II

DO WE RIGHTLY VIEW THE CHINESE

100 much has been made of the peculiarities of the Chinese, ignoring the fact that many customs and

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traits that appear peculiar to us are simply the differences developed by environment. Eliza Scidmore affirms that "no one knows or ever really will know the Chinese, the most comprehensible, inscrutable, contradictory, logical, illogical people on earth.” But a Chinese gentleman, who was educated in the United States, justly retorts: "Behold the American as he is, as I honestly found him-great, small, good, bad, self-glorious, egotistical, intellectual, supercilious, ignorant, superstitious, vain and bombastic. In truth," he adds, "so very remarkable, so contradictory, so incongruous have I found the American that I hesitate."1

The Chinese are, indeed, very different from western peoples in some of their customs.

"They mount a horse on the right side instead of the left. The old men play marbles and fly kites, while children look gravely on. They shake hands with themselves instead of with each other. What we call the surname is written first and the other name afterwards. A coffin is a very acceptable present to a rich parent in good health. In the north they sail and pull their wheelbarrows in place of merely pushing them. China is a country where the roads have no carriages and the ships have no keels; where the needle points to the south, the place of honour is on the left hand, and the seat of intellect is supposed to lie in the stomach; where it is rude to take off your hat, and to wear white clothes is to go into mourning. Can one be astonished to find a literature without an alphabet and a language without a grammar?"?

1 "As a Chinaman Saw Us," pp. 1, 2.

2 Temple Bar, quoted in Smith's "Rex Christus," p. 115.

It would never occur to us to commit suicide in order to spite another. But in China such suicides occur every day, because it is believed that a death on the premises is a lasting curse to the owner. And so the Chinese drowns himself in his enemy's well or takes poison on his foe's door-step. Only a few months ago, a rich Chinese murdered an employee in a British colony, and knowing that inexorable British law would not be satisfied until some one was punished, he hired a poor Chinese named Sack Chum to confess to having committed the murder and to permit himself to be hung, the real murderer promising to give him a good funeral and to care for his family. An Englishman who thought this an incredible story wrote a letter of inquiry to an intelligent Chinese merchant of his acquaintance and received the following reply:

Nothing strange to Chinamen. Sack Chum, old man, no money, soon die. Every day in China such thing. Chinaman not like white mannot afraid to die. Suppose some one pay his funeral, take care his family. • I die,' he say. Chinaman know Sack Chum, we suppose, sell himself to men who kill Ah Chee. Somebody must die for them. Sack Chum say he do it. All right. Police got him. What for they want more? "

These things appear odd from our view-point and there are many other peculiarities that are equally strange to us. But it may be wholesome for us to remember that some of our customs impress the Chinese no less oddly. The Frankfurter Zeitung, Germany, prints the following from a Chinese who had seen much of the Europeans and Americans in Shanghai:

"We are always told that the countries of the foreign devils are grand and rich; but that cannot be true, else what do they all come here for? It is here that they grow rich. They jump around and kick balls as if they were paid to do it. Again you will find them making long tramps into the country; but that is probably a religious duty, for when they tramp they wave sticks in the air, nobody knows why. They have no sense of dignity, for they may be found walking with women, Yet the women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are dragged around a room to the accompaniment of the most hellish music."

A Chinese resident in America wrote to his friends at home a letter from which the following extract is taken :

"What is queerer still, men will stroll out in company with their wives in broad daylight without a blush. And will you believe that men and women take hold of each other's hands by way of salutation? Oh, I have seen it myself more than once. After all, what can you expect of folk who have been brought up in barbarous countries on the very verge of the world? They have not been taught the maxims of our sages; they never heard of the Rites; how can they know what good manners mean? We often think them rude and insolent when I'm sure they don't mean it. they're ignorant, that's all." 1

A call that I made upon a high official in an interior city developed a curious interest. He was a pale, thin man, apparently an opium smoker and a mandarin of the old school. But he was intelligent enough to ask me not only about "the twenty-story buildings of New York," but "the differences between the various Protestant sects," and in particular about "the Mormons and their strength ! Who could have imagined that the Latter Day Saints of Utah could be known to a Chinese nobleman of Chih-li? Verily, our own idiosyncrasies are known afar.

It will thus be seen that mutual recriminations regarding national peculiarities are not likely to be convincing to either party. Human nature is much the same the world over. this view-point at least we may discreetly remember that

"There is so much bad in the best of us,

And so much good in the worst of us,

That it hardly behoves any of us

To talk about the rest of us."

From

I do not mean to give an exaggerated impression of the virtues of the Chinese or what Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop calls "a milk-and-water idea" of heathenism. Undoubtedly, they have grave defects. Official corruption is well-nigh universal. A correspondent of the North- China Herald reports a wellSmith, "Rex Christus," p. 116.

informed Chinese gentleman of the Province of Chih-li as expressing the conviction that one-half the land tax never reaches the Government. "But that is not all," said he.

"There are other sources of income for the hsien official. Thus here in this county, thirty-five or forty years ago, the Government imposed an extra tax for the purpose of putting down the Tai-ping rebellion, and the officials have continued to collect that tax ever since. Of course if the literati should move in the matter and report to Paoting-fu, the magistrate would be bounced at once; but they are not likely to do so. The tax is a small one, my own share not being more than five dollars or so."

China's whole public service is rotten with corruption. Offices with merely nominal salaries or none at all are usually bought by the payment of a heavy bribe and held for a term of three years, during which the incumbent seeks not only to recoup himself but to make as large an additional sum as possible. As the weakness of the Government and the absence of an outspoken public press leave them free from restraint, China is the very paradise of embezzlers. "Any man who has had the least occasion to deal with Chinese courts knows that every man has his price,' that not only every underling can be bought, but that 999 out of every 1,000 officials, high or low, will favour the man who offers the most money." Dishonesty is not, as with the white race, simply the recourse in emergency of the unscrupulous man. It is the habitual practice, the rule of intercourse of all classes. The Chinese apparently have no conscience on the subject, but appear to deem it quite praiseworthy to deceive you if they can.

Gambling is openly, shamelessly indulged in by all classes. As for immorality, the Rev. Dr. J. Campbell Gibson of Swatow says that "while the Chinese are not a moral people, vice has never in China as in India, been made a branch of religion." But the Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, of Peking, declares "that every village and town and city-it would not be a very serious ex

1 Rev. Dr. C. H. Fenn, Peking.

aggeration to say every home,-fairly reeks with impurity." The Chinese are, indeed, less openly immoral than the Japanese, while their venerated books abound with the praises of virtue. But medical missionaries could tell a dark story of the extent to which immorality eats into the very warp and woof of Chinese society. The five hundred monks in the Lama Temple in Peking are notorious not only for turbulence and robbery, but for vice. The temple is in a spacious park and includes many imposing buildings. The statue of Buddha is said to be the largest in China-—a gilded figure about sixty feet high-colossal and rather awe-inspiring in "the dim religious light." But in one of the temple buildings, where the two monks who accompanied us said that daily prayers were chanted, I saw representations in brass and gilt that were as filthily obscene as anything that I saw in India. There is immorality in lands that are called Christian, but it is disavowed by Christianity, ostracized by decent people and under the ban of the civil law. But Buddhism puts immorality in its temples and the Government supports it. This particular temple has the yellow tiled roofs that are only allowed on buildings associated with the Imperial Court or that are under special Imperial protection. Mr. E. H. Parker, after twenty years' experience in China, writes,

“The Chinese are undoubtedly a libidinous people, with a decided inclination to be nasty about it. Rich mandarins are the most profligate class. .. Next come the wealthy merchants. . . . The crapulous leisured classes of Peking openly flaunt the worst of vices. Still, amongst all classes and ranks the moral sense is decidedly weak. Offenses which with us are regarded as almost capitalin any case as infamous crimes-do not count for as much as petty misdemeanours in China." 1

More patent to the superficial observer is a cruelty which appears to be callously indifferent to suffering. This manifests itself not only in most barbarous punishments but in a thou

1 46 China," pp. 272, 273.