In world believe that they are greater than they really are. June, 1903, the same New York newspaper that gave the hor rible details of the burning of a negro by an American mob within thirty miles of Philadelphia announced that a Chinese, Chung Hui Wang, had taken the highest honours in the graduating class at Yale University. Another New York journal, in commenting on the fact that Chao Chu, son of the former Chinese minister, Wu Ting Fang, was graduated in 1904 at the Atlantic City High School as the valedictorian of a class of thirty-one, remarked: "At every commencement there are honours enough to go around, and those won by the Celestial contestants will not be begrudged them. Yet it is not exactly flattering to smart American youth to realize that representatives of an effete civilization after a few years' acquaintance with Western ways can meet our home talent on its own ground and carry off the prizes of scholarship." A British consular official, who spent many years in China and who speaks the language, declares that in his experience of the chinese their fidelity is extraordinary, their sense of responsibility in positions of trust very keen, and that they have a very high standard of gratitude and honour. "I cannot recall a case," he says, "where any Chinese friend has left me in the lurch or played me a dirty trick, and few of us can say the same of our own colleagues and countrymen." The Hon. Chester Holcombe, who quotes this, adds―" The writer, after years of experience and intimate acquaintance with all classes of Chinese from every part of the Empire, is convinced that the characterization of the race as thus given by those who at least are not over-friendly does it only scant justice.' "1 Many quote against the Chinese the familiar lines 66 for ways that are dark But whoever reads the whole poem will see the force of the London Spectator's opinion that it is a "satire of the American selfishness which is the main strength of the cry against the cheap labour of the Chinese," and that "it would not be easy for a moderately intelligent man to avoid seeing that Mr. Bret Harte wished to delineate the Chinese simply as beating the Yankee at his own evil game, and to delineate the Yankee as not at all disposed to take offense at the "cheap labour" of his Oriental rival, until he discovered that he could not cheat the cheap labourer half so completely as the cheap labourer could cheat him.' It is common for people to praise the Japanese and to sneer at the Chinese. All honour to the Japanese for their splendid achievements. With marvellous celerity they have adopted many modern ideas and inventions. They are worthy of the respect they receive. But those who have made a close study of both peoples unhesitatingly assert that the Chinese have more solid elements of permanence and power. The Japanese have the quickness, the enthusiasm, the intelligence of the French; but the Chinese unite to equal intelligence the plodding persistence of the Germans, and the old fable of the tortoise and the hare is as true of nations as it is of individuals. Unquestionably, the Chinese are the most virile race in Asia. "Wherever a Chinese can get a foot of ground and a quart of water he will make something grow." Colquhoun quotes Richthoven as saying that "among the various races of mankind, the Chinese is the only one which in all climates, the hottest and the coldest, is capable of great and lasting activity." And he states as his own opinion: "She has all the elements One thing alone is wanted to build up a great living force. the will, the directing power. That supplied, there are to be found in abundance in China the capacity to carry out, the brains to plan, the hands to work." S IV A TYPICAL PROVINCE |HANTUNG is not only one of the greatest, but it is in many respects one of the most interesting of all the Its length east and west is about provinces of China. 543 miles and in area it is nearly as large as the whole of New England. The name, Shantung, signifies "the sun shining through the trees," but tillable land has become so valuable that trees are now comparatively few save in the villages and temples and about the groves of the rich. But for the most part, Shantung resembles the great prairie regions of the western part of the United States, broken by occasional ranges of hills and low mountains. The soil is generally fertile, though in the southwestern part I found some stony regions where the soil is thin and poor. South of Chinan-fu one finds the loess, a light friable earth which yields so easily to wheel and hoof and wind and water that the stream of travel through successive generations has worn deep cuts in which the traveller may journey for hours and sometimes for days so far below the general level of the country that he can see nothing but the sides of the cut and in turn cannot be seen by others. The character of the soil and the power of the wind and rain have combined not only to excavate these long passages, but to cast up innumerable mounds and hills, often of such fantastic shapes that one is reminded of the quaint and curious formations in the Bad Lands of the Missouri, though the loess hillocks lack the brilliant colouring of the American formations. Throughout the province as a whole, almost every possible square rod of ground is carefully cultivated by the industrious people, so that in the summer time the whole country appears to be continuous gardens and farms dotted with innumerable villages. Wheat appears to be the chief crop and, as in the Dakotas, the entire landscape seems to be one splendid field of waving, yellowing grain. But early in June the wheat disappears as if by magic, for the whole population apparently, men, women and children, turn out and harvest it with amazing quickness in spite of the fact that everything is done by hand. Men and donkeys carry the grain to smooth, hard ground spaces, where it is threshed by a heavy roller stone drawn by a donkey or an ox or by men, and several times I saw it drawn by women. Then it is winnowed by being pitched into the air for the wind to drive out the feathery chaff. The methods vividly illustrate the first Psalm and other Bible referencesgleaning, muzzling "the ox when he treadeth out the corn," the threshing floor and "the chaff which the wind driveth away." One might suppose that after the wheat harvest, stubble fields would be much in evidence. But they are not, for the millet promptly appears. It is hardly noticeable when the wheat is standing. But it grows rapidly, and as soon as the wheat is out of the way, it covers great areas with its refreshing green, looking in its earlier stages like young corn. It is of two varieties. One is a little higher than wheat, with hanging head and a small yellow grain. The other is the kao-liang, which grows to a height of about twelve feet. When small, it is thinned out to one stalk or sometimes two in a hill so that it can develop freely. This stalk is to the common people almost as serviceable as the bamboo to tropical dwellers. It is used for fences, ceilings, walls and many other purposes. The grain of the two varieties is the staple food, few but the richer classes eating rice which is not raised in the north and is high in price. A third species of millet, shu-shu, is used chiefly for distilling a whiskey that is largely used but almost always at home and at night so that little drunkenness is seen by the traveller. |