•THE- 
 
 •JOHN -FRYER- 
 CHINESE- LIBRARY- 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2007 witii funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
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As the Chinese See Us 
 » ^ $ 
 
HOW TO READ THE CHINESE 
 WAR NEWS 
 
 A vade-mecmn of notes and hints to readers 
 of despatches, etc. Complete with Map, 
 Glossary of Military and Technical Terms, 
 local titles, phrases : and information con- 
 cerning places and things in the areas 
 affected. Pocket size, is. 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN, 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE, E.C. 
 
As 
 
 * The 
 
 * * Chinese 
 
 * # # See Us 
 
 By 
 
 THOMAS G. SELBY 
 
 LONDON 
 
 T. FISHER UNWIN 
 
 PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 I 90 I 
 

 «*'« l/BRARy 
 
 iOHN FRYER 
 CHINESE LIBRARY 
 
 [All rights reservea.] 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES . I 
 
 II. RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION . 32 
 
 III. WESTERN versus CHINESE DEMO- 
 
 CRACIES . . '52 
 
 IV. THE ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 78 
 V. OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 107 
 
 VI. COMPETING RELIGIONS . .129 
 
 VII. A CHINESE APPRECIATION OF THE 
 
 NEW IMPERIALISM . . -153 
 
 VIII. THE REFORM MOVEMENT . 190 
 
 IX. BOXERS, COSSACKS AND OTHERS . 209 
 
 X. THE DIPLOMATISTS' BALANCE-SHEET . 233 
 
 751578 
 
AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 
 
 *' The superior man is catholic and no partisan." 
 —Confucian Analects. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — I am a little uncertain 
 about the translation of one or two phrases 
 in the Prefect's despatch. Please look through 
 the rough draft on the table, and afterwards I 
 will trouble you to test my mastery of the local 
 tones in a few sentences of colloquial. I am 
 afraid iht patois^ if I get saturated with it, may 
 spoil my enunciation of the Court dialect. 
 
 Pufidit Tung. — The main idea of the despatch 
 is correctly grasped, but when I have explained 
 the history of two or three technical terms, you 
 will be able to set forth the meaning a little 
 more closely in the English rendering. 
 A 
 
2 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Vue-Censul West. — I will soon put the 
 details right, and embody your suggestions in my 
 Qnal copy. 
 
 Pundit Tung.— Yes ! yes ! The tones are 
 good, but you drawl the lower departing a little 
 too much, and the local sound for Buddha is 
 neither a long ^'u" nor a short "a," but two 
 parts of the one and three parts of the other. 
 The nasal **ng" you must produce as if you 
 had polypus. Do not let the breath come 
 through the lips ; keep the mouth open, and 
 coop up the sound half-way between the throat 
 and the nose. . . . Yes ! better. The Vice- 
 Consul will speak like a man of the province in 
 another year, better even.than the missionaries. 
 
 Vice -Consul West. — Nothing going on of 
 interest in the city just now, I suppose } 
 
 Pundit Tung. — The news is scanty, and as 
 savourless as cold rice. The second harvest 
 was not up to the average ; business is quiet, 
 and the loafers at the city gates and in the less 
 reputable neighbourhoods are getting a little 
 restless as the end of the year draws near. I 
 was told that two foreigners passed up the river 
 a little while before the setting of the watch 
 last night, and that they were rather roughly 
 handled. They went ashore at the ferry-boat 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 3 
 
 landing, and the boys began pelting them with 
 chewed sugar-cane, banana husks and lumps of 
 mud. By some mischance or other, they got 
 into the streets of the gambling shops, and the 
 small boys were reinforced by a knot of loafers, 
 who, as usual, hustled them, and threatened them 
 with the knife. A friend who saw the mild riot 
 told me they hurried back to the boat, and no 
 harm befell them beyond a slight wetting. The 
 older of the two in jumping from the bank fell 
 short of the bows and got soaked up to the 
 knees. One of the crew, however, caught 
 him by the wrist and hauled him on board. 
 The gentlemen were probably merchants or 
 travellers, for they did not speak to the crowd 
 in Chinese, and seemed not quite at their ease. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — It is strange they did not 
 call here or send their cards. In a few days we 
 shall have an alarmist paragraph in one of the 
 Hong-Kong papers, saying that the people are 
 extremely hostile to foreigners, and a crisis of 
 trouble is at hand. The town has not the best 
 of reputations, although it is not quite so bad as 
 it is painted. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — It was unlucky they should 
 have come ashore just when the schools 
 had been dismissed, and swarms of boys were 
 
4 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 buzzing about the streets, and still more un- 
 lucky that they should have landed on the side 
 of the creek where the vicious classes live, rather 
 than amongst the respectable shops on the 
 opposite bank. It was their misfortune that 
 they could not chaff the people into smiles by 
 a few sentences of the local patois. The 
 Chinese servant on the boat was insolent to 
 the bystanders, and did not mend matters. 
 Had things been just a little different in these 
 particulars, they would have gone back and 
 praised the citizens for their courtesy and 
 friendliness. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — Some travellers do seem 
 to have a trick of smelling out the special 
 places where they will be roughly handled. I 
 rarely meet now with signs of ill-will, and when 
 I go out for a day's shooting, nothing can 
 exceed the kindness of the village folk, although 
 I do cross their Buddhist prejudices against 
 taking life, for notices against shooting birds 
 seem to be stuck up on every wayside shrine 
 and banyan tree. In the temper of the street 
 crowds here I find a distinct improvement. A 
 year or two ago I could not take a walk without 
 seeing half a dozen Chinamen thrust their noses 
 into their sleeves as I passed them, in token of 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 5 
 
 their disgust and contempt, but that fashion 
 seems to have passed away. I was often 
 tempted to kick the wretches, and would not 
 swear that I was always superior to the tempta- 
 tion. The antipathy seems to die hard in some 
 of the suburbs, and when it has been quiescent 
 for a time, it suddenly awakens in unpleasant 
 and ominous forms. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — The feeling perhaps varies 
 with the rumours circulated by native news- 
 papers, which now find their way into every 
 district city, besides the private letters which 
 come to hand from the coast ports. Some- 
 times there may be local causes of irritation, 
 or foreigners who pass along the streets may 
 blunder through ignorance of our customs. To 
 bring the Hong-Kong method of treating the 
 Chinamen into the interior, is to fire a powder 
 magazine. As a rule, exasperation arises when 
 France is taking new territory in Tonquin, or 
 Japan is scheming to become dominant in Corea, 
 or Russian railways are creeping nearer to our 
 northern frontier ; and the exasperation subsides 
 when it is found that the eighteen provinces are 
 not all swallowed up by the mysterious powers 
 of the West. 
 
 Vice- Consul West. — I should like to get down 
 
6 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 to the real cause of all [this ill-will and mis- 
 understanding. Why should your countrymen 
 dislike us even when they receive kindness at 
 our hands ? Forget your politeness for once in 
 a while, and be quite candid with me. Do not 
 tell me what you think the Englishman would 
 like to hear, as is the habit with teachers, 
 butlers, cooks and house servants. When I 
 visit the officials, of course they flatter me and 
 my countrymen as though we were fresh in- 
 carnations of Confucius and his seventy disciples, 
 come by mail steamer from the Western 
 Paradise ; and when I walk through the streets 
 of towns and cities unaccustomed to the 
 presence of Europeans, I am called "imp," 
 " cuckolod," and other epithets, not to be found 
 in either Chinese or English dictionaries. Now 
 I want something about half-way between these 
 two extremes. The foreigner, as you know, is 
 neither a Gautama Buddha on the one hand, 
 nor an ox-headed demon tormentor on the 
 other. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Do not blame me for saying 
 so, but perhaps the praise is in excess of what 
 is really thought, and the railing of the street 
 crowd is not to be taken literally. The dislike 
 is a tradition of our training. Perhaps the 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 7 
 
 attitude towards us into which you are trained 
 does not rest upon a true and just appreciation. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — Perhaps not; but I can 
 well believe all you say about the prejudice, for 
 it was absurdly illustrated in a trifling incident 
 which occurred as I was passing through a 
 neighbouring village yesterday. A little child, 
 held by his mother's hand, shrank back with 
 terror as I came in sight, and I heard the 
 mother whisper: "Do not fear. Say 'great 
 merchant ' as you pass, and it will be all right." 
 The terror was the effect of false views about 
 the foreigner inculcated in the home, and the 
 flattering vocative, "great merchant," a pro- 
 pitiatory expedient of the moment to put the 
 child on safe terms with a passing adversary. 
 I thought it much like the superstitions of the 
 less instructed people, who seek to turn the 
 enmity of mischief-making spirits by adulation 
 and sacrifice. When the child had been got 
 past the place at which he shied, the old 
 prejudice would doubtless be encouraged, and 
 the " great merchant " would be made once 
 more the " demon " with which to frighten a 
 wilful child. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Perhaps it is so. A strange 
 white face, with plenty of hair about it, projecting 
 
8 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 eyes, and limbs uncouthly clothed in tight, short- 
 cut garments, may be guaranteed to affright and 
 terrorise the imagination, especially when such 
 things are associated with stories told in our 
 homes of what the foreign soldiers did in the 
 wars which broke out during the reigns of T6 
 Kwong and Ham Fung. We are ruled to some 
 extent by the nightmares of our past history. 
 For three thousand years our race, which has 
 both multiplied and incorporated other and less 
 numerous races, has been in partial contact with 
 inferior, not to say cruel tribes. No civilisation 
 has grown up within sight of our own that has 
 not borrowed the good in it from us. You say 
 we are clever imitators only, but we have origin- 
 ated what has been the pattern civilisation of 
 the eastern half of Asia, centuries before you 
 began to dream of art and letters. And the 
 copies of our civilisation adopted in Corea, 
 Japan, Siam and Thibet were on a small and 
 inferior scale. Pre-historic tribes survive in our 
 hills, and down to the present time raid 'our 
 crops, carry off our cattle, and burn our villages 
 in the valleys abutting on their mountains. 
 These men, who have no letters and no culture, 
 and who play the part of bandits, were the first 
 foreigners we knew. The habit of thought and 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 9 
 
 speech acquired in hundreds of generations of 
 intercourse with these outsiders is strong upon 
 us, and the image of the Nam Man or the I 
 Tik is the first picture of a foreigner in the 
 mind. It maintains its position there till it is 
 displaced by something else. Every schoolboy 
 learns about the wild tribes of the classic times, 
 and brings this prepossessed judgment to his 
 outlook upon the strange visitors who have 
 come across the waves in ships. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But you must surely 
 admit that it is unjust and misleading to apply 
 to the men from great continents beyond the 
 seas, the names used to describe your frontier 
 tribes and the hillmen of your remote moun- 
 tains, who could not copy your crafts or fit 
 themselves into the complex life of the plains. 
 We have a literature which is broader and more 
 vital than yours, an art which has touched 
 higher levels, although of course we prize your 
 lacquers and porcelains for their colour and 
 quaintness, and your bronzes for their finish 
 and patient detail. Our civilisation is of a new 
 order, and cannot be classed with any told of 
 in the past history of the world. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Well, we know nothing of 
 your literature, and perhaps cannot acquire a 
 
lO AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 taste for its special beauties. Your art, re- 
 presented by second-hand picture papers, often 
 displayed for sale on the street-side, in com- 
 pany with photographs from the nude, does 
 not impress us. As to your civilisation, we 
 allow that it is wonderful, but it is so different 
 from our own that the ignorant look upon it 
 as the product of magic, akin to that of the 
 Tauists, and the less ignorant, as an abnormal 
 development of the sense-faculties which have 
 been trained at the expense of the moral. The 
 Vice-Consul himself speaks lightly of the codes 
 of conduct taught by the missionaries, and does 
 not put himself under any obligation to practise 
 their precepts, by conforming to the rites of the 
 Church, unless on the birthday of Jesus. Our 
 own histories tell of great magicians and in- 
 ventors, but we do not think of ranging Ts5 
 Ts'z, or any of his craft, side by side with 
 Confucius. "The sage spake of morals and 
 not of marvels." The precepts out of which 
 our family life is built we look upon as greater 
 than the craft which gets power out of steam, 
 changes the combinations of gases, and controls 
 and directs the vital principle of the lightning. 
 We classify society into scholars, cultivators of 
 the soil, artisans, and traders. Till we re- 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES II 
 
 arrange that classification, your civilisation, 
 which is the work of those who belong to 
 the third class only, cannot be esteemed as 
 highly as it is with you. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But that surely does not 
 justify you in ranking us with barbarians. 
 
 Pundit Tung, — Perhaps not, but we act from 
 obstinate prejudice, as your countrymen also 
 do. If you will not blame my bad manners 
 for presuming to say so, I daresay there is 
 physical aversion on both sides, and we each 
 seem to the other as though we belonged to 
 dififerent species. You perhaps remember that 
 when you first came to represent your country 
 at this river-port, a Chinaman from the Eastern 
 suburb called to say that he had a daughter 
 with pink eyes, white hair, and a florid com- 
 plexion (an albino?) for whom he could not 
 get a betrothal arranged on any terms. He 
 thought that as she was born with a foreigner's 
 physiognomy, the Vice-Consul might be willing 
 to take her as a concubine, and the price should 
 be very cheap. He had made up his mind 
 when she was a little girl to destroy her, but 
 the oracle in the temple had twice given the 
 answer that it would be unlucky. I mention 
 it to show the impression made upon the 
 
12 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 average Chinese mind by foreign hair, and 
 foreign complexion, not to speak of foreign 
 dress. Everybody says the Vice-Consul him- 
 self is majestic in appearance, and has an 
 intelligent eye. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But the man was a 
 lunatic, and could never have observed so 
 closely as an average Chinaman. If you do 
 keep your eyes half shut we give you credit 
 for being able to see a great deal, and to see 
 correctly. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — I am not sure we are more 
 careless in such matters than the men of your 
 esteemed country. L6 Kwok had seen perhaps 
 not more than four or five foreigners when he 
 fell into the delusion that his daughter had 
 European hair and complexion. I have also 
 heard of Europeans who for weeks could only 
 distinguish the cook from one of the chair- 
 bearers by the fact that he carried a market 
 basket with a weighing-stick on his arm. The 
 carelessness is on both sides, and concerns 
 other things besides face and feature. If our 
 ignorant classes, and even our mandarins, have 
 spoken of your countrymen as the Yung and 
 the Man, you have rated us less highly than 
 you rate the Greeks and the Romans, and 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 1 3 
 
 have spoken of our literature as old-world 
 lumber. Your view of our past history, our 
 ethics, our philosophy, our family and civic 
 virtues, is as defective and misleading as our 
 view of foreign geography and Western cus- 
 toms. A few of the consuls and the missioil- 
 aries have looked into our sacred books and 
 taken the trouble to understand us, but a 
 consul is satisfied when he can translate a 
 despatch or conduct an interview without the 
 help of his interpreter, and the average mis- 
 sionary seems to think it is a waste of time 
 to learn more colloquial than will enable him 
 to communicate with the common people. 
 As to the few consuls, or vice-consuls, who 
 learn enough of the local dialects to converse 
 freely, they are sent after a year or two to 
 other stations, where different dialects are in 
 use, and their knowledge is academic. Not 
 one in a hundred of the great merchants and 
 their clerks could hail a boat, ask the way, 
 or call for a cup of tea in a refreshment-house. 
 The few of you who have studied Chinese 
 books say we are a learned people, and at the 
 same time despise us. Our kii-yan, tsun-sz, 
 hon-lam, who are honoured as princes in their 
 own neighbourhoods, are flounced and chivied 
 
14 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 and shouted at by your countrymen as though 
 they were mere cooHes. The boards inscribed 
 with the literary titles of our scholars, and 
 carried before them in full dress processions, 
 are as incomprehensible to you as the badges 
 of your secret societies are to us. In fact, 
 the Chinaman is preferred who is not learned. 
 There can be no lasting and acceptable inter- 
 course unless we can talk about history, litera- 
 ture, poetry, or some topic fit for the educated. 
 We soon tire of hearing about foreign countries 
 and their customs. It is spicier to read 
 " Wonders of the Seas and Mountains," if one 
 has a bent to that kind of ware. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But the members of the 
 Diplomatic and Consular services at least revere 
 the learning of the country, although foreign 
 merchants laugh at them, saying they have 
 fallen into the ways of the Chinaman; and 
 native newspapers so far overstate the apprecia- 
 tion avowed by some of us, that they say we 
 have found a higher attraction in Confucius 
 than in the traditional teaching of Jesus. Even 
 missionaries, who have come to give you what 
 they think a more perfect religion, have no 
 censure to pass upon the precepts of the 
 sacred books. 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 1$ 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Much of that is of course 
 the language of compliment, and we take a 
 little off for politeness, just as you do not allow 
 yourselves to be entirely misled by the ex- 
 travagant flatteries our officials pay to your taste, 
 learning, and virtue, whilst they offer you sweets 
 and tea. Of those who come from the West, 
 the rank and file never take the trouble to 
 learn our language at all, and of those who 
 learn our language few dive into the treasures 
 of our literature and prepare the way for intelli- 
 gent intercourse with us. You know the story 
 of Tsz Kung, a disciple of Confucius. Some 
 one had said he was greater than his master, 
 and he replied by a parable. " My wall is only 
 shoulder-high. One may peep over it and see 
 what is of worth in the apartments. The wall 
 of my master is several fathoms high. If one 
 does not gain the door and enter, he cannot see 
 the beauty of the ancestral temple nor the 
 sumptuous attire of the officers attending there." 
 The foreigners who become Chinese scholars 
 peep over the wall and do not enter by the 
 door, and as to the rest, they treat the temple of 
 our literature as if it were a cow-byre, and pass 
 by on the other side. Is it any wonder that we 
 live together without any pretence at social 
 
l6 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 intercourse. Our dealings with each other are 
 official or strictly mercenary. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But foreigners are birds 
 of passage. We are here for a time only, and 
 you are here always, and will have to do with 
 those who come after us. It is quite as easy 
 for you to learn our language; and you may 
 have occasion to use it to the end of your days. 
 You might inaugurate the period of a more 
 perfect understanding by making a study of our 
 literature. 
 
 Pmidit Tung. — Some of our younger genera- 
 tion do learn it, because it is profitable, but 
 from no other motive. Our native traders think 
 you speak nothing better than the coolie English 
 of Hong-Kong (pidgin). How can a language 
 that has no greater variety of sounds in it than 
 the quack of a duck-raft or the cackle of a 
 poultry-pen, and that is represented by twenty- 
 six featureless characters, lead up to a literature 
 that will delight the mind of a scholar ? The 
 social fellowship of which we get glimpses 
 through coolie English does not tempt us. Of 
 course your merchants go once or twice to a 
 Chinese feast, where they taste trepang, shark's- 
 fins and bird's-nest soup, and drink health and 
 good-will with native business clients, by tossing 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 1 7 
 
 cups of samshoo into each other's open mouths, 
 but that is for the fun of the thing, or to make 
 their firms popular with Chinese customers. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — Perhaps one of the 
 reasons why foreigners are not attracted to 
 Chinese society is that it represents one half of 
 human life only. We never speak to your 
 women and the children, and unless they appear 
 upon the scene, there is a lack of piquancy 
 and romance. Your countrymen are deficient in 
 sentiment, and will probably continue so whilst 
 men and women live so rigidly apart. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — It will be a long time before 
 we shall change our family traditions. In the 
 more important settlements there are clubs 
 at which foreigners meet each other, and they 
 seem to find men's company satisfying, for they 
 spend much time together, even when their 
 families are within easy reach. Perhaps they 
 will by-and-by come over to our view about the 
 separation of the sexes. The coarse manners of 
 some of the foreigners do not incline us to make 
 changes in our social life. Some of them at 
 least have never learned the proprieties, and 
 think themselves honest when they are only 
 rude, and amusing when they are viciously 
 familiar. Not many years ago one of our 
 £ 
 
1 8 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Chinese ministers was returning with his retinue 
 from Europe, and a merchant's clerk on board 
 chucked the female attendant of His Excellency's 
 wife under the chin, and called her " handsome 
 facey." A Chinaman who would dare to offer 
 such an insult to a waiting-maid here would 
 be knived on the spot. When such things 
 are rumoured abroad we ask, "Are Western 
 manners like this ? " Do not be surprised that 
 we are jealous and inaccessible. We look upon 
 it as contempt when foreigners are too indifferent 
 to learn our speech and respect our customs, and 
 it is only human nature to meet contempt with 
 contempt. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But such looseness is 
 against Western etiquette, no less. We have 
 our code of manners, which is simple and spon- 
 taneous. Chinese ceremony is complex and 
 elaborate in its requirements, and needs almost 
 as much learning as the Chinese ideograph 
 itself. Your people could learn our few rules 
 of courtesy, and if they do not feel bound to 
 practise the rules in their comings and goings 
 amongst us, they might at least allow that we 
 have our own proprieties of behaviour, and not 
 rate us as unmannerly barbarians. 
 
 Pundit Tung, — Well, our rules are better, 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES I9 
 
 particularly where women are concerned. It is 
 forbidden us to touch a woman's hand, a re- 
 striction Mencius, of course, allows to be 
 broken if a woman has stumbled into a well, 
 and needs to be pulled out. But in foreign 
 life women seem to be always in wells, judg- 
 ing by the constant need they have of being 
 helped. Our distant manners make for 
 domestic morality, and however bad we may 
 be in some things, seductions, illegitimate 
 births, and public divorces are fewer than with 
 you. Foot-binding may be as wanting in 
 pitifulness as you assert, yet we think it better 
 than the promiscuous dancing of under-dressed 
 women, which is practised at some of the 
 Legations and Consulates, as well as in the 
 merchants' ^^ hofigs.^' 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But it is scarcely reason- 
 able for us to give up social pleasures which 
 involve no real evil, as a concession to Chinese 
 prejudice. We are not missionaries who are 
 under an obligation to deny themselves of 
 everything through which they might forfeit 
 the respect and good-will of their Chinese 
 neighbours. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Perhaps not, but it is the 
 only price at which you can secure the secret 
 
20 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 respect and good-will of the Chinese. If you 
 prize codes of manners, objectionable from our 
 standpoint but innocent from yours, more than 
 friendship with our people, be it so. You 
 cannot have it both ways. Our manners have 
 helped our morals, and are consecrated by the 
 authority of the sacred books, as well as by the 
 usage of many dynasties. If your merchants 
 come as the guests of our country, they should 
 surely conform to our manners rather than 
 expect us to copy theirs. When we go as 
 guests into your territories, it is only fitting 
 we should observe the etiquette of your houses. 
 Our countrymen say a foreigner comes into our 
 midst as though he were a manifestation of Yuk 
 Wong Tai tai, and scholars, craftsmen and 
 traders were a celestial host enlisted to bow 
 down and serve him. The Son of Heaven 
 himself could scarcely require more. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — Perhaps we are a little 
 overbearing, for we belong to a conquering race, 
 but you greatly exaggerate the case. There 
 is no racial antipathy on our side, theoretically 
 at least. The antipathy on the part of your 
 countrymen is ingrained rather than superficial, 
 and shows itself towards those foreigners who 
 adopt Chinese dress, and bend themselves to 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 21 
 
 native customs. And the Japanese, who are 
 step-brothers in race and affiliated to the same 
 Oriental stock, you dislike more even than the 
 rest of us. That was so even before the war 
 broke out, which of course added greatly to the 
 exasperation. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — The Japanese at first be- 
 longed to the barbarians of the East, and 
 although we half reformed them, they retained 
 some of their earlier manners and customs, 
 which we regard as licentious. Within the 
 last few tens of years Japan, which was once 
 our apprentice, has turned round, and wishes to 
 be our instructor. It is not easy for us to 
 resign ourselves to such an inverted relationship. 
 The ancient and lowly tribute-bearer comes 
 back to our Court a dictator. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — It seems to me that 
 you are impartial, and dislike all nationalities 
 in much the same degree. And the dislike is 
 rooted in ignorance. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — Perhaps the people as a 
 whole put all foreign races [into one vague 
 group for hatred, but those of us who have been 
 brought into contact with the outside world 
 discriminate in the degree and quaUty of our 
 disfavour. The Russians are more sociable 
 
22 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 with us than the rest, but are more ruthless. 
 They are the worst of enemies but the best 
 of friends, and our feelings towards them are 
 consequently a mixture of extremes. French 
 suavity pleases us, but their politeness lacks 
 dignity and reserve, and their policy at times 
 threatens to overwhelm our country as re- 
 morselessly as the Yellow River. Perhaps they 
 still make the fighting Emperor their pattern 
 saint. We respect the Germans and their 
 methods, for they believe in authority, like 
 ourselves, and they keep women in their place. 
 But they are rough. Americans treat us well, 
 and have an affable ceremoniousness, but it is 
 too hurried. Our returned emigrants like their 
 ideas and their institutions, and those who 
 have learned English in the Sunday-schools 
 worship the young ladies who have taught them, 
 and say that in spite of their easy manners they 
 are as good as Kun Yam or T'in Hau. England 
 might stand first with us, if she would listen to 
 our side of some of the questions in dispute, 
 but her policy wavers with her statesmen, and 
 is not so trustworthy as it once was. Perhaps 
 we do not like any foreigners, but those who 
 know admit that there are differences. 
 
 Vice- Consul West — In every case special 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 23 
 
 explanations may doubtless be found, but 
 there is a vague and historic dislike to every- 
 thing un-Chinese. You have not always been 
 at peace with your own subject tribes, and it is 
 practically the same temper of suspicion and 
 contempt which you allow to grow up towards 
 all outsiders. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — That is perhaps because our 
 nation is a huge family, for the sages taught that 
 the nation rests upon the family, and its unity 
 must be secured by the faithful cultivation of 
 domestic sentiments. Large and firmly com- 
 pacted families are usually jealous of the intru- 
 sion of strangers. I am told that in the extreme 
 north'of your country the clan still survives, and 
 that when the clansmen go forth for purposes 
 of trade and commerce, although they do not 
 return to their villages at the Spring Festival to 
 worship the ancestral graves, they dine together 
 once a year. Those who do not belong to such 
 clans are looked upon with coldness, and often 
 feel lonesome and friendless. By naming 
 regiments from the districts in which they are 
 recruited, your Government perhaps desires to 
 retrieve the errors of the past and to restore 
 the clan. It is said that your Prime Minister 
 is the head of a clan, and that he shows great 
 
24 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 kindness to those of his own house, so that 
 many in the Grand Council bear the same 
 name, and are his kinsmen in different degrees. 
 Clans resent any intrusion upon their privileges, 
 pride themselves upon their superiority, look 
 down upon unclanned folk as though they were 
 tramps, and perhaps thieves, and scorn even 
 clans of another surname. Suppose, for ex- 
 ample, that your Prime Minister's clan, or the 
 clan of the Minister of State for the Colonies, 
 held together for two thousand years and 
 multiplied in numbers exceedingly, it would 
 perhaps look with disdain and misgiving upon 
 the rest of the world. China is a huge clan, 
 or cluster of clans, held together by ties the 
 strength of which you do not duly estimate. 
 Our clans quarrel amongst themselves, but they 
 lose their sense of separateness and become 
 one body when an outside stranger is to be 
 dealt with. Clans do not brook interference 
 with their domestic interests. And our clans 
 are walled in by the protecting guilds of the 
 towns and cities, and if the defence of the 
 guilds is at fault, the secret societies, which are 
 a bulwark against the oppression of our rulers, 
 can always be used against invaders. 
 
 Vice-Consul West, — But the clan system is 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 2$ 
 
 not an unmixed good. I am not sure that its 
 drawbacks do not outweigh its advantages. 
 Clan jealousies breed many quarrels at home, 
 and quarrels breed litigation, which always ends 
 in impoverishment. Broader co-operation for 
 the common good is all but impossible. More- 
 over, the clannish collectivism, which you say 
 is the distinctive genius of the Chinese race, 
 works mischievous effects by preventing inter- 
 national harmony. You need a larger idea of 
 humanity, followed by a doctrine of free trade, 
 which has done so much to strengthen and 
 enrich our own race. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — By the idea of a larger 
 humanity I think you perhaps mean the 
 doctrine of Mak Tik, who taught that all men 
 were to be loved alike, that the interests of clans 
 and families were to be swallowed up in the 
 common interest of all. Princes were not to 
 arm their states against neighbouring states. 
 But Mencius resisted his heresy, and it has 
 never gained currency with our people. This 
 doctrine of a large impartial humanity has never 
 been exemplified in any form of Government 
 under heaven. We have come as near in our 
 own clannish way to the realisation of common 
 happiness as western nations by their methods. 
 
26 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 As to the doctrine of free trade, it is against 
 our history and our institutions. The Book of 
 History relates how three thousand years ago a 
 present of hounds was sent to King M5, of the 
 Chau dynasty by one of the tribes of the West. 
 The Grand Vizier remonstrated against the 
 king's acceptance of such a present. " A prince 
 should not value strange to the neglect of 
 useful things if he wishes home industries to be 
 perfected. He will not keep imported dogs 
 and horses nor cherish in his kingdom fine 
 birds and strange beasts. Foreigners will come 
 to him when he does not look upon foreign 
 things as precious, and his own immediate sub- 
 jects will enjoy repose when he accounts moral 
 worth of great price." Our political economy 
 is still that of the Grand Vizier, not to speak of 
 the policy which prevails in many of the great 
 Governments of the West. The children and 
 grandchildren in your own colonies have neither 
 the doctrine of the larger humanity nor a true 
 sense of continuous clanship, for they make 
 tariffs against even their own fatherland, if the 
 newspapers do not mislead us. If our type of 
 clanship is suspicious of outsiders, it safeguards 
 our interests, at least as the wisdom of the 
 ancients judged things. 
 
NTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 2J 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But this obstinate and 
 suspicious clannishness is often suicidal. To 
 illustrate its action on a small scale, take the 
 attitude of some of your countrymen towards 
 medical missionaries. You admit that they 
 have many things to teach your countrymen. 
 Not a few Chinamen who ridicule tracts, preach- 
 ing, and mission-schools, praise the work of the 
 doctors because the benefits are so obvious. 
 Foreigners even who do not believe in mis- 
 sionary religion subscribe to the local hospitals 
 with great liberality and cheerfulness. And yet 
 if one class of foreigners is more cruelly libelled 
 than another, it is that of the missionary doctors. 
 You know the monstrous stories which are some- 
 times circulated to stir up anger against them. 
 To suppress their work would be to give a new 
 license to the ravages of disease and death. 
 
 Pundit Tung, — They are misrepresented be- 
 cause they are the pilot crows leading on the 
 flock. Foreigners of all sorts soon follow 
 this advance-guard and disturb our country. 
 When it is said they make medicine of children's 
 eyes and brains it must be remembered that 
 our own books of medicine speak of effectual 
 remedies to be found in the secretions of human 
 and other bodies, so these unpleasant fictions 
 
28 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 seem to the ignorant as though they might be 
 true. Magic and medicine are mixed up in our 
 ideas. It is quite possible, too, that our own 
 doctors, who are discredited and made angry by 
 these new methods, have something to do with 
 this particular phase of the anti-foreign move- 
 ment. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — You will scarcely defend 
 that malignant form of trade protection. It is 
 against filial piety, for it is against the health 
 and prolonged life of a great many fathers and 
 mothers. It seems as though you can sur- 
 render your prejudices against the West when 
 no particular interests are threatened. Marco 
 Polo was treated as though he were one of the 
 minor gods by the founder of the Ming dynasty, 
 and the Jesuit scholars received much honour 
 and kindness from the early sovereigns of the 
 Great Pure dynasty, and before the days of 
 treaties many wandering traders came to your 
 shores, and were unmolested. 
 
 Pundit Tung. — The earlier visitors conformed 
 to our customs, and did not try to set aside our 
 etiquette, which is a part of our religion, and 
 in many ways they served both the emperor 
 and his people. Everybody loathes the snake 
 and flees from it, because it is an image of 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 29 
 
 what is odious and fatal. But farmers cherish 
 snakes because they destroy the rats which 
 devour grain, and find a place for them in their 
 farm buildings. And when Marco Polo acted 
 as page and steward to Kublai Khan, and the 
 Jesuits revised our calendar, translated Western 
 mathematics, and cast astronomical instruments 
 for our Observatory, we conquered our first 
 repugnance and nurtured them at Court. But 
 because a farmer pets a harmless snake and 
 keeps it in his granary or ox-shed, that does 
 not prove the common Chinaman has conquered 
 his loathing. Not that I would compare your 
 honoured countrymen to reptiles. The illustra- 
 tion is unhappy, but it shows a rule and its 
 exceptions. It must be added, however, that 
 within the last three or four reigns foreigners 
 have forced themselves upon us, and are here 
 in virtue of treaties which were either wrested 
 by war or have been conceded from fear of 
 renewed war. We shall always recoil from 
 relations into which we have been driven, and 
 which cross instincts that are possibly clannish 
 in their origin. 
 
 Vice-Consul West. — But you cannot imagine 
 that at the present time it would be possible to 
 dispense with treaties and conduct our inter- 
 
30 y4S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 course without the guarantees of such instru- 
 ments. Then, indeed, would the Boxer pro- 
 gramme prevail, and all foreigners be driven 
 into the sea. 
 
 Pundit Tufig. — If treaties were swept away, 
 perhaps one Chinaman in ten would wish to 
 have dealings with foreigners, one in ten would 
 be bitterly opposed to any such dealings, and 
 the other eight would be neutral, as the question 
 would have no practical relevance for them. 
 At any rate, foreign statesmen should not be 
 surprised if we fail to enter with any great 
 degree of good-will into relations which have 
 been thrust upon us. Chinese maidens, as you 
 know, are betrothed without their consent or 
 approval, and in many cases they fight against 
 being sent away into strange clans and wedded 
 to youths they have never seen. To escape 
 compulsory marriage violent resistance is some- 
 times offered when the bridal chair is brought 
 to the door, and cases of suicide are not un- 
 known. Some of the marriages are better than 
 might have been expected, and some are fateful 
 of misery and misfortune. After a time these 
 forced relations with Western countries may 
 turn out better than we venture to think, but 
 at the beginning you cannot surely dream that 
 
INTERNATIONAL ANTIPATHIES 3 1 
 
 our country is enamoured of them. An inter- 
 national fellowship is thrust upon us which 
 offends our pride, and from which we instinc- 
 tively recoil. Although things may work all 
 right in the end, the beginning is a time of 
 fear, dismay, and resentment. 
 
 Vice-Cofisul West. — Perhaps you are not so 
 ill off, after all. In our country bride and 
 bridegroom choose each other, and marriage 
 is by free consent on both sides. And yet 
 some of my married friends tell me they think 
 as much happiness arises out of Chinese modes 
 of marriage as out of Western modes. Free 
 commercial and intellectual intercourse with- 
 out the constraint and guarantee of treaties, 
 might turn out better than the contact with 
 Western life which has been forced upon you 
 by soldiers and diplomatists, or it might not. 
 Your countrymen ought to take to themselves 
 this consolation, that it is the Chinese and not 
 the English or American principle of marriage 
 which has prevailed in the clash and contact 
 of Oriental and Western life. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 
 
 " Practising old knowledge so as to acquire new, fits 
 a man to be a teacher of others." — Confucius. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. — I am unworthy of the honour 
 you pay me in this complimentary call. Please 
 be seated on the divan. Scholars are always 
 glad to meet scholars, whether their honours 
 have been gained in the Middle Kingdom or in 
 the colleges of the West. I ought to have been 
 the first to call and welcome you. Do not 
 blame the rudeness of my omission; I had sick- 
 ness in my home at the time. I have heard 
 that you are to direct the High School estab- 
 lished by the missionaries, where astronomy, 
 mathematics, chemistry, the foreign tongues, 
 and many other things are to be taught. The 
 Imperial Government has already established 
 such schools, and some of the officials are 
 sending their sons to be trained under the new 
 system. 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 33 
 
 Professor Jones. — Thank you for your 
 pleasant words. It is hopeful to see the signs 
 of an intellectual awakening in the chief cities of 
 the empire. A new epoch needs new methods 
 of training, and China must not fall behind 
 the other nations in the paths of progress. There 
 is no reason why your race should not be as 
 pre-eminent in modern as in ancient learning. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. — The new methods, it is to be 
 hoped, will not lower the literary prestige of our 
 country. My degree of "tsun sz" is but poor, 
 and yet I did not take it till I was past forty, 
 although I had been diligently studying from 
 childhood under the best of tutors. I should 
 not like my poor useless sons to fall below their 
 father's standard, although I do not see how it 
 can be avoided if their time is taken up with 
 other studies, and they spend no more time on 
 the Classical Text and the Commentaries than 
 the children of peasants and artisans. 
 
 Professor Jones. — The old methods of educa- 
 tion fail to produce the man demanded by the 
 emergencies of the times, and not a few of your 
 countrymen are at last admitting the fact. To 
 memorise old-world aphorisms and write essays 
 according to a pattern that has never varied for 
 tens of generations does not develop the 
 C 
 
34 ^•5' THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 capabilities of the mind, and will do little for the 
 improvement of the country. Confucius said : 
 " Learning without reflection is labour lost, and 
 reflection without learning is perilous." In your 
 schools and examination halls you have the 
 maximum of learning with the minimum of 
 reflection, if you will pardon the bluntness of 
 the criticism. He also said : " The man of 
 complete excellence is no mere vessel," meaning, 
 I assume, that he could adapt himself to every 
 kind of task, and was not rigidly shaped for one 
 use only. Your system turns out elegant and 
 costly vessels, but a more varied scheme of 
 education would yield men of wider capabilities 
 who would do the work for which the hour 
 waits. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. — Perhaps we inherit the spirit of 
 a certain disciple of the sage who, when "he 
 had heard one thing and had not yet put it into 
 practice, was only afraid lest he should hear 
 something else." The text-books of our schools 
 contain all that is necessary for a refined and 
 well-regulated social life. Things might be 
 better with us if we were more thoroughly per- 
 meated with the precepts taught in our sacred 
 books and embodied in our traditional rites. 
 
 Professor Jones. — I am afraid I have not 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 35 
 
 made my meaning clear. The new education 
 does not seek to subvert those elementary rules 
 of conduct, which you assume are the special 
 discovery of the Confucianists, but which, as a 
 matter of fact, are current amongst all races. 
 Every civilisation admits of improvement, and 
 the improvement depends upon the acquisition 
 of new knowledge. When the growth of a child 
 is arrested it is due to defective nutrition, and 
 when invention, discovery, and progress in the art 
 of living cease, it is because the supply of fresh 
 ideas is cut off ; and then decay must sooner or 
 later ensue. The higher civilisation you need 
 must be sought through a broader and more 
 comprehensive system of education. Confucius 
 himself had an enquiring mind, was an adept 
 in picking up information, and had he been 
 living to-day, would have shown himself foremost 
 in reform. It speaks well for the future of China 
 that in the capital of the empire, as well as in 
 many provincial cities, universities are being 
 founded for the promotion of Western know- 
 ledge, both by the missionaries and by even the 
 representatives of the Imperial Government. 
 
 Dr Li T^b. — Well, the Reformers must not 
 go too fast, for our country, in city and village 
 alike, is governed by the ideas of men well on 
 
36 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 to seventy. Changes are easy to make where 
 the aged are treated with less veneration than 
 amongst us. The day of the Four Books and 
 the Five King is not yet past, nor soon will be. 
 Science, which is akin to the strange things from 
 which the Master shrank, is less esteemed by 
 our ruhng classes than letters. The Chinamen 
 instructed in medicine, chemistry, engineering, 
 and foreign languages are looked down upon 
 by our graduates, just as your merchants who 
 have gathered wealth. Your inventors and 
 mechanics are not greatly reverenced, it is said, 
 by the hereditary dukes and barons of the 
 Court. In our Civil Service they may some- 
 times fill inferior positions, as interpreters and 
 assistant magistrates, and may be even sent as 
 ministers to the countries of the West, but, as 
 a rule, they rank with military mandarins who 
 have been promoted for bodily strength rather 
 than for learning. The new mbvement is 
 momentary, and the scholars will have their turn 
 of influence and good fortune again. 
 
 Professor Jones. — But, as a practical man, do 
 you not see that the different parts of your 
 educational system are disproportionate and ill- 
 balanced ? The acquisition of countless compli- 
 cated ideographs takes up all the years of youth 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 3/ 
 
 and of early manhood, and in fact the goal is 
 never reached. It is as though a musician 
 spent the greater part of his life in studying the 
 woods of which harpsichords should be made, 
 and the patterns according to which the ancients 
 fashioned them, and then should venture to 
 play only in the last few years of his life, after 
 his fingers had become stiff and his ear had 
 lost its first truth and keenness. You spend 
 strength on the accidents of learning and reach 
 an intellectual life only when the mind has lost 
 its vigour. Our children have mastered the 
 script of their language, and are entering upon 
 a life of reason and understanding, years before 
 your students have attained the skill in penman- 
 ship after which they aspire. The knowledge 
 imparted in your schools is of a limited number 
 of books only, to which no fresh additions are 
 ever made. Your method of education makes 
 scholars who are polished copyists of the 
 ancients, and suppresses individuality. A great 
 literature should represent every variety of mind. 
 And, if you will allow me to say so, The Book 
 of Changes, which you honour as much as The 
 Book of History and The Book of Odes, is the 
 fountain-head of such superstitions as astrology 
 and fortune-telling, which lead many people 
 
38 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 astray. You can have no true science whilst 
 books of this class are held in honour. 
 
 Dr Li 'Po. — We are not anxious to develop 
 what you understand by individuality, for it is 
 an awkward and sometimes a dangerous quality, 
 and is often hurtful to the principle of venera- 
 tion. Those who are disobedient to the aged 
 and slight their forefathers, delight to cover 
 up their evil dispositions by assuming superior 
 and fantastic wisdom. The Chinese thinkers 
 you account distinguished for their individuality 
 have not been admitted to the ranks of our 
 great writers. And our literature does bear fruit, 
 although it does not go on making fresh wood, a 
 peculiarity which is sometimes mistaken for 
 fruitfulness. The fruit it bears is fourfold. It 
 softens manners. It refines the taste, making 
 every well-read Chinaman an adept in style. It 
 consecrates wholesome precedents, building up 
 boys in virtue more directly than the Classics 
 of the Greeks and Romans, which you still 
 imitate as slavishly as we copy our own early 
 models. I have heard your education is 
 admittedly weak on this point. And after the 
 first drudgery is past our standard books 
 minister the same kind of pleasure to us as 
 music and painting minister to the people of 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 39 
 
 the West. Tastes differ or are satisfied in 
 various ways, for your music and painting have 
 little or no charm for us. And as to what you 
 call the false science in The Book of Changes^ 
 it is said that many of the people of the West 
 are coming back to the practice of astrology 
 and fortune-telling. 
 
 Professor Jones. — On this last point let me 
 give you an illustration of what I mean. The 
 other day I was talking with a highly-educated 
 native friend upon the subject of foreign 
 astronomy, and he tried to prove to me that 
 the earth was fixed and the sun circled round 
 it, because the earth, according to the cos- 
 mogony of the Chinese, is feminine in its 
 quality, and the feminine is identified with 
 restfulness, while the sun is masculine in 
 principle, and what is masculine must be active. 
 You will be incapable of conceiving what true 
 science is, till these loud-sounding but fallacious 
 assumptions are cast out of the Chinese mind, 
 and, if necessary, out of Chinese literature. 
 
 Dr Li Td.—^vX I have read that the 
 astronomers of the West were once censured 
 and punished for saying it was the earth that 
 went round the sun, because that was against 
 the teaching of your sacred books, and those 
 
40 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 books are still esteemed. If your sacred books 
 have not been cast aside because they were once 
 supposed to be inconsistent with the teaching 
 of the astronomers, it is possible our sacred 
 books also may still continue to be held in 
 honour. 
 
 Professor Jones. — But you certainly need to 
 have a new motive-force brought into your lives. 
 Your literature, excellent of its kind, lacks some- 
 thing, for it leaves your country on the same dead- 
 level century after century. Your institutions 
 and your methods of government, admirable in 
 some respects, are not perfect, for the society 
 they mould is not moving towards higher and 
 better standards of life and well-being. The 
 progress which is the rule for races and empires, 
 in our half of the world at least, must begin 
 amongst you with an improvement in the system 
 of education. 
 
 Dr Li T^b. — But if we keep at the same level 
 we do it century after century, without any sign 
 of decadence. Friends who have lived in 
 Western countries, and have watched the trend 
 of affairs there, affirm that after a few genera- 
 tions of progress decay sets in, and the empires 
 of Europe tend one by one to fall back from 
 their former glory into insignificance. We at 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 4 1 
 
 least maintain our ground, and serene stability 
 is better than fitful outward progress attended 
 with risks of decline. And are not our Classics 
 praised by scholars from the West who have 
 studied and translated them into foreign 
 tongues ? Our taste for the savour of our own 
 literature is the result of continuous training, 
 like the eye for the colour of our porcelain or 
 the form of our wrought jade. And although 
 the books of the foreigners contain some things 
 that are useful, some things that are strange, 
 and some things that may perhaps be true, the 
 form is rough, and gives us no pleasure. When 
 Western science is set forth in Chinese book- 
 style, the names are uncouth and meaningless, 
 and the sentences grind and creak like ox-carts 
 or wheel-barrows passing over the uneven roads 
 of the northern plains, whilst ours glide like a fleet 
 of boats sailing across the lake in the moonlight. 
 Perhaps our country would be more open to 
 new ideas if you did not threaten us with a 
 revolution in which the Classics will disappear. 
 When you disparage our literature, or hint that 
 it must make way for a literature you bring in 
 your ships, as you bring opium and long-cloths, 
 every Chinese scholar feels as much injured as 
 though you were trying to take something from 
 
42 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 his personal possessions and the possessions of 
 his scholared ancestry. We prize our literary 
 honours as much as you prize your wealth, and 
 cherish the memory of such attainments for 
 generations. 
 
 Professor Jones. — But we have no wish to dis- 
 credit your literature or to give any support to 
 the idea that it must pass into oblivion. We 
 think it hurtful that one branch of knowledge 
 only should engage the entire attention of the 
 Chinese people. Changes are sooner or later 
 inevitable, and it is to be hoped those changes 
 will be brought about in peaceful ways. The 
 changes, when they come to pass, will make for 
 the good of the country in which your children 
 and your children's children must dwell, and 
 surely you are a lover of your country, and wish 
 to see its peoples wise, strong, and prosperous. 
 Posterity must be considered as well as 
 ancestry. We shall belong to the ancestry 
 some day, and must not forfeit our claim upon 
 the gratitude of those who will come after us by 
 resisting movements, the fruit of which will add 
 happiness to their lot. 
 
 Dr Li T-d. — But are all your changes 
 accomplished in a day, and do your experi- 
 ments in Government never need to be 
 
I^IVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 43 
 
 reversed ? It is rumoured that in the hospitals 
 of Europe doctors try experiments upon the 
 poor which would not be allowed when they are 
 treating patients who pay them large fees. It 
 seems to me, "the stupid one," that Western 
 teachers want to try upon our Government and 
 peoples experiments they cannot entirely carry 
 out at home. In the colleges of learning, which 
 abound in your honourable country, it is said 
 that Greek plays and Latin essays are taught, 
 whilst the sciences are only admitted into the 
 appointed courses of study a little at a time, 
 and missionaries have often said that our 
 ancient Classics are as good or even better than 
 the Classics to which your scholars attach so 
 much importance. The moral tone, moreover, 
 is purer and more helpful to virtue. In the 
 subjects of examination prescribed for your 
 doctors, lawyers, magistrates, consuls, judges, 
 these old-world letters are still accounted 
 necessary. Why should you wish to try upon 
 us novelties in education that you have not 
 entirely carried out in your own country ? You 
 are scarcely in accord with the Master's descrip- 
 tion of the princely man who "acts before he 
 speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his 
 actions." Your partiality in trying new methods 
 
44 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 of education upon us brings to mind a story 
 told in The History of Foreign Medicine 
 about the first use of the antidote to smallpox. 
 The doctor was allowed to implant the lymph 
 in the blood of men already sentenced to death 
 by the judges. If they died through the disease 
 caused by the experiment, it would be no worse 
 than death by the hand of the executioner in 
 presence of the crowd ; and if the remedy suc- 
 ceeded, they were to be rewarded with freedom 
 for the rest of their lives. If China survives the 
 experiment, good luck to everybody concerned 
 and congratulations all round, and, if she does 
 not survive, no great harm will be done, as you 
 judge things, for you speak of the empire as 
 sick, and are not sure but that Fate has already 
 decreed her death. But China has done no- 
 thing deserving death, and she is not likely to 
 end her course for many a century to come. 
 
 Professor Jones. — We take no such mournful 
 view of China, although some foreign news- 
 papers have recklessly spoken of her as the Sick 
 Man of the Far East. We are sure that fortunate 
 after-days are in store for China, and do not 
 mistrust the issue of these measures of improve- 
 ment we advocate. In making the education 
 of our own fatherland more purely scientific, we 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 45 
 
 have the prejudice of old scholars to overcome, 
 and the classical traditions of education, which 
 are a growth of centuries, cannot be abolished 
 in a day. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. — The lesson might be remem- 
 bered when you propose to lay violent hands on 
 the schools, colleges, and examination halls of 
 our empire. The prejudice confronting re- 
 formers in China is of more ancient growth, and 
 shared by a larger number of people. Our 
 country takes a much longer time to turn 
 round. If you cannot train a parrot to turn a 
 somersault on the swaying ring in its cage in a 
 day, how can you expect the ostrich or the 
 phoenix to learn the trick before the sun is 
 twenty feet up in the sky ? 
 
 Professor Jones. — Of course we allow for all 
 that, and do not intend to run counter to the 
 traditions of past scholarship. The difference 
 between the two cases is this, that to attain a 
 competent knowledge of the Chinese books 
 takes more time and strength than to attain the 
 proficiency in Latin or Greek required for a 
 university degree. European lads do not spend 
 themselves for ten or fifteen years on three or 
 four classical poets and historians only. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. — Perhaps if you would offer us 
 
46 /fS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 what has been strictly verified in Western 
 knowledge, the philosophy of the sages would 
 not be so hopelessly crowded out as you 
 assume. As far as the evidence will take us, 
 we are docile to your leading, in some things. 
 Your surgery we praise, for its feats have been 
 practised in our midst, and with one consent we 
 confess its frequent efficacy. But your physicians 
 admit that they do not know everything about 
 the action of drugs, and trust more and more to 
 commonplace rules for the preservation or the 
 recovery of health. Much of your knowledge, 
 unlike that of our Classics, fluctuates, for it is 
 only half proven, and passes through many 
 phases and fashions. Mechanical progress is 
 now spoken of by some of your writers as 
 hurtful to human skill, and your taste for the 
 moment seem to oscillate between machinery 
 and handicrafts. Those who wish to reform 
 your education are beginning to advocate the 
 more thorough training of the hands and the 
 feet, in which things we are adepts You may 
 have to apply to us for competent instructors. 
 Home industries are winning back into favour 
 once more. If the process goes on, a point 
 may come in the turning of the wheel when we 
 shall be at the top again, for it is said that no 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 47 
 
 Europeans can use their hands and feet so 
 deftly as our weavers, carpenters, and wood- 
 carvers. Your civilisation is on its trial, whilst 
 ours is established and approved. It may need 
 here and there a new loop or clasp, but we are 
 not likely to turn it inside out, much less to 
 throw it away, as you desire. Perhaps you 
 preach up the new civilisation, for which 
 Western schools and colleges are to prepare, 
 because you possess many of the materials out 
 of which the new civilisation is to be constructed, 
 and are anxious that we should become your 
 customers. 
 
 Professor /ones. — Believe me, those of us who 
 wish to encourage better methods of education 
 are not in a country, the climate of which is so 
 hurtful to us as that of China, to further the 
 interests of our home manufacturers, or to plead, 
 however indirectly, the cause of merchants who 
 wish to create markets and to sell their wares. 
 We desire to improve the life of the people, and 
 have no other wish than to see China strong and 
 flourishing. 
 
 Dr Li To, — But education that puts men 
 into the way of getting riches and awakens no 
 sense of pleasure in the mind we look upon as 
 a high-sounding name only. You know ho 
 
48 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Ngan Ui loved learning and lived a happy life, 
 although he was housed in a hovel, had a 
 gourd for a bowl, a bamboo-joint for a drinking- 
 cup, and rice and water for his daily food. He 
 stood first in the affection of Confucius. Does 
 your learning bring the same sweet content 
 under poverty-stricken conditions of life ? I am 
 told that even in your colleges such gymnastics 
 as are practised by our candidates for military 
 office are of more account than books. As to 
 the merchants who come to sojourn in China, 
 they have zeal for training racing ponies but not 
 for the cultivation of literature. Few of them 
 are able to learn our language, and they require 
 the Chinamen who act as their servants, clerks, 
 and salesmen to learn foreign speech so that 
 converse may be possible. This defect in the 
 training of your countrymen not only compels 
 those who are engaged in commerce to remain 
 ignorant of many things which it is their interest 
 to know, but makes cordial and intelligent 
 friendship impossible. It is not easy to be 
 sociable with those who are compelled to convey 
 much of their meaning by the gestures of the 
 dumb. 
 
 Professor /ones. — I am afraid that is because 
 our merchants grow languid in the heat of the 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 49 
 
 summer, and hope to make rapid fortunes which 
 will enable them to go back to their friends. 
 When money is no longer gathered up so 
 quickly as in former years, perhaps they will be 
 compelled to learn the Chinese speech and take 
 interest in the customs and past history of the 
 people. 
 
 Dr Li T^d. —But surely you are not coming 
 round to confess that many of your countrymen 
 only love learning for the gain of which it 
 brings the promise, and not for the pure pleasure 
 it ministers. The Analects speak of the inex- 
 haustible delights of learning, and in every 
 generation millions of scholars prove that those 
 delights do not easily pall. Can it be that our 
 learning is like a beautiful maiden whose fame 
 is widely diffused, and whom hundreds would 
 gladly espouse, and that your learning is plain, 
 dull, and ill-favoured, and no one desires the 
 hand that is offered? 
 
 Professor /ones. — But our advanced scholars 
 delight in letters and adore books as fervently 
 as the most diligent and enthusiastic students 
 of the Chinese. Many of them revel also in 
 the beauties of style. 
 
 Dr Li r'J.— But the fact that the supply of 
 books exceeds the demand looks as though 
 D 
 
50 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 your special methods of education did not 
 create a genuine and disinterested love of 
 literature. Is it true, as we are told, that more 
 books are composed in your country than are 
 printed, and that of the many books printed, 
 only a small proportion are bought by the 
 public ? Is it true, also, that poetry is out of the 
 fashion, and that a few men and women only 
 write it now to please themselves ? It has even 
 been said that many accounted your greatest 
 writers produce nothing but plays and small 
 stories ; and Western sinologues have even ex- 
 pressed surprise that literature of this inferior 
 order should not be found in our libraries, but 
 should be sold for a few cash only by the street 
 side. 
 
 Professor Jones. — But if more books are pro- 
 duced than come into use, the inference is 
 clear that our methods of education stir up 
 men and women to think. As to the poets, 
 perhaps they have had their day on both sides 
 of the world. Your scholars indite verses on 
 fans and dash off rhyming couplets for the 
 scrolls of reception halls; but these ingenious 
 compositions are only read by those to whom 
 they are addressed, and by the friends who are 
 willing to echo the self-praise implied in dis- 
 
RIVAL SYSTEMS OF EDUCATION 5 1 
 
 playing these testimonials. The market for 
 original poetry is as flat in China as in the 
 countries of the West, and in that matter at 
 least we are quits. We are digesting new 
 knowledge at present, which has come to us 
 in unexpected lumps, and by-and-by we shall 
 come back to elegant literature. 
 
 Dr Li T-d, — In that case we may well wait 
 till the stage of assimilation is passed, and 
 you are in the mood to prize the special 
 charms of our literature. Chinese fashions do 
 not change, and if we are patient for a few 
 years more, we shall be in the van of culture 
 again, and, after many a round-about itinerary, 
 you will have caught up with us. We like to 
 be at the goal without a struggle. Our scholars 
 will always depreciate your knowledge whilst 
 you speak slightingly of ours. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 WESTERN versus CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 
 
 " Heaven sees as my people see, and hears as my 
 people hear." — Shu King. 
 
 So I Shiik. — So you come from the powerful 
 country of the Flowery Flag (America). China 
 has never been at war with America, and barring 
 a few riots, our traders and labourers have been 
 well done by, whilst sojourning in your cities. 
 As an elder of the village, I welcome you to 
 our mean family temple. The entertainment, 
 I fear, has been coarse, and our viands unworthy 
 of so distinguished a guest. Foreigners are 
 rich, and live on dainty fare, whilst our village 
 of beggars has little but half-hulled rice and 
 yams to offer its guests. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — Your hospitality has been 
 most bountiful, and a viceroy could not have 
 dined to better effect than your lowly brother 
 from the Republic of the West. The only thing 
 that could have been improved is my use 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 53 
 
 of the chop sticks. In this journey through 
 the hill country, everybody has been attentive, 
 including the district magistrate himself; and 
 excepting, of course, the shouts of the street 
 boys, I have had nothing to grumble at, and 
 they mean no evil. 
 
 So I Shuk. — Our country is poor and ill- 
 supplied with schools, so the boys grow up 
 rude and unversed in manners. Do not blame 
 them, for it is only village ignorance. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — Not at all. Boys are the 
 same everywhere, and in my country we let 
 them have their bout of noise and frolic un- 
 checked. They grow quiet and sober in due 
 time. Perhaps our boys are a little worse than 
 yours, because they catch the spirit of in- 
 dependence from their elders. We pay little 
 or no respect to rank, and the highest officers 
 of the Government are taught to regard them- 
 selves as the servants of the people. Class 
 feuds become less bitter when ministers of 
 State, judges, and magistrates have to come 
 to the community at large for their mandate. 
 
 So I Shuk. — But the power of our rulers 
 rests upon the will of the people. In conversa- 
 tion with the King of Tski, Mencius affirmed 
 that a man who put an unrighteous ruler to 
 
54 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 death was not a regicide but a minister of 
 justice. He also said that officials must be 
 promoted, removed from power, or put to 
 death, not at the prompting of courtiers or 
 fellow-officials, but by the will of the common 
 people. Thus is it that the old saying is 
 justified — "The people of the kingdom put 
 him to death." In some countries, I am told, 
 the people believe in the Divine right of kings, 
 and imagine that the right is the right of birth. 
 We also believe in Divine rights, and speak of 
 our ruler as the Son of Heaven, but his right 
 is derived, if the teaching of our sages is to be 
 accepted, from the will of the people. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — These theories are just and 
 sagacious, but you need revolution and blood- 
 shed to put them into effect. The weakness 
 of your constitution is that you have no ar- 
 rangements for carrying the will of the people 
 into effect. Amongst us the people choose a 
 new head of the State once in four years, and 
 a great many of the subordinate officials are 
 changed at the same time. 
 
 So I Shuk. — But that seems changing from 
 the mere love of novelty, not because the cause 
 of righteousness or the welfare of the people 
 requires it. It is scarcely necessary to pull the 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 55 
 
 house down so often for the purpose of giving 
 effect to the judgment of the populace. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — The change is not so serious 
 as your metaphor impHes, for the constitution 
 still stands. We simply change a few of the 
 servants in the house, if it is thought fit, or 
 allow them to renew their agreement with the 
 masters for another term of years. It is only 
 in our country that the doctrine of the sover- 
 eignty of the people is carried out without fear 
 or favour to its just conclusion. Russia is in 
 as bad, or worse, condition than China, and the 
 working and trading classes have no rights as 
 subjects and citizens. In Germany, there is 
 a little liberty qualified by the power of the 
 police and the soldiers. In France, there is a 
 great deal of nominal liberty qualified by the 
 heads of the army, who are themselves ruled 
 by the priests ; and in England there is almost 
 as much liberty as with us, but the people are 
 not allowed to elect their judges and sovereign, 
 and the politicians persuade the people to en- 
 trust them with unlimited power, the financial 
 houses of London in the meantime instructing 
 the politicians. We are free in all things, and 
 the highest people in our country are subject to 
 public opinion. I do not know what I might 
 
56 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 be tempted to do, if I had been born a Russian 
 or even a Chinaman. We do not believe in 
 the hereditary principle, for it allows a man, 
 who may happen to be fool or rogue, or both 
 combined, to succeed to the prestige, power, and 
 office of his father. Indeed some of our rich 
 men in private life are beginning to see it is 
 not wise to leave very much of their money to 
 their sons, because it beguiles them into vice 
 and wastefulness. 
 
 So I Shuk. — Perhaps we are less bound by 
 the rule of hereditary succession than some of 
 the nations of the west. Leaving a few groups 
 of Mantchoo princes out of the reckoning, no 
 office is hereditary, and the law of primogeni- 
 ture is subject to modification in both the 
 Imperial Court and the village clan. If a 
 youth grows up unworthy, and continues so till 
 those who decide his family affairs are about to 
 pass away, he is put where he can do no 
 harm. He will be kept out of the ranks of 
 fathers and uncles who control the affairs of 
 the younger generation. The emperor is not 
 compelled to designate his oldest son to the 
 succession, and it is one of the gains of 
 polygamy that the choice of the heir is not 
 commonly limited. Your countrymen are often 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES $7 
 
 heard praising the uses of competition, and our 
 customs encourage a pleasing rivalry within the 
 home in wisdom and virtue. In those Western 
 countries, where thrones are still rigidly here- 
 ditary, I have heard it said that unless a 
 queen is the chief ruler, it is difficult to have 
 a court frequented by those who live without 
 stain of reproach. We have developed beyond 
 that stage. If the absolute power of the father 
 has been maintained amongst us from primitive 
 times, it protects us against many worse evils. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — Sometimes it does, and 
 sometimes it does not. In this home of your 
 ancestors I would not say anything disrespectful 
 to the heads of communities, but not in- 
 frequently usurpers have traded upon the power 
 and privilege of age, and have set aside rulers 
 wiser and more disinterested than themselves. 
 
 So I Shuk (wagging his outspread palm in 
 deprecation). — Do not speak thus. We have 
 no consuls to protect us, and it might be 
 unlucky to venture upon such a perilous topic. 
 As a rule, the old choose more wisely than the 
 young, and whilst the uses of divination must 
 not be overlooked, the end aimed at is to judge 
 men's dispositions correctly, and then appoint 
 or set aside. Our methods have worked well 
 
S8 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 and given us a solid corporate life possessed by 
 no other race. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But the system has not 
 worked well, does not work well, and never will. 
 Only the other day I was reading with my 
 teacher the quaint ballad on "big rats amongst 
 the millet and the wheat," to which the poet 
 compared the extortioners of his time. And 
 that ballad, I believe, was written in the 
 Golden Age three thousand years ago. 
 
 So I Shuk. — I have not yet heard of the 
 kind of Government which will give security 
 against rats. Wherever there are harvests 
 there will be rats, more or less. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye,—YQ^, but with the present 
 order of ideas in China, rats are held as sacred 
 as the pigs and fish in the Buddhist monastery 
 visited in the course of my journey. You revere 
 the extortioners as if they were half divine, and 
 allow them to multiply into a national plague. 
 
 So I Shuk, — But they do not eat everything, 
 and some of us get fat on what they leave us. 
 You surely would not have us devastate our 
 rice-fields for the sake of starving out the rats. 
 It is hard enough when Heaven sends famines, 
 and we do not need to add to the score. 
 
 Ezra 7! Nye. — That brings me back to 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 59 
 
 what I was just saying, you have no arrange- 
 ments in your constitution for ridding your- 
 selves of oppressors. You can only do it by a 
 revolution which entails loss of life. There are 
 no popular elections, and you cannot hope to 
 influence the poHcy of the Government, unless 
 by acts of violence the Government will regard 
 as capital crimes. You must surely resent the 
 habit your officials have of treating you as 
 though you were babies, and sometimes grossly 
 ill-treating you. The patriarchal tradition may 
 be carried too far, although I allow it is an 
 interesting and oft-times beautiful survival. 
 
 So I Shuk,—)^\x\. I think we get as much of 
 our way, which is what you mean by liberty, as 
 the people of Western States. Friends who 
 have been abroad tell me they felt all the time 
 as though they were in cages, and scarcely 
 dared move a finger lest they should break 
 some strange law, and be marched off by the 
 police to the guard-house. They never felt 
 they were out of the cage till . they had set foot 
 again in their own province. As to our man- 
 darins, we are not so much at their mercy as 
 you think. I was in business for twenty years 
 in the capital of the province, and we twice 
 secured the removal of district magistrates who 
 
6o AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 oppressed the people and issued vexatious and 
 unpopular proclamations. And in the villages, 
 if we pay the land-tax and settle our own 
 quarrels, the mandarins rarely trouble us. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But the right to choose your 
 rulers is not provided for in the statute book 
 of the Great Pure dynasty, and riots and 
 shutting up shops and the petitioning of the 
 Trade Guilds, do not afford you an opportunity 
 of selecting the best men for power. When 
 you have dislodged one oppressor, a man of 
 more tiger-like temper may be sent to take his 
 place. 
 
 So I Shuk. — That is not likely, because the 
 Viceroy of the province usually knows we have 
 to be put into good temper again, and advises 
 accordingly. But all mandarins are pretty much 
 alike to us if they do not screen law-breakers or 
 levy undue taxes. As a matter of fact, they 
 have little to do with the villages where our life 
 centres, and most of us are only sojourners in 
 the towns and cities, and do not trouble our- 
 selves about the mandarins. As Confucius said, 
 " He who is not in an office does not concern 
 himself with the duties of its administration." 
 As far as I can hear, we have more control over 
 the things which directly affect our welfare than 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 6l 
 
 Western peoples. If some reports are to be 
 believed, you have the name of self-government 
 without the fact. An election day is appointed, 
 and neighbours pledge each other in strong 
 drink, and shout as if they were playing "w^/ra," 
 put flags out of their houses, wear coloured 
 ribbons, and each voter thinks, unhappy mad- 
 man ! that he is emperor for an hour, ruling the 
 destinies of the world. But the voter feels like 
 putting on mourning next day, when he has to 
 enter upon his old life, and perhaps be over- 
 ridden for a number of years by the man he has 
 chosen. A scholar in the next village, who was 
 called home from one of the European embassies 
 to wait upon a dying father, says. The idea the 
 people have away there that they govern them- 
 selves is false, and they only think it because 
 they are superficial and illiterate. For many 
 important reforms, both cities and villages have 
 been earnestly asking, and after two or three 
 tens of years are no nearer the accomplish- 
 ment of their wishes than ever. Before an 
 election is to take place, the members of the 
 Grand Council meet in secret, and decide what 
 cries they will raise to divert the people from their 
 schemes ; and then when the Assembly of Law- 
 Makers has been once elected, the chiefs of the 
 
62 AS THE CHINESE SEE OS 
 
 parties do what they like for five or six years, 
 and cater for the interests of their friends. Our 
 oppressors go on till their heads fall, and yours 
 till the next period for forming a new parlia- 
 ment; the tenure of power working out upon 
 an average to the same term of time. Perhaps 
 our system has advantages over any of the 
 systems of Europe, because there an oppressor 
 can trick the plain unthinking people a second 
 time, and get back into office, whilst officials 
 dealt with by our method, if they come back 
 upon the scene by any one of the six paths of 
 transmigration, reappear as pigs or peacocks, 
 and not as the wearers of peacock - feathers. 
 You choose sides, but can take no part in the 
 game. In China, every man may hope to take 
 his part in the game, as I will explain in a 
 moment. The newspapers make a great show of 
 criticising the two sides in the game, but they 
 have not the weight or the disinterestedness of 
 our official censors, because newspaper public- 
 ation is a branch of trade, being conducted only 
 for gain. At least, such are the customs of 
 Europe, according to what is rumoured amongst 
 us. Perhaps in your country things are other- 
 wise, and the people get their wishes carried into 
 effect. When living in the capital of the 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 63 
 
 province I often observed that American 
 Consuls were more deferential to the subjects 
 of the country they represented than English 
 Consuls. Although you look upon us as though 
 we were the slaves of the dynasty, we have 
 more influence and liberty than foreigners. 
 The wishes of an old man are respected as 
 though he were the emperor himself. In towns 
 and cities we have the right to govern, employ- 
 ing our own police, lighting and paving our own 
 streets, building whatever temples we choose, 
 putting up whatever wharves and bridges we 
 need, without asking permission from our rulers. 
 It is said that in Western countries it costs as 
 much money to get the consent of the Govern- 
 ment for public works as to carry out the works 
 themselves. In our villages every kind of custom 
 prevails, if so be no injury is done to virtue, and 
 we can endow what religions we think well, and 
 choose our own counsellors. Each village is a 
 commune, and does not as a rule interfere with 
 distant villages. In the rural districts the grey- 
 beards have all the state and honour of 
 mandarins, who rarely intrude upon the neigh- 
 bourhood ; and it is a much sweeter thing to be 
 honoured by one's own kindred than to receive 
 outward honour, like the mandarins, from 
 
64 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Strangers. The Chinese have been accustomed 
 to greater liberty of action than foreigners. It 
 is a complaint against them that when they go 
 to other countries they secretly manage their 
 own affairs, and only now and again appeal to 
 the judges and magistrates. Those who have 
 returned from Western lands say that although 
 the officials there do not receive bribes, they 
 are far from pleased, because our countrymen 
 are in the habit of settling so many things 
 amongst themselves. A Chinaman feels that 
 he is a free man at home, and one to be taken 
 account of, whilst in the countries of the West 
 it seems as though somebody were always trying 
 to take away his liberty and make him a slave. 
 
 Esra T. Nye. — I am glad to hear you admit 
 that the officials of Christian countries do not 
 make a practice of receiving bribes. It is to 
 be feared that things are different here. In 
 every part of Asia the " squeeze pidgin " is as 
 wide-spread and as inevitable as malaria itself. 
 Although your system of open examinations for 
 honour and preferment is fine in theory, and 
 poor scholars entering them sometimes become 
 prefects, viceroys, and grand secretaries, yet 
 office is bought and sold under the very eye of 
 the Literary Chancellor himself. Do not the 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 65 
 
 rich illiterates smuggle poor graduates into the 
 hall as cooks and coolies ? and these disguised 
 graduates write essays that get placed at the 
 top of the list. And many qualify through the 
 examinations who never gain emoluments. 
 And when at last a post of administration is 
 reached, the mandarin of course is expected 
 to recoup himself for his outlay of money 
 whilst taking the steps which precede an ap- 
 pointment. Moreover, your Government, when 
 wanting money, openly sells rank without the 
 slightest attempt at disguise. 
 
 So I Shuk.—^vX I have heard it said that in 
 England judges and Court poets and the chief 
 priests of the Church are appointed because of 
 the service they have rendered to the political 
 faction which is in office ; and that in the clubs 
 and guild-houses of London titles may be 
 bought at a fixed tariff. If a man subscribes 
 thousands of taels to the funds of his political 
 friends, the Prime Minister recommends the 
 sovereign to give him a patent of nobility. 
 Even in your honourable country, it is said 
 that all public appointments are vacated by an 
 election of the President, who gives them to 
 his own friends and supporters. Money is ex- 
 torted from the criminal classes and shared 
 E 
 
6^ AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 with the ruHng gentry of the city. That is 
 probably, however, the slander of our ignorant 
 and ill-disposed countrymen who have been 
 there as cooks on steamers, or to wash clothes. 
 Our village headmen, who have more power 
 than your fifth and sixth button magistrates, 
 are chosen by their own clansmen, and, al- 
 though they may sometimes think it prudent 
 to pay the bribes asked by bad magistrates, 
 never receive bribes from their own clansmen, 
 and their decisions are worthy of their years 
 and virtue. The sentiments and affections per- 
 vading the family groups dwelling together in 
 our villages may sometimes make the elders 
 partial, but they save justice from degenerating 
 into sordidness and oppression. Indulgent to 
 our kinsmen we may be, yet we keep down 
 crime and prevent the intrusion of the man- 
 darins. Only last winter we exercised our 
 power as criminal judges by drowning in the 
 village fish-pond there a grand-nephew, who 
 was a hopeless opium sot, and who had been 
 practising frauds that might have involved the 
 village. The father of the young man was at 
 last led to consent when he saw that he him- 
 self might be held responsible for the felonies 
 of his son. He had another son to continue 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 67 
 
 the ancestral offerings. That is how we main- 
 tain our independence and keep free of the 
 mandarins. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But we have no such dread 
 of our judges and magistrates. They are 
 trained for their work, and dare not deviate 
 from the strict interpretation of the law. The 
 proceedings of the Courts are reported in the 
 press, and any grave miscarriage of justice would 
 be brought to light. And those who fill these 
 posts are upright, and are paid enough to put 
 them beyond the temptation to be avaricious. 
 Neither are they expected to provide for scores 
 of fellow-clansmen. The system of keeping 
 groups of cognate families tied together in the 
 same districts is in some ways good, but the 
 fact that a man should have a crowd of blood 
 relations acting as his suite and body-guard 
 when he is in office, and that he should feel 
 himself under compulsion to distribute gifts 
 from time to time amongst those for whom no 
 posts can be found, is almost sure to make the 
 administration sordid. For a generation past 
 scarcely a case has occurred of a foreign judge 
 or magistrate accepting the gifts of litigants. 
 You have doubtless heard your fellow-country- 
 men who have returned from Australia, the 
 
68 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Pacific Coast, or the Straits Settlements, praise 
 the impartiality of the Courts. A Chinese 
 labourer can get his rights against the richest of 
 the foreign merchants. 
 
 So I Shuk. — Yes, yes. They all say the 
 magistrates are clean-handed and austere, some- 
 times giving judgment even against their own 
 countrymen; for the sense of blood relation- 
 ship is not so strong as with us. Yet these 
 traders who have come back to their native 
 places tell me they would sooner have blemished 
 justice from men who are their own kinsmen 
 than well-balanced decisions from men who are 
 cold and distant, and who do not understand 
 their manners and speech. The village elders 
 who hold no formal seal of office judge mis- 
 demeanours which arise within the clan. When 
 domestic or village crime has to be punished, 
 we rarely allow the duty to be shirked. It is 
 in this way we avoid the interposition of man- 
 darins born and bred in other provinces, for 
 when they handle a dispute impoverishment and 
 shame are sure to follow. Confucius, when in 
 office, tried to discourage litigation. Our man- 
 darins succeed in doing the same thing, although 
 in different ways and with less noble motives. 
 They form what in the Colony of Hong-Kong 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 69 
 
 you call a Court of Appeal, although the 
 factions in our villages have usually too much 
 sense to carry their quarrels to the cities for 
 settlement. If the administration of justice in 
 the cities is not always good, it matters little to 
 law-abiding people. Perhaps we do some things 
 Jesus commended better than His disciples, for 
 in nine cases out of ten we agree with our 
 adversary quickly in the way, or, to be more 
 exact, our elders arbitrate and save the face of 
 both sides. Your rulers, I think, do not always 
 allow you to do this. I have read about 
 various countries and their governments, as well 
 as reports of law-suits at Hong-Kong and 
 Shanghai, printed in the native press, and as 
 far as I can understand, foreigners have less 
 liberty and scantier rights of self-government 
 than we possess. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But your quiet and law-abid- 
 ing classes do not always escape the squeezes 
 of ill-paid mandarins who must needs find rice 
 for many mouths. Men who wear official 
 buttons cannot be like Buddhist monks and 
 go round with a rattle and a begging bowl. It 
 is only a month or two back that a Chinese 
 gentleman, who is my near neighbour, hushed 
 his voice to a fearsome whisper and described 
 
70 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 the district magistrate as a hungry old hen, 
 scratching over every field in his administration 
 to pick up another grain or two of rice. 
 
 So I Shuk. — Well, the magistrate is re- 
 sponsible to the Viceroy, and the Viceroy is 
 responsible to the Grand Council and to the 
 Emperor, and when people really begin to 
 suffer under his exactions they can rid them- 
 selves of him. They got the last man changed, 
 and perhaps intend to bear with the present to 
 the close of his term, lest they should earn an 
 ill-name for themselves as disloyal and turbulent. 
 Mandarins are compelled to respect the power 
 of the guilds, the local gentry and the villages 
 far and near, and when these agree to act 
 together, he is as helpless as a mosquito 
 between the palms of the two hands. The 
 more blood he has gorged the harder it is for 
 him to fly away unhurt. Our Government is 
 at least cheap, and suits a thrifty people, the 
 exactions falling upon the contentious and upon 
 those who make a parade of their possessions. 
 I can believe that in some countries the taxes 
 imposed by the folly and wickedness of mis- 
 guided ministers, and the extortion necessary in 
 gathering in the taxes, may be a more wide- 
 spread grievance, making entire classes bank- 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 7 1 
 
 rupt. With us it is only the few who suffer 
 from the extortioners, and they often suffer for 
 their own faults. 
 
 Ezra T, Nye. — But amongst Western nations 
 a sympathy goes out towards all classes that 
 cheers and revives like the dew and the rain. 
 Free schools for the poor abound, hospitals for 
 every ailment, homes for the blind and the 
 dumb, and refuges for the aged and the incur- 
 ably sick, besides many private charities. Your 
 sympathy is almost limited to your friends. 
 
 So I Shuk. — We tend the old, the poor 
 and the afflicted within the clan, and shall 
 continue to do so whilst the doctrines of filial 
 piety commend themselves to the conscience. 
 It is better to be helped by kinsmen than by 
 strangers, for the gifts from such hands are 
 more cheerful and the humiliation of those re- 
 ceiving less distressing. It seems to me that 
 your poverty must be a bitterer grievance than 
 ours, because the relief of it is allowed to take 
 place outside the family, and the privation 
 becomes known to officials of different clans 
 and surnames. As to those, who, for one reason 
 or another, have drifted away from their clans, 
 and are without kinsmen to care for them, 
 we provide shelters in the larger cities, whilst 
 
72 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 in the rural districts they are allowed to sleep 
 in wayside temples. Those who are unbe- 
 friended can join the beggars' guilds, or, if they 
 are not low down enough for that, can enter the 
 Buddhist Monasteries and be sure of rice to the 
 end of their days. The Chinamen, who, having 
 got rich, become luxurious in their habits and 
 keep away from their native villages, are to be 
 found for the most part in Hong-Kong and 
 Shanghai. Our countrymen settled in foreign 
 countries rarely allow their poor brethren to 
 become a charge upon the community. They 
 even comfort them by covenanting to bring 
 their bodies home for burial. There is little 
 need for orphanages unless for a handful of 
 forsaken girls, probably not more than find 
 their way into your poor-houses. An orphan 
 lad is usually nurtured by uncles, so that he may 
 continue his father's line, and, failing that, is 
 sure of adoption into a family where gaps in 
 the succession occur. We go about things in 
 our own way, but perhaps, after all, do not fall 
 far short of the benevolence exercised by the 
 men of the West. 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But is not the clan system 
 itself sometimes an occasion of wrong? It is 
 said to beget partiality and make men suspicious 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 73 
 
 and exclusive. And now and again it raises 
 barriers to the practice of right towards those 
 who are outside the favoured circles of families. 
 
 So I Shuk. — It may be so, yet the system has 
 proved itself good, and has been strengthened 
 by the experience of many centuries. It is a 
 bulwark of defence for the weak, and gives a 
 power of united action you do not possess 
 through the suffrage. We are free, and you are 
 less your own masters in every relationship of 
 life than we, in spite of your boast that you have 
 banished tyrants. Is there the same equal 
 brotherhood between men of all classes in the 
 outside countries as in the Middle Kingdom ? 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — I must allow that the great 
 peril of Western countries is the dislike the 
 different classes have for each other. The rich 
 despise the poor and the poor dislike the rich. 
 The doctrine of Jesus, which teaches universal 
 brotherhood, has softened this feeling here and 
 there, but has failed to entirely remove it. 
 There are churches which are the churches of 
 rich men, and there are churches which are the 
 churches of poor men. In America we do our 
 best to remove this feeling by educating all 
 classes in our common schools, but when the 
 boys grow up and meet each other as master 
 
74 ^^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 and workman, the mutual aversion revives. All 
 are alike however in that matter, for we have 
 the same dispositions. You have your rich who 
 in some cases are proud, and your poor who in 
 some cases are envious. 
 
 So I Shuk. — True. But the clan system does 
 much to alleviate, if not to cure the evil. Clan 
 opinion does not allow a man to isolate himself 
 from his kinsmen and spend his money in selfish 
 extravagance. Riches, literary honour and the 
 prestige of office are in some degree shared with 
 the clan. Probably every clan of the hundred 
 surnames has, at some time or other, had one 
 of its members in high office, and expects some 
 day to have others, so the mandarins can never 
 become a separate caste who despise their own 
 brethren and forefathers. Within recent centuries 
 the emperor has been shielded from the common 
 view and made to live a sequestered life in the 
 palace. But in the Golden Age he was expected 
 to share his enjoyments with the people, and 
 that doctrine is infused into every school-boy 
 and never fades from his mind. If all that is 
 said of a gulf between the rich and poor in 
 outside countries be true, you might still learn 
 from the wisdom of our early sages. It is 
 possible to have most of the advantages arising 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 75 
 
 from an equal division of property without riot 
 and civil war. 
 
 " Leung Wai Wong was standing on the edge 
 of a pond in his park looking round at the large 
 geese and deer. Seeing Mencius standing near 
 by, he said *Do wise and good princes find 
 pleasure in these things ? ' 
 
 " The philosopher replied : * Being wise and 
 good they have pleasure in these things. If 
 they are not wise and good, though they have 
 these things, they do not find pleasure.' " 
 
 The Book of Poetry tells how King Man 
 used the strength of his people to build his 
 tower and dig his ponds, and the multitudes 
 came about him like children, and he could 
 scarcely restrain them in their zeal to help 
 forward his work. "The ancients caused the 
 people to have pleasure as well as themselves, 
 and therefore they could enjoy it." 
 
 " Is it a fact," asked T'sun the king of T'sai, 
 "that the park of King Man really contained 
 more than twenty square miles ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Mencius, " and the people still 
 looked upon it as small." 
 
 "Why," said the king, "my park is not 
 twelve square miles, and the people look upon 
 it as large." 
 
76 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 "The park of King Man," said Mencius, 
 " was indeed thirty square miles, but the people 
 had the right of cutting grass and gathering 
 fuel there, and no game-laws were in force. In 
 your park the taking of hares and pheasants is 
 punished as though it were manslaughter. He 
 shared it with the people, and was it not with 
 reason the people looked upon it as small ? " 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — Well, of course, that is excellent 
 doctrine for any country, but Mencius did not 
 find it carried out in his day, and things are no 
 better now. This idea of having all things 
 common within the clan does not diminish but 
 rather aggravates the difficulty. It transplants 
 the quarrel between the "haves" and the "have 
 nots " from the world to the home, and that is 
 no improvement. 
 
 So I Shuk. — Sometimes, but not always. A 
 man is inclined by his sense of kinship to 
 share with his own when he would not care to 
 share with strangers. Our doctrine is a com- 
 promise between " Every man for himself " 
 (individualism), and "Each man for all" 
 (collectivism). You have not settled yet 
 which principle is to rule, whilst we get on very 
 well with our working compromise, which is 
 really founded in the nature of things. 
 
CHINESE DEMOCRACIES 77 
 
 Ezra T. Nye. — But a man may be hectored 
 and down-trodden by his own family or group 
 of families, and the individual freedom enjoyed 
 by the men of the West is better as a starting- 
 point, although of course every argument should 
 be used to induce him to use his freedom for 
 the good of others. 
 
 So I Shuk. — But too much freedom tends to 
 lawlessness and self-interest. It is sufficient if 
 the family and the clan have a legitimate latitude 
 conceded to them by the State. If the freedom 
 of the individual is regulated and controlled by 
 the authorities of the clan, it will probably be 
 exercised for the common good rather than for 
 personal interests and ambitions. A freedom 
 so limited, and exercised for impersonal ends, 
 may possibly yield more inward contentment 
 than the freedom in which you boast yourselves. 
 It is admitted that the Chinese are, as a rule, 
 well satisfied with their lot, some even say too 
 well-satisfied. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 
 
 " I am in despair. I have not yet seen one who can 
 perceive his own errors and inwardly accuse 
 himself."— Confucius. 
 
 Chil Ning On. — How pleasant it is to meet 
 again in sight of our ancestral temple, with the 
 summer winds rustling through the old banyan, 
 and the buffaloes wallowing on the edge of the 
 fish pool, just as when we were school friends 
 more than twenty years ago. I congratulate 
 you upon the distinction you have reached as 
 chief secretary to the prefect, and upon all the 
 good that will come in your way when you go 
 to take up your appointment as magistrate of 
 Wing Lok. You have added greatly to the 
 prestige of the clan. I wish you yet higher 
 rank and fresh accessions both to your wealth 
 and the number of your sons. 
 
 Chil Tip Kai. — My respectful thanks. I, 
 the younger brother, am unworthy of so much 
 
 78 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 79 
 
 praise, and dare not presume to aspire after higher 
 honours. Congratulations are due to you upon 
 your good fortune in reaching home again after 
 crossing the great waves of the sea, and braving 
 heat and snow. You also have done good to 
 the clan and have made gifts to its common 
 funds, besides finding employment for some of 
 our less prosperous sons and nephews. A 
 village is more dependent upon the wealth of 
 its leading inhabitants than upon the literary 
 merit of its scholars, for in the emperor's 
 service money is not easily made. The double- 
 eyed peacock-feather men may get rich, but we 
 fellows of the brass and crystal button grades can 
 scarcely make our rice if we keep the two hands 
 clean. I hear you have had much good fortune 
 for the past twenty years, and can come home 
 and live quietly for the rest of your days, before 
 you are a grey-beard. Your parents must have 
 been buried in lucky ground. What geomantic 
 expert chose the soil for your family graves ? 
 
 Chii Ning On, — My good fortune has been 
 modest, but that is not the interpretation of it. 
 Through the favour of Heaven I found friends 
 amongst the men of the West, and whilst living 
 abroad in their country learned the efficacy of 
 many of their medicines. After saving a few 
 
8o AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 hundred dollars I came back to our own country, 
 and have since been an importer of quinine and 
 other useful drugs. Not that I am rich, but I 
 have a handful or two of rice to spare for those 
 of my own flesh, and I am anxious to show 
 that my new religion bears better fruit than that 
 in which I was first trained. 
 
 Chu Tip Kai. — But you are only jesting 
 when you say that you have submitted to the 
 foreigners' religion ? I could not believe that 
 you had been so stupid when I was told the 
 rumour. "I have heard of birds flitting from 
 dark passes to lofty trees, but I have not heard 
 of them flitting from lofty trees to go down into 
 dark valleys " (Mencius). You might surely 
 have contented yourself with taking the bar- 
 barians' silver in the way of trade without 
 doubling up your body to enter the mean gate- 
 way of their teaching. No subject of the Great 
 Pure dynasty should cease to be a Chinaman 
 and insult Confucius and his school by wor- 
 shipping a sage of uncivilised tribes. 
 
 Chii Ning (9«.— That I try to follow the 
 teaching of Jesus is true, but I have neither cut 
 off my pigtail nor shown contempt for the 
 teaching of Confucius. One may surely learn 
 from the men of the West without wearing their 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 8 1 
 
 clothes. It is my belief in family virtue, as 
 set forth by the sage, my desire to restore the 
 worship of the Supreme to whom the ancient 
 kings sacrificed, as well as my loyalty to the 
 doctrine of the root-mind (the conscience), ex- 
 plained in the Four Books, which have led me 
 to become a disciple of Jesus. I am a better 
 Confucianist than in my youth, for I think 
 fondly of my ancestors, and whilst doing what 
 little I can to help others, am not unmindful of 
 brothers and cousins who spring from the same 
 forefathers. I have learned self-rule in some 
 things, and shall not need to make amends by 
 becoming a vegetarian in my last days. The 
 terrors and distresses that once ruffled my 
 peace are dispersed, and although I no longer 
 follow the superstitious customs of the crowd, 
 I do not find the precepts of our honoured sage 
 so hard to fulfil as beforetime. 
 
 Chu Tip Kai. — I have seen little of the 
 disciples of Jesus, but from what I have heard 
 they are a strange class and not to be compared 
 with the disciples of Confucius. Every race 
 has its special merits and its peculiar defects, 
 and although we may fail in insignificant 
 matters where they excel, when the long and 
 the short are reckoned up together, the pre- 
 F 
 
82 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 eminence assuredly rests with us. We excel in 
 the things which are of chief importance and 
 fail perhaps in points that are only trivial. 
 Filial piety is judged to be the head of all the 
 virtues, but they are said to attach little weight 
 to its observance, and in some cases parents 
 minister to their children and even bow down 
 and serve in their presence. 
 
 Chu Ning On. — But that is an exaggeration 
 
 into which the ignorant fall. The sacred books 
 
 of Jesus make filial piety of great moment, 
 
 although they inculcate the spirit of that duty 
 
 rather than prescribe the outward forms which 
 
 are current with us. Our view of the duty has 
 
 been fixed by what seemed necessary for the 
 
 well-being of the family and the preservation of 
 
 the clan. They do not allow the sentiment to 
 
 pervert righteousness. In their law courts a 
 
 man who has neither money nor a guild or 
 
 powerful clan to back his cause has a better 
 
 hope of justice than in ours. In public affairs 
 
 they are as clean-handed and upright as our 
 
 ancients. 
 
 Chil Tip Kai. — Perhaps the impartial right- 
 eousness in which they pride themselves may 
 take its rise in a deficiency of family feeling, for 
 it is said the bonds which unite the members of 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 83 
 
 the home are slight. Some even declare that 
 they live together as promiscuously as the wild 
 tribes of the forests. One of the feudal dukes 
 boasted that in his part of the country the sense 
 of public justice was so strong that a son would 
 bear witness against a sheep-stealing father. 
 Confucius replied that "righteousness in our 
 part of the country is not after that model. 
 The father conceals the misconduct of the son 
 and the son conceals the misconduct of the 
 father." The men of the West perhaps cultivate 
 the righteousness of the duke rather than that 
 of the sage. When Mencius was asked if Koo 
 Sau, the evil-minded father of the Emperor 
 Shun, had murdered a man, and the minister of 
 justice had ordered his arrest, what course the 
 emperor would have taken? Mencius replied, 
 "he would have resigned the throne and 
 carried his father away on his back and lived in 
 some secluded place on the sea-shore to the end 
 of his days. He would have been happy and 
 content, forgetting the empire." 
 
 Chu Ning On. — Such conflicts between duty 
 and natural sentiment do not often occur, but 
 it is dangerous to allow even the sentiment 
 of affection to play the tyrant over all other 
 virtues. Jesus certainly taught that when the 
 
84 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 instincts of the family are at variance with truth 
 and righteousness, truth and righteousness must 
 be followed at all costs. He himself was a 
 pattern of filial piety towards both earth and 
 heaven, and He taught that, by obeying the 
 highest duty, natural affection would not be 
 permanently extinguished but revived. For 
 members of the same family and clan to 
 conceal each other's misdoings to the injury of 
 righteousness, cannot in the end do good to 
 any one, least of all to those whose trespasses 
 are condoned. The righteousness which finds 
 favour in our own country scarcely ever regards 
 that which lies beyond the family and the clan, 
 or at least its motives are partisan. A mandarin 
 comes into office, and almost all his secretaries, 
 cook and waiters are his own kinsmen. When 
 a crime has been committed, the elders of the 
 clan always try to conceal the culprit, and so 
 bring themselves into conflict with the law. 
 Rich men who subscribe to new business enter- 
 prises are bent on putting their sons and 
 nephews into positions of trust rather than 
 honest and capable men of whatever name, 
 and the enterprises are wrecked. No end of 
 trouble and confusion arises from the fact that 
 we glorify the family feeling, which issues 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 85 
 
 in partiality, and our name for truth and up- 
 rightness is no better than it ought to be. If 
 we make the obligation of filial piety swallow 
 up all other obligations, we can never have 
 harmonious feeling with those outside our own 
 clan and country, nor can we be at one with 
 the mind of Heaven. The Emperor Shun, living 
 by the sea-shore and keeping watch over a 
 guilty father, would not have fulfilled his obliga- 
 tions either to his contemporaries or to the 
 Supreme God whose mandate he had received. 
 How could he have been the happy and con^ 
 tented recluse Mencius imagined? He would 
 have been little better than a Buddhist priest, 
 save for fulfilling the one obligation of filial 
 piety. It is these false ideals of keeping our- 
 selves to ourselves, which have excluded us 
 from the brotherhood of nations and made us a 
 laughing stock. 
 
 Chii Tip Kai, — But filial piety is the root, 
 and the root must be greater than the branch. 
 The justice which seeks the punishment of an 
 offence is surely subordinate to this great solemn 
 relation upon which human life rests. 
 
 Chil Ning On. — But I am not sure it is filial 
 piety to screen an offender from his just deserts 
 because he is of the same flesh and bone. We 
 
86 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 are too prone to look upon man as beginning 
 and ending his destiny within the limits of the 
 family. Man is the offspring of heaven before 
 he becomes as an infant the inmate of a home, 
 and as our proverb says, " Heaven has no 
 partiality." There must be a Divine precept 
 binding both upon the minister of justice who 
 seeks to punish the crime of Koo Sau, and 
 upon Shun whom affection would prompt to 
 carry off an offending father to some place of 
 sanctuary. The minister of justice might claim 
 that his right to inflict penalty was from Heaven, 
 and Shun might claim that his filial instincts 
 were also from Heaven. Both could not be 
 right. All duties are to be harmonised with 
 each other, and are not hostile, like hunter and 
 quarry in the chase. There is a righteousness 
 which is broader than families or nations, broad 
 as the sky itself, and it must not be sacrificed to 
 a false view of filial piety. Sometimes perhaps 
 the only way of honouring parents is to allow 
 them to fall under the teaching of the discipline 
 which will make them worthy of honour. 
 
 Chii Tip Kai, — As you say, these cases are 
 infrequent. Our traditions have not failed in 
 training honest and upright men. The heads 
 of banks and shipping offices, as well as import 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 87 
 
 and export merchants, say that our native 
 traders are the most trustworthy people in the 
 world and rarely run away from their obligations. 
 Our integrity is equal to theirs, and perhaps 
 superior. I have heard that within recent years, 
 since men of various nations have come here to 
 buy and sell, and riches have not been made so 
 quickly because the profits are small, the men 
 of the West do not command the same busi- 
 ness confidence as in former days. 
 
 Chil Ning On. — But the honesty which 
 foreigners praise in us is not so much a virtue 
 which is the growth of the moral sense, as a 
 useful substitute for the virtue which is a 
 product of the clan organisation. Traders 
 and shroffs, cooks and house-boys who serve 
 Europeans are honest because they have rich 
 and powerful clansmen who become their 
 sureties, and if by embezzlement or secret 
 commissions they were to land their sureties in 
 trouble, they would 'forfeit the favour of their 
 villages and become outcasts. Unless a man 
 chooses to be true and upright because his 
 conscience prompts him to these things, apart 
 from the social arrangements which are in- 
 tended to make and keep him so, those qualities 
 can scarcely count as virtues of character. 
 
88 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Chu Tip Kai—But the men of the West 
 are influenced by the judgments of those with 
 whom they consort, and do not always act 
 from the principles which are supposed to be in 
 them. It is said that comparatively few of the 
 red-haired traders, after they have been a few 
 months from their native lands, practise the 
 precepts of their ancestral faith, and that in our 
 Treaty Ports they do many things that would 
 not be countenanced at home. At least their 
 country would soon come to confusion if they 
 formed the same habits there as are common 
 here. 
 
 CM Ning On. — That may be so, but in the 
 exercise of some virtues they certainly surpass 
 us. They are fearless, and in nine cases out of 
 ten even their bad men speak the truth without 
 equivocation and periphrasis. The Master said, 
 " I do not know how a man without truthfulness 
 is to get on." 
 
 Chu Tip Kai.—Ue also said, "Straight- 
 forwardness without the rules of good breeding 
 becomes rudeness." I am not sure he would 
 have praised the rank virtue as it shows itself 
 in some of the barbarians. He would have 
 liked the truth sweetening a little. But all are 
 not after one pattern. Some speak the truth 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 89 
 
 pure and simple, and some so speak it that 
 you have to find out where it is in what they 
 have said. I have heard an under secretary in 
 the Tsung Li Board say that their officials use 
 as much guile, and make as many fair promises 
 as the smoothest of our statesmen. It is not 
 considered falsehood when they speak plausibly 
 for the good of their country, even if it is not 
 for the good of ours. It is said they tell their 
 sovereign that opium is harmless, that the 
 Chinese see no evil in gambling, and look 
 upon it as an excellent source of revenue, and 
 that the license of social evil involves no slavery. 
 Perhaps they rely upon the opinions of China- 
 men of whom they are assured beforehand they 
 will say what it is desired they should say. Our 
 deceit never goes so far as that. If we do not 
 always say what we mean, we judge ourselves 
 true to the claim of fidelity when we do nothing 
 hurtful to the clan and the commonwealth. 
 They vary the truth to the wishes of the chief 
 officials of the Government, and are less faithful 
 to the public good than the heads of our 
 Government. They have few, if any men, who 
 are as honest as our official censors. We at 
 least keep faith with those who prove themselves 
 our friends, and to keep faith with aliens who 
 
90 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 have no care for our morals is what is not re- 
 quired from us. 
 
 Chii Ning On. — There again you belittle 
 faithfulness into a mere art for serving the 
 welfare of the clan or the family, and forget 
 that the pattern of it is to be found in the 
 overspreading heavens. We need to make the 
 virtue large and impartial. The thought that 
 there is a Spirit who searches the heart, and 
 that nothing escapes His judgment, helps to 
 deliver men from the respect of persons, and 
 trains them into sincere seekers of that which 
 is real. 
 
 Chic Tip Kai. — Our sages taught the same 
 doctrine, and, more important still, led us to 
 believe that the spirits of our forefathers look 
 with pleasure or disapproval upon the acts of 
 their descendants, a persuasion that for all prac- 
 tical purposes has twice the weight of the other. 
 
 Chii Ning On. — But if such an idea is upper- 
 most, it must encourage partiality, for ancestors 
 are supposed to show peculiar favour to those 
 who are of their own flesh and blood. That 
 tends to keep our race-virtues clannish rather 
 than cosmopolitan in their range of application. 
 In most cases our sense of duty is apt to stop 
 short at the Great Wall and the city of Tai Li 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 9 1 
 
 Foo in the west. No wonder foreigners will 
 not allow themselves to be judged in our Law 
 Courts. A man's responsibilities do not end 
 with those who bear the same surname, although 
 they may begin there. The doctrine of Jesus 
 teaches that because God's compassion is im- 
 partial, men should try and copy His far-reaching 
 kindness. That has led to the abolition of 
 cruel customs in Christian nations, trial by 
 torture and organised systems of slavery, and 
 has called forth a higher sense of the sacred- 
 ness of life than is common amongst Eastern 
 nations. There is little infanticide, they have 
 no such unfeeling customs as foot-binding, and 
 in saving the lives of entire strangers they will 
 sometimes risk their own. There are almshouses 
 for the poor in their cities, so that none need 
 die of starvation, and hospitals in which the sick 
 and the maimed of every name and nation may 
 be healed. It is rare for any one to end his 
 days in the streets or by the wayside as with us. 
 They are not restrained by a dread of ghosts 
 from helping those who are in peril. 
 
 Chu Tip ^fl/.— Whether that is due to the 
 teaching of Jesus or not is uncertain. Perhaps 
 that teaching only makes itself felt at intervals. 
 A book distributed by the missionaries at the 
 
92 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 last examination for provincial graduates, asserts 
 that in the reign of Ka Hing their customs were 
 no better than ours, children being employed 
 as slaves in their mines and factories, and men 
 sentenced to death for crimes we punish with 
 the stocks and the bastinado, whilst debtors 
 were sent to prisons that killed them as surely 
 as the scaffold. They had, I presume, the 
 same religion then. Can it be that it bears 
 fruit in some generations and not in others? 
 It is said that the nations which follow the 
 religion of Jesus are fast losing their sense of 
 the sacredness of life. Perhaps when their 
 countries become as populous as ours, and no 
 new lands are in view to which the people 
 can go, they also will think of the surplus 
 population as a burden not to be too tenderly 
 nursed. As to the treatment of the poor, the 
 problem is solved by our zeal for filial piety. 
 We cherish the aged. Except in times of 
 famine, the clan funds are a sufficient defence 
 against starvation for those who do not drift 
 out of their relationships and pass into the 
 ranks of city thieves and beggars. The sense 
 of kinship constrains us to help those who in 
 other lands would become paupers. The wor- 
 ship we pay to grey hairs is not without its 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 93 
 
 economic advantages, for it keeps the control 
 of money in the hands of those who are wise 
 through years and have no desire to squander 
 it. The future priesthood of the family is to 
 be exercised by our male offspring, and it is 
 only when men are panic-stricken with fear, or 
 overwhelmed with debt, that they consent to 
 part with that offspring. Under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances, there is not the same scope for 
 foundling and other charities in our life as 
 in the life of the West. Nature, moreover, 
 in the South at least, is kind to us, and we 
 can do with less food and raiment without 
 becoming destitute than races in the colder 
 regions. 
 
 Chii Ning On. — But the partiality of our 
 virtue again asserts itself. Our care and ten- 
 derness we reserve chiefly for male issue, 
 which is to cultivate the soil and continue the 
 family sacrifices. The daughters who have 
 to pass at marriage into other clans we some- 
 times neglect and despise. The love cherished 
 by parents towards their children becomes 
 deteriorated by self-interest, and we need a 
 new view of life, and an enlarged sense of 
 duty, to enable us to deal more fairly with 
 girls and women. 
 
94 ^^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Chic Tip Kai. — I do not think we are likely 
 to take the barbarians as our instructors in 
 morals. Their own practices involve dis- 
 crepancies no one can explain. Every foreign 
 wife has the power and state of an empress, 
 and her husband and his friends run after 
 her palanquin and bow at her nod as though 
 they were court attendants. But when a 
 Chinese woman fills that place in a foreigner's 
 home, for a time she is secretly cherished, 
 publicly ignored, and at last flung back upon 
 the street in a way no female slave would be 
 dealt with in a Chinese household. Our society 
 finds no place for an unattached woman without 
 husband, child, or male representative. It is 
 more humane to put a female infant into the 
 creek or on to the refuse-heap than to allow 
 her to grow up into a "sea-shore girl" (a 
 foreigner's mistress), and become a mother of 
 unfathered half-breeds. It is true the class is 
 well fed and well clothed for a time, but the 
 realms of Yama do not cease to be foul 
 because in the intervals of their torment the 
 victims wear fine raiment. 
 
 Chu Ning On. — Such things may be too 
 common amongst the Western men who dwell 
 in China, but in the countries from which 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 95 
 
 missionaries come are strongly disapproved. 
 You do not know the type of home fostered 
 by the spirit of Jesus, when you walk through 
 a foreign concession or spy out the sights to 
 be found in the worst streets of Hong-Kong, 
 or Shanghai. In countries truly Christian, the 
 family life is pure, sacred, harmonious, and 
 such as our sages would have praised. To be 
 a guest in a household of the West is like an 
 ascension into the Buddhist Paradise. Music, 
 order, and the pursuit of letters are varied 
 with blithe and innocent pastimes for the 
 young. We shall never know the satisfac- 
 tions of home till we educate our women, and 
 abandon polygamy, — a practice which is for- 
 bidden to the disciples of Jesus. As Chinamen, 
 we know too well that such arrangements 
 rarely add to the peace of the family, even 
 when a wise and reasonable woman, free from 
 every trace of jealousy, is at the head of it. 
 We could not bear the endless clash and feud 
 if we spent as much time in our homes as 
 foreigners spend in theirs. The fact that we 
 are abroad more, and desire to be, is proof 
 that our family circles have not the same charm 
 and attractiveness, although they are formed 
 of the same sort of people. 
 
96 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Chic TipKai. — Such arrangements, which have 
 existed from the days of the ancient kings, of 
 course have their drawbacks. But a man needs 
 sons to continue the ancestral sacrifices, or he 
 will bear the reproach which cleaves to the 
 unfilial. Have you forgotten that Mencius said, 
 "There are three things which are unfilial, and 
 to have no posterity is the greatest of them." 
 And after all, is not our system better than 
 European looseness ? A Chinese father always 
 recognises his relationship to the children of 
 subordinate wives, and the female head of the 
 family cherishes the children of different mothers 
 and calls them her own. 
 
 Chii Ning On. — Of course we do our best 
 to palliate the evils of a misguided system, but 
 whilst such systems are sanctioned, the relation 
 of husband and wife can never be one of perfect 
 accord. As a matter of fact, the wife always 
 has heart-burnings against her rivals, even 
 though they are inferiors and subject to her 
 authority; and the sons of different mothers 
 fight with each other like bandits dividing their 
 booty. With our experience upon this question, 
 we scarcely need a religious law to inhibit this 
 perversion of the family idea. 
 
 Chic Tip Kai. — The precept of Jesus may be 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 97 
 
 good, although it is against filial piety to say a 
 man must leave father and mother and be 
 joined to his wife ; but the practice of his ad- 
 herents is not a pleasant subject to talk about. 
 If at the setting of the watch when the 
 foreigners " eat the great meal," you walk past 
 the back doors of the " hongs" or if you happen 
 to be abroad an hour before sunrise, you can- 
 not fail to see Chinese girls flitting to and 
 fro, who wear foreign slippers and dress the 
 hair according to a style that is not ours, 
 and who have little or no sense of shame. It is 
 true the masters who own or hire them by the 
 month, do not profess for the time to observe 
 Christian customs. They go into the country 
 snipe and duck-shooting on worship day. But 
 when they rise to the chief places in their firms, 
 and perhaps become partners, they return home 
 for a six months' holiday, marry wives of their 
 own country, and come back to China and act 
 as if they had been Christians all the time. 
 They go to worship when the day comes round 
 as if they had never missed — at least, they do 
 so till the new wife's health fails, and she has 
 to return for a time to her native land, and then 
 in comes Miss Willow-Blossom again, and the 
 wish for Sunday shooting returns. These evil 
 G 
 
98 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 customs are shown in many ways. Two or 
 three of my wife's nephews had learned English 
 in the Hong-Kong High School. A foreigner 
 who wished to show his Chinese learning used 
 to send lists of local phrases to one of the 
 English newspapers. Many of the words were 
 such as are never used by men and only by the 
 lowest of the women. These youths were in 
 the habit of getting the newspaper and reading 
 over with jeers the list of words sent by this un- 
 suspecting foreigner. They clapped their hands, 
 laughed with a merriment it was hard to choke 
 down, and exclaimed : " We know where the 
 Consul's interpreter goes to school." No one 
 needed to be told that he had got his particular 
 knowledge of the pafois from a woman who was 
 not respectable. 
 
 CM Ning On. — Such things cause shame 
 and wrath. Amongst men of all nations it is 
 possible to find both good and bad. If you 
 seek for the good you can find them, even 
 amongst the men of the West. Those whom 
 I accept as my teachers in religion never fall 
 into such vicious ways, and a few of the 
 merchants and consuls are also without re- 
 proach. Within their homes may be seen 
 a peace, a happy order, a self-restraint to which 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 99 
 
 we rarely attain. It may be that their good 
 men surpass ours, and that their bad men go to 
 greater excesses of wickedness. 
 
 Chic Tip ^fl/.— The fact that most of these 
 men from the Outside States live loosely, causes 
 doubt concerning the few who are of correct 
 outward life, especially when their manners are 
 so effusive, and there is practically no separation 
 of the sexes. To a subject of the Great Pure 
 dynasty, it seems as though the division of 
 labour had been carried to the extreme of mad- 
 ness. Just as with us, one man cultivates the 
 five grains, and another weaves, and a third is 
 a potter, so amongst the barbarians, certain 
 classes are set apart to practise virtues, whilst 
 other classes are excused from such duties, but 
 render other useful services. Perhaps under 
 the guidance of the sovereign, there is an 
 interchange like the barter which was practised 
 in primitive society, and the merits of the 
 religious men are put down to the merchants, 
 whilst some of the gains of the merchants are 
 transferred to the missionaries. Student inter- 
 preters generally pose as model family men 
 when they become consuls in the more im- 
 portant ports. The whole thing looks like 
 a play in which the actors have arranged their 
 
100 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 parts beforehand, some taking the heroic, and 
 some the dishonourable parts. 
 
 Chu Ning On. — The thing may be so stated 
 as to cause a laugh, but the fact that foreign 
 life has such different sides is due to the 
 freedom of Western countries. Whilst Foreign 
 Governments approve of the religion of Jesus, 
 and conform to it, they do not interfere with 
 their subjects, unless they commit crime 
 against the laws or the laws of the country in 
 which they sojourn. Men who choose to live 
 in vice are removed from the Church, however 
 rich and influential they may be; or at least 
 they know the customs so well that they re- 
 move themselves beforehand. Such irregular 
 relations are bad, but have we any right to 
 speak of these scandals ? In Australia our 
 own countrymen live with Irish women, and 
 in Mandalay with Burmans, and in Singapore 
 with Malays, and in the trading towns at the 
 foot of the mountains with the Lais and the 
 Mius. These, no less than the men of the 
 Western nations, when they do such things, 
 follow sensual inclinations and repress their 
 better instincts and convictions. The virtue 
 which truly belongs to a man is that which he 
 chooses to practise, and not that into which he 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST lOI 
 
 may be forced. Why should we be hard 
 upon a foreign, and excuse a ^Qhgies*^; trans'^ 
 gressor ? , " ,.-,..". 
 
 Chii Tip Kai. — But there 'a^Q . ,(\ifere«de& 
 between the two classes of offence. The native 
 women who are owned by foreigners, or at 
 least owned by their compradors, and leased 
 at so much a month, have in many cases been 
 kidnapped in the interior and passed on 
 through brokers to their present life. Some- 
 times parents are compelled by poverty to sell 
 their daughters, but foreigners, who boast that 
 by paying more than the market price, and 
 putting money into circulation, they are per- 
 forming acts of charity to a poverty-stricken 
 people, do not realise that every Chinaman 
 feels insulted when the meanest offspring of 
 even an impoverished clan reaches such a 
 destiny. There are Chinamen heroic enough 
 to drown their daughters rather than resign 
 them to such a lot. Besides, these foreigners 
 who become fathers in this way never notice 
 their own children. It is the Chinese blood 
 in them they despise, and that is an added in- 
 sult to our race. I wonder the few foreigners 
 who have the honesty and the courage to marry 
 Chinese wives do not beat the drum and drive 
 
I02 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 out the rest, for the shame felt of their own ofF- 
 •spring seenis to put all offspring of the mixed 
 marriage into the class of illegitimates. These 
 ta&sx go back to their countries, marry wives of 
 their own race, and have no more care for 
 their first families than dogs, buffaloes, and 
 tigers, for their progeny. If the riches they 
 have accumulated do not quite suffice, and 
 they come back to the Middle Kingdom, they 
 get appointed, if possible, to other Treaty 
 Ports, and their half-breed sons become clerks, 
 printers, and head policemen, whilst daughters 
 follow the careers of the mother at rather 
 higher rates of pay. Such is the family chaos 
 which prevails amongst foreigners. No wonder 
 we say they have no knowledge of the family 
 relationships. Our countrymen who have had 
 sons by foreign women always bring them back 
 home and get them incorporated into their 
 clans. The officials of foreign Governments 
 sometimes live this kind of life under the flags 
 of their respective countries, and are rarely 
 recalled unless their habits at last render them 
 too imbecile for the transaction of public 
 business. 
 
 CM Ning On. — But these loose habits of 
 life into which foreigners fall on Chinese soil 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST IO3 
 
 are like the fever and pestilence which abound 
 in particular districts only. If the countries 
 professing the religion of Jesus were as bad 
 as the Foreign Concessions, such countries 
 could not grow and prosper. In England, 
 America, and Germany, strict usages prevail, 
 and family life is seldom corrupt. The higher 
 standard set up in Christian lands is seen in 
 the fact that it would be fatal to a foreigner's 
 respectability and good name, if he were to 
 take half-caste children to his own country, 
 whilst our own returned emigrants bring back 
 the children of all kinds of mothers without 
 any sense of shame. 
 
 Chic Tip Kai. — Your words come to this, 
 that men do the same things everywhere, and 
 that the higher the code of morality pro- 
 fessed, the deeper the hypocrisy into which 
 they fall. You said not long since that 
 foreigners surpassed us in honesty. But in 
 their own country it is rumoured things are 
 not much better than here. I have a friend 
 who was attached to the staff of one of the 
 Chinese envoys in London, and he told me 
 that an interpreter who had been in China 
 was sent by the Board of Foreign Affairs to 
 act as guide to his Excellency and followers, 
 
104 ^^ I' HE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 and to escort them to the different sights of 
 London. He took them to a theatre which 
 was crowded and illumined with coloured 
 lamps. Till his Excellency looked through his 
 double-eyed distance glass he could not tell 
 whether the girls who were dancing on the stage 
 had clothes on or not. The envoy professed to 
 be pleased, for he was always polite, and said 
 it was prettier than anything he had seen ; but 
 when he came back home he told his friends 
 the customs were those of savages, and none 
 of his grandchildren should be educated in the 
 schools of the West. But why need we speak 
 of other lands ? The dresses and the dancing 
 at the foreign yamuns and guild houses are 
 worse than those which disgusted Confucius 
 and led him to resign service under the Duke 
 of Lo. Such customs never make virtuous 
 families. 
 
 Chil Ning On. — Some customs may not be- 
 come us, but we must allow for differences of 
 race and training, and not treat strangers as 
 criminals because they are somewhat out- 
 landish. It is character by which we judge 
 men, and not the husk of custom in which 
 character is hidden. Human nature is the 
 same everywhere till the Divine power renews 
 
ETHICS OF THE EAST AND WEST 105 
 
 and improves it, and a foreigner who disobeys 
 his religion is as bad as a Chinaman who dis- 
 obeys his. The question is, which rehgion, 
 when it is obeyed, will carry men higher and 
 make them truer friends of the whole race. 
 
 Chic Tip Kai. — The countries which profess 
 to follow the teaching of Jesus should enforce 
 it on their subjects. It seems to me that 
 Western religions have no authority, or they 
 do not exercise it on the side of virtue. They 
 repress stealing because they are zealous for 
 trade, and stealing is against trade, but they 
 stop at that point. We have mutual sponsor- 
 ship, and by the authority of the aged over 
 the young, and parents over posterity, and 
 the gentry over the villages, and the Son of 
 Heaven over the eighteen provinces, we can 
 make some show of conformity to Confucius. 
 But Western Governments honour Jesus, and 
 sometimes use their authority in establishing 
 the vices He condemned. The precepts of 
 Jesus are set at naught by soldiers and sailors, 
 traders and officials alike, and seem to be 
 prized only by a few who are looked down 
 upon by their own countrymen as though they 
 belonged to a meaner class. 
 
 Chu Ning On. — The more spiritual a re- 
 
I06 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 ligion is, and the loftier its precepts, the less 
 can it be enforced by civil authority. A man 
 must himself choose to obey its laws, and use 
 right methods of acquiring strength to obey. 
 But these things are difficult to judge. Our 
 discussion has been long and the sun slants. 
 I must go home and make ready for the clan 
 feast held to celebrate your promotion. We 
 will take up the subject again. Kindly per- 
 mit me to retire. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 
 
 ** Who says of Wei Shang Ko that he is upright ? One 
 begged some vinegar of him and he begged it of 
 a neighbour and gave it." — Confucius. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — When your Queen ap- 
 pointed a Commission to enquire into the opium 
 trade I foretold the result. It was a device 
 adopted with the object of fortifying the growth 
 and manufacture of the drug in India. Of 
 course I know the effect of smoking it both on 
 the health and the efficiency of the men under 
 my command, and I strictly prohibit it. But 
 I did not wish to give a public expression of 
 opinion that might bring me into disfavour with 
 the other branches of the Emperor's service, 
 and expose me also to the contempt and ill- 
 will of the foreigners. The latter never miss a 
 chance of weakening my influence. 
 
 Paul Brown. — But you are a patriot, and the 
 question is your concern rather than ours. The 
 
 107 
 
I08 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 missionaries, to which class your younger 
 brother belongs, wish to further the welfare of 
 all classes of the Chinese people, and have been 
 consistent and disinterested opponents of a 
 trade that works so much evil. They at least 
 are not afraid to incur the reproach of their 
 own countrymen, and do not fear to say that 
 China has been unfairly treated. You might 
 have ventured to strengthen our hands. You 
 would have won our gratitude and at the same 
 time have served the best interests of your 
 country. We, on the one hand, get little official 
 support and approval for all our writing and 
 speaking upon the question, and on the other, 
 often incur the displeasure of many in authority, 
 who call us fanatic and charge us with exaggera- 
 tion. Our political influence is small, and it is 
 not much we can do alone. The mischief 
 alights upon the bodies and homes of your 
 poor, decrepit kinsmen, but an etiquette which, 
 though not heroic, is at least expedient, seems 
 to seal your Hps when a word might do some- 
 thing towards the salvation of your empire. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — The representatives of your 
 honoured Government never took the trouble 
 to ask our opinion, and probably did not want 
 it. If they had thought fit to consult our 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS IO9 
 
 officials they would probably have asked per- 
 mission to collect the views of those interested 
 in the excise receipts. Any suppression of the 
 trade would of course be attended with financial 
 inconvenience, and could not be carried through 
 in a day, or even a year. It is a costly and a 
 tedious task to undo the error of years, and one 
 is reminded of the popular proverb, " To do 
 right is like climbing a mountain, and to do 
 wrong like riding down it on a land-slide." 
 Alas ! alas ! for our people and their rulers ! If 
 your honourable Government had wished to con- 
 sult the unofficial classes of the Chinese, it should 
 have taken steps to get into communication with 
 the gentry, who are responsible for the order and 
 well-being of their neighbourhoods, and who are 
 untouched by foreign influence. Men who 
 speak for their immediate clansmen usually have 
 more deeply at heart the moral issues of the 
 question than Chinamen living in the midst of 
 disintegrated and promiscuous populations. 
 Foreigners engaged in the opium trade, whose 
 callings were scrupulously concealed, spoke, and 
 great weight was attached to their testimony by 
 some of the Commissioners, but such testi- 
 mony simply echoed the unreal opinions of 
 fawning compradors and servants who have a 
 
no AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 monopoly of the wires conveying information 
 on native questions to masters who speak only 
 English. Ai-yah ! Ai-yah ! I could laugh over 
 the farce till I broke in two, if it were not so 
 pitiful. 
 
 Paul Brown. — I admit that not much im- 
 portance should be attached to such witnesses, 
 but we take pride in our truthfulness, and as 
 some little excuse for these witnesses, it perhaps 
 ought to be said that the worst effects of opium 
 smoking are not always to be found on the 
 Foreign Concessions. Amongst the native em- 
 ploy h of the merchants, as you know, a high 
 rate of wages rules, and nourishing food can 
 be procured, which often, though not always, 
 averts the disastrous effects prevalent amongst 
 the poor and the ill-fed. No opium-sot would 
 be continued in foreign employment, but would 
 be dismissed, nominally, for laziness or incom- 
 petence. And when a man is impoverished 
 by the vice, unless for some reason or other 
 he has already lost favour with his clan, he is 
 sure to be shipped off to his native village, 
 where living is cheap, and he can quietly end 
 his days as a poor dependent on the community 
 of his blood-relations. It is in the villages and 
 in the poorer suburbs of the city that the worst 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 1 1 1 
 
 effects of the vice are to be found. I would 
 not charge these witnesses even who are 
 apologising for their own trade with direct 
 falsehood. In your official position as well 
 as through private intercourse with your friends, 
 you know more than the sleek and prosperous 
 employes of the foreigners, who cultivate the 
 art of speaking what they know the master 
 wants to hear. We do hope for direct and 
 courageous speech from a military leader who 
 has won repeated promotion by his valour on 
 the battle-field. An officer of the Government, 
 like the pattern emperor of the ancient times, 
 ought to take upon his own person the sins 
 of the people. Could you not help in averting 
 the wretchedness and debauchery caused by 
 this ever-spreading vice ? 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — But I am not the Emperor, 
 and the powers of my office are defined, or 
 there would soon be confusion in all the 
 districts and provinces of the empire. Perhaps 
 in the end the curse upon my country will be 
 lighter than upon yours, if what I have been 
 taught is true, that the retribution upon the 
 tempter is sharper than upon the tempted. It 
 does not seem like it at present, but, as we 
 often say, " the hour is not yet." I am a friend 
 
112 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 of your country, for a missionary doctor took a 
 bullet out of my back that had been troubling 
 me for years, and an American taught some of 
 my troops musketry, so I shall not rejoice in 
 your calamity. But the anger of our foreigner- 
 hating patriots will be more than appeased by 
 all that will come to pass, and they will no longer 
 think it necessary to bombard the settlements. 
 
 Paul Brown. — If such is the General's belief 
 and disposition, he ought to show himself the 
 friend of our country by helping to open its 
 eyes. Your kindness and good motives are 
 known to many, and in so doing, you would be 
 doing your best to save us from the penalty of 
 political selfishness and misdoing. Missionaries 
 have been crying aloud for fifty years, and at 
 one time all the churches rallied to their side, 
 but the words spoken by merchants and consuls 
 in China, by army doctors and excisemen in 
 India, and by Government officials at home, 
 have divided the churches, which really aspire 
 to practise the doctrine of reciprocity, and, for 
 the time being, the churches no longer speak 
 with one voice. 
 
 Brigadier Nang, — But do men ever want to 
 know facts which hurt their reputations and 
 are against their financial interests? If your 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 1 1 3 
 
 country does not believe its own missionaries, 
 it is not likely to believe Chinese officials, whom 
 its chief newspapers call " a generation of liars.' 
 When the eyes are resolutely closed, it needs a 
 clever doctor to open them. It is useless 
 speaking to those who do not wish to be 
 convinced, or who are so occupied with their 
 own affairs that they have neither time nor 
 inclination to listen. Many of your countrymen 
 even in China sit in long chairs on verandahs, 
 with all native life out of view, and then go 
 forth and speak as if they had lived amongst 
 the people and knew the eighteen provinces. 
 Of course, that is not exactly falsehood as you 
 understand the word, but to speak without 
 knowledge, and all the time profess to possess 
 it, may be quite as bad. We have the same 
 word for the two things. 
 
 Paul Brown. — But the evidence of the great 
 officer and his honourable comrades might 
 have enlightened those who had no direct 
 political or financial interests at stake, and who 
 had not resolved to close their minds to the 
 truth. The electors who, in the end, finally 
 determine these things, cannot see for them- 
 selves, and must see through the eyes of other 
 people. How are they to know the men who 
 H 
 
114 ^^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 praised the virtues of opium, and declared the 
 trade was good, had Hved in China without 
 using their eyes and ears ? 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — Perhaps even the electors 
 whom you praise are not anxious to know the 
 truth. When you can no longer derive money 
 from China through the opium trade wherewith 
 to keep up your administration in importunate 
 and poverty-stricken India, the electors may 
 have to find it themselves. Judging from those 
 pieces of the opium evidence which have been 
 translated into the Chinese newspapers, the 
 electors might know the facts, if they would only 
 take the pains. Doctors in India affirmed that 
 milUons of Hindiis swallow a few grains a day 
 without injury, but that to smoke the drug was 
 degrading and deadly ; the Indian Government 
 therefore agreed to suppress shops for smoking 
 the drug. Through the eighteen provinces of 
 China not one man in a hundred eats it, and to 
 fail in seeing that the smoking, which is bad for 
 India, cannot be good for China, is a proof 
 either of extreme stupidity or of unwillingness 
 to consider the facts. The natives in India, I 
 am told, do not consume one-tenth part of the 
 opium which is produced there, and yet the 
 population is almost as large. To look at the 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NA TJONS 1 1 5 
 
 Indian side of the question, and then pass a 
 guess-work judgment upon the Chinese, is Hke 
 examining the finger-nail of one man to see 
 whether the carbuncle growing on the neck of 
 another is likely to drain away his strength and 
 destroy him. To form conclusions which 
 concern China upon the evidence of men in 
 India, without visiting China itself, and making 
 careful and prolonged enquiries here, is a piece 
 with asking the Legation physician in Pekin 
 to write out a prescription for the Llama of 
 Thibet or the King of Corea. English gentle- 
 men perhaps do not he, but to look at one bit 
 of the question and ignore the body of facts at 
 the centre of it, is like professing to feel the 
 pulse in the silk plaits of the pig-tail. My 
 countrymen cannot juggle so astutely. Mis- 
 sionaries inform the people of the West of 
 many things in the life of China which consuls 
 and ministers do not know. Perhaps your 
 country will one day believe your view of this 
 question is true to the facts. 
 
 Paul Brovm, — But your testimony would 
 have been important from another point of view. 
 Those who think China has not been righteously 
 treated, and who advocate her cause, are taunted 
 with the fact that the Imperial Government now 
 
Il6 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 allows opium to be grown upon an enormous 
 scale in most of the Western provinces, and the 
 cultivation is even creeping down to the sea- 
 board. Such a change of policy, it is said, 
 proves that your statesmen never regarded the 
 use of opium as a vice, that they are quite 
 pacified towards the nation which induced them 
 to change the prohibitive tradition of the past, 
 and that the only real objection ever felt to 
 the trade was the drain of silver at one time 
 caused from your country to the countries of 
 the West. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — The export of silver might 
 be an aggravation of the evil, and it certainly 
 appealed to a sensitive side of the Chinese 
 temperament, for our destiny has compelled us 
 to teach that all waste is wicked ; but the hurt- 
 fulness to health and industry, the deterioration 
 of moral habit and character, together with 
 the frequent shortening of life to which it 
 contributes, are too well known to need dis- 
 cussion. Nearly two hundred years ago, before 
 the export of silver was perceived, the emperor 
 Yung Ching issued an edict against opium. If, 
 as your merchants say, every man toys with it 
 now and again, such an occasional use of it can 
 make no appreciable difference to the volume 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS \\J 
 
 of the trade, for it is only after it has become 
 a daily craving that the smoker derives pleasure 
 from its use. As to its being a preventive of 
 fever, no Chinaman ever thought that, till your 
 merchants instructed him to say so. The 
 excuse is never heard in the swampiest rice 
 plains, unless the folk have come under foreign 
 influence. As to its popularity as a medicine, 
 medicine is usually prescribed by the doctor, 
 and not by the patient himself, and I under- 
 stand your doctors use Turkish and not Indian 
 opium. If the motive for the growth and 
 manufacture of opium is so disinterested, would 
 it not be well to abandon the Indian monopoly 
 and encourage the Turkish growth ? Of course 
 it soothes pain, just as foreigners sometimes 
 find it blunts the pain of debt to get drunk, 
 but the liabilities are there when the man be- 
 comes sober again. In seven cases out of ten, 
 to cure the opium habit is to remove the disease 
 from which a man is supposed to suffer. And 
 even if opium used as a medicine did save one 
 life, why should twenty lives be degraded or 
 destroyed because one man has asthma or con- 
 sumption ? For one man who dies of disease, 
 relieved in the stages of its progress by opium, 
 ten men die of opium alone. More than three 
 
Il8 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 thousand years ago we stopped the custom 
 some wished to introduce of killing a few slaves 
 so that they might be buried with the dead 
 master. It seems as though your countrymen 
 were willing to kill multitudes by the vice of 
 opium-smoking for the sake of two or three 
 incurables, to whom opium may be a god- 
 send. And you kill the slaves not to honour 
 the man whose life disease destroys, but for the 
 gains of trade. 
 
 Paul Brown. — You will excuse me for saying 
 so, but you are getting away from the subject, 
 and are forgetting to explain the change in the 
 policy of your Government. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — I will come to that if you 
 will be patient. The price of the home-grown 
 opium is cheaper and the drug itself is not so 
 strong, for the habit of smoking it can be broken 
 off without strict confinement in a hospital 
 and medical care. Our compromise, which has 
 been slowly and reluctantly adopted, and may 
 after a time be abandoned again, has the good 
 fortune to palliate the impoverishment and dis- 
 tress. I do not affirm that was the direct 
 motive, but such has happily been the result. 
 Your country — you will pardon my plain speak- 
 ing, for I am a soldier and not a literary 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS II9 
 
 mandarin — has the discredit of expanding what 
 was once supposed to be a trade in a medicine 
 into a huge trade, which now ministers almost 
 entirely to noxious luxury and incurable vice. 
 The trade had ceased to be one in medicine long 
 before Commissioner Lin was sent to Canton 
 to stop it. What Government which makes it 
 a duty to nourish the life of the people ever 
 wishes to prevent its sick from buying that 
 which truly heals and restores? We are the 
 sufferers, and in our speech with each other we 
 never fail to classify it as the predominant evil 
 in our life. The close ties which unite us and 
 bind together the generations, perhaps awaken 
 within us a stronger dislike of anti-social sins 
 than your countrymen share. If we have come 
 into partnership with you, the connection is not 
 one of our own choice, and the ill-name is yours. 
 When a commercial firm admits a new partner 
 and retains the old "style" on its sign-board 
 and puts the old " chop " on its samples, it is 
 the original name which suffers. Opium grown 
 in Szchuen and Yunnan is still called " foreign 
 dirt" and "foreign smoke," although many of 
 the people who grow and use it have never seen 
 a foreigner. And it will be so to the end, for 
 names are not easy to change when they have 
 once become current. 
 
120 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Paul Brown. — But it is said our country did 
 not force opium upon the Chinese, and that at 
 the present time China would be sorry to give 
 up its share of the revenue. I say this, because 
 I want to know your opinion. If I were argu- 
 ing with a fellow-countryman, perhaps I should 
 take the other side of the question. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — It is not for me to see into 
 the heart of the Son of Heaven, but I cannot 
 believe he is faithless to the principles of his 
 ancestors. To sacrifice all the revenue on 
 which we have come to depend may not be 
 convenient at a day's notice, but the English 
 Government is careful not to offer us the 
 opportunity, or to offer it only when it knows we 
 need money. Whether Enghshmen in the reign 
 of Ham Fung did force opium on us is known 
 only to those who arranged the treaties ; perhaps 
 not even to them, for each side may have put 
 a mistaken construction upon the ideas and 
 intentions of those on the other side. At that 
 time there were no Chinese newspapers except 
 the Co7irt Gazette^ which of course wished to 
 save the face of the dynasty, and would not 
 represent any of its acts as done under com- 
 pulsion. What our people do know is that 
 before the wars it was necessary to bribe 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 121 
 
 officials and smuggle the drug into our country, 
 and after the second war it was placed formally 
 upon the tariff. That may have been a co- 
 incidence, but our people doubt it. [If the 
 English Government did not force the trade 
 upon us, then why are they so unwilling to 
 change the clause of the treaty which permits 
 it, and argue for years against any proposals to 
 raise the duties? In a letter to his own 
 Government Sir Thomas Wade wrote that he 
 was afraid, if the duty was raised to our figure, 
 the Chinese Board of Revenue would kill the 
 goose which laid the golden egg. Western nations 
 are not accustomed to act as the guardians of 
 our wealth. Judging from the clamour for 
 mining rights, railway concessions, and the 
 monopoly of our loans, they are usually anxious 
 to coax the birds which lay either golden or 
 silver eggs over into their own pens and farm- 
 steads. But the history of the past fifty years 
 is an insult to our rights as the leading nation 
 of the East, oft-repeated. Your race, in com- 
 parison with ours, is as a babe to a grey-bearded 
 patriarch, and is it seemly that the babe should 
 keep the key of the patriarch's treasury ? 
 
 Paul Brown. — I am not apologising for my 
 country, which has treated China with grievous 
 
122 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 unfairness, but it is often said that if the 
 Chinese want to prohibit opium, they are quite 
 free to do it within their own borders. The 
 British Government does not compel the sub- 
 jects of the Great Pure dynasty to smoke it. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — Perhaps not, but once they 
 buy they will smoke it, and we are compelled to 
 give them the opportunity of buying. Our free- 
 dom to prohibit within our own borders was taken 
 away twenty years ago, for when the duty at the 
 port of entry was last raised it was stipulated 
 that we should cease to impose any further 
 duties upon it, as it was carried from district to 
 district in our inland territory. The simplest 
 method of checking the ruin caused by the 
 drug would be to forbid its admission at the 
 port of entry, or to levy such a tax that it 
 could only be imported for medicine. The 
 problem would then be clear and within the 
 reach of our power to settle. Why should you 
 impose upon us the task of restraining men 
 from the use of it in a thousand cities and ten 
 thousand villages? Western countries quaran- 
 tine their ports against plague and cholera when 
 the peril is grave. Why should we not be free 
 to quarantine our ports against that which is 
 more grievous and deadly than either? Mis- 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NA TIONS 1 23 
 
 sionaries are fond of parables, and I will 
 venture to set one forth. Do not say the 
 illustration is frivolous, for clever doctors in 
 Amoy and Hong-Kong have found that the 
 mosquito is more than a nuisance ; it is a peril 
 to health and even to life. A giant was 
 accustomed to rest on a couch covered with 
 the finest matting, a lacquered pillow at one 
 end and gossamer nets round the four sides to 
 keep out the mosquitoes. The nights were hot 
 and the thirsty blood-drinkers noisy and watch- 
 ful. Now and again one or two managed to 
 creep under the walls of silk, and to sneak into 
 the enclosure where the giant slept. No great 
 harm was done, for he lit his lamp, hunted 
 them down, and slew the intruders with the 
 flick of his fan. The next day ill-disposed neigh- 
 bours burnt five small holes into the curtain, 
 and when night came the vicious insects 
 poured in by scores, for the sleeper was fat and 
 succulent, and the banquet tempting and free 
 to all. Before the third watch had been struck, 
 the hunt for those hosts of intruders began. 
 When the neighbours, who were listening out- 
 side the door, heard his groans' of pain and the 
 curses he called down upon mischief-makers, 
 they laughed, and told him to suppress the 
 
124 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 mosquitoes within his own borders, and not 
 make it a grievance that his protecting nets had 
 been pierced with five little holes from the 
 outside. The next day a few more holes were 
 added to the first five, and on the third day the 
 number of open ports was increased to twenty. 
 No wonder that the giant had bad and feverish 
 nights, and was sometimes heard breathing 
 vengeance against his mischief-making neigh- 
 bours. Once, it is said, that in a frenzy of 
 pain he rushed out and thrashed the first 
 neighbour he found in the streets. "Put it 
 down within your own borders," is the last 
 word of wisdom from Western statesmen. " Get 
 a new curtain and do not allow holes to be 
 made in it," is the remedy which commends 
 itself to the statesmanship of the East, and I am 
 a man of the East. 
 
 Paul Browtu — But unrestricted trade is the 
 rule of the modern world, and Western Govern- 
 ments concede great freedom to their own 
 subjects. England and America do not stop 
 the distillation and sale of spirits, which some 
 affirm work more misery and beget more crime 
 than opium. 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — Of the drunkenness of 
 Western countries I hear only reports, and have 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 125 
 
 no opportunity of seeing for myself. Perhaps 
 those who thus speak know as Httle of the 
 mischief wrought by one of the two evils com- 
 pared together as I know of the other. But 
 because England and America are content that 
 their people should be impoverished and de- 
 bauched, that is no reason why China should 
 copy their example. Hale and wholesome men 
 should be set up as models for our children, 
 and not the crippled and the diseased. It is 
 said that amongst some half-civilised tribes, if 
 the chief falls off his horse, all his followers are 
 required by etiquette to fall off theirs. Must we 
 indeed copy the humiliation of the great Powers 
 of the West. If your nations are drunken we 
 shall be the less inclined to acknowledge your 
 suzerainty and copy your example. Our people 
 are content to be ruled by those in authority 
 over them, and if opium were stopped, the 
 cases of those incurably victimised being pro- 
 vided for in the meantime, no one would 
 complain that liberty was interfered with, or 
 wish a ball of opium to be brought into our 
 country again. But is it not foolish to speak of 
 liberty when all that is meant by the word is an 
 open gate into a gloomy path from which there 
 can be no return? A moment's liberty that 
 
126 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 leads to long slavery is a fine name for a hurt- 
 ful thing. If such is to be the result, we do not 
 want your Western notions of liberty. Each 
 state should be allowed to choose what it will 
 allow and what it will not allow. Your 
 merchants come as the guests of our empire, 
 and have no right to deal in things which 
 corrupt and impoverish our people. When a 
 guest 'S received into a house, if he tempts the 
 sons of the house to evil ways, or even to ways 
 out of agreement with the family traditions, it 
 will be no surprise if the master of the house is 
 secretly displeased in spite of his bows and 
 courtesies. 
 
 Paul Brown. — But do you think the minis- 
 ters of State would be willing to forego the 
 revenue ? 
 
 Brigadier Nang, — I cannot speak for minis- 
 ters who are often changed, but I know that 
 would be the right course to take, and as the 
 proverb says, " Let good be done for one day, 
 and although prosperity may not have come, 
 disaster will be a long way off." The taste for 
 revenue like that for opium itself is hard to 
 overcome. Some years ago our Government 
 proposed to diminish the production of the 
 drug both at home and in India by gradual 
 
OPIUM AND THE COMITY OF NATIONS 127 
 
 Steps which would have led to its entire sup- 
 pression in twenty years. The English minister, 
 after consulting with the Viceroy of India, did 
 not favour the idea. Your country is not 
 likely to consent to any step which threatens 
 to diminish its revenues, although the change 
 may be necessary for our salvation. We have 
 the reputation of being covetous, but we are 
 prepared for greater sacrifices than you are 
 willing to consider. Your Government, with an 
 Indian head at one end of its body and an 
 English head at the other, looks only to its own 
 officials and the races subject to its sovereignty, 
 knowing no claim of the larger humanity 
 beyond. 
 
 Paul Brown. — This is depressing, and bodes 
 no improvement for the future. What is to be 
 the end of it all ? 
 
 Brigadier Nang. — Perhaps Russia and 
 France, who condemn the opium trade, may 
 agree to set us free, unless they themselves are 
 tempted to compete with you by raising opium 
 in Manchuria and Annam. Or things may go 
 from bad to worse till a new insurrection arises, 
 aiming at the recovery of our moral autonomy 
 rather than of alienated lands. My old leader 
 in Kashgaria, Tso Tsung Tong, thought that 
 
128 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 would come to pass. In the meantime, I would 
 recommend to your Indian Government two 
 popular sayings. It might venture to put them 
 on the official seal. I am a soldier and not 
 a literary man, so quote only the classics of the 
 streets. "A man may have fifty palaces, but 
 when he lies down to sleep he cannot cover 
 more than eight feet of his possessions," and 
 " All things are possible for the man who can 
 train himself to eat cabbage stalks." 
 
 I could wish the Emperor Shun might rise 
 from the dead and be appointed to govern 
 India, for it is said of him : " He lived in a 
 mean hut, and exercised his strength upon 
 irrigation." 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 COMPETING RELIGIONS 
 
 "He who sins against Heaven has none other to 
 whom he can pray."— Confucius. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye (Magistrates' Secretary). — His 
 honour has received a despatch from the 
 prefect, saying that on your way to the coast 
 you must be escorted from one district to 
 another by two soldiers and two Yamun police. 
 The country is disturbed, and he would be sorry 
 if you were robbed or molested whilst in his 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 John Smith, — It is very kind of his honour, 
 but it was my intention to stay in one of the 
 inns. I have no fear for myself, and did not 
 wish to impose any trouble upon his staff. I 
 am greatly obliged for his kindness. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But the people hereabouts 
 are lawless and violent, and the message from the 
 prefect is peremptory. Your illustrious occupa- 
 tion is that of preaching the doctrine, I believe ? 
 
 T 128 
 
130 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 John Smith. — I am a man of modest parts, 
 and would not dare to take to myself words of 
 praise. I have left my country to teach others 
 truths I have been brought to greatly prize. 
 Having been fifteen years in the province, I 
 travel widely without mishaps. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — You speak the local dialect 
 well. If I heard you talking and did not see 
 your face I should take you for a Chinaman 
 from another province. I suppose your 
 sovereign pays you handsomely for this work, 
 and that when you return to your native country 
 rank will be conferred upon you as a reward. 
 
 John Smith.— ^ot at all. I am protected by 
 my country just as it would protect a merchant 
 or a traveller, and my income, which is enough 
 for a plain life, is subscribed for by those who 
 are in the same rank of society as myself, and 
 who feel it a duty to spread the religion of 
 Jesus amongst other nations. Indeed that was 
 what Jesus Himself bade His disciples do, 
 before parting from them. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — All the disciples of Jesus 
 could not go to other countries. Those of you 
 who come abroad to preach and scatter books, 
 perhaps seek to atone for your own faults or for 
 those of your forefathers, and to make merit 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 131 
 
 which will ensure the prosperity of your 
 children. 
 
 John Smith. — That is not the idea at all. I 
 of course have my faults like others and pretend 
 to no special sanctity, but faults are not dealt 
 with in the way you imagine. We are all children 
 of one common Heaven, and whatever good we 
 receive, either in body or mind, we must try to 
 share with others. As I view things, China 
 needs the teaching of Jesus. If she is to rise 
 above the corruption and misery which abound 
 like an overflowing flood, and escape a de- 
 generacy your own statesmen lament, she must 
 begin by accepting a new faith. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — What is amiss with the 
 three old religions? The Emperor honours 
 them all, and gives high rank to their repre- 
 sentatives. The people can find what they 
 need in one or other of these sects. Even 
 missionaries approve of the teachings of 
 Confucius. 
 
 John Smith. — The evil of the situation is 
 this, that the common people and the women 
 follow superstitions at which the educated 
 laugh, and the educated themselves do not 
 believe in the more spiritual elements in the 
 Confucian books. If the educated laugh at the 
 
132 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 religious beliefs of the uneducated, it is impossible 
 for any form of worship to enlist reverence and 
 uplift the character. Faith must suffer when the 
 poor who profess it are scoffed at by the literary 
 classes who do not profess it. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But I do not see how you 
 are to improve matters by giving us the religion 
 of Jesus. The faith of missionaries is some- 
 times laughed at by consuls and assistant-consuls, 
 as well as by Englishmen engaged in newspaper 
 work. Did not Confucius say that "True 
 wisdom consists in being sensible of the limita- 
 tions of one's own knowledge." Those surely 
 are wanting in wisdom who speak with certainty 
 of the things treated in the Books of Jesus, 
 things that no one has either seen or heard. 
 
 John Smith. — I do not think the sage 
 intended his maxim to be applied in the way 
 you suggest, or he would not have attached so 
 much importance to The Books of History and 
 Poetry., which contain fragments of primitive 
 religion precious as gold. At that starting-point 
 we are all in agreement. "King Man, with 
 complete intelligence, watchfully and reverently 
 served God, and so secured the great blessing." 
 You will be able to quote more correctly than I 
 can the remarkable text about "Man Wong 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 33 
 
 ascending and descending upon the right and 
 the left hand of God." Such texts remind us 
 of the sacred books of the Jews, where the 
 beginnings of the faith of Jesus are to be found. 
 The early belief in God, so pure and simple, will 
 have to be revived and enlarged. The God 
 worshipped at the altar of Heaven by the 
 Emperor Kwang Sii is mysterious and unknown, 
 but we cannot think he is to remain for ever 
 hidden. Jesus was born to reveal the mystery 
 of God, and to teach us to live in harmony with 
 His will and work. Western doctors say that 
 sometimes a child's intelligence is straitened 
 and defective because the bones which cover 
 the brain grow together too soon and prevent 
 its expansion. The wise and holy faith of 
 ancient times has been imprisoned by an 
 exaggerated ceremonialism, and the excess of 
 ceremonialism breeds ignorance and insincerity. 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But it is impossible to have 
 religion without the rites of sacrifice, and such 
 rites often tend to outward and empty show. 
 Perhaps if we were to make Confucianism real, 
 which is our proper and indigenous faith, it 
 would do as much for us as a Western religion, 
 for Western religions do not always make consuls 
 and Customs secretaries, merchants and sailors 
 
134 ^S ^-^^ CHINESE SEE US 
 
 mindful of the precepts of the sages. At least 
 I am told so by those who live in the ports. We 
 are not likely to get much further in our know- 
 ledge of the Supreme Ruler, for our own com- 
 mentators are not clear as to what is meant by 
 the name, and it relieves us from any uneasiness 
 of mind to remember that King Man's successors 
 have always continued to worship Him on our 
 behalf. . . 
 
 John Smith. — But is this attempt to shift 
 responsibility upon the emperor good? It is 
 right that his high office should be recognised, 
 but Heaven has given you just as complete a 
 conscience as it has given to the great kings and 
 rulers of earth, and you have quite as sound a 
 title of direct access to Heaven as they. You 
 have not been made half a man or three-quarters 
 of a man only, but a complete man, and although 
 the subject may not be as much qualified to rule 
 as the sovereign and his ministers, he is as much 
 qualified to worship. The people, when they do 
 not worship the Supreme Ruler, who is known 
 to be holy, righteous, and impartial, fall to the 
 worship of gods who are supposed to favour 
 them in their wrong-doings and animosities. 
 Thieves, insurrectionists, murderers, all have 
 their gods in whose name they execute their 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 35 
 
 crimes. It was only last week I saw an old 
 woman who had drawn a rough picture of her 
 adversary, which she placed before the idol, and, 
 after burning crackers and presenting offerings, 
 she asked the idol to smite her enemy, and 
 with each petition struck the portrait of the 
 neighbour she had spread on the ground before 
 her. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — That is ignorance, and 
 perhaps there may be something of the same 
 temper in countries where the Supreme Ruler 
 only is worshipped. 
 
 John Smith. — But no one would pray in that 
 way who read what Jesus taught about the 
 character of the Supreme Ruler. Besides, it is 
 impossible to defend a condition of society in 
 which the educated worship one god, and the 
 uneducated and the lawless worship other gods 
 of their own choosing. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Perhaps revenge-seekers, 
 robbers, and assassins think their cause is 
 righteous, so that they are entitled to the help 
 of the gods. Men do not always know them- 
 selves, and that may even happen in Western 
 countries. To change one's gods is no cure 
 for self-deception. It is said that the rich and 
 powerful people of Western countries always 
 
136 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 think that God is on their side and against 
 the other people. At any rate, we are good- 
 humoured towards all religions which are in 
 agreement with the law and encourage domestic 
 virtue. 
 
 John Smith, — But the fits of persecution 
 which come over both people and officials at 
 fixed intervals do not seem to exemplify a 
 tolerant temper, although many officials, like 
 your honourable magistrate, and people of all 
 classes, do sometimes show boundless kindness. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — We do not as a rule trouble 
 to examine the religion of the foreigners, and 
 neither hate nor favour it. Some of its 
 principles are the same as are contained in our 
 own books, but its histories are strange to us, 
 whilst the names with which the Old and New 
 Testaments open make us laugh. We have our 
 own histories, of the genuineness of which we are 
 able to judge for ourselves. What we mistrust 
 and dislike is the men who profess your religion. 
 I am afraid I drop the rules of politeness in 
 saying so ; but there is an unconfessed anti- 
 pathy of blood between us. Our people do 
 not think of Western races as of the same 
 species. We have never suppressed any re- 
 ligion in the past unless the followers of it 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 37 
 
 have practised cruel rites and been licentious 
 in their conduct. We have been so magnani- 
 mous that we have absorbed the Jews who 
 settled in our midst, so that by intermarriage 
 and in other ways they have become one body 
 with us — a feat which I am told neither 
 Russia nor Germany has yet rivalled. A 
 few years ago, when his honour was in office 
 near Hoi Fung Fu, and I was in his suite, two 
 foreigners came into the neighbourhood to 
 inquire after "the sect that draws out the 
 sinew." They might as well have sought for a 
 last year's Tsaidam snow-storm in the floods of 
 the Yellow River. The sect had melted away 
 into our guilds and clans and families, and 
 could no longer be traced. Mahomedans we 
 leave to do as they like in religion, unless 
 they are disloyal and foment rebellion, as has 
 happened more than once in Kam Suk and 
 Hi. Their mosques are as safe against riot as 
 the temples of the God of War or of the City 
 God. When the Arabs came to our coasts a 
 thousand years ago, the emperor appointed a 
 Mahomedan mandarin to deal with their 
 affairs. Members of that sect have lived 
 amongst us undisturbed for generations, have 
 a place in the ward-motes, and become in- 
 
138 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 corporate with the city life, some even filling 
 high posts in the civil and military service of 
 the empire. It is true the Emperor Shun Chi 
 put down the Dutch, Italian, and Portuguese 
 missionaries, but his policy was caused by the 
 fact that their meddlesome and masterful 
 tempers had become hard to bear with, and 
 our rulers were losing their liberty, and suffer- 
 ing treatment on their own soil like that of 
 slaves. These men came as guests to the empire 
 and to the Court, and at last began to act as 
 host, and give orders in another's house. And in 
 some of the later troubles, missionaries, if not 
 paid and sent by their Governments, received 
 seals of office, empowering them to enter into 
 the mandarins' courts and negotiate the affairs 
 of their converts. Sometimes they have ven- 
 tured to browbeat our magistrates as though 
 the appointments of the Middle Kingdom were 
 held at the will of foreign sovereigns. And 
 even when no such things were done, the 
 missionaries introduced others into the inland 
 districts, and superintendents of coal mines, 
 railway - route surveyors, and many kinds of 
 drifting foreigners followed in their steps. By 
 compelling us to interfere with the historic 
 independence of clans, guilds, and ward-motes. 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 39 
 
 consuls were little by little pushing us to 
 the verge of insurrection. If we have some- 
 times been violent, that is because we have 
 been driven out of our normal tolerance by 
 the obstinate enforcement of treaties. A 
 costly feast may be put in order upon the 
 table, but if the viands are forced down the 
 throats of the guests with bamboo sticks, they 
 will wish to vomit, and suspect the host of a 
 design to poison them. 
 
 John Smith. — But the use of force is with 
 the other side. Some few months ago the 
 people in a village I sometimes visit burned 
 down the house of a Christian, because he 
 would not worship idols. He had made money 
 in foreign trade and had helped his neighbours. 
 But at last there was an epidemic of swine 
 cholera, and although there were gamblers and 
 opium-smokers in the place, they put the blame 
 upon this particular man, and said the idols 
 were angry because of the way in which he 
 slighted them. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Well, of course, that was 
 their ignorance. But if a man lives in a village 
 and belongs to the collective clan-life of the 
 place, he is bound to do what the authorities 
 of the families require. I daresay it is easier 
 
140 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 for you to act separately in the religious worship 
 you choose to follow, although it is said that in 
 trying to put down the pestilence in India, you 
 forced the people to do things against their 
 religious traditions, and at that time strangers 
 interfered in the family life to an extent our 
 own fathers, uncles, and grandfathers would 
 never attempt or permit in our homes. 
 
 John Smith. — But that is what medical 
 science requires, and the science is absolutely 
 true. It is done to preserve the health and 
 life of an entire community. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But in the judgment of 
 those village elders, the house of the disciple 
 of Jesus was burnt in what they believed to 
 be the interests of the community. 
 
 John Smith. — Does not that show that the 
 village sorely needed better instruction than it 
 had hitherto received? Such a course would 
 not have commended itself to Confucius, judg- 
 ing him at least from some of his memorable 
 sayings. But I forbear to press that side of 
 the argument. You are an official, and pride 
 yourself on loyalty to the throne. If the 
 emperor is ** father and mother of the people," 
 even the clan patriarchs should obey his edicts, 
 which declare that since Christianity inculcates 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 141 
 
 morality and good works, its followers must not 
 be persecuted. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Certainly. But if a father 
 is driven to bid a child do something against 
 his own secret will, he will think the child 
 both filial and sagacious, if the child disobey 
 the letter of the father's injunction, and do what 
 will be inwardly more pleasing. All edicts are 
 not spontaneous. In the past, many have 
 thought that the emperor and his ministers 
 would be best pleased if little or no favour was 
 shown to the foreigners. It is said that with 
 many Englishmen the country stands first and 
 the teaching of the sacred books second. Will 
 the nations over the seas never understand we 
 do not want a foreign religion ? 
 
 John Smith. — But flowers and fruits from 
 other lands have become acclimatised in China, 
 and you no longer think of them as foreign, 
 although in some cases there is a ring of the 
 foreign sound in the Chinese names. Western 
 nations no longer think of their religion as of 
 foreign origin, although it is one of the religions 
 of the East and not of the West. A religion 
 becomes the religion of the man who professes 
 it, when he shares its living virtues and 
 practises its teachings. The Truth is of no 
 
142 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 particular race or country. That is what Paul 
 taught, who was the most noted disciple of 
 Jesus. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — If that is so, why do 
 foreigners thrust their strange buildings upon 
 us, and make common people feel they take 
 away their luck by disturbing the " fung-shui " } 
 Temples for the worship of Jesus could be 
 built like those of Kun Yam or T'in Hau. To 
 make religious buildings and the forms of 
 worship copy what is foreign, is as bad as 
 compelling converts to cut off their queues and 
 wear European clothes. 
 
 John Smith. — But such things are accidents, 
 and perhaps missionaries, not sufficiently under- 
 standing the likes and dislikes of the Chinese, 
 make many mistakes. The religion of Jesus 
 can prosper without public buildings of any 
 kind. It was first preached in houses ; after it 
 had once begun to spread in new countries its 
 rites were practised in caves and rock-tombs, 
 and for two centuries it had no public temples. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — It could not do that in China. 
 Missionaries are too assertive to be content with 
 such quiet methods, for it is their boast that they 
 belong to the ruling races of the world. Yours is 
 a less domestic religion than Confucianism, and 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 43 
 
 because it is dissatisfied with the average senti- 
 ments of human life, needs public demonstrations 
 to give it strength and prosperity. Moreover, 
 secret societies are always suspected amongst 
 us. We organise family instincts into motive 
 forces of action, and direct them into worship. 
 The religion of Jesus, as far as I have read, 
 seems to be made up of conjectures about God 
 and dreams of a future life ; and dreams come 
 and go whilst man's natural instincts always 
 remain. The dreams may be true or untrue, 
 but they do not supply stable and effective 
 reasons for action. Now and again a man goes 
 on a pilgrimage, becomes a vegetarian, or 
 presents new gold-leaf to adorn the Buddhas 
 of a monastery, because he has been moved 
 by a dream, but nine men out of ten act 
 because they have thought of something when 
 awake. Our trade has a sacredness lacking in 
 yours, for its motive is the better fulfilment 
 of the duties of filial piety and brotherhood, 
 and the end to which it looks is the ancestral 
 temple. The motive of your trade is a grand 
 house in London or New York and the sweet 
 wine with bubbles in it, such as is given to our 
 officials when they make Queen's birthday calls 
 at the Consulates. 
 
144 ^^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 John Smith. — Yes, but the instinct for God 
 is just as much a part of human nature as that 
 for parents and brothers, and lasts as long. 
 And Confucianism in its modern forms does 
 not despise the dream. Ancestral worship, 
 as popularly held, assumes a fact which the 
 mere senses cannot know — the immortality 
 of the soul. It is because of that underlying 
 belief that those who are now living hope to 
 be solaced after their decease by the worship 
 of posterity. To assume the continued exist- 
 ence of the soul after death without a Divine 
 soul which upholds it, is less credible than the 
 teaching of Jesus upon this subject. Every 
 religion has to reinforce the sense of duty with 
 those ideas which you call dreams, and Con- 
 fucianism never scruples to make use of them. 
 In all your habits and movements do you not 
 consider the wishes of your ancestry and believe 
 that you can often find out what those wishes 
 are ? How often do you try to dissuade men 
 from evil courses by asking them how they can 
 meet the spirits of their forefathers ? You keep 
 a professional class of sorcerers, necromancers, 
 and " fung-shui " experts, who are supposed to 
 interpret the tastes and dispositions of the dead. 
 Is it not a more reasonable thing to try and 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS I45 
 
 find out what God is from the conscience 
 which your Doctrine of the Mean declares is 
 of Divine origin. ** Man's moral nature is con- 
 stituted by the mandate of Heaven." A moral 
 nature so constituted is surely as trustworthy in 
 its intimations as the professional diviners to 
 whom you resort. Conscience asks no fees 
 when it gives its instructions, and at least is 
 disinterested. The religion of Jesus is in 
 agreement at every point with the moral 
 nature man has received from Heaven, and 
 presents a rational interpretation of the facts 
 of the spiritual world. It is not necessary to 
 do violence to one's intellect by believing in 
 Jesus. In fact, the sacredness of life is only 
 felt amongst the nations which accept the 
 Christian doctrine of immortality. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But it is said that Western 
 nations have a feebler sense of the sacredness 
 of life than some years ago. They certainly 
 sacrifice life for objects we should not think 
 of sufficient importance. In some countries 
 it is said that every man has to be a soldier, 
 and wars are waged because of the private 
 quarrels of princes and statesmen. Govern- 
 ments spend lives more recklessly than they 
 spend silver and gold, and when they cease to 
 K 
 
146 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 waste lives it is because they wish to cease 
 wasting silver and gold. 
 
 John Smith. — Such statements are made at 
 times, but they are unfriendly exaggerations. 
 At the same time, I must confess that the de- 
 light in pictures of war does tend to make men 
 think death a trifle, especially when religious 
 faith is not strong. But this bears out my 
 argument, for the declining sense of the sacred- 
 ness of life is associated with the decay of 
 religious belief. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Then I am to infer you 
 come to offer us a dying religion, just as the 
 farmer when his plough-buffalo dies, cuts it up 
 for cheap beef and sells it to his neighbours. 
 Our religion of family sentiment, which does 
 not decay, might be useful to you in re- 
 covering your lost sense of the sacredness of 
 life. It is our homage to family affection and 
 fidelity which has saved us from the war craze, 
 for some Eastern nations have been just as 
 notorious for the love of war as France, 
 Germany, and Russia. Perhaps our religion 
 is easier than yours, because a child's earliest 
 feel' .gs of duty are towards his parents, and 
 here Hes the root of all other virtues. The 
 root lives when the flower dies. It must be 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 47 
 
 parent first, and God, who is more remote and 
 obscure, in the uncertain after-time, if He needs 
 to be worshipped at all. Most Chinamen are 
 content to leave that deep and mysterious 
 function of sacrifice to the emperor. 
 
 John Sfnith. — In the first place let me say 
 the Christian religion is as imperishable as the 
 conscience itself, because it more fully expresses 
 all that the conscience contains, and whilst we 
 recognise the sacredness of the family affections, 
 they derive their sacredness from the God who 
 ordains and inspires them. He is the root of the 
 root and the beginning of the beginning. For 
 a time, perhaps, in the early growth of a child, 
 the parent must be in the place of God, and 
 the faculties through which the parent is seen 
 unfold before the faculties through which God 
 is felt and known. God's care begins before 
 that of the parent is possible, and His claim 
 is paramount. But the succession in the steps 
 of growth is no key to the relative value of 
 various human obligations. It is said that a 
 babe's sense of smell begins to act before its 
 other senses. Would you therefore say the sense 
 of smell is the most sacred of all the senses, 
 and the babe must be trained into a hunting- 
 dog, and its other senses ought to take an 
 
148 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 inferior place. We teach a child reverence, 
 and the instincts of a child desire a larger 
 object of worship, and at last turn to that 
 which is infinite. But my argument is need- 
 less, for a Chinese child who can only just 
 toddle, is taught to prostrate himself before idols, 
 as well as before ancestors, living and dead. 
 The duty of filial piety can scarcely be used 
 as the basis of a universal religion, because its 
 incidence is unequal. How can a child rightly 
 worship a parent who forsakes or ill-treats him. 
 I know you quote the example of Shun and 
 others, who set themselves to recover unworthy 
 parents, but they had other elements of religion 
 beyond those which they drew from the family. 
 How can a child, brought up in a foundling 
 house, and sold at last for a slave or something 
 worse, cherish the principle of filial piety ? One 
 of the reasons China has stopped in its progress, 
 and has been for centuries like a man sleep- 
 ing by the wayside, is that its ideals are in the 
 past. When we worship that which is no 
 higher than ourselves, imagination shrinks like 
 a man in whom the nutritive functions have 
 been suspended by opium, and the well-being 
 of the race becomes limited by the standards 
 of a rude antiquity. 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 1 49 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — But if filial piety cannot be 
 the basis of a universal religion, can you find the 
 promise of anything better in the teaching and 
 worship of Jesus? If there are classes in our 
 midst we are compelled to regard as reprobate, 
 are there no corresponding classes in Western 
 countries ? 
 
 John Smith. — Our faith leads us to look 
 upon all classes with hope; the message we 
 teach announces God's good-will to the worst 
 men and women of our cities ; and as a matter 
 of fact, the best people in the churches are often 
 drawn from classes of society other religions 
 regard as hopeless. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — If you still have vicious 
 classes left that seems to imply your religion 
 promises more than ours, without making good 
 its word. Large portions of Western cities are 
 reputed to be as bad or worse than our streets 
 of gambling and opium-huts. It is said nothing 
 can be sadder or more degrading than the 
 " samshoo "-shops of foreign ports. Visitors who 
 come back from the West say Tarn Ch*i need 
 not go into the world of shades to see the halls 
 of purgatory and their ghastly shows. Those 
 with the taste for such episodes can cross the 
 sea and visit melancholy cities where smoke and 
 
150 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 cloud never disperse. The rich manufacturers 
 of beer and spirits are the Yamas who preside 
 over these places of torture, and they wear 
 costly robes and many gems. If we look upon 
 certain classes as reprobate by birth, Western 
 countries take the same view, and announce 
 it under another name. When the doctrine of 
 Jesus fails to save men from their vices, they 
 are spoken of as insane, and the wish is ex- 
 pressed to shut them up in mad-houses. 
 
 John Smith. — Men's diseases of soul are the 
 same everywhere, and the religion of Jesus is 
 effectual, not so much in preventing those ills 
 which arise in all countries alike, but in saving 
 those who have any desire to be saved. In 
 spite of the fact that men are made with minds 
 which compel them to approve of what is good 
 they tend towards evil paths. We bring men 
 out of vice and make them respectable citizens, 
 although it must be allowed, at the present 
 temptations are so strong, that others from the 
 virtuous classes lapse from virtue and go down 
 into the mire to take their places. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Perhaps by a wise use of the 
 natural forms of authority we prevent as many 
 from going down into vice as your religion 
 saves when they have drifted there. Our 
 
COMPETING RELIGIONS 151 
 
 religion is therefore valuable for prevention and 
 yours for cure. From your admissions, it seems 
 as though society with you were akin to that 
 which the Buddhists depict in the world of 
 shades. Bad men come crowding in to take 
 the places of those who have been sufficiently 
 chastened for their offences, and as the wheel 
 of transmigration turns in the last court of the 
 series, souls are sent forth to new embodiments 
 in which the old combinations of character 
 repeat themselves, without permanent improve- 
 ment or amelioration. 
 
 John Smith. — I do not accept that as a true 
 picture of what is coming to pass in Western 
 countries. There have been great improve- 
 ments within my Hfe-time, and I believe that the 
 evil which still remains will one day vanish. A 
 sick man on the way to recovery is often better 
 and worse, and better again on successive 
 days. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — Some periods are less dis- 
 orderly than others, but they do not last. It 
 has been so in our own history. Manners 
 became lax, and restlessness and insubordination 
 spread through the empire for a time, and then 
 there is a return to virtue. But in the end the 
 world continues what it was, and the kind of 
 
152 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 religion it follows may not be a matter of vital 
 importance. 
 
 John Smith. — In countries where the truth 
 of Jesus is accepted and practised, if a long 
 term of years is brought into account, improve- 
 ment is seen to be continuous. All decline in 
 prosperity is to be explained by the decline of 
 religious faith. 
 
 Cheung Sz Ye. — It perhaps is so. You will 
 find the road to the next city has ups and 
 downs, and when you get there to-morrow night 
 you will be on the same level as when you start 
 in the morning. And the movements of 
 religion follow the same rule. But the third 
 watch is being sounded and we have talked long. 
 I hope I have not offended you by my rough 
 and fiery disputings. The kitchen boy will 
 show you to your room. Our sleeping apart- 
 ments are mean, and not so spacious and 
 stately as those foreigners are accustomed to 
 occupy. May you sleep well ! If you hear any 
 noises in the night, you need have no fear, 
 The rats in this part of the country are devoid 
 of shyness, but they will only steal the oil out of 
 the lamp saucer. May you sleep well ! 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A CHINESE APPRECIATION OF THE NEW 
 IMPERIALISM 
 
 "He who rules by virtue is like the pole-star which 
 keeps its position in the heavens whilst all the 
 stars turn to it."— Confucius. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — In this skirmish with 
 the Dutch settlers of Africa, the luck of your 
 esteemed country seems to have turned. We 
 are comrades in misfortune, and I make my 
 bow of condolence. Some time ago, when you 
 paid me the honour of a call, our relations with 
 Japan had been troubled, and you not only 
 smiled at the drill and equipment of our army, 
 but spoke as though our battle-ships, which had 
 cost millions of taels and had been built under 
 the best foreign direction, were little better than 
 a fleet of salt-junks. In speaking of your 
 honourable Government I would not be rude 
 or forget the proprieties, but although the 
 prestige of the English Navy may be high, the 
 
 153 
 
154 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 field army, allowing, of course, for differences 
 between the East and the West, does not seem 
 to accomplish much more than our own. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — With all due respect to 
 your Excellency, I cannot agree to that com- 
 parison. Our officers are men of science, brave, 
 and upright, and as to the private soldier, 
 everybody is loud in his praise. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Your merchants, 
 especially those of the old school, are men of 
 integrity, but the caterers for the Commissariat 
 must surely have served an apprenticeship 
 under Chinese masters in the art of "squeeze 
 pidgin," at Shanghai or Pekin. We are 
 flattered by the many details in which you have 
 consented to imitate us. When Tso Tsung 
 Tong set out with his army to put down 
 Mahomedan rebels in Kashgaria, having 
 neither ships nor railways to carry his stores, 
 he halted his troops for six months at a time, 
 so that they could sow seed and reap harvests. 
 He was patient, and did not allow himself to be 
 starved into retreat. In the later stages of this 
 campaign, if one may believe the Shanghai news- 
 papers, it looks as though your generals might 
 be shut up to the same line of tactics. Perhaps 
 we could lend you a few survivors from that 
 
APPRECIA TION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 5 5 
 
 memorable expedition who might take charge 
 of the Commissariat. Those Dutch farmers are 
 as hardy and cunning as Mongols, and mount a 
 horse as well. English and German counsellors 
 tell us we must have a new standing army, if 
 the integrity of the empire is to be maintained, 
 but we are beginning to doubt whether these 
 new-fangled armies are of much account after all. 
 Gideon Khakison. — Your Excellency is witty, 
 and perhaps not altogether fair in judging the 
 course of events. In my humble country a 
 civilisation prevails which is more deft in its 
 methods and humane in its motives than that 
 which has so long established itself in China, 
 your ministers of state, who have come as 
 envoys to Europe, freely admitting this. If our 
 generals have blundered and been held at bay 
 by a handful of stubborn agriculturists, at least 
 they have at their service the benefits of a science 
 which is peculiar to the West. Never before 
 in the history of the world have ten times ten 
 thousand men been carried across the sea in a 
 month or two at the most, and placed face to 
 face with a distant enemy. We are proud of 
 our sun-mirror telegraphs, of the cars raised into 
 the clouds by gas-bags from which the enemy's 
 position can be observed, and of the guns which 
 
156 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 hit with exact aim objects unseen by the 
 artillerymen, and, most of all, of the courage 
 and sacrifice of our common soldiers. But what 
 best deserves the study and imitation of Eastern 
 nations is the compassion of our hospital work, 
 which is a direct fruit of the religion of Jesus. 
 We pity and heal our enemies, nursing them as 
 though they had been wounded on our own 
 side, and such acts are not common where the 
 work and character of Jesus are unknown. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — That is so, assuredly, 
 and does not need to be argued. The mis- 
 sionaries make pity the chief virtue in both the 
 Supreme Ruler and His worshippers. You are 
 masters there, and we are humble learners at 
 your door. But tactics and invention are not 
 always proof of superiority in disposition and 
 conduct. The fox is cleverer than the meek, 
 obedient creature which ploughs our fields. It 
 is not easy to understand the men of the West, 
 for they do not know their own minds, and are 
 divided by conflicting ideas. The oldest son of 
 a family becomes a military mandarin, and 
 invents torpedoes and poison-gas guns, feeling 
 as happy as a faery when he has discovered 
 some new combination in chemistry by which 
 he can kill men, a trenchful at a time. The 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 57 
 
 second son of the same father and mother is 
 sent to learn surgery, and with knife, probe, and 
 other instruments, performs those feats in which 
 you are pre-eminent, thinking he has deserved 
 the highest fame if he can heal seventy per cent, 
 of the men his brother has been trying to kill. 
 And the youngest son becomes a padre, and 
 prays for peace in the temple of a city where 
 they weld steel guns, roll armour-plate, and 
 make rifles, and the very people who join in 
 his prayers would starve if the prayers were 
 answered. And he will tell those who hear 
 him preach, not to kill men unless they are 
 Hollanders, and can be killed in squads and 
 battalions. And with these three sons, the second 
 of whom undoes the work of the first, whilst the 
 third discredits his calling, the father is equally 
 pleased, and praises them all as models of filial 
 piety. We might hope to understand you if 
 you were all soldiers, or all doctors, or all padres, 
 but these contradictions amaze us. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — These three occupations 
 are not so contradictory as your Excellency seems 
 to think. Sooner or later fighting has to be 
 done, and if it is right at all, it is right to carry 
 it through thoroughly, so that the misery may 
 be short and the lesson lasting. And when 
 
158 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 men have been overthrown in battle, our religion 
 teaches that we must not slake our vengeance in 
 the torture of the fallen. Justice ought to be 
 tempered with mercy. And as to praying for 
 peace, most men think that the human race 
 would be happier and more prosperous if war 
 could be abolished. We all favour that idea, 
 and call together councils of various nations to 
 see how it can be brought to pass. The in- 
 consistency in the three sons of one family, 
 chosen for your illustration, is on the surface, 
 and their inward motives are not so antagonistic 
 as their apparent acts, 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — If we had been born 
 foreigners, perhaps we might understand these 
 ideas better. To reconcile such divergent 
 pursuits is like trying to put together a puzzle 
 when the pieces have been made to a different 
 scale, and thrown in a heap at random. The 
 ways of the men of the Great Pure dynasty are 
 less perplexing, because they have been trained 
 in the doctrine of Confucius, which he asserted 
 to be that "of an all-pervading unity." It is 
 true our surgery is that of an early age, and 
 the doctors of the present time are not so much 
 honoured as yours. We are cautious, for, as we 
 are taught in our classics, " the cautious seldom 
 
APPRECIATION OF NE W IMPERIALISM 1 59 
 
 err." In this, as in other things, we move 
 slowly. The Chinaman is more patient under 
 pain than the men of the West, recovering 
 without much care. Judged by European 
 methods, our army may be loose, decrepit, in- 
 effectual, for it does not cost much, and we do 
 not want it to kill men in large numbers. It 
 absorbs as much money and is quite as deadly 
 as either Confucius or Mencius would have 
 approved. If the precepts of these wise men, 
 who lived centuries before Jesus, had been 
 known and respected in the countries of the 
 West, both English and Dutch would have been 
 kept out of this gold-mine "bobbery," about 
 which everybody is talking. Of course our 
 armaments are as old-fashioned as the pikes 
 and coats of mail for horses and men which 
 my nephew saw in London in Jubilee year; 
 but even those would have been sufficient to 
 defend your empire, big as it is, if the maxims 
 of our early sages were learned and honoured 
 by your scholars. Our weapons and our drill, 
 about which Lord Beresford laughed so politely 
 when he was visiting us, do at least prove that 
 our people have learned to follow out those 
 ideas, of which the empire governed by the Son 
 of Heaven has been built up. It is evident 
 
l6o AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 that the bigger it is necessary to make the army, 
 the poorer is the stock of ideas through which 
 order and moraUty are secured in the homes of 
 the people; and the more influential the stock 
 of ethical ideas, the more insignificant will 
 armies tend to become. If our native soldiery 
 is unequal to a contest with the fierce warriors 
 of the West, who move as though they were 
 spokes in the wheel of a paddle-boat, and fight 
 by launching meteors and thunder-bolts at their 
 foes, it is sufficient at least for the preservation 
 of peace within the eighteen provinces. Some 
 reforms, it is true, are needed, and mandarins 
 ought not to be left to pay themselves by fees 
 and exactions, but if under a defective scheme 
 of administration the people continue prosperous 
 and contented, that proves they govern them- 
 selves. The mandarins touch them with a light 
 hand, unless critical emergencies compel them 
 to do otherwise. Our populations are fused 
 into coherence by loyalty, mutual good-will, and 
 strong family sentiments; and lacking these 
 things, not all the armies of Europe, said to 
 number as many as the adults in a Chinese 
 province, could hold together our busy multi- 
 tudes. Our institutions, which continue like 
 mountains the floods cannot reach when 
 
APPRECIA TION OP NE W IMPERIALISM 1 6 1 
 
 dynasties rise and fall, safeguard the interests of 
 all classes of the people. Our sacred books, old 
 as yours, and equally honoured, encourage and 
 extol the instincts which find expression in an 
 organised family life ; and the tens of millions 
 who bow to Confucius as master, are in warp 
 and woof as much of a texture as a roll of 
 pongee silk. In your scattered empire it is 
 rumoured you have no common literature, no 
 uniform worship, no unalterable standard of 
 family life; and an empire in whose homes 
 there is no mutual, unifying attraction, of course 
 needs military force to hold it together. Your 
 promiscuous territories have as little stability as 
 the trees, fortresses, and city gates of painted 
 wood in our open-air theatres, which are kept 
 in position by attendants on the stage whilst 
 the actors recite. Perhaps your statesmen are 
 right when they say there must be the strong 
 upholding hand in every part of the world where 
 the flag flies. Our cult of filial piety guards the 
 family against dispersion, our classical learning 
 is a legacy in which every hamlet has its stake, 
 and our civilisation, although you think it a 
 skeleton of the past, does at least preserve the 
 close coherence distinctive of the primitive tribe, 
 and knits together hundreds of millions as 
 L 
 
1 62 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 closely as the first groups of families were 
 compacted under lu and Shun. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But is there no truth in 
 the rumour that the weakness of China's 
 military defences is due to the avarice and 
 neglect of her officials, rather than to zeal for 
 the peace doctrine of the ancient sages ? Has 
 not each city its temple dedicated to the God 
 of War, who was a valiant general in the times 
 of the Three States? Does not the Book of 
 Odes speaks of Mo Wong, the founder of the 
 Chau dynasty, who did his fair share of fighting, 
 and soldier of fortune though he was, is still 
 spoken of as one of the model kings of 
 antiquity ? 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — The age is sometimes 
 disorderly, and violent characters arise who must 
 be punished. How can the punishment of 
 confederated crime be accomplished without 
 military force ? The campaigns spoken of with 
 complacency in the Classics are always described 
 as acts of " chastisement " approved by the public 
 conscience. The wild men who were not sub- 
 missive to our doctrine have retired into the 
 mountains. Military fanatics, such as Ts'un 
 Ch*i Wong, who tried to revolutionise our 
 ancient institutions by destroying the Confucian 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 63 
 
 literature and oppressing the scholars, have 
 always been execrated. We do not worship 
 such as these, at least if their warfare had 
 conquest for its object. Mongols and Mant- 
 choos, who overcame us and took possession of 
 the empire, only maintained their position by 
 conforming to our customs. They conquered 
 our provinces with the sword, and we in our 
 turn conquered them, without shedding of blood, 
 by our arts, letters, and the spirit of our family 
 life ; and they are now devoted to our institu- 
 tions, and jealously guard the doctrine of the 
 sages. It is by a process of peaceful assimila- 
 tion that our race has spread itself from its first 
 area between the Yellow River and the Yang 
 Tsze, through eighteen provinces. The territory 
 now included within our frontiers has not been 
 wholly overspread by races which have 
 multiplied from one stock only. We have 
 incorporated races which have admired our 
 teaching and customs, and have wished to 
 intermarry with us, and have not driven them 
 out. In the Chinamen of the north, the south, 
 and the west, the strain of neighbouring races 
 with which our settlers intermarried may be 
 traced, and in some of the local dialects words 
 occur which no one can trace back to the early 
 
164 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 books. The spread of our race has been deter- 
 mined not by weapons but by the admiration 
 felt for our doctrine of the family and for the 
 arts of our civilisation. Nothing but a cruel 
 necessity has led us to wage wars of extermina- 
 tion even against savages. In fact, the doctrine 
 of filial piety prevents the popularity of war 
 more effectually then either the cost of arma- 
 ments or the teaching of Jesus amongst the rich 
 and half-believing nations of Europe. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I agree with your 
 Excellency that China is peaceful in its tradi- 
 tions, and, as all who know the people can 
 testify, that they are quiet, industrious and easy 
 to govern. Riot and violence are rare, and 
 occur only when false rumours are circulated to 
 incite the ignorant. The Chinaman is not 
 perfect, but he loves his home, cherishes his 
 children with kindness, and is too much 
 occupied to be a political busy-body. The 
 teaching and the institutions of his country have 
 schooled him into many profitable virtues ; but 
 I cannot see that the influences hitherto at work 
 have produced the highest types of character. 
 Do not think me wanting in veneration for 
 those whom you justly esteem if I venture to 
 say Christian countries have again and again 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 165 
 
 produced less faulty saints than Confucius, and 
 as to his seventy-two disciples, good men 
 though they were, many a little English town 
 could supply a list of equally good men, without 
 ranging the country through to find them. It is 
 a wonderful wheel which has ground these dense 
 myriads to such reputable sameness of mind 
 and character, and the process has been patient 
 and long sustained. But the highest ethical 
 finish is wanting. Pardon my narrowness for 
 thinking so, and venturing to speak my mind. 
 You say that foreigners are blunt, and I take 
 advantage of your opinion in that matter. 
 
 Wong Chtu Yeung. — You fail, sir, to feel the 
 spirit of our literature and the true worth of our 
 many virtues. Perhaps the reason is, western 
 men nibble at our books when they are 
 approaching middle life, and do not feast on 
 them as boys, for warm appreciation is rare. 
 " Mysterious is the intelligence of the sage. He 
 nurtures and transforms all things, and is the 
 equal of Heaven." The antipathy such a state- 
 ment calls forth is a proof that you only skim 
 our literature. I would go to your metropolis 
 and disseminate the political economy taught 
 by our two greatest masters, if I were freed from 
 office, and had not the great duty of watching 
 
1 66 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 over the last days of my parents. I should 
 make as many converts as the missionaries, if I 
 were to rent a hall in one of your wealthy 
 centres, for many of your people have leisure 
 and are always ready to hear the voice of virtue 
 and conciliation, especially if the voice is that 
 of a stranger. Or perhaps the better plan would 
 be to conciliate the scholars first, for you 
 missionaries seem to invert the appointed order 
 of working. Our sages teach that "the rulers 
 are like the wind and the people are like the 
 grass, and that the grass bends as the wind 
 blows." By approaching the poorest of the 
 people first, you are trying to make the grass 
 direct the wind, instead of letting the wind sway 
 the grass. The political maxims of ancient 
 China might be made the subject of an examina- 
 tion for those who are about to become judges, 
 magistrates, revenue-officers, and consuls. The 
 Government would not care for the officers of 
 the Army and Navy to devote themselves to 
 this branch of study, lest they should be dissuaded 
 from entering upon their profession, and esteem 
 its honours inferior. 
 
 King Wai of Leung was once bewailing to 
 Mencius defeats in war and loss of territory. 
 That wise and liberal friend of the people 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 6/ 
 
 replied: "With a territory only thirty miles 
 square in extent it is possible to attain the 
 suzerainty. If your Majesty will confer a 
 benevolent administration upon the people, 
 making penalties rare, taxation easy, and leav- 
 ing your subjects sufficient leisure for the culti- 
 vation of filial and fraternal pieties, you will be 
 able to send your people armed only with sticks 
 to resist the mail and the sharp weapons of 
 Ts'un and Ch*o ; for the rulers of those states 
 steal their people's time, so that the fields are 
 neglected and their families famished and 
 scattered abroad. In accord with this anticipa- 
 tion is the popular saying, 'The benevolent 
 has no enemy.' I beg your Majesty not to be 
 in two minds about this." 
 
 When asked by the son of the same king, 
 "How can the empire be settled?" Mencius 
 said, "By being united under one sway." 
 
 " And who can so unite it ? " 
 
 " He who has no pleasure in killing men can 
 so unite it." 
 
 "Who can give it to him?" 
 
 " All the people of the empire will give it to 
 him without a dissentient voice. The shepherds 
 of men throughout the empire all take pleasure 
 in killing men. If there were one who did not 
 
1 68 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 find pleasure in killing men, all the people in 
 the empire would look towards him with out- 
 stretched necks." 
 
 To King Sun of Ts'ai he said, " If your 
 Majesty will institute a Government whose 
 acts are benevolent, it will make all the officers 
 in the empire wish to stand in your Majesty's 
 Courts, all the farmers wish to plough in your 
 Majesty's fields, all the merchants wish to 
 store their goods in your Majesty's market- 
 places, and all plaintiffs who cannot obtain 
 justice at home to have the opportunity of 
 appealing to your justice." 
 
 "Let benevolent government be exercised 
 in a country of ten thousand chariots, and the 
 people will be delighted with it, as if they were 
 relieved from hanging by the heels." 
 
 " A ruler who honours talent, makes taxation 
 easy, and accepts labour in place of tithes from 
 the husbandmen, will be looked upon by 
 neighbouring kingdoms as though he were 
 a parent. Such a ruler will not have an 
 enemy in the empire, and he who has no 
 enemy in the empire is the minister of 
 Heaven." 
 
 " If good men were to govern a country in 
 succession for a hundred years, they would be 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 69 
 
 able to transform the violently bad, and to 
 abolish capital punishments." 
 
 In India and other countries, where you have 
 had the opportunity of dealing with subject- 
 races, have your rulers justified themselves by 
 the axiomatic test of the sage? Directly or 
 indirectly, you have had a century for the ex- 
 periment. Our sage must be wrong or your 
 administrators have not reached his standard 
 of excellence. It is said that instead of lighten- 
 ing the penalties for some offences, you try to 
 make them heavier, and if you did not awe 
 the people now and again by military pageants 
 and campaigns, you fear your dynasty would 
 pass away. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — These aphorisms of your 
 early sages do credit to their kind-heartedness, 
 but sometimes were they not over sanguine in 
 their views? Your Excellency will probably 
 agree with me that these classic precepts, after 
 all, are too good for practice. As to our 
 Government of India, the country has far 
 fewer soldiers than when it was under native 
 rulers, and fewer lives are sacrificed by fighting 
 or violence. The evidence of my assertion is 
 that the population increases in an unexampled 
 ratio. Your reproach of our Indian Govern- 
 
I/O AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 ment will embolden me for a criticism of things 
 I see here. The squabbles and skirmishes 
 amongst the disciples of Confucius are as 
 many as those which occur in kingdoms across 
 the sea ; but fighting resembles your industrial 
 production; it is a domestic craft carried out 
 on a small scale, and you lack the machinery 
 for wholesale enterprises. Clan fights, guild 
 fights, fights between men of different pro- 
 vinces, who make their club-houses serve for 
 fortress and barracks, may be seen in one place 
 or another any day of the month. And as to 
 your frontier tribes, you have been skirmishing 
 with them, off and on, for three thousand years, 
 and the play is not finished yet. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung, — Does not that show 
 how patient and forbearing we are ? Perhaps we 
 may have to learn from Christian nations the 
 art of "putting this business through," and 
 "fighting to a finish." I think those are the 
 phrases your statesmen use. As to our brushes 
 with frontier tribes, they occur on the thinly 
 settled outskirts of the empire, and bear no 
 higher proportion to the myriads of our central 
 and seaboard provinces than the wine-shop 
 fights in Western countries bear to the number 
 of people there. Do you not think it is greatly 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 171 
 
 to our credit that we have not exterminated 
 them after such a long period of time by the 
 rifle, strong drink, opium, and loathsome 
 diseases ? 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — If you have spared them 
 you have done less to improve their lot than 
 we have done to improve the lot of those within 
 our influence. The churches at least have 
 meant well by the vanishing tribes, however 
 much they may have suffered from traders. 
 And the wars of Christian nations are less fierce 
 and savage than the wars of nations which 
 are not Christian. The teaching of Mencius 
 is admirable, but probably the most cruel and 
 devastating war of the century has been the 
 war you waged to put down the T'ae P'ings. 
 It is computed, that in the course of twenty 
 years you slaughtered as many millions of men 
 as we have slaughtered hundreds in the course 
 of this tedious and unlucky war. Counsels of 
 perfection, preached by the philosophers of the 
 past and present-day practice do not always 
 agree; and yet I must allow these peace 
 theories are held in wonderfully high esteem, 
 considering their long neglect. Perhaps the 
 wisdom of those utterances will not be 
 neglected by our posterity. 
 
172 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Wong Chm Yeung. — As to the T'ae P'ing 
 rebellion, your honourable country, which feared 
 the loss of trade, encouraged us in the suppres- 
 sion of it, and sent one of its ablest soldiers 
 to advise and assist. The greater part of our 
 fighting under the present dynasty is done by 
 Tartar soldiers, and our people have fits of 
 martial temper only when they begin to chafe 
 under the yoke of oppressors. The masses 
 are leavened by the example and doctrine of 
 Confucius, who, when Duke Ling wished to 
 discuss military matters with him, "took his 
 departure next day." 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Your Excellency was 
 scarcely serious when you spoke just now of 
 a winsome assimilation as the secret of empire, 
 and not feats of the sword and a policy of 
 conquest. That China is the most populous 
 country in the world, and that its populations 
 conform to one type, is a fact that admits of 
 no dispute. At the same time, assimilation by 
 either moral influence, or by force applied more 
 or less violently, has its disadvantages. It 
 tends to make life somewhat monotonous and 
 uninteresting. What in your judgment have 
 been the factors in the process which has built 
 up an empire of unexampled magnitude, and 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 73 
 
 made hundreds of millions of Chinamen as 
 much alike as two blades of grass on the hillside ? 
 Wong Chiu Yeung, — Confucius made the 
 virtues of the home the root of all government. 
 If you compact men into families where mutual 
 reverence and fidelity are passions, the families 
 will compact themselves into kingdoms. With 
 us the domestic sentiment is invincible, and it 
 gets much of its strength from that worship of 
 ancestors which you brand as superstitious and 
 hurtful to the worship of the Supreme. The 
 generations are linked to each other, and with 
 the soil into which the bodies of our forefathers 
 have been given back and blended. In Hong- 
 Kong or Shanghai a foreigner who has children 
 by a Chinese wife or concubine, when he goes 
 back with his savings to his native land, leaves 
 a few hundred taels with a lawyer or with a 
 friend for the support of his offspring, and 
 never wishes to see this branch of his family 
 again. That is not the prevailing custom in 
 foreign life, but it is the part of foreign life 
 many Chinamen see most of. We have a 
 saying that "those who do not recognise the 
 ties which identify the different generations 
 with each other, are like cattle in clothes." 
 "Cattle in clothes" can scarcely organise 
 
1/4 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 themselves into kingdoms. Mixed alliances are 
 unseemly and inexpedient, but in similar cir- 
 cumstances, a Chinese father is never ashamed 
 of his own offspring. A second factor which 
 has made for the unity of the empire, is that 
 the Confucian literature, in which we are all 
 steeped, draws the thought and feeling of the 
 whole empire into correspondence, as musical 
 instruments follow the pitch-pipe. Our rulers 
 rarely court insurrection by attacking those 
 forms of self-government which have the 
 sanction of antiquity in city and village alike, 
 and they make it their policy to strengthen, 
 rather than undermine, the independence of the 
 family councils. For this reason the empire 
 can survive dynastic change, and, though wasted 
 for a time, is never destroyed by revolution. We 
 rule ourselves, and the lawlessness is perhaps 
 less than amongst other races. When you 
 conquer, you assume that every existing institu- 
 tion is a stronghold of rebels, and in your 
 colonies this primitive exercise of power within 
 the guild and the family is made a crime. 
 Chinese secret societies you dread, as though 
 they were the caves of bandits and assassins, 
 but nine Englishmen out of ten do not know a 
 secret society from those councils of parents and 
 
APPRECIA TION OF NE W IMPERIALISM 1 7 5 
 
 kinsmen, whose prerogatives have been respected 
 and upheld by every Chinese dynasty. Western 
 Governments give no special powers to the aged. 
 If we have not trial by jury, it is because the 
 participation of the people in the administration 
 of justice has never been taken away by tyrants. 
 Our people are not trampled down like dirt, as 
 you assume. It is no part of my duty to give 
 advice to missionaries, but their work would 
 meet with more favour, if they did not treat 
 their converts as though they were little children. 
 By assuming that the Chinese are not sufficiently 
 wise and strong to administer their own affairs, 
 you destroy the sense of mutual responsibility. 
 The churches are presumably pure as far as a 
 foreigner can see; but a Chinaman can see 
 further. Men never keep a law they are not 
 allowed to apply to others, and they keep it all 
 the better when, with due safeguards, they take a 
 turn in enforcing it. Sooner or later, every China- 
 man becomes a justice of the peace over his 
 own children and grandchildren and his younger 
 brothers also. Such arrangements school men 
 into virtue, and to ignore their place and part in 
 society is to drive men into wrong paths and to 
 divide, rather than to unite, the empire. I do 
 not know whether your rulers have always 
 
176 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 recognised this principle. With us empire does 
 not mean the dangerous rigidity which is pro- 
 duced by martial law, but a supple autonomy 
 that can fit itself to varying tastes and require- 
 ments. As the proverb goes, " The soft tongue 
 outlives the hard teeth." One of our sages said, 
 " Get the hearts of the people and the empire 
 is got," but you will never win any hearts by 
 taking away power from the virtuous. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — It is a mistake to speak 
 as though the religion of Jesus slighted the 
 family graces and made light of the authority of 
 parents, for it has created the best home life to 
 be found in the world. Moreover, it is the 
 special glory of my humble country that it gives 
 a larger measure of liberty and independence to 
 subject peoples than is ever conceded elsewhere. 
 No difference of race, colour, or class is ob- 
 served in the administration of the law, and the 
 humblest man can get redress for his injuries. 
 The result of this tradition of equality is that 
 blood feuds and murders of revenge have almost 
 ceased. The sum of money paid by our Govern- 
 ment for the liberation of slaves is everywhere 
 spoken of in terms of praise. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Foreign countries are 
 rich, and pay their judges and magistrates so 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 77 
 
 well, that they do not need to receive the 
 gifts of those who seek the help of their 
 courts. Merchants in Hong-Kong and Singa- 
 pore praise the impartial justice exercised 
 there, and invest money with the assurance 
 that it will not be confiscated by the officials. 
 Yet clean-handed as your officials are, my 
 countrymen would rather settle their own 
 affairs. And your doctrine of political equality, 
 as you said just now of the peace doctrines of 
 our sages, sets forth what ought to be rather 
 than what actually is. Your tolerance even 
 has its drawbacks. You allow the practice 
 of all religions alike, and you wink also at 
 the public vices which are condemned by all 
 those religions in common. To tolerate a 
 religion, and then to publicly affi-ont its first 
 principles, is the topsy-turvy kind of perform- 
 ance we look for in foreigners. Your philan- 
 thropies are grand, especially to races of alien 
 blood, but are exercised with a coldness of 
 demeanour which makes the benefits conferred 
 unwelcome. Whilst the Chinaman is proud, 
 and that is an infirmity common also to other 
 races, there is no caste in the Middle Kingdom 
 The esprit de corps in family and clan keeps 
 that down. The mandarin and his attendant 
 M 
 
178 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 of the same surname, who in open court 
 assume towards each other the attitudes of 
 god and worshipper, when the day's functions 
 are over, eat out of the same cauldron of rice, 
 and sit round the same table. The rich man 
 shares his possessions with relatives, and a 
 rich man's kinsfolk are many. Gifts prompted 
 by affinity of blood never humiliate the re- 
 cipient. A Chinaman probably feels himself 
 more at home in China than foreigners can 
 possibly feel at home in the countries in which 
 they were born. They cut the tie more reluct- 
 antly, and that is surely good proof of the 
 strength and coherence of our empire. We 
 only need force for the lawless few. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — To such excellent theories 
 I agree. The best empires rest upon the good 
 will of the people, and to enlist this, no better 
 policy can be followed than that advocated by 
 your statesmen, and often practised by your early 
 emperors. But is every military campaign neces- 
 sarily evil in both motive and method ? 
 
 Wong Chiu Veung. — Your question I will 
 answer by falling back again upon the rule laid 
 down in our standard literature, "When Yen 
 was attacked by T'sai, King Siin asked if he 
 should interpose. The philosopher replied, 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 79 
 
 * If the people of Yen will be pleased for you 
 to take possession of it, then do so, by all 
 means.'" The dominion of a ruler should 
 be extended only by the consent of the people 
 brought under his sway, and not by superior 
 force, which may be rightly used to put down 
 tyrants, but not against the people. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Perhaps some day such 
 principles may be accepted by practical states- 
 men. For the present, they are the themes 
 of dreamers who live apart from the world, 
 and rest upon a view of human nature which 
 history has scarcely substantiated. Did not 
 Mencius, from whom you draw your political 
 wisdom, say that " All men are by nature good, 
 and that evil is an acquired habit only"? If 
 that view is true, we may dispense with arma- 
 ments, and have immense domains founded 
 upon reason and virtue only. But Mencius 
 was not always self-consistent. Did he not 
 also say again that men were divided into three 
 classes : " The first class practises virtue by 
 predisposition, and does not need to be taught 
 it ; the second class must perforce be schooled 
 into it, sometimes by trenchant discipline ; the 
 third class is refractory and unsusceptible of 
 virtue, whatever may be done for them " ? 
 
l8o AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — That makes little differ- 
 ence to the question in dispute. The religion 
 of Jesus, I have heard, teaches that an influence 
 from Heaven broods in all men to correct evil, 
 and make the thoughts and desires good. Our 
 positions therefore start upon assumptions that 
 are practically the same, and from your point 
 of view, government by example and moral 
 suasion ought to be as easy as from the 
 Confucian. If you say men are so bad that 
 huge armaments must be kept up to tame 
 them, it proves you have not the same degree 
 of trust in your " influence from Heaven " as 
 the Chinese sages had in the original goodness 
 of human nature. In reference to the rule of 
 classification, if one-third are good, one-third 
 refractory, and the rest are trimmers, amenable 
 to good teaching and example, they may surely 
 be brought over to the side of virtue, and kept 
 there without an exaggerated militarism. A 
 two-thirds majority on the side of law and 
 order is not a bad beginning for the govern- 
 ment of a country. It looks as though Western 
 Governments did not set themselves to reform 
 the indeterminate class which holds the balance 
 of power. The vices of the second and the third 
 classes are catered for, because neither sove- 
 
APPRECIA TION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 8 1 
 
 reign nor Boards of Government concern them- 
 selves with morals. A ruler who is " father 
 and mother of the people" ought to show 
 greater solicitude in directing the habits and 
 characters of the children. 
 
 One of our feudal kings said to Mencius : 
 " May I presume that you are provided with 
 counsels to profit my kingdom ? " 
 
 He replied : " Let your Majesty say benevo- 
 lence and righteousness, these shall be my only 
 themes. Why must you use that word profit ? " 
 
 If I may express my mind without offence 
 to your honourable country, Boards of Adminis- 
 tration think of profit first and of righteousness 
 and benevolence when profit has been secured 
 — and long enjoyed. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But if the force which 
 makes men fear is taken away, authority is 
 despised and civil tumults arise. The majesty 
 of the law must be maintained, and maintained 
 by the military strength which upholds the law. 
 In rude societies the stern hand makes for 
 righteousness. After men have been refined 
 from their baser impulses the force which up- 
 holds the executive of a government may be 
 minimised. If men are divided into elect, im- 
 provable and incurably reprobate groups, the 
 
1 82 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 first and second groups must arm themselves 
 against the third. Beyond the frontiers of 
 every peaceful empire the barbarian always lies 
 in wait. The third group has often shown 
 much cunning in getting the whip-hand, and 
 even in well - ordered communities brute 
 passions smoulder under the surface, and 
 threaten to break out again. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — That martial force 
 should be needful and that the bill of costs for 
 its hire and equipment should increase every 
 year, seems to show that in both the Eastern and 
 the Western worlds rulers have lacked the 
 moral influence which goes with high character. 
 We are right in putting the happiest epoch of 
 the race in the time of the early kings, and you 
 are wrong in speaking of it as yet to come, for 
 it steadily recedes. Perhaps a ruler may one 
 day arise who will trust in the maxims of our 
 sages and make an empire cohere through 
 moral rather than through military force. No 
 limit need be put to the extension of such an 
 empire. Amongst Western races, where clan 
 and family communism count for so little, it 
 will always be necessary to repel violent 
 attacks upon property by violence. Property is 
 safe when the man who owns it, owns it for the 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 83 
 
 benefit of his kinsmen and their cognate 
 families. According to our view of things, the 
 empire which will never go to pieces, however 
 large it may grow, is the empire which is bound 
 together by moral sympathies. The empire is 
 already too large if the ruler cannot conciliate 
 his own subjects, and to feed the soldiers 
 who guard and enlarge it, multitudes are 
 compelled to live in hunger and degradation. 
 As Mencius said : " There is no difference 
 between killing men with a stick, a sword, or the 
 style of government." 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But the method of Jesus 
 was to improve the individual by personal in- 
 fluence rather than by the exercise of state pre- 
 rogative, and every disciple was to use his 
 influence for that end. Your method allows 
 the official only to be the evangelist and the 
 reformer. And renewed individuals of all social 
 grades He leagued together into a society which, 
 in due time, was to make the whole world good. 
 His religion works upwards from the people to 
 their rulers, rather than from the rulers down to 
 the people. And in every part of the world His 
 method has accomplished much, making races 
 of men-eaters humane, abolishing the cruelties 
 exercised towards the oppressed, and creating 
 
184 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 philanthropists who cleansed the prisons from 
 pestilence, and freed the slave once held in 
 bondage. When the present unhappy war is over 
 the spirit of these philanthropists will rule the 
 South of Africa. Indeed, missionaries have ad- 
 vocated the war in the confidence that native 
 races there will at length be cherished with kind- 
 ness, and humane laws be equally administered. 
 Wong Chili Yeung. — Admirable ! Admirable ! 
 Long before the days of Confucius, China abol- 
 ished human sacrifices, for cruel tyrants often 
 wished to have wives and servants slain at their 
 death, who should be buried in the same grave. 
 If we still have domestic slavery, the system 
 affords some kind of protection for outcasts from 
 clans. China has no indentured ahens, and if a 
 man is sometimes put to compulsory service, 
 it is because gambling habits have compelled 
 him to sell his body into servitude. His wife 
 and children share the bondage, because the 
 laws of the successive dynasties deal with the 
 family rather than with its separate members, 
 and debts are hereditary. It would be against 
 the doctrine of filial piety for sons to repudiate 
 the debts of deceased parents. Unless such 
 obligations were honoured and the family name 
 protected against reproach, the spirits of the an- 
 
APPRECIA TION OF NE W IMPERIALISM 1 85 
 
 cestors might be disquieted. In the opinion of 
 your younger brother the departed philan- 
 thropists who cleansed prisons and freed slaves, 
 if they could visit the coolie barracoons of the 
 African mining companies, and watch the treat- 
 ment of the native labourers, would not be 
 pleased. I see no proof at present that your 
 gold and diamond kings there either copy the 
 works or are reincarnations of the patron saints 
 of the movements which ameliorate pain and 
 debasing drudgery; but perhaps the likeness 
 may come out at a later stage. Furthermore, I 
 make bold to say that your philanthropy comes 
 in spells, and is almost as intermittent as fever. 
 Your country does not seem to know its own 
 mind for many years together, for I have read 
 that within recent times slaves have been given 
 back by British officers to the owners from 
 whose harshness they had fled. You are said 
 to be the richest nation in the world, but some 
 of your ministers would not spend the price of 
 a bundle of incense sticks and a libation of wine 
 for the honour of the spirits of the humane men 
 of whom you are always talking. Our proverb 
 says, " The musk deer does not need to stand 
 in the wind." If your Government did all the 
 good things of which you are perpetually re- 
 
1 86 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 minding us, the fragrance of your good deeds 
 would be in the air, and you would not feel 
 compelled to asseverate so much in your books 
 and Press. The best things of your own history 
 do not bind either your statesmen or the people 
 who choose them. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But you must not be unjust 
 to us as a people. Our rulers, although chosen 
 by the vote of the majority, do not always give 
 effect to what is best in the sentiments of the 
 people. In most countries you will find that 
 the people are better than their rulers. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — If that is so, your methods 
 of popular election are a puzzle, and nothing 
 could be more disastrous. Our principle is 
 that the best should rule. I am not prepared 
 to say it is always carried out. You boast that 
 Jesus did not touch questions belonging to the 
 jurisdiction of the Romans on the one hand, or 
 to the Council of Jewish doctors on the other, 
 because He could better serve the world by 
 taking no sides in law-suits or political disputa- 
 tions. It was perhaps His misfortune, and to 
 the disadvantage of His cause in after times, 
 that the envy of these rival authorities prevented 
 Him from applying His doctrine directly to the 
 administration of the State. It is well for us 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 87 
 
 that nearly three thousand years ago, we had 
 law-makers who enunciated the principles upon 
 which a virtuous State must be founded, 
 and did not shrink from the uncompromising 
 application of those principles. We are col- 
 lectivists in one sense at least, for the head of 
 the State governs through the family, and by 
 the co-operation of the clan. The State is a 
 larger home which carries out the pattern of 
 order first found there. When we think that 
 padres are political agents paid by foreign 
 Governments, the sure forerunners of exploiters 
 and annexationists, you tell us Jesus did not 
 concern Himself with state questions, except by 
 privately improving the citizens of the State. 
 So far, so good. But that leaves His disciples 
 with loopholes of inglorious escape. When told 
 that they must apply the great sermon of Jesus 
 to international relationships, like mice as the cat 
 enters, they run into hiding, gasping in excuse. 
 The Golden Rule is for private application only, 
 in small and carefully weighed doses. One is 
 never quite sure to what particular event the 
 maxim of reciprocity, which you say goes much 
 further than our negative maxim, should be 
 applied. I have my doubts whether you are 
 doing complete justice to Jesus. Your Parlia- 
 
1 88 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 ments and Government Boards are putting Him 
 on His trial again, as He was put on His trial 
 before the Jews, and the bias of the interests 
 against Him is equally strong. When the 
 ignominy of His second rejection is complete, 
 and you have decorated His new tomb and are 
 burning incense before it, perhaps we may take 
 Him up and give a finer hospitality to His teach- 
 ing. You have almost done with Him. His 
 principles would fit in with the practical maxims 
 of Confucius and Mencius, and the three would 
 supplement each other and work in a mystic 
 and harmonious triad, like the three precious 
 ones of the Buddhas. If we do accept Him at 
 all, we have common-sense, and are thorough in 
 our business methods, and we shall give Him 
 the kind of chance He has never had amongst 
 you. Our chief allegation against Him is that He 
 is claimed as the patron-god of your many 
 political delinquencies. 
 
 Raising his tea-cup towards the lips, his 
 Excellency bowed to his guest with the words, 
 " Please drink tea ! Please drink tea ! " a hint 
 that the interview was at an end. Not to 
 show any want of respect, he accompanied the 
 padre to the outer gates, bidding him farewell in 
 the words, " May your returning steps be safe. 
 
APPRECIATION OF NEW IMPERIALISM 1 89 
 
 Come and see me again at an early opportunity. 
 I have been delighted with our gossip, and have 
 learned much from your instructive words. 
 May your returning steps be safe ! " 
 
 The padre felt glum as the chair coolies, with 
 unceasing grunt, jerked him through the 
 buzzing streets. The thought thrust itself on 
 him more than once — His Excellency seemed to 
 have the current of the talk under his entire 
 control to-day, and I suspect a touch of irony in 
 his masterly politeness. Once when my head 
 was half turned I noticed a secretary who was 
 standing at his master's elbow put up a hand to 
 hide the beginning of a smile, into which his 
 lips were about to break. He at least seemed 
 to assume that the astute old sinner was chaffing 
 me and my religion, as far as etiquette would 
 permit. 
 
 Khakison, poor fellow, felt peevish and 
 irritable. Before he had reached the Mission 
 Compound the tones of a Hebrew contem- 
 porary of the dynastic sovereigns of Chau 
 seemed to reinforce the gentle mockery of the 
 old mandarin, " I will provoke you to jealousy 
 by them that are no people, and by a foolish 
 nation I will anger you." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE REFORM MOVEMENT 
 
 *'The Master said of Kung Ye Cheung, that he was 
 
 worthy of a wife : although he was put in bonds 
 
 he had not been guilty of any crime. He 
 
 therefore gave him his own daughter to wife." 
 
 —Confucian Analects. 
 
 Au A T^sing. — Still at work on the great 
 dictionary ? If the Emperor Kang Hi had been 
 able to employ such scholars on his famous 
 task as you are proving yourself, he would 
 have been able to carry it through without a 
 staff of seventy. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor, — Just a moment, and I shall be 
 free to talk with you. . . . Glad to see you 
 once more. It is some years since we met. 
 You never did carry yourself with the defer- 
 ential stoop characteristic of your countrymen, 
 but you seem more erect than ever. I con- 
 gratulate you upon the high place you have 
 filled in the counsels of the Reformers. The 
 
 190 
 
THE REFORM MOVE MEN! I91 
 
 movement has met with a serious check, but I 
 hope it is only for a time. China surely will 
 not reject its day of grace, and in this case, by 
 China I of course mean its Government. If the 
 Emperor gains power again, we may yet see you 
 in the Grand Council, perhaps prime minister, 
 who knows ? I am glad I had a share in your 
 early training. I am convinced you made a 
 mistake when you refused to become a native 
 evangelist, although the fact that you had 
 parents depending upon you seemed at the 
 time to compel you to take a position that 
 promised better remuneration. 
 
 Au A T^sing. — The outlook is very dark just 
 at present. If you had not been buried night 
 and day in that stupendous dictionary, you 
 would probably have heard that a price has 
 been put upon my head, and that I dare not 
 leave the colony. I am in great perplexity, 
 having just received a letter from home, saying 
 that my mother is fatally ill, and wishes to see me 
 — in fact, bids me go at once to her side. I feel 
 sure it is a ruse to tempt me to the capital, and 
 yet, as I am her only son, I feel restless, and 
 shall condemn myself if I stay away. I may be 
 bound, tortured, and done to death by slow 
 degrees if I venture into the neighbourhood. 
 
192 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 It will be a pretty story when my head is put 
 upon the walls of a city in which I have some- 
 times preached. I have been wondering if you 
 could persuade any of the Missions to receive 
 me into their protection during the day. I could 
 arrange to see my mother at mid-night and take 
 the morning boat back to the colony, where I 
 am all right. I think I could go disguised as a 
 woman, but am afraid my chipped tooth might 
 betray me. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor. — I sympathise with you deeply, 
 but feel quite sure the letter is a ruse. Take 
 no notice of it, and in the meantime do not let 
 your filial conscience trouble you. There are 
 many difficulties in the course you suggest. If 
 we were to conceal you at the Mission, our 
 reputation for loyalty to the country in which we 
 are sojourners might be compromised. The 
 enemies of the faith would then cover their 
 hatred with the cloak of zeal for the authority 
 of the native Government, and the converts all 
 over the province would be persecuted as 
 traitors. If you insist upon treating the letter 
 seriously, I will arrange to have direct and 
 independent enquiry made about your mother's 
 health, and then we can consider again what is 
 the wisest course to take. 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 1 93 
 
 Au A T^sing. — That is kind, but it seems to 
 me you might venture to go a step further. 
 The letter says the sickness is urgent, and it is 
 written by a neighbour I can trust, although he is 
 not a Christian. Some of the older missionaries 
 have looked askance at the Reform Movement. 
 They remember the fatuousness of the T'ae 
 P*ing rising. But you have furnished us with 
 our ideas, and if we have kept the movement 
 outside the Church, it seemed needful to do so, 
 for the purpose of retaining the good-will of 
 many who are reformers, but who do not wish 
 to become Christians. The crusade would not 
 have had so much official commendation and 
 support if it had been within the Church ; 
 and the Church at present is not equal to the 
 task of transforming our official life and pro- 
 cedure. We have given every encouragement 
 to Christian ideas, and are trying to make 
 better times for the missionaries, as well as for 
 the people at large. Had we succeeded, you 
 would soon have found yourselves working in a 
 freer and more fruitful field. 
 
 Dr M-Ivor. — But I am not sure that these 
 
 tempting conditions would help the growth of a 
 
 robust faith. You know a little Christian 
 
 history, and I need not remind you that the 
 
 N 
 
194 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 fields tilled with distress and tears have often 
 yielded the best harvests. 
 
 Au A jTsing. — For centuries to come there 
 will be enough of trial for a Chinaman who 
 tries to practise the Christian faith, and to miss 
 the chance of official favour and support, when 
 Providence puts it in our way, is like throwing 
 back God's gifts. But there is no need to 
 confer about that now, for the door is closed. 
 You and your missionary brethren have equipped 
 us with our ideas, and I know you have more 
 sympathy with our aims than you think it 
 politic to avow. Bluntness and honesty you 
 make pre-eminent virtues, and yet wriggle out 
 of every obligation to help us you might be 
 expected to feel. When you read Pilgrim^s 
 Progress with us in the Bible-Class, I was 
 much entertained by the character called Mr 
 Facing-both-Ways : surely you are not going to 
 take that part in the new Pilgrim's Progress of 
 the Reformers. Crowds of Chinamen are 
 playing the part of Mr Faithful. You ought 
 not to give us such a flattering monopoly of 
 that particular cast in the play. If you were in 
 England or America or the Straits Settlements, 
 where Chinamen who speak out their minds 
 are safe from the violence of our misguided 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT I95 
 
 Government, you would applaud our aims, and 
 champion our cause; but when the Chinese 
 mainland is in sight you put yourself into a 
 non-committal attitude towards those who risk 
 life and all things in fighting what is your 
 battle as well as theirs. We are heroes a 
 thousand miles away, but hunted outlaws at 
 our own doors. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor. — Or to put it into a figure under- 
 stood in English. We make you lions in 
 London and New York, and cast you to the 
 lions in Canton and Hankow. Well, the position 
 is difficult, and you must not be too hard on 
 us. We have not shaped the revolutionary 
 programme, and we are bound to remember 
 the defenceless native churches of the interior. 
 These ideas have been picked up from news- 
 papers, and from visits to Western countries, and 
 the treasury is replenished by the contributions 
 of Chinamen in the Colonies, in Australia, and 
 in the United States. With few exceptions, we 
 have kept to our own special work. 
 
 Au A T^sing. — But if you thought we were 
 going to succeed, you would be ready enough 
 to take credit for the ideas which animate us. 
 Failure threatens, deadly, disastrous, complete, 
 which may make China immovable from her 
 
ig6 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 evil ways for another half century, and you want 
 to make out that having picked up these ideas 
 for ourselves, we must be left to bear our own 
 burdens. Again and again you befriend China- 
 men to whom there is no attachment of past 
 friendship. I was your teacher in your appren- 
 tice days in the interior. How often did I come 
 at night to cheer you in your loneliness, when it 
 was scarcely safe for me to walk through the 
 streets ! I watched over your life, and more 
 than once warned you of danger that might 
 have cut short your career. In defending you 
 from the ignorance and ill-will amidst which you 
 were living, I incurred odium and lost many of 
 the companions of my youth. It is not as a 
 stranger I ask your intervention. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor. — Ask anything that calls for 
 personal risk, and does not seem likely to 
 compromise the Church and land us in quarrels 
 with the Imperial Government, and I will gladly 
 do it. Of course, we know the Government is 
 not what it ought to be; but thousands of 
 native Christians are at its mercy, and it would 
 be a betrayal of them to identify ourselves with 
 the Reformers. We have never adopted the 
 specific list of changes for which they have been 
 agitating. 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 1 97 
 
 Au A T^sing. — Perhaps the time will come, 
 and that very soon, when you will be compelled 
 to take sides against the Government, or, at 
 least, against the nest of murderers who have 
 got the Imperial seal into their possession. It 
 is the old story — the story as old as one of the 
 earliest ballads in the Book of Poetry which 
 hints at the mischief wrought by women and 
 palace eunuchs. Surely that is not to go on 
 repeating itself for ever. You used to warn us 
 against expediency, and bid us count all things 
 loss for the truth's sake. The Emperor's edict 
 was perfectly legitimate. That is a revolution 
 without a shadow of constitutional right, which 
 sought to undo the edict, and with which you 
 seem for the moment to be taking sides, or 
 towards which, at least, you want to preserve a 
 neutral attitude. We have been working in 
 perfectly legitimate ways. Everything has been 
 done after the pattern of the sage who went about 
 trying to get feudal kings to take him up and 
 give his methods a chance. We have suc- 
 ceeded beyond the measure of Confucius, who 
 at his death was no nearer his goal than when 
 he set out fifty years before. The Emperor had 
 been won to our side. His programme of 
 reform was wise and valid, and if he did not 
 
1 98 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 count the difficulties in his path, that might 
 be excused in a ruler who had been trained 
 to believe that his sovereignty was absolute 
 and that his person was half Divine. If he 
 is not "the father and mother of his people," 
 qualified to decree change in his own house- 
 hold, what becomes of the doctrine of filial 
 piety ? 
 
 Dr M^Ivor. — But the succeeding reverses 
 only tended to show that the doctrine of 
 absolute power is empty and nominal. High- 
 sounding as may be the title " Son of Heaven," 
 he must reckon with his counsellors of state 
 and with the views and wishes of his people. 
 The doctrine of filial piety should perhaps have 
 compelled him to confer with the Empress 
 dowager, although to love such a person is, 
 perhaps, the hardest task God ever set a man. 
 The model Emperor Shun, however, sought 
 to win and improve an equally disreputable 
 father. Did your friends think of the thousands 
 of officials who were threatened with starvation 
 by these impending changes ? It is rumoured 
 that the Emperor took steps by an extreme use 
 of his life and death power to remove a high 
 officer who was countermining his schemes of 
 reform. Some of you also, it is said, have 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 1 99 
 
 been in communication with secret societies. 
 
 always condemned as illegal. 
 
 Au A T^sing, — But the Empress dowager 
 and her favourite ministers were in league with 
 the Boxers, if they did not secretly decree the 
 movement. If we approached some of the 
 heads of the secret societies, it was only to see 
 whether they were ready to aid in the restora- 
 tion of the rightful sovereign and checkmate the 
 plotters of the palace. Can it be that to set 
 on foot a movement to guard and establish the 
 throne is rebellion, and that to foment a palace 
 revolution which has crushed some of the purest 
 patriots of the empire, who were also good 
 friends of the foreigners, is an act of heroic 
 righteousness? Commercial expediency seems 
 to be the only rule by which your country 
 guides its action. When the Emperor's life 
 was in danger, and a missionary went to the 
 Legation to ask sanctuary on his behalf, your 
 minister refused the request, and treated the 
 missionary with rudeness. You sided ostensibly 
 against the Reformers when the Emperor was 
 with them, fearing, perhaps, that the hopes 
 entertained would prove illusory, or that the 
 burden might be too heavy. Forty years before 
 you sided against the Reformers, some of whom 
 
200 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 had been educated in the Mission School over 
 the way, and sent Gordon to fight them, be- 
 cause the throne was against change.. A good 
 man never did a worse deed than your devout 
 soldier, whom we also revere. Perhaps if you 
 had not thought so much of trade in those days, 
 of trade also that was hurtful in every way to 
 Chinese prosperity, our country might have been 
 spared this dark hour and many an hour like it 
 past and to come. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor, — Well, I am no believer in the 
 infallibility of my country, which perhaps in- 
 tends better things than it performs. But do 
 not blame me. You have brought this trouble 
 upon yourself and family. At the same time I 
 am profoundly sorry. I shall not turn my back 
 upon you, but I must be allowed to take the 
 course I think best. 
 
 Au A T^sing (reading a telegram just put 
 into his hand). — I have a message to say my 
 mother is dying, and, if I wish to see her alive, 
 I must go up by the night-boat. I will take the 
 risk. My choice is made. To be so unfilial as 
 to disobey the call of a dying mother, would do 
 more harm to the cause of the Christian faith than 
 taking part in twenty reform movements. I am 
 not going to say anything against Jesus, or even 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 20 T 
 
 to think hardly of Him, but I have lost faith in 
 the fidelity and disinterestedness of foreigners. 
 
 Dr M^Ivor. — Now, do not be a fool, my 
 friend, or allow yourself to take embittered 
 views of those who sincerely care for you. 
 
 The plot ran its course without a mishap. On 
 the evening of the following day, the sanguine 
 reformer lay bound on a bamboo couch in the 
 back apartment of a disused gambling shop. 
 Some months before, he had taken a leading 
 part in getting the shop closed, and the pro- 
 prietor and his two underlings had long been 
 waiting for their revenge. The muffled talk 
 of the three conspirators — the master, the 
 croupier, and the door-keeper and chucker- 
 out, added a more cruel fever of the brain to 
 that caused by the cords which had been 
 knotted round his swollen wrists and ankles, 
 half strangling the circulation. A T'sing had 
 often been taunted by his adversaries, because 
 he had no son to continue his father's lineage, 
 and the disability had been flung in his face as 
 though it were a providential judgment. But 
 all his love had concentrated itself upon an only 
 daughter, who was acquiring accomplishments 
 that were to lift her above the friends and com- 
 
202 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 panions of her girlhood, and make her the 
 envied mistress of a new order of Chinese home, 
 and the founder of a family life refined and 
 sociable as that of the missionaries. 
 
 Croupier. — It was smart to get possession of 
 the daughter before alluring the father up to 
 the capital. The foreign dames who keep the 
 school would never have let her come home to 
 see the sick granny, if it had been said that we 
 had got the father first. It was rather remark- 
 able that they should have given her up so 
 implicitly, but we acted promptly, and they had 
 probably not heard that a price had been put 
 upon his head. But, after all, foreign devils are 
 simple in some things, although in magic they 
 could best Mang Wok and Muk Luk Wong in 
 The Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was 
 a smart move to put medicine into the old 
 lady's soy, so that the neighbour who went to 
 fetch the girl from the foreign school believed 
 the sickness was real. We shall make more out 
 of the daughter than is offered for the father's 
 head, and, at the same time, shall be able to 
 slake our rage against him. It will torture the 
 father more than wedges and iron chains when 
 he hears our plans. 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 203 
 
 Tenant. — The agreement is quite understood. 
 I take the two-thirds, as my premises are used 
 for the business, and you two divide the other 
 third. After a few months have lapsed, if we 
 were to send her by the hand of a female 
 broker to Hong-Kong, it would only pay her 
 father out for betraying his country to foreigners. 
 Betrayal for betrayal is fair reckoning. They 
 give much higher prices than on the mainland. 
 
 Croupier. — But that would never do. She 
 has learned to speak " devil's talk " and knows 
 "devil's laws and customs." If she got no 
 chance of speaking to the officers of the steam- 
 boat on the way down, she would appeal to the 
 Protector of the Chinese and get free, and then 
 her owners would insist on having their money 
 back from us, under the threat of making things 
 awkward in other ways. The colony is the 
 worst place in the world, for the owners of slave- 
 girls are watched at every turn, and it is not 
 easy for them to keep those for whom they have 
 paid dollars scaling seven one seven. When 
 slave-girls once find out where they are, they 
 run wailing into the streets to claim their liberty 
 or rule the house with the airs of a mother-in-law. 
 She cannot be kept quiet with opium-wine for 
 ever. Of course it is the prefect, who in some- 
 
204 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 body else's name has offered the reward for A 
 T 'sing's head, and the family of a man con- 
 demned to death by the mandarins would 
 scarcely dare to prefer a charge of kidnapping ; 
 but the foreigners in this case would overbear 
 the mandarins and press the capital charge 
 against us. In that event, our heads might 
 have to make the red blinking " kautau " in 
 the wake of A T'sing's. 
 
 Tenant. — The risks of the situation would be 
 escaped and the irony of the revenge kept up 
 if we could trade her on to a vice-consul or 
 an interpreter in another province. His house 
 steward would buy the girl and be nominal 
 owner. Foreigners give large prices for maidens 
 who speak their dialect and copy their manners. 
 It is better, they say, than having a barbarian 
 wife, for Chinese girls are more submissive and 
 do not need to have costly clothes, so that they 
 may come and go with the rest of the barbarian 
 women. And no one in the consul's official 
 quarters would be likely to put the law into 
 operation against himself In such affairs they 
 give no heed to the complaints of missionaries 
 who wish to appear as plaintiffs. It would be 
 refreshing to remember that this daughter, 
 more precious to A T'sing than gold and pearls, 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 205 
 
 had become the slave of barbarians he pre- 
 ferred to his own countrymen. His ghost 
 would be tormented by seeing her fondled for 
 a time and then cast out into the streets. 
 
 Door-keeper. — But there are risks in that 
 scheme. I am told it is not easy to be quite 
 sure what views consuls and vice-consuls enter- 
 tain. No Chinaman can judge them as he 
 would judge one of his own race. I have a 
 safer plan. In my village there is a rich man 
 who is always increasing the number of his 
 concubines, and gives any amount of money 
 where his fancy is taken. We should probably 
 get four hundred for A T'sing's girl. He is rich 
 enough to defy all the officials of the prefecture. 
 It is rumoured he is a leper. If we can carry 
 out that scheme of vengeance, nobody in our 
 part of the country will venture to enter the 
 foreigner's religion again. It will be sweet 
 for A T'sing to know it before he dies, and 
 not even a beggar will listen to the Jesus 
 preaching as long as the Great Pure dynasty 
 lasts. 
 
 Tenant, — That is the cleverest plan of all. 
 I did not think a door-keeper had such a fund 
 of guile. But who is to be the executioner and 
 carry away the head for the reward promised ? 
 
206 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 If we give up A T'sing alive there will be 
 squeezes to pay to all the underlings, and wine- 
 money for the officer of the knife. Could you 
 not undertake it, Lo Pak ? You were a farmer 
 in your early days, and can do unpleasant things 
 without shrinking. He is faint and tired now, 
 and if we drug his samshoo, by the second 
 watch he will be as easy to handle as a parcel 
 of rattans. 
 
 Au A T^sing (groaning behind the screen of 
 painted and gilded fretwork). — Oh, what wrongs ! 
 Betrayed by men and aggrieved by a merciless 
 Heaven ! Lord Jesus, hast Thou no pity for the 
 innocent ? Dost Thou, the forsaken One, for- 
 sake those who have sought to serve Thee, and 
 cast off their children? I cannot pray after 
 Thy example at the uplifting of the cross " For- 
 give them." It is not that I care for life, and 
 although I have been a book-man I can bear 
 pain. But it is the girl. Jesus, it was not Thy 
 lot on earth to be a father. Remember the 
 one thing in which Thou wast never tempted 
 as we are, and do not judge too hard. I am 
 weak. 
 
 Door-keeper, — Aiyah ! Hi ! hi ! hi ! He is 
 
THE REFORM MOVEMENT 20/ 
 
 praying to his "P'osat." It is too ludicrous. 
 Well, as to doing that thing myself, I might 
 perhaps have the gall, but it is needless. In 
 the next street there is a cutter of firewood 
 who has been gambling for a month and has 
 had a run of bad luck. He is mad for a few 
 strings of cash, having pawned even tunic and 
 shoes, and stripped his room bare. He has 
 slept for some time without coverlet or mos- 
 quito nets. I will go and see what he says to 
 the offer. 
 
 A few days later a head, looped up by the 
 queue, was grinning on the south-east gate of 
 the city. Some of the passers-by disputed 
 amongst themselves whether it was that of the 
 fellow who, two or three years ago, used to 
 preach at times in the Gospel Hall of the main 
 street to which the gate led. Opinions differed, 
 for the head was once long and well-moulded 
 and the neck straight and stem-like. A native 
 Christian was passing who knew him well ; in- 
 deed, in his pre-Christian days, Au A T'sing had 
 debated with him at length and removed many 
 of his prejudices and contentions. At the first 
 glance he could not recognise this bunched 
 mask of a face, dissevered from its supporting 
 
208 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 neck. But he ventured a step or two nearer, 
 looked again, and noticed that there had been 
 a diagonal chip out of an upper front tooth 
 that helped to grin gruesomely at the by- 
 standers. It was no part of his business to 
 settle street controversies, and with a silent 
 shame and terror a faint forced smile scarcely 
 concealed, he hurried on as fast as he could 
 lift, or shuffle his shoes of felt and stamped 
 velvet 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 BOXERS, COSSACKS AND OTHERS 
 
 "The Master said, The bird of good omen does not 
 appear ; the river sends forth no cabalistic signs. 
 My work is in vain." — Confucian Analects. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Distressing 'events have 
 occurred since I last had the honour of meeting 
 your Excellency. Perhaps we each feel less 
 pride in the virtues of some of our countrymen 
 than once, or at least of our Allies, for it is 
 allowed that the worst charges of cruelty and 
 outrage do not apply to my countrymen, nor 
 even to the Indian troops fighting under our 
 flag. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — If you take that line of 
 excuse, and dissociate yourself from the Allied 
 races, I will claim the benefit of your example, 
 and although a servant of the dynasty, will 
 make bold to remind you that the chief trouble 
 has been raised by the Mantchoo faction of 
 the Government. The Mantchoos have their 
 O *^ 
 
210 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 virtues, and are almost as straightforward as 
 the foreigners ; but they have not been so 
 deeply indoctrinated with either the teachings 
 of Confucius or the ideas of the Western 
 countries as the Chinese section of the 
 Government. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Well, I must congratulate 
 you upon the peace that has been maintained 
 in your Excellency's prefecture, and indeed 
 throughout the province. I have no official 
 rank, but may be allowed to say foreigners will 
 be under a lasting obligation to you for the 
 strong and enlightened administration to which 
 they owe the safety of their lives. You have 
 carried out the maxim of the sages, meeting 
 "kindness with kindness, and injury with 
 justice." Alas, that the same thing cannot be 
 said in every place. You perhaps remember 
 your praise of peace at our last interview, and 
 the eulogies you pronounced upon the early 
 teachers who had the foresight to discourage 
 costly armaments and to plead the cause of 
 peoples impoverished by the quarrels of their 
 rulers. How do you think the holy man of Lo, 
 and his successor in the following century, would 
 have viewed the bitter and destructive conflict 
 now raging ? 
 
BOXERS, COSSACRSy AND OTHERS 211 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — You do not think surely 
 he would have been a partisan of the Boxers 
 who are steeped in views widely different 
 from his. His wise prejudice against " the mar- 
 vellous " would have preserved them from that 
 belief in the superhuman mysteries which in 
 the beginning gave them courage. If he had 
 been in office he would have kept up his old 
 habit of resigning and taken to private teaching 
 again. Events have tended to show how 
 necessary his lessons are to the well-being of 
 the people. Much of the misunderstanding 
 tolerant and upright men, like Confucius and 
 Mencius, would have escaped, had they been in 
 power. They, at least, had open minds, and 
 would have welcomed quiet and reasonable 
 changes making for the popular good. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — You seem to allow that 
 the teachings of the sages, which have been 
 current for two millenniums and a half, have done 
 little to change the popular temper ; that the 
 ideal men of the past do not reproduce them- 
 selves in modern times ; and that Confucius and 
 Mencius are mere show-piece statesmen and law- 
 givers kept in stock to enlist a barren admiration 
 in the schools and examination-halls of the 
 empire. 
 
212 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Not at all. Their 
 practical influence in manners and morals is 
 great, and it is a question whether the sages of 
 the West, who in your judgment have taught a 
 higher doctrine, have leavened the tempers of 
 their adherents to the same extent. I admit 
 the outlook is depressing, and that many of our 
 best patriots have fallen into the gloomy moods 
 which settled upon the spirit of Confucius. 
 The fury of the crowd is like the hurtful 
 influences which sleep in the fire-mountains for 
 decades and then break out into renewed 
 violence. My father should have sickened 
 to give me an excuse for resigning office, rather 
 than I would have sided with Boxers. But if 
 some of the Imperial leaders who have been 
 charged with giving countenance to the rising, 
 and even fomenting it, had the opportunity of 
 speaking for themselves, they could perhaps 
 make out a much better case than you suppose. 
 And they would have pleaded that the war was 
 one of loyalty and self-defence. If the move- 
 ment was secretly directed from the palace, that 
 takes much of the blame from the multitude, 
 who have been trained to obey authority. 
 Perhaps some of your soldiers in Africa who 
 burnt farms, turned women and children out 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 21 3 
 
 on to the pasture lands, and who are said to 
 have done other things which may be untrue, 
 performed such acts in obedience to authority, 
 and not through the promptings of their own 
 hearts. Your well-trained soldiers are forgiven 
 acts of pillage on the ground that they had been 
 without food for days, and the people of the 
 Middle Kingdom are sometimes hungry, whether 
 they will or not, just like Western men. With 
 all our thrift there is a chronic hunger, the extent 
 of which in any province you scarcely realise, 
 and we have frequent famines afflicting twice as 
 many people as your native country contains. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But the cure of the 
 trouble is in your own hands. You might 
 make want impossible by improving your 
 methods of communication. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Our people do not see 
 that, and the attempt to push the making of 
 iron roads was one of the chief causes of the 
 trouble. When the right to make an iron road was 
 conceded to the men of one nation, the men of 
 five or six other nations demanded the right to 
 make other roads in different parts of the 
 empire. The ministers of the Powers at Pekin 
 might surely have allowed us to see how one 
 line worked, and what was its effect upon the 
 
214 A^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 condition of the people, instead of driving us 
 with the whip. They did not give our people 
 time to study the first example, and be converted 
 by it. You have had experience of the difficulty 
 of getting a mau or two (one-sixth of an acre) 
 of land for a school or a hospital, and do you 
 suppose it is easy to buy the thousands of li 
 (one-third of a mile) needed for the iron road. 
 It is said that in Western countries the here- 
 ditary nobles own miles of territory which 
 they are glad to sell because of the enhanced 
 price, but here it is not often a man owns 
 above an acre or two, and sometimes a small 
 parcel of land is held by a whole clan, so 
 millions of people need to be satisfied, and it is 
 not always easy to satisfy a Chinaman in the 
 matter of price. A book of colloquial stories 
 from Jewish History, which the lady teacher in 
 your school gave to a waiting-maid in my house, 
 tells of a Jewish king who wished to obtain his 
 neighbour's vineyard. The Na Paks (Naboths) 
 of China are without number for multitude. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But a good and just price 
 is always paid for the land, far more than could 
 be got from any other purchaser. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — But that was what the 
 Jewish King A Hop (Ahab) at first offered, 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 215 
 
 and the owner of the vineyard did not wish 
 to sell. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Your reference is not 
 flattering to my countrymen and to others. I 
 am not aware that any Chinese landowner's life 
 has been sacrificed by violence, so that his little 
 plot of ground might be taken. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Perhaps not, because 
 our native farmers know how to take care of 
 their own heads. The foreigners, the trading 
 foreigners I mean, of course have no scruple 
 at pushing our mandarins, and with us any 
 resistance to the sale of land when ordered by 
 officials might mean a compulsory visit in a 
 basket to the execution - ground. And you 
 know our Chinese customs. The money, 
 handsome though it may seem, does not always 
 reach those who own the land, without serious 
 deductions. There are many halting places 
 where toll is taken. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But that is China's fault 
 and not ours. The whole scheme of Govern- 
 ment and social life rests upon fees and secret 
 commissions. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — However true that may 
 be, it does not diminish the difficulty. Besides, 
 there is the question of the dead. You bury 
 
2l6 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 in places like flower gardens which are watched 
 over by a porter. We bury all over the country- 
 side, wherever the geomancer says the ground 
 is lucky. Our dead are not tended by hirelings. 
 Every grave has a living representative who 
 asserts his proprietary rights over it at the 
 Spring Festival. If the route lay through 
 tens of miles of graves, you might find it 
 difficult to construct a road for the fire-coach, 
 even in your country. I hear new iron roads 
 are sometimes opposed on much less serious 
 grounds by the men of the West. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But in clearing land to 
 build railway-stations, and for the purpose of 
 widening our streets, we are often compelled 
 to remove hundreds of coffins ; and if the bones 
 of the dead are buried again in some new and 
 suitable cemetery, and without disrespectful 
 treatment, no one objects. 
 
 Wong Chill Yeu?ig. — That is perhaps because 
 you have no ancestral worship, and the people 
 of the cities do not believe that the bones of 
 the dead influence their fortunes. I have heard 
 that in Western countries, only the hereditary 
 nobles are careful to guard the links with pos- 
 terity, and after fifty years not one grave in ten 
 is cared for by descendants. 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 2\*J 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Well, that is scarcely 
 true, and is not a point vital to the subject of 
 our conversation. What is more relevant is 
 that the Chinese themselves often dig up their 
 dead and rebury them in more suitable places. 
 I have travelled through some districts where 
 this is quite an established rule, and not done 
 once and again. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Such customs are local 
 only. When an attempt is made to correct an 
 unlucky burial, it is because the survivors think 
 the dead will be better content in some other 
 resting-place, and those who make these changes 
 expect to become more prosperous as the 
 result. A man may often be willing to do 
 things which oblige and refresh the spirits of 
 his ancestors that he will not undertake from a 
 wish to oblige foreigners. But this is only part 
 of a larger question. Every Power has been 
 clamouring for territory, and we cannot lease 
 an acre of land to one Power without being 
 compelled to lease larger strips of land to five 
 or six other Powers, under threat of war. And 
 the process may go on till we have nothing left 
 for ourselves. You are always ready to be paid 
 for life, which you profess to hold so sacred, in 
 new grants of land. And then when you have 
 
2l8 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 got the land you put up white, grotesque, many- 
 windowed buildings, which seem to be always 
 looking down upon our plain lowly roofs with 
 disdain. And this only expresses the spirit of 
 your policy. Ministers of state and imperial 
 princes have been ordered about by the repre- 
 sentatives of European powers as though they 
 were a throng of refractory children, irrevocable 
 threats in some cases succeeding the orders, 
 so that China has been made to feel as 
 though she were a mere slave to the Powers 
 of the West. Bad counsellors surrounded 
 the Emperor and the Empress dowager, and 
 in some cases, it may be, issued edicts in 
 their name, or by their enforced consent; 
 but perhaps, after all, the rising was intended 
 to scare foreigners from our shores rather than 
 to kill them. In the rows of our own country, 
 little or big, you know full well that the shout- 
 ing and hubbub are out of all proportion to 
 the blood actually spilled. Now and again 
 some influential voice must have spoken on 
 the side of humanity, or all foreigners at Pekin 
 would have been destroyed. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — In my belief, the only 
 interposition on the side of humanity was that 
 of Divine Providence itself. The mob did its 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 219 
 
 worst, and the imperial troops were in no sense 
 second to the mob. Whatever blood they could 
 spill, they spilled without any half-heartedness 
 or misgiving. Some few months ago you were 
 boasting of the meek and peaceable temper of 
 the Chinese people. Your fellow-countrymen 
 have not altogether justified the good opinion 
 of them you professed to cherish. The cruelty 
 shown in two or three provinces, not only to 
 missionaries, but to their wives and little 
 children, has been described in the native, as 
 well as in the foreign, Press. Such fiendish 
 acts are rarely heard of in the West. When 
 we are compelled to fight, we at least spare 
 the women and the little children. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — All races become cruel 
 at times, especially under the stress of panic, 
 hunger, and burning revenge. We know most 
 things that take place in other countries through 
 the native Press, and are not so ignorant as 
 when you first came to China. It is said that 
 crowds of youths in the London streets are as 
 bad as our Boxers, only they use violence to 
 the men and women of their own country, 
 which is perhaps rather worse, and without the 
 excuse of being stirred up by false rumours. 
 Within recent years black men, sometimes 
 
220 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 guilty of crime, and sometimes innocent, have 
 been hung and burnt alive in America. And 
 your honourable country is charged with burning 
 houses and farms in the African war. Here 
 ignorant rowdies and pirates have acted under 
 orders, and officials of Chinese birth and tradi- 
 tion, who would have restrained them, had been 
 purposely removed from power and degraded 
 to insignificant appointments. The looting of 
 mission property by the people has been 
 carried chiefly out when the houses had been 
 abandoned. Many of us have risked our 
 honours, our salaries, and even life itself, to 
 show kindness to foreigners when their lives 
 were in danger, whilst as a rule the people 
 have tried to avoid implicating themselves on 
 one side or the other. And all the thanks we 
 receive is to be called liars and assassins by 
 your most influential papers, as though a 
 Chinaman were incapable of virtue and high 
 principle. Your troops had provoked the 
 hostility of our people by an act of war. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — The slander of Chinese 
 officials, by a section of our Press, I greatly 
 deplore, but you will find it is not the 
 missionaries who have made these representa- 
 tions. The treatment I have enjoyed under 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 221 
 
 your administration is as good as I could expect 
 at home, and if it were permitted by the consul, 
 I should have no objection whatever to put 
 myself entirely in your power, and to surrender 
 my rights as an English subject, that is 
 assuming your appointment here was lifelong. 
 But things have been different in other places. 
 Allowing even that the interposition of the 
 Allies to protect the Legations was one and 
 the same thing as an act of war, and that 
 hostilities had really opened, such cruel re- 
 prisals, as were practised upon missionaries of 
 both sexes, are condemned by the customs of 
 civilised warfare. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung, — Our mobs perhaps 
 behaved no worse than some of the soldiers 
 of the Allies. There is no clearly proven case 
 of dishonour done to the virtue of those whose 
 lives were taken, so far as is known at present, 
 although when the dregs of a population break 
 loose, such acts are difficult to prevent. But 
 outrages were of frequent occurrence amongst 
 some of the troops. Women and girls were 
 dishonoured and then stabbed or shot, as is 
 freely admitted. A missionary in Pekin de- 
 clared that, after the relief of the Legations, 
 the wells of the city were choked with the 
 
222 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 bodies of women who had committed suicide, 
 either to escape the shameful behaviour of the 
 soldiers, or because they could no longer meet 
 the gaze of husbands, brethren, and parents. 
 Perhaps soldiers are trained to such acts by 
 Lock Hospital Governments, which cater for 
 their vices, and put a stamp of warranty upon 
 the victims who are offered to their desires. 
 
 Gideon Khakison, — But the Press corre- 
 spondents allow that the English, American, 
 and Japanese forces were kept under control, 
 and that little or nothing can be alleged against 
 them. When war breaks out, those who are 
 depraved seize the opportunity of freely indul- 
 ging their bad propensities. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Well, there is a differ- 
 ence, no doubt, but an Englishman who has 
 taken too much brandy-wine is not one whit 
 more humane than a drunken Cossack or a 
 Frenchman. Drink takes you all back to the 
 level of the worst savage. If your soldiers have 
 been distinguished by kindness and chastity, 
 they have improved since the war of forty years 
 ago, improved within very recent years, for it is 
 not so long since the Press told us of an outrage 
 by English soldiers in Burma upon a native 
 woman, who died. The officers of the regiment 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 223 
 
 tried to conceal the offenders, and at last the 
 Viceroy of India himself had to intervene to 
 bring the offenders to justice. If those officers 
 who tried to screen the men or any of their 
 friends have been in the last campaign, of course 
 your men have been chaste as babes. They 
 always are under such indulgent officers. The 
 Chinese half of the story has yet to be heard. 
 The different Powers have been all allied in one 
 campaign, and you can no more expect our 
 ignorant peasants and drivers and barrow-men 
 to distinguish between different nations than you 
 can expect them to know one regiment from 
 another. The rapes followed by slaying, which 
 have been many, will be a common dishonour 
 to the Governments of the West. Perhaps the 
 few natives left in the capital will learn something 
 about the particular foreigners under whose ad- 
 ministration they are temporarily placed, but of 
 the tens of thousands who have suffered and fled, 
 not a tithe of them will ever discriminate between 
 one flag and one race and another. Russia, 
 France, Germany, you speak of as Christian 
 Powers, but in some cases they have shot the 
 very converts they had gone to protect, and have 
 failed to shoot real offenders. We could not 
 have done worse than that. Your lack of dis- 
 
224 ^S THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 crimination is as fateful as ours. Patriotism 
 expresses itself in acts of piracy, the adultery 
 which is punishable with death becomes a 
 venial revenge when it is committed beneath 
 the regimental colours, and the most ruffianly 
 burglar is decorated by his country with the 
 largest number of medals. Such things are 
 counted to soldiers for righteousness when war 
 has once been declared. The Japanese behaved 
 with more restraint and gentleness than any of 
 the European powers, and the Japanese are not 
 Christians. There are many things in them we 
 do not like, and the events of three or four years 
 ago do not incline us to like them, but in the 
 campaign itself, and in the policy they have 
 since advocated, they have shown less of the 
 hardness and cruelty of the typical enemy than 
 any of you. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Yes, it is so. Their 
 behaviour, I confess, has been a welcome sur- 
 prise to me. I can only explain it by the fact 
 that they have accepted the Christian civilisa- 
 tions of Europe with the high moral standards 
 upon which they are based. For the moment, 
 Japan has felt the power of the public opinion 
 of the West, and has been on her good 
 behaviour. She has perhaps surpassed us all. 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 225 
 
 because she has the zeal and enthusiasm of a 
 new convert. 
 
 Wong Chile Yeung. — That is a humiliating 
 admission from the lips of a teacher of the 
 Christian religion. It seems to imply that the 
 teaching and virtue of Jesus are more effectual 
 when they operate indirectly than directly. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Not at all. The direct 
 influence of Jesus makes the character upright, 
 and then Christian precepts are practised 
 as a natural product of the character. But 
 it is possible to enforce some of the founda- 
 tion precepts of our religion through the 
 machinery of a Government, or by the disci- 
 pline of an army, so that the immediate result 
 to others is practically the same. In the one 
 case you have the fruit of the new life, but 
 in the other a manufactured article, valuable 
 from the utilitarian standpoint only, but lacking 
 the charm and sweetness inherent in acts 
 prompted by personal sympathy and good-will. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — Well, for the present we 
 will be content if you supply us with the manu- 
 factured article, and we will take the better 
 thing, which you say is the outcome of a 
 renewed character, when it is oflered to us. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — In some cases I think 
 P 
 
226 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 you must admit it is offered, although unhappily 
 not in all. The followers of every religion are 
 apt to fall below its standards. You will 
 probably allow that the Confucian standard was 
 forgotten when the people of the villages stole 
 the money of missionaries who were fleeing for 
 their lives, and left them to beg their way, 
 hungry and naked, for hundreds of miles. You 
 perhaps might not think it quite fair if I were 
 to taunt you with the atrocities of the Governor 
 of the Shensi province, who asked numbers of 
 missionaries to come into his yamun for 
 sanctuary, and then had tens of them beheaded 
 in the court-yard, in some cases doing the deed 
 with his own hand. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — The cruelties of Tai 
 Yun Foo stand alone, and had not the excuse 
 of war. In that case there was a strong motive 
 of personal revenge. But, passing by excep- 
 tional incidents, the many acts of misconduct 
 on either side roughly balance each other. 
 Our Government has never encouraged rob- 
 bery and pillage, but the loot taken from the 
 houses and palaces in Pekin, has been publicly 
 sold by auction within the British Legation 
 itself. Admitting that the missionaries were 
 friends of many of our people, your soldiers in 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 22/ 
 
 turn have spoiled the very Chinamen who were 
 on your side, and who in some cases were seek- 
 ing to save the lives of your countrymen. 
 Ladies from the Legations are said to have 
 carried off silks and furs from the deserted 
 shops at which they had once been customers. 
 Chinamen who had been pressed into the 
 service of your troops have been stabbed and 
 shot, because they did not understand the 
 words of command given in your strange 
 tongue, and, when faint with hunger and fatigue, 
 have been left to die by the road-side. It is 
 said that for the loyal Dutch, whose farms 
 have been looted and destroyed, there will 
 be liberal compensation when accounts are 
 settled, but who is to compensate tens of 
 thousands of neutral and even friendly China- 
 men who have been despoiled of all that they 
 have? We have been flayed alive by both 
 sides, and shall never get ten cash worth of 
 plaister for our sores, not to speak of being 
 paid a price for our trampled crops and de- 
 molished homes. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — It is pitiful when the 
 innocent suffer with the guilty. And yet the 
 Chinese ought to see that it is their ideas of 
 justice which are being enforced rather than 
 
228 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 ours. In the West we never punish one man 
 for the sin of another, although the arrange- 
 ments of society are such that all wrong-doers 
 implicate friends and kinsfolk. But you go 
 beyond what is inevitable. When you cannot 
 get hold of the real culprit you punish the heads 
 of the clan. If a murder has been committed, 
 you hold the nearest village responsible for the 
 discovery and capture of the culprit. It is 
 perhaps not discordant with your precedents 
 when you slaughter American or Swedish mis- 
 sionaries because a German railway surveyor 
 has ill-used or killed a coolie, or a French 
 bishop has championed the cause of some 
 convert against the mandarins, who would 
 like to punish him. Such inequitable usages 
 we have discarded long since, although it must 
 be allowed that in time of war we revert to 
 these ruder methods. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — I am not sure you are 
 one whit better than benighted Chinamen. 
 It is said that in Africa, when a piece of the 
 iron road has been torn up, you burn the Dutch 
 farms for eight miles round, whether the farmers 
 have had any part in the destruction or not. 
 The Dutch women brought into camp, whose 
 husbands are in the field against you, are not 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKS, AND OTHERS 229 
 
 allowed the same rations of food as the others, so 
 that the husbands, pitying the hunger of their 
 wives and children, may be compelled to sur- 
 render. And in the troubles of the last few 
 months in China, you have slain multitudes who 
 had no provable relation to the instigators of riot 
 and massacre \ in not a few cases you have slain 
 those well disposed to your interests, and willing 
 to defend your lives. Soldiers, who do not 
 understand Chinese speech or Chinese ways, 
 have inferred that every man who wears a queue 
 must be a demon, and have dealt with him upon 
 that theory. Never for many years have shooting 
 and decapitation by guess-work been carried 
 out upon such a frightful scale. You call us 
 barbarians because we extort evidence by tor- 
 ture, but you convict by caprice and execute 
 by conjecture. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Much injustice is doubt- 
 less suffered in war on both sides. Soldiers, as 
 a rule, are neither careful judges of evidence, 
 nor meek, forbearing saints. Whilst war lasts 
 such accidents will happen. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — But I thought the Allies 
 were not at war with us. The saying comes 
 into my mind, " Enmity raised in a day cannot 
 be dispelled in a thousand." Our people are 
 
230 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 rude, and look upon all foreigners as of the 
 same stock. It is to be feared that the sons 
 of slaughtered sires, the brothers of sisters dis- 
 honoured and then stabbed, and even the 
 generation after that, will repay upon many 
 an innocent and defenceless missionary the 
 wrong done within their families. Files and 
 phalanxes of hospitals and free schools, and 
 munificent famine relief, oft-repeated, will be 
 necessary to efface the memories left by this 
 deluge of blood, and this profanation of Chinese 
 homes. Those who have been busy writing 
 anti-Christian pamphlets and placards, and 
 inflaming the spirit of riot and persecution, 
 will be able to allow themselves a little breath- 
 ing space. Through two or three provinces 
 at least, the unhappy history of the past year 
 will make all Treaty provisions for the tolera- 
 tion of the Christian religion unavailing for 
 some time to come. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — The prospect is perhaps 
 scarcely so bad as you fear. Soldiers are not 
 always members of the Church of Jesus, or they 
 would behave better. Some of them are 
 devout and humane, and you must not blame 
 such. You will by-and-by see the justice of 
 discriminating between different nations. A 
 
BOXERS, COSSACKSy AND OTHERS 23 1 
 
 few of you do that now. All nations which 
 have taken the Christian name are not equally 
 bad. You would not care to have China judged 
 by its worst men. 
 
 Wong Chiu Yeung. — No, indeed ! But my 
 ground of complaint is that you do not enforce 
 your best ideas. You are afraid to create 
 authority by terrorising lest you should take 
 away the liberty of the soldier. You shrink 
 from harshness, and because you shrink from 
 harshness you make ready for that cruelty of 
 unbridled passion which leaps out in time 
 of war. Your men are not kept in hand. 
 There has been much to deplore on both 
 sides. But if the Boxer is put in one scale, 
 and a drunken soldier or marine in the other, 
 it is difficult to say which way the balance 
 would incline. Do you not think we might 
 improve things if we went back to those maxims 
 of the sages, for which I still feel undiminished 
 admiration ? Suppose that East and West we 
 make a beginning by way of experiment with 
 the rule laid down by Confucius himself. " Let 
 a good man teach the people for seven years, 
 and they may then be safely employed in war." 
 What a change would be produced if no man 
 could enlist as a soldier till he had earned a 
 
232 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 certificate for temperance and humanity ! It 
 seems to me if fighting is to be done at all, 
 it should be done by men of the highest 
 character. The societies, which you have 
 assured me test and examine the missionaries 
 sent out, might be asked to do the same thing 
 for the soldiers. Our proverb is not without 
 good sense which says : — " Sweep the snow 
 from your own threshold, and do not stare at 
 the rime on your neighbour's roof." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE diplomatists' BALANCE-SHEET 
 
 "The Master said, Do not be impetuous or look to 
 small gains. Impetuosity prevents thoroughness, 
 and an eye to small gains is fatal to great achieve- 
 ments." — Confucian Analects. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — It is a great relief to see 
 you back in the Mission Compound again. We 
 have all been anxious for you since rumours 
 came down the river that the Black Flags in 
 the South were getting up riots of their own and 
 emulating their Boxer comrades in the North. 
 
 Catechist Yau. — Things were threatening at 
 one time, but I got away to my native village and 
 the elders hid me for two or three days under 
 the altar-table in the ancestral temple. When I 
 sniffed the morning and evening incense sticks, 
 I felt as though I had already joined the spirits 
 of my forefathers. The village gentry did not 
 forget to remind me that the fidelity of blood 
 relations was more efifectual than the favour and 
 
234 ^^ THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 patronage of missionaries, and expressed the 
 hope that I should show my gratitude both to 
 them and the protecting spirits of my fore- 
 fathers, by falling in again with the customs of 
 the clan. They did not blame the missionaries, 
 and admitted that I was under some obligation 
 to men who had helped to free me from the 
 opium habit into which I was drifting. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I am glad you are not 
 much the worse for your fright, perhaps a little 
 thinner, that is all. Have you any recent news 
 of the village churches ? We have been in great 
 perplexity as to what should be done. It did 
 not seem desirable either to visit them, as that 
 might have directed the attention of the enemy 
 upon their homes, or to ask the members to 
 come down here if the disquiet culminated in 
 violence. To have had a camp of refugees 
 here, would have been an incitement to panic in 
 the city. 
 
 Catechist Yau, — No lives have been lost but 
 the bullies of the neighbouring villages have 
 stolen the Christians' crops and carried off their 
 buffaloes and farming implements. I am afraid 
 there will be much distress and privation, but the 
 converts do not complain. They say that their 
 own troubles are light in comparison with the 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 235 
 
 terrible things suffered by the missionaries and 
 converts in the North. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Something must be done 
 for them, and that promptly, and we must tide 
 them through the winter. 
 
 Catechist Yau. — That of course is important, 
 and the kindness of the pastors is great. I 
 think the converts are more concerned about 
 the settlement of the difficulties in the North. 
 You remember the story in Mencius of a chief 
 minister in the State of Chin, who, instead of 
 repairing the bridges, carried the people across 
 the fords in his own carriage. That was kind 
 but not quite statesman-like. We are sure that 
 you will all do your uttermost, but the troubles 
 are beyond the reach of individual kindness, 
 and we want the strong settlement which will 
 put our feet above these floods and tumults. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I agree with you, but that 
 question is in the hands of the diplomatists, and 
 we can only pray that they may be influenced 
 aright. Did you find out anything about the 
 state of feeling in the provincial capital, when 
 you passed through ? 
 
 Catechist Yau. — I heard very little. The 
 people one meets in the boats and in the tea- 
 shops show unusual reserve ; perhaps they are 
 
236 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 terrorised, and dare not openly express any 
 opinion on either side. The native Christians 
 of the cities which have been outside the 
 upheaval are discouraged, and seem to think 
 the Church has lost face, and will never recover 
 it. Two or three men who had been 
 accustomed to stir up strife in the preaching 
 halls, became insolent and offensive, and 
 threatened all sorts of woes. The recent 
 proclamations, however, have restrained them a 
 little. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Of course you have heard 
 the terms of settlement which are now under 
 discussion, and to which the Commissioners 
 have agreed in the main. 
 
 Catechist Yau. — I have seen the native papers 
 which reproduce, with comments of their own, 
 the telegrams from the foreign newspapers. 
 Yesterday I met a fellow-clansman, who 
 translates with explanatory notes for one of the 
 native papers. He is friendly, but a little con- 
 temptuous. Having expressed the hope that 
 I should show greater discretion in the future, 
 he said, " I also am a man of new ideas, but I 
 preach through the Press, from the precincts of 
 a foreign settlement, and do not identify my 
 fortunes with those of the Church or bind 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 237 
 
 myself to its rules." He taunted me with 
 the fact that, in the present negotiations, 
 missionary work was scarcely mentioned, and 
 the interests of trade were the supreme con- 
 cern of the single-eyed spokesmen of the 
 Allied Powers. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — Well, I am tempted to 
 think that the Missionary Problem is inten- 
 tionally ignored. I know one order of 
 missionaries who observe strict silence, and get 
 the most dangerous and irritating privileges 
 when they are least seen and heard. For my 
 part, I do not want favours got by such arts. 
 The true faith will not suffer by being kept 
 apart from these bickerings. The less it is 
 dealt with in Treaties, mixed up with horrible 
 bloodshed and international feud, the better. 
 If liberty is still left us to teach, and to heal 
 and do good, there will be no permanent loss 
 to our cause, and that liberty is not seriously 
 threatened. Blunders and crimes on both 
 sides have marked the events of the last few 
 months. The Allies have been like a row of 
 blind men striking out in helpless rage, whilst 
 the instigators of riot and massacre have been 
 dodging round them on every side and making 
 their unseen grimaces of contempt. My self- 
 
238 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 respect as an Englishman has been profoundly 
 humbled by the promiscuous slaughter of 
 innocent and guilty alike, which has taken place 
 in not a few towns and villages \ and still more 
 humbled by the proposal to let off very black 
 offenders in high places. Expediency is far 
 more conspicuous than righteousness. The 
 attitude of one section of the Allies is cruel 
 and ruthless, and that of another section 
 irresolute and a distinct incitement to crime. 
 Some clamour for decapitation by guess-work, 
 others would press suicide upon Prince Tuan, 
 and even upon the Empress dowager herself, 
 and yet others in a spirit of sordid com- 
 mercialism would let bygones be bygones 
 upon the condition that China will give free 
 access for steam ships to inland waters, and 
 unlock the whole of her provinces to adventure 
 and foreign trade. This last proposal makes 
 me red with rage and shame. What a monu- 
 ment of irony to the martyrs ! To think that 
 the blood of two hundred missionaries should 
 be used to buy commercial privileges for men, 
 some of whom would come into the interior to 
 discredit Christianity by loose living and 
 impartial contempt for natives and missionaries 
 alike, takes one's breath away. It is not so long 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 239 
 
 since one of these traders, for whom the 
 missionary is expected to prepare the way, 
 pointed over his shoulder at a missionary, and 
 said to the Chinaman standing by his side, 
 " Number one foolo pidgin." How would the 
 people receive such a policy if it were carried 
 out, and what would be its effect upon the 
 prospects of Christianity? 
 
 Catechist Yau. — Well, I am speaking to the 
 missionary, so may venture to put aside reserve. 
 Many would be glad to see the country opened 
 and new methods adopted. We should like 
 to travel more quickly and in greater comfort. 
 The native Christians, who in many instances 
 have been thrust out of their early employments 
 because of their religious profession, would be 
 the first to share in the prosperity which would 
 come through opening the mines and setting 
 on foot new industries. But to let off 
 murderers, and ask as a reward for such slack- 
 ness new commercial privileges, would make 
 foreigners more spoken against than ever. If 
 the instigators of all these murders are not 
 punished, some of the officials and many of the 
 bad people will turn their faces aside to laugh 
 and say, "The foreigners are a stupid people 
 after all, and it is easy to outwit them. They 
 
240 AS THE CHTNESE SEE US 
 
 are always in a hurry, and if there is a little 
 patient waiting on the other side none of their 
 behests need be respected." Not to punish 
 murderers is to punish sooner or later many 
 innocent people who have a just right to live. 
 When the Buddhists set free Hving things, they 
 choose the innocent and the harmless. It 
 would not be considered a work of merit to 
 turn the shrike loose amongst the doves. We 
 follow some of the practices of the Buddhists, 
 but laugh at the story told of Gautama's self- 
 sacrifice in a previous incarnation. It is said 
 he bestowed his body on a hungry tiger and so 
 appeased the poor beast's pain. We are not 
 fools, and know well that such an act could not 
 stop at that point. Had he thus given himself, 
 Buddha would have inflamed the tiger's appe- 
 tite for human flesh, and have helped to 
 destroy many people's bodies besides his own. 
 To fawn on the leaders of the insurrection, and 
 pledge them immunity from serious punishment, 
 is to foster massacre in the after days. Is there 
 any such doctrine as that ? It is worse than 
 creating the desire for opium amongst young 
 men by the free distribution of the drug. To 
 make crime free by condoning its perpetration, 
 will be to convey the impression that if you do 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 24I 
 
 not sympathise with crime you are at least too 
 weak to punish it. If you punish the right 
 offenders and upon sufficient evidence, our own 
 people will be secretly satisfied. We are 
 humanitarian, in our ideas at least, but our 
 humanitarianism does not imply indulgent 
 partiality towards crime. We have all had our 
 early drill in Mencius, who tells us that King 
 Tong, the founder of the Sheung dynasty, " put 
 to death eleven princes, and that he had not an 
 enemy in the empire." Indeed, when he went 
 off on one of his punitive trips to the north, the 
 people of the south were jealous because they 
 saw so little of him, and a little tyrant-scotching 
 needed to be done at home. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I quite agree that 
 murderers and the instigators of bloodshed 
 should be severely punished. But the irony of 
 the situation is, that it is criminals of the first 
 degree who are invited to punish their fellow- 
 criminals of the second and third degree. The 
 head of the band cannot do otherwise than 
 screen the guiltiest members of his confederacy 
 and punish the less guilty. I am afraid this 
 low estimate put upon the value of missionary 
 life, arises from the fact that many of our 
 Q 
 
242 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 countrymen still think of us as though we were 
 mere serfs in comparison with traders and 
 financiers, and go upon the assumption that 
 missionary blood is a deteriorated currency. 
 Whilst I claim no greater sanctity for missionary 
 life in the eyes of the law than for merchant, 
 traveller or diplomatist life, I am ready to turn 
 Boxer myself against the frigid wretches who 
 would compound massacres and buy access to 
 China with cheap missionary blood. I am 
 fast losing my youthful patriotism. I would 
 never speak a word or move a hand to bring 
 promiscuous foreigners into the interior. Some 
 of them are as good as one could wish; but 
 many, alas, so notoriously bad that they are 
 enough to blight missionary work through a 
 prefecture. I see more and more that it will 
 be fatal to our standing with the officials and 
 gentry if the slightest encouragement is given 
 to the idea that the missionary is the advance- 
 guard who conciliates the people by his patience 
 and good works, and so opens the country to 
 a medley incursion of foreigners. 
 
 Catechist Yau, — To condone the wholesale 
 murder of missionaries and ask new trading 
 facilities as a reward for the indulgence ex- 
 
THE DIPLOMATISTS' BALANCE-SHEET 243 
 
 tended towards an enormous crime, is the worst 
 form of bribery, and can only expose Christian 
 countries to the contempt of the heathen. 
 Such a policy would do much to prove the 
 justice of the allegations urged against the 
 nations of the West, and especially against 
 England, that greed is the only motive which 
 guides the administration of government. If 
 I were a heathen man, I should expect the 
 ghosts of the slaughtered missionaries to haunt 
 every "go-down" built under a convention for 
 which their blood was bartered, and pursue the 
 steps of every new-comer admitted into the 
 interior at the cost of their lives. I should 
 subscribe handsomely to an All Souls' Festival 
 performed to appease their restless pain with 
 offerings of rice and wine. I am a heathen no 
 longer, and will express the offence I feel at the 
 idea in the language of the New Testament. 
 The souls of the missionaries must surely be 
 crying from under the altar, not so much against 
 their tormentors as against the Christian diplo- 
 matists who offer the Chinese Commissioners 
 this sacred blood as the price of new trade 
 privilege. It is an insult to the dead, worse 
 than the desecration of graves. It is like 
 
244 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 making wedges of their whitened bones for 
 the opening of China. I think the people 
 wish to see the offenders punished for two 
 reasons. It is just. And if the offenders are 
 not punished, they will have to make good 
 the omission. When slain missionaries' wives 
 and children have to be indemnified for their 
 loss, the mandarins are always ready to promise 
 any number of " tear-stopping " dollars, and we 
 have to find them. It is our mines which will 
 be made over to foreigners, so that Mantchoo 
 princes may be ransomed from the death penal- 
 ties due to their crimes. 
 
 Gideon Khakison, — But many foreigners say 
 such a policy binds the people to good be- 
 haviour. I do not agree with them for a 
 moment, but it is shouted in many of the 
 newspapers. The Chinese are so fond of 
 money, that it punishes them more severely 
 to take their dollars than to nip off heads. 
 
 Catechist Yau. — That is a slander on the 
 Chinese character, but few foreigners really 
 know us. I am reminded of the proverb 
 which says — " If the heart is pure, those who 
 revile are like the man who exhausts his own 
 mouth by spitting at the sky." The slander 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 245 
 
 recoils. The idea that we must be dealt with 
 on a basis of inordinate covetousness works 
 against foreign prestige more disastrously than 
 anything else. It is said that in the eyes of 
 foreign Governments gold and silver exceed 
 all else in sacredness. And so instead of 
 looking upon money demands as a proof that 
 Europeans think we are avaricious, we look 
 upon such demands as convicting Europeans 
 of that particular vice, and in this way, they 
 spoil their own good name. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I am afraid it is so. The 
 relations of the Chinese and Western Govern- 
 ments would have been much healthier, if there 
 had been less chaffering over blood-money and 
 a purer desire for righteousness. One of the 
 clauses in the settlement under discussion re- 
 quires the Chinese Government to put up 
 monuments to the German minister in the 
 street in which he was shot, as well as to the 
 missionaries who have been killed in the 
 interior. Something also has been said, I 
 think, about paying similar honours to those 
 statesmen who were not Christians, but who were 
 martyred because of their friendliness to 
 foreigners and their opposition to the great 
 
246 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 conspiracy. How will such a proposal be likely 
 to work ? 
 
 Catechist Yau. — The Empress dowager has 
 already issued imperial decrees ordering monu- 
 ments and posthumous honours for some of 
 those who lost their lives in the Insurrection 
 or committed suicide when they saw its 
 frustration at hand. I fear she has got the 
 start of the Allies. When monuments to those 
 who have been notorious for cruelty to foreigners 
 are placed almost in sight of monuments to 
 slaughtered missionaries, the multitude will 
 be perplexed by the farce, and will scarcely 
 know which to accept as a setting forth of the 
 mind of the Government. If statesmen friendly 
 to foreigners happen to be in power, the people 
 will look complacently at the monument to the 
 missionaries, and if statesmen of the old regime 
 get back into power, they will look with venera- 
 tion upon the monuments erected to those who 
 tried to turn out the foreigners. As Confucius 
 said, " The will of a common man cannot be 
 taken from him." You cannot keep foreign 
 guards to defend the monuments as you pro- 
 pose to defend the Legations. It is said that 
 statues and monuments erected in Western 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 247 
 
 countries to men who are not popular with 
 large sections of the people are sometimes 
 defaced and mutilated. We venerate the past, 
 but are practical. It is more important that 
 something should be done to protect the 
 Chinese who are friendly to foreigners, and in 
 favour of progress. That would be better 
 than monuments. The toleration of new ideas 
 ought to be guaranteed as well as the toleration 
 of the Christian religion. Some of these men 
 are not Christians, but they are honestly and 
 intelligently seeking the good of their country, 
 and the peaceful advocacy of progress ought 
 not to be made a crime. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — I have felt deeply on the 
 subject. The Allies seem to have no care for 
 the advocates of improvement, perhaps because 
 some of them do not like reformers at home. 
 As far as I can make out, their case does not 
 form part of the negotiations. The way would 
 be clearer if a responsible Government were 
 re-established at Pekin. The excuse for putting 
 influential and enthusiastic reformers to death 
 has been that they gave bad advice to the 
 Emperor, and their projects miscarried. 
 
 Catechist Yau. — But, according to that rule, 
 
248 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 all the surviving officials of the other side ought 
 to be put to death, for the policy they recom- 
 mended to the Empress dowager and her council 
 has been attended with still graver disasters. 
 The rule is its own refutation, for if it were 
 carried out, not a single official would be left in 
 China to carry on the Government. The case 
 of the native Christians is bad enough, and will 
 be so after they have been helped through the 
 stress of these terrible times by the kindness of 
 the Western churches; but the case of the 
 reformers and their families is still more pitiful. 
 It is true they have influential friends amongst 
 their own countrymen, but no Western nation 
 is disposed to plead their cause. Appearances 
 seem to indicate that the Governments of 
 foreign countries concern themselves with 
 "greed rather than righteousness." 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But if their cause were 
 taken up by the Allies do you suppose it would 
 be any gain to them ? I should have thought 
 it would be fatal to their chance of recovering 
 power. For England or America to champion 
 their programme would be a mistaken kindness. 
 They would be looked upon as secret agents of 
 the foreign powers. I feel more than ever that 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 249 
 
 Reform, no less than the Christian religion 
 itself, must drop all foreign associations if it is 
 to succeed amongst such self-centred and self- 
 approving communities as those of China. The 
 Inspector-General of Customs has just been 
 suggesting in one of the English Magazines that 
 missionaries should forego their status as foreign 
 citizens, and place themselves under Chinese law 
 and authority, reserving of course the right of 
 appeal to their own country in case of extreme 
 necessity. What do you think of such a pro- 
 posal? Would it be practicable and promote 
 a better condition of feeling ? 
 
 Catechist Yau. — The Chinese authorities would 
 doubtless be much pleased with such a system 
 at first. To rule over the foreigners who once 
 despised them would be pleasing to their pride, 
 and also have a satisfying savour of retribution 
 about it. Perhaps in the beginning they might 
 try and pay off a few scores. Such a change, safe- 
 guarded by the right of appeal, would be good 
 for us, and help the reform of our law and the 
 procedure of the courts where it is administered. 
 I cannot picture the pastor kneeling before a 
 small mandarin, or meekly submitting to trial 
 by torture. You might find yourself in danger 
 
250 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 of capital punishment for refusing to get out of 
 the way of the viceroy's chair. For hinting 
 that fees and squeezes must be a part of the 
 bargain when petitioned to suppress a brothel 
 or an opium den opened at the gate of the 
 Mission Compound, you could not dismiss a 
 mandarin and his retinue as you dismissed cook 
 and house-boy last year for making a little com- 
 mission of their own when purchasing kitchen 
 supplies. It would not be easy to pack off on 
 their business officials brought up from baby- 
 hood on commissions. The good opinion and 
 approval of missionaries would doubtless be 
 sought by those mandarins who are clean-handed 
 and strive to improve the lot of the common 
 people; but corrupt officials would probably hate 
 them more bitterly than now. Unless you could 
 supply China with a new statute book and a new 
 set of rulers, much turmoil and confusion would 
 be inevitable. The change might lead, in some 
 cases, to closer and more friendly relations with 
 influential Chinamen who have been accus- 
 tomed to think foreigners monsters of depravity 
 and unreason, because they have had no oppor- 
 tunity of converse with them. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — But that is only the fringe 
 
THE DIPLOMATISTS' BALANCE-SHEET 251 
 
 of the subject. The question of our relation- 
 ship to the mandarins who represent the 
 Imperial Government is perhaps the least part 
 of what would be involved in the surrender of 
 foreign citizenship. Would the Chinese shop- 
 keepers give foreigners admission into the ward- 
 motes ? and what would happen if your country- 
 men refused to contribute to the local imposts 
 for the upkeep of idol temples? Would the 
 barbarians be received into the village councils 
 and be themselves also subject to their 
 decisions ? Justice is often administered in the 
 villages by the patriarchs of the community, 
 and the mandarins' courts, where the foreigners 
 would have their rights if enrolled as Chinese 
 citizens, rarely revise such decisions. Would 
 they not feel themselves Uitlanders and agitate 
 for an enfranchisement, the Imperial Govern- 
 ment could not give without revolutionising 
 local institutions recognised from the beginning ? 
 Catechist Yau. — Such questions would hinge 
 on personal character and disposition. If the 
 people liked them, no difficulty would arise, and 
 if the people did not like them, all the emperors 
 of the past together could not compel the 
 people to treat them otherwise than as out- 
 
252 AS THE CHINESE SEE US 
 
 siders. But there is much in the proposal. If 
 it could be carried out that would be a step 
 gained towards curing public corruption, and it 
 would bring the missionaries nearer to us, help 
 them to understand us better, and make the 
 Christian religion less foreign. 
 
 Gideon Khakison. — The idea is worth think- 
 ing about. If the converts would gain by the 
 change, and the reform of the law courts would 
 precede, or necessarily follow at no great 
 interval of time, we ought to be ready for the 
 sacrifice. Unmarried missionaries, who have 
 neither wives nor children to consider, might 
 try the experiment. Missionaries in Japan who 
 have come under Japanese law fare as well or 
 better than we fare under some of our Consuls ; 
 and whatever disabilities converts sometimes 
 have to suffer in that country, their lot is better 
 than that of converts here who fall to the 
 ground between their own courts and the in 
 formal protectorate sometimes exercised by the 
 European powers. I am afraid we have injured 
 the cause and the honour of the great King of 
 all the kingdoms by a temper of noisy and boast- 
 ful nationality. The Christianity of the future, 
 especially in the countries where it is a new 
 
THE DIPLOMATIST^ BALANCE-SHEET 253 
 
 cult, will have to allow more generously for the 
 sense of nationality in those who are to be 
 evangelised, and even to encourage that sense of 
 nationality. We have still to learn something 
 from our old model, who became a Jew to the 
 Jew, and a Greek to the Greek, never putting a 
 spurious patriotism before the claim of that 
 faith which is vital both to patriotism and 
 the sense of world-wide humanity, of which 
 patriotism is only a subordinate part. I fear 
 we have sometimes made the part greater than 
 the whole. 
 
 THE END 
 
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CUBA AND PORTO RICO 
 
 WITH THE OTHER ISLANDS OF 
 
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 BY ROBERT T. HILL, 
 
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 BAHAMAS, N. A valuable Work of Reference. 
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