China now needs help to found a University teaching Western knowledge. Once it is formed, there is every reason to believe that it will be endowed by the same class that has endowed similar institutions in our own country.
Nowhere is the transitional period through which China is passing more obvious than in the cities of China; many towns are still completely Chinese, but as you approach the ports you find more and more Western development. The contrast between towns is extremely marked. Shanghai or Tientsin are Western towns and centres of civilisation; the difference between them and such towns as Hangchow or Ichang is very great. The true Chinese city is not without its beauty—in fact, in many ways it is a beautiful and wonderful place. But to appreciate it eyes only are wanted, and a nose is a misfortune. The streets are extremely narrow passages, which are bordered on either side by most attractive shops, particularly in the main street. The stranger longs to stop and buy things as he goes along, but the difficulty is that it takes so much time; he must either be prepared to pay twice the value of the things he wants, or to spend hours in negotiation. There is one curious exception to this rule; the silk guild at Shanghai does not allow its members to bargain, and therefore in the silk shop the real price is told at once.
The shopkeepers are charming, and there are numbers of salesmen—salesmen who do not mind taking any amount of trouble to please. It is delightful, if insidious, to go into those shops; and one can well believe that if a Chinese silk shop were opened in London, and silk sold at Chinese prices, the shop would have plenty of customers. The quality of Chinese silk far exceeds that of the silks of the West. A Chinese gentleman mentioned as an example of this superiority that one of his gowns was made of French silk, and that it was torn and spoilt after two or three years; but that he had had gowns of Chinese silk for twenty years or more which were quite as good as on the day he bought them, and that he had only put them on one side because the fashions in men's garments change in China as they do elsewhere for ladies. The same gentleman related many interesting things about the silk trade. The quality of the silk is determined by the silk guild. This is much more like the guilds in mediæval Europe than anything that we have nowadays, and that is why China is not exporting more silk than she is at present. These silk guilds to a certain extent prevent the Chinese catering for European customers, as they will not allow or at any rate encourage the production of silks that would take on the European market. The West has many faults as well as many virtues, and one of its faults is that it no longer cares for articles of sterling value, which last long and for which a high price must be paid,but it delights in attractive articles of poor quality at a low price. It is to be feared that the West may spoil some of China's great products as she has spoilt the great arts and productions of India.
But to return to Chinese streets. Next the silk shop will be the silver shop. Here again the work is admirable. At such a place as Kiukiang you can spend an hour or more bargaining, and watching the wonderful skill of the silversmiths as they turn out beautiful silver ornaments. It is pleasant to wander along and to look into the shops and see the strange things that are for sale—fish of many kinds in one shop, rice and grain in another, strange vegetables, little bits of pork, flattened ducks; or to glance at the clothes and the coats hung out, many of them of brilliant colours. The signs over the shops and the names of the merchants are a feature in themselves, illuminated as they are in vivid hues of red and gold, in those wonderful characters so full of mystery to the foreigner.
In a native city up-country the traveller is practically forced to go through the city in a chair. There are no wheel conveyances except wheelbarrows, and, except where there are Manchus, horses are quite unknown. Walking is profoundly unpleasant for a European, for as he walks along he is constantly jostled by porters carrying loads of goods on a bamboo across their shoulders; or cries are heard, and a Chinese Mandarin is carried past shoulder high, leaning forward looking out of hischair perhaps with a smile, of contempt for the foreigner who can so demean himself as to go on foot like a common coolie; or perhaps it is a lady with her chair closely covered in and only a glimpse to be seen of a rouged and powdered face, for the Chinese women paint to excess, as part of their ordinary toilette. Next comes the water-carrier hurrying past with his two buckets of water; or perhaps it is some malodorous burden which makes a Western long to be deprived of the sense of smell. But in a chair a ride through a Chinese town is delightful; the chair-coolies push past foot-passengers who accept their buffets with the greatest equanimity, and from a comparatively elevated position the traveller can look down on the crowd.
But when the Chinese city is near a port, all this begins to change. The chair is replaced by the ricksha, and though in many ways it is less comfortable than a chair, the ricksha is after all the beginning of the rule of the West, being a labour-saving machine. One coolie or two at the most can drag a man quickly and easily where with a chair three or four bearers would be needed. Outside the old town will be built the new native town, and the new native town is built on European lines, with comparatively wide streets. In a treaty port the completed specimen of the transitional stage through which all China is passing is to be seen. Shanghai is a most delightful town, although it seems commonplace to those who live there, butto a stranger it is a place full of contradictions and eccentricities. The first thing that strikes one in Shanghai is that none of the natives know any of the names of the streets. It is true they are written up in large letters both in English and in Chinese; but as not one of the coolies can read, they have not the very slightest idea that that is the name of the street—they call it quite a different name; and as they speak a different language both to that of the educated Chinaman and to the Englishman, there is no reason why they should ever learn the names given by them. The habitual way of directing a ricksha coolie is by a sort of pantomime, and there is always a great element of uncertainty as to whether he will get to his destination even with the oldest resident unless he knows the way himself. I arrived at Tientsin and tried to go and see Dr. Lavington Hart, whose college is known all over China, I may say all over the world, but the Chinese porter was quite unable to make the coolie understand where it was, and so we wandered about for some time till the coolie got tired and put me down opposite what fortunately turned out to be the house of a Japanese gentleman. I entered the house, and was surprised that the Chinese servant who met me did not altogether seem to expect me; but as he could not speak English and I could not speak Chinese, it was impossible to inquire if anything was wrong. I was just wondering why Dr. Hart should live in a Japanese house,when the door opened and a Japanese gentleman walked in. Fortunately for me he spoke both Chinese and English well; so after explanations I was again sent on my road, and found Dr. Lavington Hart waiting dinner for me, and wondering how I had got lost. He then told me that I should have asked not for his college but for the hospital opposite, and that I should have asked not for the street but for the Chinese name of the doctor of the hospital who had been dead ten or fifteen years.
There is a moral in all this: it shows the state of confusion that exists in small as well as in large things. I asked several Englishmen why they did not accept the native names of the streets; their answer was that the coolies could not read them; and when I suggested that common sense would expect that the coolies' names should be taken for the streets, for after all that is how most of the streets in England were originally named, the suggestion met with no approval. These small matters show what a great gulf there is between the thoughts of the two races. If the coolies had been Italians or Germans or Russians, their names would have been accepted, or they would have been compelled to learn the new names.
Another example of the difficulty of carrying on the details of city life is afforded by a common spectacle at Shanghai. In the crowded streets you see a little crowd of policemen. The group consists of three splendid men, typical of three differentcivilisations. First there is the English policeman; next to him is a black-bearded man, bigger than the first, a Sikh, every gesture and action revealing the martial characteristics of his race; then a Chinaman completes the group, blue-coated and wearing a queue and a round Chinese hat as a sign of office. The traveller wonders why this trio is needed till he sees them in action. A motor car rushes down one road, a ricksha comes down another, and a Chinese wheelbarrow with six women sitting on it slowly progresses down a third. All three conveyances are controlled by Chinamen, and when they meet, all shout and shriek at the top of their voices; no one keeps the rule of the road, with the probable result that the wheelbarrow is upset, the ricksha is forced against the wall, and the motor car pulled up dead. Then the police force comes into action. The Chinese policeman objurgates vociferously and makes signals indifferently to everybody; the Sikh policeman at once begins to thrash the Chinese coolie; meanwhile the English policeman at last gets the traffic on the right side of the road, quiets his subordinates, sees justice done, and restores order. Possibly if the matter had been left to the Chinese policeman, he would have arranged it in the end; the traffic in Peking was controlled entirely by Chinese policemen and was fairly well managed.
There is an extraordinary example of the want of consideration for the feelings of the Chinese tobe seen in the public gardens at Shanghai. There stands a notice which contains, among several regulations, first, that "no dogs or bicycles shall be admitted"; secondly, that "no Chinese shall be admitted except servants in attendance on foreigners." Considering that the land is Chinese soil, one cannot but wonder that any one who had dealings with the Chinese should allow so ill-mannered a notice to be put up. No Chinese gentleman would object for a moment if the notice had been to the effect that unclean persons and beggars should be excluded from the gardens; but to exclude the cultured Chinese merchant who is every whit as clean as his Western neighbour, or to exclude the respectable people of the middle class whose orderly behaviour is beyond suspicion, is as unreasonable as it is regrettable.
Again, the Shanghai municipality has no Chinese representatives upon it, though the great bulk of the population is Chinese, with the result that from time to time they come across Chinese prejudices and quite unnecessarily irritate the population which they govern. The Chinese have a principle that a woman shall be publicly punished only for adultery and open shameless theft; her "face" or dignity must be preserved; and therefore she should never be made to answer for her offences in open court, her husband or her father being held responsible for her behaviour and for her punishment. The right way of dealing with any woman who is charged with an offence is to do as we do in England with regard to children, to summonnot her but those responsible for her behaviour. I was assured by a Chinese official that the trouble which culminated in the Shanghai riots originated from disregard of this principle. The refusal of the Shanghai municipality to have Chinese representatives upon it is the more remarkable, as I was informed at Hong-Kong that they have such representatives, and find them most useful in assisting in the government of the Chinese. It is not surprising that Shanghai is a town to which it is diplomatic to make no reference in conversation with a Chinese gentleman.
There is more to be said for the mistrust of the Chinese Post-office and for the continuation of the curious system by which each nation has its own post-office. Nothing is more annoying to the traveller in Shanghai than the trouble he has to get his letters. If it should so happen that he has correspondents in many countries, he has to go to every one of the many post-offices in Shanghai, and they are situated in different parts of the town and in places very difficult to find. There is the Imperial Chinese Post-office, to which he first repairs, and where he will find letters from any correspondent in China; then with the greatest difficulty he reaches the English Post-office; after which he remembers that some of his friends may be on a holiday in France, therefore he must go to the French Post-office, and so on. When he asks why the Chinese Post-office cannot be trusted, he is told that the Chinese themselves will not trust theirpost-office unless there be a European official in control, and that the old Chinese system by which letters are forwarded by private companies still continues in many parts of China, although they possess branches of the Imperial Chinese Post-office. Still the traveller wearily thinks at the end of his day's journey that without undue trust in another nationality, or any loss of national prestige, an International Post-office might be arranged in a town like Shanghai, with its vast travelling population.
Shanghai with its mixture of races, with its national antipathies and jealousies, is indeed one of the most attractive but strangest towns in the whole world. Every race meets there; and as one wanders down the Nanking road, one never tires of watching the nationalities which throng that thoroughfare. There walks a tall bearded Russian, a fat German, jostling perhaps a tiny Japanese officer, whose whole air shows that he regards himself as a member of the conquering race that has checkmated the vast power of Europe; there are sleek Chinese in Western carriages, and there are thin Americans in Eastern rickshas; the motor cycle rushes past, nearly colliding with a closely-curtained chair bearing a Chinese lady of rank, or a splendid Indian in a yellow silk coat is struck in the face by the hat of a Frenchman, who finds the pavements of Shanghai too narrow for his sweeping salute; one hears guttural German alternating with Cockney slang; Parisian toilettes are seen next half-naked coolies; a couple of sailors ona tandem cycle almost upset two Japanese beauties as they shuffle along with their toes turned in; a grey gowned Buddhist priest elbows a bearded Roman missionary; a Russian shop where patriotism rather than love of gain induces the owners to conceal the nature of their wares by employing the Russian alphabet overhead, stands opposite a Japanese shop which, in not too perfect English, assures the wide world that their heads can be cut cheaply; an English lady looks askance at the tightness of her Chinese sister's nether garments, while the Chinese sister wonders how the white race can tolerate the indecency that allows a woman to show her shape and wear transparent sleeves.
Yes, Shanghai on a spring afternoon is a most interesting place; and yet as you turn your eyes to the river and catch sight of the dark grey warship, you realise that beneath all this peace and busy commerce lies the fear of the grim realities of war. China may assimilate the adjuncts of Western life, but she will never welcome the Western. The racial gulf that divides them is far too deep. It may be temporarily bridged by the heroism of a missionary; the enthusiasm of Christianity may make those who embrace it brothers; but the feeling of love will not extend one inch beyond the influence of religion; and those who ponder on the future as they watch the many-hued crowd that passes must grow more and more sure that the future of China lies with the Chinese alone; and however much as a race they maybe willing to learn from the West, they will as a race be led only by their own people. The Westerner may be employed; Western teaching may be learnt; Western garments may be worn; but, as a Chinese professor said, "The wearer will be a Chinaman all the same."
There was one marked difference in the cities of China as we saw them in our two visits, and this was the change that had taken place in the matter of opium-smoking. Opium-smoking in 1907 was such a common vice that you could see men smoking it at the doors of their houses. In 1909 opium-smoking hid itself, and those that smoked, smoked secretly, or at any rate less ostentatiously. I doubt whether so great an alteration has taken place in any country, certainly not of late years.
Each race has its peculiar vice; in fact, we may go further than that, we may say that it is a remarkable fact that the great bulk of mankind insists on taking some form of poison; in fact, it is only a minute minority which wholly abstains from this practice. The poisons used by mankind have different effects and have a different degree of toxic power, but the reason they are used is because in some way they stimulate or soothe the nervous system. Opium, alcohol, tobacco, tea, coffee, hashish, are examples of this widespread habit of humanity; but these different drugs have the most different effects on the welfare of man. Some seem to be whollyinnocuous if not beneficial, and others seem to be absolutely pernicious and to do nothing but evil; and further than that, one may say that a different preparation of the same drug or a different way of taking it produces differing results. A still more curious thing is that though all mankind is agreed in taking some poison, there is a marked, racial tendency to accept one particular poison and to detest others, and at times it seems as if the habit of taking one was sufficient to prevent another having any attraction.
As we went to China we passed through the Suez Canal, and heard what a curse hashish was in Egypt, and how the Egyptian Government had endeavoured to secure total prohibition of the use of this obnoxious drug, a course which was impossible owing to the great amount of smuggling that was facilitated by the wide deserts that surround Egypt.
When we arrived at Saigon (we were travelling by the French mail) we first came in contact with the terrible vice of the Chinese. A French lady was pointed out to us by a doctor, and he asked us to observe the odd glassy look of her eyes, the intense suavity of her manner and the contempt which she evinced for truth, and he told us that these were all symptoms of the vice of opium-smoking that she had contracted from association with the Annamites. The French for some mysterious reason seem more prone to acquire this vice than do our own countrymen, for though in 1907 it was rife in South China,no one ever suggested that any English smoked opium at Hong-Kong.
As we went up to Canton crowds of people were smoking opium on the Chinese deck, and when we wandered round they had no objection to our standing watching the lazy process of dipping the needle into the treacle-like mixture, turning it round till a bead was formed, then putting it into the lamp to light and thence transferring it to the opium pipe, when after three whiffs or so the process had to be begun again.
The first effect of opium-smoking is to make a man intelligent and amiable. It is for this reason that opium-smoking—so the Chinese explained to us—is used largely in business. When business is difficult, and you cannot get three or four men to agree, the opium pipe is brought out, and after two or three whiffs the cantankerous people are reasonable, and the people whose dignity is hurt are forgiving, and business is easily and rapidly transacted. The next stage of smoking is stupidity. As you watch an opium-smoker in that condition he nods amiably at you with a rather imbecile look. The last stage is one of heavy senseless sleep. The habitual opium-smoker rarely passes the first stage, and its apparently beneficial influence constitutes its danger. Each man says to himself: "I will never take it to excess; I will merely use it and not abuse it; it makes life sweet to me and business easy."
I have always thought that those who condemnopium have a tendency to prove too much in their argument. If it could be shown that the effects of opium-taking were invariably pernicious, it would be very hard to see how the vice could take such a hold as it has taken on the Chinese race; if the young men regularly saw that the older men were brought to inanity and death by the use of opium, they would themselves be terrified of contracting the vice, and it would not have spread as rapidly as it has done. The vice is essentially modern. Opium has only been grown in China for about seventy or eighty years, and it has only been imported in large quantities for a scarcely longer period of time. An inhabitant of Shansi told us that though every one smoked opium, and it was a terrible curse, his father remembered its introduction. Opium is certainly deleterious to the moral fibre of a race, and in many cases it produces death and misery; but there are a certain number of cases where no obvious evil effects follow from its consumption—cases when as a rule a man is well-nourished, for it acts most deleteriously on a man's powers of digestion. Men who have good food can better tolerate the effects of the drug, so a mission doctor explained, and their comparative immunity tempts others to follow their example. Men do not see at once the evil that will result, and so its use has spread by leaps and bounds. The Chinese Government have always theoretically resisted it, but their action has been hampered by their not being permitted toprohibit its importation. For many years the pro-opium party in China used those treaty obligations by which China was bound to permit the importation of opium as a reason for stopping any efforts to extirpate the vice in the country. Not only were there always a great number of people in high places addicted to the vice, who were naturally unwilling to remove from themselves the opportunity of its gratification, but also there was a vast number of people who rapidly acquired a great pecuniary interest both in the maintenance and extension of this trade.
Unfortunately for humanity, opium was not only very injurious but extremely portable, and it therefore formed in a country where means of communication are bad a very useful article of exchange. The peasant farmer will grow most things on his little farm which he and his family consume—in most respects they will be a self-supporting community—but there must be a certain number of things which they will need to buy, and for which they must give something in exchange; that something must be portable. In many cases the only way of bringing your goods to the market is by carrying them on your own back. Opium, alas, forms, in soils which it suits, a most remunerative crop. The whole product of several fields can be carried quite easily on a man's back and can be sent down to the market, where it will find a ready sale, and the result of that sale will be invested in articles of which the farmer and his family have need.
Not only the farmer, but the trader, both Chinese and European, find it a most profitable source of trade. It was hard, and it is hard, to persuade the European trader that it is injurious to China, and to understand the reason we must turn back to the thought which was suggested at the beginning of the chapter, namely, that it is very doubtful whether the English race has any natural desire for the vice, while it is most patent that the Chinese have a peculiar national tendency towards this form of dissipation. When people have no desire for an intoxicant themselves, it is hard to persuade them that others may have a desire which may be beyond all power of restraint. The trading class mixes but little socially with the Chinese, and the people with whom they are brought in contact are very generally pecuniarily interested in the opium trade, and therefore they have neither the evidence of the Chinese nor of their own temptation to convince them of the insidious and dangerous character of this vice to the Chinese race.
The English race has long been conversant with opium. In the form of laudanum it used to be sold freely in the eastern counties. I have heard people describe years ago how the old women from the fen round Lowestoffe, or the marshes as they are there called, would call on market day at the chemist for their regular supply of laudanum, which they would take in quantities sufficient to make any ordinary person go fast asleep. It was used there, as it is used in manycountries, as a prophylactic against ague. The doctors now deny that it has any beneficial effect, but the people in the eastern counties used to think differently. But when I was a curate at Yarmouth I could find no traces of this vice; it had apparently been exterminated not by any social reform or moral movement, but by the superior attraction of alcohol; and in my day Yarmouth and the district round was terribly addicted to the national vice of intemperance. I noticed the same thing in Shanghai. The English know opium; most of them have out of curiosity tried a pipe; and they describe the effects as trifling or very unpleasant. One man said that he felt as if all his bones were a jelly; another that he felt as if he was floating between heaven and earth; a third that he found no pleasure in it at all, but that he had a "filthy headache" next day. On the other hand, if you go into the Shanghai Club you can see at once what is the attractive vice to the European at Shanghai; the whole of one side of the entrance hall was nothing more than the bar of an overgrown public-house. You will hear story after story which tells the same old tale that alcohol, especially in its strongest form, is the greatest pleasure and the worst danger to the Englishman abroad as at home.
If opium is unattractive to the white man, on the other hand alcohol is equally unattractive to the yellow man; in fact, their relative position is much the same. The yellow man has known of alcohol from the very earliest ages. Dr. Ross quotes thesecond ode of the Book of Poetry as showing how well known drunkenness was to the Chinese: "Before they drank too much, they were dignified and grave; but with too much drink their dignity changed to indecency, their gravity to rudeness; the fact is, that when they have become drunk they lose all sense of order. When the guests have drunk too much, they shout, they brawl, they upset the orderly arrangement of the dishes, they dance about unsteadily, their caps are set awry and threaten to fall off, they dance about and do not know when to stop. Had they gone out before drinking so deeply, both host and guest would have been happier. Drinking gives real happiness only when it is taken in moderation according to propriety."
Drunkenness seems to have been extirpated from China by the same process that laudanum-taking was from the eastern counties, namely, it has given way before the more entrancing vice of opium-smoking. I was assured that the Tibetans do not share with the Chinese this preference for opium, and this is all the more remarkable because from their geographical position they have always been in close contact with India, which is apparently the home of the opium vice, but they have adhered steadily to the vice of drunkenness. The Chinese have free trade in drink; they have no licensing laws; any one may sell alcohol at any time of the day, in any place they like; and yet alcohol has so few votaries that you will scarcely see a drunken man from one end of China to another.
If the English commercial world is incredulous to the danger of opium to the Chinaman, not so the Chinese world. People will tell you that Orientals love to agree with you in whatever you say, but I heard a British Vice-consul flatly contradicted by a Chinese official when the Vice-consul expressed a doubt as to the danger of the vice, and I must say the Chinese disputant supported his contradiction with an argument which seemed to me perfectly unanswerable. He said: "Look at the Japanese; they are impartial spectators of the vice of alcoholism and opium-smoking; they are conversant with the worst forms of alcoholism that white men can show them. It is well known that white sailors are great offenders in this respect. Every port in Japan knows what it is to see a drunken sailor finding his way to his ship. They are equally conversant with the vice of opium-smoking. They have intimate contact with the Chinese; they know both the recent origin of this vice and its terrible ravages; and what do they do? Do they forbid both vices equally? No; they are so convinced that opium is so much more dangerous than alcohol, that they will not allow it to be introduced into their country for smoking purposes, and the smuggler is liable to five years' penal servitude. But the vice of alcoholism they treat as something which, though harmful, can never threaten their national existence."
Perhaps we who have suffered much more from the vice of alcoholism than of opium-smoking may beinclined to think that while the Japanese are right in the opium question, they are acting imprudently in allowing alcoholism to gain such a hold on their people; but whether they are right or wrong, there can be no doubt that the Chinese official had justice on his side when he pointed out that to the Japanese mind the evils that opium-smoking had done to China were of a most serious character.
His Excellency Tang-K'ai-Sun spoke the Chinese mind when, in an eloquent speech at the Shanghai Conference, he told of the awful desolation that opium was bringing to his land. But it is unnecessary to quote the opinion of individual Chinamen; they are practically unanimous on this subject. One has only got to point to what China has done to show two things. First, that the curse of opium-smoking was far greater and more horrible than anything that we have experienced on this side of the globe; next, that there is latent in the Chinese character a vigour and an energy which, when it is called into action, despises all obstacles and acts so efficiently as to leave the world lost in astonishment. Realise what China has done. China is addicted to a vice which has a far greater hold upon her than alcoholism has upon us; she determines that within ten years that vice is to cease. The production of the poppy is to be diminished till none is produced; opium-smokers are to be held up to public scorn; opium dens—which are really the equivalent of our public-houses—are to be closed; all officials who takeopium are to be turned out of Government employ; the only exception that is made is for old men, and that exception was quite unavoidable. So vigorous was the action of the Government that men who have for forty or fifty years of their lives taken opium, tried to give it up; the result was in several cases that they were unable to support the physical strain; a great illness, even death, ensued; and so the edict was relaxed; men over sixty were allowed to continue smoking. When all this was published, every one smiled. They argued that China was trying to do the impossible. A vice like opium-smoking may be extirpated, but only after years of struggle. A generation must come and a generation must go before opium or any similar vice shows appreciable diminution.
We ourselves have not been unsuccessful in struggling against the vice of alcoholism; but consider the number of years since Father Mathew first spoke against drink. England may be growing sober, but it is by slow if steady degrees. But China hopes to accomplish in ten years what has taken England so many patient years of toil to effect partially. The idea that China could do this was regarded by most Westerns as almost laughable. In 1907, when the edict was first put forth, all those we met in China held this view; even missionaries, while they gave every credit to the Government for what it intended, shook their heads and foretold disappointment. We noticed as we passed along thatwonderful line that links Hankow to Peking and Peking to Harbin in 1907 that the country was beautiful with the white and pink crops of poppy, till at times one might imagine that the transformation scene of a London theatre was before us rather than the land of China, and remembering what we had been told, we also confidently expected failure to the edict which requires the destruction of so many miles of this pernicious if beautiful crop.
In 1909, when we again traversed the same country, we could not see a single poppy flower; not only so, but we made every effort to see if we could find a field. We went for a twenty mile walk at Ichang through the country, where no one could have expected a foreigner to come, and we only found one tiny patch of poppy, and one in which the ruthless hand of the law had rooted up the growing crop. As we went up the Gorges of the Yangtsze we scanned with a strong glass the hillside, and never once on those glorious mountains did we see any sign of opium cultivation. We asked about the officials; not only was the Government enforcing the law that officials must give up opium-smoking, but they were taking a more effectual action; they were requiring all those who were going to be officials to spend some time under supervision, to ensure that they should not be opium-smokers. Could any Western power hope to accomplish such a feat? Would the most extreme temperance reformer suggest that all public-houses should be closed, that the amount of barleyshould be diminished every year till within ten years none should be grown, and that all the Government officials, from the Prime Minister downwards, should become total abstainers within that period? The reason of this vigorous action of China and its present success is to be attributed to two things: first, to the terrible and very real national fear that this vice will destroy the nation, as it has destroyed countless families and individuals; secondly, to the vast store of energy which enables China to accept new ideas and act vigorously on them.
The great revolution of thought that is going on has called forth this vigour. The China of yesterday wasfainéantand unprogressive. The China that is emerging out of this revolution of thought is energetic, though possibly unpractical. The old traditions of Government are not lost, and they wait but for the man and the hour to enable China to act as vigorously as she has done in time past. Her action in this opium question may be ill-considered in some details; it may even fail; but it has shown the world that China is in earnest, and that she can act with a vigour which will cause wonder and envy on this side of the world. Every missionary reports that even high officials are coming asking to be cured of the opium habit. The missionaries have founded refuges where they receive and cure those who are ready to submit to the terrible ordeal, for their suffering is intense. Many quack cures are advertised. Some are definitely pernicious; for instance, themorphia syringe has become a common article for sale in some parts of China. Some few may be beneficial. There is no doubt that the movement against opium is a great national movement, and is not the result of the action of any small or fanatical party. What China has done proves that this is so.
Let me close the chapter by a quotation from the ablest of the foreign representatives at Peking, Sir John Jordan. Writing to Sir Edward Grey, he says: "It is true that the Chinese Government have in recent years effected some far-reaching changes, of which the abolition of the old examination system is perhaps the most striking instance; but to sweep away in a decade habits which have been the growth of at least a century, and which have gained a firm hold upon 8,000,000 of the adult population of the empire, is a task which has, I imagine, been rarely attempted with success in the course of history; and the attempt, it must be remembered, is to be made at a time when the Central Government has largely lost the power to impose its will upon the provinces. The authors of the movement are, however, confident of success, and China will deserve and doubtless receive much sympathy in any serious effort she may make to stamp out the evil."
The desire for radical change is never so much to be dreaded as when it attacks the home life of a nation. That quiet life so often hidden away because of its very sacredness by the Eastern races is like everything else in China disturbed by the introduction of Western civilisation, and in no other part of human life will its two different sides be more apparent. Western civilisation without Christianity will destroy the home life as it destroys most Eastern things it touches, and will do little to construct a new life to take the place of the one it destroys. The Japanese complain that Western civilisation has destroyed both the modesty and the religion of their women, and Christianity has not yet been able to any great extent to reconstruct on the basis of true religion new ideals of feminine life. Therefore the Chinese, with all their enthusiasm for Western culture, are looking a little nervously at what they see has happened in Japan. They say that their home life is not now unbeautiful; even those who are disposed to admit that the life of the Western woman is founded on higher ideals than their own will not allow that their national home life deserves unmixedcondemnation. Everybody agrees that the wanton destruction of the laws which govern women's life in China may have a terrible result when Western civilisation is unwisely introduced, especially if it is made to appear to be a civilisation without religion. The missionaries see in this crisis the necessity for vigorous action; while thankful for the movement, they realise the responsibility it puts upon Christians to see that that movement is wisely directed. In the memorial from the Centenary Conference at Shanghai in 1907 to the Home Churches, they say:—
"The changed attitude of China towards female education and the place of woman, lays upon us great responsibilities. The uplifting of woman is a first need in the moral regeneration of a people, and one of the things in which Christianity has a totally different ideal from that which the religions of China have encouraged. The present change of national sentiment on the subject is one of the indirect but none the less striking changes that the slow but steady dissemination of Christian ideas in China during the past century has led to. Let it be remembered, however, that it requires the Christian motive power to make it successful and fruitful."
It is somewhat difficult to obtain information from the Chinese themselves as to the position of women. They are very averse to discussing the subject; in fact, it is not even regarded as good manners for a man to ask after the health of his most intimate friend's wife; and all the information that we couldget had for the most part to be obtained by Lady Florence Cecil through feminine sources. We may generally state, however, that the position of women in China is neither so low as that which they occupy in India or among the Mohammedans, neither is it in any degree so high as the position of women in Western lands. The woman is completely subject to the man; till she marries she is subject to her father, when she is married she is subject to her husband, and if her husband dies she is then subject to her son, and rarely re-marries. These are called the three obediences. She is not educated as a rule, because both public opinion and Chinese philosophy regard her as mentally far inferior to the man. We shall explain later on how in Chinese thought everything is divided into a good and an evil principle—a Yang and a Yin. The woman is distinctly Yin. She is therefore necessary to man, but at the same time inferior.
Again, with regard to the question of polygamy, her position is an intermediate one between the avowed polygamy of Moslem countries and the ill-maintained monogamy of many a Latin country. In Hong-Kong the position was explained by a Chinaman to me thus: that when a woman grew old it was regarded as her duty to provide a secondary wife for her husband's pleasure and as a companion for herself—a companion with a sense of servitude in it. If this was done in an orderly manner, it was absolutely approved by Chinese public opinion. If,on the other hand, the husband, ignoring the wife's rights, should choose a secondary wife for himself and set her up in another house, his attitude would be regarded as distinctly doubtful by the respectable Chinese. In the same way if an official were appointed to a distant post he would probably not think of imposing upon his wife with her deformed feet the pain and discomfort of a long journey; he would most likely take a natural-footed woman, who will be for that reason a slave; in fact, one gentleman went so far as to say that he thought that the squeezed feet had a great deal to do with this institution of a secondary wife, because he noted that the secondary wives of all the officials when they were travelling were natural-footed women.
The secondary wife would be rarely a woman of good class; it is allowed to be an inferior position. On the other hand, if she bears her husband a son, and that son is recognised, all that son's relations, and therefore all his mother's relations, become relations of the father.
The curious tangle which such a position begets when brought into contact with the Christian idea is exemplified in this story. A rich Chinaman had three wives. By his lawful wife he had nine children; by the other two he had none; but his second wife was a woman of very strong character, and she was brought in touch with the missionaries by the Chinese wife of a European. She apparently ruled the house with a kindly rule to which all the othersbowed. She did everything in an energetic and vigorous way, and she studied Christianity till she was convinced of its truth, and then she demanded baptism. There was a great difficulty; she must leave her husband before she could be baptized. After considerable delay she accepted the condition, but resistance came, not alone from the man, but from the other two wives. They could not possibly get on without her; they were like sisters; and she must be allowed to return to the house. She refused, though the pressure was extreme. The man said that he had promised his ancestors that none of his children should be Christians, and that his own mother would not forgive him; but the woman held firm, and at last she was baptized. Her face was beautiful to behold while she was accepting Christianity and renouncing all that made life sweet to her. The husband was so moved by her fortitude that he signed a paper promising not to molest her, and yet to support her apart, so that she should not be in any need.
At the Shanghai Conference there were, curious to relate, many women who wished the Christian body to recognise existing polygamy among the Chinese. A sentence of the resolution proposed was that "secondary wives may be admitted to membership if obviously true Christians." Mr. Arnold Foster resisted the inclusion of these words, and they were lost. No doubt the Conference was wise in taking this line. It is most essential to maintain the purityof the home life, and the difficulty that arises from secondary wives desiring to join the Christian Church can never be a very important one, as the vast majority of Chinese are monogamous.
A serious evil this custom creates is that of female slavery. Both in Japan and China one of the awful penalties of poverty is that a man is sometimes forced to sell his female children. These little girls are bought by prudent Chinamen, first to be servants to their own wives and then to act as secondary wives to their sons to prevent them going elsewhere. Sometimes they are kidnapped by men who make a regular business of this cruel traffic. Stories are told of boat-loads of these children being brought down the Yangtsze, concealed below the deck and terrorised to keep them quiet by one of their number being killed before their eyes. On one occasion a missionary suddenly saw a hand thrust through the planks of the deck, and on investigation he discovered a dozen children hidden below, and as it turned out they had been kidnapped, not bought, he was able to get them released. These slaves are the absolute property of their owners, and many are the tales told of the cruel and neglectful treatment to which they are subjected. In Shanghai the Chinese police will report such cases, and in consequence the ladies of the settlement have founded an admirable institution to which they can be brought. The Slave Refuge deserves all support. There the little girls are taught and cared for, and helped toforget the terrible experiences some of them have gone through. Sad to relate, many of them have to be taken first to the hospital to be cured from the effects of the ill-treatment they have received. One poor little thing went into convulsions when a fire was lit in the ward; it was difficult to understand the reason, but when it happened again and the poor child uttered incoherent appeals for mercy, it was discovered that she thought the fire was lit to heat opium needles with which to torture her. Her system was too shattered for recovery, but many others get quite well and form a pleasing sight at work and play in the bright cheerful Refuge, with the happy elasticity of youth forgetting the injuries which in some cases have left on them permanent scars. But I fear the system of slavery continues very commonly all over China, and such a philanthropic effort as the Shanghai Slave Refuge can touch but a very small proportion of them. Probably when the little slaves are destined to be wives to their mistresses' sons they are treated less cruelly, and though employed as household drudges, do not live actively unhappy lives.
Without stating that women as a whole are miserable, I think it would be no exaggeration to say that they are infinitely less happy than their Western sisters. Many of the national customs militate against their happiness. The custom of child betrothal, for instance, condemns a woman to live completely subject to a man for whom she perhapshas the greatest natural antipathy. Stories are told of brides committing suicide rather than leave their father's house to be married to men for whom they feel no affection; yet as a whole they accept their position, and a Chinese woman has neither the will nor the power to be untrue to her husband.
Again, the rule of the husband's mother is very often extremely harsh; the child-wife is little better than her drudge. On the other hand, when a woman grows older, her position is one of considerable strength. I was assured that they take a keen interest in the management of their husbands' properties, and often show themselves excellent business women. The position which the late Empress of China acquired shows that women's position is the very reverse of inferior when dignified by age.
And now before all this woman's world glitters Western civilisation; the greater dignity which is accorded therein to women is envied and the laws which restrain her are misunderstood. The Chinese women hear stories of Western life. At first such strange perversions are believed as that in the West women rule. One missionary explained that this absurd figment came from the rule of the late Queen; another attributed it to the custom men have when travelling in China of walking while their wives remained in the carrying chair. To the Chinaman such a course admits of but one explanation: thewoman must be greater than the man because she is carried while he walks.
Again, in Western China they learnt through their local press that girls and boys received a similar education in England, and they concluded that the dress must be also similar, and the missionaries were more amused than scandalised at seeing a Government girls' school turned out in boys' clothes. It was explained to us that this was far from being an uncommon custom in China; slave-girls who have been brought up with natural feet are habitually dressed as boys, and it is common now for fathers of small daughters with unbound feet to avoid the unpleasant taunts of the ignorant by allowing their daughters while they are children to wear boys' clothes.
Still on the whole the desire for imitation of the West has been very beneficial to the women of China, especially in this matter of foot-binding. This disgusting custom is going out of fashion among the enlightened and educated classes; two or three Chinese gentlemen assured us that this was so; and in a place like Shanghai, where the Western movement is very strong, the number of women with unbound feet is quite remarkable; the greater number of them naturally have had their feet bound, and as feet bound from infancy never become quite normal, they still have something of the tottering walk which used to be the admiration of every Chinaman; in fact, this tottering walk is preserved as a piece ofaffectation. A lady told us that even her Christian girls' school was not above such a feminine weakness. As they walked to Church they would step out with the swinging stride that regular gymnastic exercises and a most comfortable dress have encouraged; suddenly the lady would see the whole of her school struck with a sort of paralysis which made them exchange their easy gait for the "tottering-lily" walk of the Chinese small-footed women. The cause is that the boys' school has just come into sight. I fear it must be admitted that foot-binding continues to be practised in the interior amongst the poorer women, who cling to the custom for fear of ridicule.
The most beneficial effect of the admiration of the West is the earnest desire that it has given to Chinese women for education. So keen is this desire that even married women will become children again and take their position in the class. Husbands who have received Western education are most anxious that their wives should share somewhat in their interests.
Lady Florence could see over girls' schools where a man's visit would not have been acceptable, so she visited many of all varieties, including two at Peking of a rather unusual description. One of them was carried on by a Manchu lady of high position, connected with a great Manchu prince. Her attitude generally towards the forward women's movement offends her family, as she lectures publicly on topics of the time.Her school is small, and, alas, not very efficient, she having fallen into the usual fallacy amongst the Chinese of believing that a Japanese instructress must of necessity be efficient. Still her desire to give education to the children of the poor is worthy of nothing but commendation. She looked most impressive, being a fine big handsome woman, attired in the Manchu long robe with the ornate Manchu head-dress. The second school my wife saw was managed by another Manchu lady, and it seemed more orderly and more successful than the other. These two schools testified to a desire to improve the status of women. My wife visited many other schools, some belonging to missions of various denominations, which attracted the daughters and even the wives of upper-class men, who mixed quite happily with girls of lower degree, being all united in a fervent desire for education, the ruling desire now in China among women of all classes.
This desire for education is a great opportunity for the missionaries, and they appeal most eloquently in the message from which we have already quoted for help from their sisters in England. "We need more schools for girls and more consecrated and highly trained women competent to conduct such schools and gradually to give higher and higher instruction in them. We need more training schools, also, for Chinese women, to fit them to work among their sisters, and we need educated Christian ladies from our homelands for Zenana work in the houses of thewell-to-do. Such work would have been impossible a few years ago; now the visits of such workers would in many cases be cordially welcomed by Chinese ladies, and frequently they would be returned, for the seclusion of women in China is not at all as strict as it is in India. This, so far, has been a comparatively unworked sphere of usefulness in China, but it is one full of promise and of gracious opportunity in the present."
The difficulty of education is in one way increased and in another way decreased by the ignorance which many women have of reading the Chinese characters. A new system has been invented by which Chinese can be written in our letters as pronounced. This is called by the rather uncouth name of "Romanised." At the Shanghai Conference we were told wonderful stories of the incredibly short space of time in which women learnt to read by this system. A woman of sixty-seven learnt in two months; while one lady asserted that she had taught a boy to read between Friday and Wednesday, I may add inclusive. This extraordinary achievement is not quite so impossible as it would be with our more complicated languages. The Chinese have extremely few sounds, and their language is monosyllabic in formation. However, we do not ask our readers to accept this as the normal rate of education; still the thing is worth mentioning, because it is possibly the beginning of a great movement which may alter the whole of education in the Far East. The extreme ease withwhich Chinese can be written in our letters may induce some daring spirit to advocate it as a system fitted for the education of the poor, though this is at present quite improbable.
A far darker side to the introduction of Western ways is the gradual naturalisation of the social evils of the West. Lady Florence had the privilege of seeing some of the rescue work undertaken by devoted missionary ladies in Shanghai. Being an open port, this town, in common, I believe, with the other semi-Westernised ports in China, bears a very bad character as regards purity of morals. The advent of the foreigner has done nothing but harm in this respect. Wonderful and horrible though it may seem, the vice-mart exists in the ports mainly in connection with the foreigners, who appear to have shown the way to the Chinese. There is a street in Shanghai, the Foochow Road, where terrible scandals occur almost openly; signs whose intention is veiled to the outsider by his ignorance of Chinese characters, boldly advertise the merits of various houses and their inmates. Formerly these wretched girls were even paraded in open chairs, but this has been stopped, though they are still carried about in closed chairs. The scenes in this street as night falls are a sad witness to the ill effect of Western ideas without Christianity. It must never be forgotten that the victims of this condition of things are literally victims. They have no choice in the matter. They are sold by their parents, even by their husbands,into their terrible position; and though some may live a life of luxury, most of them are cruelly treated, beaten, tortured to prevent flight, and, as is proved by their subsequent conduct, they regard the life with absolute loathing.
Inspired by profound pity for these poor creatures, these excellent ladies started a Refuge for them with a receiving-house in the very midst of this locality of ill-fame. To this haven the poor things often flee even in the middle of the night, facing the unknown, undeterred by rumours of the evil intentions of the foreigners put about by their owners, rather than endure longer the life of degradation and misery to which they have been condemned. The missionaries receive them and pass them on to the "Door of Hope," the appropriately named Refuge, which restores them to hope and peace and happiness. There were to be seen some eighty young women living a hard-working simple life, contented and merry, and apparently never regretting for one moment the fine clothes and lazy luxury which many of them had renounced. The ladies teach them useful arts, instruct them in Christianity, and fit them for wives to Chinese Christians who will be good to them, and, understanding well that their former life was involuntary, are glad to have wives with a modicum of education. The ladies will allow non-Christians to mate with non-Christians, if of good character; but they will not permit any of their rescued flock to become secondary wives.Two things are remarkable in this work of almost divine compassion—a relapse is practically unknown; and it is the Chinese who are most helpful in encouraging it—more so than foreigners; the Chinese often themselves suggest the "Door of Hope" to these girls, and help in police cases to save them from their brutal owners.
The risk that China runs at this moment in the home-life is the same as the risk that she is running in every other department of her national existence. If the materialist side of Western civilisation is the one that is the most apparent, it is scarcely possible that it will fail to do great damage to her home-life. A thoughtful Chinaman, talking about the whole question, argued in favour of a complete acceptance of Western ideas. He was afraid of a half measure. He said that there was no question that women in the West are restrained by a mass of conventions of whose value they are perhaps unconscious, but which are very apparent to those who have been brought up in a different civilisation. It is the existence of these conventions that makes their liberty possible. If the Chinese are to accept Western civilisation for their women, and he regarded this as inevitable, they must learn the conventions; and therefore his solution to the problem was that Chinese girls should be brought to England and brought up as English girls.
But many missionaries plead for the opposite policy. They say: "Let us preserve what is good in the Chinese home-life, let Christianity permeatethat life and make it beautiful, but do not destroy it. The Chinese home-life fits the Chinese race. The Westernised Chinawoman will combine the errors of both civilisations and the virtues of neither."
Without giving an opinion on this very vexed question, we may express a hope that a policy of prudence and moderation will govern the action of those who are concerned with women's education, for the degree of alteration which may be necessary in women's life to make them fitted to receive Western civilisation will be a matter rather of experiment than of theory. At any rate let Christianity precede any large alterations, for Christianity alone can make the life of a Western woman intelligible and consistent to her Eastern sister.
Among the many ways a nation has of expressing its thoughts and of showing its individuality, none is more valuable to mankind in general than its art.
Perhaps it can be said that every civilised nation has contributed to the common stock of art, and certainly China has done her share. The porcelain which is called after her name testifies to her pre-eminence in ceramic art, and should make Westerns cautious in expressing their contempt for a race which is generally acknowledged to be the originator of this industry. I will not attempt to express an opinion about the mysteries of this art, except to regret that the name of the country should be so attached to this product of her skill as constantly to cause confusion. When my friend Archdeacon Moule published his interesting book on "New China and Old," a lady wrote to him to say that she did not care for new china, but as she was a collector of old china, she would much like to read his book.
China has contributed to other forms of art as well. Her embroideries and her lacquer work are well known; her ivory carving and silver work have found a place in every collection. Her art, as wemight expect from a race which has been under artificial conditions of civilisation for many years, is distinctly artificial. In it you can see the spirit of a race who for many centuries have been taught to control themselves and to avoid the natural expression of their feelings. If it is artificial in form, it is pleasing in colour and superb in workmanship. There are few who will not agree that every effort should be made to preserve these arts from being injured by a false admiration of Western models. The only possible exception being modern embroideries, which might be considerably improved if more harmonious colours were blended together.
China excels in another art, though her excellence is not admitted either by the foreign resident or even by the native student. In certain forms of architecture she is unequalled. Yet when the Westerner comes to China he glories in bringing with him Western architecture, indifferent as to whether it is suited to the climatic conditions or is in itself beautiful. Take, for instance, the English churches of China. Could any form of architecture be less suited to a country like China, where the sun is frequently oppressively hot, than Gothic architecture? The large windows, the pointed arch, and the weak, open, high-pitched roof may be suitable in a country like ours which has little sunlight, and where a wet drifting snow will often force an entrance into the best-designed roof; but in a country like China, where the sun is the chief difficulty, some constructionshould be preferred which renders a heavy and heat-proof roof possible. If antipathy to the Chinese necessitated a Western type of building, Italian or even Romanesque architecture might be selected, and a building with a massive roof supported on solid arches might resist the rays of the sun. But why not accept the Chinese architecture as eminently fitted for the climate?
If Christianity is to be assimilated by China and become part of their national existence, the buildings in which it is proclaimed should be essentially national. The intention of the Christian should be written clearly on the face of every landscape where the new and beautiful Chinese building rises up for the religion which is, as we maintain, as essentially fitted for the Chinese as it is for the English. We do not worship in a Roman basilica, but in the buildings that the northern architects have devised as suitable, both for Christian worship and for our climate. The new Chinese churches need not be replicas of the Chinese temples; the object of the building is different, therefore the building should differ, but there are many other forms in which it is possible for the architect to express in Chinese architecture the eternal truths of Christianity.
Again, why are all the schools and colleges erected on Western patterns. The Chinese are used to and prefer their own architecture, and from a sanitary point of view I hardly think it is inferior. The average Westerner in China has but one idea, andthat is that the Chinese must become like a Western nation or must remain untouched by Western civilisation. He absolutely refuses the suggestion that the architecture of China can be altered to suit modern conditions.
It is said that the thoughts of all nations are written in their architecture; that you can see the nobility of the Middle Ages in the Gothic cathedral, or the fulness of the thought of the Renaissance in the Palladian facade; certainly on the modern Chinese town the story of their change of thought is being rapidly written, perhaps with truth, but certainly not with beauty. The Western man absolutely despising all things Chinese refuses to erect any building which preserves even a detail of the national architecture; the Westernising Chinaman in faithful imitation erects Western buildings, but with this difference; whereas the buildings of the Western have some beauty—for instance, the cathedral at Shanghai is a noble building and the Pe-T'ang at Peking would not disgrace an Italian town, even the bankers' palaces at Hankow are not unworthy dwellings for merchant princes—the Chinese imitations of these Western buildings have but little beauty to commend them, and as far as I could understand they are really less serviceable than a true Chinese building.
No European resident in China will ever allow that Chinese buildings are either beautiful or useful, and if any one suggests that a Western house shallbe built in the Chinese style the suggestion is scouted as absurd; yet the British Legation at Peking is an old Chinese palace, and no one who has seen it ever doubts that it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the whole of China, and if this building has been found fitting for His Majesty's Representative, surely some such building might serve for others of less high station.
As to the spiritual ideals in Chinese architecture, who can doubt them when they look at some of the pagodas that the reverence of Buddhism has produced. These pagodas tell in every line of a nation that would reach up above mere utilitarianism to higher thoughts. The uselessness of the pagoda which so often annoys the practical Englishman is one of its chief merits. It stands there in all its beauty pleading with mankind for a love of beauty for its own sake and a belief in a beautiful spirit world. The whole of Buddhist thought is intimately connected with the love of beauty. When a Chinese gentleman was asked if the Chinese had any love of beauty, he said: "You will notice that their temples are always built in beautiful spots, so that they who worship in them should satisfy their love of beauty."
Even if the pagoda is merely regarded as a thing to bring luck to a town, it still merits admiration, for there must be something fine in a race that believes a beautiful thing can bring the blessing of the heavenly bodies on the earth. No one canstudy the details of any of these pagodas without being confident that those who erected them had as their main object the erection of a beautiful building.
Or again, take the Temple of Heaven. Is there any monument in the whole world that has more feeling of beauty about it? The white altar lying uncovered testifies to the fundamental faith of the Chinese that there is a God in heaven who dwelleth not in temples made with hands, while the detail of the carving, though showing a certain sameness, yet indicates their belief that God must love beauty. To see the white Altar of Heaven together with the blue-roofed Temple beyond on some sunny day when the flowers are blooming and the dark green of the pine grove is in strong contrast with the light green of the spring herbage, is one of those visions of beauty which make a man dream and dream again of the noble future that may be before a race which has its holiest places in such lovely surroundings.
As most of the readers of this book may never have seen a Chinese building, perhaps it should be described. The architecture of the Chinese differs from that of the West in almost every detail. A Chinese town is a town without chimneys, and yet the absence of those chimneys which Renaissance architects made such a feature of domestic architecture is never missed, for Chinese roofs are curved and decorated with quaint figures; they are oftencoloured, bright yellow if the building is an imperial building, or bright blue or blue and green with yellow lines, as taste may direct. Common houses have not such ornate roofs, but I am speaking of the houses which have some claim to architectural excellence. This great roof is carried directly on pillars, so that it is possible to have a Chinese house without walls, and these wall-less houses are most suitable to a country where the summer is hot. The massive character of the roof prevents the heat of the sun penetrating, and the absence of walls allows of a free current of air; if there are walls they are generally wooden screens filled in with paper, and the effect in some old Chinese houses is very lovely.
For winter weather these houses seem cold to us, but the Chinese have always believed in the open-air policy. They never heat their houses; they rely either on warm clothing or on a flue-heated bed at night; and as they are as a race very subject to consumption, probably this policy is one which is best suited to their constitutions. At any rate it seems strange that while we in England are advocating open-air schools, open-air cures, and sleeping with the window open, in China Western influence should be destroying the admiration for a splendid form of architecture, the characteristic of which was that while it was of great beauty, it also shielded the inmates from the intense heat of summer and gave them ample fresh air.
When some Chinese literati were questionedabout this architecture they freely confessed that they preferred their native buildings, but they seemed to think that a Western school could not be efficient unless it was held in a Western building. Missionaries and others being questioned on this point maintained that Western houses were in the end the cheapest, but the Chinese would not allow this. They said that a Chinese house would cost far more than a Western house if it were beautifully adorned with carving, but if it was built simply it would work out at less cost.
Chinese architecture is obviously a construction which lends itself to the use of iron. A Chinese building with iron substituted for wood would look as well, for they always paint their wood; this ought to be a very cheap form of construction in a land which is going to produce iron at a very low rate. The truth is that it is neither a question of cost nor of efficiency which makes the Chinese architecture despised; it is part of the great movement which expresses itself in stone and brick—a movement which is tending to bring the Eastern countries into misery—a movement which is planting in the East all that is commonplace, all that is hideous in the West, and that is destroying all that is beautiful in the East both in thought and colour and form. It is the counterpart of the movement which is destroying the faith of the Eastern nations and is only substituting the materialism which has degraded the West.