CONCLUSION
From Burma I returned to north China by slow and easy stages, covering a period of two and a half months. As, however, I visited no part of the Far East which is not thoroughly well known to the ordinary tourist, I will spare my readers an account of peoples and localities which have been often and well described by others. Leaving Rangoon by steamer on 19th July, I reached Colombo on the 24th, and as the guest of Sir Henry Blake, G.C.M.G., then Governor of Ceylon, I spent six delightful weeks in touring through the island by train and motor-car. At Anuradhapura I obtained a seedling from the famous Bo-tree393—probably the oldest surviving historical tree in the world—and took it away to plant in the Public Gardens of Hongkong. I trust it is still there, and that it will do credit to its illustrious origin. From Ceylon I passed through Singapore, Hongkong and Shanghai, andcrossed thence to Japan. After nearly a fortnight in the island of Kyūshū I paid a short visit to Korea, and finally returned to Weihaiwei on 5th October, after an absence of exactly nine months. My faithful dog, which had accompanied me through all the vicissitudes of my journey and had never had a day's illness, died suddenly, shortly after my return to China.
RUINS AT ANURADHAPURA, CEYLON.
RUINS AT ANURADHAPURA, CEYLON.
RETURN TO CHINA
After the various journeys that I have made in different parts of China, I am often asked how I have been treated by the Chinese people, and to what extent I have suffered inconvenience from their notorious hatred for foreigners. The reader who has been so indulgent as to follow me carefully through the preceding pages has probably a good idea of what my answer to such questions is likely to be. In the course of more than nine years' residence in China I have travelled in ten provinces, and have never had cause for a single serious complaint against any class or any individual. By the official classes I have almost invariably been treated with scrupulous courtesy, and at the hands of the people I have experienced only kindness and hospitality. It is hardly possible for me to cite a single exception to this rule; and if it were not for the fact that other Europeans—missionaries and travellers—have sometimes had a different tale to tell, I should have no hesitation in saying that no more kindly or hospitable people exist than the people of China. They have certainly not the charm and grace of manner that are so characteristic of some of the Shan tribesor the people of Burma, Siam and Japan, and it is sometimes a little disconcerting to see them hurrying their children out of sight in case the Western ogre should want to cut out their eyes to make into foreign medicine. There are Chinese and Chinese, and good manners are less characteristic of one locality than of another. My own experience of the peasantry of eastern Shantung, with whom I am best acquainted, goes to show that they are good-tempered, reasonable, orderly and law-abiding, inveterate gamblers, quick to appreciate a kindness, good husbands and devoted fathers, neither more nor less intelligent than others of their class elsewhere, rather too fond of flattering the foreign official because they think he is fool enough to like it, singularly lacking in the proverbial conceit of his race, full of humour, a liar in the law-courts but truthful and honest outside them, and courageous in facing hardship and disappointment. My slighter acquaintance with the agricultural classes of other provinces forbids me to attempt any general characterisation, and even in our little territory of Weihaiwei—about 300 square miles in extent, with 160,000 people—there are differences and exceptions which must modify any general statement. The people of Kuangtung—the province from which issue the majority of Chinese emigrants—are in my opinion less attractive than those of many other provinces. They have sturdy qualities, are sober and industrious, enterprising and independent, but are rather too truculent and too much given to brawling. But this applies only to the lower classes, and especiallyto the "rolling-stones" that find their way to the coast-ports, for the typical Cantonese gentleman would be an ornament to any society in the world.
A VILLAGE FAIR IN CHINA, WITH OPEN-AIR THEATRE.
A VILLAGE FAIR IN CHINA, WITH OPEN-AIR THEATRE.
CHINESE OF THE COAST-PORTS
That the Chinese people have in the past been misunderstood is due to a variety of quite unavoidable circumstances for which no one can be said to be responsible. The intolerable arrogance of the Chinese Court, up to very recent days, in all its dealings with other Powers, tended to spread the belief that this attitude was characteristic of the whole Chinese people. The admission of foreign merchants to certain "treaty ports" did not tend to bring about much change of feeling, for though the Chinese mercantile classes soon won, through their honesty and fair dealing, a liking or respect which they have never ceased to deserve, the European settlements early became the resort of the worst type of Chinese ruffian. The emigrants from Kuangtung and other provinces of south-eastern China have in the Straits Settlements, California and Australia proved themselves well-behaved and law-abiding members of society; but among them, too, there were many who left their country "for their country's good," and who, had they not prudently sought refuge on foreign shores, would have suffered a worse fate than mere exile. Great numbers of the coolies who were sent to work in the South African mines, and whose various malpractices there have raised so natural an outburst of disgust and indignation, belonged to the vicious and criminal classes of north China, and even the best of them were recruited from the lowest ranksof society. Chinese officialdom, needless to say, was only too delighted to see the last of them. Unfortunately, even a visit to Shanghai or Hongkong does not tend to modify very appreciably the unfavourable opinion of the Chinese which the average Englishman may have formed from his previous knowledge of that race. Whatever may be the cause—and several causes might be assigned—the lower-class Chinese of Hongkong probably have worse manners than any other inhabitants of the Chinese empire. The coolies who wilfully jostle Europeans in Queen's and Des Vœux Roads, and snatch watches and purses from ladies and children, the house-servants who are impertinent to their European mistresses in their masters' absence, and the shopkeepers who blink rudely at their foreign customers and remain seated, sleepily fanning their paunches, when according to their own canons of good manners they should be on their feet murmuring polite salutations—all these are persons to whom a glimpse of Western civilisation seems to have done nothing but harm. They have lost their own manners, and have altogether failed to acquire those of the Occident. For my own part, I may say that though I have travelled through a great part of China and visited many of her large cities, I have found nowhere such lack of manners as unfortunately characterises a large proportion of our fellow-subjects in Hongkong.
RACIAL ANTIPATHIES
It must be admitted that the Chinese do not like foreigners. It is all the more creditable to them that their native courtesy—outside theEuropean settlements—so often prevents them from showing their dislike. Here and there, no doubt, a real friendship springs up between a foreigner and a Chinese, owing to qualities which each finds and appreciates in the other, but as a rule the feeling hardly goes beyond one of respect. Though many Chinese gentlemen in Hongkong are naturalised British subjects and are men of education and culture, they are practically excluded from the charmed circle of Hongkong "Society." It must be granted, of course, that a difficulty is introduced into the situation through the incompatible social customs of the two races, especially with regard to the position of women. But the difficulty is not, as it may be in the case of English and Hindus, an insuperable one. The total absence of caste-rules and the willingness of intelligent Chinese to relax the rigidity of their own social laws deprive Europeans of the excuse that friendly intercourse with the Chinese is from the nature of things an impossibility.
Dr Martineau tells us that the man who goes abroad and comes in contact with alien civilisations is at first chafed by every sound and sight of foreign things, and thinks he has left everything good behind him at home; but that as he grows accustomed to his surroundings he is "hit by many a happy phrase and won by many a graceful usage, and fairly conquered at last by a literature and art and national life which reveal to him an unimagined type of human culture."394Unfortunately all travellers and residentsin foreign lands are not so easily dragged out of their prejudices as this passage would seem to imply. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the stay-at-home Englishman is often more apparently sympathetic towards alien races than those who come in daily contact with them. This, however, is too frequently due to a most dangerous form of ignorance,395that has already—within the British Empire—caused a good deal of possibly irreparable mischief. In spite of warning after warning, many an Englishman is still apt to think that Orientals under British rule should be put in possession of all the political "rights" of the Briton at home, and is constitutionally unable to see that a political and social system which has been slowly created during centuries of national growth by and for men of his own race may prove not only detrimental but even ruinous to the true interests—political, social and moral—of his Oriental fellow-subjects. It is quite possible—I desire to lay special stress on this point—that a sympathetic and broad-minded Englishman may have the highest regard for the individuals of an Oriental race, the deepest admiration for many aspects of Oriental life and character, and the keenest appreciation of the many splendid achievements of the East in art, philosophy and religion, and that he may nevertheless consistently repudiate any concurrence with the illogical doctrine that what is good for one is good for all, and that the aspirations of the Englishman mustnecessarily coincide with the aspirations of the Hindu or the Chinese. I would even go further, and say that the man who wishes to fit out the Oriental with a complete equipment of Western ideals proves thereby that he has either no understanding of or no true sympathy with Eastern peoples and Eastern modes of thought: and that if he tries to give practical effect to his theories he will prove himself that most dangerous of foes—the mischief-maker who comes in the guise of a smiling friend.
DIFFERENT APTITUDES
Every exiled Englishman who as a Government official is brought into direct contact with a large population of Asiatics is well aware that if his object is to win a certain kind of precarious popularity among those whom he assists in ruling, there is ready to his hand a cheap and nasty way of attaining his ambition. Fortunately for the honour of England and the stability of the Empire, he is generally content with the less dazzling rewards that come from the honest performance of duty. It has recently been reported by the newspapers that an English politician, a few hours after he had set foot on Indian soil for the first time, informed crowded Hindu audiences that he proposed to assist them in securing a constitution similar to that possessed by Canada, on the ground that "what was good for the Canadians must be good for the Indians"; in consequence of which it was arranged by half-educated Hindu demagogues that he should be greeted with the plaudits of million-throated Bengal, garlanded with flowers and hailed as "an angel and not a man."Meanwhile, scattered throughout India are hundreds of able and experienced Englishmen—members of the Civil Service—who are giving the best years of their lives to India and her people, who can speak the Indian vernaculars and know the Indian mind and character as well as they can be known by any foreigner, and who are carrying on day by day the great administrative work that saves India from chaos. Few of their names are known to the British public, and not one of them—so far as I am aware—has ever been hailed by a Hindu mob as "an angel." How is it that a roving politician has managed so quickly to out-run them all in the race for popularity? Perhaps, if the truth were known, most of them could, if they so desired, attain the dizzy elevation of this kind of angelhood without much difficulty; but the pity of it is that as time went on they would find the conditions of continued success growing ever more and more stringent, till at last they would have to be something greater even than angels to satisfy the expectations of their admirers. The young Englishmen of half a century hence might have cause to lament that their fathers had not limited their ambitions in this life to terrestrial instead of extending them to celestial promotion, and the young Hindus, as they sat amid the ruins of their violated temples or crouched under the lash of the Mohammedan, would perhaps bitterly wish that their sires had known how to give honour where honour was due, and had turned a deaf ear to the ignorant rhetoric of native and foreign demagogues.
PREJUDICES
But the Englishman at home, who in a spirit of misdirected generosity aims at conferring on the Asiatic all the political and other "blessings" (if indeed they are such, even in England) that he himself enjoys, oblivious of the fact that under Asiatic conditions the blessings may turn into curses, is guilty of a blunder no graver nor more dangerous than that committed by the Englishman abroad who acts on the other assumption that the Oriental was created to be the white man's slave. This attitude is unfortunately traceable among a certain class of Europeans in both India and China;396and in China it has certainly tended to widen the natural gulf that Nature has fixed between the hearts and intellects of East and West.
That the Chinese in general have no liking for the foreigner seems to me a matter for no surprise whatever. I think I am not far wrong when I say that the average young European comes to the East with a prejudice against the Chinese, and a distinct idea that they are his inferiors. Of course in a sense this form of national prejudice exists all the world over. The English schoolboy used to believe that everyEnglishman was as good as three Frenchmen.397The French of the Middle Ages used to retort that Englishmen had tails, which is just what many educated Chinese of the present day believe of the Miao-tzŭ tribes. The ancient Greeks called every one else "barbarian." In our own day we have it on the word of an emperor that the real "salt of the earth" are the people of Germany: more recently, indeed, the salt has been metamorphosed "into the block of granite upon which the Lord God can complete His work of civilising the world."398Yet was it not only a few years ago that a statesman assured us that the torch of civilisation had now definitely passed to Russia? It was a Russian statesman, of course, who said so: and the Englishman or the American may smile at the self-assurance of this or any other nation that arrogates to itself the rôle which, as he has always been convinced, exclusively belongs to the Anglo-Saxon. Yet this kind of national partiality—provided it is accompanied by a belief in the principle ofnoblesse oblige—is by no means to be sneered at or despised. "The sense of greatness keeps a nation great," and an honest belief in our own lofty destiny will stand us in good stead in the day of trial. If two nations of equal powers and resources come to blows, and one of them happens to be actuated by a belief, lacking to the other, in its "divine mission," we need be in no doubt as to the side on which victory will declare itself. But the feelings with whichEuropeans and Chinese too often regard each other are different in kind from the national prejudices that we know so well and make allowances for in the West.
OFFICIAL BEARING
In our relations with China we have been constantly offended by the air of superiority that is assumed towards us by the Chinese Government and by Chinese officials. They used to call us "barbarians" even in official documents, just as the street urchins of Canton still hail us as "foreign devils"; and we can never forget that Chinese officialdom used to do its best to humiliate us in our relations with the Court at Peking in a manner which was altogether intolerable. Of course, the Chinese were wrong in assuming a non-existing superiority, and they have had to pay bitterly for their arrogance. But is it not the case that we, as individuals and as Governments, have shown in different but not less provocative ways just as much unreasonable arrogance in our treatment of the Chinese? "The Chinese complain," writes a fair-minded American diplomatist,399"that an air of proprietorship is constantly manifested in unreasonable demands and impertinent criticisms, in denunciation of any of their officials who manifest a disposition to protect native interests, and that it practically amounts to a refusal to recognise China as the property of the Chinese. They object, perhaps unreasonably, against the application to their empire of those two well-known declarations, said to have been made by the unanimous voice of a religious body: 'Resolved,that the righteous shall inherit the earth. Resolved, that we are the righteous.'"
Many Europeans not only hold the view that Chinese civilisation is inferior to that of Europe—which is doubtless to a great extent true, though there is another aspect of that question—but they are strongly convinced that the Chinese represent a lower type of humanity—that they are, in fact, less far advanced in the scale of evolution than Europeans. An educated Englishman once told me that the Chinese were evidently a mean and inferior people, because when you whacked a Chinese coolie in the streets of Canton400he did not hit you back. This argument is curiously typical of the aggressive attitude which is so often assumed by Europeans not only in their dealings with Chinese, but also in their relations with all other Oriental races, whose lack of "grit" is supposed to be proved by the fact that they are not so ready with their fists as we are. One of the most enlightened Hindus of our own day—the late Swami Vivekananda—quotes as a curious instance of this attitude a remark that was made to him in London. "What have you Hindus done?" said an English girl, full of the pride of race. "You have never even conquered a single nation."
"INFERIORITY"
Now, setting aside all considerations of national prejudice and patriotism, is it a fact that the Chinese are as a race inferior to the peoples of the West? The question, when we examine it closely, has really very little to do with politicalstrength or military efficiency, or (paceMr Benjamin Kidd) relative standards of living, or even the usual material accompaniments of what we call an advanced civilisation; it is a question for the trained anthropologist and the craniologist rather than for the casual observer of men and manners. The Japanese people are now much more highly civilised, according to Western notions, than they were half a century ago, but it would be ludicrously erroneous to say that they are now a higher race, from the evolutionary point of view, than they were then. Evolution does not work quite so rapidly as that even in these days of "hustle." The Japanese have advanced, not because their brains have suddenly become larger, or their moral and intellectual capabilities have all at once made a leap forward, but because their intercourse with Western nations, after centuries of isolated seclusion, showed them that certain characteristic features of European civilisation would be of great use in strengthening and enriching their own country, developing its resources, and giving it the power to resist aggression. If the Japanese were as members of the genushomo sapiensinferior to us fifty years ago, they are inferior to us now. If they are our equals to-day—and the burden of proof certainly now rests on him who wishes to show that they are not—our knowledge of the origin and history of Eastern peoples, scanty though it is, should certainly tend to assure us that the Chinese are our equals too. There is no valid reason for supposing that the Chinese peopleare ethnically inferior to the Japanese. They have preserved their isolated seclusion longer than the Japanese, because until very recently it was less urgently necessary for them to come out of it. They have taken a longer time to appreciate the value of Western science and certain features of Western civilisation, because new ideas take longer to permeate a very large country than a small one, and because China was rich in the possession within her own borders of all the necessaries of life.
STAGES IN CIVILISATION
Many Europeans, dazzled and blinded by the marvellous inventions and discoveries of modern times, and the huge strides made by physical science, are apt to conclude too hastily that our ethnical superiority is sufficiently proved by the fact that all or nearly all such achievements are due to the white races only.401Even the Japanese, we are often reminded, are after all only our imitators, and being so must necessarily be our inferiors. If an artist were to make so excellent a copy of the Madonna di San Sisto as to deceive connoisseurs into the belief that it was the original, he would not thereby elevate himself to an equality with Raphael. But surely it is much too soon to make generalisations about the relative development of Eastern and Western nations from the few facts at our command. It is only during the lastone or two hundred years that science has achieved her greatest triumphs in Europe, and it is with the aid of those triumphs of science and partly as a direct result of them that European civilisation has progressed during that time. Yet even with us popular opinion has not always been on the side of advancing science. I once heard a charming old lady declare that balloons or air-machines of any kind would never be successful, because the Almighty in His wisdom had decreed that mankind was to restrict its movements to the solid earth, and that even the attempt to make such machines was—like the building of a certain mythical tower that we have all heard of—an act of impiety which would certainly bring down divine vengeance. Yet the man who now denies that we are within measurable distance of the conquest of the air—especially if he denies it on religious grounds—is not likely to be listened to with much respect at the present day. Many persons—pious and other—were strongly opposed to the construction of railways in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. We grew impatient with the Chinese, because, until very recently, they showed similar reluctance to the introduction of railways and machinery into their own country, thus proving that they were oblivious of the enormous economic benefits that such innovations had conferred upon every country that had adopted them; yet we do not regard the University of Oxford as having been the last stronghold of barbarism in England, because that venerable corporation for a long time opposed the approach of a railway to its classichalls, nor do we consider that Lancashire was less civilised than the rest of England in the eighteenth century, because its cotton-spinners rose in their thousands to resist by force the introduction of Sir Richard Arkwright's spinning-frame. If we are willing to admit that Oxford and Lancashire did not act from a mere blind hostility to modern inventions as such, we should at least be willing to enquire whether the opposition of the Chinese has not also been due to other causes than mere barbarism or lack of intelligence.
I do not think it can be seriously contended that the civilisation of China to-day is on the whole lower than that of Europe in the comparatively recent days of the thumb-screw and the Holy Office, and it is possible that in the K'ang Hsi period (1662-1722) China was as civilised as most of the countries of Europe were at the same period. In that case it is not much more than two hundred years since European civilisation began to move ahead of that of China—a very short period in a nation's history, and almost infinitesimal from the point of view of the evolution of mankind.402Our racial superiority tothe Chinese may be an anthropological truth, but it cannot be deduced merely from the fact that during the most recent portion of our national existence we have invented steam engines or wireless telegraphy or quick-firing guns or turbine battleships or even party government.
A TEMPLE-THEATRE IN NORTH CHINA.
A TEMPLE-THEATRE IN NORTH CHINA.
CHINESE CIVILISATION
That Chinese civilisation has for many years been allowed to get into a very bad state of repair is, of course, an undoubted fact. Not to mention the various terrible outbursts of hatred against foreigners, for which the aggression of foreign Governments has generally been to a great extent responsible, no excuse can be found for the atrocities committed in the Chinese criminal law-courts, or the unsatisfactory position of women, or the binding of girls' feet, or the defective educational system, or the low state of the arts of medicine and surgery, or the corruption of the official classes and the numberless administrative abuses. All these and many other evils must be rectified before China can expect to take her proper place in the front rank of the nations of the world. That she is now making an honest endeavour to rectify them in the face of immense difficulties must, I think, be apparent to all observers, but we cannot expect that great social and political changes can be introduced into so enormous a country as China merely by the issue of a series of imperial decrees, and it is buttoo probable that before she can enter upon the heritage that is rightly hers, China has yet to pass through a terrible ordeal of fire. It is also far from unlikely that in the early stages of her new career she will be forced by circumstances into various reactionary phases which may give foreigners the mistaken impression that she is about to fall back again into her old lethargy and somnolence.
SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
Some of the existing features of Chinese civilisation are so admirably suited to the genius of the people that they might with great advantage be allowed to remain almost unchanged. If everything goes into the melting pot, China will lose almost as much as she can ever hope to gain. It is a great mistake, for example, to suppose that the Chinese system of government is thoroughly bad. The Government has failed so often and so signally to uphold the dignity of China in her quarrels with other Powers that we are apt to regard the whole system as rotten, inside and out. We are told so much about official corruption and the inhumanities of Chinese gaols and the cruel acts of oppression practised by the ruling classes and their underlings, that some may be surprised to learn not only that there are hundreds of admirable officials, zealous and single-minded in the discharge of their duties, but that the majority of the people of China are quite unconscious of being oppressed, and would be bewildered if one were to suggest that such was the case. The "squeezes" of the officials and their subordinates are thoroughlywell recognised by every one concerned, and acts of real extortion are by no means so common as Europeans believe, though there have no doubt been several serious cases of malversation of funds subscribed by Chinese and foreigners for such laudable objects as famine relief. It is true, moreover, that the official classes have often shown a cynical disregard for the sanctity of private property, and this has compelled many rich Chinese to invest their money in Shanghai and Hongkong. As regards the ordinary "squeezes," the imperial Government knows quite well that the salaries paid to the officials do not amount to a living wage, and that to eke out their slender incomes they must pocket fees and percentages which have no legal sanction.
The criminal convicted in a Chinese court is well aware that he must fee his gaolers—that is practically part of his punishment for being a criminal. The party to a civil lawsuit knows equally well that he cannot hope to get a hearing till he has paid something to every one connected with the court, from door-keeper to magistrate's secretaries, and that if he wins his case he will have to pay more: but he, too, knew all this before he decided to go to law, and he regards all these payments much as we should regard a solicitor's bill of costs. Real acts of extortion and oppression are often practised in individual cases, but it is a strong light that beats upon the judgment seat of a Chinese official, and if he becomes notorious for such acts he must have exceedingly influential support if he expectsto escape denunciation and disgrace. It is the sale of offices, the selfishness of the highest ruling classes, the ignorance and prejudices of the court, the malversation of funds that ought to be devoted to paying for fleets and armies and public works, that China suffers from so bitterly to-day, not the comparatively small extortions practised by local officials.
ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Even taking extortion and "squeezes" into consideration, China is a lightly-taxed country; and we should remember that in times of famine or other distress it is quite common for the Government to remit all direct taxes throughout the whole area affected. A Chinese magistrate is held responsible for the peace and well-being of his district just as a father is held responsible for the conduct of his son. The people whom he rules know this very well, and are fully conscious of their own power to ruin his official career if he consistently tries to extort more than the recognised "squeezes," or is guilty of any gross acts of maladministration.403In connection with civil lawsuits, intentional miscarriages of justice are far less frequent than is usually supposed. The parties may be required to pay what we should call bribes, and sometimes the hearing of a case is intentionally postponed from day to dayuntil the bribes offered are sufficiently large; but the important point to notice is, that all this bribery does not necessarily imply a miscarriage of justice. Considering the wide areas over which Chinese district magistrates preside, and the slight amount of supervision exercised over their proceedings, it is not an exaggeration to say that great numbers of them are able and well-meaning officials who have an honest desire to benefit the people committed to their charge and to serve their country loyally. We find, too, that the men who show such qualifications in a conspicuous degree are almost sure of rapid advancement; nor do they fail to earn the respect and affection of the people whom they rule, for there is no one quicker than a Chinese to realise when he is well governed, and perhaps no one more appreciative.
The social organisation of China, especially for an agricultural people, is in many respects thoroughly sound. In ordinary times—that is, when no extraordinary events such as famines or political troubles occur to complicate matters—China is one of the most profoundly peaceful countries in the world. The fact that hated foreigners can safely go through the country from end to end without any means of self-protection is in itself a striking proof of this. The people are singularly law-abiding. There are no policemen in the European sense except in a few large cities like Peking, Ch'êng-tu and K'ai-fêng-fu, where Western institutions are beginning to be copied, and yet there is probably a smaller percentage of crime in China than in any countryin Europe. This is partly due, no doubt, to the naturally peaceful and industrious character of the people, but it is an almost necessary corollary of their semi-patriarchal village system and the responsibility of each family for the good behaviour of all its members. In the three hundred and ten villages of the leased territory of Weihaiwei the policy of the British Government has been to rule the people as far as possible in the way to which from time immemorial they have been accustomed. The village organisation is maintained, and in the courts of the two British magistrates the law that is administered is the law of China (tempered by local custom), so far as such law and custom are not repugnant to British conceptions of justice and morality. In my own district, which is nearly 200 square miles in extent, and contains about two hundred villages with nearly a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are eight police constables permanently stationed at headquarters, ready to be sent out to discharge any duties that may be necessary, but apart from them there is not a policeman in the district. During a recent period of six months—including the winter months, which are always the season for serious crime in north China—the cases of robbery reported to the police were three in number. Out of about eighty cases in which during the same period imprisonment or fines were imposed, nearly half were gambling cases and the rest of a more or less trifling nature. When riding through the villages of the territory I do not remember to have seen more than one intoxicated man, and he had been to market and sold all his pigs.
THE GRAVE OF "JIM," WEIHAIWEI.
THE GRAVE OF "JIM," WEIHAIWEI.
WEIHAIWEI
During more than two years in Weihaiwei I have tried Englishmen and Japanese for being "drunk and disorderly," but never a single Chinese. I must hasten to explain that the absence of crime and disorder in Weihaiwei is not in the least degree due to any reforms introduced by the British Government: the neighbouring districts under Chinese rule are just as well behaved, if not, indeed, rather more so. Perhaps I should add that civil lawsuits in Weihaiwei are exceptionally numerous. Such cases are decided by the two British magistrates in accordance with Chinese law and are conducted in the Chinese language. The only expense which a litigant incurs is a shilling or two for hiring a petition-writer to state his case, and even this outlay he can avoid if he happens to be an educated man and can write out an intelligible statement for himself, or get a friend to do it for him. There are no court fees, no "squeezes," and solicitors and barristers are unknown. I am not quite satisfied that the facilities offered to litigants in our courts in Weihaiwei are altogether beneficial in their results. Litigation has become so cheap and easy that it is often resorted to before the least serious attempt has been made by the parties to come to an amicable settlement out of court. The British magistrates are called upon to decide such trumpery questions that if a litigant were to submit them to a Chinese tribunal the magistrate would probably order him to be flogged for needlessly stirring up litigious strife. By taking cognisance of the simplest village disputes it may bethat we are gradually weakening the solidarity of the village organisation, which, if once destroyed, can never be restored; and we are possibly storing up a good deal of trouble for the Chinese officials who will resume their functions in Weihaiwei on the expiry of our lease.
CHINESE ART AND MUSIC
If the high development of literary and artistic tastes is to be taken as a criterion of civilisation it is not likely that even in this respect Europe has much cause to throw contemptuous glances at China. But many of those European collectors who admire and are willing to pay enormous prices for specimens of Chinese porcelain404—much of it stolen from private houses in Peking and elsewhere—are perhaps not aware of the high standard which Chinese artists have reached in other directions. Fine examples of their pictorial art are still not very numerous in Europe, or at least are not easily accessible to the public, though the British Museum contains, among other Chinese drawings and paintings, characteristic sketches by such famous artists as Lin Liang of the Ming dynasty. But the rapidity with which the art of Japan has gained the admiration of Europe is proof enough that Chinese art—to which that of Japan owes its most characteristic qualities and nearly all its inspiration—will some day arouse no less enthusiasm among the art critics of Europe. An English critic, who is also a poet—Mr Laurence Binyon—says of the landscape painting of the Sung dynasty (the tenthto the thirteenth centuries of our era) that "not till the nineteenth century in Europe do we find anything like the landscape art of China in the Sung period,—a disinterested love of beauty in nature for its own sake, regardless of associations imposed by the struggles of existence.... To the Sung artists and poets, mountains were a passion, as to Wordsworth. The landscape art thus founded, and continued by the Japanese in the fifteenth century, must rank as the greatest school of landscape which the world has seen."405In art, as in literature and politics, the great days of China lie in the past, but there are probably more artists at work at the present day in China than anywhere else, and the zeal and enthusiasm with which they execute their best work—generally without any expectation of material reward—is a sure indication that the artistic sense of the Chinese is still full of vigorous vitality, and may lead to great results in the future.
In music it must be admitted that China lags as yet far behind Europe. It has been reported of one of the foremost pianists and composers of the present day that when he visited California and heard Chinese music for the first time, he volunteered the opinion that "it really was music," a truth which some of us perhaps might be inclined to doubt. If an intelligent Chinese who had never before been outside his own country were taken without previous instruction to the performance of an Italian opera, or had the privilege of hearing theAgnus Deiof Mozart's 1st Mass or Meyerbeer'sQui in manu Dei requiescitas sung,for example, in Magdalen College Chapel, he would be merely puzzled. The music would be devoid of meaning to him, and he would probably regard it as unintelligible noise. Yet, after all, a musical ear—apart from the almost universal liking for simple melody—is by no means too common even in Europe, and an average Englishman would repudiate the idea that he was less civilised or less highly evolved than a German because he had less appreciation of the wonders of harmony. Time was—not so very long ago—when Wagner's music was regarded in England as a kind of joke; and few people are really able to understand and appreciate the grandest music of the nineteenth century—though they often think they do—without some previous training. Some are even frank enough to confess that it bores them, much as it would bore a man who did not understand Greek to listen to a reading from Sophocles. But are the Chinese capable of being musically trained? Judging from a few cases within my own knowledge, I am inclined to think they are. But in any case we should remember that music as we understand it is the youngest of the arts, and time only can show whether all the great music of the future is to be exclusively a Western product.
LITERATURE
As regards literature, the difficulty of the Chinese written language has no doubt stood in the way of spreading a knowledge of the Chinese masterpieces in Europe, and most of the translations that exist are—even when verbally exact—far from reproducing the spirit of the original.The probability is that in future the best translations will come from the pens of native scholars. Mr Ku Hung-Ming,406graduate of a Scottish university, has rendered good service to Europe in giving us what are perhaps the best existing English translations of a portion of the Confucian classics. Yet the ignorance still shown even by European residents in China of the extent and richness of Chinese literature is very remarkable. Some time ago, in conversation with an Englishman who had lived many years in China, I happened to allude to the works of one of the most famous of Chinese poets. My friend had never heard his name, and was surprised to learn that China had any poets at all. Professor Giles, with his happy gift of apt translation and paraphrase, has turned into good English verse407a few short specimens of the beautiful poetry of the T'ang and Sung dynasties, and the contents of his little volume must have surprised some Western readers who had little idea that while the Mercians and West Saxons were still struggling for supremacy in England under their Ecgberhts and Beorhtrics, such exquisite flowers of poesy were springing up on the soil of distant China. Yet the translations that have already appeared in foreign languages are but a trifle compared with the wealth of poetry that still remains unknown to Europe; and Chinese poetry, like that of all other languages, loses half its beauty when clothed in the words of an alientongue. A Chinese gentleman's education is not regarded as complete if he cannot clothe his ideas in graceful verse; nor does he, like the English schoolboy who seldom meddles with Latin hexameters and Greek iambics when his education is "finished," neglect this pleasant accomplishment when he has left the halls of learning. Such poetry, naturally, is rarely of a high order; but though the published poetry of the present day is poor compared with that of the past—even in England we have not always with us singers of the Elizabethan standard—the great poets of China are still quoted and read with the same appreciation as of old. That real poetic feeling is far from extinct may be seen by any English reader who peruses Mr C. Clementi's translation of the Cantonese Love-songs,408which are quite modern. The genius of Chinese poetry tends to be elegiac and idyllic. It is seldom or never intensely lyrical, even when it is intended for a musical accompaniment, like the love-songs just referred to. But if Chinese literature can boast of no Shelleys or Swinburnes, there are many writers whose poems may well be compared with the best work of our English elegiac and descriptive poets, such as Gray. It must, I think, be admitted that the Chinese language is not the most perfect existing vehicle for poetical expression. We need only take a single test-line from Homer—say line 198 ofOdysseyxi.,—or a couplet from Shelley—say lines 5 and 6 of the third stanza ofThe Question,—to realise a rhythmical music andmovement of which the Chinese language is, I fear, incapable; yet the words used by Lafcadio Hearn to describe the best Japanese poetry may with equal justice be applied to the idyllic poetry of China: "compositions which, with a few chosen syllables only, can either create a perfect coloured picture in the mind, or bestir the finest sensations of memory with marvellous penetrative delicacy."409