a while the use of gasoline on account of the fire risk. Gasoline cars and launches are now used throughout the treaty ports, but kerosene engines are preferred in motor-boats. Kerosene can be procured anywhere in China, but gasoline is procurable only within a limited area.

As a foreign steamer enters a port, a fleet of sanpans throw out hooks and grapple with the ship. This picturesque nuisance the authorities are trying to stop, on account of the danger to life which is involved. The hotel runners, gamblers, and venders desire to be over the rail before any passengers leave. The health authorities desire to376 stop the irrepressible boarders as much as the harbor masters do. The boarders shout out to their countrymen: “You there! Throw over a fastened rope; we want to kotow to you on board, and leave you some of our money in a little game.” Over the rope goes, despite the frantic mate, who is a white man, and like ants, the agile Chinese clamber up the sides of the big trans-Pacific or Suez liner.

Peking, Haukau, Tientsin, Shanghai, Ningpo, Hongkong and other cities of China all have fine race courses, club-houses and stables. In hot Hongkong the racing, gymkana and polo meets occur from September to April. Szechuen and Mongolian ponies, Australian and Indian horses are used, but few American or British, the cost and insurance risk for the latter being too great. Every white man, singly or in clubs, goes in for the “king of sports”, and from a military point of view this interest in racing is very advantageous. The betting is generally on the French method of Paris Mutuels, where those who bet on the winning animal divide the pool, less eight per cent. for club expenses. The Chinese are beginning to understand the horse, and mafoo-jockeys and trainers are being developed. Up and down the China coast the owners ship their champion racers, and the interport rivalries are keen in this, and every other sport. The main ambition is for the owner to ride his horse as a “gentleman-jockey” in the crowning Derby event, and quite a few Hebrew and Parsee owners enter their horses in a widening sporting fraternity, which not long ago was limited to Saxons, and which may yet include Chinese gentry. The stocky Mongolian pony, weighing fifteen hundred pounds, only covers the mile in two minutes and eight seconds, and being hard of mouth and stubborn, he is as likely as not to cover the mile the opposite way to that which has been prescribed by the377 stewards! Not only has Hongkong two very fine golf courses, but Canton, Macao, Hankau, Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, and other treaty ports have excellent courses famous for their novel bunkers of tombstones, etc., and club-houses. During most of the year at Hongkong the game is played on the Wong Nei Chong course shortly after daylight, as after eight o’clock the overhead sun is too hot for that exercise which is essential if one expects to keep “fit” in the Orient.

Many have asked what was the organization of the crown colony of Hongkong Island, where 3,000 white troops, a navy, 2,000 Indian troops, and 500 British, Indian and Chinese police guard and rule 3,000 white men and 500,000 Chinese so successfully that after paying her own expenses, Hongkong continues, what she was the first colony to offer, to pay to the British government a large sum for military and naval expenses. The government is organized under the Home Colonial Office, as follows: a governor, the general of British troops in China, a local colonial secretary, an attorney-general, a colonial treasurer, a director of public works, a registrar-general, a superintendent of police, a clerk of councils, four white civilians, and two Chinese civilians, the six latter serving mainly for the honor. The famous Sanitary Board serves as a separate commission. Almost every one will admit that this is a compact, graftless, powerful and very economical organization, and it has more than answered expectations in a worldwide fame, both for Britain and China. The able newspapers of the ports are the Opposition, and keep the government up to efficiency. There is only one flaw, which may soon be remedied. There should be a director of education, for the purpose of honoring education, and not because education is backward in the progressive colony, which has378 had so many hero governors and cultured heads of department. Their great deeds would fill volumes as yet unwritten, for the many authors who have lived and served at Hongkong have not written of themselves. In modestia magnus! Hongkong has had some famous regiments in its garrison, musical and sporting life. After the South African War the Royal Welsh, Derbyshire and Lincolnshire regiments came. In 1911 the noted Yorkshire Light Infantry were in garrison. Their fine bands, often massed with the Indian regiments’ bands, are the feature in the musical life of the royal colony. The Yorkshires served in garrisoning the foreign settlement on Shameen Island, Canton, when, following the revolution of 1911, the pirate chief Luk seized the forts around Canton. Over at Kowloon, the mainland section of the colony in 1860, was mobilized the army of Sir Hope Grant’s 13,000 British troops and Baron Gros’ 6,000 French troops for the Taku-Peking campaign, and though the existence of their nation was at stake, the southern Chinese did not make a protest against this mobilization on what was then China’s territory.

The municipal organization at Amoy is seven councilmen, two of whom are a clergyman and a physician. They employ a captain-superintendent, and a judge who sits in a “Mixed Court” with a Chinese mandarin. American naval officers were given warm receptions by the Chinese of Amoy when the battleship fleet went round the world in 1908. The island-dotted and hill-surrounded harbor is one of the finest and most beautiful in China, and there is a great future before the port. At one time it was the largest tea port in China. The foreign settlement is on the hilly Kulangsu Island. The streets to see are Likin, Temple, Bootmaker, etc. The native Chamber of Commerce entertained the visiting members of the American Chambers of379 Commerce in 1910 in the Nan Pu Tu Temple. There are notable clubs and theaters; the Kwan Tai and other temples. The scenery is famous for the Valley of 10,000 Boulders, a sort of “Garden of the Gods”, in which the Deified Rock is worshiped. Many of the boulders are engraved by nature-worshipers. Note should be taken of the dainty architecture of the White Stag Temple and gates. The London Mission at the boat landing has partially adopted the Chinese style of architecture in the up-curling cornices. Forts which have seen hard service are placed on the hills. The foreign race course and jockey club is under the hill where the noted Lampotah Temple stands. Amoy is particularly famous for the best oysters, coolie oranges, pumeloes (grapefruit), fish, game, sugar, ginger and grasscloth in China. At Amoy stone buildings are seen everywhere, and extend southward through Fukien and Kwangtung provinces. The natives, who have a little Arab blood, and who often wear turbans as well as hats, are tall, turbulent, humorous and curious. There is much infanticide, because the small farms are only able to support sons. Amoy is connected by railway with Changchow on the Lung (Dragon) River, and it is planned to have a coast railway connecting all these cities from Shanghai to Canton. There is almost daily steamship connection with Hongkong. Native Amoy City is on a large island. The walls, which climb straight up the hills, are about eight miles around. The city was taken by the republicans on November 12, 1911, and there were many subsequent engagements with pirates when American marines from the Monterey had to be landed. Centuries ago the people of this province offered the most stubborn resistance to the Manchus when that dynasty conquered China. The dialect is the most isolated380 in China, showing that the northern ruling Chinese influenced the people very slightly. To instance:

Though the port was formally opened to foreign trade in 1842, the East India Company had hongs here as early as 1661 and up to 1730.

There is much for the antiquarian to trace as he follows the traditions of Arab visits in centuries preceding the Portugese discovery, at Canton. We hear reports that St. Thomas, the disciple, and Mohammed’s uncle journeyed here, taking the route none ever has since, across Persia, India and Burma. The tourist should not fail to visit the noble park of thousands of examination stalls, where the old classical learning held rule from Confucius’ time until recently. There is evidence enough that the state has grasped the new educational conditions recommended by the great Emperor Kwang Hsu, and the Cantonese reformers, in the splendid Kwangtung normal college, which consists of two wings and a tower building in the style of the University of New York. A noble stucco wall, pierced with portholes, surrounds the college. There is also the Canton Christian College, established in the fine Martin Hall. It is supported by Americans. American statesmanship and philanthropy will miss their glorious opportunity if they do not soon erect at Canton the preparatory department of a comprehensive American-Chinese university, the higher classes to be at Peking or Nanking. Trace should also be made of the factory of Milner & Bull, of New York, which381 sheltered Robert Morrison in 1807, when he was preparing for his immortal translations and dictionary. This was the time when American tradesmen of New York, Philadelphia and Boston showed keen sympathy with statesmanship and learning. Olyphant & Company, of New York and Canton, backed the printing of the priceless Chinese Repository, and brought fifty missionaries free from New York in their famous clipper ships. The Boston merchants who ran regular lines in those days to Canton, and had factories there, were Forbes, Perkins, Cabot, Sturgis, Russell, Cushing and Coolidge.

The morbid will want to see the execution ground in the Thirteen Factories section. It has no rival as the bloodiest spot on this earth. Governor Yeh, of Kwangtung, during the Taiping rebellion in October, 1856, beheaded 100,000 rebels here, and during the pirates’ attack under Luk, at Canton, in March, 1912, executions were part of each day’s work here. The ground is small and insignificant looking, and when not legally in use is used for spreading pottery in the sun. This Thirteen Factories section is in rather bad odor as an entertainer of opium smugglers and counterfeiters. Confucius’ temple near the Examination Park should not be missed, not for its beauty, but for its significance in the national ethics of so many centuries of one uninterrupted idea. The Parade Ground, under the eastern wall of the old city, should be visited, for here the nucleus of China’s new army, which we will some day hear much of, is training. China must learn to marry martial force and productive mechanics to, what through the long ages she has been preeminent in, literature, agriculture and art. In the western suburbs, the looms of the silk weavers, the native hospital, the Temple of Longevity, and the Temple of Five Hundred Genii are of382 exceeding interest, and if one can go as far as the White Cloud Hills there is the historic spot to see, where Morrison baptized, in 1804, Tsai Ah Ko, the first Protestant convert in China.

Various other places of interest are Tsiang Lan Kiai (Physic Street), which is protected from the sun with matting; Ma An Street, where the shoe shops are; Book Store and Jade Streets, with their tea saloons; the Hall of Green Tea Merchants radiant in porcelain; the Pok Chai native hospital; and the public gardens which were confiscated from the rich salt merchant, Pun Shih Cheng, because he evaded the law by smuggling, etc. China first prophesied that restitutionary besides prohibitive laws will yet be adopted world-wide to straighten out the economic tangle. Many modern improvements have come to Canton, such as a wide modern bund, electric cars and light, water, sanitary buildings, hospitals, etc. The University of Pennsylvania and the American Presbyterian Women have notable medical establishments at Canton, which city is connected with the early life of Doctor Sun Yat Sen, who has become immortal by formulating the republican Chinese rebellion and nation. Canton is already a railroad center, having rails east to Hongkong, south to medieval Macao, and north toward Hankau, and she proposes to link up west by running a railroad to Nanning and Yunnan. There is a vast steamer and launch traffic to Hongkong and up the West (Si) and North (Pe) Rivers, and along the iron-bound coast. Canton is the largest and most representative city of ethnical, republican and commercial China. Its stores and small factories are decidedly the most notable, efficient and varied in the wide land. The foreign settlement on Shameen Island in the Pearl River has every luxury in the way of modern clubs, hotels and residences, and in383 the native city there are clubs where the foreigner and native gentleman are trying to approach nearer to each other. Canton has two dialects, the Cantonese and the Hakka, and I know of no better authority on them than my old friend, Dyer Ball, the veteran author and linguist of Hongkong, though Canton has had many famous foreign students among her foreign residents in exile. The curious Hakka tribe composes one-third of the inhabitants of Canton. They can be distinguished by vivacity, by the flat hat with valance, worn by the women, and by their love of jewelry. The sanpan, junk, slipper boat and launch people, the most distinctive feature of Canton’s life, are largely Hakka. For further information regarding this tribe, which is also largely in evidence at Hongkong, Amoy and Swatow, I would recommend Dyer Ball’s authoritative books. Dutch Folly Island commemorates an early settlement of trading Hollanders.

The writer in his book, The Chinese, dealt at length with the oldest foreign settlement in China, the Portugese city of Macao, and its famous author, Camoens, who wrote The Lusiads. Authors who have written on quaint medieval Macao are Doctor Eitel, Norton Kyshe, Montalto de Jesus, Kutschera, Ljungstedt, the famous Sir John Bowring and the immortal Camoens himself. The largest library on the subject is to be found in the National Libraries of Lisbon, Coimbra, and other educational centers of old Portugal. The first American consuls lived at Macao, as did also the noted Jesuit explorer Abbé Huc, in 1840, in the seminary here. The British artist, Chinnery, lived and painted at Macao, as did the lovely Chinese colorist, Nam Cheong. Edmund Roberts, the first American ambassador of the United States “to Siam, Cochin and Muscat” died of bubonic plague here on June 12, 1836. In a study of Macao384 the old volume of the Chinese Repository should not be left unsearched. In a temple at Wang Hiya, beyond the quaint Porto Cerco gate, the first commercial treaty between America and China was signed respectively by Cushing, Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher, and Ki Ying. The remarkable miniature garden at the governor’s summer palace on the Monte Road should be seen, and rather amusing miniature photo statues are to be seen in the cemeteries. The largest cement factory in China (British owned) is on Green Island, which is connected by a causeway with Macao. The silted up harbor is being dredged in an effort to bring the long lost shipping back to old Macao. There is to be railway connection with Canton, and there is palatial steamer connection with Hongkong and Canton. The modern hotels, such as the Boa Vista and the Hing Kee, are excellent, the former occupying an unusually scenic site. The drives and Praya Grande are delightful. Macao is famous for its medieval carnivals and processions. It has an ambitious Chinese population whose leading spirits are the progressive Ho Sui Tin and Fong families. Its gambling houses are possibly notorious, and its opium farm, now somewhat restricted, was once a great thorn in international and hygienic matters.

Off the three-mile limit at Kowhowyang anchorage, the smuggling steamers occasionally lie. The trouble between Japan and China over the “Tatsu Maru” incident, and the subsequent severe trade boycott, which nearly bankrupted a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship and coastal line, will be recalled. The Chinese and Portuguese are constantly at swords’ points over harbor questions and the inclusion of the large islands of Lapa, Joao and Taipa in the beautiful colony, which would have been rushed long ago by the Chinese but for fear of Britain which supports385 Portugal “for auld acquaintance’ sake” and the memories of Wellington’s peninsular campaign when Portugal assisted Britain in her need. Chinese and Portuguese gunboats are always watching each other in the rather turbulent waters.

Lovely flowery Macao, of fast and festival, is the favorite health resort of Hongkong, because of its sou-west monsoon in the summer months. The wave of the Portuguese republican revolution took a month to reach Indian Goa and Cathayan Macao. The newspapers were read by the soldiers in the two beautiful barracks which stand high over Cape Sao Francisco and beneath Monte Fort. They were then loaned to the sailors on the gunboat Patria which rose and fell on the yellow tide in the offing. On November 29, 1910, the sailors of the Patria landed, marched to the square where the Senato Leal stands on high ground on Rua Central in the center of the closely built city. There three volleys were fired as a signal to the troops who, a mile away, broke into the armories and armed with ball cartridge ready for liberty’s business! The Legionaires Regiment first proceeded to the Santa Clara Convent, drove the nuns to the steamboats lying in the inner harbor, and forced them to sail for Hongkong, forty miles away, the objection to the long intrenched religious orders being that they successfully compete with business by not paying taxes. Then the revolutionists, dragging cannon, marched to the artistic government “Palais” on the picturesque Praya Grande, where the governor and representatives of the Senato Leal were forced at the bayonet’s point to agree to the expulsion of favored religious orders, the establishment of a republic in Portugal and her colonies, the suppression of the oligarchic and religious organ, Vida Nova, and similar reforms obtained by the republicans in Portugal. Most wonderful to relate, as a new sign on the horizon of the twentieth century,386 the Chinese viceroy of Kwangtung province brought up his Chinese army to stand by and see that order elsewhere was maintained while European revolutionists, European monarchists and reactionary Catholics fought out questions of representative and popular government in a corner of the sacred soil of old China. Correctly speaking then, it was little historic Portugal, and not ancient China, that first established a republic on Chinese soil, and Portugal’s republican influence, multum in parvo, as well as America’s and France’s, has been influential with Chinese reformers.

Fuchau, the capital of turbulent Fukien province, is situated twenty-five miles from the coast on one of the most romantic rivers of China, the Min. “Fu” means happy, and is the most used word in superstitious China, if we except perhaps a “strange oath” or two, and the family name Chang, which almost half of the Chinese carry. This city lies in a river plain surrounded by a glorious amphitheater of hills. With Hongkong, Fuchau joins as the two most scenic ports of China. The wide walls are thirty feet high, ten miles around, and up a mountain on one side, and there are seven fort gates, the most notable being the North Tower, with its curious spirit shrines. The most noted temples are those to the goddess Kwan Yun, the God of War, and Ching Hwang Temple. The seven-storied White Pagoda is famous. It has Romanesque doors and stunted galleries with railings. It is more ponderous than beautiful, and is remarkable for its great antiquity. The city is a noted educational center, missionary and native, It was a reform center even back into the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi’s day in 1897 and 1898, and produced its martyr, young Lin, who fell a victim of that reactionary Jezebel. Six miles south of the city on Ku-Shan, 1,700 feet high, is the noted Bubbling Well Monastery.387 The chair ride there affords a wonderful view. Fuchau is a health resort, as it has many hot springs. The Pacific Coast Chamber of Commerce was entertained by the city guilds at the Nan Pu Tu Temple in October, 1910. The valley of boulders is notable, as are also the rich pumelo groves. Fuchau used to be a great tea port. The trade declined from 1898 to 1907, but it is picking up again with the increased demand for China teas. Pagoda Island exhibits a severely plain and ancient pagoda and some remarkable Pai Piku (white stern) junks of the olden time. An ancient bridge nine centuries old, with sixty arches, on which are many overhanging shops, propped from the piers, connects one of the islands.

Fuchau went over to the rebel provisional government in October, 1911, but the Manchu city was not captured until a month later. There is a naval arsenal here, a dock, navy school, mint and a foreign settlement on Nan Tai Island. The climate is extremely trying.

Many unique costumes and turbans are to be seen. Fukien province people have some Arab blood in them, though the Mohammedan religion has been lost. They boast that they have never been conquered, and that many of the notorious pirates are Fuchau men. Their women wear a head-dress that looks like the model of an air-ship. There are excellent Methodist and Congregational schools, an American hospital, and a fine London mission which has done what missions should do in architecture. It has adopted to a degree the characteristic and beautiful Chinese style. All the missions and foreign trade buildings should strive to retain this wonderful art instead of daring to bring square ugliness or Greek coldness of column to artistic China, where it does not fit well in so warm a land. Down at the seaside bamboos are placed in the beds so that the oysters may cling to388 them. There are factories for glass filigree lamps. Trips should be made to the Yuan Fu Monastery, built on props on Wu Hu (Five Tiger) range, and up to which five hundred steps have been cut; the Paeling tea hills, fifteen miles north; the olive and orange groves; and the hot mineral springs. Fuchau is to have railway connection north and south. With Soochow, Fuchau is the center of the lacquer art, and old specimens are highly prized. In 1885 the French fleet under Admiral Courbet sailed into Fuchau and battered at the forts and the city, virtually compelling the Chinese for the time to cede the great province to Tonquin. This is what the Chinese call the “Sacrilege of Fuchau”. The city is also the center of tinfoil workers, their product being used in great quantities in making the gold and silver models which are burned at the graves. Beautiful heavy wall paper is also made. The noted sinologue, Professor Parker, of Manchester University, the witty author of John Chinaman, etc., was once British consul at Fuchau.

Ningpo (Peaceful Wave) in friendly Buddhist Chekiang province, could be called the Azalea City, and is one of the most delightful and picturesque cities of China. It is the second oldest in its relations with Europe, the Portuguese having founded a trading settlement here in 1522. The city is moated, and the walls are broken with six gates. Old Krupp cannons lie about on the parapet. The best wood carvers, masons, and varnish makers of the kingdom work here, and their services are sought for all over China. Its artists also are famous. Ningpo lies twelve miles from the sea at the head of the Tatsieh River. Three streams branch out into the hills, which lie spread around in a most picturesque panorama, including valleys, canals and lakes. It is a great fishing center, and its sailors are venturesome. The fast river slipper boats of Ningpo are noted far and389 wide. The inhabitants do not disdain the use of such a modern thing as ice, as the many straw-covered, peaked ice houses show. Much tea and silk are produced. Excellent stone carving is done, as witness that gem of architecture, the Fukien men’s Guild Hall, with its carved dragon-entwined columns, comical stone lions, and splendid, up-curving tiled roofs. The screens and bronze urns at the many temples are also a delight in this center of culture, the new rights of women, engineering and commerce. There are successfully run native cotton mills, and the district produces fine matting, rice, oils, varnish, sepia, bamboo, lumber, tea, game, flowers, rape, barley, tallow trees, etc. There is a curious street covered with pailoo arches to widows who would not remarry, to scholars, children, etc. There is a foreign quarter with its splendid bund, race course, house boats, clubs, churches, hill bungalows, etc.

No Chinese city affords more delightful excursions to the hills, waterfalls, rapids like the Wenchow, and the wonderful Buddhist monasteries like the noted Tien Dong and the Shih To. The trips to the Ta Lang and Snowy Valleys are exceedingly beautiful. Outside the city the temple to the sailor’s patron goddess, Ma Tsu Pu, at the east gate, is particularly fine in lines, proportion, dignity and rich detail. It was erected in 1680 by sailors of Fukien, the neighboring province. These precious old temples are the last precious gems of a great age in art. The new times in learning, religion, politics and commerce are bringing in an ugly architecture. Ningpo is strongly influenced in Buddhism by the nearness of Phu Tho Island of the Chusan group. There is a quaint pontoon bridge over one of the streams. It has shops upon it, and is the center of a fair. The women of Ningpo are known for their fine needlework, and the old schools were celebrated for their men of letters among the390 literati officials. The old Tien Fung pentagonal pagoda is perhaps the oldest in China, dating back 1,200 years. Its gold and white tiles have fallen, and the brick and mortar work of the seven stories is exposed.

Politically, Ningpo is progressive. It went over to the “Han Republic” rebels on November 5, 1911. In the early days of the Portuguese at this port, the Ningpo men rose up, destroyed thirty-five Portuguese ships, and slaughtered eight hundred of the crews, because they claimed the foreigners had gone inland and captured Chinese women on the Sabine plan. The city was captured by the Taiping rebels in 1862. Off Ningpo a fierce engagement between the Chinese and English fleets took place in October, 1841. Nimrod Bay, near Ningpo, is to be the central base for the new Chinese navy. In the turmoil of 1898, when the nations of Europe were striving to partition China, despite the protests of America and Britain, the French, on July 16th, landed marines at Ningpo and tried to take a temple graveyard for a settlement, incidentally adding twenty Chinese to the number to be buried in the graveyard! Ningpo is soon to have a railway connection with the west and south.

Hangchow, the capital of Chekiang province, is famous as the city of the Roaring Tidal Bore. The walls are twelve miles around. The bore is best seen at Haining pagoda, east of the city. The tourist should go at moonlight to see the unforgettable white specter riding in on the wheels of the night. The legend is that the Wu prince, Tse Hsu, committed suicide, and the Chinese go to the bore to see him sweeping by in his fury. The stone-faced river wall has stone cradles built for junks to outride the terrific main bore. The city has railway and canal connection, and launch tows are now much used instead of sail. The Golden King Hill is in the center of the city by the lake side. It is crowned391 with a Buddhist temple. The lake has a causeway, lake temples and pagodas. The city is famous for its beautiful waterscapes, like the view of Western Lake (Si Hu), and the view from Thundering Peak Tower (Lui Fung Tah). This tower is without the usual ornate galleries, and shows the Arab influence which crept up the coast in the old days, and established itself at Hangchow in mosques, etc. Three separate attempts were made to capture China for Mohammedanism; they were made in Kansu, Yunnan and Chekiang provinces. The Red Imperial Palace at the lake side was once the center of the cultured Sung dynasty, thirteenth century. Marco Polo visited and praised the beautiful ancient city as follows: “Beyond dispute, it is the finest and noblest city in the world.” It is now a center of the silk, wine, fan, lantern, tea, tinfoil, camphor, hardware, book, vegetable oil, etc., trade. The city was captured by the republicans on November 5, 1911, the Tartar city strongly resisting. With Soochow, it is called the most fashionable city, and the home of the best dressed women of China. Doctor Main’s model leper hospital is here. The American Presbyterians have erected on a lovely hillside over the water a number of buildings of the important new Hangchow University. The Tartar walled city is on the northwest. There are a governor’s yamen, many pailoo honorary arches, the massive Great Peace Bridge, canals, famous temples, shops and fine residences, for the Chinese of this section seem to have a civic pride. The rolling suburbs of Hangchow are the most beautiful in China, reminding one perhaps of England’s lake country. The modern parliament buildings of the province of Chekiang are erected at Hangchow. There is also a native university and normal school.

Nanking, the largest walled city of the Ming emperors392 and Taiping rebels, and the first republican capital and assembly headquarters, is very dear to the hearts of the Chinese race. It is the center of the classic Mandarin pronunciation used by the north and the cultivated of all China. The name translated means southern capital. The great Yangtze River sweeps beneath the walls, and the city has canal and railway connection of the finest. The city, as was discovered when General Chang defended it, is commanded by the peaks of Purple Mountain on the north. There are fortified hills within the city, and great avenues down which run modern electric cars. Ruins of the last pure Chinese dynasty remain: the Ming palace, the picturesque tombs, and an avenue lined with wonderful gigantic camels, lions, elephants, etc., similar to the Ming Avenue at Nankow on the Great Wall above Peking. Emperor Hung Wu’s monument is a stone monolith, erected on a gigantic turtle’s back. The tomb itself is square. In the same manner that the Japanese and Russians unavoidably pounded the Manchu tombs at Mukden with shot, the imperialists and republicans pounded these revered Ming tombs in 1911. Bloody General Chang’s slaughter of the republicans and non-combatants at Nanking in November, 1911, will be hissed at in history forever. Viceroy Chang Jen held the first Chinese exhibition at Nanking in 1910. He established water, electric and gas works, and broad roads, and was in many ways a most enlightened leader. The foreign settlement is in part on Siakwan Island. Across the river on the north at Pukow, a British railway goes to Tientsin and Kiaochou, and south to Shanghai runs the splendid Shanghai-Nanking British railway, the best built road in China. As usual, the city is divided into Tartar and Chinese sections. There are military and naval colleges, a native provincial university and an arsenal. Nanking Union University of the Methodists393 and Presbyterians is famous, and is discussed in another chapter. The students have adopted athletics and propose to send a team to Olympic games. The city has famous pagodas and temples, like the Pi-Che-Ko, the Buddhist Temple of Ten Thousand Gilded Gods, the White Star Temple, etc. The Taipings burned the famous yellow and white porcelain pagoda which once stood here, and which was the most ornate pagoda in China. Some of the tiles are in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. American firms have established themselves, and consulates, churches, clubs and all that goes with foreign life will now come up to the favorite city of republican China, whose ancient culture hangs like a golden cloud over its memories. There are newspapers, paper mills, silk and satin filatures, fan and cotton factories, shoemakers, tailors, porcelain kilns, etc. The city gave its name to the shiny cotton, “Nankeen”, used throughout China and Europe. Ink, flower, bath, vase, tile, book and jewel makers abound. Its artists are skilled. In the days of the old-style examinations, thousands of candidates used to gather in the great park of brick stalls. Nanking became a viceregal city when it ceased to be the southern capital. Its guilds and boards of trade are famous and progressive; each has its fine hall. Industry, learning, politics, foreign trade and medicine will henceforward take a mighty hold at Nanking, where the first provisional president of China, the world-wanderer, Doctor Sun Yat Sen, bowed to a modern representative assembly on January 1, 1912.

Shanghai is the queen of middle China, the ruler of the Yangtze River, at whose gates she sits. It is often called the “Paris of the Far East”, which remark refers to its social life, for it is not nearly so picturesque as its rival, Hongkong, or that queen of beauty, Fuchau. The fine black sand, once yellow loess, and saturated clay bed under394 Shanghai is four hundred and fifty feet thick. For the large modern buildings, it is necessary to sink a heavy girder-reinforced concrete raft, and build the structures on that. Even these buildings sink five inches as compared with the foot that ordinary pile and brick buildings sink. Life is in a whirl at Shanghai. The river bund is crowded, and so is the long, winding Bubbling Well Road. The concessions are splendidly managed from a foreign point of view, and vie with each other in public spirit. The Chinese, however, feel greater warmth for Hongkong, which gives them representation on the council. In Shanghai there are mixed courts, consular courts, an American Superior Court, and Chinese courts. The Chinese are planning for the day when they will try all Chinese offenders. There is an imposing cathedral, and a modern Venetian style railway station. Good libraries, magnificent clubs, theaters, hotels of all nations, taxicabs, electric trams and rickshaws are among the conveniences. The separate post-offices of all nations are somewhat confusing. All the sports,—racing, golf, tennis, shooting, house-boating, swimming, etc.,—may be enjoyed, and the military enthusiast has almost the same opportunity that he has at proud brave Hongkong. The Shanghai settlements protect themselves with the Municipal Volunteer Guard, in which a special corps of Europeanized Chinese can be enrolled. Secret societies, both foreign and native, have their temples. Shanghai has been the chief center of the native reform newspapers which agitated from the time of the coup d’état of 1898 to the rebellion of October 10, 1911, and at Shanghai the peace conferences between the south and the north were held in January, 1912. Outside of iron and coal, one can see here almost all of China’s efforts to equal the Occidental in industrial activity in modern mills. The Japanese395 are in strong evidence at Shanghai in ownership of Chinese cotton manufacturing. In speculating, no city can approach Shanghai. The awful rubber collapse of 1910 mowed down Chinese as well as foreigners. A military band plays in the public gardens and in the hotels. The musical and literary life of the colony is well developed. On North Honan Road is the immense plant of the Commercial Press which translated a million dollars’ worth of text-books last year for China’s schools. Its president is Chang Yuan Chi. The English newspapers of the port are known world wide for their scholarliness, and the Chinese press is making a mark for its patriotism and progress. The Bubbling Well Road cemetery and the Pahsien (Catholic) cemetery contain many melancholy monuments of famous foreign pioneers. In meteorological science, the Sicawei Observatory, under the control of the Jesuits, is facile princeps; indeed in this field this order has led in China and in the Philippines since the eighteenth century. Shanghai shares with Hankau the title of head of the railway system; that is to say one is the New York and the other the Chicago of the land. There is no computing what the future trade will be at Shanghai. The climate is not much improved on the damp sea-level misery which one experiences at Hongkong, Canton, and Amoy, but there are brave hearts in Shanghai, and the noblest of women who will endure any physical torture so long as they know that they are doing their duty in not deserting the advanced firing line of civilization and philanthropy.

The leading educational institution is St. John’s University, managed by the American Episcopalians. Nothing but praise can be accorded to it, and its future will be great. Already great men in China, such as Alfred S. K. Sze, once named as minister to Washington, and Doctor W. W. Yen, once secretary of the Foreign Board, are saying: “I am396 a St. John’s alumnus.” The university is five miles from the bund landing. Other missionary and native educational and medical institutions, like the Nan Yang University, are of a high order. The intellectual life is advanced, for at Shanghai live most of the Occidentalized Chinese and retired officials.

A great arsenal is located here. There is some abandon in the French quarter, which tolerates perhaps the lowest opium joints in the world, and the Foochow Road exhibits its brothel life the most brazenly of any street in the world. The dives of native Shanghai have been notorious the world over for disappearance of victims.

There are wonderful silk shops on Nanking and Foochow Roads; luxurious tea gardens, fine temples like the Pan Tuck Ih and the Kwang Sang Kee; splendid furniture shops; guild halls like that of the Shansi Bankers; the Yu Yuen gardens, etc. The Hong Ku market should be visited early in the morning, and the wonderful products of a rich district, intensively farmed, will surprise a stranger. The place is famous for its houseboat trips. The boat people are called Tankas, the tribe coming from Kiangsu province. They are related to the old Hongkong Hakka tribe. Wonderful farms can be studied on Tsun Ming Island. Interesting pagodas, like the Ta Kong, are to be seen. It is the theatric custom of the Germans to erect over the earth monuments to their dead who have fallen when in conflict with other races; this explains the “Iltis” monument. Shanghai, soon to be the center of a vast railway development, was the first apostle of railways for China, the noted old Jardine firm building a railway to Woosung, twelve miles away, as far back as the 60’s. The Manchus, who have always been reactionaries at heart, promptly tore it up and stacked it to rust out in distant Formosa397 Island. The native city is not large, nor are the moated walls substantial, brick instead of stone being used. There are six double gates of iron. Manila was the first city of the Far East to tear down part of its walls and Shanghai will probably be the second. The Taiping rebels of the 60’s captured the city, and the population went over to the revolution in November, 1911, thus depriving the effective Admiral Sah of the Manchu navy of his ammunition, which Shanghai arsenal had furnished up to that time. As Shanghai grows she will probably extend toward her port, Woosung, twelve miles away, and a Conservancy Board must arrange for vast expenditures to prepare for a large steamship tonnage now that the Pacific ocean is narrowing because of faster steamers being put on the route. Imported goods for China are mainly stacked in Shanghai’s godowns, not even subsidiary stocks being held at ports as far away as Newchwang. This practise must change somewhat and Shanghai take particular care of the Yangtze valley, which is a kingdom of 150,000,000 people in itself.

The quaint Kiangsu junks are disappearing, and vast fleets of launches and mere cargo junks have come into use. To see the picturesque old life on the waters, one must now go farther inland. Shanghai is famous for its peony, chrysanthemum and lily gardens. It is a florist’s paradise, because it lies in the valley of the sun. Its dress show on the bund and Bubbling Well Road, Hong Kew Park, Public Gardens and Jockey Club grounds, almost rivals in silk the floral creations of nature. Some of the costumes are amusing. A tall Sikh, “bearded like the pard”, and wearing an immense red turban, comes along the road with never a look to right nor left and never a smile on his eager face. His gown looks like a loose white nightshirt, over which he has forced a small tight vest of bright colors and flashy buttons.398 The nightshirt is gathered in about his legs, which are bare below the knee. On his feet he wears Punjab slippers, which curve up at the points like a gondola. So he fareth forth into the perpetual comedy of the Shanghai streets and maloos! The London “bobby” looks at him but does not arrest him, because on official occasions this same Sikh is the bobby’s partner on police duty, when, however, he buttons himself within a decent blue tunic and dons long trousers, though the turban is maintained to him for tradition’s sake.

All the foreign banks, the Hongkong bank, and the Chinese National and Shansi banks, have branches here, and it is proposed to have branches of large Chinese-American banks and steamship companies. Fault must be found with the modern native as well as the European architecture of Shanghai, that they are not perpetuating and adapting the extremely beautiful Chinese style in roof, screen, portals, columns, terminal ornaments, panels, pavilions and approaches. We of the Occident are barbarians to intrude in any land and debauch its beautiful architecture in the way we are universally doing. All praise to some of the missionary societies, that as usual they are the first to do right in a beautiful way by building in the Chinese manner in China. A Grecian building like Boone University, at Wuchang; a top-heavy German building like those at Kiaochou; a New York cave building like some at Tientsin; a British barn like some on the praya at Hongkong, even an Italian Renaissance like some on the Shanghai bund, are a trespass unto architectural sacrilege in artistic China. Let us keep to the galleries, the curved lines, the rich roof, the colored panels, the enameled tiles of pagoda and temple as we raise stone on stone in glorious old China, for she is the mother of the arts, and has sat longest at the fountain of beauty, if not at the anvil of arms.

399 The extension of the American post-office to Shanghai, whereby a letter can be sent from Shanghai to New York for two cents gold is a remarkable achievement, and speaks much for the generosity of the Chinese Revenue Board in permitting this heavy competition. Many of the other nations have post-offices, but the rates are higher. The great international Opium Commission, its chairman the American, Bishop Brent, which did the impossible by disenthralling a hundred million habitués from the pythonic toils of opium in two years, sat in Shanghai in February, 1909, in its most memorable conference. The chief credit is due to America for leadership in the altruistic sentiment, and to China, Britain, India and Hongkong for the immense altruistic sacrifice of revenue. Now that the pipe and the poppy fields have been wiped nearly out, it remains for the nations to stamp out morphia, the hypodermic syringe and the drugged cigarette. And poor China is not the maker of these infernal tools. Shanghai has a modern water, an electric and street making plants, which are being copied through China as fast as funds can be collected by the municipalities.

For a long time it was impossible to escape quickly from the deadly summer climate, but railways and steamships have placed the inland mountain resorts of Kuling, at Kowkiang, 3,000 feet high, and at Mokan Mountain within easy reach. Phutho, the famous Buddhist mountain island, is also near enough for quick steamship service. Every debilitated Shanghai dweller used to go to far Japan at great cost to recuperate, but this expense will be less necessary, as these nearer resorts are opened up by a fast developing transportation service. Kuling Mountain is a missionary resort. Before it was discovered broken-down workers had to be sent to Japan or home on a furlough if they were able to stand the long voyage and the boards were able to stand the400 expense. The work of missionaries is the hardest under dangerous pioneer conditions, and Kuling Mountain is enabling the missionary quickly to restore herself or himself to efficiency without leaving China. The waters around Shanghai, including Seven Mile Lake, afford excellent facilities for house-boating. The municipality uses tall, red-turbanned Sikh police from India, as well as native Chinese lukongs, all under foreign officers. The docks, ways and engine shops of Shanghai, both foreign and native owned, are equipping the waters of Central China with small steamboats, though there is a strong competition from Hongkong, Japan and Britain, and some competition from Manila. Shanghai can not set out thousands of lanterns on a dozen hills 1,800 feet up in the night skies, as gorgeous Hongkong can, yet her more intimate garden and house illuminations are famous in China. The poet may justly rave and sigh:

Even the shop signs are lanterns. China is the home of that nonsputtering, cold vegetable tallow that makes the only perfect lantern candles. The silver shops rival those of Hongkong, Nanking and Soochow, but beware of the German and Japanese machine-made imitation. The artist only can put his soul and a luck message for you into what he makes slowly by hand; anything else is not an objet d’art. There are very fine bronze statues in Shanghai, and the pottery stores are a delight. The market stalls are a mine of yellow, red and pink in all shades, for these sub-tropics are a hothouse of fruit: pumeloes, persimmons, mangostines, lichees, oranges, bananas and nuts. The grape401 and pear country is much farther north, even to Shangtung province.

There have been famous consuls at Shanghai, like Sir Harry Parkes, whose statue is erected on the bund. He became British minister, and did much for British diplomacy and world trade in Chinese wars. The first government of the rebellion of October, 1911, opened in Shanghai, with Wu Ting Fang as foreign minister. Shanghai, like Tientsin and other river ports, has its great conservancy question in the matter of keeping the channel free from loess and sand silt. Dredging is infinitely too expensive, and the wit of man has to be matched against the will of tide and stream. At Shanghai the course seems to be to keep an immense tidal basin above the port, as at Seven Mile Reach, ready to assist the ebb tide with a flushing flow. A Department of Rivers and Harbors will yet be the busiest and have the largest budget in China. At present, Conservancy Boards, assisted by loans and government help, take care of the expensive and difficult work as best they are able. The foreign engineers employed are exceedingly able men.

Suchow, a walled city of ten miles in circumference, the Venice of China, lies on the Grand Canal, northwest of Shanghai. It is the center of a population of several millions. The city is intersected with canals, and has, among its gates, six unique water gates. Hills surround the wide plain, which is picturesquely marked also with canals and camel’s-back bridges. The city has long been famous for its culture, the beauty of its women, the rich designs of its imperial silk looms, its artists, its luxurious gardens and its boat life. Foreign settlements are both within the walls and in the suburbs. The shops on Kwei Tsze, Dragon, Peach and other streets, manufacture paper, wall-paper,402 lacquer, horn, glass, porcelain, furniture, ivory, cotton, linen, iron, copper, etc. The city has launch connection with the Yangtze ports and railway connection west to Nanking, north to Tientsin, and south to Shanghai and Hangchow. In addition to the wonderful sunken gardens in Shu Park, there are also public gardens, libraries, modern schools, a governor’s palace, a famous monster octagonal pagoda overlooking a picturesque, sinuous, bridged canal, a massive customs bridge, the South Horse bridge, twin Burmese pagodas, and in contrast with their richness, near by, a square Ink pagoda, a provincial university, a Confucian temple, the very artistic South Gate pagoda, statues in Tsang Lang pavilion, Mohammedan and Buddhist cemeteries. Modern architecture is represented by the American Methodist University, which has what the new Chinese particularly appreciate, a fine clock tower. It is a sign of the times in China, for the old Chinese ignored exact time. The American Presbyterians have a most important publishing and translating department in Suchow, which had much to do with germinating the wonderful New China, which in Suchow particularly was ready for the seed. Modern medicine is represented by Blake Hospital. The city was sacked by the Taipings and captured by General Gordon, whose victorious legions thundered through the east gate. So great an authority as the Japanese Marquis Ito declared that the West never should have supported the Manchu against the Taiping revolution; that the reforms of 1911 could have been effected in 1863. I humbly differ with this opinion, as Hung and Yang were very different leaders from Sun Yat Sen and General Li Yuan Heng of the immortal revolution of October 10, 1911.

At Hankau, the first battlefield of the October, 1911,403 revolution, the finest-developed foreign concession, running along the Yangtze River, is owned by Britain, but many of the lessees of the palatial homes are Russian tea merchants. All nationalities are admitted to the municipal council of these model British settlements. Next to the British comes a Russian settlement, with French, German and Japanese settlements following. The Americans, as usual, club with the British settlement, which is generally called “The Settlement”. These concessions were granted by the treaty of Peking and following treaties. Hankau has railway connection with Peking, and it will be linked up with the other great centers west and south. The river connects it with the east, and a riverine railroad will eventually be run from Nanking, which is already railed up with Shanghai. The burned native city of Hankau is to be reconstructed as the model city of China. Wide parallel avenues are to run north and south and wide boulevards east and west. All blocks and squares are to be geometrical. This is an astonishing departure from the pig-path streets of the other native cities. The three cities at the junction of the Han and Yangtze Rivers, Hankau, Hanyang and Wuchang, are one metropolitan district, as are Brooklyn, New York and Jersey City. At Wuchang, in the barracks of the Eighth Division, the revolution actually broke out in force, as far as the regular army was concerned, on October 10, 1911, before it extended to Hankau. Wuchang was the headquarters of the famous Viceroy Chang Chih Tung, the first of the conservative progressives, and one of the three viceroy props of the Dowager Tse Hsi’s throne for thirty-five years. He was the most honorable old-style mandarin that ever ruled the provinces of China. The city is walled and is divided by Serpent Hill, which will be tunneled. It has long been an educational center, the provincial native university404 and modern schools being located here. Bishop Roots, of the Ohio Episcopalians, founded the noted Boone University at Wuchang, and the New York Episcopalians have St. Hilda’s Girls’ School. Stokes and Thomas Hall, of Boone University, have Ionic Greek porticoes, which look out of place in ornate warm China. The university draws its pay pupils from the rich merchants and officials of Hankau. There is also the Griffith John College of the London Mission, a normal school of the American Baptists, a Swedish college; and Lord Cecil and Oxford and Cambridge Universities propose to start their great university here. It is a garrison and arsenal city, and is famous for its bronzes and pagodas. On Flower Hill stands the famous three-story pagoda. The German firm of Carlowitz has established an antimony smelter, and there are extensive cotton mills, some of them now owned by Japanese bankers. This red earth province is famous for its minerals, silk, tea, cotton, paper, wax and particularly for the political independence of its inhabitants, as the Eighth Division has immortally recorded in history.

Hanyang, a mile across the river, has the famous steel plant established by Chang Chih Tung. It is becoming one of the most important steel plants in the world, and Japan and Western America will not call upon it in vain, as they are indeed now doing. Dock yards will doubtless be established also. The American Baptists have a large hospital at Hanyang. Hanyang has an arms manufactory, a cannon foundry and a powder mill.

Much of Hankau was burned by those firebrands, the Imperial Third Division, under General Feng, in November, 1911, a deed which the south will never forget, if they ever forgive, as it was entirely unnecessary. Many millions of property were destroyed in a land which economically can405 not well afford the loss of one cent. The great city, which numbered over a million inhabitants, will be rebuilt on the high banks sixty feet above winter level of the two rivers. The river rises over forty feet in summer. The Anglicans have established the church of St. John the Evangelist, and the American Episcopalians have St. Paul’s and St. Peter’s churches. There are fine clubs, a race and a golf course, a foreign volunteer organization which has seen much active service. There is also an English newspaper, the Central China Post, and many native papers. The Russians are prominent because of their tea trade. The steamship service is steadily growing, Hankau being at the head of steamship navigation. Lighter boats are taken for Ichang. The railway connects with Peking, and soon railways will run south, east and west, and a bridge will cross the Yangtze River on the road to Canton and Singapore. The Deutsche-Asiatische Bank, the Russo-Asiatique Bank, other foreign banks, consulates and foreign traders, are housed palatially. The great walled city is the most famous in China for its trade and provincial guilds. As in old London, the trades have gathered on one street, or in one district. Hankau is and will be the trade and industrial hub, the Chicago of China, and here foreign firms should locate without delay. The pioneer names connected with Hankau are Bishop Ingle, whose splendid tomb can be seen in the foreign cemetery, and Archibald Little, the explorer, author, tea trader, and the first foreigner to run a steamer from Hankau to Chungking through the terrific rapids of the glorious gorges between Ichang and Wan Hsien.

Ichang is the advance post on the Yangtze for the commercial attack on the Chingtu, Chungking and far western trade. It is at the head of navigation, and is sending out its railway to conquer the gorges and rapids. There is a406 walled riverine city up seventy feet of stairs; a foreign settlement; golf course, to be sure; Episcopal trade schools; clubs; consulates; Established Church of Scotland Mission; interesting temples and pagodas. Ichang has for immemorial years been the headquarters of perhaps the bravest boatmen in the world, the Hupeh trackers and sailors of the gorges. Read a hundred books of travel and you have their story. Here also is the headquarters of China’s red life-boat service, an effective and daring company of men. Hupeh can point with pride to such material in brawn and courage, on which to build a provincial parliament or assembly. There are notable guilds in Ichang.

Chifu, on the gulf of Pechili, is a noted bathing resort for foreigners from all over the Far East. There is a splendid foreign quarter, with a well-appointed club, churches and hotels. The view of the many cone-shaped purple hills, the bluest of seas and yellowest of sands, will not quickly be forgotten. There are islands which invite boating, such as Temple and Lighthouse Islands. The finest fruit in China, such as grapes, pears and apples, is grown at Chifu. The stock was brought from America by Doctor Nevius and other missionaries in the 80’s. There is also a tree-cranberry, the Red Fruit (Hung Kwo). Worms, fed on oak leaves, produce the famous tough Chifu silk, which is as popular in China as abroad. Chifu was known for its blockade runners in the Russian-Japan War of 1904–5. In the famous engagement of August, 1904, several Russian warships from Port Arthur broke through Admiral Togo’s iron-bound investiture, and reached Chifu, but the Japanese broke in, and despite international law, abducted the Russian torpedo boat destroyer Reshitelni. The other Russian vessels they torpedoed in the Chinese harbor. Chifu has a naval college of modern equipment. The district produces407 straw braid in great quantities for the hats of the fashionable women of the world, and her other products of beans, peanuts and vegetable oils are well known. Gold and coal are found near by, and many vessels call for coaling. Missionary societies are active, and have a wide opportunity, for this is the home province of Confucius and Mencius, and the inhabitants have a literary, political and inquiring turn of mind. The Chinese of Chifu are noted for their height, as compared with the busy little men of the southern provinces, whom we know in America and Britain. Many of them emigrated to South Africa in 1904 for a six years’ indenture, when they were all returned. Chifu is to have railway connection with the German and Chinese roads to the south and west. The city went over to the revolutionists on November 10, 1911, and a republican column, reinforced by the republican navy, operated from here against the imperialists at the capital, Tsinan. Not far from Chifu, at Wei Hai Wei, the British keep a strong garrison on China’s soil.

Tsingtau, in Shangtung province, is a German port, and a colonial experiment which has attracted much attention because of the experiment of Henry George’s “single-tax-on-land” plan, in its effort to attract improvers of land, and spread out, instead of congest cities. In 1898 the Germans forced a lease of it at the same time that Russia occupied Manchuria. The Japanese drove the Russians out of Manchuria, which they have largely occupied themselves, treaties notwithstanding, but no one has driven the Germans out of Shangtung, the most sacred of the provinces of China. It was largely this German seizure that precipitated the “Boxer” massacres in 1900 under the secret instigation of the Empress Tse Hsi. The port and main colony is two hundred square miles in area, but the most remarkable (the408 only one of its kind except that of the Japanese in southern Manchuria) concession is that of sixty miles wide and two hundred and fifty miles long from the port back inland to Tsinan, the illustrious capital of the province, which dates back to 1100 B. C. Through this land the Germans have built a strategic railway, by which they could cut off communication between the northern and southern provinces. The Chinese have never forgiven and will never forgive this affront. It is therefore one of China’s many unsettled questions. The bay is fifteen miles long by fifteen miles wide, surrounded by hills from 1,500 to 3,000 feet high, on which the Germans have planted forests in fine style. The ocean boulevard is one of the five most scenic roads in the East, the others being Hongkong’s Jubilee Road, Macao’s Cacilhas Bay Boulevard and the Manila Luneta and Baguio Roads in the Philippines. The entrance to the commercial harbor at Ta Pu Tao is two miles wide. Fortifications, docks, godowns, railways with patented iron sleepers, hotels, banks, hospitals, statues, magnificent homes, educational institutions for both Germans and Chinese, have all been set out in characteristic German methods. It was by this railway that the imperial troops were provisioned in November, 1911, when the revolutionists had cut off their ammunition at Shanghai, Hanyang and Nanking arsenals, and the Chinese have not forgotten this, claiming that with all their criticism of the “Yellow Peril” the German foreign office, at the beginning of the revolution, was at heart pro-Manchu. The port was made a free port on the pattern of Hongkong, and while a larger trade has developed, Tientsin (with her port, Taku) holds her place in the competition. Without the railway to Tsinan, Tsingtau could not hold her own as a shipping center.

The sympathy between the natives and the foreigner409 which exists at Newchwang, Tientsin, Shanghai and Hongkong, is lacking at stern, military, exotic Tsingtau. Yet the Germans have set a splendid object lesson in the precision and strength of the Tsingtau municipal establishment. The fine German navy is always in evidence, and the finer German army is everywhere. Many German industries have been established, and are run with as grim a determination, being backed by the “syndicates”, when they are losing money as when they are making it. German merchants seem to thrive better, and prefer to keep their stocks at the many international settlements, where trade has followed natural channels. The coal wealth at Poshan and elsewhere, which the German railway has developed, is enormous, but the Chinese are bitter that the profits, on the principle of “all the traffic will bear”, all go to Germany and not to China. It is noticeable, in contrast with the British occupation of Hongkong and other colonies, that the Germans have not kept the Chinese names for the hills and bays. Tsingtau has splendid rail and ship connection north and south. Among the exports to Europe are the famous silk and straw braid of the province, egg products, black pigs, coal, wheat, millet, sorghum, maize, beans in particular, peas, hemp, copper, iron, antimony, asbestos, silver, sulphur, gold, rugs, the famous liu-li vitreous crockery of wonderful colors, castor oil, peanuts, fruit of excellent quality, etc. Years ago the German gunboat Iltis was lost in a typhoon while trying to make this port, where the Germans were later to establish themselves in a rivalry with Russia’s aggression in Manchuria.

Tientsin, the great port of Peking, is another concession city, where the various nations keep their civilizations and military and naval forces bright for the inspection of the Chinese, who live contiguous in a walled city, where Li410 Hung Chang and his protégé, Yuan Shi Kai, made their names famous as viceroys and intermediaries between Orient and Occident. The city is at the head of the historic Grand Canal. Its river, the Pei Ho, runs up toward Peking. It has splendid railway connection west, south and north. The national railways of North China are managed here under the direction of Jeme Tien, Doctor Wang and Chang Kee, with foreign advisers like Mr. Kinder and Mr. Pope available. Rich coal mines, especially the famous old Kaiping, are near, and there is a vast export of this product, as well as of carpet wool, camel’s hair, camel’s-hair rugs, jujube preserves, etc., for the world. As it is a most important banking center, a great amount of gold is handled. Concessionaires have flocked here, eager for privileges, and the game has opened anew. Foreign troops have grounded their arms here more than at any international port in China.

On account of its flat surroundings, Tientsin is the least picturesque city of China. There is a recreation ground, Victoria Gardens, native gardens, a race course around a graveyard, a jockey club, much society, naval and military life, theatricals, and facilities for the many athletic, swimming, boating and skating clubs. Except in summer the climate is charmingly dry; the wind and sand storms are greatly feared, however. The loess dust is as penetrating as the alkali dust of Arizona. A British military cemetery has many melancholy monuments of the foreigner’s occupation of an alien land, where disease and the casualties of many famous bombardments have mowed down their costly toll. There are electric cars, electric light, gas and water plants, fine clubs, churches, consulates, missions, a Y. M. C. A., the magnificent Gordon Hall, science and military colleges of the best, hospitals, native and foreign411 schools of all grades, excellent roads like the bund and Tai Ku, fine fur, silk and pottery shops. The English newspapers like the Times and China Critic are important, and many Chinese papers like the Ching Wei Po are very influential in the coming New China. There is much foreign military music, and the natives are learning the delightful art, the viceroy’s band already being clever. Many Chinese have made their names here under foreign tutorship, Yuan Shih Kai and Tang Shao Yi, for instance; and Li Hung Chang held forth here in his yamen on the river bank in his most influential days. The Pei Yang University is the best native modern university in China. The medical school trains with foreign help, what China needs most at the moment, native physicians and nurses. The port, more than any other, has for many years had a restraining influence on the Manchus. Without it, no one knows what the reactionary dynasty would have promulgated in the way of edicts. Tientsin is interesting for its wonderful colored clay images, its excellent rugs, its salt heaps, its fish-pies and hot potato pedlers, who shout their goods along “Eternal Prosperity” and other native streets. There is interesting French life on the Tai Ku Road in the French settlement. The native walled city is a model in Chinese municipal government, as far as activity and order, but not so far as beauty is concerned. Among the many steamship lines, the native China Merchants (a government line) has a branch here. A Conservancy Board has much work cut out for it by the Pei Ho bar which hampers the growing shipping. The National Chinese Posts and Telegraphs have branches. There are native temples, and mosques for the Mohammedan Chinese, who have absorbed the old Honan Jewish Chinese. Tientsin is very hot, and the summer resort for bathing is up the coast of Pechili412 Gulf at Pei-Tai-Ho, where the Great Wall meets the sea. This is the water resort also for the Pekingese foreigner and foreignized native.

There is much industrial activity, and Tientsin, with its million of inhabitants, will be a great center for the import of machinery for the rich provinces of Pechili and Shansi and the vast territory of Mongolia, as it will also be the port for the mining and agricultural wealth of those rich provinces, including chilled meats, millet, sugar, flour, wheat, beans, fruit, nuts, skins, furs, vegetable oils, ores, etc. In some respects the possible new ports of Chin Wang Tao, Chung How So, and Jinkow, on the Gulf of Pechili, could compete with Tientsin. The Peking (British) Syndicate, of Shansi, and the Chinese Engineering and Mining Company, of Pechili, with their immense capitalization of $6,000,000 and $5,000,000, respectively, operate and make loans from Tientsin, and, as in all the ports, there are many land, coal, iron and milling companies, in which Chinese have shares. The tendency is to grant fewer franchises to foreigners, and let the Chinese exploit their own wealth in mines, transportation and public service, buying only from the foreigner the necessary machinery, and paying only to the foreigner a proper interest for loans, instead of the immense bonuses and concessions that have often been obtained. The tendency to water the stock of public service corporations and monopolies so as to hide the immense earnings from an overcharged public is creeping into China, and will be attacked by a courageous and indefatigable government. Tientsin is one of the two places (Peking being the other) from which it is most convenient for tourists to set out to see the Great Wall of China, the world’s grandest monument. The railway takes the tourist about one hundred and twenty miles along the413 Pechili coast to Shan Hai Kwan, where the wall meets the sea, and turning back climbs the vast mountain ranges, to the speechless wonder of the sightseer. One of the Chinese proverbs on this subject is: “Those who have seen least, stare most!” There are more Jews (not the lost colonies of Chinese Jews absorbed by the Chinese Mohammedans of Honan, Kwangtung and Kansu provinces) in business at Tientsin than at any port in China, not excepting Hongkong. In the warehouse of the American Trading Company, at Tientsin, six hundred men of the Fifteenth United States Infantry were quartered in the stormy days of the first months of 1912.

Peking stands at the end of the great seacoast plain as you go up from Tientsin by railway or by boat. Beyond rise the Hsi Shan (Western Mountains) and the Mongolian plateau and mountains. It is the most expansive city in the republic, because it is more built up than spacious Nanking; a court, a legation, a trading, an art, an educational, a health center in autumn, a military, but not a manufacturing center as yet, though it will be. It is more Mongolian and Manchu, perhaps, than pure Han Chinese. It is splendidly laid out, and with drainage and paved roads will attract fine equipages and even greater wealth than now resorts there. It has a water system, electric light, telephone, telegraph and railway service, wireless connection with the coast, a modern railway station at the famous Chien Men gate. Its fine Gothic Pe-Tang Cathedral, strangely within the purple imperial city, with its spires, looks as though it had been transported from France. Its porcelain temples are centers of wealth, if not of zeal and history. Its monuments, especially the city wall and gates, are the noblest. Its pavilions, like those in the late emperor’s garden, are the most artistic in the land. It is comparatively modern414 among the cities and capitals of China, going back only to 1150 A. D. as a provincial and national center. Coleridge has sung of the city. Kublai Khan, Marco Polo’s protector, was its first great emperor. The creator of Ming monuments, the artistic Yung Lo, is its next greatest emperor, and it was he who gave the present stamp to Peking. Its most illustrious Manchu emperor was Kang Hi, the potter, to whom Louis XIV. of France, signed himself as “your most dear and good friend, Louis.” The city is laid out on the plan of an immense Mongol camp of the plains, defense line within defense line three times, and not unlike Cæsar’s plans when on the march. The trading section of the city is filled with an immense gathering of camel, mule and pony trains, and the new railways bring coal from east and south. A master hand could turn the great camp into a hive of modern industry. Some day, perhaps soon, that will occur. The Peking market is well supplied by the Mongols of the plateau and the farmers of the Pechili plain, not to speak of what railways, canals and roads bring in from all points. More races and varied costumes are seen at Peking than at any other city, and the teak-barred shops are treasure houses. The Tartar city faces the north and in its center is the Forbidden, or Purple City, of the old Manchu court. Between the wall of the latter and the south wall of the Tartar city are the Wai Wu (Foreign Office), legations, hotels, railway station, banks, churches, missions, universities, hospitals, clubs, newspaper offices, shops, etc., all saying, according to the conservative Hanlin Chinese, in the words of our Belle of New York, “Of course you can never be like me, but be as like me as you’re able to be”. The union of Protestant medical missions at Peking, so as to form a hospital, medical college and nurses’ school of wide scope, has attracted nation-wide415 and world-wide attention. The beginning of the unifying of Protestants thus takes place effectively in the capital of oldest China, instead of at Geneva, Berlin, London or New York.

How much of the modern and the old, the Oriental and the Occidental, are mixed up in this wonderful city? There are modern steam rollers; donkey and camel trains, blue-turbaned couriers on Mongol ponies; springless, hooded Peking carts, the mule wearing a velvet cloth; bouncing mule litters; camel trains swaying up and down like the billows of the Yellow Sea; modern water tanks borne by steel towers; a modern zoo with a dragon-carved gate; automobiles; victorias drawn by swift Mongol or black Szechuen ponies; Russian droshkes drawn by three ponies going different paces; men tugging single-axle carts by long ropes and harness; coolies with baskets and boxes balanced from the bamboos on their sweating shoulders; wheelbarrow men transporting huge bags of millet or salt; men throwing water on the streets with big wooden spoons; rickshaws, and passenger chairs with ventilators and windows. There is a great military camp outside the walls. In the Portuguese cemetery outside of the west gate lie the famous Jesuits who nearly made the Manchu dynasty Catholic in Kang Hi’s day. In the revered British cemetery lie the bodies of the famous pioneers of our race, who, during the centuries, have fought forward the most advanced line of our civilization. Many of the graves and memorials, the trees and walls were desecrated in the “Boxer” outrages of 1900. There is a cemetery for that notorious tribe of palace eunuchs in the northwest of the Tartar city, and sons had to be bought, or “forged” for them so as to pay the necessary grave worship of Confucianism. There is the new Peking Club, the second in cost in the Far East;416 the Tsung Hua College, which trains students who are to go to America and England; and where the old examination stalls and the Hanlin College stood under the ancient “literati” system, are the modern parliament buildings (Tzu Cheng Yuan); also National University, and the Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Office) halls, where Yuan Shih Kai had his headquarters in the exciting days of 1911–12. Towering over the Tartar city are the Gothic towers of the French Pe Tang Cathedral, which was successfully defended by Bishop Favier during the 1900 siege. The white marble pailoo arch to the German ambassador, who was assassinated in 1900, is notable, as are also numerous other marble, porcelain and painted arches, and marble bridges, balustrades and statues of lions. The statue to the German was erected under foreign compulsion and is hated. The wonderful street bazaars of Chien Men gate, Lung Fu Temple Street, wide Kaiser Street; the important Methodist and Union Hospitals of Hatamen Street; Legation, Tsung Pu, Tung Tan, Liu Li, Koulan, Butcher, Fan Tan, Lantern, Jadestone, Bamboo, Meridian and other leading streets should be visited. There is a Peking Tiffany; the firm name is Hsing Lung Tien. The city’s kilns and weavers are famous for their porcelain, cloisonné and tapestries. Pedlers, however, bring almost everything, from the cheapest to the costliest, to one’s door. There are many native papers like the influential Chun Kuo Pao.

Some of the legations have been rebuilt since the 1900 siege, the Americans in particular occupying near the Chien Men gate a series of costly, but not architecturally proper buildings for artistic China. The British legation near the Wu Men gate is notable for two reasons: because it occupies Duke Liang’s Chinese palace, and because its compound was the center of the foreigners’ quarters in the Peking siege of417 1900. The French legation rented Duke Tsin’s palace. In the sacred urns in the Temple Park in the south of the Chinese city, the bodies of the Sikh soldiers, who died or were killed in the 1900 siege, were cremated. The Art Gallery in the imperial city is of particular interest. The Lama (Tibet Buddhist) Temple, with its ornate pailoo arch, should be seen. The priests wear orthodox yellow robes and hats, and a red cloak with squares, which represent the rags of poverty as realistically as art cares to go. There is an immense statue of Buddha, and some small obscene statues which have been draped by the request of the legations, to the great and joyful surprise of the priests, who have discovered that they are now able to make more money in fees than when the statues were undraped, so perverse is tourist curiosity! A walk on the walls should not be neglected, especially where, between the Chien Men and Hata Men gates the American, British and other foreigners made their long stand in 1900. The ponderous fort-temples on the walls, with their interesting exhibit of columns and galleries, are characteristic. Red is the color of the Chinese, yellow and green the color of the Manchus, and the tiling of the roofs indicates where each predominates.

Peking has its many military memories. In 1900 the Ninth and Fourteenth Infantry, the Sixth Cavalry and the Marines of the cruiser Newark of the Americans fought their way here from the coast in General Gaselee’s union column of relief. The Wei-Hai-Wei Regiment of British Chinese in blue and white, came, too, with quotas from the forces of France, Germany, Russia and Japan. The Sun Wui Club brings leading Chinese and Occidentals together; that is, those Occidentals who have a maximum of good sense and national ambition and a minimum of out-of-date, insular “snobbery”. We once had a similar international club418 in Canton, which did good work in destroying difference and welding approximation. The Russian Mission in the Pei Kwan section of Peking is almost the only effort of the vast Greek Church to missionize China. Good music is now available, for both the National Customs and native armies, and all the foreign legations have trained bands, and there are some orchestras. The Union Medical College and Hospital on Hatamen Street is most notable, not only because of its effectiveness, but because the various evangelical denominations have first united in far away China. Some writers, like Lord Salisbury’s son, Lord Cecil, think this is the forerunner of union elsewhere. The example has been copied generally in China, as at Nanking, Tsinan, Canton, etc., and before long all medical, hospital and teaching work will be on the union plan in all the large centers. The Chinese are eager to assist, and join in with a whole heart. Reform started in Peking in 1898, when Kang Yu Wei and other Cantonese, trained at Hongkong, got the ear of the Manchu emperor, Kwang Hsu, and induced him to issue the famous reform edicts.

The peony gardens are notable, and the courts and gardens of the many temples, inside and outside of the walls, exhibit many horticultural treasures, but Northern China in general is more notable for wild flowers than hothouse products. There are Manchu tombs, and the Manchu palaces and gardens of Yuan Ming, Wan Shou and Ih Ho to the northwest to visit, and temples in the western hills, where the foreigners resort during the blazing summer of the plains, if they do not care to take the railway down to the bathing resort of Pei Tai Ho, or Chifu. The scenic railway running north takes one to the glorious Nankou pass in the Great Wall and to the Ming tombs. The station is at Liu Tsin outside the walls. To the northwest are the419 villages where the Manchu pensioners or bannermen were kept in idleness, which was one cause of the 1911 rebellion. As in many of the Chinese cities, there is a clepsydra water clock to be seen. Mints, banks, engraving plants, printing presses, electricity, modern water-works; primary, intermediate, trade and high schools, have all come to the reforming capital. There have been large hoards of bullion in the imperial city. The empress dowager, Tse Hsi, left many millions of silver, which were used to run the government for weeks during the rebellion in 1911–12. This money was collected by the eunuchs, compelling every official to pay for his daylight audience and honors, and crimes were “planted” on officials so as to have the excuse of fining them and thus adding to the Manchus’ imperial reserve. Great granaries exist where the tribute rice from the southern provinces was stored for a million or more subsidized Manchu soldiers and hangers-on. This rice formerly came to Tientsin and Peking by the Grand Canal and Pei Ho River. It was later brought north, through Li Hung Chang’s intervention, by the China Merchants’ Steamship Company, in which the government held the majority of the shares. The history of spying, intriguing, concession-hunting and diplomatic contests swells its largest at Peking, and old Legation Street and the Wai Wu Pu have heard perhaps more secret stories than any other diplomatic quarter of the world. Men of all nations, Manchus and Chinese, eunuchs, women, human parrots, dictographs secretly placed, waste-paper baskets, keys to private codes, the kitchen cabinet, keyhole sentinels, tapped telephone wires, field-glasses masked behind curtains, letter sweaters and those adders in the bosom, society detectives, have all had their part in the old Peking game of intrigue. Foreign trusts have come over the water to battle with local distrusts!420 Understanding has not always honestly wooed misunderstanding. Evasion has alternately successfully and unsuccessfully battled with invasion. “When is a promise not a promise” has been answered by, “At Peking, on both sides of the ethnological pale”.

Culture, learning, fashion and fools have often mixed in the drawing-rooms which face Legation, Meridian and Great Wall Streets. In dignity, the National Customs Service, managed by foreigners, takes its way somewhat apart on Koulan Street. With the British Legal, it is the best civil service in the Far East, the other legations depending in various degrees upon missionaries for their knowledge of Chinese. The American legation in recent years has equipped its staff with student interpreters. Foreigners learn attachment for the life, as their wits are kept at work. It has been a wonderful capital in exciting life, as it is in physical appearance. Foreign press bureaus have vied with one another in sending out men fitted to obtain privileged information. In summer, the working Pekingese throws away all the clothes that the law will allow; in winter, he puts on so many cotton-wadded coats that he looks like a balloon ready to ascend, if he were not weighted with a charcoal brazier tucked under his coat or up his sleeve. He has a stone or brick kang (stove), but he must lie close to it to get its meager warmth. He, therefore, uses it for a bed, and so does the whole insect race, who make it warm for him, even if the brick stove does not. When the schoolboy wrote his ambiguous essay that “crowded China is too thickly populated to be comfortable”, he may, therefore, have referred to other inhabitants than the men and women. The furs of Peking are famous, and many black chow-dog farms have been started in Mongolia to supply the foreign fur markets. Peking has been so looted by421 war and by collectors of its ceramic prizes that the shops and potteries of Liu Li Street contain less that is valuable than the museums of America and Europe. For the ordinary traveler who wants something beautiful, even if it is not old, there are thousands of shops and bazaar tables that display their tempting wares. As China reforms, and art is not sweated out of the provinces by grasping officials and courtiers, the traveler will be able to follow his quest back to the many old centers of production in the central and southern provinces; and this will be better for art, and better for the traveler. The whole nation used to tremble when an official, dowager, baby emperor, prince, regent, etc., had a birthday or one of their various anniversaries, because it meant that jade, jewels, costly furniture, tapestries, porcelain, etc., must prove the sincerity of congratulations, and as we fill the papier-mâché rabbit with candies on Easter Day the vase had to be filled with coins of worth. These presents were no sooner received than they were pawned by the indigent Manchus to the shopkeepers of Peking, or they were stolen and sold by the palace eunuchs. The Chinese system of keeping art in drawers instead of in glassed cabinets, in view, aided this thievery, for the rascally eunuchs were not soon found out.

Many wonderful stories are told of the mysterious ceremonies of the Manchu court at night; how soldiers suddenly lined Meridian Street, and no Chinese could leave his house but on pain of death. Then the Wu Men gate of the Forbidden City was thrown open under the smoking torches, and the pale Emperor Kwang Hsu was carried forth, robed in yellow, and his courtiers in red, gold and blue. Down Meridian Street they noiselessly marched southward, the soldiers turning volte-face along the street. The Chien Men gate into the Chinese city was thrown open,422 and through its Meridian Street the procession continued south for two miles to the temples and the open altar of Heaven, where midnight sacrifices of a black bullock, burned silk, grain and wine were made; a worship as old and as simple as that of the patriarchial days of Abraham. It was the worship of the ancestral Chou clan, which Confucius chronicled and the Manchu adopted so as to keep himself in veneration; and this right of sacrifice he has maintained in his abdication. The Pope Mikado has also retained his right to make similar sacrifices. Surely if the main hold on eastern peoples is to be a superstitious one, it is not so strong a hold as the republicans of China intend to set up in the minds and hearts of the new nation. God’s name was simply called “Tien”; i. e., heaven or sky. Then the procession hurried back long before the non-Manchus were awake. Other mysterious things happened in the night. The Wu Men gate was opened, and all courtiers and ministers then alone had their audience with the screened crown head. During the long regency of the Dowager Empress Tse Hsi and her predecessors, China was a land ruled by midnight decisions, and justice was as dark as the muffled and mysterious hour. Executions of the prominent were held at night on the common Meridian Road, which had been blocked off by soldiers. You never know at Peking when your passenger cart is standing over the altar of a life which was persecuted and sacrificed for opinion’s sake. No wonder that the Chinese, like other long-suffering reformers, are saying under their breath: “We have had enough of ‘plants’ and deeds done in darkness; let there be light.”

This wonderful walled capital of Mongol, Ming and Manchu dynasties, is not so old as the Great Wall of China, for it has been rebuilt several times, the imperial423 portion being about 1,000 years older than the inferior Chinese section to the south. It was as though the Chinese traders camped before the southern Chien Men gate to supply the Manchu court, and the Emperor Kia Tsing rose up and said: “Let us now take thought, and throw a wide wall around our purveyors’ bazaars also.” There is only one good thing about absolutism; i. e., to say is to do, and it was done. Peking has had many rivals as the capital of China: Nanking, the southern capital of the Mings, in particular; Hangchow, of the Sungs; and Canton, Wuchang, Chingtu and Shanghai have all put in their claims and maintained their flag in the breeze for a regal season. Geographically and strategically, Chingtu would be the proper capital of a united nation, and Wuchang would be almost as central and afford better trading facilities, a London of China, but it would not be so strong a strategic center. From a Chinese republican point of view, Canton, Nanking and Shanghai are foremost in their claims. Peking is weak because it is always within striking distance of Russia’s and Japan’s mighty armies. Almost alone of the world’s capitals, it is not at the water’s edge.

There are temples to nearly everything in Peking, a “Brooklyn of Churches”, but most of the altars this time are heathen: temples to Buddhas, sleeping in Nirvana, recumbent in Cingalese style; a splendid Lama Temple with wonderful carvings in wood and stone; God of War; Confucian; Taoist; Catholic Cathedral; Evangelical of every denomination of the three Protestant nations; Mohammedan mosques; God of Literature; God of Fox; Russian Greek Church; Portuguese Church; shrines over Buddha’s skin, teeth and a score of other things; Ancestral temples; Altars of the Sun, Moon, and Gods of Grain and Rain; temples to Buddha’s mother, and Gods of Success, and424 “World Peace” (not the recent invention of an armed peace!); Gods of Title Deeds, Dragons, Wind and Water, the North Star; Gods of Dead Elephants and Strong Tigers, etc. When the jolly men of Canton and another southern city heard of all this, glorious humorists that they are, they said they could “go it one better”. They erected with a rush a “Temple to Ten Thousand Gods”, all of whom look alike, even the images named for Marco Polo and “Chinese” Gordon. Chided with all this, a humorous Cantonese retorted: “Well, haven’t you Occidentals an Eden Musée and Madame Tussaud’s wax works; don’t take our idols as seriously as you do the Indian ones.” There are superbly carved marble dagobas in the Lama and Pi-Un-Se Temples. The Peking Lama is second in authority in the Buddhist world, and since General Chao Ehr Feng drove the Dalai Lama out of Tibet into India, the Peking Lama has now probably most power in the Buddhist world. The Pali Chuan pagoda outside the west wall is the most ornate in China. Burmese Buddhists brought their art influence thus far north, and under patronage of the Ming emperors cast it up like a pearl wrecked upon a barren shore; for the Manchu, who succeeded in the dynasty, is not an architect nor an artist. He has had to call in Chinese, Indian, Persian, Mohammedan and Jesuit architects from time to time to adorn his capitals and his graveyards at Mukden and Peking. There are towering, priceless bronze censers; stone and metal tablets; delightful octagonal marble mausoleums with circular second stories, topped with conic fluted roof, which is copied from the perfect act of the incomparable blue Temple of Heaven, and like the second story of the divinely beautiful choragic monument of Lysicrates at Athens. In his book, The Chinese, the author has referred to many other similarities between Greek and Chinese425 art and architecture, which are as wonderful as the dissimilarities. The ponderous gate forts, Manchu Drum and Ming Bell towers, with the largest bells in the world, sixteen feet high and nine inches thick, and the delightful compound or palace gates, are notable. The Buddhists have bell and statue foundries in the Tartar city, and there are potteries for dainty cloisonné. There are said to be some lost Jewish Chinese at Peking, as at Kaifong. They are now butchers, and worship with the Mohammedans, having lost nearly all their religious, if not their phrenological distinction long ago. What proof is stronger that the phylacteries of any conviction should be worn day and night on the forehead, as well as engraven on the heart, “lest we forget”. The trees and lakes of the city and suburbs are conspicuous, because all Chinese buildings, except pagodas, are not over two stories in height, and do not dwarf the lovely landscape.

There is one dead foreign city in China, Cathay’s “Deserted Village”, immortal Port Arthur. Where are now the streets of palatial Renaissance palaces which eight years ago nestled under Golden Hill and lined the bund of the Eastern Port? Where are the massed battalions of Alexeieff’s troops, white-capped, white-tunicated and high-booted, which used to dress ranks on the broad parade ground behind Golden Hill? What stilled forever the music of the ringing glasses, drained of their sweet Roederer by gold-braided arms that lifted them quickly to harsh lips in Saratoff’s gay restaurant on the sunny bund? What hushed the song of the musée and Odessa ballet girls on the small stage in smoky Nicobadza’s Café in the New Town? Over the breakers that lash the Tiger’s Tail Peninsula do the ghosts of Admiral Makharov, the court painter, Verestchagin, and seven hundred and fifty others of the mine-sunk Petropavlovsk battleship still whisper their mournful426 names like a dirge of St. Andrew, as on that sad gray morning of April 4, 1904? Where are the battleships Sevastopol, Peresviet, Poltava and Nicolai, which used to lie safely under Golden Hill, while terrific war harmlessly hurled fire and shell from Kikwan Hill, Pigeon Bay, where we used to shoot snipe, and Wolf’s Hill? Surely they are not the salvaged and transformed Sagami, Tango, Iki, etc., flying now the rayed, red sun instead of the white, blue and red flag of St. Andrew. On second view, they certainly are; there are the high freeboard of a Baltic-built vessel of the Kronstadt navy-yard.

We search in vain for the newspaper office of Alexeieff’s official organ, the Novo Krai, and we miss from the gay bund the dashing team of the richest Chinese compradore army-purveyor, Chih Fun Tai, Esquire. The naval dockyard across the harbor from Golden Hill is, however, developed better than ever, though you can not get near it because of the watchful Japanese picket, unless you wish to be incarcerated under the international spy act! The fine white hospital buildings to the west of the inner harbor are also improved. The wrecking crews are still working with derricks and drags at the narrow harbor entrance only two hundred yards wide upon the rock-filled hulls which Captain Hirose, the Hobson of Japan, sank there at the cost of his life, under the fire of Golden Hill on a hazy morning in April, 1904, so as to cork up the navy of Russia and allow Togo to scour the seas with his British naval preceptor at his side on the bridge, instead of being held in blockading leash. Around the harbor tower the great forts of strategically essential 203 Metre Hill, stubborn North Hill, Kikwan Hill, Ehr Lung (Two Dragons) Hill, Sun Shu Hill, “H” fort, Palung Hill, and Wan Tai. Not a large tree waves on them, though some stubby firs for masking427 purposes are being set out stealthily. Everywhere is desolation; choked tunnels and saps underground, filled war galleries above ground, broken gun carriages, burst Krupp and Armstrong guns piled up in titanic wreckage. Heroic Kondrachenko and gallant Stoessel on one side, and Grant-like Nogi on the other, sowed the hundred valleys and hillsides hereabout with rusting bayonets, belt buckles, medals of glory and skulls of death. Thousands and thousands of men, known not by their names but by their number tag, like prisoners, dropped before the ruthless and fame-obliterating fire of range-fixed guns operating behind searchlights. It was the steady mowing of the grim reaper himself, until Nogi determined to reach Kondrachenko, and North and 203 Metre forts, underground instead of by bombardment and assault. Nickel-nosed bullets, soft-nosed spreaders, broken sabers, rusted buttons, bleaching bones, water cans, leather knapsack bottles, slowly rotting walnut rifle stocks, four-inch and eight-inch shells, camp-fire equipments, pots, match-boxes, frames that held sweetheart’s picture next the heart, star orders of the heathen emperor and cross decorations of the Holy Tsar of Peace (!), numbers that were tagged on the neck to take the place of the name of a man, breeches of quick-firing guns, barrels of Gatlings and Nordenfeldts, cartridge cases, porcelain saki bottles, metal clasps of Y. M. C. A. Bibles, all fill up these powder-upheaved furrows of Death, where not a Chinese building stands of the once beautiful Chinese suburbs.

Out of the historical hills and valleys wind the long parallel ribbons of the railway around the horseshoe bend of the Kwang Tung Peninsula, but no commercial traffic is now brought lower down than Dalny. A destroyed city indeed, a precious ice-free port of commerce and a sunny428 bund of society, deserted by force of arms, a secret base and a masked fort yet being silently strengthened. The fleet that holds the Pacific holds Port Arthur at its will, and the hand that holds Port Arthur can hold all China north of the Yangtze and up to the Amur River in its iron grasp, if there is a will and an exchequer to launch the force. Russia allowed commerce, travel and society to come with war to Port Arthur. Japan only allows war to mark time here. True, the Yamato Hotel is there yet, but it is exclusively for the garrison artillery life of the little brown men who by edict of government have given up sitting on mats that their legs may grow as tall as their minds and ambitions, despite Matthew 6:27. Whether there are Anglo-Japanese, Anglo-American, Sino-American, American-Japanese, Russo-Germanic, Anglo-French, or Four-Nation alliances or entente cordiales, this question will always come up: “Well, what about the deserted, shell-swept city of the Far East, the masked and granite fort, Port Arthur?”

What happened to Port Arthur can happen to any city of China north of Hongkong, unless China is put on her feet and has an army of defense. Under whose tutelage shall that force arise? Not a true man lives who wants to see another Dead City of the East. There this one stands, terrible to-day as eight years ago, the most terrific, oppressively silent, shell-blown, mine-scarred, tunnel-cut, war-cursed, sap-seared, skeleton-grinning, warped, agonized, Luciferian monument of bloody war that the world exhibits. Tuck it away in the toe of the Tiger’s Tail in far-away China, and let busy altruistic mankind, yellow and white, forget it. Forget it! Yes! but I hear the hammering and riveting, the cranking of the siege guns, the piling of the ammunition, the digging and blasting of the429 deep docks still going on. In the midst of peace and life we are yet in the midst of war and death. Yet the Dead City of the Far East, in dying, won something for progress; it checked the Russianization of China and the obliteration of China’s best son, Japan; it prevented the clash of Britain and Russia, and the eventual clash of America and Russia perhaps in the Philippines and Manchuria. It loosened a little the ruthless hand of the Russian oligarchy upon the neck of Dumas, and the Ochrana detectivization of the people. In dying, it brought some dangers, too, that a not sufficiently representative Japan would take the place of Russia in greed, and bring altruistic America upon her fleet; for the American people, loving freedom for all, and now writing text-books on that subject, are committed by John Hay’s “non-partition of China” policy to seeing that Japan stops her imperialistic expansion with the absorption of Korea, and that China, the Mother of the East, is left to pursue her new glorious destiny in peace, with no more of her sacred territory imperiled, until she can put liberty in free stride from the hot Tonquin border to the Amur’s ice-fringed rapids.

Newchwang, which means “ox depot”, is on the Liao River fifteen miles from the sea, Jinkow being its port. The bar permits of eighteen-foot draught, but could be dredged deeper. The river is icebound from November till April. The exports are beans, bean cake, bean oil, gold, silver, silk, black oxen, mutton, wool, wheat, kaoliang, little millet, pulse, spirits, tobacco, paper, lumber, furs. Coal and iron would be a heavy export if there was not railway discrimination on the part of the Japanese. The imports are flour, machinery, cotton, etc. There is an important foreign settlement, and foreign hongs should move their advance posts here for the attack on Manchurian trade.430 The city was invested by the Russians in 1898 and 1900, and the Japanese to-day are almost as active, having linked the city by railway with their Dalny line. They have established a Japanese settlement on the water-front, with hotels, hospitals, tea-houses, banks, etc. The Chinese national railways give a direct service north and south via Kinchow. Newchwang’s commerce is fed by the immense fleet of 20,000 junks of the Liao River, which gather cargo even north of Mukden. Perhaps the most celebrated British consul and diplomatist who has been stationed here is the author, A. H. Hosie. In the Japan-China War of 1894 a great battle was fought at Newchwang.

Mukden, the home city of the Manchu race, lies one hundred miles northeast of Newchang on the Shin River, a branch of the Liao River. It has connection with the Japanese and Chinese railway systems, and northward it connects with the Russian system. The stone and brick-walled inner city is one mile across; the outer wall, with eight double gates, is fourteen miles around, and there are important suburbs. It is a smaller Peking in plan. East of Mukden there are walled tombs of the Manchu emperors, and of Shun Chih and Narachu, the founders of the dynasty, which tombs suffered in the Russo-Japan War. A plain mound, with a growing tree upon it, covers the founder’s tomb. Winged griffins guard the southern gateway, which is so stern in architecture as hardly to suggest the Orient. There are the usual pailoo memorial arches, rising on the backs of tortoises, and two unique pillars with lions on top, which design is copied from the Ming emperors, whose throne the Manchus ravaged. The north gate oddly is single, and not triple in Chinese style, and is guarded by a plain, two-roofed pagoda. The court is stone laid. The main avenue of the tomb is guarded by monster statues of lions, camels,431 horses, elephants and warriors. The ancestral temple contains a tortoise which bears the tablets. Mourning houses, temples, stone screens and vases add to the ensemble.

The old Chung Cheng yellow-tiled palace is at the south gate of the city, and has been tenanted by notable and progressive viceroys, one of whom attempted to reconcile the Eastern and Western religions. The imperial palace, Wen So Ko, has the imperial library of 7,000 cases. Its rich museum of priceless bronzes, vases, tapestries, etc., was largely looted by the Manchu princes, who sold the treasures to the curio collectors who flocked like vultures to Peking in the financial troubles of the revolution. The Fei Lung Ko treasury is on the east side and the Hsiang Feng Ko treasury is on the west side. There is a modern Chinese commercial museum; the Yamato Hotel in the extensive Japanese section; a Japanese railway medical college; an Astor Hotel; a Chinese medical college; and the medical college of the Scotch Presbyterians outside the east gate, with which the noted author, Doctor J. Ross, is connected. Doctor Christie, of Mukden, was another hero of the terrific pneumonic plague in Manchuria in 1910–11. The usual favorite Fox Temple of the Manchu race is to be seen. There is a Taoist Temple of Hell, with horrible statues. The Temple to the God of Literature is the most beautiful in bare Manchuria, because of the artistic proportion of its walls, galleries, roofs and stairs; but the temple has little independent meaning, because the Manchus have absolutely no original literature, possessing in their perpendicular Syriac-like script only copies of Chinese literature.

Not only the Japanese are conspicuously in evidence; Russian droshkes are pulled at the gallop and trot along the Meridian Street of the Drum Tower. The unique tall shop signs are carved on pole and capital not unlike Alaskan432 totem poles. Differently from the cities of South China, many ponies and mules are seen on the street, and man is not here, as in Middle and South China, the beast of burden. The best frozen game, pork and mutton, and fish shops of China are in Mukden. Outside each angle of the walls is a Lama monument. Mukden is famous for its black pigs, many of which, frozen, are shipped to Liverpool and London markets. The Japanese have erected fine railway, administration, bank, school, etc., buildings in their settlement. The city has telephone, telegraph, electric light, mail and water service. Wen Hsiang, the most enlightened Manchu prince connected with international dealings with China at Peking in the Victorian age, was a Mukden man, and is buried near the east gate. The foreign settlement has the usual clubs and churches, a brewery, and a large modern concrete factory of the British-American Tobacco Company, for when opium went out the cigarette came in, in disgusted Cathay! The Chinese hotel is the Hai Tien Chun, near the entrance to the west gate. There are horse-tram railways, electric trams, a Chinese provincial mint, and great fur, skin and coal markets. Mukden will yet be a leading center for land, mine, agricultural, machinery, food and clothing interchange of the world, for rich, black-earth Manchuria is destined to be the granary of more soil-impoverished countries of the Pacific than China.

XXII
NATIVE CITIES OF CHINA

Singan or Sian (meaning “Chinese”), the capital of Shensi province, dates back to the twelfth century, B.C. The whole valley is full of the monuments, mounds and relics of kings of many ancient dynasties. As its name appropriately shows, Singan was the original capital of China, when the tribes first united in mutual recognition of kinship, and it is a shrine, therefore, appealing to antiquarians. Out on the plain the Emperor Tsin, builder of the Great Wall, “burned the books” of China, and buried the scholars under mounds of contumely. The most remarkable pyramidal pagoda in China lies beyond the south wall. It has seven stories, surmounted with a turban, and temple buildings with rich screens are attached. To this city the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi retreated from Peking in a springless cart over sunken loess roads before the march of the European allies and the American column in 1900. Its walls and large forts, filled with ports, are the oldest and best preserved of all Chinese cities.

The Bankers’ Guild building is famous for its many-pinnacled roof and ornate tiling. Its monuments relate the intellectual communion of China and India in the seventh century A. D. Very old buildings exhibit a four-leaf clover design in stone screens, and the fish-scale design in wooden and bamboo balustrades. There are wonderful gardens with pavilions and wavy stone bridges. Pailoos,434 bearing legends, are built over the entrance stairs to temples and guild houses. The square space within the walls is six miles long each way. One reason for its strong fortification is that it is in the Mohammedan section of China, and the Mohammedans are always rebelling. It withstood a Mohammedan siege of two years in 1870–1.

If Russia aimed to cut off eastern from western China, she would strike at Singan, as it is the strategic base which holds Turkestan, Tibet and Szechuen to the empire. Its trade is vast and various. From a religious and antiquarian point of view, hardly any Chinese city equals it in the interest of Occidentals, for here the famous Nestorian Tablet, dated 781 A.D., stands in the park of a heathen temple. This tablet records the communion of the earliest Chinese Christians. A copy of this supremely venerable and artistic stone was placed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1909. The National Library, Paris, has had a replica since 1850. The Pei Lin Park contains a library cut in 1,300 stone tablets; the “Stone Forest”, it is called. The city lies in a plain, and presents a striking appearance from the limestone and loess hills which surround it. In these hills, to the northwest, are cut the cave dwellings, temples and statues of prehistoric and early civilizations. In one cave temple is the sandstone and gilt colossal Ta-Fu-Tsze Buddha, fifty-six feet high, the largest statue in China, showing the tremendous zeal of the Buddhist movement in the brilliant Tang dynasty in the seventh century, when our Europe was in intellectual darkness. Two colossal statues of Buddha’s pupils are also in this temple.

The city presents a brilliant kaleidoscope of nationalities: Mohammedans with red turbans, Tartars wearing red panels; Mongols with blue turbans; high-booted, bewhiskered Russians; booted Tibetans; blue-gowned Chinese; yellow-435robed Lamas; now and then a top-knotted aborigine; robed Manchus; and descendants of the original Tsin and Chou tribes of Chinese who came east to China from the cradle of the race, seated in the saddle of pioneer conquerors; and with the Hebrews, these Singan men can probably boast that they bring down the purest blood from the dispersion of Ararat. Descendants of kings and generals of many a dynasty now plough farms on the plain, and they will tell you: “Yes, I am the son of a king.” Near here the builder of the Great Wall, infinitely the greatest mason and military commander of history, the Emperor Tsin, 220 B. C., had his capital at Hsien Yang. His huge pyramidal mound, and other burial mounds, are among the world’s greatest curiosities. On the plain are the two unique marble arches, with four roofs, erected by Governor Lu to the memory of his mother and wife, in the China where some writers say women meet with no honor. A stone bridge of seventy arches over the Pa River, and the hot sulphur springs of Lin Tung, are notable. The round, instead of square stone piers, are unique in China, and show Moslem influence. Not all Chinese cities were without attention from the sanitary engineer. Old culverts and drains constructed by the ancient kings of the north exist in Singan and elsewhere, and some of the southern cities have drainage canals, sewage canals not being considered necessary, as the night-soil is collected for fertilization. China, however, is going to drain her cities so as to carry off expectoration and decaying matter. The smells which the tourist revolts at are not as dangerous as they seem, as opium, peculiar incense, and vegetable cooking oils, such as sesamum, peanut, bean, etc., contribute the most malodorous portion.

Chingtu stands in a wide plain in the heart of the vast empire. The walls are fifteen miles around, and the gates436 of these walls are never opened at night, except to the “chi” (government messengers). Either Chingtu or the Hankau cities will be the capital of the nation eventually. It is an intellectual center, and there are many publishing shops. Two rivers, the Min and To, border the plain, and are broken up into the widest system of irrigation canals that the world shows. No garden of the earth is so rich as this warm moist Eden. Every tree, herb and plant of the tropics and sub-tropics is raised, and more men are supported here to the acre than anywhere else in the world. It is the earth’s model school of intensive farming, and would delight the professors of the specializing University of Wisconsin! In the sandstone and loess hills are the cliff dwellings of prehistoric man. There are hundreds of bridges and ferries, many temples, arches, cemeteries and villages, the latter often populated by one family clan. The great walled city of a million inhabitants has the widest streets of any native city except Peking. There is a Tartar walled city within the Chinese city. The forts over the gates are of three stories. The loyal General Chao Ehr Feng, the hero of the Tibet campaign in 1910, held Chingtu for many months against the republicans in the fall of 1911.

The Provincial Assembly proclaimed reform in September, 1911, from a wonderful, circular, double-roofed temple in Chingtu. There is a large Mohammedan population, and mosques are therefore conspicuous. Marco Polo was a traveler here. There are wide Tartar parade grounds and rifle butts. The markets and fairs held in the temple grounds (religion and business being partners in China as in that Boston church that uses its basement for stores!) are the best in the empire. It is the splendid capital of the largest and richest province; a center of independent provincials437 who are crying “China for the Chinese.” It has a modern union university, which teaches English, science and Chinese; trade, military and girls’ schools; musk, silk, brass, salt, horn-lantern, oil, fur, spice, lace, porcelain, cotton and wool shops; a few iron shops; decorated yamen and guild halls. Its traveling kitchens, its porters and wheelbarrow brotherhoods are unique. One temple, erected to the Sheep-god in particular, is remarkable for two reasons: first, that it is a Taoist and not a Buddhist monastery: and second, that it is one of the finest examples of architecture in the empire. It is the beautiful Ching Yang Kung (Temple of the Golden Sheep) monastery outside the south gate. The Chu Ko Liang monastery, with its circular doors, is another chef-d’œuvre.

Many nations and faiths have missions here, and their medical schools and hospitals have won the hearts of the Chinese even ahead of their excellent schools. Chingtu is one of the centers that the Canadian missions have selected for special work. One meets many foreign engineers, and there are also native engineers. The climate is far more endurable for foreigners than that of South China at the seacoast. Many Lolo and Miaotse aborigine mountaineers, with their hair worn in a top-knot, are seen on the busy streets. Rice and wheat mills are being erected, and furniture, florist, book, bronze and picture stores abound. Chingtu will be the center of the commercial attack on rich Southeast Tibet, as the main pass of Ta Chien is not far away. Britain plans to link Chingtu to her Burmese and Indian railways by loaning the Chinese the necessary money. The Chingtu gentry started a railway to Ichang on the Yangtze River, and differences with the Peking authorities over the nationalization of this railway in September precipitated the October, 1911, rebellion at the438 Hankau cities. There is an arsenal, a mint, a military school and police barracks, the police being uniformed in modern style, with the addition of arms. The French are also in evidence at Chingtu, as they would like to run their railway up from Yunnan City. Railways are planned to run north to Singan, east to Ichang through exceedingly difficult country, south to Chungking, and west to Batang and Burma. Politically the Chingtu people are progressive and fearless like the men of Hupeh province, whence they came, as in 1644 Chang Hsien Chang depopulated Chingtu.

Chungking, the second city of vast Szechuen province, is a riverine port with a great future as a railway, boat, trading and manufacturing center; a future Pittsburgh, perhaps. It is built on a rocky peninsula just like Macao, the Yangtze and Kialing Rivers forming two sides, and a wall the third side of a triangle. From the hills outside the wall, the graves of the ages look down on the busy scene, as the carriers set out on the long stone road toward the capital, Chingtu. Chungking is famous for its water-gates, overhanging buildings propped over the rock with long poles. Some of its streets are exceptionally clean, wide and well paved. It is called the “piled-up” city, like the lower part of rocky Hongkong, the roof of one row of buildings being part of the street of the tier of buildings above. There is a great parade ground, and a military school by the land wall. The city is a center for fitting up expeditions which are bound for the prosperous capital in the north, the rich hilly south, or the wild west. Drugs, vegetable and mineral oils, water-proof paper, salt, coal, furs, iron, tea, lanterns, cement, agricultural products including sugar, bamboo, silk in particular, boat builders’ and chandlers’ supplies, placer and quartz gold, are all specialties of the district. Fine pagodas, with beautiful, up-curling galleries,439 overlook the river, and there are excellent “Li Pais” or mission compounds, and modern educational institutions. There are fine guilds, as one could expect of the Hupeh and Hunan province merchants, and the Ho Gai Monastery reveals a delightful touch of the old times. Beautiful pailoo arches span the roads. The Guild of Benevolence is famous for its extremely beautiful pavilions and terraces. As at all the riverine ports of the Yangtze, the great flights of wet stone stairs are characteristic. Chungking was once the second worst opium hell in the kingdom, but the people awoke to their danger in a wonderfully surprising way, and in the years from 1908–11 largely threw off the curse.

In Chungking the rebels of 1911 recruited many of their first patriots, and the first attacks were planned from here. The people are an earnest-looking set, yet the place for centuries, like its great winter mists which float down from Tibet, was the center of sorcery, superstition, fortune-telling and folk-lore. It was just the place to raise soothsayers, poets and astrologers. The only man who had a stronger wand like Aaron’s which swallowed up all the rest, was the American or British medical missionary, who by 1910 grew to be heartily beloved, so much so that every foreigner was welcomed by rich and poor, and implored to “come in here, see my art treasures, and (incidentally!) before you go won’t you please heal my child, my beloved and my old parent?” It was enough to make every traveler swear that if he returned home safely he would at once study medicine and come back to China as a physician of the body first, and the soul and economic state afterward. The boat people of the port are famous for their courage and skill, and the mountain coolies are noted for their endurance. Much of the blood of the race is from Hupeh, which means a strong strain of “China for the Chinese”. The city is surrounded440 with hills and ranges, and there are many mountain health resorts used by natives and foreigners, which are exceedingly welcome in the moist hot summer. There is the Golden Buddha range to the south, with its fine temples and many aborigine dwellers. Ho Ih Shan Mountain is to the north. The Gong Gorge is a scenic spot of great beauty. The British have a palatial consulate at Chungking, with a bungalow adjunct in the hills so as to afford escape from the terrific summer. This is the policy that the Hongkong Bank long ago instituted in China; mess quarters over the bank for winter occupancy, and airy bungalow quarters on Hongkong peak for summer occupancy. There are many Mohammedans in Chungking, and four of the industries which they control are bakeries, butcher shops, inns and common carrying.

Wuhu, on the Yangtze, half-way up to Hankau, is recovering from the blow dealt it by the Taipings in the 60’s. It will take a prominent place in the coming industrial China because of riches in land, mine, silk, tea and bamboo near it. It is one of the new strongholds in education and medicine under American and European auspices. It has a foreign colony in the hills. The Hwangchi River brings grain and produce down to its marts, and the great Yangtze sweeps by its harbor bund. Game, such as pheasant, quail and duck, abounds. There are very fine pagodas, and in particular a Buddhist rock temple with the figures of men, animals and birds cut solidly out of, or in relief on the solid rock, the shrubbery and grass serving for hair and beard in a startling way. Excursions can be made to the Chin Shan and San Shan hills, temples, lily lakes and flowery restaurants. The town is full of the festival spirit, and the beauty of lanterns, arches, flags and matting shelter is often delightfully exhibited. Wuhu early went over to the rebel441 movement of October, 1911. Wuhu is a great sufferer from floods. They were so deep in August, 1911, that Lion Hill became an island. The Yangtze, instead of mounting willingly up to Nanking, tries at Wuhu to break across country for Shanghai. The result is deplorable flood and resultant famine, involving millions of people.

Tai Yuen is the walled capital of the great coal, iron and loess province of Shansi, which is as large as England. It is the richest in minerals of all the provinces. The famous Ping Ting coal and iron mines are near. The city lies in a great plain 3,000 feet above the sea on the Fen River, and has railway connection with Peking and all the east and south. It is to have connection with the capital of Kansu province, and all the great northwest for thousands of miles. Mills will arise, for stone, clay, iron and coal are available in this province as nowhere else. Though the air of the city is exhilarating and there is little consumption, skin diseases and diseases due to poor water are prevalent. With irrigation in operation, fertilization of this loess province would be unnecessary, so that Tai Yuen will yet be a great wheat and millet center. Her grain, stock and wool merchants will be taking contracts to feed and clothe America and Britain when our fields are impoverished and overrun with people. It will be a financial center, for Shansi’s wealth in China’s new industrial era can not be computed. Even now the Shansi bankers are the best known, their guild houses being in every city of the land. The railway, electric light, post, telegraph and telephone have arrived, and so has the printing press, raying out reform. The railway has brought progress to quaint Tai Yuen. There are match factories, police department, a public band, modern schools of all sorts, an agricultural and military school, modern roads and a street-442cleaning department, a modern jail which aims to teach instead of confirming in despair. Confucius fled here to the Wei State, when his own state persecuted him, and this province is the home of the original clan of Chinese, the Chou, who instituted ancestor worship and the rule of princes at the beginning of history. The great Shansi University was established here in 1901 by the British with indemnity funds restored to the Chinese at the request of British missions, which was a singularly Samaritan act; for on July 9, 1900, at the yamen in Tai Yuen, all the missionaries, their wives and children, were put to a brutal death by the infamous “Boxer,” the Luciferian brute, Governor Yu Hsien, whose name is hated by the progressive Chinese as much as we hate it, and the Manchu officials who took their “tip” from the dowager empress, Tse Hsi. Doctor Timothy Richard, promoter of the successful Red Cross in China, was the first president of this institution, and W. E. Soothill was its second president. Both these gentlemen lead in Britain’s educational influence in China. English, of course, is taught. Like all the northern cities, Tai Yuen is cursed in fall with the penetrating loess and sand-storms. The blue-roofed and blue-walled Temple of Heaven is beautiful, with its magnificent eaves, carved terminals, colored frieze, columns, statues, scrolls, paintings and theater. There are also Confucian, Manchu-Fox, Buddhist and Taoist temples and pagodas, and a Mohammedan mosque, for this is the first city, going west, where we meet this last sect, whose sphere extends right on to the far northwest. There is a notable four-storied fort over the Romanesque south gate.

The Manchus have their own Tartar or military city, which will now become the administrative headquarters.443 Many furs are brought down from the Mohammedan and Mongolian plains in the west and north. There are mission schools and hospitals, a military parade ground, and an arsenal. The twin pagodas of thirteen stories, with narrow galleries, are famous. The pailoo memorial arches are distinct from the open southern type, the Shansi type being a solid top-heavy tower. More ponies are to be seen here than in most of the cities, and the horsemanship of the Mongols is daring, as we should expect from the descendants of Kublai Khan’s hordes, whom Marco Polo praised in that famous memorial that was dictated in a prison of Europe more terrible to him than all the dangers of Far Cathay.

Yunnan, the capital of the great copper and tin province, is five hundred miles from the Gulf of Tonquin, with which a French narrow gage railway, completed at awful cost of men and money, now connects it. The city is in a plain five thousand feet high, at the foot of the Tibetan Mountains. A great lake, the Tanklu, near by, is connected by canal with the city. It is the center of a warmer art than the other provinces, the architecture showing the elaborate Burmese influence, which relies on ornament and color more than line and proportion. Some of the pagodas are square, peculiar to Yunnan, and have nine to thirteen stories, and galleries, as compared with seven to nine stories elsewhere. The gate forts are ornate, though the roofs do not curl up as fantastically and richly as in the east of China. The British and French are fighting it out for chief foreign influence, with the latter ahead as yet, because the railway from Mandalay has not been run through. There are fine French stores where you can purchase madame’s millinery, confection or perfumery, a French hospital and a palatial French consulate; but the Chinese have far greater trust in the Americans and British, for444 French designs on Chinese territory are feared. Yunnan does not want to follow Tonquin. There are many Mohammedans, and their round mosque towers are in evidence.

Great rebellions and massacres have occurred, as in those bloody years 1857–73 when General Tsen made a name for ruthlessness which still strikes terror throughout China. The city, with a splendid division of the modern army, went over to the rebels on November 3, 1911. Outside the walls are two interesting temples. The Golden Heaven Temple is in the northeastern hills. Part of it is made of gilt copper, and shows Burmese influence. The stairs, terraces, openwork balustrades, tiling, roofs and scrolls are very fine. The Buddhist temple cut in the rock over the lake is a noble work, even extra niches being cut for the statues. It is not likely that this costly work will ever again be done in China, for “the god has lost his grip,” the devotee having found out that he was hollow! The bald monks are scratching their heads and thinking what new thing they can devise to bolster up the system. Many of them have gone in the hotel and teaching business! The flags of the temples have bells attached to them, and bells are hung under the eaves. Every breeze in Yunnan is laden with silver and gold, therefore. There are temples and shrines to the goddess Kwan Yun, who is said to give good luck to travelers. It is proper ritual to roll the prayer paper on your tongue, and in a ball shoot it toward the statue, where, if it sticks, it means fortune for you, as the goddess will certainly be unable to forget you. There are beautiful pavilions at the lake, and Yunnan can now be considered a health resort for Southern and French China. It is a center of engineering, and the headquarters of the inventors of the stone-and-chain suspension bridges which are peculiar to this province of gorges. The piers and445 pier houses are very artistic, and stand unique in the world’s architecture.

Yunnan has modern schools, colleges, hotels, hospitals; a mint, post-office and telegraph station; splendid modern barracks, a fine parade ground, etc. The university is a modern domed brick building on a hill in the center of the city. Its dormitories are lighted by electricity and the equipment is wonderful compared to what used to be. There is a museum, and English, Japanese, French, science, music, agriculture and sericulture are among the branches taught. The best trade school, however, is the modern jail, which is very popular! When you hire a mechanic in Yunnan you are reasonably sure that you have a former jailbird, just as in Peking, if you have a good clerk you are sure he is a Manchu prince incognito, for pensions have been stopped of late! One sees here the famous Yunnan yellow pigs, and peculiar white and black fowl, whose bones and skin are black, probably on account of iron and copper in what they eat. Boys are driving water buffaloes to the rice and maize fields, which have superseded the poppy plantations. The stores exhibit the famous jade and the Yunnan (Tali) landscape-veined marble which is used in the tops of tables, the seats of chairs and panels of cabinets and screens. Peculiar bamboo and paper toys in which the figures move by the heat of a candle, are made, which is another proof that the Chinese love children more than they are said to do in many books of travel! The city is famous for its copper and bronze work. The copper smelting by charcoal up to 1911 was an imperial government monopoly, the ingots being sent overland to Peking by pack animals, which took the route via Sui-fu and Chungking. At the Peking mint it was used in the heavy “cash” coinage. Yunnan is noted for its cloth446 dyers, who as yet use the famous indigo of the province, instead of analine dye. The tin, iron, pewter and furniture shops are noted, and foreign models are being copied with success.

The city is noted for its modern prison, with model workshops, the best in China. The police corps, uniformed in knee boots, tight tunics and German caps, and wearing swords, is a model gendarmerie. Yunnan, the farthest removed city of the empire from the capital, Peking, has been the foremost in these startling reforms since the French railway came through from the coast in 1910. Many Hongkong Chinese, who at once visited the place, are largely responsible for this reform leaven, but the chief credit is due to the progressive governor, Li Chin Hsi, who, remote as he was from headquarters, preserved order during the exciting months of 1911–12. In the streets the chair coolies rush along, with the right of way, shouting “Pei Ha” (We’ll poke you in the back). It was once the king town of opium, where a whole city walked for years in a sleep, but the government has largely stamped out both poppy field and opium joint. On the parade ground on a fall day of 1909, with military honors, the governor amusingly burned in public hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of opium and ivory pipes. On account of magnesian limestone and minerals in the water, awful-looking victims of goitre are constantly met. The poppy fields are now being used by a wide-awake people for the cultivation of mustard, rice, maize, sugar, banana, orange, pomegranates, bamboo, walnuts, etc.

Many peculiar races and varied costumes are to be seen in this Museum of Languages: Shans with high black head-dress and a red band across their foreheads; Mohammedans with green turbans; Lolos without queues and hair piled on the head like men who have a perpetual nightmare; Tibetan447 women driving their pack trains to their mountain home, the “Roof of the World,” and driving their husbands, too! Burmese with combs in their hair, though they are not women! Kilted Kachins, carrying their long, two-handed dha-swords on their shoulders, and their women wearing bamboo sticks through their ears and chains of river shells and colored stones on their necks; Annamese in gorgeous gold silk, embroidered as though they were on their way to claim a throne; daring, dirty Bhamo muleteers, who dare to be full of polyglot oaths, for they wear nothing worth throwing mud at; women riding ponies, donkeys and mules, and trying to evade the thrust of one another’s pin-filled hair as though they were on tourney; aboriginal Miaos and Lolos with figured yellow cloaks like circus clowns, and wide hats whose rims are stayed down to their shoulders with strings; French surveyors in white duck and kettle helmets, and exhausting themselves with the vivacious volubility that you listen to on Marseilles’ Cannabiere; British in khaki, Calcutta topey-helmets and putties, and as “cool as cucumbers” both in tongue and temperature, men who “get there”; yellow-gowned bonzes wondering where their religion has flown of late; black-gowned Roman priests and flat-hatted frères of the Missions d’Etrangeres, wearing Chinese soutanes; gray-gowned Taoists who are satisfied with their incomes, because while religion has flown in China, superstition still sticks; blue-gowned Chinese; flame-robed Tibetan lamas; pink-gowned Buddhists, who are thinking of opening hotels instead of temples, in which latter there has been a “slump”; and occasionally an American in a Sabutan hat and a Shangtung silk suit, ready for anything, and showing the mood in his eyes and laughter.

The district is gorgeous with flowers, camellias, mustard, poppies, magnolia, indigo, olive, jasmine,448 and every kind of fern, bush and vine. Yunnan is rich in animals, including the tiger and black panther, and fine skins, and some ivory are to be obtained. Beautiful cranes and duck are to be seen on the lake. It is also rich in valuable lumber, and therefore its furniture stores are notable. Coal, iron, zinc, copper and salt are produced in abundance, and there is much gold, silver, nickel and quicksilver. The tin mines of Kuo Chia produce 13,000,000 pounds of tin a year. There are also beds of precious stones, rubies, garnets, sapphires, amethysts, etc. No district of the empire has so many varied metals as Yunnan. The many races keep the province more disjointed than any other. An authority on these aboriginal races is the British consul at Tongyueh, Yunnan, whose exhaustive articles have appeared in the London Geographical Magazine. In natural scenery Yunnan presents the most sublime panorama in the world.

Tsinan, the capital of Shangtung province, goes back to 1100 B. C., and ethnologically is very interesting, as these are the people of Confucius and Mencius, the descendants of the Tsi State of original China. The city, which is walled and moated, is quite beautiful with trees, springs, mosques, theaters and temples. There are hills all about, and inside the walls on the north a lake dotted with islands, on which memorial arches and temples have been erected. Communication with the sea is had by the famous Yellow River (“China’s Sorrow” of flood), and the Grand Canal is also in touch. The German railway gives connection with the east, and national railways are to run north, south and west. Fine glass and the famous colored vitreous crockery, called liu-li, are made here. The guild halls and jewelry shops on Kuan Ti and Fu Run Boulevards are very interesting. The mineral springs will doubtless gather449 sanatorium hotels. There is a girls’ school, a military school, an arsenal, and a modern native university in the suburbs, where English preferably and German are used in scientific studies, and peculiarly music is also studied. The markets are well supplied by a province rich in agriculture. Missions, colleges and medical schools, like those of the Baptists and Presbyterians, have a strategic center at Tsinan, as millions of Confucian and Mencian pilgrims come here on their way to the shrine of Taishan Mountain, and the birthplaces at Kufow (Yenchow), and Tsou, respectively.

It is to be hoped that the Duke Kung and other members of the Kung family will take their places in China’s government, intellectual and religious life. They are the oldest family on earth, older than the Mikado’s ancestry, and China could with genuine and lasting pride gather around real leaders of the Kung family for noble causes. A plan has been drawn up by which, if the Chinese republic is a failure, an experiment will be made to enthrone one of the Kungs (Confucius), who happens to be a Christian He would be in somewhat of a quandary, as his appeal to the Chinese would have to be that he was born a Confucian, and his appeal to the five nations would be that he was a Christian. Still a little thing as that might not bother a Chinese diplomat! It never did in the Manchu days of twist and turn, volte-face, and come back again, smiling ever! The proposed Union University of all the American and British denominations in Shangtung will be brought from Wai Hsien and other cities to Tsinan, and this move will be fraught with great success, for “in union is strength.” Tsinan, with the province of Shangtung, under the rebel governor, Sun Hao Chi, went over to the revolution on November 13, 1911.

XXIII
RELIGIOUS AND MISSIONARY CHINA

Buddhism, the religion of China which owns most of the finer pagodas and temples, celebrated in 1912 the 2500th anniversary of Buddha. They do not celebrate Buddha’s birth in the body, but rather birth in the mind or soul, the celebration being called “the anniversary of Buddha’s enlightenment.” Despite the troubles that Buddhism has encountered at the instigation of the government’s amban in Tibet, the celebration occurred there with avidity, as it did also in Mongolia, at Kuren, etc. Throughout the rest of the land, despite the prominence of Confucianism, Taoism and Christianity, the Buddhists made their anniversary well known. Every one was interested in those who once taught that man should be clean, and sincere in good works, and should love his fellow man disinterestedly. The thousand little rules for purchasing a specific pardon in the next world have, however, confused the Chinese mind, and many of those who looked on called the ritual now merely a mass of superstition. No one can deny that this is the world’s most picturesque religion which the Chinese imported from India so long ago, and of which they are now the leading exponents. There are temples in San Francisco, San Jose, Sacramento and London also. If Buddhism were purified from its accretion of rites, and took up again vigorous sermons on the virtues, responsibility and self-sacrifice, as in the days when Asoka’s preachers started out to convert the451 world to doctrines of service, it would not be a long step from Buddhism to Christianity.

Architecturally, the world enthuses over Buddhism, and now that travel to China is increasing, a cry is going up over the artistic world: “Save the incomparable pagodas and temples for art’s sake, for they can never be repeated, the spirit having departed.” Many of the temples are dropping to pieces, as in the break-up of old faiths the bonzes have been unable to collect the money which is necessary for upkeep. The government is maintaining some of the temples, but it uses them as schools, and the monks themselves have turned some of the temples into inns. The nation, rich merchants and interested foreigners might take part in preserving these beautiful monuments, and Christianity, which is spreading in China, is wide enough in its charity to appreciate and wish to preserve the beautiful architecture of Buddhism. Let experiments be tried; let the government, with its supreme authority, buy out some beautiful Buddhist temples and pagodas and turn them over as headquarters to Christian schools or medical missions. The Buddhist monks are a forlorn-looking set, their parishioners contributing too little for their support. This parsimony has induced the monks to invent the system of superstitious credit indulgences and absolutions, which, by working on their fears regarding the future life, they compel the Chinese—particularly the women—to buy.

As a rule the statues of Buddha are solemn or gentle-faced, as in the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii at Canton. But there is one hilarious exception, the laughing gilded Buddha of the Ming Hong Temple, near Shanghai. The god’s eyebrows, nose, eyes, mouth and chin all curve into great bows of mirth, like the irresistible Coquelin’s face in a full-blooded comedy, or DeWolf Hopper’s face in Wang!452 The Buddhist priests who run inns keep a guests’ literary book, in which one will find sentiments written by many of the world’s noted travelers. The priests wear a yellow gown. Over the left shoulder hangs an over-gown, made of square red patches, sewed together, typifying the vow and rags of poverty. On the walls of the famous Lung Chang Buddhist Monastery, near Chingtu, in Szechuen province, hangs a celebrated text reconciling Buddhist and Christian teachings on the doctrine of peace. The Chinese hang a popular text on the walls, which corresponds with “God bless our home.” It is “Tien Kun Kong Fuk” (May Heaven send happiness).

Disfiguring by branding, just as the Romanists used to flagellate themselves, has not died out in China, for some of the Buddhist and Taoist monks of Soochow and elsewhere bear regular scars on their shaven heads and on their limbs, placed there to show penance during fasts, and to gain a reputation for holiness, or to use the Chinese phrase, “attain virtue.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi liked to assume the character of the Buddhist goddess Kwan Yun, and have herself painted with bare feet riding on a lotus leaf; in her hand a rosary; and wearing a blue veil, gray robes, a gold, garnet and pearl crown, earrings and necklaces. The eunuchs and friends of the empress always referred to her as the “Old Buddha,” which was the nickname that she liked the best. It is worthy of note that the Taiping rebels in the 60’s destroyed Buddhist temples and slew the bonzes, largely because the Buddhists of that time were opposed to progress and oppressed the poor with their “privileged orders.” On account of his not marrying, the Chinese call a bonze a “Chek Ke” (forsake family). They are, therefore, despised by Chinese men, but have a stronger453 hold on the women, with their picturesque religion, and good omens whenever they are paid for them.

On the first and fifteenth of each month, a musical service is held before dawn in the two thousand Confucian temples scattered throughout China. These temples all contribute a little toward the support of Confucius’s seventy-seventh direct descendant, Prince Kung Fut Tsze (which Latinized is Confucius), of Shangtung, though some of the Kungs are Christians. The Confucian temples contain red and gold tablets of Confucius and his disciples instead of the statues appearing in the Buddhist, Taoist and War temples of the land. When Kwang Hsu, the reform emperor, issued an edict in 1898 that modern schools should be formed, he ordered that some of the Confucian temples should be impressed. Confucius did not institute ancestor worship in 550 B. C. He found that it existed in his own state of Lu (present Shangtung province) and in the adjoining states of Tsi on the north and Wei and Sung on the west, all of whom had taken it, with the sacred tripods, from the parent Chou clan, which brought them from misty prehistoric days thousands of years back. To Confucius, credit should be given for adopting ancestor worship as an indispensable rite in the organization of the growing Tsu clan and of the future conqueror and federator of China, the Tsin clan, which latter eventually ended feudalism, which was then, however, adopted by Japan and carried forward to our own day. Let us quote here the stern Carlyle’s sympathetic tribute to the ancestor worship of the Chinese: “The emperor and his millions visit yearly the tombs of their fathers; each man the tomb of his father and his mother; alone there, in silence, with what of worship or of other thought there may be, pauses454 solemnly each man; the divine skies all silent over, the divine graves—and this divinest grave—all silent under him; the pulsings of his own soul alone audible. Truly it may be a kind of worship. Truly if a man can not get some glimpse into the Eternities, looking through this portal, through what other need he try it?” Attempts have been, and doubtless will continue to be made to revivify or modernize Confucianism. The most notable of the viceroys, Chang Chih Tung, of Wuchang, wrote a book called China’s Only Hope with this in view. Confucius was averse to liquor. One of the odes of the Book of Odes, written 1100 B. C., and edited by Confucius, rails against drunkenness. The ode realistically describes a riotous banquet which might have taken place in hilarious Vladivostok in 1904, previous to the war, when sweet Roederer ran like water.

The Pope of Taoism dwells on Lung Hu Mountain, in Kiangsi province. Taoism’s book, the Tao Teh King, written in 604 B. C. by Lao Tsz, speaks of the Triune God of reason, nature and virtue. The sect is now one of astrologers and nature worshipers, and is strong in the southern and eastern provinces. It builds temples and teaches the nature superstition of Feng Shui (Wind and Water), which until recently held the land in thrall against mining, industry and railways. The Taoists have been bitterly anti-foreign. Bows and arrows are sometimes hung up in the green Taoist temples as votive or thank offerings, the sentiment being that they are to kill one’s unpropitious influence or adverse Feng-shui. Taoist priests sometimes wear gorgeous gowns completely covered with embroidery of flowers, insects, birds, animals and the exorcised devil himself. They make a pretty penny by publishing or interpreting an almanac, the day selected possibly reading as follows:

The traveler who has everything ready at Ichang to start on the long journey through the glorious Yangtze gorges and rapids often wonders why his men can not be induced to start. The reason is that they are wading through the Luck Book, thus wasting an unnecessary week. Oil is needed, but it can not be bought on June 5th. Fish are needed, but can not be bought on June 6th. Rope can not be bought on June 7th, and when June 9th comes along it is unlucky to sail on that day. The Taoist priest makes his money by selling your laota (captain) an indulgence to sail on June 9th, for which you have to pay handsomely about ten cents, and the kinshan incense and firecrackers extra! The tiger and the dragon represent the early gods of the terrified aboriginal Chinese, and predate the ancestor worship of the first Chou clan of the north. These emblems have been adopted by the Taoist priests. The grotesque shrines are found among the mountains, a dominating view being necessary for the casting of the “influence.”

Among the aboriginal Lolo tribes of Yunnan an animal456 represents each day of the month. Accordingly the body of a caravaner is kept for burial until the lucky day of the horse arrives. A coin is put between the lips to pay the way, which shows that the rites are Taoist, and quite similar to old Grecian and Egyptian rites. When the revolutionists were fortifying Hanyang, in October, 1911, they did not hesitate to use a Taoist monastery as a fort in the hills. This marks a step forward against old superstitions, which were once insurmountable. The Chinese declare that a positive omen of a coming conflagration is the crowing of a cock during the night. Of course, all the cooks of Hankau recited this to their masters on the day when the imperialists burned the native city. Statues are many in the temples, monasteries, guild halls, pagodas and road shrines. Although Confucius is generally represented by a tablet merely, there are some temples which have statues of him and his disciples. Buddha is represented by three statues of the Past, Present and Future Buddha. Emperors of popular dynasties have statues erected to them in the temples. Then the Taoists have innumerable gods, including the famous gods of the War Temples. The guilds of the three hundred trades and twenty-one provinces all have patron gods, and it is orthodox to rub your finger on the god’s body in the place that corresponds with your sore spot, if you feel ill! You touch his back if you have lumbago (and find out that he is hollow!); his nose if you have asthma, and so on.

There are household gods; a god “Tsan” of the kitchen; pictures of gods to paste on the gates of the compound, and the God of Literature, who is very popular and has many temples. All over the north the Manchus have erected temples to the Fox, their wily patron god. This dependence on idols is not so dense as in India. The Chinese do it more as457 a good luck omen, just as we wear an opal or a turquoise, and not always as an essential religious rite. They have too much humor really to be as foolish as they may look when in the god’s presence. A god who doesn’t do his business well is as quickly dragged out by a rope and burned in times of stress as a human being would be treated with contumely whose prophecies always failed. In the south, religious edifices are being occupied for educational and civic purposes. When in 1908 the new learning broke over China like the full burst of a tropical day, the schools at first had to be housed in temples and monasteries. Recently, at Canton, the Wah Lum Monastery was used to entertain a public-spirited Chinese of Singapore, Chang U. Him, who brought both new learning and new wealth. “All interested in industries, self-government, charities and new education” were invited by circular to come up and see him “at the temple!”

“God gives birth and death to every man, but honors only to the few who deserve them.”

“When things go well, we are so hungry that we eat all the meal; when trouble comes, we are glad to give it all to the idol.”

“The whole earth is a coffin; only for the living the lid is not yet hammered down.”

“A lie is like burying the dead in the snow; the secrecy doesn’t last long.”

Says a northern pessimist: “Oh! the hypocrisy of religion; sacrifice a bullock once a year, and steal bullocks all the rest of the year.”

The supercilious man threw this sarcastic shaft at his accoster: “I pick my company.” The mission school man heaped coals of fire on his head with this bland reply: “And your company is proud to pick you.”

The Chinese love to contrast life and death, as is shown in their paintings of pear trees in bloom and willows in bud, while snow lies on mountain peak and hillside.

The Americans at home have established a beautiful custom of casting wreaths into the sea on Decoration Day in commemoration of the dead who were buried or lost at sea, and there is a similar custom at Venice and elsewhere. The459 Chinese, too, have a Decoration or All Souls’ Day, which is observed by the adherents of the three religions in the first week of September. Red boats and lanterns are set afloat, and the priests burn paper clothing, money and food, and set off firecrackers. Where the ceremony takes place on land, it is customary to throw copper money to the street gamins. The festival is also observed at the magisterial yamens and temples, and Wing Lok Street, Hongkong, is noted for the characteristic observance of the ceremony. The rise of republicanism is going to strike a hard blow at one of the main teachings of Confucianism, “serving the prince,” because there will be no prince to serve and also at “li,” the rule of blind obedience to those in power; following the trade of the parent; destroying children; self-disfigurement; concubinage; expensive funerals and priest-craft; abuse of women; blind worship of the past; suicide of purchased wives; exaggeration of man and minimizing of God; neglect of organized charities and of science and comparative history. This change will make the introduction of Christianity more hopeful. It is to be expected that the worship of ancestors will also weaken, and with it will weaken the custom of early marriages. The Chinese have too many children to educate properly, as the Americans and French have probably too few. A somewhat smaller China would mean a richer and better China.

Catholic missions began in China when by caravan Corvina visited Kublai Khan, at Peking, in 1292 A. D. Ricci arrived at Canton in 1582 and worked in many of the provincial capitals and at Macao and Peking. Schaal worked from 1622 to 1664 and had influence with the greatest and most artistic Manchu emperor, Kang Hi. Abbé Huc covered the country from Peking and Tibet to Macao from 1844 onward. The chief educational centers of the Romanists460 are at Peking, Tientsin, Canton, Macao, Saigon and Hongkong. The large press and college of the Missiones d’Etrangeres is at Hongkong (Aberdeen side of the island). At Peking is their extensive Pei Tang press. They have large, two-spired Gothic cathedrals at Canton, Peking, etc. The square towered cathedral on Caine Road, Hongkong, is the architectural crown of the lovely colony. The Catholics number 1,500,000, their work being strong in orphanages, among women, etc., and in comparison with Protestant missions very weak in higher education and the distributed Bible itself. They consider it expedient to train the child rather than to make the expensive experiment of reasoning with and educating the man. Therefore most of the modernized Chinese officials are Protestants. Naturally the Catholic method brings more converts than does the Protestant.

The American missions almost dominate in the expensive higher education of the land, and it now seems certain that American educational methods, thoroughly tried in China, will be adopted over the world because of their efficiency and altruism. The Protestant missions of Europe, working in China, are as follows: The Scandinavians work in Hupeh and the northern provinces, and while not rich, they have developed effective fearless men of great resource. The German Lutherans are active at Kiaochou, and in the north and the Yangtze valley. The English Baptists, dating back to 1792, have many missions, notably in Shangtung province. The London Missionary Society (mainly Congregational), dating back to 1795, operates largely along the coast, in the south, and at Peking. The Church of Scotland (both Free and Established), which is strong in medical missions, operates notably in Manchuria. The Presbyterian and Methodist Churches of England have461 many missions throughout the land. The Anglican Church operates chiefly in the great ports; is now strong in higher education, and has erected many fine cathedrals. It has taken under its wing the foreigner in China, who, Kipling charged, did many reckless things “east of Suez!” Even the Friends’ Society of England has missions in China. The China Inland Mission, founded by the noted Doctor Hudson Taylor in 1862, has eight hundred missionaries who altruistically accept the smallest salaries paid in China. Many of them live on the land, in the “faith” method. The method of the organization is by personal contact rather than by expensive, highly organized education. For years this was the most dramatic and heroic mission in the darker provinces of the land. The Salvation Army has also come to China through the world-binding love of that extraordinary man, “General” Booth. American missions dominate in Protestant China, British and Colonial missions being one-half as strong, which means an equal zeal when the population of the two countries is considered.

American missions are stronger in educational, political and medical activities; the British make a specialty of preaching, charities and personal work. The Americans develop more native preachers and translators than any of the other missions, and their confidence in the Chinese is producing wonderful results in reaching toward the establishment of a self-sustaining church some day. No work, except the medical missions, has, however, ever surpassed the aim of the British and Foreign and American Bible Societies to put a translated Bible in the hands of every Chinese. China, foremost of all lands, ranks learning above everything else. By its attitude in specializing in education, the American church has attracted the sympathy of the leaders of the nation. No462 nation has a monopoly of mission heroes, but the wisdom of the American decision has been at once apparent.

The Roman missions work largely on the medieval plan of: “Give me the child till he is thirteen and I don’t care who gets it after that.” The American Protestants and some of the British say: “Give him to me from thirteen to twenty-three, so that he can understand.” One proselytizes possibly by prejudice and association. The other, imparting all the knowledge possible, trusts to the mind and sense of cultivated justice in the pupil. The Roman orphanages in China outnumber the Protestants five to one. The high-grade schools and colleges of the Americans are almost alone in the field, though the British propose now to follow vigorously. The difference is in attitude. There is no difference between Romanist and Protestant missionary in China in braving death from the hands of pirates, persecution from “Boxers” and others, misery, disease and alienation. The heroes are numberless; their lives are thrilling; their aims are the most altruistic the world has known, and the orchard is in such a flower of fruitage now as to dazzle the altruist’s eye.

It was a matter of great interest to foreigners when the October, 1911, revolution opened, that the chief leader and organizer of the movement, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius) was a Christian, the son of a Cantonese (Fatshan) evangelist. It will be remembered that Siu Tsuen, the leader of the 1848 Taiping rebellion, which marched from Canton to Nanking via the Mei Ling pass, was also a Cantonese Christian, but infinitely inferior to Doctor Sun in education and experience, as well as in character. Eventually Siu fell away from the faith, under the influence of bad advisers, into savagery. The missions were all given advance information previous to the October, 1911, revolution, showing that463 the Chinese esteem missionaries ahead of diplomats. This is a very precious compliment, and marks the vast advance of Christianity in the hearts of the Chinese “Hoi Polloi.” Even before the October, 1911, rebellion, officials of the old class were throwing away their prejudices against missionaries and welcoming them as angels of light in a way that would have delighted Paul and Barnabas. General Tsen Chun Hsuan, a bloody enough loyalist leader in war, when viceroy of Szechuen province, made this address: “My hope is that the missionary teachers and medical missionaries of America and Britain will spread their gospel more widely than ever, and that the influence of the gospel may bring boundless happiness for our people of China. I shall not be the only one to thank you for your good work. Long live your Gospel.”

The literal name by which the Roman church goes in China is “Tien Chu” (Heaven Lord church), and the Protestants are generally called by the Catholics and by the Chinese “Jesus church,” or “Shangti” (Supreme Ruler church). The American Episcopalians and the British Anglicans in April, 1912, decided to call themselves the “Holy Public church” (Sheng Kung Hwei). The Roman missionaries had much to do with the annexation of vast Tonquin (population twenty-two millions) by France, and their activity is similarly ambitious in Yunnan province, lower Szechuen, and in Kwangsi and Kweichou provinces. As long ago as 1844, so brave a traveler and learned a priest as Abbé Huc insisted on wearing the yellow robe of the privileged mandarin class. Not only at one station or in one province did he do this, but on his journey of 1849 through Tibet, Szechuen, Hupeh, Kiangsi and Kwangtung provinces, he wore the robe and demanded the reception of a mandarin, the thinly veiled implication being that if464 he was interfered with, there were French guns that could pound the Taku and Bogue forts on the way to Tientsin and Canton, respectively, which they really did ten years later. As late as 1899, when China was torn by dissensions between the reformers and the reactionaries, and while the wounds of her defeat by Japan were still open, the Roman church, with the diplomatic aid of France, forced from the then Tsung Li Yamen (Foreign Board) an imperial rescript granting Roman priests the rank and insignia of a Chinese perfect (mandarin), and Roman bishops the astoundingly high title and insignia of a viceroy, which honors affected eleven hundred priests and forty-six bishops. It was not until 1909 that China resolved to throw off this incubus. The rescript was rescinded by the new Wai Wu Pu (Foreign Board) and Li Pu (Board of Rites). Enlightened Romanists in America of course do not uphold such militant Romanism, which smacks rather much of the bizarre days of Cortez. Let it be said too that the French Romanist abroad is more medieval than the French Romanist in France. While sailing in the Red Sea, talking with French clerics from Tajoora, which faces the hot Gulf of Aden, and while walking along the red banks of the Saigon River in Indo-China, I have heard bitter criticisms from French priests which would have been deemed lèse majesté in the home republic itself.

A traveler can not pass through China without being mobbed by the sick to be cured. “You are a foreigner, you must be a doctor; cure me and mine; I have heard that the foreigners can cure any ill; cure me, man of Jesus.” It is agonizing. I knew a man who only carried a caustic stick and two drugs (quinine and salts). Wherever he was mobbed with appeals he administered these drugs to those whom he thought they would benefit. Almost better if he465 had not done so. The cured who leaped about with new life were enough proof that he was “lying” when he said that he could not heal the wounded, the seriously ill, the leprous and the ulcered. He was almost torn apart. Were I a billionaire, I am a thousand times sure that I would send a thousand medical missionaries to China for five years, each man to hire a Chinese understudy, and carry a full surgical and medical chest, and the Bible and medical text books only. Then I would leave the Chinese pupils to carry on the work; they would be stationed as radiating centers at proper distances apart throughout the land. I would then spend the rest of my life listening to the marvelous stories which my five thousand friends had to tell of what they had seen and done. No man who ever lived—not even Paul when he wrote the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians; not even the beloved John when he saw the Heavenly City in seraphic dreams—would have experienced such real and wide happiness as I. No man could pass away with more ecstatic memories, such a delirium of too much joy.

I want to write a word of commendation of the missionary, for detraction by some in high places, and by some authors who write as they fly and flit at the ports, is not uncommon. The attacks upon missions in Henry Norman’s Peoples and Politics of the Far East, and in Pumpelly’s Across America and Asia, are well known, and have been repeated by others. One may be a cynic at home, and with reason sometimes criticize some pulpits because they fear the magnate at the end of some pews, and color their sermons accordingly. One may in a supercilious way sneer at the seeming lack of personality in the missionary candidate, who in a gentle faith stands up in her or his church to answer the call: “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.” But follow the worker into the China field,466 and see what that call and the altruistic opportunity has done by its very immensity. The gentle missionary has soon become many things: a brave pioneer in exile; a scholar and linguist; an organizer of great power and tact; a local foreign minister of great ability in adapting the West to the East; a scientist, housekeeper, traveler, physician, explorer, ethnologist, nurse, orator; the only host of explorers; the most generous of mankind; an ideal example of what the West should be; the most inspired of human beings in self-sacrifice and wonderful accomplishment under difficulties. Their expenses are many; their resources few. Many have to live on the slimmest of contributions from home, such as the missionaries of the China Inland Mission, the Scandinavian Mission, and the Scottish Missions, which are not rich.

Many, like the American and English missionaries, receive fair help from home, but spend on their equipment, and educational and hospital buildings the money that was due to themselves and their families as salaries. The highly cultured, brave president of the Nanking University accepts only $1,500 as salary, whereas if he were in America, on a purely business basis he would be expected to demand $15,000 for the same services and expenses of his high position. The writer does not mean to select one board as doing better than another. All have done marvelously, and China can never forget. In the Yangtze valley at Shanghai and Wuchang, along the whole front of the rebellion of 1911, the American Episcopalians have universities and training schools, which were especially noted by the republicans. The missionary does not always desire money. Such a simple thing as a magazine, or a new book of travel, or a standard work of fiction, or a weekly newspaper from some metropolis, is a god-send to the missionaries at the outposts, under the idol’s hills, who like to feel that though467 they are thousands of miles from a treaty port, they are yet in touch with civilization. Any one can get from the Mission Boards the names of missionaries who are off the beaten track from Yunnan province up to the Amur River in China, and send them now and then at trifling cost this cheering literature, which will shine upon them like the beloved sun of the far-away home land. Treat them as American and British men and women, and not only in the high light of missionaries, for they are the ambassadors from the West to the East, and there is no form of our civilization in which they are not active, efficient and heroic.

England and America contribute the same sum to missions, but as England is the smaller, the statistics reveal that America is doing only half what she should do in the China mission field. Of the denominations, the American Methodists easily lead the world, followed in order by the Anglican Church of England, the Presbyterian Church of America, the Baptist Church of America, and the old Congregational Church of America with many heroes on its old roster, which dates back to 1812. If you ask what the Chinese think of missionaries I will quote the following prayer spoken by the Confucian viceroy, Hsi Liang, in the Scotch chapel at Mukden for the hero physician, Doctor Jackson, who died as a voluntary martyr in the pneumonic plague in 1910, and you can answer whether you do not think it eloquently pathetic: “Doctor Jackson, with the heart of your Christ, who died to save the world, came to our aid when we besought him to help our country in its hour of distress. Daily, where the plague lay thickest, amidst the groans of the dying, he struggled to help the stricken to find medicine. Worn out by his efforts the pest seized and took him long before his time. Our sorrow is beyond all measure; our grief too deep for words. Oh! Spirit of Doctor Jackson,468 we pray you to intercede for the twenty million people in Manchuria, and ask the Lord of Heaven to take away this plague so that we may once more lay our heads in peace upon our pillows. In life you were brave; you, therefore, now are a spirit. Noble Spirit, who gave up your life for us, help us still, look down with sympathy upon us all.”

Y. M. C. A’s. are being built in the treaty ports, largely through American endeavor. The Japanese sphere, Tientsin, etc., are provided for, and the Chicago Y. M. C. A. raised a large sum of money for a Y. M. C. A. in Hongkong. The sailors in Hongkong contribute the third largest amount to their missions (being exceeded only by Wellington and Liverpool) of any port in the world. I am not referring to amounts collected from passengers on steamers, but the support given by the sailors themselves. This shows that Jack Tar and John Celestial recognize the manly and godly worth of the “sky pilot”, even if they pivot many of their jokes on his solemn patience.

Since Morrison’s translation, there have been quite a number of translations into the official Mandarin, and even into Romanized letters expressing the dialects of the southern provinces. This latter Bible can only be understood by mission school pupils. In 1890 the missionary bodies met at Peking and determined to translate the whole Bible into approved characters which idiomatized better certain words which had been improperly understood in former translations. The committee meets once a year at different cities in China. By 1910 the New Testament and the Psalms had been completed, and the whole Bible will probably be completed by 1918. The head translator is the American Presbyterian educator, Doctor Mateer, the founder of Shangtung Union University at Wei Hsien and Tsinan,469 and the noted Doctor W. A. P. Martin, the author and educator of Peking, is another translator.

Shintoism (the Japanese adaptation of Confucianism) has been found lacking in Japan, as it raises no positive God-fearing sentiment in the masses, no national morality, no individual conscientiousness which can be relied on when the letter of the law fails. This is the rock strength which Christianity has given the West, and the Chinese republicans see what they have missed in not adopting Christianity. On February 9, 1912, the Japanese home minister called a conference of the Buddhist, Confucian (Shinto), and Christian religions, to see what could be done to strengthen Japan’s creeds, so that the state would benefit in that moral and God-fearing power which Christianity has given to the western masses. Christianity makes but one answer to China, and that is to take Christianity and the Bible as a religion and a revelation, and reduce Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism to the ethical and literary place which Socrates, Plato, Homer, Virgil, etc., occupy in western thought and practise. President Sun Yat Sen, of the Nanking Confederated Assemblies of South China, appreciates this, and has promised the Chinese Christians that he will do all he can in time to form a Chinese Christian church; not a Roman or Greek or American or British church, but a free Chinese Christian church. When China takes the Bible nearest of all books to her heart, and has her own head bishop in each denomination absolutely free, she will then have achieved greatness and glory, and found joy and truth.

The troublesome temperance question of the military canteen has been solved, I think, under severest tropical conditions at Hongkong, where there is a large garrison, and despite well meaning W. C. T. U’s. at home under different470 conditions, the canteen, where “vice is regulated”, has, I believe, come to stay for a while. At one time the soldier drifted into the slums. He sighed for company as only an alien among the heathen can sigh. He drank bad liquor and was robbed when drugged thereby. That he will drink liquor must be accepted, as he is the rougher sort of man, although worthy for all that. He committed offenses before the tender eye of the public, brought the service into ill repute, and cost the municipality money for trials and police. He endangered international peace, for in his “cups” he was always seeing differences instead of amenities when he met a soldier of another nation. He made himself unfit for real war. The Army and Navy Canteen, or Club, was adopted, I think, largely on Lord Roberts’ suggestion (and who will question “Bob’s” wisdom). The soldier was put on his honor and he rose fully to his opportunity. The sergeants on guard permitted sufficient indulgence, but regulated rows. Most of the men drank less, because they felt that they were drinking in “their own home”, but if they over-drank, their fellows were on hand to see that they were taken to barracks without being dragged through the public streets. Good liquor was supplied. Disease decreased, as the men were contented in barracks. Authority was respected, for it comes as second nature for even a drunken soldier to obey a soldier. The soldier is now never robbed; his life is safe; he saves money, and he drinks less because he drinks “as a gentleman what ’as ’is Club wi’ the best on ’em.” The W. C. T. U. is a necessary theory; the Soldiers’ Canteen of Hongkong, Manila, and Delhi, is a brilliant compromise which should be accepted as a solution until the world is so good that the brave and perhaps rough soldier is needed no more. Candy is sold to the soldiers, as it is found that the absorption of carbohydrates greatly decreases the appetite471 for alcohol. The Officers’ Army and Navy Cooperative Stores sell goods to men and their families at cost, and the American army is to adopt this method to reduce the cost of living at foreign army posts.

XXIV
LEGAL PRACTISE AND CRIME IN CHINA

Books and articles that have thrown light on this dark question include those of Wu Ting Fang, once minister to America; Mr. Jernigan’s China in Law; Sir G. T. Staunton’s Penal Code; Sir C. Alabaster’s Chinese Criminal and Property Law; Parker’s Chinese Family Law; Mayer’s Chinese Government; lengthy notes in the Middle Kingdom, by the learned American, S. Wells Williams; Dyer Ball’s Things Chinese; Professor Giles’ Historic China; Sir Henry Maine’s commentaries; and the old Chinese Repository. The Hebrew penal code, Leviticus, is antedated by the Chinese penal code of Shun’s reign nearly a thousand years. It can not compare, of course, in extent or in lofty principle with the Levitican code. Brutal punishments, such as branding, amputation of members, linchee, bambooing and torture made these early reigns so peaceful that it is said “money lost on the road would be left there until the owner returned to find it”. The truth probably is that this referred to the prince’s money, and that if injustice was done the common man, the inferior serf or slave, by the prince or the powerful, the weaker had to whistle for his judgment as long then as he has had to do in subsequent periods of history. Each change of dynasty brought in a revision of the code, not that it was made more humane, but that there were necessary items of lèse majesté to add. For instance, the Manchus required that when the emperor473 passed at night, every onlooker (all except the soldiers were kept indoors) was required to turn volte-face on pain of death. There was no procedure for revoking a statute. The judge could unexpectedly spring on the victim some precedent or law that was followed in the “year one”, and the prisoner could plead in vain that another law of the “year two” gave him a better chance. In other words, the mandarin practically said with one of Louis Fourteenth’s judges, to litigants: “La loi, c’est moi”, and he interpreted the code as he wished! United protest to the Peking censors, mobbing and refusal to pay taxes were in reality the only reprisals that the people could exert against the exactions of an unjust judge. Confucius, in rendering service as a ruler in two states, interpreted codes. One of the states, the Tsin (B. C. 246), shortly after Confucius, put in effect the Li Kwai code in six books. Codes of the following important dynasties exist: Han, Tsin, Tang, Sung, Yuan, Ming and Tsing (Manchu).

The Grecian Thebes, of which Sophocles wrote, was notorious for its torture of suspected criminals, and Herodotus relates that the ancient Medes exercised similar practises. The “third degree” is outrageously developed in China as in no other country, the law requiring confessions in every case before penalty is inflicted. “More Sinico”, the pepper is rubbed in the eyes, and the confession is forced out of whomsoever is made the victim. Crimes are often “planted”, and blackmail of the weaker by the stronger runs riot. The laws themselves have been noted for their conciseness and simplicity, the number of volumes signifying little as the Chinese ideograph-text is expansive. “It is prohibited to murder”; “It is prohibited to trespass”, etc. There is imperfect codification of precedents and decisions, so that the prisoner must rely on himself (or on money!) to474 explain that the homicide was in self-defense; the trespass to escape from a mad dog. The spirit is always above the letter; it alone makes perfect law possible. Where there is a will to do right, right generally prevails, and it may be said that many of the Chinese judges try to do right, get at the truth, and give a common-sense judgment, for they are not iron-bound as the Occident is under appeal, precedent, quibble and evasion; the letter above the spirit. If the case is an action within a clan, the “hsiang lao” (old man of the village) generally assists the judge in getting at the truth. If the action is between two clans of two villages, or between competing guilds, God help the judges in sifting the truth from the lies! Such situations arouse the sympathy of disinterested foreigners for Chinese judges. Sometimes the native is not at fault, as the Chinese viceroys and Foreign Boards have often complained that some of the Romanists and one legation have interfered to a greater or lesser degree when a nominal Christian, who had a suit at law, was trying to evade justice by enrolling himself as a “rice Christian”.

The frequent edicts of the throne, published in the Peking Gazette, at once became laws, such as: “It is prohibited to smoke opium;” “It is prohibited to bind feet,” etc. Law will now be enunciated as in America, by the central and provincial legislatures of the new republic. A sort of martial law now prevails, and the provinces, after a quick drum-head trial, are shooting or lopping off the heads of pirates and mutinous soldiers in great numbers. Decapitation, flogging, torture, strangling, stocks, cangue, etc., will all probably be retained, as the Chinese are stolid when it comes to bearing pain, and the criminal classes must be treated with severity. Linchee, or Ling Chih (cutting into a thousand pieces) may be discontinued and shooting substituted.475 If, however, Confucianism remains as the leading religion, decapitation will be continued. The Confucians loathe the severing of the head, and this punishment is a powerful deterrent of crime. Imprisonment in a modern jail is no punishment for a hard-working Chinese, and something else must be substituted, such as the state impressing the convict’s free labor, to offset the convict’s family becoming a charge on the clan or state. It has been found in Yunnan City, Kweilin City and elsewhere that a modern jail, with good food and sanitary conditions, induces the poor wretches to commit crimes so as to achieve permanent incarceration as quickly as possible! As in the French system, the old-style Chinese judge is also often the prosecutor, and witnesses and accused are made to fight it out in the hearing of the judge, so that as the frequent “lie” is passed, the truth may jump from the tossed bag! (Confronter les témoins à l’accusé.) The twenty-eight volumes of the Manchu code cover general, civil, finance, military, criminal and public works law.

The following, taken from the Shanghai Shen Pao, of August 29 and 30, 1911, the oldest and most reliable native paper of China, will illustrate the “third degree” methods used by the old literati judges of the Manchus, and incidentally the astonishing endurance of the Chinese, who from time immemorial have lived outdoor lives and whose hearts have incredible powers of recovery. “The murderer, Hsu, was brought before the assistant magistrate Chung on August 27th for a final trial. The magistrate ordered the clerk to read the confession of the murderer (procured by torture in the native walled city of Shanghai), who said it was incorrect in one statement. The assistant magistrate consented to the correction. When City Magistrate Tien learned of this, he ordered Hsu to be whipped. Up to three476 hundred strokes no groan escaped from Hsu. At this Tien was angered and called to the torturers to strike heavily. Hsu was now whipped so cruelly that his flesh was cut from his back, and some muffled groans were heard. When five hundred strokes had been administered, he was again asked to confess or suffer pain. As he was still obstinate the magistrate ordered him to receive eight hundred strokes of the bamboo. He was now subjected to the most inhuman kind of torture, that in which the prisoner kneels on an iron chain, while two yamen runners stand upon a wooden beam laid across the back of his legs. As Hsu stood even this torture, he was strung up by his fingers and queue on a scaffold. Hsu cried out that he would not be kicked by the runners. The magistrate was now very angry. He ordered Hsu to be stretched upon the weighing machine (which gradually pulls the victim apart). The man fainted, but when he recovered he would not confess. The scaffold was again requisitioned, and he was strung up again by fingers and queue. He struggled and his queue of hair parted from his head. Next day, he was made to kneel on the iron chain under two men for two hours. When he was about to faint, the two runners picked him up and ran him about to restore his heart action. Alternately they put him upon the chain and restored his circulation. He then cried out: ‘Why should I sign two confessions; I have but to die.’ He was ordered to receive four hundred strokes of the bamboo. The magistrate Tien threatened to persecute the victim’s wife and son. Hsu now relapsed into a fever which has been running two days.”

The Chinese when in a rage (chih) is not a knife-user as are the southern races of Europe, but a hair or queue-puller. Now that the queue is being severed in China, he477 will probably take to kicking or boxing, in the French and Anglo-Saxon methods, in expressing his temper.

The social adjuster, or peace-talker, is a well-known institution, more generally employed within the hsiang (village) and guild, than the law. “To go to law is to put one’s estate in the ditch and one’s soul in hell,” is one of their sayings. Therefore, the importance of first engaging the services of the adjuster, or second, to meet the second of the offender, rather than to enter suit, and get into the hands of lawyers, court runners, grasping judges, etc. This heathen adjuster answers to the work that the lay deacon may have done in the early Christian church, in settling cases out of court. It is an institution that might well be copied from China in these days of criticism of the bench and bar by such authorities as Ex-presidents Roosevelt and Taft, and Mr. Bryan. The Chinese adjuster puts the case before, and settles it in accord with, public opinion, without any idea of fee; and certainly public opinion is a better judge than the law whose justice is built too much on fees, appeals and the maintenance of a large set of pettifoggers who live on the woes and ill temper of the unfortunate. In the revision of the Chinese code by Wu Ting Fang, Wang Chung Wei (educated at Yale), etc., long life to the social adjuster, the village Solon, whose ways are ways of peace, but whose path is not one of pleasantness! We have said that authorities have castigated the bar in China and America. Here is what Cicero said of Rome (the mother of laws) in the “Murena” oration: “For though many things have been settled excellently by the laws, yet most of them have been depraved and corrupted by the talkatively litigious genius of lawyers.”

The method of “planting” forged evidence is met with in China where a powerful enemy wishes to ruin some victim.478 The Yuen Fung Yuen Bank, of Bonham Strand, is one of the largest native banks in Hongkong, in which colony it is illegal to import opium except through the Farm, which pays the government a large royalty. This valuable drug passes almost at bullion value. Anonymous information was sent to the Farm contractor that at 8:00 P. M. the bank would receive illicit opium. Detectives were put in ambuscade. At the hour mentioned a coolie bearing a basket rapped at the bank’s door and shouted: “A letter for you.” Then he ran, but was caught. An examination revealed a tin of opium at the bottom of a basket of eggs. Investigation disclosed the whole thing as a “plant” prepared by an old enemy of the Yuen Fung Bank. In the same way bodies of the dead and murdered are often secretly placed at the doors of innocent victims, and as much motive as possible is prepared so as to get them in trouble with law and popular indignation. In years now happily passed missionaries have been bothered in this way by “Boxer” conspirators.

The Chinese code provides that all deeds shall bear the stipulation that “the land was first offered to the seller’s kinsmen, who refused to buy.” When a deed is lost, the Mandarin can issue a duplicate deed on presentation of the last tax receipt and tax receipts themselves are transferred in place of lost deeds.

In 313 B. C. the state of Tsi (present Shangtung Province) broke up its half of a wooden tablet containing part of the agreement with the state of Tsu (present Hupeh Province). These halves fitted into each other, and beyond any possibility of substitution proved the genuineness of the record. An old book called the Si Yuen (washing the pit), used in connection with the criminal code, prescribes the method of ascertaining whether death was caused by blows or was natural. A clay pit is heated white, the ashes are479 dug out, and wine is poured in. The body is then placed on a cradle in the pit, and a roof of tiles is placed over the pit’s mouth. If the fumes of the rice alcohol bring out the marks, even on a partly decayed body, the murderer is searched for. Other books relate that if a body is thrown into the water after death, it will not show distended stomach, hair stuck to head, or foam in mouth; the hands and feet will not be stiff, or the soles of the feet white. Their criminologists also write that if a body is thrown into a fire after death, there will be no burning or ashes in the throat and nostrils. The Chinese of the old time were rather clever investigators of crime.

This scene was presented outside the west gate of Tientsin one October day in 1870 after the massacre at the French convent. The French compelled Li Hung Chang to give them satisfaction. Li held the execution at dawn so that a mob might not gather. The criminals were flattered as martyrs. None of them was bound. New silk clothes, fine shoes and the ornaments of females were put upon them. Arriving at the execution ground, they were given opium. They shouted to the crowd, “Are we showing a shamed face?” And the answer came back: “No.” “Call us brave lads for being given to the foreigners as a sacrifice,” they cried again. A shout of approval came back. Then they sang a war song, and while their relatives cried, they knelt and stretched out their own necks before the blow of the heavy, short, mercury-loaded Taifo sword of the executioner. The shedding of a cock’s blood, even in the British courts of Hongkong, when an oath is taken, is a survival of the ancient Chinese custom, practised in Confucius’ day (550 B. C.), when the ministers of the various states of Lu, Wu, Tsin, etc., had a criminal killed, and wetting their lips with his blood, took oath to keep the treaty, which was480 inscribed on wood, each party taking a broken portion. The following incident will throw a flashlight on a section of Chinese legal practise, just previous to the revolution of 1911. It is well known that Wu Ting Fang, two and a half years before the revolution, had revised and modernized the Chinese code, but it was not even in part put in practise before the revolution. In Tungkadoo, a town of Kiangsu province, a bonze (priest) murdered a fellow-bonze and confessed under third-degree torture. The native authorities brought him to Shanghai to be strangled, but the chief bonze, with headquarters at Chingkiang, requested that the criminal should be turned over to him to be burned to death according to the code of the Order. Cremation of dead bodies was more common in China when Marco Polo visited the land than it is now, though it is practised in the Honan Island section of Canton.

It is probable that not for some years will the punishments of flogging, neck cangue and stocks be removed from the revised Chinese code. These punishments, involving public “loss of face,” are abhorred by the Chinese, and while they are somewhat barbaric, they are effective deterrents of crime in China. They were both revived by the British government of Hongkong in dealing with native offenders during the turbulent times of the 1911–12 revolution, when it was found that hard labor, jail sentences and fines were laughed at by the immense Chinese population of the island colony. Greece, as long ago as 330 B. C., had borrowed the cangue from China, and Demosthenes, in the Oration On the Crown, can think of no way so effective to damage his accuser, Aeschines, than to mention that the latter’s father had to wear a zulon (cangue) as a punishment for thievery. Chien Shao Cheng, of the Justice Department,481 Peking, has visited American prisons and studied foreign penal methods.

An “Investigating and Arresting Department” is the name by which one of the Manchu courts at Canton went. It employed detectives, and the taotai (mayor) did not disguise the fact that the court resorted to “third degree” tortures. This was one of the many things which made followers for the reformers. Banishment cases are constantly coming up. The prisoner who will not or can not depart to another country or province is put in the stocks for four hours a day for a year, and the remainder of the day he spends at hard labor. Strangling in cages was in vogue at Canton in the last days of the Manchu reign, orders having come from Peking in September, 1911, that the coolie who attempted to assassinate Admiral Li should be suspended by the neck in a bottomless cage. In the yamen at Chingtu City stands a stone tablet bearing the word Sha (kill), erected by the Shansi marauder, Chang Hien Chung, who massacred the Szechuenese, who supported the native Ming emperors. The stone remained as a threat to be used by the Manchu mandarins on behalf of the Ta Ching dynasty. The Ministry of Justice under the Manchu régime ordered the viceroys and governors to prohibit foreigners from unnecessarily being present in court.

On account of the scarcity of foreign population, the Hongkong jury consists of seven and the Shanghai jury of five. There is constant argument between the Chinese press and the English press of the treaty ports in China on the subject of “mixed” courts in which foreigners sit. China is writing a reformed code in which Wu Ting Fang had a hand, and in which the new minister, Wong Chun Hui, is interested, and is pressing forward to the day when at least she482 will try all Chinese, including those who have injured foreigners in settlements. The newspaper argument will do good instead of harm. In 1899 Japan ceased to allow her citizens to be tried under foreign law, and even began to try foreigners under Japanese law. On the subject of trusts and directorial responsibility, I have seen in the Tientsin Ching Wei Pao a plea that employés be not fined and imprisoned for corporate faults, but that those who make the money (directors and shareholders) bear the responsibility. China is, and has always been, a frank sociological thinker.

A police system on the French gendarmerie plan has been put in vogue at Peking, and photographs are being generally used for identification. The Chinese have been very averse to photographs. The custom was broken down by Hongkong insisting for twenty years that emigrants should be photographed in duplicate so that their certificates might be identified. This gradually got the Chinese used to the custom, the returned emigrants spreading word that there was no ill-luck in the operation. The old-fashioned policeman who went his rounds beating a gong is becoming obsolete, and the new policeman, like our own, is supposed to bait himself with silence and skill, so as to be sugar in leading the burglar to the trap. Not long ago, however, I heard the old-fashioned Chinese Lukong beating his wooden drum as he went his rounds in the Portuguese colony of Macao, China. When the police recover lost goods, half only is returned to the owner, and half often goes to public charity which is organized in a guild. This is an old regulation in many parts of China. One of their wits said that the difference between a lower and a higher court is that one has the first and the other has the last “guess” at a case! The Chinese point out the delays in the execution of murderers as a most serious defect in justice, and the sentimentalism483 expressed by part of our press and pulpit as a most serious defect in our mentality. They show headings in our newspapers reading as follows: “Ministers Strive with Murderer Blank”; “Four Pastors Prepare Murderer Blank for Death,” etc. The laconic Chinese ask: “How long a time did the murderer give his victim to prepare for death.” The Chinese say that our levity in this terrific matter has run the average of murders in America up to the highest point in any nation, and that their average, with England’s, is the lowest because of swift and sure justice in those two countries.

In our month of August occurs the festival of the goddess of needlework. It is customary for the women to exhibit the wealth and ornaments of the family during this festival. In 1911, at Fatshan, near Canton, where Sunyacius was born, robbers disguised as women arrived in closed chairs before the yamen (compound) of the Li family, and pretending to be relatives, they broke past the doormen. When inside the home, they drew weapons, and with the inmates intimidated, ransacked the house of jewels and valuables, escaping to the river, where the pirate boats took them on board and made off for the reaches and canals. Owing to the paucity of maritime police, because of a limited revenue, piracy has swept over China’s waters since her Captain Kidd, Koxinga, operated from Amoy in 1657. The West River of Kwangtung province has been notorious in recent years, and in my former book, The Chinese, I have related the attacks upon Europeans in the steamers Sainam and Shui On.

The most startling attack in many years was upon the well-known Pacific Mail steamer Asia, in April, 1911. Known previously as the Coptic, this steamer sailed from San Francisco for twenty years in the trans-Pacific484 service, and she was therefore well known to many thousands of Americans. She was a graceful Belfast-built boat of low freeboard, and easily boarded. In a fog on April 23rd she ran against the precipitous Finger Rock Island, which rises off the coast of Chekiang province. Wireless was immediately sent out, and the Chinese Merchants’ S. S. Company’s vessel Shoa Shing started for the rescue. Before she could arrive and after her departure with the sixty rescued passengers, Chekiang pirates, in swift snake boats and sanpans, put off to the attack, and despite revolver defense, boarded the Asia and her boats. They even demanded under duress that passengers should sign “chits,” promising to pay sums of money for rescue. When the steamer was temporarily abandoned, they boarded and stripped her of almost everything except the smokestack paint. Fisherman and pirate are about as synonymous on some waters of China as Cornishman and farmer, Panamanian and placer miner are in some of our romantic novels! Thrilling engagements with pirates not infrequently occur almost under the windows of the fashionable Boa Vista and Hing Kee Hotels on romantic Macao’s Praya Granda.

On July 13, 1910, a party of Chinese students, women and children were kidnapped in Macao, by pirates led by the second of the swashbuckler Leungs, and by the leader Luk, and taken to Ko-Ho (Colowan) Island, where they were chained to the walls of caves and of a Portuguese fort, after the latter had been stormed, and the blue and white flag of the castles hauled down to be succeeded by the triangular red flag of the pirates. The governor of Macao sent the Portuguese gunboats Patria and Macao, and an expedition of artillery and infantry of the “Legionaries Coloniale.” The possession of this island by the Portuguese has long been disputed by China, and the Chinese gunboats, which485 now drew up only watched the engagement. Two thousand pirates fought with modern weapons and smokeless powder, which had been smuggled from Japan. The Portuguese bombarded with four-inch guns, and dropped so many shells into so many compartments of two pirate junks, as with skull and sail they made for rocky Wung Kum Island, that they sank with all on board. In an armistice, Commander Wu, of the Chinese navy, a brave commander of whom we shall hear more, disguised as a coolie, courageously spied on the pirates’ stronghold and ascertained where most of the women were imprisoned, so as to save these retreats from being bombarded. The pirates were smoked out of these caves with sulphur and the women resuscitated.

Not only South China, but North China also has experienced piratical attacks in recent times. In September, 1910, a large band of Hung-Hutz pirates, disguised as bean merchants, sailed down the Liao River to Newchwang and captured for ransom fifteen wealthy Chinese merchants under the walls of the foreign settlements. They safely made retreat with captured arms to their mountain stronghold, one hundred miles up the river, near Liaoyang, and settled down for a siege. The Chinese desire to build more railways through this section, but the Japanese and Russians have opposed American backing of another road and have hoodwinked Britain and Europe into a disinterested attitude, which is the status quo, but not the permanent settlement of the question.

The Chinese have a saying regarding courts, retainers and the animals outside, as follows: “When the mandarin swears, the dogs bark, and when the mandarin laughs the dogs grin, and the terrible tsai ren (yamen court runners, corresponding to our detectives) stroke their rough fingers.” Some of their legal proverbs are:

486 “When two rascals differ, the truth is near; when they agree, the truth is hid.”

“Don’t jump to conclusions in evidence, for a grain of sand is not the seashore, nor a tree a forest.”

XXV
CHINESE DAILY LIFE

The happy Leigh Hunt, who was half American by blood, in one of his incomparable Addisonian essays, Tea Drinking, wrote as follows of the daily life and surroundings of the Chinese: “The very word tea, so petty, so infantine, so winking-eyed, so expressive, somehow or other, of something inexpressibly minute and satisfied with a little (tee!) resembles the idea one has (perhaps a very mistaken one) of that extraordinary people of whom Europeans know little or nothing, except that they sell us this preparation, bow back again our ambassadors, have a language consisting of only a few hundred words, gave us chinaware and the strange pictures on our teacups, made a certain progress in civilization long before we did, mysteriously stopped at it and would go no further, and if numbers and the customs of venerable ancestors are to carry the day, are at once the most populous and the most respectable nation on the face of the earth. As a population they certainly are a most enormous and wonderful body, but as individuals, their ceremonies, their trifling edicts, their jealousy of foreigners, and their teacup representations of themselves impress us irresistibly with a fancy that they are a people all toddling, little-eyed, little-footed, little-bearded, little-minded, quaint, overweening, pig-tailed, bald-headed, cone-capped or pagoda-hatted, having childish houses and temples with bells at every corner and story,488 and shuffling about in blue landscapes, over nine-inch bridges, with little mysteries of bell-hung whips in their hands,—a boat or a house or a tree, made of a pattern, being over their heads or underneath them, and a bird as large as the boat, always having a circular white space to fly in! Such are the Chinese of the teacups and the grocers’ windows, and partly of their own novels, too, in which everything seems as little as their eyes, little odes, little wine parties and a series of little satisfactions. However, it must be owned that from these novels one gradually acquires a notion that there is a great deal more good sense and even good poetry among them than one had fancied from the accounts of embassies and the autobiographical paintings on the chinaware, and this is the most probable supposition. An ancient and great nation as civilized as they is not likely to be so much behind hand with us in the art of living as our self-complacency leads us to imagine. If their contempt of us amounts to the barbarous, perhaps there is a greater share of barbarism than we suspect in our scorn of them.”

In August the Chinese resort to the graveyards and burn paper money and tin- and gold-foil models at the graves of their ancestors. It is a pretty sight at night to see thousands of these little fires lighting up the vast fields of the dead like a plain of stars through which the living spirits move. The ceremonies sometimes include the Greek custom of pouring out a libation of wine, and as this is the custom especially in the western provinces, it may indicate a former communion with old Greece. Long before the Christian era Greece had possibly acquired veneration for graves from older China. Demosthenes cried out to the Athenians in B. C. 354 as a climax to his arguments: “Will ye sacrifice your sepulchres to the Persian?” A mortuary custom in the southwest provinces, also similar to the Greek, is to489 place a coin in the mouth, to pay for ferriage of the spirit. The round coin, made of jade, and sometimes banded with pure gold, is an exact copy of the copper cash, with a square hole in the center. These tomb jades acquire a stained appearance as compared with the delightful glisten of jades kept in the light.

Foreigners with cinematograph lanterns are now going into the interior of China with interpreters to manage part of their shows, and are doing well, as the Chinese delight in the moving pictures. It is necessary to apply to the provincial governor for a passport, and to register at the consulate at the nearest treaty port. Both French and American films are used.

The purpose of the long nails, dwarfed feet and heavy hairdressing is the snobbish one of showing that such a person does not need to work, but can afford to keep servants. These devotees of fashion, rapidly becoming fewer, suffer so much torture that their conceit can be forgiven them. “Don’t say a word, you Westerners; remember your suffocating waists and your high-heeled compressed shoes,” retort some of the Chinese! At Ningpo boys wear boots made of human hair. Over these they draw straw sandals. For waterproof material an oiled cotton is used. The very poor classes use a picturesque cape and kilt made of rush leaves, and one sees sights on the mountain roads of Hongkong that remind one of Robinson Crusoe and Friday. The Chinese are great bird fanciers. Crows, magpies, hawks, larks, ducks, finches, etc., are exposed for sale in the fairs. The singing birds are taught to sing in competition, and also to catch seeds thrown into the air. Fortune-tellers take up their location at the street corner in Hongkong, Canton, and other ports, with their trained Kwangtung sparrows. When you pay your coin, the owner places a package of490 cards in envelopes before the door of the cage. The bird selects one and is rewarded with a grain of rice. You identify the card by the picture that it bears. The owner puts the card, together with a tiny slip of sandalwood, back in the envelope, shuffles the envelopes and calls the bird out again. The bird will select the same envelope, which proves that Kwangtung sparrows at least have a fine sense of smell! On another corner stands a bird trainer with a grossbeak-weaver perched upon his finger. He throws coins into the air, toward which the bird darts, catching the coins in its bill and returning to the finger of the master.

On the narrow streets, in constant danger of being jostled into, the letter-writer sits at a table, painting the beautiful characters for whomsoever wishes to buy a letter. His customers are many,—fruiterers, laborers, fishermen, cooks, gunny-lifters, hotel-runners, lantern sellers, rice bird hawkers, etc. The Buddhist or Taoist priest, too, is not averse to writing a letter for a wife buyer for an added fee after his customer has bought a written prayer to Buddha or his own dead father, which prayer the priest burns in presenting it to the spirit.

There are many Mohammedan Chinese in the western and southwestern provinces, and scattered throughout the empire are Mohammedan companies. They are generally butchers and bakers by occupation. Among these Mohammedans are doubtless the lost colonies of Chinese Jews.

It is found that the Miao aborigines of Szechuen and Yunnan are a more impulsive, vivacious, and by turns a more sulky race than the staid, trim, mannerly Chinese. Missionaries, therefore, report that when they Christianize the aborigines they find them delightfully frank and vivacious companions, who grow to be liked heartily, as the cultured Chinese is in comparison deeply respected. The491 Miaos (Now Su tribe) show Burmese influence, too, for they burn their dead, a custom which is abhorred by the Chinese masses, though some Buddhist priests do it. The Miaos often worship a hill, and far to the east, even at Hongkong, I have seen members of the aboriginal Hakka tribes worshiping a hill, or a rock, or the seashore. On the hillsides of Hongkong jars will be found on stones among the woods. These contain the bones of Hongkong Chinese who have died in America and whose bones lie out in the woods, waiting till the Taoist calendar reports that it is a lucky day for burial. If you make the fee large enough the priest can grant you absolution any day and you may bury with full assurance of good luck. It then becomes a struggle between the priest’s determination and the mourner’s stubbornness in the matter of securing possession of the coins of the dead one! The body lies in an American graveyard until the large bones only remain. These are manifested across the Pacific as “fish bones” and are received at Hongkong by the Tung Wah Hospital for the guild of which deceased was a member. The hospital turns the bones over to the chief mourner, who places them in a jar, as already related. While the Chinese abhor sickness, and will sometimes desert a fever patient after loading his blanket with stones so that he can not leave the bed, they have no abhorrence of coffins or bones. For long periods they keep the coffin in the best room of the house, or the jar of bones in the garden.

In selling goods by auction at the pawnshops, or inns, the auctioneer does not permit audible bidding. The goods are passed through an opening for inspection. Then the bidders walk to the window, and by whisper, card, or squeeze of the hand, indicate the bid. This encourages high instead of low bidding at the beginning, for it is known492 that the first bidder who offers a fair price secures the article.

The Chinese, on account of their localization, and lack of experience, while usually placid, can be worked up into uncontrollable excitement. This explains the murders of missionaries by mobs in the long years up to 1901. Many suicides among officials and widows and daughters of soldiers followed the excitement and distress of the October, 1911, revolution. The camaraderie of American clubs which has evolved the greeting, “old fellow,” equal to the “old chap” of British clubs, was copied from China, where you must call every one “old man” (lao jen). It is the highest term of respect, is in diplomatic use, and even bonzes and teachers are addressed in that way. A captain of a sanpan is called the “great old one” (lao ta). The mayor is called “old man of the village” (hsiang lao). The following incident will illustrate how the clan dominates Chinese life. San Wui is a city lying near Canton. The Kwan family is one of the largest and wealthiest clans living there. It maintained near the district burial ground a fine, large ancestral hall filled with family tablets and effigies. Against the votes of the clan, in the middle of August, 1911, Kwan Ta, one of the most powerful members, rented the building to the police, who used it as headquarters in collecting unpopular taxes and pressing the people to accept the nationalization of railways scheme. The people led by the Kwan clan, burned the ancestral temple. The members of the clan then rebuilt the hall and ordered the sculptors to make an image of the unpopular Kwan Ta, who had died in the meantime. The granite image represents the man with his hands behind his back in a kneeling posture. On his back is carved the history of his defection. As each member of the Kwan clan comes into the temple493 on the great days to worship the ancestral tablets which have been restored, it is obligatory that he shall give Kwan Ta’s image three strokes of the bamboo!

The method of carrying water in India and China is conspicuously different. In India the drawers go from the well with the jar of water balanced on their heads. In China the water is put into two large buckets, which are slung from the two ends of a bamboo, which is balanced on the shoulder. Chinese markets in the villages and smaller cities are managed on the fair system, as in Russia. You can not buy barrow wheels at the bridge fair every day in the week, because the wheelwright only comes to your village fair every second Friday, his tour taking him through ten villages perhaps. You can not buy feather dusters or shoes every day, as the pedler is off on a tour of six villages, and only visits your fair, held at the temple, every Saturday. But food and coins you can buy every morning at your two village fairs, and the hucksters there will tell you just what days the barber, the druggist, the potter, the copper hammerer, etc., will be around again, unless thieves waylay them, or gamblers entice them, or Taoist astrologers, looking for a bribe, deceive them into belief that it is their unlucky day by their birth star on the almanac!

That the Chinese civilization in general had little communication with Egypt or Babylonia, after once being separated, may be inferred partly from the fact that the early Chinese forgot the secret of embalming the body. The Bamboo Books, tenth century B. C. recite how the Emperor Muh, whose concubine died while traveling with him in the Tartary desert, had to bury her there at once, and other records recite that when tombs were opened they stank so badly that dogs had first to be sent in to ascertain when human beings could safely enter. It was not until494 long centuries after this that the Chinese learned to use lime to destroy the flesh.

Conjuring has been popular from the earliest times. The famous Bamboo Books recite that the Emperor Muh, on his travels into Tartary in the tenth century B. C., was infatuated by an unusually clever conjurer there. Lieh Tsz, a patriotic chronicler of the fifth century B. C., complains that the emperor of disintegrating China had more time to study the tricks of a conjurer than for state affairs.

An interesting means of transportation over the mountains of the north is the pony-litter, which is swung between two animals in tandem. The trip is exciting enough, especially when one of the animals falls to its knees. Chinese gang laborers do all their pulling, pushing and lifting, accompanied by a chantey song. The famous trackers of the Yangtze gorges and the Grand Canal; the gunny lifters of Hongkong; the wood sawers and teak pilers; the coal passers of Hankau, all sing at the top of their splendid voices as they work.

When a native moves he is supposed to carry fire from his old kitchen to the new one, so as not to rekindle the misfortunes of the last lessee. He desires to burn up his old predecessor’s past, which may have been all bad (or he would not have moved), and to continue his own fortune, which is all good, or ought to be! When moving into a new house, the tenant replaces a threshold, lintel or rafter so that he may not inherit the bad fortune of the former tenant. He starts all things anew, as the new piece of lumber or stone typifies. The old-fashioned Chinese hotel buildings in the northern provinces are not unlike those in Palestine, low buildings with few windows in the walls being built around a court. In the court are troughs for the donkeys, mules, Mongolian ponies and especially camels of495 the pack trains. The roofs of the buildings, with their up-curling eaves and pagoda pinnacles, are the most beautiful in the world. It seems uncanny to see a crowd passing your house on a holiday without a sound, because the Chinese shoe is all felt. In contrast with this, compare the noisy shuffling of the wooden shoes of Japan, where one man makes more noise than a thousand Chinese, or a dozen Occidentals.

The happiness of a Chinese home is measured by the degree in which one’s neighbors leave one alone, not by the degree one is bothered with the repeated visits of neighbors, as is the fashion in the more intrusive Occident. The Chinese illustrate this characteristic by building a high wall around the clustered buildings of the home-compound. As a rule, the Chinese rent not; they move not. They build a time-bronzed, indestructible home, even if it be as simple as one rough rock laid across two age-silvered boulders. Generations, down the ages, flow and follow there, as wave follows wave down the steps of the waterfall. What is the result? A personal fame, heroism of faith, a love, a depth, a beauty, in none of which our Western life can offer an equal joy or strength. The Oriental, never having dropped the extinguished lamp of memory from his hand, is able to follow the path of history with intensity, satisfaction and certainty, while we of the West, having no similar assurance, wander the fields of the earth, unsatisfied still, where our individual name may be carved with permanence. What hate pursues us? What fate awaits us? It is the saddest sign in our psychological organization. If we intend to remain great, we must end this renting of scooped holes in cave apartments, scatter our big cities into smaller ones, spread out on the land and give every man a home of his own, and a strong enough one to leave through the ages to496 his great-grandson. This is the Chinese way; it is the only true way, as witness their six thousand years of certain history, while they take care to-day of four times our population. The custom of sheltering the families of sons and grandsons within one patriarchal compound is truly Asian. It is described by Homer in the sixth book of The Iliad as obtaining in the home of Priam, King of Troy, B. C. 2500. At New-year time, in Fukien province, all the family join hands around a brazier which is smoking on a table, to signify the unity of the family around a common hearth.

The Chinese make a stew of chicken, ginger, lettuce and cucumbers, or vegetable marrow, and it is very good. Beans are soaked in water and allowed to sprout before being pickled, or boiled in sugar. Salutes at feasts are sometimes made in the German fashion by raising the wine (samshu) cup to the eyes before drinking. The Chinese mix rice, nuts, flour, fruit and seed in their candies, and their cakes are highly colored and made very sweet. Where the Germans use vinegar and salt as a preservative, the Chinese use sugar, and the results, while surprising, are often delightful. Partly as revealing the sumptuous table which it is now possible to set at Hongkong or Shanghai, or Tientsin, and partly to show to what gastronomic heights the treaty port Chinese rise, I quote the menu of the Wah On Kwong Association, or Guild, served at one of the Hongkong hotels by Chinese stewards:

Queen olives                                  Caviare on toast
Bird’s Nest soup                  Chicken soup                      Fungus soup
Garoupa, shrimp sauce                      Boiled shark steak
Fillet of beef (Champignon sauce)
Chicken compote                                Stewed sharks’ fins
Pigeon gelatine                                          Pâté de foie gras en Aspic
Beche de Mer                                Fried frogs’ legs
Roast saddle of Queensland mutton with jelly497
Roast ribs of sirloin of Queensland beef
Roast Kwangtung turkey                        Boiled fowl
Singapore pine apple            Hankau ham                        Potatoes
Peas        Vegetable marrow        Salad
Asparagus, olive oil sauce
Victoria pudding            Chartreuse jelly
Cakes                Mango ice cream
Preserved ginger                Small oranges            Chinese nuts
Coffee                            European wines
Lucien Rozet          Cliquot        Heidsieck        Chateau Larose
Medoc            Manzanilla        Marsala

The iron pans that come from Shansi province are made as thin as possible so as to economize fuel; indeed, as light fuel as grass and stalks is used. The kitchen god is Chang Kung, and he was given this office because “nine generations peacefully inhabited the same compound when he lived on earth.” As pigs, ducks and geese are driven long distances to market, little straw sandals are woven for their feet. This one sometimes sees in Southern France when the frugal peasant is competing with local railway rates!

An official asked a mannerly subordinate which way he was walking home, and the latter replied: “Your way, sir.” The same official, discussing a subject said to the subordinate: “Say what you think.” The subordinate, who was a good party politician even in China, replied: “I think what you say.” Some of their proverbs on daily life are:

“The pot is as strong as its thinnest spot; the chain is as strong as its weakest ring.”

“Don’t ask your thirsty visitor if he will have tea, because498 if he is mannerly he will say, ‘Don’t trouble yourself’; just draw the tea for him.”

“Because you feel merry, there’s no need to dance when you are on a horse’s back or in a small boat.”

XXVI
CLIMATE, DISEASE AND HYGIENE

In the last two years China has surprised the world by carrying out her agreement to extirpate quickly opium smoking and poppy growing. It is the most spectacular abatement of a gigantic nuisance that the world has known. Among the heroes of the reform was Lin Ping Chang, a grandson of the famous Commissioner Lin who destroyed the chests of opium at Canton and brought on the war with Britain in 1840. Heredity obtains in China! It would have taken England and America possibly fifty years to bring about an equal reform in personal habits, but the Chinese have for 3,500 years been the most obedient people to government in the world, “Filial Piety” being the eminent principle of the religious, social and political life. The good work is going on apace, and Hongkong and India, thanks to the noble altruism of Lord Morley, Sir E. Grey, Mr. Asquith and Lloyd George, are with good grace swallowing the bitter pill of loss of revenue from this lucrative trade. It was a great victory for religion over commerce, and the latter died hard, for unregulated commerce is anything but a moralist at heart. The humanitarian sentiment in Britain, America and China won over money. Britain in her parliament Blue Books used to say: “Opium is a legitimate article of trade and a vested right that China is unable to attack.” To-day John Morley speaks of Britain’s “humanitarian duty.” Persian500 opium, which is much denser in morphia than is the Indian, still comes to Hongkong for Formosa. This is the opium of which Herodotus in 430 B. C. amusingly wrote as follows, his imagination supplying his facts: “Though it comes from a most stinking place, it is itself most fragrant. It is found sticking like gum to the beards of he-goats, which collect it from the woods.”

Now Japan should obey the humanitarian sentiment of the world, and stamp out opium in her Formosan colony. The opium conferences at Shanghai in 1909 and the Hague in 1911, called by America and presided over by the American, Bishop Brent, have produced wonderful results. It now remains for the western nations to emulate China’s example and stamp out morphia. China could well come back at America and say: “What are you going to do about morphine and hypodermic syringes? You import yearly 500,000 pounds of opium, and you use only 70,000 pounds in medicine. As far as morphine goes you are more ‘doped’ than all the nations combined. You import 200,000 ounces of cocaine each year, of which only 15,000 ounces are used in medicine.” The exportation of India opium will cease in 1918, and China will have ceased to grow the poppy this year. In the heat of the debates in England, Eric Lewis, a Welsh supporter of Lloyd George’s, proposed that England should buy all the opium in India, like the famous Chinese Commissioner Lin of Canton, dump it in the sea, and indemnify by a loan of $40,000,000 the poppy growers of Bengal. Now let us cease to criticize Britain, for if she grossly sinned, she has repented and made amends, as could now be expected of a Britain which has recently established national pensions for her aged, and brought her educational extension, employers’ liability and land taxation up to the mark set by America.

So thoroughly successful was the Chinese government in501 restricting the planting of the poppy even in distant Yunnan province, that in 1911 the passenger earnings of the new French railway from Haiphong to Yunnan were greater, because men fed on maize, instead of diseased by opium, are both strong and wealthy enough to travel. Maize succeeded the poppy. When China was attacking the use of opium in the mandarinate, one official wrote to the Board of Constitutional Reform: “His Majesty can send me the silver cord (for suicide by strangulation) but I can not give up opium.” They did give it up, for an opium smoker was denied his right to plead in court, and his office was taken from him. At plowing time, revenue officers were sent into Yunnan, Szechuen and other poppy provinces, to see that poppy seed was not sown. The opium cure, which is either swallowed or administered hypodermically, is given the patient at the same time the drug is, and if his stomach only was concerned, he is so nauseated that in five days he will give up the indulgence. The cure contains fifteen per cent. tincture belladona, fluid extract of prickly ash (xanthoxylum), and fluid extract of hyoscyamus. Another cure includes iron, coffee, quinine, strychnine, gentian and capsicum, with temporary injections of morphine in cases of collapse. In a former book, The Chinese, I affirmed that China and India could soon economically recover from the prohibition of opium planting if the same attention were directed to other fields. I shall instance Yunnan alone. In the first year of the prohibition the province suffered. In 1910 and 1911 the increase in silver, copper and tin mining, and maize cultivation had alone reimbursed Yunnan for all her loss of opium revenues, and a sobered people realized that they were even then only beginning to find their energies for legitimate enrichment. The burning of pipes continues in China. In The Chinese I related some502 dramatic occurrences in Shanghai. In September, 1911, Chinese gathered on the athletic field of the Tientsin Y. M. C. A. and burned 100,000 opium pipes, and at Yunnan City, under the auspices of Governor Li Chin Hsi, a great burning was held on the parade ground of the arsenal; the new military, the police and bands attending to add éclat to the function.

Doctor Buchanan, of India, has discovered that cats are immune to China’s curse, bubonic plague, and that they can safely destroy the rats which carry the germs. But cats and dogs indulge in fleas, and the flea is as busy in transporting the plague germ as are the rats. Poison and traps are the things to use against rats, and cats and dogs should be asked to retire, too, until China cleans herself up a bit, when she can probably safely indulge in bench shows of her famous chow and Pekingese dogs! Even the fur marmot has been asked to go, since the pneumonic plague epidemic in Manchuria in the winter of 1910. That awful epidemic revealed a new scourge, even worse than bubonic, to the startled world. Bubonic thrives in dampness in the south in summer time. Pneumonic thrives in indoor winter conditions. America was represented on the field by Doctor R. P. Strong, of Manila, Doctors Aspland and Stenhouse, and the medical missionaries Sinclair, Gibb and Mary Ogden; Japan by Doctor Kitasato, who discovered the bubonic bacillus at Hongkong in 1894; Russia by Doctor Haffkine and Doctor Zabolothy; China by Doctor Wu Lien Teh; England by Doctor A. F. Jackson, who fell a martyr, to the great grief of all China; Scotland by Doctor Ross, of Mukden. Though no victim recovers, the germ can not live outside in dry air. The doctors and sanitary corps, inoculated with Yersin serum, or Haffkine’s or Kitasato’s prophylactic lymph, at once equipped themselves with masks503 and surtouts, and the scene was one which Manzoni might have novelized. Often dying men were seen to struggle up to the pile of bodies among which were their fathers, bow low in filial, Confucian ancestor worship, even to pour out libations and present sacrifice, and then join the heap in a delirious death agony. Such a tragic attitude could be possible only in a land of ancestor worship.

Kingslake, in Eothen, describes the quarantined city of Cairo in 1835, when a thousand deaths a day occurred until the terrorized population hated the name death, and called it with bated breath “another accident”. I have been through similar nerve-racking experiences in the plague centers of China, the mentioning of death and cemeteries being tabooed from polite conversation, though hundreds were falling. Kingslake’s description is graphic. He went to the only European physician in the city, and found him wrapped up, suffering from the plague. The heroic man prescribed for Kingslake. Later, thinking that he might have recovered, Kingslake sent his servant to ask the physician to call. “Did you meet him?” The servant replied: “Yes, I met him coming out of his house,—on his bier!” In the tenth chapter of Eothen, Kingslake recites how the plague in 1835 ruthlessly struck down the brave brothers of the Franciscan monastery in holy Jerusalem. One quarantined member went on his priestly duty to the stricken city. On his return to the pest-house, he rang a bell as a signal that he still lived, and was carrying on the martyr’s work over the paths that Christ himself trod. When the bell ceased ringing, a new brother went forth to bury the martyr, and take up his duties which could only also lead to death.

In 1720, Belsunce, the hero Bishop of Marseilles, seemed alone to breathe pure air and handle pure food as he moved among the infected who to the number of 50,000 dropped504 at his feet. Infection comes from indoor breathing, direct, or from sputum. Banish dirt, darkness and foul air, and both bubonics at once commit suicide or die of starvation. The pneumonic, it will be recalled, swept from Harbin to Newchwang, and held Europe in terror that it would take the Siberian goods train westward for St. Petersburg and Berlin. Thirty European doctors and nurses were martyrs, most of them Russians. The Chinese permitted what they have never permitted before, the cremation of the dead, and the segregation of suspects in detention camps. At Harbin alone there were 1,200 deaths, the dead being cremated in the brick kilns. If heroic members of any legation staff should be given honors for the Peking campaign against plague in 1911, there are 20,000 veterans of Hongkong and South China who should be clothed in a coat of medals for plague dangers they never thought of talking about, except to say with their guest Kipling that “it was all in the day’s work”. I have seen the foreign police, soldiers, sanitary corps and volunteers of Hongkong and Canton tackle multitudinous dangers in epidemics with all the éclat of a football game, and the men of Bombay regularly do the same thing. Because of the legations and press bureaus, the foreigner in North China, God bless him, is much better advertised than is the foreigner of South China and India. India had one Kipling; South China is looking for hers!

In a former volume I have instanced some surprising appearances of bubonic plague in Europe. In September, 1910, a girl, her father, mother and nurse, died successively under mysterious conditions at Preston, Suffolk, England. It was later noticed that the rats in the neighborhood were dying. Examination showed that the black plague was the cause, and the supposition is that the disease was imported in grain received from Odessa, Russia, and that the germs505 developed under conditions of damp, dirt and darkness. In 1902, Odessa, Russia, reported a plague case in the house of a baker. In August, 1910, plague was recrudescent there in the very same house, showing that the bubonic plague germs had lived eight years. The ineffective measures of the authorities to destroy the rats caused the spread of the last-mentioned epidemic. World campaigns against rats will doubtless now occur from time to time, as insurance companies have taken up the study of the subject.

Abattoir and market laws calling for foreign supervision and veterinary inspection were first instituted by Hongkong, and Singapore, Shanghai, Tientsin, Saigon, Manila, and Tsingtau followed in about the order named. Partial inspection is exercised at Canton, Hankau, Newchwang, Peking and other cities. It is one of the things China must and will soon take hold of, for Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius) who has done so much for Chinese reform, is himself a modern physician and has always lived in foreign or treaty ports. In connection with this, China will improve her cattle, which are of the wild, buffalo-humped variety, with an excess of bone. Her Hankau and Manchurian black, as well as the Kwangtung white, pigs are now going to Liverpool, London, Glasgow and Bremen. It is wonderful that populous China can be an exporter of meat to Europe. It shows two things: that living in America and Europe is too high, and that return freights are too low. China centuries ago instituted pure food laws, preceding Germany, Britain and America. They did not go far of course, but they showed the germinative idea. The guild or manufacturer was glad to stamp biscuit or ink-stick, and the food purveyor placed a red stamp on his dried duck, fish, or vermicelli package, the stamp standing for purity or inferiority according to the reputation of the packer.

506 Every reader has sympathized with the heroic General Roberts who in his book, Forty-One Years in India, tells of a sunstroke which he suffered in the heat of the tropics. The great heat and humidity are likely to produce, certainly in those who use stimulants, drugs or much meat, anaemia or acidulation of the blood, with persistent auto-intoxication, and the resulting torture of constantly reeling under the heat can be imagined. The Chinese are up at daylight, and most active in the cooler part of the day. The Chinese skull, because of the lifelong habit of shaving the head under the Manchu régime, grows thicker than the European’s skull, and the former, therefore, are better able to resist the equatorial sun. Herodotus pointed out that the ancient Egyptians, for the same reason, resisted the sun better than the Persians, who accustomed themselves to head-coverings from childhood. The Chinese emperor and the mandarins gave their audiences at dawn. It will be recalled that Cicero, when governor of Asiatic Cicilia, admitted the crowds of complainants to his popular court at daylight, so as to use the hot midday for retirement from the heat. At Hongkong, where, hot as it is, exercise is imperative, we used to rise at daylight and rush to the golf, tennis and riding courses for an hour’s play, and this unusual sight would induce you to say that it was not so luxurious a colony as the sumptuous club life of the later day would possibly make it appear to be.

The bar in an Oriental club is eloquent of the fact that you are in the malarial East, for among the popular bottles is the one containing quinine-sulphate powder, and the veterans seem able to judge what is a proper dose to take out with a spoon to mix with their sherry as they salute and say: “Here’s how,” or “The king.”

South China is kind to the man who suffers from heat.507 Knowing that he is coolest who can throw away his flesh and move in his bare bones, she provides a damp hot climate that reduces men to the appearance of trained thoroughbreds! There they walk, the thinnest foreigners of the Far East, the Hongkong, Manila, Saigon, Shanghai and Canton men! They have been boiled down almost to their backbones and skulls from March until November, and there being no tissue to feed, the blood can all go to building up the gray matter! Although black focuses the actinic rays of the overhead equatorial sun, and a body feels twenty degrees more of heat than when covered with white, the British courts of Hongkong insist on the formal garb of Lincoln’s Inn, a black coat and gown. Pity the barristers and judges of Hongkong who delve into the law and weigh out justice in the stifling atmosphere of the magnificent courts of the illustrious Crown colony. The almost naked, or duck-covered criminal, bracing up for his sentence, shows fewer beads on his perspiring brow than do his learned accusers! “Inflexible” is not a more famous name in the British navy than in the British legal and colonial service.

The Americans in Manila, the French in Saigon, and the republican Chinese, however, are listening to the dictates of hygiene rather than to the long sonorous trump of tradition. In the American cavalry in the tropics it is found that the imported white animals are immune to the heat, whereas the darker breeds soon die. Southern Tibet is coming nearer to the railhead with its wonderful climate for the enervated of the whole East. India, Tonquin and China are sending on their construction gangs, and the day is not so far off when the veil at the 8,000 feet passes, which has hid the last withheld land, will be rent in twain. The two men who have done the most to break508 down the forts of exclusion are Sir Francis, Colonel Younghusband, for the Indian government, and the Chinese general, Chao Ehr Feng, who in 1910 also broke up the Buddhist superstitious system by driving the Dalai Lama (their pope) for the first time into unholy foreign soil at Darjeeling. Twenty miles south of Chungking, in the sublime valley of Wen Tang, is a famous hot sulphur bath cut in the rock. The flow is generous, and the Buddhist priests have divided the bath so that men and women may use it. They make no charge for the use of the water, but they charge for inn service. Before many years many foreigners will resort here, as the bathing is beautifully clean.

A remarkable thing about China is the comparative absence of flies, because manure and refuse is so important as a fertilizer that it is immediately carried to the intensively farmed fields, which are expected to produce two to three harvests a year. Therefore typhoid and other diseases are not as prevalent as they otherwise would be. However, a whisper in your ear, reader: if China lacks in flies, she abounds in “bunkies,” which is the polite name for fleas! Nature abhors a vacuum and always provides for the deficiency in one field from the surplus in another! To have real safety in a Chinese inn, one needs to go to bed in a Peary suit, furnished with a diver’s helmet. This is never done, however, because of the heat. Cold weather only increases the torture, for the pauper “bunkie,” small as he is, successfully races to the heated kang faster than the paying guest! As the Chinese masses use no liquor, tobacco or drugs, and live an outdoor life on vegetable food mainly, their hearts are in splendid condition, and all the hospital surgeons report remarkable recoveries when an accident has made operations necessary. The race seems to have that old aboriginal fortitude of not fearing the knife or wincing509 under pain. They have no idea of the danger of infection by contact, the rich being as ill-informed as the poor. Wet towels, wrung out in the same hot water, are for refreshment rubbed over the hands, face and neck of every one at a feast. A governor’s pipe is first lighted and puffed for him by a miserable attendant, the governor merely wiping the mouthpiece dry with his hand or long sleeve, the custom being to cut out a soiled sleeve and substitute a new sleeve so as to save the splendid garment.

The Chinese are proving themselves to be adept in dental surgery. Many Chinese have graduated from the University of Pennsylvania dental school, and they have set up in business throughout the Chinese treaty ports. Others have graduated from Hongkong’s school, and still others, entering as apprentices under Chinese dentists, trained abroad, soon start out for themselves and pass the good work along. When customers are slow in coming, the Chinese dentist adds another shingle to his door. “Dentist and Photographer”; “Dentist and Printer”; “Dentist and Manufacturers’ Agent,” are common signs. A good many stories are printed that the old-fashioned Oriental dentist trained himself for tooth pulling by practising with his fingers on pulling pegs from soft and afterward from hardwood logs, but this is true only as far as loosened teeth are concerned. They always used forceps of some kind. Generals Roberts and Kitchener could not, by taking thought, add one cubit unto the stature of the British soldier, but they decreed that he must have as good teeth as he had a rifle when on foreign service, and so the dentists of Hongkong and other garrison ports flourish. The British call themselves “dental surgeons.” The Chinese put out a sign that they repair or extract molars “by best American methods.” The Philadelphia dentist, here as over the world, leads in his510 calling. One owns a leading newspaper of Hongkong. The prices of the American dentist are high, as the tourist and five-year indentured clerk discover. Apprentices are brought out under contract covering service, and it is rumored that some contracts prohibit independent practise in the same port at the end of the term; but common law has long ago exploded the legality of a man signing away his rights to make a living.

It is strongly hoped that a cure has now been found for incipient tubercular leprosy, hitherto supposed to be incurable. South China has more lepers than any country, and the necessary segregation is incomplete. Doctor J. T. Wayson, city physician of Honolulu, has used the “beauty pencil” (stick of carbon dioxide ice), which gives a temperature of one hundred degrees below zero, on the nodule sores, breaking down the affected tissues time after time, until no “bacilli leprae” are found in the tests of the cuttings from the surrounding parts. He has found that affected children of lepers seem to have been cured. The trial of this method will be made in the missionary and University of Pennsylvania hospitals at Canton, which is the center of the largest leprous district in the world, though it has had no Robert Louis Stevenson or Father Damien eloquently to make its wants known, as was done for the Molokai colony in Hawaii. If there is some unknown microbic diathesis or nervous tendency to it, this remedy, like quinine, strychnine, phosphate of iron, chaulmoogra oil, etc., may not be a permanent success. Long years of observation only can tell. I have gone through the leper camps and the leper boat colonies of the Heungshan Peninsula between Canton and Macao. The colonies do not seem to move up or down in numbers. There seems to be no danger of infection if the visitor does not eat or handle things among them.

511 As I have related in The Chinese, the scenes are piteous beyond words, and illustrate China’s old Spartan methods, that the sooner incompetents pass away the better for all. It is said that a fish diet encourages the diathesis, and certainly Heungshan is a remarkable fish center. Doctor G. A. Hansen, of Bergen, a Norwegian bacteriologist, and Doctors Brinckerhoff, Cumy and Hallman, of Honolulu, all discovered the leprosy bacillus, and Doctor Hansen broke down the belief that the disease was hereditary. By segregation, he reduced Norway’s cases from three thousand to four hundred. The American bacteriologists are experimenting on toxins. In 1902 an American named Conrardy established and lived in a model endowed lazaretto with five hundred lepers near Canton. He, of course, contracted the disease, which made slow headway because of his vitality, which was stronger than that of the vegetable-fed Chinese. He expected to live for fifteen years, but at the end of eight years he was slowly sinking. On beautiful Joao Island, which is in view from your hotel window at Macao, South China, Portugal long ago established a leper asylum.

A careful study of the newspapers for many years must lead one to the deduction that as the Chinese adopt foreign life in the treaty ports, suicides are increasing among married women and business men. Probably both religion and nerves are at fault, for they go somewhat together. As is well known, Chinese cities and dwelling-compounds are surrounded by walls. Unusual rains or quickly melting snows often undermine the walls of compounds, filling the street with débris. In August, 1911, at Mukden, Manchuria, particularly, the streets looked as though the Russians and Japanese had again just got through with bombarding the town! How differently everything is done in China and the Occident! The New Jersey cities are spending512 some $10,000,000 to take liquid sewage from their rivers and conduct it in a trunk sewer to New York Bay. In China so little sewage remains after the farmer is through with its manuring properties that British analysts concluded to take the water supply for the three cities of Hankau, Hanyang and Wuchang, in the center of populous China, directly from the Han River near the cities. The extensive plant consists of a deep intake protected from the heavy loess siltage; an air lift, which showers the water in rain into filter beds; reservoirs of five million gallons; three Worthington pumps of 300,000 gallons an hour and an electric plant to supply the cities. The company is Chinese, and Chinese did all the contracting by the favorite method of piecework. As the provincial parliament was not established when the company was chartered, the viceroy granted the franchise. American boilers were used.

Water gathering is easy in Hongkong, though it has no river. Many mountains of the island have been reserved and trenched at the bottom. The torrential rains strike these peaks, and a thousand trenches carry the water to dammed valleys at Taitam, Pokfulum and Wong Nei Chong, high enough up in the hills to give gravity pressure for the mains. The beautiful aqueducts on Bowen Road, far up on the mountain side, facing the famous harbor, are a sight no tourist approaching on his steamer will forget. When pianos are made for the humid south, loose keys and felt, fastened without gum, must be provided for, and even at that lamps are kept burning under the instrument to dry the atmosphere. A case of the Korean “earth disease,” or “tochil,” is rare in America, owing to the vigilance of our Marine Hospital Service, but one case got into Seattle from the Orient in September, 1910. The disease is incurable and infectious, and is much dreaded. Other races may have513 forgotten, but the Orient never forgets, and always can bring up something wonderful from the dispersion of Babel, and every camp gathering since, along the valley of the Tarim!

An account of the quarantine practise at Hongkong and other Oriental tropical ports may be of interest. Manila, Saigon, Singapore, Shanghai or Nagasaki may hear or believe that there is plague or cholera at Hongkong, and they quarantine vessels from the latter port. There is always certain feeling between the port doctors, and Hongkong retaliates. A vessel loaded with steerage and cabin passengers arrives at Hongkong from one of these other ports. The yellow flag is hoisted on the main topmast and no one is allowed to board the ship, which lies in the stream, until the port doctor and his assistants come off in a launch, which flies a yellow flag, and allows the ship’s yellow flag to be hauled down. Quartermasters man the gangway and rail until the doctor frees the vessel. He holds a conference with the ship’s doctor, and woe betide the latter’s vessel, or its future calls up and down the coast, if untruths are told or concealments made. The cabin passengers are carefully watched as they march by the cabin table, and the temperature of suspicious cases is taken. Any one who shows over ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit is examined further for corroborative symptoms. The temperature of every one of the steerage is taken and the glass thermometer is not always cleaned as it is passed from mouth to mouth here in these crowded regions! A suspicious case is stripped of clothes then and there in the line. Despite satisfactory examinations, vessels are sometimes held up forty-eight hours, and every one in the steerage, as well as his baggage and quarters, is sulphur-smoked, steamed and washed. A fumigation hulk is used for this purpose, and it is the most hated vessel anchored514 in the harbor. I have known a ship’s white officers, afflicted with plague, cholera, etc., to be taken off to the plague hulk Hygeia, and their vessels to be detained fourteen days for observation and cleansing before being released by the British and American doctors of the port. The detention anchorage ranges on the northwest of the usual fairway, and though a beautiful spot under the heathen hills of old China, it is naturally considered by many as a most melancholy one.

There is always a smouldering fire of conflict burning in the hearts of ships’ agents, port doctors and United States Marine hospital surgeons on duty abroad. The agents are inclined to imperfect care and quicker despatch of vessels. The United States doctors who, abroad, splendidly and incorruptibly guard the health of America, are likely to injure competitive business for the sake of making safety doubly sure. The proper course is “in medio tutissimus ibis.” I have known these doctors to examine the earth around lily roots and prohibit their export to America during many months of the year. Ships’ captains, doctors and agents, ever pressed by the management for increased earnings, take every bit of risk they can, even in the case of west-bound Chinese suffering from phthisis, and the check of the United States Marine Hospital Service is salutary, and will continue to be necessary. When a vessel is homeward bound the United States Marine doctor at Hongkong will not give a clean bill of health for America until all steerage passengers and their effects have been washed and steamed in disinfecting waters. Often the emigrants are stripped and America thus saved from loathsome hidden diseases being imported. The scene is sometimes enough to make the doctors as sagacious as Solomon, or as compassionate as Florence Nightingale.

515 What a work is opening up in China for the labors of the medical missionary, first with the touch and then with the voice of the Angel of Salvation. The rigid medical examination of returning Chinese at Hongkong and San Francisco is disliked by Chinese consuls, firms and the steerage passengers themselves, but the best friend of China, if he is enlightened as to the unsanitary conditions yet obtaining there, could not ask America to lighten her severity, which is no more onerous than Japan’s, until China cleans up her land, sanitizes her houses, and supplies herself with a modern medical system. The inspection at San Francisco sometimes calls for lancing of the ear at night to see if the patient is suffering from filariasis, and at Hongkong and sometimes at San Francisco the immigrant is required to disrobe, bathe and have his effects fumigated. The Hongkong inspection can not obviate the wisdom of a new inspection at San Francisco to ward against hookworm, elephantiasis, plague, cholera and the unmentionable disease.

Hongkong is ever increasing its hospital equipment, which is now the most extensive in the Far East. Some of the buildings erected on the mountain peaks are palatial. On the western slope of Victoria Mount there is the worldwide known Tung Wah Hospital, managed by Chinese educated in the medical schools of Britain, America and Hongkong. At this hospital Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the first president of China, was a student some years ago. Over Bowen Road, above the clouds of Mount Wanchai, is the sumptuous Military Hospital, and at the foot of the mountain is the no less splendid Naval Hospital. On Mount Kellett is Sharp’s Hospital, and on Victoria Peak is the Peak Hospital. There is the Civil Hospital, the Nethersole Hospital, hospitals over on the mainland at Kowloon, and there will516 be a railroad hospital at Kowloon. Canton has copied from Hongkong. The Chinese there are modernizing their ancient guild hospitals which lie outside of the eastern wall. Philanthropy in only the smallest of the Hongkong hospitals has been depended upon, most of them being municipal or service hospitals. At Canton is the immense Doctor Peter Parker Hospital, founded in 1835, for which the American Presbyterian women of Philadelphia furnish the medical missionaries. There are 300 beds, and 25,000 patients are treated annually. The Chinese do their part, having presented a building for a medical college. The Gregg Hospitals for Women at Canton is presided over by Doctors Mary Fulton and Mary Niles, and the Chinese have given $3,500 for a children’s ward. At Kowkiang, on the Yangtze, there is the model Danforth Memorial Hospital, erected with American money and presided over by a noted Chinese lady physician who has taken the name of Miss Mary Stone, and who graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School.

In remote large Hainan Island, in Suchow, at Paoting, Chingtu, Peking, etc., there are American Presbyterian hospitals. Where there are now hundreds there will soon be thousands of medical missionaries and more medical colleges to fit the Chinese to help themselves. It is the most important work in China,—more important even than foreign loans for railways and industrials, and far more important than loans for armies and navies. Doctor F. C. Yen, of Yale Medical College, Changsha, is a fine example of a native medical man, trained in the best that the West knows. Several American universities have opened medical schools in China, the University of Pennsylvania at Canton, Yale at Changsha in stern conservative Hunan province; and now Harvard proposes to517 open a medical school possibly at Shanghai, to be staffed by the Harvard Medical School, and the diseases which they will attack are China’s curses, the dangers of the world,—the skin diseases, tumors, the two plagues, cholera, dysentery, leprosy, malaria and consumption. One-third of the money for the Scotch Presbyterian Hospital and medical college at Mukden was contributed by the Chinese, who now warmly appreciate Western medicine.

The day is not distant when the Chinese, placed on their feet in finance, will pay half the expense of medical missions. The Chinese give liquorice to men and animals as a cure for wasting diseases. From the skin of a venomous toad their doctors derive a preparation which they call Sen-so. It is a far more powerful stimulus to heart action than our drug digitalis. It is well known that deer’s horns are ground to powder by the old-fashioned Chinese doctors. In the valley of the Wei River, just north of the Peling range in far western Kansu province, stags are raised in enclosures for this purpose. The soft prongs of the horn are cut off in summer time. The old-fashioned doctors of China never dissected, as abuse of the body is contrary to Confucianism. They knew nothing of circulation, and little of anatomy, physiology or chemistry. “Then Confucianism must go,” say the new Chinese scientists. Two of their medical proverbs are:

“Send for the diagnostician before the druggist, for the cure must fit the disease.”

Four great tropical medicine colleges have been opened outside of the Orient. The first was the University of Liverpool School. Then followed the London School of Tropical Medicine, and the Hamburg School of the Germans.518 Now the New York Tropical Medical School has been opened at Twentieth Street and Second Avenue. The work will include the translation of text-books, and America will be able to do much for Southern China in the clinic on ships which the school will have as soon as the Panama Canal is open. Serums have yet to be found for the paralyzing dengue which every foreigner in China has suffered from at one time or another: typhus, anæmia, dum-dum, tze-tze, sleeping sickness, amoebic dysentery, malaria and pneumonic plague, though the indefatigable Doctor Kitasato found a temporary serum for the last named.

The medical works translated into Chinese by medical missionaries include the following: Doctor J. G. Kerr’s (first teacher of Doctor Sunyacius) translation of Bartholow’s Practise of Medicine, Doctor S. A. Hunter’s translation of a Materia Medica and Pharmacopœia, Doctor Dudgeon’s translation of Gray’s Anatomy, Doctor Porter’s translation of a physiology, Doctor Mary Fulton’s Diseases of Children; Nursing in Surgery, and Gynecology, etc.

When I think of the trials of the Orient in its heated, humid, equatorial region, where I lived for three years; and the hardships, dangers and life-remembered punishment of its unavoidable, various diseases, I am inclined to suggest in this book the formation of an “Equator Club,” eligibility for membership in which shall be at least two years’ uninterrupted residence between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Such an experience was certainly a unique and trying one, a tremendous test of physique, as a growing number, who have endured it, will confess, and a perpetuated remembrance of those days, and an interest in the successors who have followed one to take up the white man’s growing burdens in those realms of the imperious sun, would certainly do good.

XXVII
CHINESE WOMANHOOD

On the last of our August the women of China celebrate the festival of the goddess of needlework. The interesting legend told to the daughters of the house is as follows: This goddess, because of her wonderful skill, was given by the great god Tien to a worthy farmer. After this life she incurred the wrath of the god and was removed from her husband’s star. Once a year, when her star comes round again, magpies conduct her back to her husband’s star home, across the carpet of the Milky Way, where she is welcome for a while, because she is as good a needleworker as he is a farmer and provider. The festival includes the exhibition on a table of the needlework of the women and the toy work of the girls. Wonderful toys of gummed sesame seeds, wax and paper are made, and toys worked by clockwork or heat, which exhibit all kinds of rural life,—some of it humorous. From behind screens the women listen to what the men callers have to say to the head of the family in praise of their handiwork. It is, however, principally a women’s festival and encourages the production of the gorgeous embroidery of the Chinese. A Chinese wit was asked the difference in the position of Chinese and Anglo-Saxon women, and she replied: “An Oriental man beats his wife in public to show that he is indeed the ruler, but he pets her in private, whereas a Western man pets his wife in public and beats her in private.” I do not know520 what the remote Tibet men do with their powerful women in private, but I do know that the women of Tibet who come down into Szechuen and Yunnan provinces with the trading trains are on an equal with man. They join him in work, play, in meeting strangers and in holding the “cash,” and therefore are the most independent of the Chinese women. They do not bind their feet, as they have too much work to do. They come next to the Tonquinoise as perhaps the best-looking of the Chinese. The best dressed women in China live in Kiangsu and Chekiang provinces. The dress of Korean women is not so gorgeous as the Chinese dress, the former wearing green or white, and hiding their heads in immense basket hats, “to keep them from flirting” the wits say! The Korean woman at home, instead of modestly screening her face with a fan, does so by lifting up her wide sleeve. Muffs and gloves are not worn in the cold north. Instead, the wide long sleeve is gathered round the hand.

The campaign of the Tien Tsu Hui (As-Heaven-Made-It Foot Society) against foot-binding is meeting with much success. Chinese women are rejoicing that they are not withheld from physical freedom and an education, by being longer crippled. The idea that a bound foot is the surest sign of a lady, and the best recommendation for marriage, is dying out. As prices increase with the material development of China, men will not be able to hire servants to carry and wait on these crippled women. Therefore economy will advance the reform also. The famous viceroy of Wuchang, Chang Chih Tung, who died in 1909, was the first prominent Chinese official to become converted to the reform. The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi joined the movement. It is a pity that more Chinese girls from the Yangtze and southern provinces do not come to American521 and European schools, as their work, on returning to China, would do most for this reform. The snobbish idea, of course, was that a girl who never needed to work, and had never worked, made a very select wife, just as in America and Britain the “snobs” think that a girl who has never worked, and can not work, makes a finer wife than a woman who has been or is in business. The French have thought otherwise for a long time. One of the pioneer foreign women, outside of the missionaries, who worked and lectured in China for the unbinding of feet, was Mrs. Archibald Little, author of The Land of the Blue Gown, and wife of the intrepid Yangtze explorer and author.

The following love tale is the one oftenest painted on your teacup and saucer, and other Chinese pottery, and on fans, etc. Kung She is the sweet and lovely daughter of a rich man. She falls in love with her father’s bright and brave young secretary, who has more in rosy prospect and dreams than in lined pocket. The father proposes that the daughter shall, against her will, marry a rich old suitor. The lovers in desperation elope over a bamboo bridge to an island pavilion of willow wood, with beautiful up-curving eaves. The wrathful suitor follows and burns the pavilion and the bridge. The souls of the lovers take refuge in the bodies of two doves which are seen cooing from the branches of a banyan that grows above the pavilion. Thus we sit down to eat, and we fan ourselves each day over a beautiful love tale of romantic old China.

The queue is now going out as man’s head-dress in republican China. The general custom with Chinese women is to dress the hair out behind, sticking in large-headed gold pins; and the Manchu’s dress it over the ear, with the help of wide pins, and broad ribbons and flowers. The aboriginal tribes of Lolos in Szechuen province, and522 Miao Tszes in Kweichau province, dress the hair on top of the head over rats, in true Western cone-style. The Chinese women oil their hair and brush it out smooth on forms. The only departure from this is a straight bang allowed to girls. They wonder if we have brushes or combs in the West, and point to our curls (called “rough dog”) as a proof of our tonsorial carelessness.

“Mother’s love is even in beasts, for the hungriest tiger will not eat its whelps.”

“A virtuous wife is like a loyal statesman; she knows only one king, her husband.”

“If you listen to every one’s advice, the picture will never be straight on the wall.”

Because of the worship of men ancestors, Confucianism has been called a man’s religion. Yet it recognizes woman’s work. A bronze brazier stands before the open white marble altar at Peking, in which once a year at the ancient Chou sacrifices to the God of Heaven, the emperor-pope burns silk. The Manchu emperor, in abdicating the throne, retained his sacerdotal offices, though strictly speaking, they523 should have fallen to the Ducal Kung Fut Tszes, of Shangtung province, who are the seventy-seventh in direct line from Confucius. A number of the Kungs, however, are Christians, and they exerted little insistence on their Confucian privileges. The care of the worms and the weaving of silk is distinctly woman’s work in China. This sacrifice is repeated by the governor at every capital, and heads of families sometimes, in their own office of patriarch priest, make the silk sacrifice. This is quite distinct from hiring a Taoist bonze to burn silvered and gilded imitations of money to appease a devil or “ying” spirit. A patriarch would have no influence there, the operation requiring a specialist more familiar with witches and demons! The Chinese women always sit on chairs and lounges (kangs); the Koreans and Japanese sit on the floor. This does not mean that the Koreans, whom the Japanese have conquered, are in sympathy with the latter, for they thoroughly hate each other. The Chinese never wear a feather, except to denote literary rank in men. Therefore the bucolic natives who see the fashion of western women, remark: “Only your women are educated, and very talented at that, some having a dozen literary degrees.” Millinery is for men, not for women in China, as only men wear a feathered cap. The gorgeous tail feathers of the Machi species of pheasant are particularly popular. Preserves of these birds are kept in the Wei valley, north of the Peling range of mountains in far western Kansu province, to provide the men milliners with supplies!

A well-known custom at Chinese weddings is the effort of the bride to sit upon part of the groom’s gown when they are drinking the betrothal tea together. The cups are tied with a red string, and the groom must not break the string in his effort to release his gown. If the bride succeeds it means that she will be his ruler. A partially similar custom524 prevails among the Miaotse aboriginal tribes of Yunnan province. The friends of the groom endeavor to prevent the bride’s brothers from throwing her veil on the roof of the house. If the latter are successful in the rush, the omen is that the bride will rule the groom, saying in any argument: “Remember that on June 15th my veil went on your roof!” The midwife is a well-filled calling, but she does not go by that name. She is called the “life-catcher” throughout the land. The “mother-in-law” joke does not obtain in China. Its place is taken by the son-in-law joke. It is the aim of the son-in-law and his wife to “go and live on mother” as long as possible. Mother resents it with the usual complaint: “Here comes my son-in-law, with his wife and six children, to live on us again for a month; dearie me,” etc.! When a family marries off a daughter, generally to save the expense of supporting her, they hope to see the last of her as far as that expense goes. Family courtesy, the Confucian “li” code, prescribes yearly entertainment, however, of the son-in-law’s family, which is not reciprocated, and hence the standing of the son-in-law joke as a mirth-provoker among those who perceive the code’s requirements obeyed, with exactness but not with cheerfulness!

Although the race has for centuries shaved the heads of the men almost to baldness, they have a great abhorrence of baldness in women, and this is frequently pleaded as a cause for divorce or breaking of an engagement (marriage contract). The women in general have luxuriant hair, though it is coarse, and its color and luster remain till late in life, owing to the use of oils, the absence of hats, and the out-of-door habits. If the lion-like chow dog (yellow or black) is the pet of the men, the Pekingese toy spaniel is the pet of the Manchu woman. She calls it her “sleeve dog.” The late Empress Dowager Tse Hsi enumerated its points as follows:525 “It shall learn to bite a stranger; its toy body shall be maned and fixed with the fierce eyes of the great lion seeking its prey. Its ears shall be set like the sails of a war junk; its nose shall be stubby like the monkey god of the Hindus; its forelegs shall be bowed so that it can walk over the foot of its mistress, but shall not be able to stray far from the yamen; its feet shall be tufted so that its step shall be as on turf; and its color shall suit every change of gown. It shall be fed on the breasts of quails, livers of curlews and sharks’ fins. Its drink shall be Hankau, first-budded tea and antelope’s milk. If ill, it shall be anointed with the fat of leopards, and drink a thrush-egg full of the juice of the custard apple and dissolved rhinoceros’ horn. If very ill, piebald leeches shall be applied to it.” Despite all this poetry which aptly goes with this fashionable dog, it thrives very well on Spratt’s dog biscuit in the salons of West End, London, and Fifth Avenue, New York. A number of ladies are mixing up Chinese and Japanese names for the pets at the bench shows (Peking Yen, for instance), but the dog answers very well to the names Jip, Tip, etc., which we used to call those old favorite toy dogs, the black-and-tans. The dog looks like a cross between a Pomeranian and a King Charles spaniel. The face is decidedly lion-like; the bushy tail sweeps well over the back as does that of his big brother, the Chinese chow dog. The legs are short and bowed, and the manner is very alert.

Possibly overmuch has been written that the Chinese despise female children and worship male children. In the economic and religious structure of old China boys have been more valuable, but the human heart of the race has responded to love for its girls. Poverty, more than hardness of heart, has induced the race in instances to sell its girls; for China has been very poor because of flood and famine,526 resulting from inefficiency of government and the non-development of mines and manufacturing. The two greatest teachers of old China have for twenty-five centuries taught love of children in the following among other maxims. Confucius said: “Treat the young tenderly,” and Mencius wrote: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” Where the parents can afford it, the Chinese dress their boys and girls expensively and gorgeously, and fondle them as lovingly as do the Hebrews, who are supposed to set the standard in love for children, as compared with us colder northern races. One of the first things that the new government will attempt to suppress will be the sale of girl slaves and concubinage. The population of China will fall or remain stationary, which will be a good thing for China. There is, therefore, no “Yellow Peril” for the West, as the Emperor William enunciated in 1898. The poorer a man, the more children he desires in China, so that sons may take care of him in old age, but he forgets that he is raising uneducated sons and neglected girls, who are often sold into slavery. Better a family of four well-cared-for children in the new hygienic Cathay than a family of ten in the old China. China’s population will fall under the new régime, but her efficiency, education and comfort will advance, and those who will benefit the most, as compared with their former condition, will be her women.

At the time of the revolution, October, 1911, to February, 1912, there were 400,000 starving girls and women in the Yangtze and Hwei River valleys alone who offered to sell themselves for food; China’s courts will no more defend the legality of such contracts under duress, as we in the West must revise our “freedom of contract” and “confession” laws where an uninformed or a restrained individual signs away rights. Every Chinese boy has527 till now married early in life, Shanghai being an exception in having a large demi-monde colony. The Kuo Kuang Pao, a native paper of Peking, complained in a late issue of courtesans (with modesty they call it rather the “custom of Shanghai”) coming to Peking, and soliciting students brazenly in the streets. Shanghai has a “slave refuge” for the protection of abandoned and abused girls. Intense poverty on account of famine is at the base of this curse. It is not as common in Hongkong and Canton as in the valleys of the Hoang, Han, Yangtze and Hwei Rivers.

The position of the Chinese woman, taken by the white man, who is mean enough to do it, as a common law wife, and of their Eurasian children, who are often not acknowledged, or are deserted, is a pathetic one in Hongkong, Shanghai and many treaty ports. It was more common in the old days than it is now, and men of high position often fell, when the Oriental ports were designated over an ill-informed world as the “white man’s grave,” to which no white woman would come. There are Eurasian schools and orphanages in Hongkong, Shanghai, Macao, etc., and the colonies of deserted Eurasians have a population of thousands. They are far from unintelligent. The best billiard player in Hongkong was of this mixed race. They have dark eyes and hair and dress in both foreign and Chinese style. They are taller and have larger heads than the pure Chinese. In the second and third generations the hair turns fairer. Naturally they partake of the characteristics of each race. A Eurasian is more sprightly than the Chinese, and he is inclined to the sporting and spendthrift proclivities of the foreigner. They are the clerks and second men of the ports. Few rise high, though many now attend colleges. They are the best penmen and linguists of the Far Fast, though not earnest enough to become scholars, or persistent enough to become the successful528 merchants which the men of their mother’s race are. Feeling sometimes acutely the opprobrium which is visited upon them by both races, they often claim a dark foreign nationality, generally Portuguese of Macao colony.

I want to relate the remarkable history of one Eurasian and his mother. I shall say no more of his father than that in blood and ability he was one of the noblest names that came for a long sojourn in the Far East. His position was such that the father could not own the son, especially as in time the former married a white woman. The boy, who from the beginning bore a Chinese name, was the picture of his father, and his dressing in Chinese clothes and wearing a queue shocked all of us who knew the history, for the boy was taller than the Chinese and had the face of a foreigner. Some laughed, for the youth seemed to be a foreigner on perpetual masquerade. He came into our hong as clerk, was easily the best penman and figurer in the office. His manners were those of fashionable West End, London, or genteel Upper Fifth Avenue; you felt when you heard him speak that you were talking to your superior. He often had business dealings with his father, yet he did not seem conscious of the relationship. The son, being even the abler man, the painful dramatic situation was pitiful. The tall Eurasian youth married a Chinese woman in time, and reverted to his mother’s race, and his deserted Chinese mother returned to her blood, married a Chinese, had many pure blood children, and publicly disowned her Eurasian boy. Privately, however, the boy and mother sometimes met, and the scene matched in dramatic pathos the meetings with the father. The youth seemed to be cheerful despite all these trials. I never saw him reveal pride or resentment; only in this way, when in later years for a time, he came into a position529 of power in a Chinese company which entered into international trade, he was merciless when the white competitor withstood him. I have often felt his mighty blows and been outwitted by his commercial strategy. He smiled in a complacent way as though to say: “Why might I not circumvent you; you know something, perhaps, about one race, but nothing about the other. I, being a Eurasian, know much about the two races.” He deserved all his conquests. He had something to avenge, and he did right in casting his life with China and not Europe. The remarkably dramatic setting of this boy’s, his mother’s and father’s life would have given Shakespeare material for a tragedy, and the foreigner concerned would have paid the price of his heartless audacity, despite the romantic poetry which Pierre Loti wove around such relationships in his book Madame Chrysanthème.

Perhaps the most significant sign of China’s reform is the new status of women. Never before have Chinese women traveled with their merchant husbands. In a few isolated instances Chinese ministers have taken their wives abroad, but there have never been mixed parties of men and women until the revolution. On November, 1911, a touring party of prominent members of Chinese trading guilds of several of the provinces met at Shanghai for a business tour of Japan. They were accompanied by their wives. The New China has its Mrs. Pankhurst in Miss Yik Yung Ying, of Canton, who is foreign trained and has admission to the Nanking Assembly as representing the women of her province of Kwangtung. She has obtained from the Nanking Assembly a promise of equal suffrage on equal property and educational conditions. Some of her suffragettes attacked the assembly police and broke windows in true Pankhurst530 style, the patient Chinese wits only remarking: “This froth will blow off the glass and leave the clear liquid!”

Many girls of the mission schools of Canton, Fuchau and the Yangtze cities of the rebellion could not be restrained from serving at the front in the republican revolution. Some of them tried to form bomb-throwing corps. Where they insisted on service the missionaries of Wuchang, Hankau, Shanghai and Nanking organized them in several uniformed Red Cross Corps, which performed effective and brave work. The large clans, or family villages, are sending to the missions for graduate teachers to take charge of their girls. The head man (hsiang lao) sets apart a bedroom, a schoolroom and a courtyard for the school, and the whole family clan contributes. The mothers of course continue their instruction in the Chinese classics, folk lore, religion and their inimitable needlework. Elsewhere I have spoken of the St. Hilda’s school at Wuchang, under American Episcopal auspices, which aims to become the Women’s College of Central China. A daughter of the original reformer, Kang Yu Wei, has studied in America. Miss Li Yu, the granddaughter of Li Hung Chang, took the course at Wells Female College, at Aurora, New York, where she was a prize scholar.

Cornell in particular, Hartford High, Leland Stanford, Columbia, University of Washington State, Wellesley, Vassar, Smith, University of Michigan, and all the women’s and co-ed colleges in America have enrolled more Chinese women than all the other women’s colleges of the world, but not so many as they might and will, now that the new régime has opened with rainbow promise. Forty young Chinese women are studying medicine in America through the work of China’s first woman doctor, Miss Ya Mi Kin,531 who is in charge of the Tientsin Woman’s Hospital and nurses’ school.

A remarkable Chinese woman doctor, going by the name of Doctor Mary Stone (educated at University of Michigan), manages the American hospital at Kiukiang, and Doctor Tsang Cho Kin, a Cantonese lady, is prominent in modern medical work at Canton, Fuchau and Shanghai. The American Presbyterian women (to instance only one denomination here) have seventeen girls’ schools open at Canton alone, and in addition the following exemplary development: a school for blind girls, in charge of Doctor Mary Niles; a boarding school for children of lepers; a hospital school for girls in charge of Mrs. Kerr; a training school for women teachers; the Hackett Medical College for women; and the Turner Nurses’ School, under the charge of the noted Doctor Mary Fulton. At Ningpo there is a girls’ school and a women’s industrial school. At Shanghai there is the well-known girls’ school at the south gate; and at Hangchow and Nanking there are girls’ boarding schools. At Nanking the wives of Chinese taotais (officials such as mayors) are encouraged to preside over mothers’ meetings. At Peking there is the Bridgman College for Women, a women’s medical college and nurses’ school, a girls’ day and industrial school. At Paoting, in Pechili, there is the Union School for Girls; at Tengchow, in Shangtung, a girls’ high school and industrial school; and at Tsinan a girls’ school. At many of these girls’ schools, presided over by foreign women, the Chinese pay much of the expense; and they are copying the schools to the best of their ability all over the land for their girls and women, and calling upon the mission women’s schools for graduates whom they may use as teachers. There532 is no greater proof that the New China has begun its march toward the sun than that its womanhood has at last been thus recognized in modern education and opportunity.

Womanhood over the world responds to the same chord of sympathy. One of the contributions to the Woman’s Titanic Memorial came from a Chinese girl, Ying Low, with this message: “I send this for Captain Smith’s soul.” The word for woman in Chinese is “nu,” and the probability now is that she will be new indeed, and the foundation stone of the New China for her sons.

The first modern style Chinese marriage among those not Christian was solemnized in April, 1912, in the well-known Chang Su Ho Gardens, Shanghai. The families concerned were wealthy and the marriage was a civil one. A ring, music, flowers, witnesses, a public ceremony and certificate contract all came into use. There was nothing picturesquely old-style or secret, as the middleman, the closed chair, the ceremony at the groom’s house, the joined teacups, the contests between teams of both families, the worshiping of sticks and house coffins, the discordant orchestra, the chairs of food, the goose present and heckling of the bride by practical jokers.

XXVIII
AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY IN CHINA

Agriculture has always been a leading calling in China. The farms are small and are intensively worked. They have been too small, and the immense population has been crowded into the river plains only of the vast country. Not one quarter of China and its territories is worked as it might be. The adopting of machinery and the application of the single tax to some of the unworked land by the new régime will make possible the enlargement of farms, and the consequent stocking with meat, milk, egg, wool and skin-producing animals on a vast scale. The decrease of population that will occur owing to the decadence of ancestor-worshiping Confucianism, and the system of early marriage and concubinage, will necessitate the introduction of agricultural machinery. An increased agriculture will bring about the exportation of food products from so fertile and sunny a land. The enhancement of hygiene with the new medical knowledge will confirm this increased production in agriculture, as there will be no waste of life through ignorance, and human surplus vitality will be directed to increasing the productivity of the land, and the reclamation of the waste spaces.

In agricultural wisdom little can be taught the Chinese. In love of and assiduity in agriculture no one equals him. Professors King and Ross, of Wisconsin University, have dealt in an exhaustive way with the subject, and other books recommended to the inquirer are Ball’s Things Chinese,534 Williams’s Middle Kingdom, Fielde’s Corner of Cathay, the journals of the Royal Asiatic Society, Lay’s Chinese As They Are, and Douglas’s Society in China. The list of products is exceedingly long. Here are just a few as we run down the gamut from the north to the south: wheat, all millets, maize, buckwheat, sugar beet, tobacco, pulse, hay, straw braid, soy and other beans, barley, sorghum, rhubarb and drugs, hemp, all berries and tree fruits, cotton, sesamum, indigo, persimmons, melons, walnuts, almonds, olives, peanuts, tea, bamboo, rice, sweet and white potatoes, grass-cloth plant, oranges, sugar, coffee, rubber, cocoa, pumeloes, lichee, quince, ginger, loquat, mulberry, mustard, tallow trees, flowers for perfumery, lily roots for food and candy, colza nuts for oil, rhus nuts for varnish, camphor, all hardwoods, insect wax, matting and opium. Their truck farms are unequaled. They seem to lose not one lettuce or cabbage leaf. Every bug is nipped in the chrysalis by hand; everybody works from dewy dawn to twilight’s star! Where China exports $40,000,000 of agricultural products to-day to the manufacturing nations that border the Pacific and Atlantic, to-morrow she will export $400,000,000, besides becoming herself richer in pantry and bank.

The farmers are always searching for soil enrichers, with such success that you seldom see the nitrogen-starved yellow instead of green field. Not a handful of ashes is wasted; not an herb or branch but is gathered for the compost heap to make humus. Water is brought over the land, that it may deposit its nitrogenous wealth, and the mud of canals is dredged for the valuable rotted slime. Three times a year a part of China, 1,200 miles long and 1,200 miles wide, is one vast flooded field. By placing mud walls around his fields, a farmer does not need to raise all his irrigation water by power. Rather, he directs gravity, for he saves the rapid535 surface draining of the land, especially in the higher terraces. In the lower terraces he digs wells to store the surface water against drought. The water showered upon the higher fields he lets down to the lower during dry periods. They believe in a rotation of soils as well as in a rotation of crops, and will exchange bodily a rice field’s and an orchard’s top soil. By intensive farming a Chinese gets as much from a ten-acre farm as we get from a hundred-acre one, and he never permits a soil to be impoverished by its crop. You never see his implements, rude as they are, left uncovered over night. He carries home even his straw fork, which is made three-pronged by training nature instead of fashioning by hand. When the farmer’s wife and girls are not in the field they are working up straw braid for America’s and Europe’s hats and weaving silk and making embroidery for western gowns.

South of the Yangtze River human nightsoil is mixed with water and applied to the farms in liquid form. North of the Yangtze the drier climate permits of mixing the manure with earth and drying the slabs for transport. A farmer in South China willingly builds a toilet on the public road and requests the public, including the humorously shocked foreigner, with a sign which is much shorter than my words, to remember how China must be fertilized in order to support more inhabitants to the acre than any other land! The result is that China’s streams, outside of the suspended mud and silt that they carry, alone of all countries, are nearly pure, and foreign sanitary engineers take potable water directly from the rivers, as at Hankau, Canton, etc. The loss to the land of fertilizers by burning them as fuel, in the absence of forests and worked coal mines, is nowhere better illustrated than in Mongolia and the province of Fukien. In Mongolia the camel dung is536 dried and used as fuel. In Fukien, railway development has been retarded, and the coal of the Ankoi and other mines does not reach the hut in the field. Straw, therefore, instead of returning to the land, is of necessity used as fuel. For instance, take the tanning industry. The hides are thrown in a pond, in which there is a solution of alum. After peeling, the leather is stretched on springy frames of strong bamboo, and placed over an earthen furnace for smoking and drying. The fuel is straw, which gives the hide a yellow color, at a lamentable cost. In their opening era of manufacturing, the Chinese do not intend to permit dyes, chemicals, refuse or sewage to be drained into their streams and rivers, which from their source to the sea are used over and over for irrigation and for drinking.

Chinese matting comes mainly from the West River (Si Kiang) ports west of Canton. The fresh water reed is in some cases fertilized, as at Tung Kun and Lintan, so as to produce size and sheen. The reed is split when cut in the green and the sun rounds the strands. German aniline dyes are used, which produce a sorry product as compared with the famous natural dyes of old China. In producing red, however, the dye is obtained by boiling a Philippine redwood. The looms are simple hand looms, worked in the humble homes of the people. The mats are dried and set over a charcoal fire. The shipping season is in the fall. Vast quantities, baled in reeds, come by junk and steamer from the riverine ports to Hongkong, where they are put in godowns until the arrival of a trans-Pacific or Suez steamer, or a Standard Oil Company freighter and sailing vessel. The very low rate is controlled by the sailing ship, and quantity is of the first essence of importance in making the business pay any one concerned, except the middleman in America or Europe. Better dyes might be furnished to the reed farmers537 and better looms and designs will now probably be distributed among them. It is a floor covering which should grow more popular from an economic, and especially a sanitary point of view, as it does not harbor moths or germs, and is easy to handle; and from a conservation point of view, its wider use would reserve carpet wool for clothing. The clean Japanese despise us for our use of the fixed, unsanitary woolen carpet. The seed of the reed is planted, just as rice is, in a sheltered spot in the fall. Transplanting occurs early in the year and the fields are irrigated. It takes two men or women four days to weave a roll on a very crude loom.

The farmer is king. He has attacked the old magnificent roads, eight feet wide, cut at great expense in the mountains, carried soil over part of them and planted his corn. Marble-lined lotus gardens of magnificent old estates he has filled up with his rice seed; and the grain waves beneath the windows of deserted palaces, the owners probably long ago, because of their opinions and not their crimes, having, in Manchu days, dropped their heads beneath the blow of the taifo swords while they bowed upon their knees in a line at far-away Peking!

Ginger is grown extensively in China. It is used for cooking and as a medicine. Preserved in sugar, it is known world-wide as a delicious confection. The Chinese prefer it in a heavy syrup. This species of lily grows about two feet high. The roots are very heavy and are kept irrigated in mud. It is one of the few plants which leave their odor in the air in the fields where they grow. The marmalade industry will have a great future in the vast southern provinces. Java, the Philippines and Formosa, are near with their sugar, and the provinces of Kwantung, Kwangsi and Fukien have noble orchards of pumelo, lemon and orange trees. As the family-village farms the apparently undivided538 fields as a community, watchers have to be set in the fields and at the granary floors, when harvest time approaches. A platform is built of bamboo, and the watcher mounts it, carrying along his gong. As there are no fences and few trees, the watcher commands a wide view, and deters private bands and prowlers of other villages from making sudden raids. Manchuria has been found to be an ideal ground for the sugar beet, the black soil producing a higher percentage of sugar than anywhere in the world. The sugar industry is a most important addition to the agricultural wealth of those three extremely rich provinces, which are destined to help in the feeding of industrial America. Returned Chinese emigrants from Java and America started in 1911, in Fukien and Chekiang provinces the cultivation of cotton on an extended scale, looking to the new mills of Shanghai, Hangchow and Wuchang to buy the product, which will be shipped by junks, steamer and the new coast railway. The Chinese value their highly tilled lands near the large cities at a price equal to forty-five dollars in gold for our acre.

British Hongkong set the example in reforestation. Germany followed at Kiachou, Shangtung, with acacia, fir, ash, larch, walnut and oak trees along the railway line. Japan followed in South Manchuria, and China herself established a forestry school at Mukden in 1908, and in Kansu later. It is absolutely essential to retard the snows and rainfalls at the heads of the great rivers if the awful floods and consequent famines are ever to be obviated in the valleys of the Hoangho, Han, Yangtze and Hwei Rivers. The camphor is China’s own tree, especially in Formosa, Fukien, and the southern provinces. Ceylon, California, Texas, Florida, Jamaica, Malay, Italy and German East Africa have successfully introduced the tree, and will in time help to supply539 the world’s growing requirements for the arts and industries, which synthetic camphor can not do, because of the deforestation of America’s southern pine, which now supplies the necessary oil of turpentine. Camphor can be distilled from any part of the tree, even the dead leaves, and some conservation foresters, especially Americans and Germans, are urging a world movement to use the leaves, dropped twigs and cuttings alone for this purpose. Camphor formerly was made by cutting up the tree and treating the chips with water in a closed vessel, the volatilized camphor condensing on rice straw packed in the head of the still. The deposit was purified by sublimation in glass retorts in the presence of lime.

I have for years been writing that the Chinese is a born humorist. The humor of their arboriculturists is well known in their stunting and twisting of trees and bamboos. The matched curved bamboos of the Fati and other gardens of Canton are famous. Another quaint form is the splitting of a tree trunk so as to form a living arch. When the tree is young, it is uprooted and split up the trunk and replanted in the road leading to a shrine or temple. As the trunk grows apart, the road leads under the arch. Under the shelter of the north wall of the imperial section of the city of Peking, there are famous old cryptomeria cypresses split in this way. The humorist is saying: “See Nature’s god with his grotesque products laughing at man’s idea of religion!” The farmer and his boy are humorists. They meet you on the highroad and laugh because the pigs and geese which they are driving to market all have tiny straw sandals on their feet, and the water buffalo which they are riding to the exchange has sandals, but they themselves are in their bare feet, and they point out to you the humorous incongruity!

540 The very handsome Hagenbeck pheasant from the Kobdo valley of Manchuria, fiftieth parallel, can live farthest north of any pheasant, and can therefore withstand our winters. It is large and edible. The Mongolian pheasant has been acclimated on the Rothschild estate in Herts, England. The Manchurian eared pheasant is heavy and edible, but unlike the others is not wild and active enough for the game fields. Accordingly it best suits the poulterer of China. The pheasant is a fairly cheap dish at all the clubs and hotels of China, and the indentured clerk of Hongkong is therefore to his surprise dining like a king daily on the game which the owner of his concern would consider at home a luxury reserved for the Christmas dinner! Some of the native proverbs are:

“Frost and ice are made of water, but they don’t grow things like rain and dew.”

“Rain on a summer’s dawn means a clear day, but a rain at noon will last.”

XXIX
CHINESE ARCHITECTURE AND ART

“The glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome” are unearthed a foot at a time to the wondering eyes of the world by the tireless antiquarian-architect. China has some extensive ruins that show the death struggle of a dynasty with the tooth of the destroyer, Time. Near Singan, in Shensi province, are the ruins of the tombs, arches and palaces of the builder of the Great Wall. On the left bank of the Orkhon River in Mongolia, southwest of Kuren, are the ruins of the Uigur empire, seventh to ninth centuries, A. D. These Mongols were first Buddhist, then Nestorian Christian, and afterward Mohammedan in faith, and their fathers took part in the terrific invasions of Europe that have made Russia one quarter Asiatic. Ujfalvy, Schott and Professor Thomsen have written books on the race, and Heikel and Radlov explored the ruins in 1890–1. On the right bank of the same river, fifteen miles southeast, at the edge of the Gobi Desert, are the ruins of the Mongol empire of the thirteenth century, founded by Ogodai Khan in 1234 A. D., and whose greatest conqueror, Kublai Khan, of whom Marco Polo wrote, overran all China and Turkestan. Had it not been for a lucky storm that destroyed his armada, he would have overrun Japan also.

One hundred and fifty miles northwest of Pnom Penh, in a deserted tropical jungle, are the ruins of the Khmer dynasty which ruled Cambodia from the eighth to the twelfth centuries.542 These gorgeous palaces were built for luxurious Oriental kings when the early Mercian, Northumbrian and Wessex chiefs were shivering in wooden huts in our primeval England. The ruins are at Angkor on the north of the Great Summer Lake. The main temple of the Angkor Wat, in a walled enclosure, is in splendid preservation, and is one pf the world’s most wonderful architectural curiosities. It is shaped like a wide Chinese temple, but has in addition splendid pagodas one hundred and eighty feet high over the entrances. The architecture is Indo-Chinese. There is much carving and sculpture, fine corridors and columns that were colored. Five miles north is another walled ruin, thirty feet in height, enclosing an area of two miles square, the walls pierced by five gorgeous gates. The ruins stand alone in the moonlight, unclaimed and untenanted. What few Siamese, Shans or Annamese may wander here, fall down in speechless worship. The dense jungle is filled with insects, reptiles, wild animals, and but for them the silence is primeval. Pierre Loti recently visited the ruins by sailing up the Mekong River from Saigon to Pnom Penh. There he took elephants and oxen one hundred and fifty miles for the Great Summer Lake, across which he paddled. His book, Un Pelerin d’Angkor, not yet translated, was issued in French by Calmann-Levy, Paris, in 1912. Other French authors on this subject are Delaporte (Voyage au Camboge); Fournereau (Les Ruins d’Angkor), and Tissandier (Cambodje-Java).

Two hundreds miles north of Angkor, at Korat, are further Khmer ruins. The other ruins and tombs of old China are those of the Ming dynasty at Nankou pass, north of Peking, and Nanking; the Manchu dynasty at Mukden and northwest of Peking; and the Sung dynasty at Hangchow. The tomb of Prince Ki Chah of the then543 Wu principality, who died B. C. 530, and which bears an inscription prepared by Confucius, can be seen to-day lying between the new British-built railway and the Grand Canal, twenty miles east of Changchow in the south of Kiangsu province. The laws of the Tsin principality, 513 B. C., were engraved on iron, but have not been recovered in any tomb or on any wall. Individual pagoda ruins and ancient walls cover the land, as does star-dust the sky. Laws, customs, history and a relation of the Rites, were engraved on metal bowls, which stood on three legs. These bowls were handed down through the dynasties to the princes, together with the ancestral tablets, as a sign of royal authority. There exists to-day in a temple on Silver Island, near Chinkiang in Kiangsu province, such a tripod bowl of the Chow princely dynasty, date 812 B. C. This was about the date when Jeroboam recovered Damascus from Israel. When Confucius was a boy of twelve, and already deep in his study of history, Cyrus the Elder had captured ancient Babylon and founded the Persian empire. It is quite probable that the old Hia, Shang and Chou kings (2200 B. C. onward) left their records, as the contemporary Egyptians and Babylonians did, in brick tablets, but those tablets, being made of non-adhesive, fibrous loess mud of the present Shensi and Shansi provinces, soon crumbled. It was a different thing when centuries later, the Chinese kings, having traveled farther south, employed better potters to use the more adhesive clays of the present Kiangsi province. The Hia kings of what is now Shensi province reigned when the giant sequoia evergreen trees of California were seedlings 4010 years ago.

Chinese bronzes date back as far as the imperial Chou dynasty (1120 B. C.) which instituted the sacrifices and544 ancestor worship, and a few majestically simple bronze tripods, elemental monsters and sacrificial vessels date back to the Shang dynasty 1800 B. C. These tripods are similar to those that Homer describes in the ninth book of The Iliad, 2500 B. C. The oldest bronzes are, of course, noble and plain in design, the warmer, richer art of Buddhism coming in at a far later date, and bringing in the innovation of the human figure, flowers and incense burners. The Natural History Museum at New York has precious collections of the old mortuary bronzes of the Chou dynasty referred to in Professor Parker’s illuminating work on the days of Confucius. Bronze vases, goblets, censers, mirrors, tablets, baskets, bells, some of them studded, are in the collection which dates as far back as 1800 B. C. Chinese form has been persistent, its ornamentation progressive. When we are looking at these bronzes, we should realize that they were fashioned by men contemporary with Homer. The oldest tombs were in Turkestan, Kansu and Shensi provinces, lying alongside the path of the primeval emigration along the Tarim’s banks from Eden. In various articles I have instanced the similarity between old Greek and old Chinese designs. The dragon was used in art designs and considered a sacred Jovian portent by the Homerian Greeks who were camped before Troy, B. C. 2500. In anthropological customs, Pope relates that the Homerian Greeks of the Euboea tribe, drawn up before Troy’s walls, 2500 B. C., shaved their foreheads but left the hair on the back of their heads to grow long, like the present Manchus.

The new bronze portrait statue of Li Hung Chang at the Sicawei Gardens, Shanghai, is unusual, and marks a new era in memorials in China, pailoo arches and tablets having formerly been erected. True, there are many fanciful statues to Buddha and Confucius, and one to Marco Polo in the545 Temple of the Five Hundred Genii at Canton, but they are rather to be considered as effigies. In Tibet, they erect engraved, square stone monuments, a figure of Buddha being cut into three of the top panels, representing the past, present and future Buddha. A horned roof, with a little central pagoda covers the monument. These strikingly symmetrical monuments are erected on high places along the mountain passes. The Buddhists cut gigantic figures of the god into cliffs, bushes serving as hair, and grass as eyebrows. Notable among these are the colossal cliff Buddhas at Kiating and Yung Hsien in Szechuen province. Old caves and cave-temples are generally in proximity with these images.

In Szechuen province, the piers of bridges have a stone dragon as a terminal, the head looking up-stream, and across the bridge, the tail pointing down-stream. The proportions are beautiful and the effect delightful. The best known and most beautiful camel’s back bridge in the empire is at Wan Hsien at the head of the Yangtze gorges. Stone steps mount up the arch, which is crowned with a beautiful house of blue stucco. The house is used as a rest place, and a restaurant These bridges show how much the Chinese understood of engineering and also that they were good masons. In the caves along the Min River in Szechuen province, pottery coffins have been found, dating back previous to the Christian era, and showing that the early Chinese of the Chou dynasty did not bring all the civilization of China with them, but found many arts among the aborigines. At Ning Hsia, an oasis city in the horn of Kansu province, is a peculiar pagoda where the joylessness of the north has cut the curling ten galleries down to mere ridges, and roofed the eleven stories with a mere turban roof. Each story has Roman windows, except the top, which has circular546 windows. The architecture shows Mohammedan influence over these Buddhists, and the structure, with that at Liangchow in the same province, is exceedingly unique in so ornate a land of up-curling roofs, carved screens, and overhanging galleries. While the Chinese never build fences, the Manchus, of Manchuria, construct a curious palisade composed of crosses, one end of which is stuck in the ground. The whole of the Grand Canal was crossed by many thousands of beautiful marble bridges, erected during the Sung dynasty. Many of them still remain, with their great beauty of aspiring arch, balustrade, carving and anchorage. At Sui Fu, on the upper Yangtze, is a temple remarkable not for its size, but for the proportion of its galleries and roof, the cornices of which curl upward violently at great width from the walls. The temple is met by steps that climb up the mountain side from the great river. The walls too, with their panels, frieze and balustrade, are interesting, but the design of the roof is an artistic triumph, equaled only by the Loong Wah Temple which is photographed as a frontispiece in my book, The Chinese. It is this sweeping boldness and generosity of curve which should be copied in roofs and galleries in the new Chinese architecture, which lovers of the old China earnestly recommend.

Many of the poorer huts of Pechili province are built of clay poured around a reinforcing of kaoliang stalks. Sometimes tiles are set in the clay roof, which is very heavy, and in the rainy season, it often falls in on the tenant. In Kiangsu province the thatching is made of reeds. Of course improvements are often designed, and they attempt to make a cement or chunam by mixing burnt lime and stone in the clay. The very poor, however, really live in mud burrows like the fox, whether the mud is made547 into a hut, or the dwelling is cut as a cave in the loess hills of Shensi and Shansi provinces. The Manchurian and northern Pechili style of architecture is severe and strong, but it has its simple beauties. A Buddhist temple not far from Shan Hai Kwan is a good example. A plain brick and stucco wall, the height of the eaves of the buildings, surrounds the compound. It is broken by a fort-gate, with a Roman arched doorway. The tiled roofs of the fort and temple curl up only slightly. A few high pine trees, branching out only near the top, tower like nature’s banners over the temple, which is matched to the austere lives and buildings of the dwellers in the north. The proportions throughout are nobly and chastely balanced in accord with the architectural influence of the stern Great Wall throughout this region.

At the Edinburgh Mission Conference of the nations in 1908, the Chinese pleaded for the preservation of their architecture. Too great praise can not be given the British for their taste in occupying a Chinese palace as legation headquarters at Peking. Many missions, every foreign business house, nearly every foreign college, the government itself in its new buildings, even the kindred Japanese, and nearly every foreign legation, are all housed in an ugly adaptation of a Renaissance building with verandas. The fashion came from Singapore and Hongkong, but Hongkong gets some picturesqueness out of the style because that colonial city has a mountain to terrace it on. The ventilation and light are poor; the roof is hideous. There is one foreign architect whose soul will never escape from the purgatory of bad architects. He designed for the Honan Assembly a hall at Kaifong which is Moorish in general design; the roof is a Roman dome; the arches are Gothic; and the screens are Chinese. The Japanese do not bring their548 own beautiful buildings, like those gems, the incomparable Horiuji pagoda and monastery, Yakushiji pagoda; and the shrine of Ieasu at Nikko, to China, and they do not copy or adapt any of the tens of thousands of Chinese gems. They often build a ponderous, ugly, dark, Renaissance building like the Japanese consulate at Shanghai, costly enough but unrepresentative.

St. John’s University (American Episcopal), of Shanghai, has made the laudable concession of putting a Chinese roof on its valuable foreign buildings. The eaves have a slight Chinese up-turn, but there is little of Chinese ornament in apron, ridge, column, double roof, or pagoda spire here and there. However, America, nearly always the leader in sympathy with the Chinese, has here made a beginning in saving China’s peerless architecture and art. At Kweiyang, the capital of Kweichou, the French have erected a notable pagoda church, which concedes to Chinese canons a five-story pagoda entrance, and the rear façade is formed as a pailoo with five roofs. With the same idea the British architect has placed on the costly Renaissance “Audience Hall”, of Bangkok, three ornate Burmese pagoda spires. As Greece stands for simplicity and line, China stands for richness, curve and color. She should not die, if according to Keats, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Ruskin insisted in his famous lectures to artistic Edinburgh that the salient feature of a building was the roof, and that there adornment should be rich, like a woman’s hair, or hat, her “crown of glory”. This rule, perhaps indirectly, he took from the Chinese, who from the buried centuries have undeviatingly been faithful to it. The Assembly Herald of the American Presbyterian Church, January, 1912, page twenty-seven, illustrates a gem of modern Chinese architecture. It is a chapel built by a native549 elder in his simple but beautiful faith. On each side of the entrance there is a rich tile grille that relieves the plain façade. Under the eaves is another beautiful grille that relieves the plain surface. Over the door is a heavy tile canopy with characteristic up-curling points. The tile roof is peaked and might have been more up-curling at the eaves in the beautiful, characteristic Chinese style. The apron under the eaves is richly carved. The Chinese still have a strong rich grasp of beauty, when they are encouraged to develop their architecture.

It is not the custom in stores, temples or homes to keep curios, silks, etc., on view. They are all wrapped in paper, and kept in boxes or cupboards. When a trusted guest arrives, there is an exciting scene as the treasures are unpacked and revealed to admiring eyes. China has always had court painters, a notable one in the reign of the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi being Li Shih Chuan. He was a believer in joy, and developed the more human aspects of the countenance. He was a master in painting fine gowns, dainty embroideries and rich furniture. Portrait paintings are not common, but in the Yangtze provinces some are to be seen. They are in water color and painted on screens. Actors carry an enormous bamboo or ivory tusk, on which is engraved or painted their repertoire. The giver of a feast selects from this the plays which he wishes to have performed for his guests. The Chinese manufacture a hard wall-paper, similar to what we call Lincrusta Walton and use on the walls of our parlor cars and saloons of steamships. The mold is of hard wood, on which the sharp design is carefully chiseled en relievo. The blotter-like bamboo paper composition is hammered on this mold, then taken off and sun-dried. Sizing is applied. Afterward the design and final Ningpo or Szechuen rhus-nut varnishing is added.550 This paper is damp proof, which is an important quality in so humid a climate.

The Chinese of Queens Road, Hongkong, made me two bamboo trunks that have served me on a trip around the world, and are strong enough to make several more. They are remarkable in five important points, elasticity, lightness, strength, resistance to dampness, and cheapness in purchase price and transportation cost. Travelers and explorers bemoan the fact that excess baggage charges cost them almost as much as passenger fares. This problem the wonderful Chinese solved with these remarkable trunks. The framework is of strong bamboo, on which a tough rattan and bamboo envelope is wound. This is lined with soldered zinc, and covered with strong canvas, and for serviceability in the five important points mentioned, the iron and leather trunks can not compare. Go to the Chinese, thou traveler, and be wise! Many of the chairs used at Tientsin have a dome-top, with curious scale design and knob, and are therefore more Burmese than Chinese in design. The chairs of Hongkong are strictly flat-topped. Jade is green, pink and crystal, and retains a soapy glisten. Jades buried in tombs as mortuary ornaments, however, acquire a brown smoky tinge, and the distinction should be made in assorting collections at museums. The Bishop collection of art jades, and the Peters collection of tomb jades in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, are deservedly world famous.

The typical Chinese rug shows beautiful apricot ground, spangled with blue medallions. Rich brown and gold rugs are also frequently made, the centers of weaving being Tientsin, Nanking, Hangchow, Canton, etc. The most accessible places where specimens are shown are the large museums. The yellow rugs are used in China in connection with the red tile floorings, and the brown rugs are used551 often upon blue-tiled floorings, so that if one would catch the true Chinese ensemble, a colored crash must be used in connection with the rugs. Some critics are hasty in declaring that a Chinese rug is glaring when they place a yellow rug on a yellow floor! Chinese rugs were made generally for temples, imperial and viceregal yamens, mandarins’ yamens, and guild halls, as the designs often reveal. Rugs exist which were woven as long ago as the reign of the native Ming kings, fifteenth century. Other rugs date from the Kang Hi and Chien Lung reigns of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Temple rugs five by eight feet, or a little over, come from Buddhist monasteries. The ground, as one would expect, is orange, ornamented with clouds, water, figures of Buddha or his mother, Kun Yam, and the zodiac. Imperial Manchu rugs employ the Manchu dragon. Each rug differs slightly, as the artist trusted to his eye alone in following the pattern which hung over his head.

China is almost depleted of her ceramic treasures. The Anglo-French expedition of 1860 under Lord Wolseley destroyed the Emperor Hien Fung’s summer and other palaces near Peking. Some of the allies of 1900 looted Peking itself. The Manchus in the 1911–12 revolution sold the Peking, Mukden and Jehol palace treasures. The collection of the Roman Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, gathered during a long life, was sold in New York in 1912. The Taiping rebellion of 1854 swept bare the pottery province of Kiangsi, and the distress following the 1911–12 revolution and the floods of 1910–11–12 sent the hidden treasures of the Yangtze and Hwei River provinces to the block. An artist of the King Teh Ching potteries would now have to resort to Occidental museums to find his models of cloisonné and champlevé enamels studded with precious stones; yellow and red Lang Yao monochromes of inimitable552 purity; Ku Hsu Hsuan translucent glass; Kang Hi hawthorn, ginger, and peach-bloom vases, round and square; Yung Cheng landscape and fish vases; flaming jars of the royal Mings; egg shell, rose, green, peony, medallion, dragon, lion vases and plaques of Yung Cheng and Chien Lung periods; the joyous, finely finished pottery of the Kang Hi (seventeenth century period); the rugged, strong, stern work of the tenth century; strutting camels, grinning griffins, spirited horses; the elegant, soft Ming work; the square, flower-covered, green and yellow vases of the sixteenth century; bulging vases of the seventeenth century, with green decoration on a blue ground, as fine as a mixture of emeralds and amethysts; awful gods and funny men stepping about in priceless porcelain. It was not a slight price that to attain political liberty China had to lose her artistic soul. More fortunate Japan never had to pay this price, though she had little art and architecture to lose as compared with the rich and glorious treasures of vast China. A remarkable catalogue of Chinese porcelains with two hundred and fifty-four gorgeously colored plates was written by Messrs. Gorer and Blacker and published by Quaritch, London, in 1912.

In an attempt, even so late, to save China’s art from the foreigner, the public-spirited Tze Tsan Tai, of Hongkong, a collector himself, proposes the establishing of national museums to preserve at least the paintings of China that are notable for their graphic quality, color, humor and love of nature. The most famous schools were in the Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasties, and Mr. Tze’s collection, which he proposes to give to the cause, includes collections from many other schools also. It would be better to open at first museums at Hongkong and Shanghai, and then at Peking, Nanking, Hankau, etc. Some of the names of the artists553 can be secured in Paleologue’s L’Art Chinois, Owen Jones’ Chinese Ornament, Dyer Ball’s Things Chinese, and E. F. Penellosa’s Epochs of Chinese Art.

Chinese temple and house furniture is made of teak. This wood does not grow in China, but in Siam, Java, Ceylon and the Philippines, the main source of supply being the afforested belt of Northern Siam. The tree is an upland one. It is barked or girdled and allowed to die. After two years the tree is felled, the exposure killing off the small branches and developing the oils which help in giving the extraordinary life of the wood. The government does not permit trees of under six and one-half feet girth to be felled. The Chinese of Canton particularly carve the wood in its rich red color, and they also stain it ebon black. Another desirable quality in the Orient is that the wood resists the white ant. The woodwork and furniture of the palatial Hongkong Club is teak, and many of Hongkong’s, Canton’s, Shanghai’s, Manila’s and San Francisco’s palatial residences and public buildings and yachts now use the wood. Hard as it is, the Chinese seem to prefer to saw it by hand even in Hongkong. They tilt the immense logs on end, and one man works under the log, and one stands on the log, the dust being dragged upward by their contrary cut saws, which are designed to save the eyes of the under-man. The natural oil in the wood prevents driven nails or bolts from rusting, and is therefore valuable in ship-sheathing. It is the most durable wood known. The teak piles of West End, Hongkong, and Kowloon over on the mainland, are a unique sight. Water-buffaloes are used to drag up the immense timbers.

A Chinese proverb is, “Speed for a horse, but a slow race for a good jeweler”. The German machinery-stamping jeweler has not yet reached the Orient with his machines,554 though his products imitate even the Chinese ideograph-buckles. One of their humorous proverbs is, “He thought he painted a tiger, but only a dog waged his tail at the likeness”, and this is about the relationship between the Chinese and the German products. Wherever you buy, remember the artist can put his soul and his taste only into what he makes by hand.

XXX
SOCIOLOGICAL CHINA

When America was as yet undiscovered, and Europe was largely a forest inhabited by hunting tribes, China had taken up an advanced position on sociology. She has long been the world’s clearest and bravest economical thinker, from whom even Germany has consciously or unconsciously copied, and for thousands of years she has followed a thorough civil service in political appointments. It is not surprising therefore that Doctor Sun Yat Sen, the organizer of the revolution of 1911–12, the first president of republican China, and the leading economist of the race, enunciated himself as follows on April 5, 1912: “I have finished the political revolution and now will commence the greatest social revolution in the world’s history. The abdication of the Manchus is only the beginning of a greater development, and the future policy of the republic will be in the direction of socialism. I am an ardent admirer of Henry George, whose ideas are practicable on the virgin soil of China, as compared with their impracticability in Europe or the United States, where the money is controlled by the capitalists. I have the full consent of the new republican government to start a propaganda immediately, whereby the railroads, mines, and similar industries, will be controlled by the government. The single tax system, and as far as possible, free trade, will be adopted.”

Shang, a minister of the Tsin clan of Confucius’ time—the556 age of courageous statesmen—said: “To restore balance in the state, and remove the dangerous discontent of the poor, renew taxes on the privileged classes.” The Chinese predate all that we claim in America, Britain and Germany as the modern discovery of the formulæ of sociology, economics, commerce, taxes and tariffs, and their aim is always toward free trade, repression of monopoly, opportunity for the ordinary man, who, instead of the privileged, represents the importance of a state, and the necessity of the greater punishment of the rich than the poor for the same offense, because hunger and self-preservation do not drive the rich to crime. Under the ancient criminal code, the hsiang lao (village head) under penalty of the bamboo, must compel all available land to be cultivated, not only that government may receive taxes, but that famine may be averted. The Chinese, Koun Tze, as early as B. C. 100, wrote: “The more horses that are put to the chariots of the rich, the more those who are poor will have to walk.”

“The more the houses of the rich are vast and magnificent, the more those of the poor will be small and miserable.”

“The more the tables of the rich are covered with dainties, the more people there will be reduced to plain rice.”

“At all costs, government should secure to all, all the necessities of life.”

This last sentence is worthy of being linked with the immortal epigram in Lincoln’s Gettysburg address.

Other notable economic writers were Tsien Tche and Leang Tsien, but towering above them all for adaptability to the convictions and crying necessities of our day was Wang Ngan Shih, 1069 A. D., a Rooseveltian statesman of the Sung dynasty, whose capital was the present Kaifong. Remember that this statesman-author wrote when William the Conqueror was putting England under the yoke of557 feudalism, which hated the principles of liberty. Wang taught partly as follows:

1. The first duty of government is to secure plenty and relaxation for the common people.

2. The state should take possession of all important resources and become the main and dictating employer in commerce, industry and transportation, with the view of preventing the working classes being ground to the dust by the monopolizing rich.

3. Government tribunals should fix the local prices of provisions and merchandise.

4. The rich shall pay all taxes; the small owner shall pay nothing as long as he remains small.

7. The state to assign land, distribute seed and direct sowing, so that there shall neither be cornering of food by the rich, nor lack of food for the poor.

9. Confiscation of large and criminally-won estates; that is, retroactive laws and restitution, instead of “Go and sin no more, but keep what you got by former sins.”

The Boswell of Confucius in the Ta Hio (Great Study) writes: “If those who govern states only think of amassing riches for their personal use, they will infallibly attract toward them depraved men, and these depraved men will really govern the state. The administration of these unworthy ministers will call down the chastisements of heaven, and also excite the vengeance of the aggrieved people. The riches of those who have the honor to govern states should rather be justice and equity, and not only talk of justice and equity.” Is this not excellent statesmanship, even if written in China long before the Christian era?

558 China’s love of peace was inculcated brilliantly by Lao Tse (604 B. C.) in these words: “The least glorious peace is preferable to the most brilliant successes of war. The most splendid victory is but the light from a conflagration.” The Ancients said: “Render no funeral honors to conquerors; receive them with tears and cries in memory of the homicides they have committed, and let the monuments of their victories be surrounded with the tombs of those whose death they brought about.” Confucius, a practical statesman, fifty-three years later, ineffectually combated this philosophy with these words: “They who discuss by diplomacy should always have the support of a military backing”; that is, the mailed fist and the soft word! The feudal system began to totter in China in B. C. 250, under the reign of the emperor-builder of the Great Wall, Tsin Chih Hwang-Ti. The classical examinations gave it the death blow in A. D. 600. With its martial accessory, the feudal system continued in Japan, which tolerated no democratic examinations for office, until the very late date of 1869 A. D., thus lasting there the longest in the world, for it had died in England eight centuries earlier. Such was the beneficent effect of the famous classical examinations and civil service in old China.

On this subject of hardships, Mencius himself wrote, in 315 B. C.: “When Heaven (Tien) is about to confer a responsible office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his bravest undertakings. By all these methods it559 stimulates his mind, hardens his courage and increases his adaptability.” China was the first country to establish a Price Board, now recommended by all political parties in America for dealing with monopolies until real competition can be again set up. Salt production is a government monopoly. The dealer must buy from the government and sell a fixed quantity at a fixed price in a fixed district. The justice that the government regulates is that the dealer may not adulterate and may not charge an unreasonable profit. If the cost of production is high, the people profit, because the government will not need to collect high taxes in other ways. There is no chance for a crowd of drone-middlemen to get away with immense profits, or for private monopolists to lay a whole people under economic slavery. This is the Chinese theory. In many parts of Eastern Szechuen every farm has its little salt well with bamboo wheel and men treaders. The salt is sold to the government at a fixed price, about two and one-half cents a pound. The Chinese say: “Why do your trusts now want consolidation? The divisions of Europe, by the competition of various ambitions, have made Europe bright and progressive. America’s trusts, by making all things one, will produce decay of genius, invention, liberty and individualism.” A Chinese reformer had written to a rich bribe-taker and bribe-giver for work in one of the industries which he controlled, and he also endeavored to sell to the rich man a copy of one of his books. Chided in later years with seeking employment in his earlier years from a man whom he had later cause to criticize, the reformer said: “The devil is king and has usurped the seats of employment; yet, although he is devil, he owes me employment. A man’s right to work and to retain free opinion are inalienable, and a government, in granting a monopoly, can not sell such rights of the individual; they are a perpetual560 lien on the monopoly.” Intelligent municipal philanthropy has not been unknown of late years. I will instance an occurrence at Lanchow, a city on the Yellow River (Hoang-Ho) in far western Kansu province. In the fall of 1911 large numbers of people had become a charge upon the city on account of summer floods and consequent famine. By the end of August the moat of the city had become dry. The authorities roofed and partitioned this trench into many houses so as to shelter hundreds of vagrant families.

China has specialized in localization, or home rule. Even in charities this operates. No province, district or city encourages any other district’s imposing its public charges upon it. To illustrate, we shall say that your Chinese interpreter and his wife have accompanied you from Amoy to Chingtu City. The interpreter dies. If you do not send the woman back to Amoy, she will report to the Amoy Guild in Chingtu. That guild will subscribe and send her on her way as far as Chungking, where the Amoy Guild will subscribe and send her in care of the Amoy Guild at Hankau. Eventually, to her great pleasure no doubt, she will reach her people in Amoy. A widow is not molested on her travels; her persistence in widowhood and desire not to sell herself, either as a second wife, slave or strumpet, are highly respected. She would not be encouraged, however, nor would she desire to remain in Chingtu, where, being a stranger, she would be unable to secure employment. The same system would operate inversely if a Chingtu woman were, through misfortune, stranded in far-away Amoy. The Chingtu Guilds in Amoy, Fuchau, Shanghai, Hankau, etc., would relay her onward to her home, where she would be more likely to secure work, remarriage, or properly be a charge upon her own community. A criminal is treated in the same way. He is driven on toward his own community, which can elect whether561 they desire to board him in jail at public expense or make life so uncomfortable for him by corporal punishment that he will select a virtuous existence in preference to crime.

The community, closely related in cousinship, makes the family clan responsible for the misfortunes and crimes of its members. If a criminal breaks the law, the law does not bother itself long with the criminal. By one fell swoop it makes the clan take the criminal’s course in hand for the rest of his life. There is much talk of revising China’s code, the slogan being the American maxim: “Crime is personal.” China’s code in this particular does not need revision. It saves the state much expense; it is more effective also in real permanent reform. It is the most scientific system of reform ever invented, and beats all farming out of criminals, parole, coals of kindness, pellets of advice, pardons, abolishing of stripes, preachings, coddlings, threats, music-treatment, trepannings, religious advice, hypnotic treatment, flowers, sentiment, visits of the jail angel, etc.! Don’t whip the criminal alone; whip the criminal’s six elder brothers and cousins because they must have been lax in instruction and watch. They will see that never again will they suffer for the scamp’s dereliction! The Chinese say, “Don’t whip your trusts; whip your electorate! They will forever after see that the trusts do not break bounds; they will watch the charters.” Guilt then is not personal; it is communal. We are our brother’s keeper, and if we allow him to meet with misfortune or do wrong, we must suffer with him. How quickly would the Chinese scientific system of localization and communism correct and limit crime, poverty and misfortune.

British vessels trading in China are manned entirely with Chinese crews. During the dock strike in Britain, in August, 1911, the dockers refused to handle the cargoes of vessels562 which employed Chinese. China then entered a claim for damages, because her citizens were ill-treated, and the Chinese guilds threatened to embarrass the British vessels when they returned to load in the East. The writer has had some experience with such a situation in Hongkong, where the British government exercises a strong hand in preventing the spread of stevedore strikes. The use of the boycott in China calls for special study. In no land is it more in use. It is a powerful weapon for securing justice when laws and diplomacy fail either because of weakness or venalty. China, of course, has no navy to support her diplomacy. Recent boycotts in China have been the following: In 1904 the merchant guilds of Canton and Hongkong desired to support, among other things, China’s protest against the American Exclusion Act. A boycott of American goods and American ships was ordered, and the loss to American trade ran into the millions. In 1908 the Japanese landed arms for pirates in Macao, South China, and with the powerful Japanese navy compelled the Chinese officials who had seized the smuggling steamer Tatsu Maru to give her up. The Chinese guilds of Hongkong and Canton then boycotted Japanese ships, causing the Toyo Kisen Kaisha a loss of millions in earnings and a deficit of $300,000 for the year’s operation. Japan probably would have again declared war on China with this excuse if she had not feared America’s naval support of China’s general cause under the Hay “non-partition of China” policy. The loss to Japan ran into many millions. In 1910 the same body of Chinese guilds boycotted American trade as a reply to the long and costly detainment of Chinese on Angel Island, San Francisco.

We shall hear more and more of international boycotts by the Chinese, and should study the question. They hover on the borderland of justice, and are recommended by many of563 the women’s clubs of America in dealing with monopolies. They will be misunderstood. They will produce much annoyance and trouble. They are mighty weapons in the hands of the clannish Chinese. Many fortunes of millionaires were really produced by boycotts. For instance, Mr. B controls the X railway, which latter has used the Y railway as a connection for freight. Mr. B wants to buy the Y railway for a song. He diverts all the freight he can to the Z railway, and when the Y railway fails, he buys its stock for a song. Then he restores the freight of the X railway to the Y railway, whose earnings rise and make his fortune, which is immediately entrenched under nonretroactive and nonrestitution laws. In China the boycott is only used by the guilds for patriotic purposes. Of course, we traders in America and Britain object because we suffer, but looking with Chinese eyes and with a world-economical vision at the matter, we must admit that the Chinese guilds are not ignoble or selfish and that their use of the boycott is a mighty diplomatic weapon. It has humbled Japan without the use of a soldier or a thirteen-inch broadside. By threatening a boycott, Wu Ting Fang and the Shanghai Assembly at the darkest hour of the republican revolution, prevented certain nations from making a loan to the imperialists, which was the most brilliant and potential move of the revolution. It really won for the southern cause, the military capture of Nanking following as a matter of course. Let Japan, Russia and others beware how they take advantage of China, whether in Manchuria, the Yangtze provinces, Shangtung, Yunnan, Szechuen or other provinces, or territories like Tibet, Mongolia and Turkestan; the Chinese guilds with their boycott are a sure refuge in time of trouble, back of any failing walls of arms, finance or diplomacy.

“The chain is as strong as its weakest ring, and a corporation is as moral as its most corrupt director.”

“Taking rocks away makes a smooth stream, as removing wrongs makes a placid nation.”

“We can’t all agree exactly, for many faces, many minds, and the ten fingers are not all of one length; but they are all useful.”

“Some dogs are so intent on chasing the rabbit that they don’t see the tiger chasing them.”

“Of all the fools the greatest is the miser. He breaks his back with the burden which he carries when the goal is in sight.”

“Before you beat an irresponsible dog for its howl, think of the manners you owe to its master.”

565 “The heart has one language the world over, but the tongues of men have many languages.”

“When you are rich the whole world is your cousin; when you are poor, even your cousin doesn’t know you.”

“He who deserves an increase in his wage is a coward if he does not ask for it.”

“It’s a pretty mean traveler who destroys the bridge which has served his purpose; there are other brother-travelers.”

“With money you can yell like a lion; without it you must squeak like a mouse.”

“There were two fools: one when he was poor thought of days of riches; the other when he was rich never thought of days of poverty.”

“He gives more who gives a penny to the poor than he who adds a fortune to the wealth of the rich.”

“A headlong hero is not so good as a timid man who knows just what he is after.”

“Once books, art, music, poetry and gardening used to interest566 the men of China and the world; now it is the new age, when only food and power engage; is materialism progress?”

“The best place to await your enemy is at the graveyard boundary, for he must pass there at last.”

XXXI
AWAKENED INTEREST IN AMERICA

Three recent manifestations, selected from many, will indicate the awakened interest in America in things Chinese and the New China. Like the ostrich which pushed its head in the sand, and concluded that the world that was not seen, did not exist, our stage has for centuries persisted in ignoring Sinim-histrionics. Now Chinese plays are not uncommon. One in particular is worthy of mention. William Winter, the dean of the American critics, says of The Daughter of Heaven, playing at the Century Theater, New York: “I have seen every important spectacle displayed in America during the last sixty years and I think The Daughter of Heaven is superior to anything of the kind I ever saw.” The Liebler Company state that it has cost them $100,000.00 to stage the play. How my eminent Thespian friends in old China will marvel when they read this amount! For the same sum they would agree to give four thousand simultaneous plays in the four thousand walled cities of China! Revenons à nos moutons. There are eight gorgeous scenes, the exact detail of which the stage manager brought from Peking and Nanking, where he specially went for local color, and where the play is laid. Scene one introduces a moving state sanpan boat, lighted by lanterns, as a setting for a beautiful tenor love song. Scene two shows the Manchu emperor’s room in the Peking palace. Scene three is of the Ming empress’ gardens at Nanking. This lovely scene is568 made realistic by living flocks of sacred cranes and peacocks moving about the stage. Scene four is the throne room of the Ming palace at Nanking, a gorgeous representation of Chinese luxury such as we shall never see again, now that the old royal China has passed away. Scene five is outside the pavilion of the Ming empress. Scene six, in contrast to previous gorgeousness, gives a somber Craig-like setting to the battlements of Nanking, and all the remarkable modern art of the stage manager is called into exercise to produce thrilling battle effects. Scene seven is outside the Chien Men gate at Peking, executions taking place, and all the daily life of the Manchus holding one spellbound by its accuracy. Scene eight is the Manchu throne room at Peking.

Now, as to the plot and theme. Pierre Loti, the Orientalist, of course knows his China, for he fought in the relief of Peking, and I have related elsewhere in this volume, his unique pilgrimage to Angkor. Judith Gautier, his collaborator, knows the passionate human heart, as should the daughter of the famous romantic French poet, Theophile Gautier. They have combined their skill to write a tragic Shakespearean theme in a Chinese setting, but the human heart beats to the same pulse under all colors of complexion. In short, the theme is as follows: As there has been for three hundred years, in this play there is war between the Ming and Manchu races. Neither the beautiful young widow, the Ming empress, nor the bachelor Manchu emperor, has been allowed by the factionists of their respective parties to consider the national suicide of race strife. The Manchu emperor resolves if possible to do two things: to restrain in time his army which is attacking the Mings, and in disguise personally to sue at Nanking for the hand of the remarkable beauty, the Ming empress. He can not sue as a Manchu emperor; he knows the Ming empress has only too569 much cause to hate his race. This worthy Romeo gains admittance to the audience chamber of the Ming empress, and his unusual address and fire carry away the forlorn empress’ heart, despite herself. He therefore has made the personal conquest that could only be made on love’s unsupported basis, and he can afford to wait. In the meantime, the Manchu emperor’s real character is discovered, but he escapes from the Ming palace. His armies, controlled by a cabal of generals, against his will, overcome the Mings, kill the Ming empress’ adored little son and thus break her heart by destroying the dynasty. The Ming empress is captured by the Manchu armies, and is brought to the Manchu emperor’s palace at Peking. There, in real character, the emperor sues for two things: for the fruition of long deferred love, and for the patriotic union of the warring races, in their marriage. In an awful scene of Homeric passion, the Ming empress finally decides that too much blood has flowed between the races for her selfishly to accept of the offered love and honor. She sees the shades of the leaders of the great Ming race, led by her adored little son, and she decides in Oriental fashion, just as General Nogi did, that duty calls her to follow them into the spirit land. The fiery hearted Manchu emperor stands by spellbound, for he can not refute the Cathayan viewpoint, terrible as is his personal suffering. He, too, must be willing to resign love. The Ming empress allows the Manchu emperor to escort her up the privileged central stairway reserved for royalty, to the widest and oldest throne of the human race, and for a hushed and glorious moment she sits radiant in the place of power. The shades of her race, in clouds, approach and reproach her. She asks the emperor to return to her the pearl which she gave him at Nanking, when, incognito, he was an accepted suitor. He hands it to her, and she suddenly570 swallows it. The lines of Loti and Gautier draw out passion, as the French feel it, in this scene to the limit of endurance, and to its exquisite pain the brave Anglo-Saxon acting of the actor Basil Gill adds a tempestuous power that is thrilling and convincing. When the Manchu emperor at last realizes that the long silent Ming empress really sits dead on the throne, with overflowing emotion he strikes the great audience gong, and commands “to their knees and kotows” the host of viceroys and courtiers which enters; yes, though proud Manchus, they must, indeed, at last worship a Ming empress. As I have pointed out in a chapter on the Portuguese in China in my former book, The Chinese, such a scene is historically correct, for the frenzied king, Don Pedro, once placed the remains of his beautiful bride, Ignez de Castro, who was murdered for love by his enemies, on the throne and compelled a before unwilling people, to pay homage to her. Such is the deathless pride of true love, which mocks at fate even at the triumphant gates of death.

What further shall be said of the acting of Basil Gill and Viola Allen. He makes a brave, eloquent, manly lover, and his reading of the lines can be heard round and full throughout the immense vault of the Century Theater. Viola Allen, as the Ming empress, touches with finished skill, every chord of emotional acting, ever with burning fire and yet ever with artistic control, which best brings the sympathetic tear. They both ring the changes, both in what they suggest and in what they say, on the noble chord: Dulce et decorum est pro patriâ mori. Compared with the silly themes of some popular plays, what a wholesome one is The Daughter of Heaven. While there is little accurate Chinese music, one wishes for more of it, as the Chinese throughout their plays use more music than this play uses. The costumes,571 the most gorgeous ever seen, will be seen no more, as the old China has passed away. The Liebler Company have rendered a public service by staging so accurate, expensive and educational a production, even if the actors repeatedly mispronounce the word “dynasty”! All Orientalists eagerly hope that the public will avail themselves of the unique opportunity without delay, as there is no telling how long it will pay the producer to stage such an expensive play. No such spectacle will again be seen; the old China has passed away, but it is caught and preserved in the amber in The Daughter of Heaven.

Among the Americans who deserve special credit for awakening an interest in the New China should be mentioned Professor George H. Blakeslee, of the Department of History of Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, who for years has brought together a remarkable World’s Oriental Congress, the influence of which, in its published proceedings, etc., is rolling like a golden wheel around the globe, raying forth information, reconciliation, altruism and a forward Americanism in the Orient, which is pro-Oriental and not incursive in any sense, in the opinion of the Orientals. At the last conference there were thirty-six major addresses by specialists.

In closing this long volume, I would like to make a plea for China. America should at once, without waiting for the “concert of Europe” (the “entangling alliances” which Washington prohibited) recognize the new Chinese republic. For some time, with others, I have been working on such a popular movement (as an American, and in no sense in the pay of the Chinese government), writing to editors, authors and influential men, making addresses before learned and popular bodies, and ascertaining the opinions of Orientalists and Orientals. In public meetings, I have found572 the sentiment of the American people to be entirely in favor. I wrote Ex-president Roosevelt in full on November 25th, 1912, and the Outlook of November 30, 1912 kindly published an article in favor. The editor of the Independent wrote me that they had long been favorable. From my mail, I quote a few representative sentiments as follows:

“Mr. Carnegie asks me to say that he is confident the republic will be among the first to recognize her sister republic.” The frank editor of the North American Review writes: “We are in sympathy with your belief that the time has come for America’s recognition of, and aid to, the new Chinese republic.” President Woodrow Wilson warmly wrote me from Bermuda: “You may be sure that my interest in the fortunes of China is deep and permanent, and that the subject of recognition to which you call my attention will have my very serious and thoughtful consideration.” The earnest Ex-treasurer of New York, Colonel Arthur MacArthur, editor of the influential Troy Budget, writes: “My paper will continue to publish editorials and information in favor, and help to keep the movement prominently before the people.” The Worcester, Massachusetts, Telegram has been most zealous. These are only samples of what the journals of the country are doing. Honorable Champ Clark, Speaker of the House of Representatives, writes me: “Individually I think the Chinese republic ought to be recognized, but it has been settled definitely in this country that the recognition of governments is an executive function.” Governor William Sulzer, the “father” of the famous Sulzer Resolution which passed Congress, and which congratulated republican China on her new form of government, writes me: “You can rely on me to do all I can in the future, as in the past, to promote the welfare of the Chinese republic.” Professor Blakeslee, of Clark University, wrote573 me: “I want to tell you how much I appreciate all that you are doing to urge the early recognition of the Chinese republic. Have you thought of getting up another petition? I should be glad to sign it; so would Professor A. B. Hart, of Harvard University, and three-fourths of those who spoke at the Conference would sign it.”

Of course there are some American “Manchus” and Laodiceans who are not in favor of the movement. At our last conference, at Clark University, of Orientalists recently arrived from the Orient, it was the general opinion that China should be helped by recognition, as miniature Portugal and South American republics, some of a moth’s life, have been helped. Americans at the head of Chinese universities have told me: “We are heart and soul in favor.” The able Chinese officials educated in America, are passionate in their appeal for recognition by America now, without waiting for the “concert of Europe” on this one point. Wu Ting Fang, first foreign minister, and Wang Chung Wei, assistant foreign minister of the southern republicans, who won the battles of the revolution, have been asking for America’s recognition since their first formal note of January, 1912. America has from the beginning warmly appreciated the recognition by France, Spain, etc., of our struggling republic in 1778, and leading Chinese ministers of state have told me that China would have the same feeling if recognition is not delayed till China is strong enough not to care so much as now. The forceful idiom of one official, who smiled as he spoke, was: “You know a beggar appreciates those favors the most which were given to him when he was a beggar, and not when he comes into his estate.” Are we waiting till China gives a quid pro quo in concessions or monopolies, or until some future election confirms the revolution, as though the battles won were not574 a firmer expression of determination than even an election, in which latter, enemies can cloud the issue. Americans have almost entire charge of China’s higher education. The Panama Canal is going to bring trade intercourse with China very dose to the Eastern and Mississippi states of America. Secretary of State John Hay’s note to the powers in 1900, insisting for all time on the “integrity of China,” really commits America now to the recognition of the republic. Delayed recognition is really encouraging certain powers in ignoring the American altruistic doctrine of the “non-partition of China”. I refer partially to the secession of parts of Chinese Turkestan and Mongolia, largely caused by Monsieur Korostovetz’ intrusive visit in the van of Cossacks to the heart of the latter dependency as late as December, 1912.

My idea is that generously helping China in republicanism, in accordance with the spirit and terms of Washington’s Farewell Address, which specified that Americans “should recommend their form of government to the applause, affection and the adoption of every nation,” will redound to the reputation of America in altruism. America’s largest field for expansion in trade, educational and religious influence, is in the New China, and the new progressive Chinese, from long association with them, I can give my word, fully deserve our unreserved admiration and friendship. As illustrating the general opinion of American educationalists in China, I quote the following letter from my warm friend Doctor J. E. Williams, Vice-president of the great University of Nanking, China. Mr. Williams led in the movement whereby $430,000 was collected for China’s relief in the last flood and famine, and in the conservative administration of that relief, and the model farm colonies which were later established for the Chinese. “I am greatly interested in what you are doing to hasten America’s recognition of the575 republic. I am heart and soul in sympathy. I also agree with what you write, that there are many who are not the friends of China. To any one who knows the inside facts, the latter make no case at all against China, but to the people who do not know, they put up a plausible story. Compare China’s advance after a year of revolution and reform, with the efforts of our own forefathers to establish the American republic. After one year of enlistment, Washington’s soldiers were leaving him and returning to their homes. As for financial credit, the original colonies had absolutely none. As for trade and commerce, there was nothing worth mentioning. As for the development of popular education as a basis of republican government, there were hardly the rudiments in evidence. As for the ability to open mines and railways as the sine qua non of recognition, the original Thirteen Colonies had not even dreamed of mines and railways. It is my conviction that the Chinese are better prepared for republican government, and have a better outlook for its achievement than the Americans did any time up to the conclusion of the Civil War. I should be pleased to cooperate in any way in your plans for influencing the leaders in bringing about early recognition. Your plan is capital in every respect and I heartily concur.”

Generally, America has in the case of the South American republics, etc., recognized governments after they have been established one year. The year has long passed in the case of China. China has poor railroad communication and recognition should not be delayed until the suffrage is voting in machine form, and perhaps by “machine” plan! How smoothly was the American suffrage voting in 1778 when France, Holland, Sweden, Prussia and Spain recognized America? We did not even have a capital at that time, for our enemies had ravaged Philadelphia. China has two capitals576 (one of sentiment and one of fact) Nanking and Peking, but would like to have one, if foreigners will permit her! Why should America delay? “China has been forever and will be forever.” Soon she will be strong enough not to care, but what America does now she will forever appreciate, and America will sit nearest to her heart’s gratitude. Think of it! A republic of 400,000,000 people trading and communing with us across the narrowing Pacific, and beneath the smiling rays of the same warm sun which we both face: an altruistic brotherhood of East and West, working for the uplift of the whole world. China should be recognized and sent on her way rejoicing. Be not deceived; the new Chinese know us well, and take due remembrance of any delay that is based on narrow-mindedness or the uncharitable or selfish heart. Great cycles have opened beyond the seas; let America and Britain be great with them, and part of that greatness consists in helping China to be great. One leading Chinese minister and polished orator in our own language, who, I believe, will some day be president of China, for he has the youth, ability and ambition, told me with tears in his enthusiastic eyes, as he declaimed on the great subject, that if America will stand by China in this matter of honor, China will engrave gratitude forever on the core of her heart. The Chinese republican officials say that whether the excuse for delay is that the republic must be tried at the polls; or that China hasn’t railways, or China hasn’t credit, or China hasn’t “Christian science”, and whatnot, the delay is encouraging Russia to encroach, and is discouraging their own people, by the fact that one great Pacific republic won’t officially recognize the other one, which was bought by the same awful price set by Freedom: the sacred blood of patriots sacrificed by the war-sword on the altar of Liberty.

577 The recognition movement is growing among our people, and is not confined to one class. Many business organizations are in favor of it. The Pacific Coast Chambers of Commerce have adopted resolutions urging favorable action without longer delay. Our National Chamber of Commerce has done the same thing. Senator Bacon, of Georgia, has recently introduced in congress a joint resolution, favoring early recognition. Representative university presidents have written me of their sympathy with the movement. I quote from a letter from Doctor David Starr Jordan, president of Leland Stanford Jr. University, of California, as follows: “I am thoroughly in sympathy with your work for recognition, and am thoroughly in sympathy with the desire of most of the American people that the republic in China may be officially recognized by the United States.” Notable pulpit orators have also joined the movement. I quote from a representative letter from the Reverend Doctor John Haynes Holmes, pastor of the Unitarian church of the Messiah, Park Avenue, New York City, as follows: “The Chinese subjects which you have suggested that my church, along with others, should bring to the attention of our people, are certainly pertinent. I am particularly interested in the second, viz., recognition of China as a sister republic. I shall hope to find place in my preaching for some emphatic favorable mention of these matters. With appreciation of the splendid work that you are doing for China’s recognition, I am.”

It is fitting that I should close this volume with the following important letter to me from my one-time fellow-townsman of Hongkong, Doctor Sun Yat Sen (Sunyacius), the leading citizen of the New China, the greatest of the Chinese reformers, who was at the head of the Chinese republican revolution; the first provisional president of578 China at Nanking, and who is at present the head of China’s National Railway and Industrial Development Board. This message, which will make history, is really a semi-official message from the vast Chinese republic of 400,000,000 people, through their greatest hero, the Christian founder of their republic, and their most influential official and citizen, to the American people. It reads:

“I have the honor of acknowledging your letters, together with the newspaper interviews with you urging America’s prompt recognition of the Chinese republic. In reply I beg to inform you that your effort in your interviews, books, etc., in conducting this campaign in China’s interest, is highly appreciated by me and my associates. We hope that your efforts for the recognition of China by the United States of America will be speedily crowned with great success.”

Those who know the American people know that their hearts unanimously bespeak a warm and favorable answer without further delay to so momentous an appeal. It is the great privilege and honor of this book to help to convey Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s message to America.

INDEX

Aborigines, 349, 361, 437, 446, 455, 490.
Advertising, 144, 181.
Aeroplanes, 71, 322.
Agriculture, 138, 142, 211, 220, 338, 512, 533.
Aglen, Sir F., 169, 288.
Aigun, 219.
American-British “entente”, 232, 266, 284.
America’s fleet in China, 6, 7, 12, 31, 41, 43, 46, 78, 88, 106, 110, 206, 215, 231, 262, 309.
America’s influence, 3, 48, 50, 73, 79, 84, 90, 93, 96, 134, 139, 154, 187, 206, 211, 240, 284, 308, 318, 336, 344, 346, 380, 567.
America’s troops in China, 86, 100, 368.
Amoy, 44, 378.
Ancestor worship, 92, 453, 488, 533.
Angkor ruins, 541.
Antiquities, 361, 435, 541.
Architecture, 161, 287, 313, 398, 451, 541.
Army, 23, 36, 45, 50, 56, 58, 65, 69, 72, 84, 87, 91, 102, 105, 161, 163, 209, 243, 266, 317, 322, 328.
Art, 39, 154, 254, 313, 543.
Athletics, 335, 339.
Auctioneer, 492.
Austria’s influence, 139, 197.
Automobiles, 84, 195, 375.
Ball, Dyer, 299, 383.
Banking, 4, 18, 47, 130, 165, 172, 211, 405.
Baptists, 340, 404.
Barber S. S. Line, 196.
Bashford, Bishop, 58, 87, 298.
Bell, Major General, 86.
Beresford, Admiral Lord, 326.
Bergen, President P. W., 302, 340.
Bible, 2, 14, 16, 308, 468.
Bible Societies, 243, 461.
Blagovestchensk, 220, 284.
Blake, Sir Henry, 300.
Blakeslee, Professor, 571, 572.
Boats, 120, 190, 204, 325.
Books, 12, 13, 18, 32, 180, 243, 290, 299, 303, 315, 518.
Bowen, President A. J., 301, 337.
Boycotts, 59, 73, 77, 233, 562.
Brent, Bishop, 399.
Bragg, General, 291.582
Bridges, new, 190, 193.
Bridges, old, 250.
Broadway Tabernacle, N. Y., 339.
Brownell, Dean, 339.
Britain’s influence, 17, 48, 50, 73, 79, 106, 151, 155, 180, 184, 194, 230, 234, 288, 343, 363, 437, 467.
British-India S. S. Co., 197.
British troops in China, 102, 367, 378.
Bubonic plague, 502.
Buddhism, 7, 35, 104, 311, 351, 450.
Budget, 243.
Business, 24, 137, 159, 175, 184, 235.
Butterfield & Swire, 149, 151, 176, 178, 196.
Calendar, Christian, 47, 82.
Camp, Walter, 339.
Camphor, 538.
Canada in China, 175, 184, 348, 437.
Canadian Pacific Steamship Line, 196.
Canals, 201, 203.
Cantlie, Doctor, 15, 17.
Canton, 4, 6, 23, 43, 84, 106, 190, 202, 380, 516.
Canton Christian College, 304, 380.
Car building, 153, 188, 194.
Carlyle, 453.
Catholic work, 345, 459, 462.
Cecil, Lord, 346.
Cement, 138, 154, 384.
Chang Hsun, General, 42, 63, 166, 317.
Chang Jen, Viceroy, 42.
Chang Shao, General, 25, 38, 76.
Chao Ehr Feng, General, 34, 317, 508.
Chao Ehr Sun, Viceroy, 97, 103.
Chartered Bank, 165.
Chater, Sir Paul, 334.
Cheo Ping Chun, Premier, 109.
Chifu, 406.
Children, 525.
China Merchants S. S., 83, 93, 197, 199, 200.
China-Japan War, 326, 329.
Chinese Eastern Railway, 198.
Chinese Engineering & Mining Company, 148, 178, 197.
Chingtu, 22, 35, 193, 250, 343, 344, 435.
Chin Tao Chen, Minister Fin., 82, 223.
Chin Wang Tao, port, 83, 94, 203, 211, 219, 328.
Chops, 181.
Chungking City, 438.
Chun, Regent, 50, 67, 320.
Civil service, 9, 161.
Clans, 7, 492.
Clark, Speaker Champ, 572.
Clark University Oriental Congress, 304, 571.
Coal, 139, 142, 147, 153, 238, 287, 409, 441.583
Colquhoun, Sir Archibald, 189, 202, 205, 293.
Collinson, Engineer, 298.
Commercial attachés, 175.
Compradores, 176, 294.
Copper, 22, 149.
Concessions, 6, 10, 11, 27, 28, 72, 76, 85, 140, 175.
Confucianism, 7, 92, 449, 453, 469, 475, 522.
Confucius, 58, 61, 245, 325, 473.
Conger, E. H., 209.
Congregationalism, 73, 340, 342, 460.
Congress, National, 22, 32, 38, 50, 60, 78, 242, 244, 349.
Connaught, Duke of, 369.
Conservation, 150, 202, 401.
Constitutional Articles, Nineteen, 50, 89, 319.
Consuls, 175, 192, 207, 308.
Copyright and patents, 156.
Corporations, 146, 179, 184, 279, 412, 482.
Cotton, 178, 277, 538.
Creasy, Sir Edward, 240.
Credit system, 166.
Crime, 117, 124, 472, 561.
Currency, 86, 167.
Curzon, Lord, 293.
Customs, National, 161, 163, 169, 288.
Dalai Lama, 35, 311.
Daughter of Heaven, The, play, 567.
Debt, National, 28, 162, 164.
Dentists, 509.
Deutsche-Asiatique Bank, 165, 405.
Docks, 151, 215, 404.
Dogs, 524.
Dollar S. S. Co., 196.
Doumer, Paul, 189, 285, 292.
Dorpmuller, Herr, 298.
Dress, 7.
Edmunds, President, 304.
Education, modern, 8, 10, 162, 243, 297, 302, 334, 343, 347, 460, 531.
Eighth Division, 90, 319.
Electric development, 139, 194, 211, 257.
Emigration, 156, 216, 236.
Emperor Pu Yi, 91.
Engine building, 140.
Engineering, 180, 187, 251, 341.
English language, 143, 194, 341, 347, 359.
Episcopalians, 13, 25, 40, 73, 302, 335, 342, 343, 346, 405, 406, 461, 466.
Eunuchs, 311.
Eurasians, 527.
Extraterritoriality, 20, 232.
Fairs, 493.
Famine, 89, 161, 257, 526.
Farms, 533.584
Favier, Bishop, 303.
Feng, General, 317, 404.
Finance, 141, 146, 161, 185.
Fire departments, 140.
Floods, 8, 89, 441.
Flour, 138, 294.
Food, 6, 8, 221, 371, 496.
Foreigners, 6, 7, 12, 14, 24, 28, 49, 71, 85, 192, 234, 287, 288, 302, 363, 447.
Forests, 194, 533, 538.
Formosa, 149, 165, 311.
France’s influence, 31, 153, 170, 189, 198, 285, 292, 304, 311, 332.
Fuchau, 30, 332, 343, 386.
Fulton, Doctor Mary, 345.
Furniture, 154, 553.
Gamewell, F. D., 298.
Gautier, Judith, 568.
George, Henry, 13, 407, 555.
Germany in China, 11, 31, 54, 59, 63, 84, 148, 152, 154, 180, 193, 197, 199, 253, 298, 311, 341, 347, 407.
Goethe, 356.
Gordon, “Chinese”, 289.
Grand Canal, 200, 203.
Graphite, 150.
Greeley, Admiral, 292, 364.
Green, Owen, 300.
Guilds, 142, 233, 560.
Hangchow, 390.
Hankau, 36, 39, 40, 45, 48, 52, 333, 403.
Hanyang, 36, 51, 55.
Hanyang Steel Works, 145, 188, 249, 298, 404.
Hart, Sir Robert, 169, 288.
Hay, John, 209.
Hayes, Doctor W. M., 300, 340.
Hirth, Professor, 300.
Holcomb, Chester, 300.
Homes, 494, 495, 546.
Hongkong, 15, 20, 33, 43, 51, 63, 77, 143, 150, 154, 185, 189, 285, 293, 296, 309, 363, 377, 507, 512.
Hongkong & Shanghai Bank, 4, 165, 177, 191.
Hongkong and Whampoa Dock, 151, 178.
Horses, 141, 307, 376, 443.
Hosie, Sir Alexander, 300, 315.
Hospitals, 126, 382, 402, 414, 515.
Hotels, 212, 374.
Humor, 70, 114.
Hunan, 27, 36.
Hupeh, 18, 23.
Hsu, Commander-in-chief, 24, 46, 62, 68, 82, 87, 317.
Hwang Hing, General, 16, 21, 43, 45, 55, 82, 87, 317.
Hygiene, 257, 399, 533.
Ichang, 405.585
Idols, 125, 456.
Imperial Third Division, 39, 40, 106, 404.
Indemnities, 6, 11, 28, 32, 85, 164, 169, 232, 309, 336.
Industrial China, 138, 153, 170, 294, 347.
Insurance, 181.
International Banking Company, 165, 176.
International Merchants’ Marine, 198.
Irrigation, 250, 286, 534.
Iron, 139, 145, 149, 188, 441.
Japan’s debt, 264, 265.
Japan’s influence, 3, 25, 29, 31, 48, 53, 73, 79, 93, 109, 152, 155, 193, 199, 201, 215, 230, 259, 563.
Jardine, Matheson & Company, 149, 176, 196, 396.
Jehol, 39, 45, 255.
Jeme Tien Yao, Engineer, 187, 223, 252.
Jordan, President David Starr, 577.
Kalgan, 39.
Kang Yu Wei, 12, 96, 243, 312.
Kerr, Doctor, 15.
Kinder, C. W., 194, 298.
Kitchener, Lord, 293.
Knitting factories, 144, 183.
Korea, 15, 165, 168, 260.
Kwang Hsu, Emperor, 13, 98, 200, 242, 245, 312.
Kwangtung province, 5.
Labor, 142, 143, 217, 237.
Lanchow camp, 38, 76, 83, 87.
Land Tax, 9.
Land values, 370, 478.
Language, 2, 177, 289, 299, 359.
Laws, 20, 63, 85, 156, 299, 472.
Lea, Homer, 46, 69, 261.
Leprosy, 510.
Lhasa, 35.
Liang Chi Chao, 12.
Lighthouses, 257.
Li Hung Chang, 8, 21, 200, 318.
Likin, 171.
Ling, General, 24, 42, 44, 47, 49, 62.
Liquor, 132, 314, 508.
Literature, 351.
Little, Archibald, 115, 192, 205.
Little, Robert, 300.
Li Yuan Heng, General, 24, 25, 35, 45, 48, 55, 65, 87, 133, 209, 317, 327, 402.
Lloyds Bank, 165.
Loans, 11, 20, 28, 29, 57, 59, 64, 69, 84, 85, 93, 103, 108, 161, 169, 171, 191, 201, 292.
Lockhart, Sir Stewart, 300.
Loti, Pierre, 285, 541, 568.586
Lowry, Doctor H. H., 297.
Macao, 16, 131, 138, 202, 207, 370, 383, 484.
Machinery, 138, 176, 212.
Manchuria, 29, 94, 138, 188, 211, 217, 231, 261, 278, 281, 300, 306, 315, 432.
Manchus, 4, 6, 9, 11, 18, 22, 31, 38, 40, 44, 54, 60, 72, 79, 85, 146, 239, 248, 254, 305, 311, 356, 421.
Manila, 152, 211.
Martin, Doctor W. A. P., 297, 342, 469.
Masons, 369.
Mateer Doctor C. W., 301, 468.
Matting, 536.
Medical Missions, 15, 40, 335, 337, 339, 340, 342, 414, 465, 502, 515.
Messageries Maritimes Steamship Company, 198, 285, 293.
Methodists, 298, 301, 340, 342, 344, 402, 467.
Mines, 11, 24, 27, 28, 151.
Ming claimant, 102, 222.
Ming dynasty, 11, 254, 392.
Ming tombs, 47, 392.
Missionaries, 13, 39, 49, 78, 171, 261, 302, 400, 462, 465.
Missions, 7, 15, 25, 30, 56, 73, 90, 344, 345, 461, 469.
Mitsu Bishi Company, 152, 179.
Mitsui & Company, 179, 197, 278.
Model town, 5.
Mody, Hormusjee, 334.
Mongolia, 138, 281.
Morrison, George E., 292, 298.
Mosby, Colonel, 291.
Moving pictures, 489.
Mukden, 39, 45, 93, 193, 430.
Museums, 348.
Music, modern, 338, 341.
Nanking, 42, 43, 47, 49, 53, 56, 62, 83, 338, 343, 392.
Nanking Assembly, 80, 91.
Nathan, Sir M., 296, 364.
Navy, 4, 8, 25, 36, 41, 67, 69, 70, 88, 95, 141, 151, 162, 233, 326.
Newchwang, 429.
Newspapers, 4, 7, 8, 13, 21, 33, 114, 140, 300, 357, 368, 377.
Ningpo, 388.
Ninth Imperial Division, 44.
Nippon Yusen Kaisha Steamship Company, 197, 200.
Non-partition of China, 79, 86, 230, 282, 328, 429, 574.
Northern Pacific Railway Steamship Company, 196.
Oils, 141, 149, 179.
Okuma, Count, 76.
Open Door policy, 217, 230, 305.
Opium, 3, 309, 339, 399, 499.
Pacific Mail, 176, 196, 198, 292.
Paint, 149.
Panama Canal, 96, 137, 198, 267.587
Parker, Professor, 60, 299.
Parsees, 365.
Patent and copyright, 156, 182.
Pawnshops, 172.
Peculation, 118, 121, 146, 162, 200.
Peking, 38, 194, 339, 343, 413.
Peking, rebellion of troops, 99.
Peking-Kalgan Railway, 191.
Peking Syndicate, 27, 148, 178, 197.
Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Company, 176, 196.
Philippines, 33, 214, 237, 261, 267, 285, 290.
Physicians, 122.
Piracy, 51, 53, 67, 78, 106, 122, 286, 483.
Pneumonic plague, 342.
Ports, 187, 201, 203.
Portugal, 31.
Port Arthur, 425.
Post-office, 144, 243.
Population, 322, 526, 533.
Pott, President F., 302, 335.
Pottery, 150, 421, 551.
Presbyterians, 13, 62, 301, 302, 340, 342, 344, 345, 467, 516, 531, 548.
Presses, 345, 460.
Prisons, 120, 446.
Provincial Governors, 248.
Public Works, 161, 250, 257.
Quarantine practise, 513.
Queues, 4, 70, 81, 245, 314.
Railways, 3, 11, 61, 93, 148, 153, 162, 186, 193, 211, 219, 249, 282, 298, 382, 578.
Railways, Nationalization of, 10, 23, 27, 28, 33, 85, 137, 171, 344, 492.
Rea, G. B., 300.
Recognition of China, 85, 88, 94, 101, 214, 571.
Red Cross, 47, 342.
Reforestation, 194, 533, 538.
Reform Edicts, 243.
Republicanism, 22, 31, 54, 56, 68, 71, 73, 77, 79, 88, 94, 97, 99, 111, 248, 334, 336.
Republican revolution, 1, 6.
Revenue, 161.
Richard, Doctor Timothy, 342.
Roads, 142, 254.
Roots, Bishop, 346.
Ross, of Wisconsin, Professor, 533.
Russian Volunteer fleet, 199.
Russia’s influence, 29, 31, 48, 60, 79, 108, 153, 189, 193, 219, 229, 263, 281, 300, 425, 434, 563.
Russo-Asiatique Bank, 64, 103, 165, 170, 405.
Sah, Admiral, 36, 41, 327.
Saigon, 153, 187, 292.
Salt, 141, 161.588
Schiff, Jacob H., 216.
Schools, 4, 6, 135.
Scott, Admiral Sir Percy, 364.
Secret Societies, 247.
Servants, 131.
Sewage, 512.
Seward, W. H., 206, 210, 292.
Shanghai, 15, 41, 70, 152, 189, 202, 343, 393.
Shanghai-Nanking Railway, 171, 191.
Shek Kam Chuen, 107.
Sheng Kung Pao, 27.
Sheng Yun, General, 49, 71, 103, 104.
Shintoism, 469.
Shorthand, 349.
Ship-building, 11, 151, 213, 327.
Shops, 144.
Siberian Railway, 192, 283.
Singan, 37, 433, 541.
Singapore, 152, 187, 201, 286.
Sociology, 555.
Sowerby, Captain, 53.
Soy-bean and oil, 278.
Sports, 369, 376.
Standard Oil Company, 176, 179, 196.
Steamships, 140, 158, 162, 190, 196, 199, 204, 290.
Straight, Willard, 292.
Straits Settlements, 8, 237.
Students, 29, 77, 310, 347.
Suchow, 401.
Sugar, 149, 277.
Suicide, 87.
Sulzer, Governor William, 572.
Sun Yat Sen, 3, 6, 12, 15, 18, 21, 46, 69, 76, 80, 88, 92, 95, 101, 209, 247, 312, 382, 393, 402, 462, 469, 505, 555, 578.
Syndicates, 27, 191.
Szechuen province, 35.
Taiping rebellion, 15, 306, 462.
Tang Shao Yi, 69, 74, 105, 222, 411.
Taoism, 7, 92, 454.
Tai Yuan, 343, 441.
Tariff, 137, 214, 217, 231, 259.
Taxes, 9, 22, 30, 72, 141, 161, 169, 244, 259, 320, 556.
Tayeh, 138.
Tea, 155.
Technical schools, 154, 162, 194, 341, 344, 406.
Telegraph, 162.
Temperance, 469.
Temples, 10, 343.
Tenny, Doctor, 94, 297.
Theatricals, 358, 567.
Tibet, 70.
Tientsin, 178, 202, 343, 409.589
Tientsin-Shanghai Railway, 186, 191, 253.
Tin, 8, 148, 151, 286.
Tongshan shops and school, 154, 194, 298.
Togo Kisen Kaisha Steamship, 152, 184, 197.
Trade, 210, 287, 534.
Traffic, 193, 256.
Transportation, 143, 195.
Tropical Club, 518.
Treaties, 6, 85, 208, 219, 229, 308.
Tse Hsi, Empress, 13, 98, 310, 312, 316, 433, 452.
Tsinan, 341, 343, 408, 448.
Tsingtau (German), 152, 186, 407.
Tsitsikar, 219.
Tuan Fang, 5, 71.
United States Marine Hospital Service, 514.
United States Steel Corporation, 179.
Universities, 10, 200, 243, 362.
University, Boone, 334, 343.
University, British, 346.
University, Canton, 334, 343, 380.
University, Hangchow, 334, 342, 391.
University, Harvard, 340, 516.
University, Hongkong, 15, 295, 334.
University, Nanking, 46, 48, 64, 301, 334, 337, 392.
University, Nan Yang, 396.
University, Pei Yang (Tientsin), 155, 297, 318, 334, 341, 411.
University, Peking, 200, 243, 297, 334, 342.
University, Pennsylvania, 340, 382, 510, 516.
University, St. John’s, 302, 334, 335, 395, 548.
University, Shangtung, 334, 340, 449.
University, Shansi, 233, 334, 342, 442.
University, Suchow, 334, 342, 402.
University, Yale, 21, 327, 334, 339, 516.
University, Yunnan, 445.
Van Buren, J. S., 289.
Vladivostok, 278.
Volunteer Companies, 239.
Walled cities, 7.
Ward, General Frederick, 321.
Washington, George, 210.
Water-works, 139, 256, 512.
Webster, Daniel, 206, 208, 292, 384.
Wei Hai Wei, 203, 232, 300, 326, 331, 407.
Wen Tsung Yao, 82.
Western Electric Company, 211.
West Point Military Academy, 325.
West River, 67.
Wildman, Consul, 291.
Williams, J. E., 304, 337, 575.
Wilson, General J. H., 11, 204.
Wilson, President Woodrow, 572.590
Wireless telegraphy, 199.
Wood, General, 364.
Women, Chinese, 7, 69, 90, 128, 313, 519, 560.
Women, Manchu, 121, 209, 312.
Women, medical college, 344, 516.
Women, schools, 335, 345, 530.
Wool, 138, 275.
Wuchang, 12, 31, 35, 55, 343, 346.
Wuhu, 440.
Wu Ting Fang, 12, 19, 26, 32, 41, 45, 59, 65, 71, 82, 93, 166, 208, 305, 315, 352, 472, 573.
Yangtze River 189, 192, 346.
Yellow Peril, 2.
Yin Tchang, General, 26, 103, 315, 317, 320.
Yokohama Specie Bank, 165.
Y. M. C. A., 468.
Young, Doctor, 342.
Younghusband, Sir F., 70, 306, 508.
Yuan Shih Kai, 12, 14, 45, 48, 55, 57, 60, 92, 95, 104, 110, 243, 300, 318, 343, 410.
Yunnan, 22, 41, 120, 188, 250, 293, 343, 444.
Yunnan Railway, 238, 285, 293.

By John Stuart Thomson; published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis and New York; seventy-one splendid illustrations, three colored maps, $2.50; and by T. Warner Laurie, Fleet Street, London, 12s. 6d.

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Transcriber’s Notes

Simple typographical errors were corrected.

Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found; otherwise, they were not changed.

Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.

Index not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page references.

Page 121: “heard Madame Manchu Innocence thrill” was printed that way.

Page 181: “Nasymth Wilson Company” is a misprint for “Nasmyth Wilson Company”.

Page 215: “not calculated to give China fair play” was printed as “not calculated in give China fair play”; changed here.

Page 220: “oligarchal Russian army” was printed that way.

Page 279: “Incoporator Dill” was printed that way.

These are the four quadrants of the map on page 272:

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REVENUE	GOLD DOLLARS
Land tax, 400,000,000 acres cultivated, at 50c a year	$200,000,000
Salt monopoly	10,000,000
Maritime customs	50,000,000
Railway surplus, nationalized trunk lines	10,000,000
Fisheries, tobacco, samshu, mining, steamship, bank, incorporation, telegraph and other fees	50,000,000
Income tax	10,000,000
	$330,000,000
EXPENDITURE
Interest on foreign loans,—past, $200,000,000; and in prospect, $200,000,000; total, $400,000,000, at 4 per cent.	$16,000,000
Civil service salaries, etc.	30,000,000
Army, a full division for each province, 100,000 men at $100 a year	10,000,000
Conservation, public works, repairing national architecture, famine relief, etc	50,000,000
Navy for revenue purposes mainly, with one dreadnought a year added	24,000,000162
Education and crafts schools	100,000,000
Canals, railways, steamships, telegraph, telephone, etc., extensions	100,000,000
	$330,000,000

Loans	Amount in £	Amount Interest in £	Due
7% silver loan, ’94	£490,500		1924
6% gold loan, ’95	800,000		1924
6% gold loan, ’95	333,400		1915
5% gold loan, ’96, from France and Russia for Chinese-Eastern Railway	12,397,425		1933
4½% gold, ’98, Britain and Germany for railways	14,022,625		1933
5% gold railway loan	1,955,000		1933
5% gold (Boxer indemnities, etc.)	52,500,000		1940
5% Shanghai-Nanking railway	2,900,000		1915
5% Canton-Kowloon railway	1,500,000		1920
5% Tientsin-Pukow railway (British)	1,850,000		1918
5% Tientsin-Pukow railway (German)	1,100,000		1918
5% Shanghai-Ningpo railway	1,500,000		1918
5% Hukuang railways	1,500,000		1921
Total gov’t debts—
China	£92,848,950	£4,642,000
Japan	300,000,000	12,000,000
India	170,000,000
Italy	1,000,000,000
France	1,200,000,000
Britain	1,000,000,000
United States	200,000,000

	Japan’s Debt in £.	Annual Interest.	Due.
4% sterling	£10,000,000
4½% sterling	29,750,000
4½% second series	29,750,000
4% 1905 Russia war	25,000,000		After 1921
5% 1906 Russia war, railways, ships, Manchuria, Korea, Formosa, Saghalien, etc.	183,000,000
5% 1907	11,500,000		After 1922
4% 1910	11,000,000		After 1920
Total Japan’s debt	£300,000,000	£12,000,000
Total China’s debt	93,000,000	4,642,000
Total India’s debt	170,000,000

The Manchu Tien-Tsung overthrows the Ming King Hwai Tsung and occupies Peking	1643
Tea brought to Europe in English ships from Canton	1660
Kang-Hi, greatest and most artistic Manchu Emperor, ascends throne, Christianity almost established	1661
Galdan, Prince of Jungaria, conquers Kashgaria and becomes supreme in Central Asia	1678308
First treaty with European power (Russia)	1689
Commerce with East India Company begins at Canton	1680
Yung-Ching ascends throne; anti-Christian	1722
Jesuits expelled	1724
English send first man-of-war, Centurion, to China, English being active at Canton, Ningpo, etc.	1742
First American vessel, Empress of China, from New York, Captain Green, reaches Canton, China	1784
First American Consul, Major Shaw, at Macao, China	1786
Philadelphia opens China trade with ship Alliance	1788
Boston opens China trade with ship Massachusetts	1789
Earl Macartney’s mission arrives at Peking, throwing light on the Empire, which appeared to contain 4,402 walled cities, population 333,000,000, the Tartar and Manchu army being 1,000,000 infantry and 800,000 cavalry. Government absolute	1793
Macartney ordered to depart, the Chinese deciding to seal the country against foreigners	October 7, 1793
Sir G. L. Staunton, at London, in three volumes reveals the heart of China and the capital to the world, fixing the nations in their determination to open China to modernity	1798
First English Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison, arrives, and in American factory of Milner & Bull at Canton translates Bible and compiles Chinese-English dictionary	1808
Edict against Christianity	1812
Lord Amherst’s embassy, which failed because he would not make “kotow” to Emperor as a bearer of tribute from an inferior nation	1816309
Exclusive rights of East India Company cease	1834
Lord Napier arrives at Macao to superintend British commerce	1834
Opium dispute begins; the trade prohibited by Emperor	November, 1834
Opium burned at Canton by famous Chinese Commissioner Lin	February, 1835
Captain Elliot and British merchants leave Canton	May, 1839
British and American seamen fight Chinese at Canton	July 7, 1839
Hongkong taken by British	August 23, 1839
British retire from Macao	August 26, 1839
American frigate Powhatan and British sloop Rattler fight Chinese pirates in Kowloon Bay, opposite Hongkong	September 4, 1839
British trade with China ceases by edict of Emperor	December 6, 1839
Opium war between England and China, in which old China received the soundest thrashing she ever received from any foreign nation; many engagements; many ports taken	1840
Treaty of peace signed before Nanking on board ship Cornwallis, Sir Henry Pottinger for England and Ki-Ying and Neu-Kien for China, China paying indemnity of $21,000,000, throwing open as treaty ports Canton, Amoy, Fuchau, Ningpo and Shanghai, and ceding Hongkong Island to Britain	August 29, 1842
American Commissioner Cushing, Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher, etc., arrive at Canton	1844310
Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue adopted as official color	1855
Famous Empress Dowager Tse Hsi and Viceroy Li Hung Chang arise to power	1856
Non-fulfilment of Nanking treaty with Britain causes war again	1856
Coolie slave trade for Peru, Cuba, California, etc., opens at Macao	1860
Britain and France war with China	1860
Taiping rebellion, beginning at Canton, sweeps to Nanking; opposed by the American, Ward; Chinese Gordon, etc., on behalf of Manchus	1863
Yung Wing brings first Chinese students to America (Hartford)	1872
Terrific Mohammedan rebellion in Shensi, Kansu, Yunnan provinces and Turkestan, suppressed by ferocious General Tso Tsung-tang, Mohammedan leader, Yakub Beg, being assassinated in Turkestan	May, 1877
Sir Robert Hart establishes Chinese national customs, first guarantee for foreign loans	1886
China-Japan war over Korea; Formosa lost; indemnity also paid	1894
Emperor Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts, influenced by Kang Yu Wei	1898
Siege of Peking by allies	1900
Russia-Japan war over Manchuria	1904
America, Britain and China at Shanghai agree to end opium curse	1909
Death of Emperor Kwang Hsu and Empress Dowager Tse Hsi together	1909
Republican rebellion, led by Generals Li and Hsu, and planned by Sun Yat Sen	1911311
Abdication of Manchus	1912

CHAPTER		PAGE
I	The Genesis of the Republican Revolution	1
II	Wit and Humor in China	114
III	Industrial and Commercial China	137
IV	Finance and Budget in China	161
V	Business Methods of Foreigners in China	175
VI	Railways in China	186
VII	Shipping and Water Routes in China	196
VIII	America in China	206
IX	The Native Leaders	222
X	China’s International Politics	229
XI	Chinese Internal Politics	242
XII	Some Public Works in Old China	250
XIII	The Influence of Japan	259
XIV	Pressure of Russia and France on China	281
XV	Some Foreign Types in China, and Their Influence	288
XVI	The Manchu	305
XVII	China’s Army and Navy	317
XVIII	Modern Education in China	334
XIX	Literature and Language	351
XX	Life of Foreigners in China	363
XXI	Foreign Cities of China	375
XXII	Native Cities of China	433
XXIII	Religious and Missionary China	450
XXIV	Legal Practise and Crime in China	472
XXV	Chinese Daily Life	487
XXVI	Climate, Disease and Hygiene	499
XXVII	Chinese Womanhood	519
XXVIII	Agriculture and Forestry in China	533
XXIX	Chinese Architecture and Art	541
XXX	Sociological China	555
XXXI	Awakened Interest in America	567
	Index	581

Bank	Capital Paid Up	Reserve
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation	$5,000,000	$15,000,000
International Banking Company of America	3,250,000	3,250,000
Deutsche Asiatische Bank	5,500,000	3,000,000
Yokohama Specie Bank (Japan)	10,000,000	7,000,000
Lloyd’s Bank (British)	20,000,000	15,000,000
Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China (British)	4,000,000	5,000,000
Netherlands Trading Society	18,000,000	2,000,000
Netherlands-India Commercial Bank	6,000,000	700,000
Russo-Asiatic Bank (Russia-France)	19,000,000	4,000,000
National Bank of China	1,500,000	400,000
Banque L’Indo-Chine (French)	6,000,000	3,000,000
Bank of Taiwan (Formosan Japan)	1,800,000	300,000
Mercantile Bank of India (British)	5,500,000	800,000
Eastern Bank (British)	2,000,000
Chino-Belgian Bank (Belgian)	2,000,000

	MIAO ABORIGINE	CHINESE
1	Ah	Ee
2	Ow	Erh
3	Tsz	San
4	Peu	Su
5	Peh	Wu
6	Glow	Liu
7	Ya	Pah
8	Chow	Chiu

In Fukien	In Mandarin
Hokchiu	Fuchau
Amoy	Hsia-men
Quemoy	Chinmen