m0My > ! ; i ii~hs il^a-i I ■^/sa^AiNa-awv' > ^, \MEUNIVEF •.NGflfXy, T" O K -5^lliBRARYQr^ .^OFCALIFOMj^ ^OFCAllFOfti^ < ee ■ <^ nmi"^ ■^o■A^ym\^■li^ <7UdllVJJV> o "^/^aaAINO-^WV' J;ivMJi j ■^/5il3AINn-3WV ^. ■aNMIBRARYo^ , ^W^UBRAR^ i1V>J0>^ <: si 30 \/y ¥ fYl ^i ^ i^j mi m '-^Advaan# "r I t) Q ^ ro ' " ■■■■ 'V > ^UIBRARYCJr^ A^^l■lIBRARYar^ JAINa3UV^ ^ ^^mmn^ ^MLIBRAR ^ o ^OFCALIFO/?^ ^OFCAllFl ^OA«vaani^ ^OAavaar ,v\inSANCElfXy. v\inSANCElfj> mv^ ^UIBRARYQ/r ^,^^l•llBRARYQ^^ ^(!/0dllV3JO>^ ^^OFCALIFO% ^-A.OFCALIFOMk 1.1 , AMM'NIVERi-//) . \ME l!N'IVERSy/, 3 THIS volume is bound in a shade of color known in China as "Imperial Yellow." It is set apart for the exclusive use of the Emperor, and severe penalties attach to its use for any jjurpose by a Chinese subject. The decoration in tlie upper left liand corner of tiie cover represents the five-clawed dragon rising from the sea, surrounded by clouds, and grasping the sun. It is thus the symbol of uni- versal dominion, and forms tlie crest of the Emperor. The fig- ure used is an exact reproduction, reduced in size, of that worn upon tlie breast and back of all (Chinese officials of high civil rank in uniform or court dress. In the design and at the top is an archaic form of the character which means " happmess." Underneatli tlie decoration is tlie Cliinese title of the book. It was kindly written lor tiie autlior by His Excellency, the Chinese Minister at Washington, wiio, however, is responsible for no part of the contents oi the volume. It is written in a peculiar style of penmanship exclusively used for book titles. Upon the back of tlie volume is the autlior's name, repro- duced from a visiting card, in tlie ordinary style of writing. ^MfS 1167153 PREFACE. The average of mankind resembles too closely that pleasant old lady who lived alone, miles from a neighbor, in one of the more remote nooks of the Green Moun- tains. A stranger stopped at her gate one summer day for a glass of water. Upon being told, in answer to her question, that he lived in Boston, she exclaimed : " Dear me ! How lone- some you must be away off there !" Boston was a lonely spot in her conception ; but the very centre of the universe was framed within the weather- beaten walls of her cottage. Like her, we are inclined to measure all people by a yardstick of our own construction, the model for which is found in ourselves. Others are right or wrong, wise or unwise, according as they copy or depart from the fashion which we have arbitra- rily set up, the ideal formed within the essentially narrow limits of our personal surroundings. We smile at and perhaps ridicule tlie unthinking, automatic regularity with which millions of Chi- nese drop their winter garb for that of summer, or the reverse, upon a day fixed by the will of one man. Yet how does this act differ in wisdom from that other procedure under which millions of the most cultivated and refined ladies of America and viii PREFACE. Europe copy blindly monstrosities in dress or cos- tume at the freaky dictation of an impersonality called Fashion ? And if there is a difference in the two rules of conduct, upon which side does the greater wisdom lie ? Look at the grotesque out- lines and shapes of deformity which have supplant- ed the graceful contour of the natural woman, and then decide which is wiser, or, if you please, less unwise, for a nation to accept the dictum of one man upon the time when the climate requires a change of garb, or for half the population of two conti- nents, in defiance of their individual taste and good sense, to adopt a whim in dress which may have originated in the slums of Paris or London ? There is need of more genuine knowledge and less narrow-minded judgment. It would, doubt- less, be well if we could see ourselves as others see us. But it would be much better if we could see both others and ourselves from a higher and hence more accurate plane of sight, if we could measure men not by oirselves, but by an ideal, a standard man. A greater breadth of vision would serve a more valuable purpose than to increase the accuracy and intelligence of our conceptions. It would make charity more common, patience easier, and belief in the essential unity and nobility of humankind the rule rather than, what it now is, the exception. It is far easier to criticise the Chinese than to understand tlicm. Tlie i)oints of contact are too few and too recent. Our information is based largely upon fancy instead of fact, and misinter- pretation of them and their ways is the easy and inevitable result. Yet they are emj^hatically a race PREFACE. IX worthy of serious study. As real life is far more fascinating than any work of fiction, so is the genu- ine Son of Ilan, witli his fixed and crystallized peculiarities, immensely more interesting to the honest student than the caricatured Chinaman, with whom alone the average public is familiar. This volume is neither a defence, apology, criti- cism, nor paneg3'ric. It is rather an explanation. It attempts to give ii few of the results of many years of residence among the Chinese, in the course of which the author was brought into close and familiar relations with all classes of the people in nearly every section of the empire. In it an effort is made to describe and explain some of the more prominent factors in tlie national life, and t(j show why some of their ways, so odd to us, are natural to them. Facts are dealt with rather than opin- ions. The book represents an effort to outline with a few broad sweeps of the pen the Chinaman as he is. The numerous incidents scattered through the volume are inserted with a view to make the pic- ture more lifelike, interesting, and intelligible. Each one represents an actual occurrence, free of coloring or exaggeration. Were it necessary, the place and date of each, with the names of the persons concerned in it, could be given. In the same way, the illustrations are sun pictures, owing noth- ing to art save the skill and fidelity with which they have been transferred, unchanged even in minute details, to these pages. Intertwisted with tlie faults and foibles of tlie Chinese are many sterling virtues and admirable X PREFA CE. traits of character. They combine the fixedness of age with the persistence of youth. They change slowly. Yet it seems impossible that any one should come to know them well without reaching the conviction that there is a great future before the nation, and that China has yet an important part to play in the history of the world. Chester Holcombe. New York, January i, 1895. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A High Chinese Official in Evening Dress. . . Frontispiece Imperial Dragon v Buddhist Devil v Pagoda at Pa Li Chuang vii Ornamental Street Archway in Peking x Stone Gateway xi Dragons Supporting the Globe xiii Ornamental Fan Design . xx Dragon Design i A Gate of Peking 13 Mounted Chinese Official 20 Li Hung Chang ^. » 25 Bronze Open Work , 28 Chinese Flag 29 F.nirance to the Palace 32 View of Peking 37 Chinese River Scene 44 Post Marking Land Boundary 49 A Lock on the Grand Canal 51 Souvenir Fan 58 Toad Catching Flies (from Chinese Painting) 66 Bridge in Summer Palace 72 xil LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE Buddhist Female Idol , 73 Group of Children , 75 Street Scene in Peking 81 Wall About Peking 89 Entrance Hall to Imperial Tombs 92 Jinricksha 93 Carriage of Chinese Official 95 Front of Official Residence loi Chinese Dragon (Moulded in Porcelain) 11 1 Sedan Chai r 115 Incense Urn I16 Oven for Burning Paper, Confucian Temple, Peking 122 Buddhist Priest Trampling Satan Under Foot 133 Goddess of Mercy 137 Chinese Wedding Chair 143 Chinese Head of Pillar 144 Tomb of the Emperor Yung Lo, Died a.d. 1425 147 Pagoda at Yii Chuan Shan 155 Chinese Catafalque 163 Dragons 170 Head of Buddhist Devotee 171 Peddling Fruit 172 Group of Children 175 Chinese Barber o . 1 79 Bit of Great Wall 191 Flag Standards ... 1 92 Entrance to Imperial Cemetery 194 Approach to Ming Tombs 195 Bridge on the Grand Canal 199 Street Barrier 213 Ornament Pillar 214 The Great Wall 217 Chinese Beggar 226 Mongol Winter Encampment 231 Top of Pagoda 237 Village on Grand Canal near Peking 241 A Chinese Student ,,...„ 252 Chinese Pony and Groom 257 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. XiU PAGP. Gateway „ . 260 Bronze Lion 261 Chinese Passenger Hoat 265 The Donkey 275 Chinese Mule Litter 281 Dragons Reaching for the Sun 285 Archway , 286 Chinese Jinricksha „ 289 Chinese Servants 303 lunk 309 Dragon , 310 Group of Chinese Workmen 317 Mender of Tubs 321 Chinese Passenger Cart 325 Dragon 330 Antique Chinese Cash 337 Peking-Bank Notes , 345 "No Thoroughfare" 350 ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Introductory 1-28 Recent acquaintance of China with Western nations, r. Date of first treaty, 2. Contrast between the Oriental and Occidental world, 2. Chinese seclusion, 3. Igno- rance regarding foreigners, 4. The Chinese Empire and surrounding kingdoms, 5. Position of Japan, 6. The so-called suzerainty of China, S. Exact nature of rela- tionship, 9. The opium war, 10. Mutual misunderstanding inevitable, 14. Contrast between China and Japan. 17. Discrimination against China and its results, 18. Students at Annapolis and West Point, 19. Prince Kung, 22. Li Hung Chang, 24. No real opposition to the reigning family among Chinese, 28. CHAPTER n. The Government OK Cn-NA 29-48 Peculiarities of the governmental system, 3.1. Its antiquity, 31. Satisfies the people, 32. It is pure paternalism, 33. Filial obedience and parental responsibility enforced by law, 34. The family the unit of government, 36. The Emperor, 36. Laws are comparatively mild and humane, 40. Rewards and penalties, 41. Two theories regarding the system, 42. Filial piety. 43. Influence of Confucius, 45. Officials chosen frt)m among the people, 45. Similarity between Chinese form of choosing officers and that followed in the United States, 47. XVI ANALYSIS OF CONTEXTS. CHAPTER III. The Language 49-72 Its antiquity, 49. Immense but uncertain number of charac- ters, 50. Mode of writing and printing, 51. Characters were originally outlines of objects which they represented, 54. Modes of combination illustrated, 55. Idiomatic con- structions, 56. Grammar of Chinese, 57. Chinese efforts to learn English, 58. Words lacking in the language, 60. Difficulties of pronunciation, 62. Sounds cannot be rep- resented by any alphabet, 63. Aspirated and unaspirated consonants, 64. Tone has equal part with sound in deter- mining the meaning, 65. Four tones recognized in standard Chinese, 67. Amusing blunders, 69. Local dialects, 70. Pidgin English, 71. CHAPTER IV. Chinese Ho^^■: Like 73-92 Does not begin with marriage, 73. Lot of young married women, 74. Motherhood a badge of honor, 75. Polyg- amy allowed, but monogamy the rule, 77. Influence of women, 78. Ties of locality, 80. Chinese not natural colonists, S3. Ancestral worship, 86. Filial obedience, Sg. Coffins presented to parents, 90. CHAPTER V. Chinese Social Like 93-115 Little time given to recreation, 93. An overworked Chinese statesman, 93. Peculiar model of Oriental society, 97. Husband and wife may not ride in the same vehicle, 99. Chinese students in America, 100. Social amusements of Chinese ladies, 102. Women of the poorer classes, 103. Oriental ideas of dignity, 104. Etiquette interferes with social life, 105. Chinese fond of argument, 107. Legend of the fox, 108. Chinese reception-rooms, 109. Dinner- giving between Occidentals and Orientals, iio. The ser- vant of the Corean minister, 113, AA'ALYSIS OF CONTEXTS. xvii CHAPTER VI. Chinese Religions ... 116-143 Confucius not the founder of a religion, 116. He was a sage, not a devotee, 117. Materialism is the basis of Confucian- ism, 118. Temple of Heaven, 119. Respect for education and literature, 121. Worship of ancestors, 123. What is the practical idea involved, 123. Chinese belief in a future state, 124. Ancestral tablet, 125. All Chinese are Con- fucianists, 126. Taoism, 126. Its theory and practice, 127. Buddhism, 12S. Method of worship, 130. Thibetan archbishop, I31. Living Buddhas, 131. Ideas borrowed from Christianity, 132. Mendicant priests, 135. A pil- grimage to Wu Tai Shan, 139. Chinese Government tol- erant, 142. Mohammedans and Jews in China, 143. CHAPTER VII. Chinese SurEKsmioNs. , 144-170 Saturated with superstitious notions, 144. They are separate from religious belief, 145. Fing Skui, 145. Interfered with burial of an emperor, 149. Chinese astrologers, 152. Methods of placating local spirits, 154. The use of pago- das, 156. Lucky and unlucky days, 157. Prayer at the hole of a fox, 158. Prayers for rain, 159. Ling Shih Hsien, 160. Old trees, 161. Inhumanity as a fruit of su- perstition, 165. Infanticide, 166. Treatment of young children when ill, 167. Two cases, 16S. CHAPTER VIII. Chinese Queues 171-191 Peculiarities of Oriental hair, 171. Admiration of the Occi- dental beard, 172. Symbol of Chinese manhood, 174. How the queue was introduced into China, 174. It is a badge of respectability, 178. Etiquette of the queue, 178. " Tail-cutting," 181. Chinese belief in magic, 182. Of- ficial proclamations giving preventives for " tail-cutting," 183, One genuine case, 184. xviu AJVALYSIS OF COXTEXTS. CHAPTER IX. Chinese Courts ok Law 192-213 Primitive hall of justice, 192. Antiquity of the judicial sys- tem, 193. The Censorate, 193. The Chinese Code, 195. Cases are decided by precedents, 197. Dangerous latitude allowed to magistrates, 198. Efforts to secure confession, 201. Antiquated processes, 202. Scene in a Chinese court, 203. Chinese prisons, 205. Modes of punishment, 206. Forms of death psnalty, 207. The white silken cord, 208. Etiquette of a Chinese court, 209. A fearful case of cruelty, 210. CHAPTER X. Officials and People 214-236 The Chinaman a philosopher, 214. Official salaries, 216. Illegal and extra-legal fines, 219. Guards against injustice and extortion, 223. Civil-service regulations, 224. Sale of titles and official honors, 225. Power of public opinion, 227. The literati, 227. Dangerous exercise of their power, 229. The Tientsin massacre, 230. Mandarin boots, 233. Interesting case of resistance to oppression, 234- CHAPTER XI. Education AND Literature... 237-260 Object of study, 237. Chinese ambition, 237. High moral tone of educational works, 238. Narrow limits of system, 243. Description of course of study, 244. Schools and their arrangements, 246. Method of study, 247. High in- tellectual ability of the Chinese, 248. The Chinese stu- dents in America, 248. Illiteracy in China, 249. System of government examinations originated 1900 years ago, 250. Proscribed classes, 250. Degrees conferred, 253. Regulations for the examinations, 254. ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. Etiquette and Cekemonv 261-2S5 Politeness universal, 261. Etiquette complicated and tedious, 262. Pompous and bombastic titles, 263. Foreign rela- tions vexed by questions of etiquette, 264. The audience question, 267. The etiquette of a cup of tea, 269. Im- portance of familiarity with Oriental forms, 270. A Mexi- can saddle and sombrero in China, 271. Tedious formali- ties evaded, 273. Lies of courtesy, 274. Chinese habit of repression, 277. yuaint custom among Pekingese, 279. CHAPTER Xril. Merchants and Tricks ov Tradk 2S6-309 Grades of Chinese society, 286. Standing of Chinese mer- chants, 287. Merchants study their customers, 291. Va- rious prices for various customers, 294. The dicker, 295. No standard of weight or measure, 29S. Exact book-keep- ing impossible, 300. Co-operative system, 301. The Chi- nese " squeeze," 301. Chinese servants, 305. CHAPTER XIV. The Poor in China 310-329 Intense poverty of the Chinese masses, 310. Average prices paid for labor, 311. Food of common people, 312. Ex- periences at Chinese inns, 313. Clothing, 316 The house, 319 The labor problem in China, 320. Economy of the Chinese, 322. Government allows begging, 323. The queen of the beggars of Peking, 327. Incidents, 328. XX AA^JLVS/S OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER XV. Chinese Financial System 330-350 The Chinese money unit, 330. Spanish and Mexican dol- lars, 331. Varying and various ounce weights, 332. Form of silver bullion used, 334. Tests of fineness, 334. Chinese cash, 336. Attempts to tamper with the currency, 339. Doubling cash, 34r. Chinese banks, 343. Taxation, 346. Uncertainty regarding total revenue, 347. Taxes payable in kind, 347. Modes of remittance, 348. Needs of reform.. 349- THE REAL CHINAMAN CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY The commencement of any mutual acquaint- ance between China and the Western world dates back only a little more than thirty years. The first treaties by which China acknowledged the existence of the nations of America and Europe were signed about fifty years ago. Those treaties, how- ever, only served as a preliminary introduction, and lacked such provisions as would enable either of the parties consenting to them to prosecute any friendly intimacy with the other. So long as not more than three or four points upon the Chinese seaboard were thrown open to foreign residence and commerce, while travel in the interior of the empire was prohibited, Peking remained inaccessi- ble to all diplomatic representatives, and our lega- tions were kept on board men-of-war cruising up and down the Chinese coast — so long as such a condition of affairs existed, we of the Western 2 77/ A' REAL CUIXAMAN. World could learn little about the Chinese, and they could gain no knowledge of us. Such was the situation from the date on which the first treaty between China and any foreign power was signed — the British treaty, signed at Nanking, August 29th, 1842 — up to the time when, by the treaties of Tientsin, signed in 1861, diplo- matic representatives were accorded the right of residence at the capital, and foreigners of all classes were permitted to travel freely throughout the empire. Then first in the history of humankind two great antipodal worlds of men stood face to face and gazed into each other's eyes. The progressive and aggressive Occidental, quick, eager, and alert, met in the Oriental the very incarnation of con- servatism, the embodiment of dignity and repose. Action met inertia. The age of steam, steel, and electricity stood over against the age of Confucius. Let the reader imagine a modern pushing man of business introduced to the Chinese sage, and the two left to become acquainted, and each to gather his impressions of tlie other, tlien add to the pic- ture the essential fact that the sage had a positive unwillingness to meet the business man, and he will have a sufficiently accurate idea of the situation. There was absolutely no common point of meet- ing, no standing ground of a mutual advantage mutually recognized. True, we wished to trade with the Chinese. He had shown how much or how little he desired commerce with us by so care- fully hedging al)()ut and restricting our interchanges with him at Canton — tlie single point where they JN TR OD UC 7 'OR 1 '. 3 liad been permitted to go on at all — that it was as though we received his bales of silk and chests of tea lowered to us from the battlements of an im- pregnable wall, and delivered our Mexican dollars and British opium to him by the returning rope. Recognition of this extremely attenuated line of commercial intercourse, so far as it existed, was in the form of restrictive rather than encouraging regulations. It was not that China had any peculiar objection to political and trade relations with America and Europe. She desired no enlargement of her ac- c[uaintance in any direction. An imperial decree made any Chinese subject forfeit his head to the executioner, as a punishment for having wandered into foreign parts, if he was so indiscreet as to come within reach of that gentleman by a return to his native land. Tiiat law still stands unre- pealed, though for many years it has never been enforced. The government order, forbidding the construction of any junks or vessels of a greater length than sixty feet, made all other than short coasting voyages both unprofitable and dangerous. With her ports closed to foreign craft, regardless of nationality, and no domestic vessels fit for even motlerately long ocean voyages, it is easy to esti- mate the extent of China's desire to either receive or return visits from strangers. The sole excep- tion to this exclusion was in favor of a limited number of Siamese merchant-vessels, duly regis- tered and furnished with permits to trade between Bangkok and certain Chinese ports. These made their leisure way northward with the summer or 4 THE REAL CIIIXAMAX.. southeastern monsoon, and were blown home again by the northwestern winds of winter, thus making one round voyage eacli year. It is unnecessary to the purpose of this vokime tliat the causes which led China to prefer such ab- solute seclusion should be inquired into and their validity either recognized or denied. That she was totally ignorant of the character and position of Western nations, and necessarily so, is self evi- dent. It is related that when what is now the Ger- man Empire sent commissioners to China to nego- tiate a treaty, they were refused. On the kindly interference of the British minister, this refusal was withdrawn, the Chinese Government naively re- marking that it was informed by the British repre- sentative that the Germans were really a respect- able people, and that their king was a relative of the Queen of Great Britain. For this reason they decided to negotiate a treaty. In 1870 one of the most prominent officials in Peking, being dis- patched to Europe upon a special mission, gave directions that some one hundred and fifty pounds of salt should be packed with liis other baggage, as he was accustomed to use it in his food, and he had reason to fear difficulty in obtaining it in the regions to which he was bound. A member of the Imperial Cabinet was once overheard, so recently as 1884, inquiring of an associate whether foreign- ers had any form of marriage contract, or whether the two sexes lived promiscuously together. Coupled with this unqualified ignorance were certain absurd and amusing notions concerning the liabits and personal appearance of the unfortunate IN TROD UC rOR V. $ creatures who lived beyond the reach of the civiliz- ing influences of the Chinese Empire. The inter- ested student in ethnology may find in tlie book- stores of Peking and other Chinese cities to-day volumes containing descriptive accounts of some of these outside barbarians, with carefully executed representations of them d(}ne in water-colors. One type has ears reaching to the earth, another has no legs worthy of mention. The representation of one tribe forces the student to the conclusion that the Chinese must have heard, and with some ac- curacy, of the gorilla. One race is pictured as having its face as a sort of boss in low relief upon the breast, while another carries its head con- veniently located under the left arm. Small won- der that China desired no close acquaintance with people concerning whom she knew so little and imagined so much. Prior to this disturbance of her seclusion, China had, for many centuries, been the single central figure in a world largely of her own creation and in which she was the final dominant force. She had been the jilanct, the powerful civilized, cultivated empire, surrounded by its circle of admiring satel- lite kingdoms. Corea, upon the northeast, the Mongol families on the north, Kashgar and Sam- arcand upon the west, Thibet in its Himalayan clouds and snows at the southwest, Burmah and Siam at the south, Annam and Cochin China trail- ing off from her southeastern border, and the little kingdom of Liu Chin lying like a fringe in the China Sea — these formed a system, a world, of which the Chinese Empire was the centre. They 6 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. flattered her by that most delicate and subtle of all forms of flattery, imitation. They copied her forms of civilization, to a considerable extent mod- eled their governmental systems after hers, bor- rowed her religions, several of them adopted her written language, gained their knowledge of the arts and literature from her, and all of them de- ferred and appealed to her as final authority and sovereign mistress of the Oriental world. She was arbiter of their disputes, whether domestic or inter- national. She aided them at times to quell insur- rection by force of arms. She held herself and was held as the patron and the superior of all. In this planetary system — to pursue the figure already used — Japan was the erratic and dangerous comet. Probably no other Oriental nation gained such large and practical advantages from China as did Japan. Her knowledge of art, her written lan- guage, much of her literature, at least one of her religious systems, were all borrowed from her great continental neighbor. The very names Japan has given to her two great staple products, tea and silk, show that they were introduced from China. Yet she was always the troublesome neighbor, the one disturbing force in the calm of China's recog- nized supremacy. Those who imagine that recent troubles between these two nations are exceptional are mistaken. They are but a modern repetition of the history of the past ten centuries. Between the nations named, excepting Japan and China, a definite and well-understood relationship and intercourse was established. Annual embas- sies came from the smaller States, at each new year I.V TRODUC TOR V. 7 to Peking, bringing presents and the felicitations of the season to the Itmperor. They were enter- tained by him, and on their return home were the bearers of return gifts to tlie heads of their own nations, whicli gifts were always cis much more valu- able than tliose they brought as the Emperor was greater in power and wealth than their lord. It is only within a very few years that the King of Siam has ceased sending white elephants to the Emperor of China. Some of those sent are still living and kept in the " Elephant Stables" at Peking. And the winter of 1894-95 bids fair to be the first in many decades, if not centuries, in which the King of Corea has failed to dispatcli liis annual mission to the Chinese capital. Much of the traffic be- tween the two nations was carried on by means of these embassies, a large number of merchants being allowed to accompany them, and the goods they sold and bought being, as a matter of priv- ilege, exemjit from duties t)r imposts of any sort. Wiienever the question of succession to the throne became practical in any of these outlying king- doms, tlie will of the l-lmperor of China was taken in case of strife between several claimants. And in some of the States niimed it had come to be a custom, thougli never more than a matter of form, for the new incumbent to dispatch a special em- bassy to Peking to announce his accession and re- quest the gracious recognition of the Emperor. This was peculiarly true of the kings of Corea and An nam. As might oe expected, much confusion and mis- understanding has grown up in the exact and in- 8 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. tensely practical Western mind regarding this loose-jointed and essentially Oriental relationship. There is no word in any European tongue which will describe the position which China claims to hold vis-a-vis the smaller States named, because the idea is wholly foreign to our notions of interna- tional connections. It has therefore, for lack, partly, of a better term, and partly of accurate knowledge of what the relationship was, been spoken of as a suzerainty. Whatever it is, it is not that. The vital point of the connection of suzerain and vassal is that the latter must pay regular sums of tribute and furnish specified mili- tary forces to the former. Neither of these has ever been exacted in a single instance. China has repeatedly sent armed bodies of men to assist her weaker neighbors to suppress internal rebellion, but she has never either asked or received aid of that sort from them. And aside from the inter- change of New Year gifts, in which China invari- ably gives more than she receives, there is no such thing as tribute paid by king to emperor. Vague and indefinite as is this relationship to our minds, it is simple and clear to the Oriental, since it is exactly in the line of his ideas. He de- scribes it as the connection between the elder and the younger l^rotlier ; and when the Chinese Gov- ernment has had occasion to mention her position — toward Corea, for example — the same word has been used as is employed to express the relative position in the family of two brothers. Keeping in view tlie fact that, under tlie ])atriarclial system, whicli is \\(A only in vogue in China, but forms the IJVTA'0/)CC/OA'V. 9 basis of her entire form of f^overnment, the elder brother has a certain aulhoriiy over and responsi- bility for the younger, it ceases to be difficult to understand the tie which connects China with her surrounding and less powerful neighbors. It im- plies a sort of moral .uithority or right of control, which is entirely foreign to our ideas, and particu- larly objectionable, since it can be exercised or re- pudiated at will. And perhaps in the fact that it can be enforced or evaded, as discretion may indi- cate, is to be found the feature of the system wliich is most pleasing to the Oriental mind. It cannot be a matter of surprise to a thoughtful mind tliat long centuries of unquestioned suprem- acy, of admiriition and flattery from her weaker and less civilized neighbors, had developed an in- tense national conceit in the Chinese mind, and that she should regard with feelings closely allied to contempt all remote nations which had not been favored with her example, and hence had not formed themselves upon her model. She had her coterie of humble admirers, and desired no ques- tionable additions to tlie circle. And it must not be forgotten that she had more or less communica- tion with India, and had a substantially correct idea of what European intercourse had meant, from an Oriental standpoint, to that great empire of Southern Asia. Such being the attitude of China upon the gen- eral question of establishing friendly relations with the nations of Europe and America, and such her position of calm, yet absurd, superiority, it was peculiarly unfortunate that acquaintance and asso- lo THE REAL CJIIXAMAX. ciation wilh us was forced upon her ia what her government and people could with justice regard as a bad cause. This is not the place fur a discussion of the ques- tion whether any nation has the right to insist, by force of arms, if necessary, that any other nation shall establish and maintain commercial and friend- ly intercourse with it. That question may be left to recognized authorities on international law. Nor is it intended to express an opinion regarding the right or wrong of the so-called opium war. The attempt is here made not to record opinions, but to portray, with some degree of faithfulness and accuracy, a situation. The broad outline of facts is sufficiently well known to all intelligent readers, and each of them can and will draw his own conclusions. But the feeling which those facts aroused in the Chinese, the view which they took of them, and which has very seriously colored their opinions of all foreigners, and influenced the entire course of their foreign relations, are not sufficiently well understood nor its more remote effects always clearly recognized. No true picture of the mod- ern Chinese can be drawn without bringing the opium war upon the canvas. For that reason alone it is introduced. Whatever may have been tlie otiier causes — and they were many and serious — which led to the series of military and naval expeditions against China, from the attack upon the Bogue forts, below Can- teen, in 1 S42, to the capture of one of the nortli gates of Peking and the destruction of the Summer Pal- ace, in i860, to the Chinese the purpose of all of ■ IN TROD UCTOK Y. 1 1 these operations is summed up in one word — opium. He looks upon all other grievances as pretexts, or as valid only through being made to subserve one main purpose, the opening of the em- pire as a vast market for the sale and consumption of the drug raised in India. To him the facts are plain and their logic irre- sistible. There had been much friction between the authorities at Canton and the agent of the East India Company for years prior to 1842 over the in- troduction of the drug into China, either in open or secret violation of the laws of the empire. These troubles increased after the expiration of the charter of the East India Company. They reached a climax in 1840, when Commissioner Lin reached Canton, sent there by the Chinese Em- peror with the most explicit and peremptory orders to put a comj)lete end to the opium traffic at all hazards. He found, shortly after his arrival, opium on board twenty- two ships in the river below Can- ton, to the value of about $9,000,000. It was there in open and notorious violation of the laws of the empire, and hence was, with the vessels which brought it, liable, by universally recognized law, to seizure and confiscation. Its surrender was de- manded, and after some peculiar steps taken by Commissioner Lin to enforce the demand, it was delivered to him by Captain Elliot, the agent of the British Government, who also gave a pledge that no more should be brought into the port. The opium thus secured (20,291 chests) was at once completely destroyed by being thrown into trenches and mixed with lime and salt water, and 12 THE KKAL CIIIXAMAX. this mixture was allowed to run into the river at low tide. Officers were stationed to prevent any- one from carrying away an}^ portion of the drug ; and one Chinese who endeavored to carry away a small quantity was summarily beheaded. There is not the least reason to doubt that every ounce was disposed of in this thorough manner. These are facts about which there can be no question. The Government of China was honest in its intention to exterminate the opium trade ; it was within its right in the demand for the surrender of the con- traband drug, and, for once at least, it possessed a servant in Commissioner Lin who inflexibly and thoroughly executed the instructions which he had received. For this legitimate and praiseworthy act, as the Chinese reason, a British military and naval force was dispatched to China. Several important ports upon the coast were attacked and captured ; the Chusan Islands were occupied ; Nanking, once the capital of the empire, was besieged, and there China was forced at the point of the bayonet to enter into a treaty with Great Britain by which she agreed to pay $21,000,000. Of this, $6,000,000 was for the opium surrendered and destroyed, $3,000,- 000 was for other claims, and $12,000,000 for the cost of the war. And the important island of Hong Kong was unconditionally ceded to the Oueen. Such are the facts which tlie Chinese have in mind, and which give a permanent color to their opinion of foreigners. It is idle to explain other and grave grievances which influenced the action A GATE OF PEKING. I.VTKO/U'CTOh'V. 15 of the British, and wliich, had opium never been known, would have demanded forciljle interfer- ence. They reply by pcnnting out the fact that these armed operations against their country never fully ceased until the practical occupation of Pe- king in i860. Tlie flight of their Emperor and his death in exile had wrung from their government a further concession legalizing the opium traffic in China. Only when that was secured, they say, did Great Britain lay aside her warlike mien and adopt a conciliatory tone and policy. And the efforts made by the Chinese Government — and they have been many and urgent — to induce England to con- cert measures with China either for the immedi- ate or gradual suppression of the traffic are well known among the more intelligent of the people. It is also well known that these appeals have uni- formly been unanswered or refused. This fact lends intensity to their conviction and bitterness to their dislike. These are the more important features of the situation under which China was dragged from her seclusion, brought face to face with the modern Western world, and forced into new and undesired relationships. That she should resent what, from her standpoint, was an unwarranted intrusion, is but natural. That she should misunderstand and misconstrue the motives of those who were sin- cerely desirous of serving her best interests was to be expected. Her rulers were in abst)lute igno- rance of both the principles and technicalities of modern international law, and the rules which gov- ern the intercourse of autonomous and equal States. 1 6 THE REAL CH IX AM AN. Through this ignorance they have often put their government in false positions, and hence lost diplo- matic battles when the point for which the}^ were striving was right and they ought to have won. They are as well aware of this fact as any of their critics, but are too proud and reserved to openly confess it. One of the members of the Chinese Cabinet said to the author on one occasion : "It makes no difference on which side justice and right lie, whatever the question may be, China is always obliged to take the wall. Even when our case is good, we blunder and lose it." And the pathetic remark contained far more of truth than, perhaps, the speaker himself knew. Here is an illustration, a case unimportant in itself, yet fully justifying the complaint of the Cabinet minister. It has been the custom in Peking from time immemorial that, whenever the Emperor goes abroad, the streets through which he passes must be closed to public travel. On one such occasion the Chinese Foreign Office, two days in advance of the event, notified the various diplomatic representa- tives in a courteous note. The streets to be closed were not in that part of the city where foreigners resided ; none of them would be in the least in- commoded, and, moreover, tlie interruption to traffic would last only a couple of hours. Yet, with a single exception, every legation in Peking replied, resenting the action of the Chinese authori- ties. In this case the Chinese Government erred through an excessive desire to be courteous. In no capital of either Europe or America would the municii)al authorities, much less the Privy Coun- ix'/'A'onrcTOA'Y. 17 cil of State, trouble themselves to inform for- eign ministers of a temporary blockade of certain streets. They would simply close the streets for a day, or a month if need be, and promptly and properly rebuke any question of their action by foreign representatives. When the Chinese people are more fully under- stood, their faults, foibles, and virtues recognized — they have many of each — and the history of this first thirty years of intercourse between them and the outside world is accurately written, the won- der will be, not that China has modified her an- cient ways so little in this period, but rather that she has changed so much and conformed so largely and, on the whole, so good-naturedly to the demands of modern life. Her people are not stolid, how- ever much they may appear so. But they are natu- rally cautious, conservative, and intensely proud. The)^ have been rudely awakened from a sleep of centuries — not, it must be admitted, under the most favorable circumstances. And it takes time to safely recast the life and mode of thought of four hundred millions of people. There is neither force nor point in drawing com- parisons between them and the Japanese in regard to their progress in Western civilization. The two races are essentially unlike. Then one more read- il}'' casts off borrowed habiliments than those which were originally his own, earned by his labor, and worn until they have become almost an integral part of himself. As has already been pointed out, Japan, in discarding Oriental fashions foi Western, was, in the main, merely casting off borrowed i8 THE REAL CHJXAMAX. clothing. Those of China, on the contrary, are of her own devising, and have been slowly and labori- ously woven as the shuttle of time passed to and fro through many centuries. Aside from tliis, there has been an enormous dif- ference, all in favor of Japan, in both the initiation and the conduct of their relations with the West- ern world. Enough has been said of the opium war which was the occasion of the formal and forced introduction of China into the so-called " family of nations." Shortly after that event, Japan, also at the point of the bayonet, it is true, received her introduction. The United States per- formed that ceremony, and made the first treaty. In both countries there existed ligid laws against the importation and use of opium. We have seen how those laws were treated by those who made the first treaty with China. Our commissioner to Japan, on the other hand, scrupulously regarded Japanese legislation and wishes upon this point, and practically strengthened the determination of the native authorities. To put the contrast in the mildest possible form, Great Britain hampered legislation against the use of opium in China ; the United States rendered moral support to such legislation in Japan. The difference between these two lines of action at the outset is much further- reaching in its results tlian is ordinarily supposed. It is nearly sufficient to account for the different positions of the two nations to-day. In 1872, Japan and Cliina tiuMi having no treaty relations, a peti- tion was fcjrwarded by certain Cliinese residents in Japan to the United States Legation at Peking, IN TROD UfJ-QK Y. 19 with the request that it be laid before the Imperial Government. It prayed for the redress of certain serious grievances and hardships to which they were subjected in Japan. The chief complaint was that many of them were opium-smokers, and that the Japanese authorities interfered with their prac- tice of the vice. They summed up their sufferings in this matter with the declaration that the police were even in the habit of entering their sleeping-rooms at night and smelling their breath, in order to dis- cover whether they had been using the opium pipe. In 187S the Chinese Government asked the per- mission of the United States to place certain stu- dents, then being educated in this country at its expense, in our military and naval schools at West Point and Annapolis. Although the request was not favorably received, it was earnestly pressed for nearly tliree years before being abandoned. Our refusal was the main cause of the withdrawal of what was known as the Chinese Educational Mis- sion, the most practical scheme ever undertaken by China for placing herself in line with modern ways and ideas. At the time this request was being urged by China, Japanese students, sent and sup- ported by their government, were learning the art and science of naval warfare at Annapolis, as the Chinese authorities well knew. How far this favor, granted to Japan and refused to China, may have determined the issue of the great naval battle recently fought between the ships of those nations, in which several of the principal Japanese actors were graduates of the United States Naval Acad- emy, cannot, of course, be determined. Nor can 20 THE REAL CN IX A. VAX. it be known how far our refusal disheartened and prejudiced a nation at best only half-hearted in its desire for progress, and timid and uncertain as tc the best means of promoting it. ClUNKSE UKKICIAL — MOUNTED. The United States and all British colonies within a reaching distance of Chinese emigrants, wliicli practically includes all countries in which the Chinese coolie can be certain of the treatment due to human beings, have passed laws against Chinese immigration. No such Icgislalive action lias been taken by any against the natives of Japan. While the Chinese Government is decidedly opposed to the emigration if its people, it does not regard them as the scum of the earth, and very naturally objects to discriminative legislation against them. These comparisons and contrasts are not drawn for the purpose of argument or accusation. The (juestion whether these diverse lines of action tow- ard two neighboring powers, brought out of cen- tuiies of isolation about the same time, and each intensely jealous of the other, was wise or unwise, right or wrong, is not raised. They are brought forward solely as facts which have had an essential bearing \\\\o\\ the present attitude and position of China, and hence must be kept in mind by any person who is desirous of obtaining a reasonably accurate conception of the people of that great empire, and the peculiar agencies which have operated, from without as well as from within, to place them where they are to-day. During the thirty years which have passed since China was opened to the Western world, and brought, without prelude or preparation, face to face with the host of delicate and confusing ques- tions which came with what was really a new national existence, two men have practically shaped the policy and guided the destinies of the empire. When, in i860, the allied British and French armies reached Peking, Prince Kung, a younger brother of the Emperor, was the only member of the imperial famih^ who remained at the capital. He came forward and made terms of peace with 2 2 THE REAL CH IX AM AN. the diplomatic representatives who accompanied the military forces. And from that event until his retirement from office in 1884 he was by far the most conspicuous and influential figure in either the for- eign or domestic politics of China. His name is, perhaps, less familiar to foreigners than that of the Viceroy, Li Hung Chang. This arises partly from the fact of his residence at the capital instead of a seaport, and because his imperial rank renders him less democratic and accessible to the ordinary trav- eler. But for a quarter of a century he was the head and Li Hung Chang the strong right arm of the Chinese Empire. At the very outset of his public career he suc- cessfully initiated a system of diplomatic inter- course with Western powers, established a customs system which has no superior in efficiency, and at the siime time crushed out the Taiping rebellion in Central China, and, a little later, the Mohamme- dan uprising in the northwestern provinces. He satisfied the just indignation of foreign govern- ments at the indescribable horrors of the Tientsin massacre on surjM-isingly easy terms, fought against and then yielded the audience question when his shrewd foresight showed him that further opposi- tion was dangerous, outwitted Russia in the Kuldja affair, crushed the coolie trafiic out of existence, and finally came to grief in connection with the French invasion of Cochin China, though the policy outlined by him in that affair was successfully fol- lowed by Ills successors. Prince Kung is a past master in the art of Ori- ental diplomacy. He studies the man pitted against INTKOD UCTOR Y. 23 him in any given contest even more carefully than the question at issue. He is overbearing and con- ciliatory, rude and courteous, frank and reserved, prompt and dilatory, patient and hot-tempered — all exactly as suits his purpose, and with a startling rapidity of change from one role to another. The great secret of his success lies in his ability to de- termine in advance when it will be necessary to yield. His sudden changes of front are no indica- tion of a vacillating disposition. They are the shifting of so many masks behind which he studies his opponent, estimates the amount of his deter- mination, and thereby decides his own course. He gives no premonitory sign of surrender, is the more positive and unyielding as the final moment approaches, and then, when his antagonist is brac- ing himself for a final attack, the enemy suddenly disappears, and a smiling, compliant friend takes his place. As a leader in what may be termed a defensive foreign policy — and thus far China has had only that — Prince Kung has probably no equal. No man in tlie empire better understands her future possibilities and present inherent weakness. No man now living there has had any such broad range of experience and responsibility as he. During the twenty- four years of his premiership there was an emperor upon the throne but two, and he was an effeminate and vicious boy, who died from the effects of dissipation. Practically, during his entire term of public service, Prince Kung was the master mind in determining the policy of the government, and the shrewd and versatile politician and diplo- 24 THE REAL CIIEYAMAX. mat in its execution. His recent recall to the post formerly held by him is a distinct gain to the em- pire. Li Hung Chang was born in the province of An Huei, in Central China, in 1822. He comes from an ordinary Chinese family, which, however, has become noted from the fact that all of the sons in the present generation attained the highest rank in public service, each being entitled to wear the pink coral button. Hence his mother is highly honored among Chinese women. He became prominent in connection with the efforts made by the Imperial Government to suppress the Taiping rebellion, at which time he was governor of one of the provinces which was overrun by the insurgents. He ordered the immediate decapitation of five Wangs, or rebel chiefs, wlio had surrendered under a pledge made them by General Gordon that their lives should be spared and they should be allowed to go unpunished. He was made Viceroy of Chihli in 1871, and has been retained in that post continu- ously since. This is the highest viceroyalty in the empire, since the capital is within its limits. Li has had a large military experience, and in his bearing and modes of thought is more of the sol- dier than tlie politician. He is exceptionally large for a Chinese, has a gruff, hearty voice, and is ex- ceedingly democratic in his feelings. Despite the reserve and show of state which is supposed to sur- round an Oriental of his high station, he is easily reached, and may be seen by any foreigner who can induce his consul to request an interview. Some of these visitors, and they are many, might LI HUNG CHANG. IN TROD UCTOR V. 27 learn a lesson in ordinary politeness from the gruff old viceroy. One of them, an ex-governor of one of our States, who had been received with extreme courtesy, remarked to an American friend as they were leaving, the viceroy and his interpreter, through whom the conversation had been conduct- ed, being close at his side, " Well, I don't see that the viceroy is such an old heathen after all." Throughout his brilliant career, Viceroy Li has given consistent and conclusive evidence of his unswerving fidelity to the reigning family. He has been the strong right arm of the government. To him is mainly due the progress made in building up a navy of modern ships and organizing an army with modern weapons. The Imperial Government has leaned upon him more, relied more upon his counsel, trusted him more implicitly than any other officer, Chinese or Manchu, outside of Peking, within the limits of the empire. And there never has been a time when rumors of disaffection on his part or distrust upon the part of those above him had any foundation in fact. This is not only true of Li Hung Chang, but is equally true of all Chi- nese officials, so far, at least, as any objection to the reigning dynasty on account of its being Man- chu is concerned. Manchu rule has been wise, moderate, and sagacious. Aside from rare cases of personal favoritism, no discrimination whatever is allowed between Chinese and Manchu subjects. The number of Chinese office-holders exceeds enor- mously the Manchu list. As a matter of fact, the native race has absorbed its conquerors, and the two are practically one. It is as rare to find a Chi- 28 THE KEAL ClflXAMAX. nese who objects to the Emperor because he is a Manchu, as it is to find one of our British friends objecting to Her Majesty Queen Victoria because of her German extraction. CHAPTER II. THE GOVERNMENT OF CHINA. To misunderstand every- thing Chinese appears to be the rule in Western lands. And in no direction is this misunderstanding so pardon- able, so much, indeed, to be expected, as in questions rehiting to the government of that empire. To the student of modern political systems, with his ideas of authority based more or less completely upon a popular vote, with its clean-cut and accurate limi- tations and divisions of power, its immediate and well-defined responsibility to the governed, and its forms and methods carefully exposed to constant publicity, the system whicli has existed for thou- sands of years in China appears a hopeless puzzle. To him it is only a confused snarl of undefined and often conflicting power. He searches in vain for the end of the thread by wliich he may striughten out the tangle, iind abandons the task, himself con- fused and undecided whether the continued exist- ence of such a system, or tlie fact that any people could be governed by it for a single day, is the more remarkable. He classifies it by that familiar old phrase, an absolute despotism, and, thus la- belled, he leaves it. so THE REAL CHIXAMAN, Such a conclusion, readied from a standpoint exterior to China, is by no means remarkable. Her people possess few or none of those peculiar rights and privileges which appear so essential to others, nor can it truthfully be said that they long for them. Trial by jury is unknown, and the average Chinese defendant would shake his head at the idea, preferring to trust his case to one man rather than to twelve. Like the English and Americans, his language contains no phrase even remotely equivalent to habeas corpus. Nor does he know anything about such high-sounding phrases as " the palladium of our rights" and " the magna charta of our liberties." He is amused rather than interested at our elections, and has never had any direct voice either in the choice of those who rule over him or in the enactment of legislation. The laws of China are simply the expression of the will of the Emperor, made in individual cases. And the code — -for China has a code — is the collection and orderly arrangement of these imperial decrees as they have accumulated through many centuries. They are collated from an immense supply of prec- edents, and touch every imaginable case and all shadings of circumstance. The Chinese have an invincible repugnance to lawyers. Their strongest objection to all Western modes of judicial procedure is the existence and employment of lawyers in our courts. Said a distinguished Chinese statesman to the author : " We can trust our own judgment and common sense to get at the merits of any case and do substantial justice. We do not need to hire men to prove that right is wrong and wrong right." TJIK COl'KRX.UJ'lXT OF CHIXA. 31 The fact is, tliat while all Western nations are cc^ming more and more closely in their ideas of government to that declaration peculiarly fiimiliar to Americans, that " all governments derive their iust powers from tlie consent of the governed," the Chinese have not yet even considered such a theory. Few of them have heard of it. Their theory, on the other hand, is found, with tlie change of a sin- gle word, in iin old book which some of them have seen, and which declares that " the powers that be are ordained of Heaven." They have adhered to this generic idea of authority through all the ages, under emperors good, bad, and indifferent. Through repeated changes of dynasty and thousands of years of time, back to the point where their history ceases to be fact and becomes fanciful legend and myth, they have held unchanged to this idea, and no essential modification can at any period in all the centuries be discovered in their system of govern- ment. So far as their records show, it is to-day what it was in the days of Yao and Shun, more than four thousand years ago. Nor does history record any desire or effort, in all these years, to modify the Chinese form of gov- ernment. It not only has existed, it has satisfied the people who w^ere ruled by it. It has been copied by smaller adjacent peoples, but never re- pudiated by its own. It has existed for a far greater period of time than any other sj'stem of authority on earth ; has ruled an immense multi- tude of people — probably one third of the popula- tion of the globe — and has secured to them a rea- sonable measure of freedom, peace, and prosper- 32 THE REAL CHlXAJE-iy. ity. It apparently siitisfies them as well to-day as it did centuries in the past. There surely must be something good, some element which appeals to the better side of human nature, in any form of power of which this can be said. ENTRANCE TO THE PALACE. Whatever may be the explanation, it is not to be found in any lack or deficiency in the Chinese char- acter which would lead the race to submit quietly and without show of resistance to an oppression which other more progressive races would over- throw. The Chinese is cautious, slow, conserva- tive. But he has a sturdy independence of char- acter, an innate and strongly developed love of his rights, and will defend them as promptly and posi- tively as any men elsewhere. He may not select THE GOVERNMENT OE CHINA. Z2> the same methods as others, but he reaches the same end by his own way. The Chinese people have in numberless instances risen in opposition to their local rulers, but it has been an uprising against abuses of the system of government, never against the system itself. They have been known to deal with a local magistrate, such as the mayor of a city, in a most democratic and unceremonious manner ; have gone so far as to pull his queue and slap his face ; but it was not because of the exer- cise on his part of lawful authority, but because he had exceeded it. They are much given to attach- ing slang names to their officials, descriptive of their peculiarities of person or administration, and have even called the Emperor by a phrase equiva- lent to " Our Head Clerk ;" but this last is rare. Theoretically it may be proper to classify the Chinese system of government as an absolute des- potism, but in its practical operations such a de- scription of it not only fails to describe, but is mis- leading and unjust. It is paternalism pure and simple. Not the man, but the home, the family is the unit of Chinese life. And paternalism, based upon the ancient patriarchal idea of the position and authority of the head of the family, is the theory upon which the form of government is based. The only despotic element in it is to be found in the practically unlimited authority which, under tlie old patriarchal law, parents exercised over their children. This law is in full force in China to-day, and is perhaps more rigoroush' en- forced than any other. The theory is simple, and may be stated in a single line. The parent is the 34 THE A'EAL CHIXAMAN. absolute master of his son, entitled to his service and obedience so long as the parent lives. The son never becomes of age, in our sense of the word, during the life of the father — that is, never becomes independent of him. He must serve him so long as he lives, at the sacrifice of his own wife and chil- dren if necessity arise ; must honor him with an extravagant funeral at death, mourn him for three years, during which period his wife must not give birth to a child, and offer sacrifice twice each year, so long as he himself lives, at his father's tomb. The Chinese code provides that any one who is guilty of addressing abusive language to his or her father or mother, or father's parents, or a wife who rails at her husband's parents or grandparents, shall be strangled. Other penalties equally^ severe are provided for all possible offences against filial duty. And no statutes in the empire are more rigorously enforced. Upon the other hand, the father, having been given uncontrolled authority over his son throughout his life, is held responsible by the government for the conduct of the son. If the latter violates any law, his parents and grand- parents, if living, are punished with him, upon the theory that they had failed in their duty to instruct him in such a way as to make him a good citizen. A most shocking illustration of this theory occurred in Peking in 1S73. A Ciiinese was convicted of having broken open tlie tomb of a prince and robbed the coffin of some valuable ornaments con- tainerl within it. Although there was no evidence to shc^w that any relative of his was aware of the crime, much less a party to it, yet the entire family \ THE GOVERNMENT OF CI/ IN' A. 35 of thirteen persons, representing five generations, and including a man more than ninety years of age and a babe of less than two months, were put to death. The criminal and liis parents were sliced in pieces ; of the others, the men were be- headed and the women strangled. It is necessary to keep carefully in mind this patriarchal idea of parental authority, since from it the entire system of government in China has de- veloped. The family is the microcosm which, en- larged but otherwise unchanged, forms the type of power throughout the empire. The family, with its autocratic head, is the unit. Next comes the simplest form of combination in the village life, in which is found a considerable degree of local self- government, the old men being allowed a certain control, and being in return held responsible for the good conduct and proper discipline of the younger. Practically this semi-official council of elders is allowed to regulate the less important affairs of the commune without interference, and its opinion has great weight in the adjustment of questions of more gravity. Its functions have been fully recognized, not merely by high officials, but by every emperor who has occupied the throne. Some two hundred years ago the Emperor Kang Hsi, one of the wisest in the long list, prepared a series of eighteen essays upon the varied duties of his subjects in all their relations to each other and the State, and the elders in the different villages throughout the empire were commanded to call all the young men together upon the ist and 15th of each month and to reiid and expound to them the ^6 THE REAL CHIXAMAJSf. whole or a part of one of these essays. Following the village group comes naturally the larger com- binations up to the province, which corresponds substantially with our State. And these, eighteen in number in China proper, form the empire. The central figure in this system is, of course, the Emperor. He is the sire, the father of all the Sons of Han, as the Chinese are proud to call them- selves. Me receives his authority direct from Heaven. He is the source of law and the fountain- head of authority, the owner by Divine right of every foot of ]and and every dollar's worth of prop- erty in the empire. China has no domestic debt, and under this system can have none, for when the Emperor needs what is his and is still nominally in the possession of his subjects, he does not borrow, he simply takes it. All the forces and wealth of the empire are his, and he may claim the services of all male subjects between the ages of sixteen and sixty. He has another, a sacerdotal function, which adds largely to the reverence and semi-sacred character in wliich he is held by the people, and to which is due the seclusion in which he is kept. He is the son of Heaven, and, as such, Heaven's high- priest. He alone can worsiiip and offer sacrifice on behalf of his people at the great altar of Heaven. In this service he has no recognized substitute or subordinate. He stands alone between his people and the Heaven which is to them the final power, Jie source of blessing and bane, tlie sentient and perfect judge, swift to reward virtue and punish vice. But he stands there as its son and servant, thus forming the connecting link between his chil- THE GOVERXMENT OF CHIXA. 39 dren and Heaven, which is, in their eyes, his ancestor and theirs. While the imperial power thus described appears to be absolutely without limit, it is, in point of fact, no more despotic or arbitrary than that with which the head of every family in China is clothed. It is precisely the same in both kind and degree. The Emperor is simply the patriarch of his people. He exercises in that great area which forms the na- tivon, iind wliich they call "The Central Empire," neither more nor less than the same powers and privileges which each father of a family, even the meanest and most ignorant, exercises in his mud- walled and straw-thatched hovel. He delegates his parental authority, of necessity, to officers of various ranks and degrees, and each of them be- comes by this act the father of those under his jurisdiction. The patriarchal idea is the vital cord, the generic theory of the entire system ; and in that fact is to be found the explanation of its per- manence and the power which it has among the people. To these officers is given so large a measure of discretionary power that, in a considerable degree, each district becomes, like the village, self-govern- ing. Practically officials are held responsible for certain results. Ways and means are left to their judgment. They must keep order and administer justice within their jurisdiction to such an extent at least that no complaints are lodged against them at Peking, and collect and remit the amount of taxes due to the central government. The impe- rial commands appear not to run beyond those 40 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. points. The results of this freedom of action are twofold. They give, as has been stated, a consid- erable degree of liberty to local authorities to consult the popular will, and while they permit a vicious official to abuse his position, they make it certain that the popular censure for maladministra- tion shall rest upon him and not upon the source of his power. The government is thus loose-joint- ed in its application rather than the reverse ; and when the people complain, which they are not slow to do if occasion arise, it is not of despotic inter- ference with their affairs, but of indifference, not of too much government, but of too little. He who has absolute authority seldom exercises any. The despot is a mere figure-head, a nonentity. It must also be said that the laws, as a whole, are mild and humane, far superior to those found in any other Asiatic country. Sir George Stan- ton, who translated the Chinese code, said of it : " When we turn from the ravings of the Zend- Avesta or the Puranastothe tone of sense and busi- ness in this Chinese collection, it is like passing from darkness to light, from the dwellings of do- cage to the exercise of an improved understanding ; and redundant and minute as these laws are in many particulars, we scarcely know a European code that is at once so copious and so consistent, ■, /', and can l)e a man in only one tone of voice. In the stanchird or nuuuhirin dialect, as it iscalK'd among foreigners, there are four of tliese tones or inflections of the voice : first, a high-keyed, explo- Tirr. r.ANGUAGE. 67 sivc tone ; second, £i rising tone, as in asking a question with us ; third, a curving inflection ; and fourth, a falling inflection. A sound uttered in one of these tones has a meaning devoid of all re- lationship to or connection with exactly the same sound uttered in either one of the other three. Thus, to take the sound " man" again, if uttered in tlic first tone, it means l)razen-faced ; in the sec- ond tone, to hide ; in the third, full ; and in the fourth, slow. Another sound which might be rep- resented by our word "one," if used in the first tone, means warm ; in the second, educated ; in the third, steady ; and in the fourth, to ask. These illustrations show fully that there is abso- lutely no connection in idea between the different tones of the same sound. They show also that the tone is etpial partner with the sound in fixing tlie meaning of any utterance. Perhaps no rule of English speech is responsible for so many blunders in Chinese as that which requires the rising inflec- tion to be given to the final word of a question which can be answ^ered by " yes" or " no." The obedience to this rule becomes instinctive ; it pur- sues the unhappy foreigner into his Chinese, where, instead of indicating a question, it fatally affects the meaning of the last word of his sentence, and plays havoc generally with what he would say. He is fortunate if it renders his remark nonsensical rather than insulting. With peculiarities of consonant sounds unknown in any Western tongue, and with a special tone to each idea, a mistake in which changes the entire meaning, it is no easy matter to speak a single 68 THE REAL CI/IXAMAX. word of Chinese correctly. A long and steady drill of the vocal organs is necessary to the accurate and ready pronunciation of each separate character. At the outset of his Chinese studies the author de- voted four hours each day for eight weary months to a drill on the tone table — a table in which each sound in the language is given in the four different tones — and for many months afterward had occa- sional reviews of it. There are as many variations in these tones for the sake of rhythm as there are exceptions to some rules of English grammar — variations which add greatly to the labor of the student. Thus, for example, if, in any word of two syllables or sounds, the second is the emphatic syllable and is of the fourth tone, the tone is changed to the first. But the presence of so many varying inflections in Chi- nese gives a rhythmic swing to the language which makes it pleasant to spe^ik and exceedingly grate- ful to the ear. With some speakers whose inflec- tions are clear-cut and accurate, it sounds much like chanting. One might expect this effect, since it is impossible to speak in a monotone, and the voice, in any sentence, must pass through five notes of tlie musical scale. But the pleasure of Chinese speech comes, if at all, as a well-earned reward for indomitable perse- verance in mastering the most difficult language on earth, and is interrupted, often in the study and not seldom afterward, by the most annoying and absurd blunders. A volume might be filled with them. A missionary once informed his audience that the Saviour, when on earth, " went about eat- THE LANGUAGE. ^<^ ing cake." He intended to say " healing the sick ;" but an aspirate wrongly ])laced changed healing into eating, while an error in tone made cakes out of those who were ill. Upon one occasion, when the writer sat at his dinner-table as the host of a large party, he called the attention of his Chinese butler to some little item that was lacking from the table, and directed him to supply it. The butler appeared puzzled, asked if the article named was desired, and on being assured that it was, and must be produced at once and without more words, disappeared, and in a moment returned, bringing upon a tray, and with that wonderful gravity which never deserts a well-trained Chinese servant, the kitchen poker — an iron rod some three feet in length, knobbed at one end and sharpened to a point at the other. He probably believed that the host was about to brain one of his guests ; but that was none of his business, and the poker was gravely presented to his master, who had simply placed an aspirate where it did not belong. Upon another occasion my cook was directed to arrange, upon short notice, for a large evening re- ception. In order to lighten his labors, he was told that he might purchase one hundred " ladies' fin- gers" at the confectioner's. About two hours after this order was given he entered the legation riding upon the shaft of a Chinese cart, dismounted, en- tered the office, and reported that he had thor- oughly searched that section of Peking, but had been able to buy only sixty-four " ladies' fingers." It would be necessary to go to a distance to secure 70 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. the remaining thirty-six. He was told that the number bought would answer, and then asked why- he had hired a cart. " To bring them home," he replied. " But could you not bring them ?" was the next question. To this he replied : " Of course not ; they weigh five or six pounds each." An immediate inspection of that cart was the sequence of this startling statement regarding tin)^ strips of cake to be served with ice cream, with the result that the master found himself the disgusted owner of sixty-four fresh ox tongues. A wrong tone of voice had done all the mischief. The foregoing statements apply accurately to the Chinese language as spoken by at least four fifths of the population. While in certain regions there are slight local peculiarities of pronunciation and idiom, these are nowhere sufficienth' serious to de- serve mention with a single exception. This ex- ception consists of a strip of country bordering upon the seaboard, and extending from a point north of Shanghai to the extreme southern limit of the empire. It runs back inland in distances varying from fifty to one hundred and fifty miles. Through- out this region, while the written language is the same as in other parts of China, the spoken tongue is broken up into a number of local dialects. Pro- nunciation of the characters differs so widely in districts that are contiguous that it is commonly said among that Chinese that " people living upon one bank of a river cannot understand £i word ut- tered by their neighbors upon the other." Since Chinese officials are never allowed to hold posts of duty in tlic ]irovinces where they were born, TlfF. LAXCl'ACK. 7^ those on duty in these districts can only communi- Ccite with tlic people whom they i^overn l)y the use of interpreters. Chinese who emigriite to the United States, and, in fact, to other foreign parts, all come from within this area. Ilence, with few exceptions, none of tiiem speak or understantl the correct, standard Ciunese. A chapter ujion the ianouaoe of China would hardly be comph-tc unless it at least mentioned a nondescript tongue that has si>rung up within mod- ern times at the jioints where foreigners are by treaty allowed to reside and pursue their varied callings. Few of these learn the language, and their only medium of communication with the na- tives in the transaction of l)usiness is through the medium of what is known as " pidgin English." " Pidgin" is the net result of the native attempt to pronounce the word " business." Hence the proper name of the jargon would be " business English." With the exception cjf a few mongrel words gath- ered no one knows how or whence, it consists {;f the Chinese idiom literally translated into English ; the pronunciation, however, being varied to suit the exigencies of the native powers of speech and understanding. A couple of incidents will show how absurd and utterly undignified this mode of communication is, and will give all necessary ex- planation of its peculiarities. The reader may be a trifle astonished and perhaps incredulous at the assertion, which, however, is founded in fact, that nine tenths of the enormous business done between foreigners and natives in China is done by means of this grotesque gibberish. 72 THE kEAL chinaman: A young man who called upon two young ladies was gravely informed by the Chinese servant who opened the door : " That two piecey girlo no can see. Number one piecey top side makee washee, washee. Number two piecey- go outside, makee walkee, walkee." By which he meant to say that the elder of the two was taking a bath upstairs, and the 3'ounger had gone out. When King Kalakua, of the Hawaiian Islands, was in Shanghai in April, 1881, he occupied a suite of rooms up one flight of stairs at the Astor House. Two American gentlemen, desiring to pay their respects to His Majesty, went to the hotel one morning, and meeting the proprietor at the foot of the stairs, made known their errand, and inquired if the king was in. " I will see," replied the land- lord, and turning on his heel, he shouted to a Chinese servant at the head of the stairs : " Boy ! That piecey king top side hab got ?" " Hab got," laconically responded the servant. " Gentlemen," said the landlord, " His Majesty is in. Pray walk up." CHAPTER IV. CHINESE HOME I, I F E , In one respect at least China sets an example which all the world may wisely follow. In this empire every one marries, and no one " boards." Hence, generally speaking, there are as many wedded couples as there are men and women above the mar- riageable age, and as many present and prospective centres of home life as there are couples married. Bachelors and old maids are conspicuous only because of their absence. Marriage, however, seldom means an immediate, new, and independent home centre. It does not emancipate the man from his duty to his parents, nor lessen in any degree the obedience and support he is bound to render them. He never becomes of age and gains his independence so long as they live. A newly married pair invarial)ly take up their residence with the parents of the groom. In fact, the essential part of the ceremony is the con- veyance of the bride in a red sedan chair to the residence of the groom's parents, and the delivery of her to him there. By this act she loses all con- nection with her own home, her own family, and becomes an integral part of that of her husband. 74 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. And in it she does not appear to be primarily the wife of her husband so much as the servant, the drudge, of her mother-in-law. The lot of the young married woman in China is hard and unenviable in the extreme. She has no voice in the selection of the man to whom she is to be joined, but, theoretically at least, marries one whom she has never seen and to whom she has never spoken. Upon the day appointed for the ceremony she is carried and delivered to him liter- ally like " a cat in a bag," for her head and body to the waist are thus enveloped. He, upon his part, has never seen her, had no share in making the selection, and has not the least reason to be other than wholly indifferent to her. Hence, while mutual affection may come after marriage, it never precedes it, and has no share in the bond which binds the two together. In her new home she simply becomes a convenient under-servant. The most menial tasks, the heaviest burdens are laid upon her. Her only justification for continuing to live is found in child-bearing. Prior to that event she is not ordinarily given the title of a marrie motlicr-in-law. CJIIXI'.SK JIOMI-: J.IJ-K. 75 In motherhood alone does the Chinese woman find protection and honor. Yet even here her posi- tion, viewed from a Western standpoint, is pecul- iar and jierhaps grotes({iie. She may be an auto- GROUP OF CHILDREN. CI at with her children. She may claim absolute obedience from them, even when they are gray- headed and perhaps themselves fathers of families. She may become, in turn, the terror of several daughters-in-law, and wreak upon them the heavy load of misery she endured as a young wife. But 76 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. she is never anything but a servant to her liusband. In the event of her death her sons must, by Chinese law, wear mourning and go about with unshaven heads for a period of one hundred days. But her husband would render himself an object of ridicule and contempt among his friends if he put on mourning or expressed grief at her loss. He may marry again as often as he sees fit, but it is not considered respectable for a widow to take a sec- ond husband. The Chinese, with their usual dis- like for plain speech upon any disagreeable sub- ject, never say, " Widow Wang has married again," but " she has taken a step in advance." If a young Chinese widow desires the praise and honor of all her nation, and perhaps a monu- mental arch erected by command of the Emperor to celebrate her virtues, she will put an end to her own existence upon her husimnd's coffin. If she is ambitious in a more moderate degree, she will de- vote the entire remainder of her life to attendance upon the parents of the man whose name she bears. In conversation with some high officials of the government of China, I once referred to the recent death of the wife of the Prince Regent, and re- marked that of course the prince would go into retirement and lay aside his duties for a time. " Oh, no," replied one of the Cabinet with a laugh ; " the death of a wife counts iov nothing with us. Why should the prince go into mourning for her ? He can get as many more as he wishes." In point of fact, he already had several others on hand. In China a man is legally and morally allowed to marry as many wives as he can support. c/ii.v/':s/-: /ro.u/-: tjfe. 77 The first, or proper wife, appears to have a certain amount of precedence over the others. They are all servants, aniDno^ whom she is the head. The children by all are ecpially legitimate, and have equal rie^hts of inheritance. That this rule is liter- ally carried out is shown by the fact that the Em- peror, who seldom marries less than four " head wives," and has any where froni seventy-five to a hundred "assistant wives," as they are called, or concubines, as we should call them, is supposed to study the characters of all his sons by all these head and assistant wives, and to select from the entire number that one best qualified to succeed him upon his imperial throne. His selection, as miglit be expected, not infrequently falls upon the son of some favorite concubine, who thus becomes his successor. Chien Lung, one of the ablest rulers of China in many hundred years, was the four- teenth son of his father. And Tung Chih, who died in 1S75, and of whom so much cannot be said, was the son of a subordinate wife. Yet among the middle and poorer classes one wife is practically the universal rule, to which ex- ceptions are very rare. Some of my readers may be inclined to discover a relationship between the fact that, while any number of wives is permissible, more than one is seldom taken, and that other fact, already mentioned, that ii; the written language of the empire one woman under a roof means "peace," two women under a roof mean "dis- cord," and three, intrigue in its worst form. It would not Ix; at all surprising if some relationship did exist between these widely separated facts. 78 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. The Chinese is botn practical and of a philosophi- cal turn of mind. It would not be strange if he had seen fit, in this way, to build into the very- structure of his language a monument which should for all time give expression of his judgment as to the unwisdom of polygamy. It should not be inferred, from what has been said, that woman plays no other part in Chinese home life than one of service and drudgery. She has absolute control of her daughters until they are lost to her by marriage into other families. She to a large extent shapes the lives of her sons, and commands their full obedience from their birth until her death. The old women of a Chinese vil- lage not only dissect and disseminate all the gos- sip and scandal afloat in the community, but have a very influential part in determining public opin- ion. They form what may be called an undertow of influence in village affairs, and often decide mat- ters with which they have no apparent connection. This might be expected from the autocratic posi- tion occupied by them in regard to their sons. During more than thirty years two women, the wives of the Emperor Hsien Feng, and known to foreigners as the Empress Dowager and Empress Mother, have practically controlled the domestic and foreign affairs of China. In all important crises their judgment and will have been accepted as final authority, and have determined the policy of the government. Yet, in obedience to Oriental etiquette, they live in such strict seclusic^n that, when a council of State becomes necessary, they are indeed present, but concealed by a curtain, Their ciri.vESE iro.vF. tjfe. 79 voices are heard by tlie meml)ers of the Cabinet, but their faces are never seen. One of them died some few years ago, but the other is still vigorous, active, and potential in public affairs. These two women exactly illustrate the peculiar position occupied by women in the Chinese Em- pire. As wives they apparently have no influence whatever ; as mothers they are all-powerful. Dur- ing the life and reign of their husband, lisien Feng, the two were merely the puppets of his pleasure. They were unheard, unthought of in any other capacity. lUit with his deeith, in 1862, came their period of power which, in the case of one of them, has lasted until the present time. And this is all the more remarkable as showing maternal control to be an actual power, in view of the fact that for nearly twenty years of this period — since Janu- arv, 1875 — the nominal Emperor has not been tlie son of either of these women. He is a nephew of their deceased husband. Yet his respect and obedience to the will of his aunt are absolute. Then it is as true in China as everywhere else that a stronger will and character always domi- nates the weaker. Instances arc not rare in which the Chinese wife, hedged in and bound down by the most rigid rules of custom and law, unedu- cated and unrecognized except as a sort of upper servant, guides and controls her husband, and makes him the mere echo of her opinion. Still further, a Chinese woman never forgets that she has a tongue. Whatever may be her capacity in other directifuis, 5n shrill and voluminous scolding slie lias no eciual. Whoever luis once listened to a good sj^ecimen of So THE REAL CHI X AM AX. her efforts has noticed how the ver}' atmosphere seems to quiver and collapse under the torrent of abusive language which is poured forth, picturesque in its adjectives, and, fortunately, untranslatable into English. Whoever has once heard this will readily believe that in her tongue the Chinese wife possesses a vi'eapon against which man has no de- fence. He must either run or surrender. He re- ceives no comfort from his masculine neighbors. They jeer at and ridicule him, not at all from sympathy with the wife, but because he has failed to keep her in proper, that is to say quiet, subjec- tion. The ties of locality are ver}- strong among the Chinese, and hence new families, as they are formed, are commonly established in the imme- diate vicinity of that from whicli they sprung. In this wa}^ one sees groups or nests of families gath- ered about the parent stock. Whole villages may be found composed almost exclusively of persons of the same name, and containing four or five generations of the same family. " Smithville," " Jonesville," or, to translate more exactly, "The Village of the Chang Family," " The Town of the Wang Family," " The Li Family Cross-Roads' — these and similar names of hamlets, villages, and cities are so frequent throughout China that tliey form a large fraction of all the names of places in the empire. Tlic property of each family, and more particularly the real estate, is largely held and worked in common, and divisions of it only occur upon the death of tlie malt' head of tlie name. All members of the family, old and young, male CIlhXESE IIOMJi LIFE. 83 cind female, take part in the labor. If it is a farm, all go to the fields together at daybreak and spend the day at work. Women are as comnKjnly seen engaged in such labor as men. I once saw a Chi- nese farmer holding a plough which was drawn by a cow, a donkey, and his wife, the three harnessed and pulling together. The class of " globe trotters," as they are some- what irreverently called — persons of wealth, who travel about the earth sight-seeing — form a never- solved puzzle to the Chinese, His home ties are very strong. He never travels for pleasure, and never leaves home except when obliged to do so upon either public or private business. While ab- sent, whether in foreign lands or in some other part of his own country, he always looks upon him- self as an exile, is always more or less homesick, and, no matter how dirty and squalid his native village may be, he looks forward to his return to the wretched place as the chief joy of his life. The Chinese is not, and cannot become, a colo- nist without an entire change of his natural disposi- tion. True, he is found in America, North and South, in the Australasian colonies, in Burmah, Siam, the East Indian Archipelago, in Java, and Japan. But in none of these places is his stay per- manent. He is nowhere a colonist, but a temporary migrant. He resembles closely the migratory flocks of birds who feed in one region for many months, but build their nests and rear their young invari- ably in some spot well remembered but far distant. He is driven by emergency away from home, goes into what he considers as exile, but has all his 84 THE REAL CHINA MA AK plans for return carefully made before he sets out, and these plans and the hopes connected with them are never absent from his mind. A careful exami- nation of the lists of steerage passengers upon the various lines of steamships running between China and the foreign countries to which the Chinese go, if the examination were so extended as to cover a considerable term of years, would show that prac- tically all who leave the empire return again. They come and go like the migratory birds just men- tioned. Those who are so unfortunate as to die in exile have almost invariably made arrangements by which their bodies shall be carried back to their native village, there to rest with their an- cestors. It would astonish the people of this land could they know the total number of Chinese who have been in it during the past twenty years, and compare that total with the marvelously small number of graves of the Chinese found among us. And those whose bones have been left to lie perma- nently here were, beyond question, waifs, poor un- fortunates without home ties or friends in their native land. The Chinese is an acute and careful merchant, a patient, faithful, and diligent laborer, but, above everything else, he is a lover of his home. While he wanders all over the earth, and submits to all sorts of privations, abuses, and hardships, he is only a wanderer whose deepest, all-absorbing de- sire is for home, a quiet old age with his family, and, more important than all else, burial in the tomb of his fathers. This is true of him not only when necessity drives him into foreign lands, but CHINESE HOME LIFE. S5 equally so when he establishes himself in some other part of his own empire. It is not so much a love of China that deterniincs him in this ]")eculiar- ity as a local tie. A Cantonese never becomes a permanent resident of Pekini^, for example. He may 1^0 tliere on !)usiness — many of them do ; but they arc alwa}'s " pilgrims and strangers," and their plans invariably culminate in a permanent home in the village of their birth. If one of them dies in Peking, poor and friendless, the charitably disposed see to it that his body is sent home for burial. There are guilds, or benevolent societies, organized in every large city in the empire, one of the principal objects of such organization being to send home for burial such unfortunates as have died away from their families. The so-called " Six Companies" of San Francisco, about which so much and so many lies have been written, has this among the other purposes of their organization. A trav- eler in China will occasionally meet a coffin car- ried suspended between two long poles, and the ends of these poles fastened to the pack-saddles of two mules. Upon the head of the coffin is a wicker crate containing a white rooster. The coffin con- tains the body of some man who has died away from home, and is being thus carried, perhaps across the entire stretch of the empire, to its proper resting-place. The looster, which must be of spot- less white, unblemished by a single black feather, is supposed to guide or lead the soul of the dead man in the long journey, or to persuade it to ac- company the material part. And the livelier the young rooster is, the more he struts about in his 86 THE REAL CHI X AM AN. cage and crows, the more successful he is supposed to be in the performance of his function. This intensely strong tie of locality, developed, strengthened, and intensified as it has been through a thousand generations, is reinforced by what is to them a religion, and thus a final return, alive or dead, becomes a sacred necessity in the heart of every Chinese. Reference of course is made to the so-called " worship of ancestors." While we may and must condemn tliis worsiiip as a form of idolatry, I must confess that I have never seen a Chinese coffin being carried, either by sea or by land, on its long journey back to the na- tive village of its occupant, without being remind- ed of the beautiful bit of history found in the early part of the Bible, in which it is written that Abra- ham bought a field and a cave for a burial-place for Sarah, his wife, in Hebron. Abraham himself was buried there, and so were Isaac and Rebecca. After the deatli of Jacob, Joseph and his brethren carried the body of their father from Egypt back to Canaan, and laid it there beside Leah. Joseph exacted a jiromise from his children that his ashes too should be laid in the same tomb. And this promise was fulfilled two centuries after his death. Surely one can hardly fail to respect in the Chinese a feeling which, they hixve in common with the ear- liest members of the human family, and which they have carried into practice during thousands of years. The Chinese Government has taken advantage of this peculiarity of the people in a curious way. One of the essential conditions required of any for- Clil\li.SK JIOMK LIFE. 8^ elgner who may desire to become a naturalized sub- ject of China is that he should own a graveyard, have a burial-place within the limits of the empire. Such ownership is regarded as final evidence of his intention to become a permanent resident. In another way the government has for many centuries exercised its influence in a manner calcu- lated to keep the people at home, and to minimize and counteract any tendency to change either their residence or occupation. One of the sections of tlic Code of Laws orders that persons and families truly represent their profession in life, and refrain from altering it. " Generation after generation, they must not change nor alter it" — so the statute reads. The wisdom of such a law in its effect upon a people already too little inclined to favor change of any sort may, perhaps, be questioned. To-day it is practically a dead letter. But it has had a double influence upon the nation. It has caused them to hand down their various callings and oc- cupations from father to son without variation or improvement in methods or processes. It has, at least, had a part in restraining China from all prog- ress, until she is centuries behind the age. And it has, indirectly, segregated the people. A man naturally remains where his business is ; and if that business must be that of his father, he naturally follows it where he finds it — at home. His interests centre there, and he seldom wanders far afield. I once asked an old man whom I saw leaning against the sunny side of a mud wall, as a slight pro- tection from the piercing January wind, how far it was to a Chinese city where I was planning to spend 8S THE REAL CI/IXAJfA?/. the night. He replied that he did not know. Sur- prised and incredulous at his answer, I asked him whether he too was a traveler. " Oh, no !" he said ; " I live just over there," nodding his head at a comfortable-appearing Chinese house not a hundred yards distant. " How long have you lived there ?" asked I. " All my life," said he, " and I am seventy-eight years old." " And you do not know how far it is to such a city ?" persisted I, in- credulous at his statement. " No. Why should I?" he responded. "I have never been there." This was more amazing still. " You are seventy- eight years old, have lived here all your life, and never been there!" I exclaimed. "Of course not," the old man stoutly retorted. " Why should I go there ? I live here." The city named was less than ten miles distant ! The effect of the law mentioned in encouraging the permanence of all things, though not in the wisest sense of that word, may have another illus- tration. In every city of considerable size in China there will be found a certain number of shops for the repair of clocks and watches. No such articles are manufactured in China, few people own them, and the importation is comparatively small. A trav- eler might be interested to learn where these shops find their customers, and, above all, where they learned their triide. The imswer is simple. They know little or nothing of their business. They are invariably Roman Catholics, and inherited both their religion and their calling from their ancestors, who were converts and students of the very early Catholic missionaries in China, more than two hun- CIIIXESE JJOMK JJFE 89 dred years ago. And they only know as much, or as little, of clock and watch repairing as the mis- sionaries were able to teach their ancestors then. Honor thy father and thy mother" is a com- mand so inwrought into the very fibre of the Chi- nese nature, so sustained by public opinion, and so WAI.I, ABOUT PEKING. carefully reinforced by law, that he who neglects it even in a small degree, if he escapes punishment as a criminal, is certain to l)e ch'iven from society as a leprobate and a heathen. It is, in fact, carried to such an unreasonable extreme that it has practi- cally become a form of tyranny. It leaves no room for independent action or personal judgment, and a man cannot exercise his individual powers of manhood until he is too far advanced in years to liave their exercise productive of growth or any 90 THE REAL ClfEVAMA.V. Other beneficial results. At the same time, one of the most pleasing features of Chinese home life is the deference and respect shown to their elders by the younger members of the household. Such nondescript creations as half-grown boys superior in imaginary wisdom and in practical experience with the seamy side of life to their fathers are unknown there. Such phrases as " the old man," " the governor," " the old woman" are not found in the language — at least as applicable to parents. Age is invariably respected and honored. A ragged, dirty, and foul-mouthed beggar-woman upon the streets has so much of reverence shown to her gray hairs that she is never addressed with any other term than " lao tai tai" — " venerable lady." Gray- headed ministers of State, burdened with heavy cares of office, still find time to attend upon their mothers, who may be toothless, blind, and petu- lant with the fretfulness of second childhood, with the same assiduous care and obedience to all their unreasonable whims that they were taught to give in boyhood. If old age is, indeed, the reward of filial obedience and honor, then the average length of life in China ought to be greater than anywhere else on earth. Sometimes this respect and affection is shown in what would seem to us as a questionable form, but it is always in accordance with Chinese ideas of propriety. It is no uncommon sight in Peking or any other city of the empire to see a company of men, headed by a band of music and many ban- ners, parading the streets in a long procession, at the centre of which are two coffins. The ab- CHINESE HOME LIEE. 9 1 sence of white, which is the national mourning color, the lively strains of music, and the general air of pleasure throughout tlie members of the party, makes it certain that they are not perform- ing the last sad rites for the dead. The two coffins have been purchased by the sons of, say, Mr. and Mrs. Chang, as a slight token of filial affection and honor. And they are being carried with great pomp and display to the home of the old people, to whom they will be presented with pleasant speeches and appropriate replies from the sur- prised recipients. By us such a present would be regarded much as we regard the action of a friend who pulls out his watch in the midst of a call we are making upon him as a hint that we had best be taking our departure. But Chinese parents have no such squeamish notions. They accept these finely lacquered and decorated coffins as a final proof of the forethought and affectionate care of their children. They are placed in the state apart- ments of their home, carefully protected from in- jury, and shown with great pride to their friends. The Chinese may not have expensive pianos in their drawing-rooms, but they are frequently pro- vided in advance with the casket which is to fur- nish their last resting-place ; and this, if less noisy, is equally satisfying to their pride. The lugubri- ous side of the gift never strikes them. They see in it only the love, respect, and forethought of their children. It assures their minds upon one point which is of great importance to a Chinese : it is a present pledge of an honorable, dignified funeral. 92 THE REAL C/I/XJMAY. It may be said in passing, thongh not strictly germane to tlie subject of this chapter, that the Chinese often provide themselves with coffins years in advance of death, and when in robust health. These are carefully put aside against the day of need. A childless widow, for many years in my employ, as a result of the closest economical use of her wages of $4 a month, at last was able to save a sum necessary to buy herself a coffin of plain, un- carved, and unvarnished cedar. Having no home in which to store it, she accepted the offer of a dis- tant relative, a farmer living several miles out of town, to give it room in his house. For three years she made semi-annual pilgrimages upon a donkey to this place of storage in order that she might assure herself that her coffin was safe and kept in good order. But at last she returned from one of these journeys heartbroken, with her tale of woe. Her relative, being hard pressed for money, had pawned her coffin, and then had put the cli- max upon her disaster by selling the pawn-ticket. Undismayed by this unfortunate experience, the old woman began again to save funds, only a cash or two at a time, w^th which to buy another coffin ; but cliolcra seized her before the task was com- pleted, and friends gave her the desire of her heart, a decent burial. CHAPTER V. CHINESE SOCIAL LIFE The Chinese devote little time to amusement and rec- reation. To the poor, who form an immense majority of the population, life is a never- ending struggle against starvation. They rise at dawn and work until dark, have no Sundays or other rest days. They have but three established holi- days in the year. Weddings and funerals form their only excitements, and the only luxuries of which they dream are an ounce or two of meat at very rare intervals with their invariable food of rice and cabbage, and the necessary tea and to- bacco. With them half a day of idleness means half a day of hunger, and they appear to lack both opportunity and capacity for what is called social enjoyment. The middle class are extremely busy, but appear to take life more easily. Many of the officials have an excess of leisure, but those who are high in office and in favcjrwith the Emperor are sadly overworked. I once asked a member of the Chinese Cabinet, who was complaining of fatigue and exhaustion, for a statement of his daily routine of duty. He replied that he left home every morning at two 94 THE REAL CHIXAMAN. o'clock, as he was on duty at the palace from three until six, and if the Emperor was to give him audi- ence upon public affairs, the interview always took place before dawn. As a member of the Privy Council, he was engaged in that body from six until nine. He was President of the War Depart- ment, and hence was there from nine until eleven. Being an officer of the Supreme Court, he was necessarily in daily attendance upon that body from eleven until two. And as he was the senior and responsible minister of the Foreign Office, he spent the hours from two until five or six there every afternoon. These were his regular daily duties. In addi- tion to them, he was frequently appointed upon special commissions, boards of inquiry, or to posts involving additional labor, and these he sandwiched in between the others as well as he could. He stated that he never reached home before seven or eight o'clock in the evening, and that his connec- tion w^th his family was merely nominal, as he was never able to eat a me^il with them, and really knew less about them than he did about the affairs of his master, the Emperor. Restaurants are con- nected with all the various offices mentioned by him, and at these, when he had time, he got his food. He died six months after the conversation here reported, literalh' of overwork and exhaus- tion.* Other able Chinese officials have been known to sacrifice their lives in the same way. Indeed, * This statement was originally given to the public, several years ago, in an article written for the Youth's Companion by the author of \\n% voluriie. I CIIIXKSK SOCIAL LIFE. 97 they have no possible way of escape. The will of the Emperor is a final command, and they can only struggle on, overtaxing both Ijraiu and body, until one or the other gives way, or the utter collapse of both sends them into a premature grave. Such men take no part in Chinese social life. Oriental ideas of society are based upon a very different model from those in Western lands. They are so hampered and confined by conventionalities, etiquette, and peculiar notions of what is proper and becoming, that general society, as we use the phrase, thereby meaning the intermingling of the two sexes, is absolutely impossible. There are no social occasions or assemblies in the empire where men and women meet as friends and entertain each other. Such modes of harmless amusement are impossible without an entire reformation of the Chinese social code. The rules of proper inter- course between the sexes, or, to speak more exact- ly, the rules forbidding any intercourse of any sort whatever, are rigid, inflexible, and admit of no exceptions. The Chinese, even in the case of old friends, never make inquiry as to the health of the female members of each other's families, or refer to them in any way. With them the question, " How is your wife?" which is so common and innocent a civility elsewhere, would be regarded as discourte- ous and insulting, even between acquaintances of years' standing. Men who have grown gray to- gether will inquire about and discuss the qualities of each other's sons with the utmost freedom, but they may never mention the female members of pS THE kEAL CIIEVAMAN: the families, even to ask concerning a little girl only- eight or nine years of age. The nearest they may approach this forbidden topic is by the use of a phrase generally interpreted as meaning "your family," but which is, in fact, far less direct and to the point than that expression. An illustration of this social law is worthy of being recited. In May, 1875, news reached Peking that an hon- ored Chinese official, then resident in the United States, had married an American lady. Soon after the receipt of this intelligence, the United States Minister and I had occasion to visit the Chinese Foreign Office. The minister informed me that he intended to congratulate the Chinese officials upon this marriage. I advised him that it was contrary to Chinese notions of propriety to refer to such sub- jects, and that his remarks would be misunderstood. However, when the party were, as usual, seated around a table at the Foreign Office, tea had been served, and the ordinary salutations exchanged, the minister requested me to say to Prince Kung, then at the head of the government, that " the re- lations between the United States and China, which had been of so friendly a character for many years, ought to be much strengthened by the fact that a distinguished Chinese officer had married a pretty Yankee girl." I again remonstrated with the min- ister, but upon his renewed request, I repeated this remark in Chinese to the prince. We were seated around a circular table, and besides the prince and two foreigners there were present six members of the Cabinet, venerabh,' and gray-headed men. For a moment there was a dead silence. Each minis- CHINESE SOCIAL LIFE. 99 ter of State looked down at his plate. None dared to speak. Then Prince Kung raised his head, looked at me for another moment in silence, and, drawing a long breath, remarked : " It is fearfully hot to-day." This was the sole outcome of our minister's well-meant but ill-timed congratulations. Not only are mixed assemblages of the two sexes forbidden by the Chinese social code, but husband and wife are not expected to appear together in public. There are necessary modifications to this rule, as, for example, when families are traveling long distances. Even in such cases the female members of the family have their own servants, who look after their comfort, and the master ignores their presence as far as possible. In point of fact, the entire domestic relationship which every man in China has is universally and abso- lutely ignored and tabooed. Every one knows, as a matter of course, that it exists, but no one ever mentions or recognizes it. A Chinese gentleman very rarely appears upon the street with his wife, and, when he does, never walks beside, but follows her. And under no circumstances could he be in- duced to ride in the same carriage with her. It would irretrievably ruin his reputation to do so. An amusing wrangle wliich once took place in Peking between a foreigner and a party of Chinese muleteers illustrates Oriental prejudice upon this point. A party of foreigners were setting out in mule litters — large sedan chairs borne by two mules — on a journey of five days. One gentleman desired, for the sake of company, to occupy the same litter with his wife. With a little crowding lOO 77//-; KliAL CIIIXAMAX. it could be made to carry two persons. The mule- teers at once protested, and refused to proceed. They insisted that it was a gross breach of Chinese propriety, and that they would be abused and jeered at throughout the journey. And they more than hinted that if the foreigner cared nothing for his own or his wife's reputation, they must protect theirs, and they would not be parties to any such scandalous proceedings. No persuasion and no offer of extra wages would move them. To them it was a question of morals, not of money. The scheme was of necessity abandoned. Another incident somewhat in the same line de- serves record, since it shows how very broadly our ideas of social intercourse between persons of op- posite sexes differ from the Chinese, and also what serious injury may be done by running counter to their prejudices. The headquarters of the Chinese students who were some years ago sent to this country to be educated, under the care and at the expense of the Chinese Government, were in Hart- ford, Conn. Some of the young men went to church and Sunday-school. One of them, walking home from church one afternoon American fash- ion — vvliich is to say, with a young lady — met the Chinese director of this educational mission, as it was called, out driving. The young gentleman politely bowed, and removed his hat to his supe- rior. The conservative old disciple of Confucius C(juld hardly credit his eyes. Here was one of the boys under his charge, for whose moral and men- tal training he was responsible, actually walking in full daylight upon the streets with a young woman I CIIIXESE SOCIAL LIFE. who was neither his sister nor his first cousin. This fact alone was quite sufficient to stamp the reputation of both the young people as hopelessly bad. But to complete his offence, the youn^^ man FRONT OF OFFICIAL RESIDENCE. had the effrontery to remove his hat before his superior, an act which of itself was a grave breach of Chinese etiquette. The incident was reported to Peking, where it was looked upon, as the director 102 THE REAL CHINAMAN. himself viewed and characterized it, as an evidence that the students had quite lost their good manners and sense of decency. With other and more seri- ous causes, it led to the recall of the entire body of students, and the abandonment of the enterprise. Chinese ladies do a considerable amount of call- ing, and have other social duties, exclusively among themselves. They evidently have the same ques- tions of dress and fashions to discuss that their sis- ters in other lands find so absorbing. While the cut of their garments never changes, being exactly the same to-day as it was two centuries ago, the style of decoration varies from year to year. They never shop except in the retirement of their own apart- ments, to which all articles which they may desire to purchase are taken. It is said that they gamble and even take opium " socially," but of the truth or falsity of the statement I have no certain knowl- edge. It is difficult to conceive what amusement they can have, or how they manage to pass the hours, either in their own homes or when congre- gated together at sociid afternoon feminine teas. They do no work, as a retinue of servants is pro- vided to attend to all household duties. None of them can either read or write. As an evidence that they are ladies, and as such above labor of any sort, their finger-nails are allowed to grow to an extraordinary length — to such length, in fact, that they wear gold or silver " nail sheaths," much as a sewing-woman wears a thimble — that is to say, it is fitted X.o the finger in the same manner, and extends the length and in the natural curve of the nail which it encases. Tiny bells dangle from CJIIXESK SOCIAL LIFE. 103 it by delicate chiiins. This fashion effectually pre- vents them from busying their lingers with those trifling bits of fancy work with whicli ladies in other lands occui)y so many spare moments. The women of the poorer classes appeiir to have absolutely no ideas beyond the range of household drudgery and food and clothing. True, they love to gather, two or three of them, under the shade of a tree in summer, or on the sunny side of a wall in winter, and exchange bits of gossip about neigh- borhood affairs. But no idea of a social gathering, in the Western sense of the phrase, can be said to have found its way into their minds. A foreign lady once invited several of these poor women, neighbors and acquaintances of each other, to spend the afternoon with her, and provided for theni a very simple entertainment of buns and tea. In due time these articles were placed upon the table, and the hostess, being called from the room for a few moments, asked her guests to help them- selves. Upon her return she found that they had carefully counted out to each woman her share of the buns, an odd one being divided with the most exact justice between them all, and each had taken her share and a cup of tea to a corner of the room, where she refreshed herself in silence. In Chinese country life some of these strict rules of separation between the sexes are, in a very mod- erate degree, set aside. The inhabitants of a vil- lage will raise a small sum by subscription, with which to construct a cheap mat-shed for a stage, and employ a company of strolling actors to per- form for a day or two at the time of the spring and I04 THE REAL CHI X AM AX. autumn festivals. All members of the various families attend tliese ; but the women and girls are carefully seated by themselves in a reserved space, and opportunities for general intercourse are very slight. In the larger cities ladies sometimes attend the theatres, which there are permanently estab- lished, but they always occupy secluded and care- fully screened boxes. It is naturally impossible that in village life, where men and boys, women and children, all go together to the fields at dawn and work there together until dusk — that under such circumstances the same absolute restraints should be enforced as in the easier seclusion of town life. Yet it is astonishing how keenly the sharp eyes of the old women in such a company of laborers watch the younger women and men, and how little of familiar conversation is allowed be- tween them. There is another reason aside from this separa- tion of the sexes which renders many of what we are accustomed to regard as among the highest pleasures of social life impossible in China. They are totally at variance with Chinese ideas of enjoy- ment. It is related that the first Chinese minister to this country was once invited to a reception in Washington, where dancing was the principal fea- ture of the evening's entertainment. After watch- ing the flushed and heated dancers for some time in undisguised amazement, and contrasting tlieir violent exercise with their elegant and manifestly expensive costumes, he turned to a friend and in- quired : " Why do they do that hard work ? Can- not thev afford to hire some one to do it f(jr them ?" CiriXKSE SOCIAL I.ll-K. 1 05 The accuracy of this story cannot be verified ; but if it is not true, it ought to be, as it exactly repre- sents the Oriental idea of much of what we consider as pleasure. His conceptions have been fixed in a totally different mould. He has, indeed, but one model in life — the Confucian. A gentleman must be, above and before everything else, dignified and stately in his motions. To walk rapidly is an offence ; to run is absolutely vicious. And to him whirling about on a polished floor would, if men alone were engaged in it, be almost a proof of in- sanity. But when men and women engaged in it locked arm in arm, if his notions of politeness al- lowed him to characterize his view of the amuse- ment, it would be in terms far from complimentary. The female sex has no place in his idea of respect- able pleasures, nor has violent exercise of any sort a place in his category of gentlemanly amusements. Chinese gentlemen visit and entertain each other to a considerable extent. But their laborious code of etiquette, elsewhere described, is so cumbersome and vexatious in its details regarding the reciprocal duties of host and guest as to destroy all spon- taneity of action, and make entertainment a bur- den rather than a pleasure. If, in calling upon a friend, one is met at the door by that person, and then he must spend five minutes with him in a polite wrangle over the question which shall first pass the portal, it being absolutely certain at the outset which shall eventually do so ; and if this ready-made sort of politeness must be repeated over and over again, when the visitor takes his seat, when he receives the inevitable cup of tea, lo6 THE REAL CinXAMAY. and at every other point and movement of the in- terview — if making social calls involves all this, as it does in Chinese polite society, then it is easy to see how closely social intercourse comes to being a bore and a nuisance. Many Chinese gentlemen have fine libraries of ancient Chinese authors, and are able to talk intel- ligently and with great interest about their own literature. Many of them, too, make a special study of antique porcelains, jades, coins, litho- graphs and paintings, all of Chinese origin, and to one somewhat familiar with these subjects they make most charming companions. In discussing questions relating to such subjects the foreigner naturally finds himself in the position of a learner, his Chinese host being his instructor. And he will show such careful research, such patient detail in his investigations, as to astonish his pupil and arouse his admiration. It requires a peculiar course of instruction, only obtainable by experience, before a man having Western ideas can come into anything approaching familiar social intercourse with a Chinese gentle- man. Each has to make so many allowances for the other, their courses and systems of education have been so different, their mental methods are so diverse, their respect for standard authorities rests upon such dissimilar foundations — in short, each finds so many points of what he regards as gross ignorance in the other, that two such men can only come by slow processes, and by a gradually devel- oped mutual forbearance, to be familiar friends. By way of illustration, we should hardly expect to CHIKKSr-: SOC/AL LIFE. 107 find a man able to reason closely and logically on ]-)<)ints of mental and moral philosophy who did not kn(nv that the earth was spherical, and who could not possibly be made to understand that a traveler wishing to go from New York to Peking would be equally certain of reaching his destina- tion either by traveling east or west. Yet there are many such men in tlie Cliinese Empire. One would not expect to find an acute and sagacious statesman in a person who had never heard of the law of gravitation, and wlio was confident that an eclipse was caused by a dog in the heavens endeav- f)ring to devour either the sun or the moon, as the case might be. Yet there are such. It seems strange to us that a person could be a master of style in composition, and have a wide and well- deserved reputation as an elegant and polished writer, yet be ignorant of the simplest fundamental elements of what to us constitutes an education. Yet there are many such examples. The Chinese gentleman — he is always a literary graduate — is fond of an argument. He has his own system of logic, and reaches his conclusions on what may seem at times to us to be whimsical and even absurd grounds. He is acute, quick to detect flaws in the chain of reasoning of his adver- sary, and to take advantage of them. He always bows to an}' quotation from the writings of Confu- cius. He sometimes, to his own satisfaction at least, turns the tables upon his opponent, and makes his own interpretation of certain mutually accept- ed facts settle in his favor some hotly contested principle. It is from this peculiarity that argument lo8 THE REAL CHIXAMAN. with him has a special interest. It shows how his mind works, and to what extent credulity is made to take the place of broad and well-established gen- eral principles. I once had an aigument lasting several hours with a distinguished Chinese scholar who held a high post under the government, over the general proposition, advanced by him, that a fox had the power to turn himself at will into a man. Gro- tesque as this proposition may appear, we fought over it for the time mentioned, neither apparently making headway against the other, when suddenly my friend and opponent said : " But how can you deny what you know has occurred, as an actual fact, here in Peking ? And you yourself are familiar with all the circumstances of the case. A soldier in the British Legation was preparing for bed one night a couple of years ago, when he heard the cry of a fox in the legation grounds. He dressed again, took his rifle, and telling his wife that he was going to kill that fox, went out. Shortly after she heard the report of his rifle, and fell asleep. When she awoke in tlie morning she was surprised not to find him in the room. A few moments later two of his comrades brought his dead body into the house. He had been found in a clump of laurel bushes, shot through the head. His rifle lay beside him, but the fox weis nowhere to be seen. Now, what can be plainer," exclaimed my antago- nist most triumphantly, " than the facts of this case ? Tlie soldier was ciiasing that fox through those laurel bushes. He was gaining on him ; the fox saw that he was likely to be caught, and so, in CIIIXKSE SOCIAL LIFE. I09 the flash of an eye, he changed himself into a man, snatched his rifle from the poor soldier, and shot him through the head with his own weapon. Then he changed himself into a fox again and ran away. Why do you need argument in the face of such facts ?" And he, smiling and confident, paused for my reply. My only reply was, and the only possible answer, that I adinitted his facts, which indeed were familiar to every person in Peking ; but I denied his inferences. The transfcjrmation of the fox into human form and his subsequent action were not facts, but inferences. My infer- ences were that the soldier was crawling upon his hands and knees tlirough the laurel thicket in a stealthy approach to the fox, and that he was care- lessly dragging his rifle behind him, having hold of it near the muzzle. A twig caught the trigger and exploded the piece, the charge entering his brain. Thus the argument ended, neither side hav- ing won the other to his view. Grotesque as his ideas upon this point of natural history may ap- pear, this Chinese was a wise, sagacious, and broad- minded public officer. Chinese reception-rooms and libraries are fitted up with great elegance, though not, perhaps, in accordance with our ideas of comfort. To recur again to the strict seclusion required of the female portion of any household, it should be noticed that a caller, in approaching these rooms, is expected to make his approach known by a cough, in order to afford them time to retire before he enters. The Chinese are very proud of their sons, and they are allowed to be present, and are exhibited with an no THE REAL CHIXAMAN. assumption of Indifference and many formal words of disappointment and regret at tlieir stupidity, all of which is only a barely perceptible veil covering their fondness and pride. The surest way by which to gain a much-desired point with a Chinese father is to see him, if possible, in his own home, and there to admire and praise his sons. It need hardly be said that all social intercourse between natives and foreigners in China is strictly confined to persons of the same sex. This is un- fortunate, no matter from what point it is viewed. But no change is likely until Oriental views of pro- priety shall be so far relaxed as to conform in some degree to the practice in Western lands. And this is a change which cannot be hastened, and any effort to force it would have an effect in exactly the opposite direction. At present the international gatherings, as they may be called, for social pur- poses, lacking that which the grace, wit, and beauty of woman alone can give, are, on the whole, dreary festivals. It requires mucli patience and a philo- sophic turn of mind to endure them ; or perhaps it is better to say that it would require these qualities were there not invariably so large an element of comicality j^resent to enliven the feast. In dinner-giving in China between Chinese and foreigners, the guests are invariably at the mercy of their hosts. The peculiarities of table service are each so utterly unlike the other, the dishes served are so strange, and the whole code of table manners is so widely diverse, that a dinner of this sort, otherwise tedious, becomes entertaining by reason of the very l)lunders of the guests, who may CHINESE DRAGON (MOULDED IN PORCELAIN). CHINESE SOCIAL LIFE. 113 be past-masters in the art of elegant dining upon their own ground, but become blundering school- boys with strange food strangely cooked and to be eaten with strange utensils. If an American chases a grain of rice all around the circumference of his plate with a pair of chop-sticks when he is a guest at a Chinese dinner, he has his revenge when, at his own table, he watches his former host, after numerous struggles with a knife and fork, gravely abandon them and make free use of nature's uten- sils — his lingers. In entertaining strangers from strange lands, one is often amused and also instructed. It was once my fortune to show civilities to a distinguished Corean, a member of the Cabinet, who came to Peking at the head of the annual embassy to the Emperor of China. lie was a man of dignified and refined manners ; his face showed acuteness and ability, and he was greatly esteemed for his high scholarship and literary ability. Yet the photographic camera and the photographs of him- self taken that winter were the first articles of the sort he had ever seen. A kerosene lamp was an utter novelty to him, and he evidently disbelieved the statement that the oil burned in it flowed from the ground. He had never seen, much less set foot within, a foreign residence, and all its varied arrangements and conveniences were of the utmost interest to him. He was startled out of his usual dignified bearing when he seated himself in an upholstered spring-bottomed chair. At a dinner which I gave to him and his colleague, it was almost pathetic to notice how carefully the two Corean 114 THE REAL CirEXAMAY. gentlemen watched the actions of others at the table, and followed the example they thus found in the use of table implements, and the mode of eat- ing food with which they were wholly unfamiliar. But in the course of the dinner they gave their host an illustration of Corean table manners which was amusing at the outset, and by its ultimate con- sequences quite upset his gravity. Each Corean brought his body-servant to the dinner, and each servant placed himself behind his master's chair. As they took no part in the service of the table, their presence at first appeared to be purely orna- mental, or a sort of necessary exponent of the rank and dignity of their masters. It soon became evi- dent, however, that there were certain emoluments attached to their position ; for when the master of either had eaten as much of any course as he cared for, he would pass what remained on his plate, or so much as he could gather in his fingers, over his shoulder to his servant, who would eat it. Thus when, for example, chicken cutlets were served, the master would pass the bone, with some remnants of flesh upon it, to his man, who would gnaw it clean, and gravely drop the bone upon the carpet. This was amusing, though not specially benefi- cial to my carpet. However, my revenge came later, when, in an unlucky moment. His Excellency Chin Hong Chi handed to his servant the butt of a particularly large stem of French asparagus. The master had dealt with it as he had seen other gentlemen deal willi theirs, and the result was favorable. The servant was not so fortunate. His CHINESE SOCIAL LIFE. "5 heroic efforts to chew and swallow the strange arti- cle of food made him black in the face, quite upset the gravity of the host, and made him guilty of a grave breach of Oriental etiquette. And the wretched valet probably left the feast disgusted at the bad taste of foreigners, who would serve boiled corn-stalks with melted butter upon their tables, and amazed at the strength of foreign jaws and the sharpness of foreign teeth, which could cope with a vegetable so hopelessly tough. CHAPTER VI. CHINESE RELIGIONS It is difficult to understand how Confucius has come to be regarded as the founder of a system of religious belief. He is so regarded among many foreigners, and even by some writers who should be better inform- ed. He wrote little or nothing upon what may be termed religious topics further than to endorse and commend certain rites which had been practiced commonly among the people for centuries before he was born. He exhorted his followers to the orderly observance of these rites, but went no further. Though he believed himself commissioned to restore the doctrines and usages of the ancient kings — and he claimed no higher mis- sion than this — he professed to know little or noth- ing about the higher powers, and never taught that man had a duty to a power higher than the head of his family or of the State. When he was once questioned about divinities, he said that he did not understand much about the gods, and believed that the duty of man lay rather in fulfilling his obligations to his relatives and society, than in the worship of unknown spirits. On another occasion, CHINESE RELIGIONS. II7 being (luestioned regarding sacrifice to spirits, he said : " Not knowing life, how can we know death ?" Confucius was a moral phihjsoplier, not a re- ligious leader. He was a sage, not a devotee. He elaborated a system of ctliics which has stood the test of the centuries, and has liad much to do with the conservation of the Chinese nation. But it may well be doubted whether he felt any serious personal interest in the religious observances which he coun- tenanced. If so, his interest lay rather in their antiquity than in any faith in their efticacy. The whole burden of his teachings was in behalf of moderation, order, and what may be termed the lower grades of virtue. He never got beyond the negative form of the golden rule ; and it is ex- tremely probable that he intended not so much to advise the practice of any religious rites as that, if practiced, it should be in a decorous and digni- fied manner. Two and a half centuries had passed after his death before the Chinese came to recognize his wisdom in any practical way. Confucius was born B.C. 551, and died b.c. 479. Yet, so far as the his- torical records show, Kao Tsu, the first emperor of the Han dynasty, was the first to show special reverence and regard for the sage by offering sac- rifice at his tomb, about r..c. 200. And it was not until the first year of the Christian era that a temple was erected to his memory by imperial com- mand. Such places of worship and sacrifice must now be numbered by thousands. His menn)ry is veneriited by every Chinese, and liis wonl is law ii8 THE REAL CHINAMAN. throughout the empire. It is astonishing how glibly he is quoted by prince and pauper, whether in the discussion of some grave international ques- tion or as an incentive to almsgiving. His word settles street wrangles and determines the policy of the State. He is sometimes quoted under cir- cumstances that render any reference to him gro- tesque and amusing, and the phrase quoted may not have the faintest apparent bearing upon the question at issue, but it has weight. He is the great arbitrator, authority, and peacemaker of the empire. The system of so-called religion to which his name has been given was evolved by his disciples and successors from a few obscure phrases in his writings. It is pure materialism, making all things to have originated from the " first element," the primary microbe. This, operating upon itself, pro- duced the dual powers of nature, the male and female elements, and from these, b)' a process of evolution, all existent forms have sprung. With reference to any creative agency, any God, or any divinities or spirits, one of his most celebrated commentators said : " Sufficient knowledge was not possessed to say positively that they existed, and he saw no difficulty in omitting the subject altogether." He has nothing to say concerning the immortality of the soul or future rewards and punishments. There is little to interest an intelli- gent student of religious systems in these elabora- tions of the supposed Confucian idea, or to reward him for his labor. They are, in the main, confused and meaningless repetitions of words whose thought CH IXF.sk KELIGIOXS. 119 is either uncertain or absent. And it must be borne in mind that tliey do not represent what he said — for he said little or notliing— but the more or less fanciful conjectures of his followers, some of whom lived many hundreds of years after him, as to what he probably believed. What is known as the religion of Confucius among foreigners is called, by Chinese, by a term which may be translated as meaning the doctrine of philosophers. The idea is essentially that con- veyed by the name " Illuminati," applied to classes of persons at different times in Europe. The rites prescribed by it are the worship of heaven and earth and the worship of ancestors. Essential, though less important, is the worship of the sun and moon. To these has been added, in compara- tively modern times, the worship of Confucius. The practice of the last-named rite is confined to officials, actual or expectant, literary graduates, and students. All members of these classes are re- quired to do homage at his shrine. The worship of heaven and earth is practiced by all classes and both sexes. It is an essential part of the wedding ceremonies and other equally important events. The most elaborate and interesting of all re- ligious structures in China is the Temple of Heaven, at Peking. It has two high altars, one covered and the other open. The most gorgeous and im- pressive ceremonial in the empire is that which takes place when the Emperor, as son and sole high-priest of Heaven, goes there twice each year to worship. In this service he has neither assistant nor substitute. He prepares himself for this solemn 120 THE REAL CHINAMAN. duty by a period of retirement and fasting in a hall within the enclosure specially devoted to that pur- pose. Without going into the details of the rite, it may be said, in passing, that it bears a most striking resemblance, both in its general features and detail, to the Mosaic ritual as found in the Bible. One feature, however, is peculiar. Ranged in a circle about each altar are large iron crates, shaped like enormous baskets. In these are de- posited, at the time of the winter sacrifice, slips of paper, each bearing the name, crime, and other de- tails of some Chinese offender whose life has been taken during the preceding year for offense against the laws. In this way the Emperor makes report to Heaven of the administration of affairs, so far as it has involved the death penalty. One peculiar feature of the worship at this im- perial structure is worthy of notice. Though men and women alike throughout the empire worship heaven and earth, no place is allowed to females in the grand pageant and solemn ceremonial referred to above. Not only are they excluded from all participation in it, but their presence on any part of the grounds at any time is held to be a pollution of the sanctuary. If one of the native guards of the temple should even carry a female infant in liis arms into the beautiful park which surrounds and forms the outer enclosure to it, he would be most severely punished. When General Grant, in the spring of 1879, visit- ed Peking, this temple, for the first time in its his- tory, was ofTicially thrown open. To a Chinese mind it was one of the highest honors that could I CIIINKSE KEIJGIONS. I2I be paid to hiin. Some fori'i<^ii ladies, having learned in advance that the gates were thus to be opened for this distinguished American, took ad- vantage of the fact and made their w^ay into the enclosure, riglitly conjecturing that the timid and ignorant guards would imagine that they belonged to the General's party, and hence would not dare to bar the way. As this courtesy had been extend- ed to my guests through me, I felt bound to take an early opportunity to explain the facts to Prince Kung, and to express my regret at the intrusion. He replied at once : " I know all about it. But don't mention the subject, even in a whisper. If it came to be generally known, there would be serious trouble." The respect, amounting to reverence, which the Chinese feel for education and literature, shows itself in a peculiar adjunct to the worship of Con- fucius. In every city and large town in the empire the graduates of the literary examinations are or- ganized in a guild or association. They place boxes at street corners, in shops, and other fre- quented places, upon which is painted the advice : "Have respect for the written character." In these boxes all persons are requested to carefully deposit any scraps or pieces of waste paper which contain printed or written matter. They also sometimes employ men, provided with a basket and a bamboo rod with a sharp nail at the end, to patrol the streets and gather up any such paper that may have been dropped. The contents of these various receptacles are gathered together, and at stated intervals the members of the guild march with THE REAL CIIIXAMAN. them in solemn procession, preceded by a band of music, to the Temple of Confucius. An essential feature of the courtyard of the temple is a small shrine or oven, an illustration of that in Peking OVKN FOR BURNING PAPER, IN CONFUCIAN TEMPLE, PEKING. being given herewith. The papers are deposited in this shiine and l)urned, while these devotees of literature prostrate themselves in worship. Per- haps no one thing gives tlic educated Chinese such CI/IXESE REIJGIOXS. 123 a low opinion of foreign culture iind refinement as the careless, indifferent, and, in their eyes, disre- spectful way in which we treat printed or written paper. They cannot understand how any person of genuine education would show such lack of re- gard for the source of all his learning. The worship of ancestors is literally universal in China. There are no exceptions to the practice except in case of Christianized Chinese, and on no other ground do these receive so much criticism and abuse, amounting in individual cases to perse- cution, as for their neglect of this solemn duty. So far as can be discovered, the worship is as old as the race. It is the most deeply rooted of all forms of religion in the very fibre of the Chinese character, and, beyond a question, it will be the last of all forms of false faith to die out from among them. Whatever may be the theoretical idea in the wor- ship of ancestors — and there has been much dispute upon the question — the practical belief under which it holds the hundred of millions of Chinese to ob- servance of the rite is substantially as follows : The masses believe that the spirits of the departed re- main near the home occupied by them during life, and the grave in which the body rests. They be- lieve that these spirits are powerful to work good or ill to their descendants, and that hence they must be propitiated by offerings. The more igno- rant classes, at least, believe that they are actually supported, fed by the sacrifices placed before their tombs, and that the sham money burned in the ceremony is by some unexplained process trans- 124 THE REAL CHINAMAN. muted into coin current in the world of spirits, and there serves to pay their expenses. Gross ideas these, beyond a doubt ; but they exist and form an animating motive of the worship of ancestors as practiced by a large portion of the people of China. There may be, probably is, an element of filial de- votion in the service. But there is also a large ele- ment of fear, an anxiety to stand well with the gods, and to secure for themselves the favoring influences which their departed relatives are be- lieved to possess. This worship makes clear one point of Chinese belief which otherwise might be in doubt. It shows conclusively that they believe in the con- tinued existence of the soul after death. And it makes plain the logic of their conduct in certain other matters, showing that the course so uniform- ly taken by them is more of a necessity than any mere choice. It explains why there are no bache- lors in China. Every man must marry and rear sons to perform this rite, essential to his eternal happiness, at his grave. He must have sons, not daughters, for a double reason. Wliile all mem- bers of a given family participate in the ceremo- nies, tlie active part of the service must be rendered by sons. And, further, a daughter, when married, ceases to concern herself in the affairs of her own parents, but is absorbed in the family of her hus- band. This service explains why the Chinese go and come between foreign lands and China, or re- mote i)arts of their own country, but practically never colonize, and why such intense stress is laid upon the return of a dead l)0(ly from no matter CHINESE RELIC IONS. 125 how great a distance for burial in the ancestral ground. It is there that this ceremony is observed, and there the body must be to receive tlie l)enefit of it. If buried elsewhere, the soul of the depart- ed is doomed to wander in cold, hunger, and deso- lation. The ancestral tablet, as it is called, is found in every Chinese home, and, theoretically at least, obeisance before it is made daily. This tablet is a strip of wood set into a wooden base, painted gen- erally red, and having an inscription in gilt upon it to show its purpose. It is generally enclosed in a small shrine more or less carved and ornamented. But the formal sacrifice occurs semi-annually at the tombs. It is elaborate and expensive according to the means of the celebrants. The grave mounds are carefully cleared of grass and weeds, and round- ed into shape. A table is spread before the en- trance to the place of burial, and upon it the offer- ings are placed. These ordinarily consist of baked meats of different kinds, pigs and ducks being most common, rice, cakes, wine, and strips of silk, with which the spirits are supposed to clothe themselves. Firecrackers, those universal attendants of all Chi- nese forms of ceremony, are discharged in large quantities, and large sums of imitation money are burned, thus being transmitted and transmuted for spiritual use by fire. The Chinese are nothing if not economical. This liberal display of food and drink \'~, presented \.o an- cestors, but, after they have gained whatever sus- tenance may be available in it for tliem, it is eaten and drank^ down to the last crumb and drop, by 126 THE REAL CHIXAMAN: the surviving members of the family. Thus the day is made a holiday in the true sense of the word. Instances have been known in which families too poor or too economical to purchase the materials for such a feast have hired them for the day, to be returned in good order at night. Others buy imi- tation roast pigs and ducks made of coarse paste- board and painted. They appear to believe that disembodied spirits are more easil}^ imposed upon than are the living. In order to secure an intelligent conception of the place which the three great religions of China occupy in the minds of the people, it is best to ac- cept the fact that the entire mass of the population — always excepting Christian converts — are believ- ers in Confucianism. That is to say, giving that name to a system of religious practice which he did not originate, and of which he really had very lit- tle to say, and understanding its essential features to consist of the worship of heaven and earth and of ancestors, with the worship of the sage himself added later for scholars only, then every true Chi- nese is a Confucianist. That is the one original, universal, indigenous religion of China. The other two, yet to be described, are, so to speak, supple- mentary and subordinate. It will do much to free the mind of the reader from confusion if this fact is kept in view. There has been much discussion whether Tao- ism was a native or an imported religion, with the balance of opinion inclining toward the latter. Its founder was a Chinese who traveled in other parts of Asia, and all his teachings beiir the ear-marks of CnrXESE REIJCIOXS. 127 Brahminisin. He was contemporaneous with Con- fucius, tliougli a few years his senior, and met him at least once. Tlie name Taoism, or the ism of Tao, gives more than a liint as to the nature of that belief. Tao is a Chinese word, whose first meaning is " road" or " way," and the professed object of the founder of the system was to explain the relations existing between the universe of mind and matter and this Tao. A sentence or two from his writings will show, amusingly perhaps, how easily he set about his task. And they will also most likely give the reader all that he cares to know in detail of this form of belief. Here they are : ' ' All material visible forms are only emanations of Tao or reason ; this formed all beings." Again: " Reason has produced one, one produced two, two produced three, and three made all things. All beings repose on the feminine principle, and they embrace, envelop the male principle ; a fecundating breath keeps up their liarmony." His theories remind the student of nothing so much as of a dog chasing its tail. And they are nearly as devoid of sense. Theoretically Taoism, at least in its original form, did not favor idolatry — that is, the worship of visible objects ; but now it has all imaginable forms of idols, and may almost be said to make new ones to order. Originally it taught asceti- cism, or at least that the study of pure reason and the mortification of bodily desires formed the sole duty of man. Ijut all this has long since been changed. Taoist priests are the jugglers, astrolo- gers, fortune-tellers, and general mountebanks of 128 THE REAL CI/EVAAfAN'. China. The fountain of eternal youth, the elixir of life, and the plant of immortality which grows in some fabulous Eastern isles — these are the stock phrases upon their lips, and ideas springing out of them form the burden of their teaching. They have also adopted (if they did not originate) that old European humbug, and profess to be able to transmute base metals into gold. It is, to say the least, significant that the official establishment of Confucius as an object of national worship, the birth of Christ, and the introduction of Buddhism into the Chinese Empire should have occurred at about the same time. There is a legend among the Chinese to the effect that, about the time of the birth of the Saviour, the reigning emperor was several times warned in a dream that a wise man would shortly be born in the West, and he was advised to send an embassy to invite him to China. Another legend recites that the emperor dispatched an embassy because of a remarkable expression of Confucius five hundred years earlier, to the effect that " the people of the West have a sage." This much is certain : an embassy was sent to the West about the time of the birth of Christ to seek for a new faith. It wandered into India, and the result was the introduction of Bud- dhism into the empire. Buddhist temples are a feature of every land- scape in China. The}^ are to be found by scores in the larger cities, by tens in the smaller, and by twos and threes in every market town and village, while no hamlet is so insignificant as to be without its mud god, not unfrcquently in a most shocking CHWESE liEL/G/O.VS. 129 condition of disrepair. In general, they are built, rc[)aire(l, and maintained by private subscription, in which public sentiment forces eacli mi-mber of the community to bear his share. Some, however, are supported by annual grants from the govern- ment, or by endowment. Those receiving aid from the State are distinguishable by yellow-tiled roofs — yellow being the imperial color, forbidden to the people. In addition to what may be called formal temples for the worship of Buddha, there are an innumer- able number of wayside shrines to be met with all over the country, devoted either to the worship of that deity in person or to some subordinate inferior god in the Buddhist pantheon. Once, when trav- eling in the province of Shansi, and about half-a- dozen miles distant from a sacred Buddhist spot called Wu Tai Shan, I came across such a wretched little shrine, built of mud, about the size of a dog- kennel, which was dedicated to " The one thou- sand two hundred and forty-nine unnamed local divinities of the earth, air, and sea." Here was a veritaMe omnium gatherum of a shrine. The big gods have each his own place of worship ; but it had occurred to some devout-minded Chinese that there might be a considerable number of little dei- ties left unnoticed yet deserving of attention. He had numbered them all, and consecrated this mud shrine to their service. It was thoughtful, but grotesque. While the first and fifteentli of the moon and cer- tain feast days are more particularly days of wor- ship, the temples are always open, day and night, 130 THE REAL CHIXAMAN. throughout the year ; a priest is always in attend- ance to conduct the worship, and a wick floating in a cup of oil furnishes a faint but perpetual light before the images. The worship is always indi- vidual, there being no such thing as joint or con- gregational service known. The ordinary form is very simple, and occupies but a moment. A wor- shiper comes in, buys for a few cash several sticks of incense from the priest, who lights them for him at the sacred flame. These aie handed to the wor- shiper, who places them in a bronze incense-burner upon a table in front of the image of Buddha. He then prostrates himself upon a rug before the idol three times, each time knocking his head three times upon the floor, the priest meanwhile beating a huge drum or bell to attract the attention of Buddha. This done, the worshiper rises and goes about his business. This is the usual form of wor- ship in all Chinese temples. It is simple, inexpen- sive, and interferes with neither business nor pleas- ure. In larger temples, to which a number of priests and neophytes are attached, they are re- quired to be " on watch," much like sailors on ship- board, and at regular periods, night and day, per- form this ceremony. The priests are, as a class, notorious for their ignorance and vicious habits. They are not allowed to marry, and probably not one tenth of them can read or write. They learn the exceedingly limited vocabulary of the ritual, which consists of barely more than one or two Sanscrit words, by having it repeated to them. There is a regularly graded Buddliist hierarchy, culminating with one wlio mav be termed, for lack CHINESE RELIGIONS. 131 of a better name, an archbishop. He is supposed to be subordinate only to the Grand Llama in Thibet in ecclesiastical affairs. I exchanged calls with such an archbishop at Wu Tai Shan, a sacred resort already mentioned. He was a very pleasant- faced, mild-mannered old gentleman, aged about seventy, not a Chinese, but a Thibetan. In conse- quence he spoke poor Chinese, but we managed to get on very well in our conversation. He set out some very choice tea to drink, to which he added cream (which Chinese never use) and salt. It was not at all unpalatable. The old man was some- thing of a gossip, manifested the utmost curiosity and the densest ignorance about all foreign mat- ters, and in the course of a long conversation be- came very frank and confidential. He informed me that archbishops were chosen by ballot by the bishops, from among their own number, for a term of six years. He had been elected three terms, and a new election would occur in a few months. He added naively that he doubted whether he would seek another term. He was rather tired of the monotony of the post, was getting on in years, and besides // cost too much to secure the election. The honor, pay, and perquisites were not worth it. In addition to the regular hierarchy of the priest- hood, there is an anomalous and comparatively modern creation known as a " living Buddha." He is supposed to be an incarnation of the original Buddha, has no part in the councils of the organi- zation, is of course sacred, and his most unfortu- nate lot in life is to sit upon a lotus-leaf throne and be worshiped. Theoretically he never dies, but 132 THE REAL CHINAMAN: goes away, and then is sought for and always found reincarnated in some young boy. With a certain amount of inconsistency, while there was but one original Buddha, there are four modern incarna- tions of him : one at Lhassa and three at three dif- ferent and rival sacred centres of the faith in China. Buddhism has manifestly taken on certain addi- tional ideas, with their corresponding phrases and terms, by being brought into contact and contrast with Christianity. Certain of the most important expressions in Buddhism as taught to-day are not to be found in the original theories of existence and of rewards and punishment. Early Buddhism says nothing about heaven or hell, a personal devil, or a goddess of mercy. Such a figure as that re- produced, and which represents a Buddhist priest treading Satan under his feet, would not have been understood by primitive Buddhists, nor would Quan Yin, the Buddhist Madonna, of whom an illustration is also furnished. It strikes a Western man oddly, as he passes along the streets of a Chinese city, to see upon the walls, which are as thickly plastered with adver- tisements of all sorts as those of any city in this land, unless, indeed, the Chinese warning, " I'ost no Bills," has been put up — it strikes him oddly to read, among flaming notices of quack remedies, the words, " Ask and ye shall receive," or, " To him who asks in faith shall be given." At first he imagines that the American crank has a Chinese l)r()ther who is imitating him in placarding texts of Scripture in unseemly places. Such, however, is not the fact. These are simply headlines to ad- BUDDHIST PRIEST TRAMPLING SATAN UNDER FOOT. ¥ CHIXESE KKLIGIOXS. 1 35 vertisements of Buddhist temples, posted with the desire to secure the prayers, and Jicncc the cash — for no pay, no pray, is the ruki — of worshipers. They are posted as a matter of business. Tlie number of mendicant or tramp priests in Cliiiia must be enormous. They are encouraged and fostered ; by a rule of the order, any priest is entitled to receive, free of cost, a night's lodging and a meal at any temple to which he may apply. The miijority of them are professional beggars, and, in order to increase the force of their appeal, which is ordinarily for some imaginary temple at a great distance, adopt artificial deformities, or make spe- cial effort to intensify their naturally repulsive ap- pearance. To one such whom I met on the street I offered what was a considerable sum of money to him for the finger-nails of his left hand. He as- sured me that they had not been cut in ten years, and, judging from appearance, they had not been cleaned in even a longer period. They were fully eiglit inches in length, curved like a bird's claws, and the thumb-nail stretched like a long arch over and bej^ond tlie others, until it ended outside the back of his hand. He was obliged to carry his hand palm uppermost and slightly closed in front of his breast. Those nails would have made a unique curiosity, but the offer made was indig- nantly declined. With his hair, which, contrary to priestly rule, grew long, under a vow, as he de- clared, and which, he said, had not been dressed in a decade, which also seemed probable, those nails formed a valuable stock-in-trade. There is another class of priests who may be 136 THE REAL CHINAMAN: called " professional money-getters." They are attached to no temple, but their services are en- gaged when extensive repairs or other special emergencies calling for money in unusual sums arise. I saw one of this class in Peking, through whose cheeks circular holes had been cut, and the upper and lower teeth opposite these openings knocked out. Through the path thus made was thrust an iron rod as large as a middle finger, pro- jecting an inch beyond either cheek. A half circle hoop of iron was loosely fastened to either end of the rod and passed around the back of his head. Fastened to this was an iron chain, such as is called a log chain, of sufficient length to drag on the ground for several feet behind him as he passed along the street. He also wore the beggar's robe of a hundred patches , a priestly garment made from small bits of cloth of the utmost possible variety and contrast of color. He was engaged to go from house to house soliciting contributions for the repair of a well-known temple. He was a brazen, bold-faced scoundrel, for whom there was not even a faint call for sympathy. The rod, chain, and ragged garment were his artistically prepared stock-in-trade. He could even simulate bleeding at those circular holes in his cheeks. He received from the temple priests who employed him regular monthly wages, and a fixed percentage of all sums collected. Another peculiar mode of raising funds for tem- ple repairs deserves notice. A small, box-like structure, jonly large enough to contain a person standing, is placed in front of the temple. A GODDESS OF MERCY 1 i CHINESE REI.ICIOXS. 139 priest — and there is a class with whom tliis form of begging is a specialty — is placed in the box, wliich is securely fastened. Then sharp-j^ointed spikes are driven through every available inch of space in the surface of the box — driven in until they come into close contact with every part of the priest's body, and he cannot move an inch in any direc- tion. Only his right hand and forearm are left free, in order that he may, by means of a cord, strike the temple bell, and thus call the attention of passers to liis sad condition. A price is then put upon each spike, the sum total, of course, being the amount of money which is needed. The value of each spike is fixed according to its position op- posite the priest's body, those opposite the eyes and vital parts being most expensive. The theory of this comedy is that passers-by, seeing the piti- able plight of the holy priest, will be anxious to aid in releasing him. This they can do by buying the spikes which compass him so closely. A priest stands in attendance to extract the spikes as they are paid for and deliver them to the buyers, who have thus lasting souvenirs of their benevolence. Theoretically the imprisoned priest stands in his kennel without relief or interruption, day and night, until every spike has been withdrawn. Space will allow of only a single incident in illus- tration of the self-inflicted cruelties and hardships which Buddhism demands of its votaries. One intolerably hot and dusty afternoon I was resting at a wayside tea-house to the southwest of Peking, when I saw a man and a woman approaching and stirring the deep dust of the highway in a very 140 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. peculiar manner. The man would take one long step forward from a certain point, measure his length, face downward, in the road, then place his feet at the spot marked in the dust by his fore- head, take another step, measure his length again, and so proceed, one step and one prostration, as the Chinese call it. At each prostration he knocked his head three times in the dust. The procedure reminded me of the measuring worm of childhood. In answer to my questions, he said that a year be- fore, when his only son was very ill, he had made a vow that, if Buddha would restore the young man to health, he would make a pilgrimage to Wu Tai Shan and back to his native village, making the entire journey in the manner above described. The distance was nearly two thousand miles, and he could measure about three miles a day. As he was seventy-eight years old, frail in appearance, and about worn out, it was easy to see that he would not live to fulfill his vow. A callous lump as large as an ^^'^ had formed upon his forehead. Yet this man was shocked and angry at a sugges- tion that he should abandon his useless pilgrimage, and passed out of sight measuring the road with his feeble body. The male Chinese is much like his Western brother : he is less religiously inclined in times of prosperity than in seasons of adversity. When the storm arises, then he runs to shelter. Ilence, ordi- narily women and children form the large majority of the devout at Buddhist shrines. Even they adopt it as a supplementary sort of belief, and habitually disregard some of its most vital tenets, ciiixKSE Ki:i.n:io.ys. 141 Thus, for example, eatin|n^ animal food or takinc^ life in any form is strictly forbidden to all Bud- dhists. One of the tests of devout Buddhism among the common people is shaped into the famil- iar, if somewhat disagreeable expression that a true Buddhist will not destroy the vermin found on his own body. Yet one would travel more than one day's journey in China to find a Buddhist who would refuse to eat meat when offered to him. The Chinese common people refrain from animal food not from principle, but from poverty. The same is true regarding the proliibition of wine- drinking. x\nd if we turn to the commandment against lying as a test, there is not a good Bud- dhist in all China. At the same time, when trouble comes, it is aston- ishing how this form of belief appears to reassert a secret hold upon the Chinese mind. Men of really great intellectual grasp, of clear and commanding intellect, degrade themselves to the most puerile and ridiculous performances, and spend large sums upon the priests in order to gain some material advantage, or to change a tide of ill-fortune into good. For example, a distinguished Chinese states- man, whose name and presence are known in Eu- rope, and who for this reason shall be nameless here, having been most unjustly degraded from office, and having in vain pulled every wire of family or political influence to secure reinstatement, finally devoted an entire year and a good part of a large fortune to a tour of worshiji at each one of the numberless temples and shrines in and near 142 THE REAL CHIN AM AX. Peking, approaching and leaving each by the " one step and one prostration" just described. The Chinese as a nation have too much intel- lectuaHty and practical good sense to accept very seriously the mass of absurd fanfaronade which constitutes modern Taoism. But unfortunately Buddhism appeals more directly and in a less ab- surd degree to the weaker side of the Oriental — his superstitious side. x\nd it is because of this that it is so popular and so injurious. That it is an awful force, active in the debasement and deterio- ration of the national character, no sane man, who has seen it and lived in the midst of it, can doubt. It can only be idealized and beatified in verse or prose by one who knows nothing about it. As a system in practical working, it is a charnel-house of corrup- tion, a whited sepulchre full of dead men's bones. While the Emperor of China is in person tlie high-priest of Confucianism, and requires that all office-holders, either in fact or prospect, should conform to that faith, tlae government is practically tolerant of all forms of religious belief. In the case of Buddhism and Taoism, His Imperial Maj- esty goes a step further, and patronizes these faiths. He supports a large number of their priests and temples, and on rare occasions visits in state one or more of tlie latter. But he goes there as a patron, not as a worshiper. lie kneels and knocks his head upon the ground at the Temple of Heaven or before the shrine of Confucius, but he merely bows before the image of Buddha or the chief of the many idols tliat litter his way in a Taoist shrine. cnrx/'.sE Ri-j.iGioxs. 143 And in the northern and northwestern provinces of China there are millions of Mohammedans, very proud of the fact that they are Persian and not Chinese in origin, who adhere to their own fiuth and form of worship, yet iov centuries have lived unmolested an^.ong the Chinese. There are twenty- four Mohammedan mosques in Peking alone. Strangest of all, in the centre of the province of Honan, which is to say, nearly in the centre of the Chinese Empire, is a single village of Jews, who have manifestly occupied substantially their pres- ent location since the dispersion of the tribes. Through all the centuries they have quietly pre- served their ancient ritual and all the other essen- tial forms of their national identity. CHAPTER VII. CHINESE SUPERSTITIONS. To any one desirous of study- ing the effect of superstition upon the human mind, China probably affords a field as choice as any on earth. The entire mental fabric of the nation ap- pears to be saturated with superstitious notions. They pla)^ an important part in the daily life of every Chinese, control his plans, whether of business or pleasure, further or thwart his wishes, affect the value of his property, determine whom and when he shall marry, interfere with his relations to his chil- dren, sometimes shorten his existence, and always regulate the time, place, and manner of his burial. They pervade all classes, from the highest to the lowest, influence every act in life, distort the rea- soning faculties, and make mischief with logic. They are not merely potent in the domestic affairs of private individuals. Grave questions of State, affecting the prosperity if not the very existence of the empire, have in many an instance been decid- ed by them. To a clear-headed foreigner resident in China and associating familiarly with the people, these superstitious notions give an impression as if the entire atmosphere were full of cobwebs, against cinxKSE suPF.KSTrTioi^s. 145 which he is constantly rnshing, sometimes to his amusement and often to his annoyance. But to the Chinese they are no spiders' threads, but un- breakable wires of steel. In the category of supcrstilit)ns are included none of the forms or features of either of the Chi- nese religions which have already been described. They apparently have no connection with religious belief. Were not their influence upon Chinese life so active and decided, one would be inclined to say that they are to religion what fog is to water. But their power is universal, constant, and positive where religion is often only negative. They lack the consistency and symmetrical outlines possessed by even a false religion. They are the vagaries of belief, the isolated, nondescript odds and ends of faith. They are like miscellaneous material left on hand after the completion of a system of super- natural religion, but practically more potent and influential than the system itself. A Chinese will watch complacently the destruction of a mud Bud- dha, but will refuse to set out on a journey until an astrologer has been consulted and named a lucky day. He will revile all the gods in the Taoist sys- tem, and refuse permission to a neighbor to build even a low chimney. There is one large class of Chinese superstitions that has a sort of topographical character. They relate to locality, and are grouped under the na- tive term as feiig sJiiti. There fortunately is no English equivalent to this word, since, if we had the word, we should have the thing. It literally means " wind and water," and may be explained 14^ THE REAL CHINA MAX. sufficiently for our purposes as follows : Each par- ticular spot of ground in the empire has its own spiritual forces or influences. These are inherent in the spot, and are affected by any change in the contour or condition of it, and also by all changes in the circumstances of surrounding localities. Modify in any way or to any extent the environ- ment of a particular plot of ground, and the geo- mantic forces of the plot are affected for better or worse, but generally, as observation shows, for worse. These spiritual influences — that is, this f^'ig shiii — may be friendly to one person and hostile to an- other. Thus one Chinese may build a house or a place of business upon a particular spot of earth, and the fcng shut being favorable to him, pros- perity will come to him and his ; but if another Chinese should construct the same building, for the same purpose, upon the same location, he would only meet with disaster, because the local influences were hostile to him. His children would die, his business be ruined, and the curse of evil spirits would involve him in hopeless destruction. Upon the other hand, if this second Chinese should construct a different style of building, or the same building for another purpose, the local powers might be satisfied not to annoy him. It may be safe to open a meat market at some spot where the spirits of the locality will not allow dry-goods or hardware to be sold in peace. To take another illustration, Brown may bury his mother in a cer- tain spot and the old lady will rest quietly, her spirit reposing undisturbed and undisturbing in the TOMB OF THE EMPEROR YUNG LO (l)IEl) A.l). I425), CJIIXKSK SUrKRSTITIOXS. 149 coffin. But suppose Smith, instead of Brown, were to huiy his mother in the given spot. The old lady miglit distress and annoy him day and night. Or the mother of either may be quiet there for a while, when something done by Jones in the neigh- borhood arouses her ire, and her spirit comes forth and allows no one to rest until some action has been taken to (juiet her soul and to restore the disturbed fcng shiii. Only a few years since a number of high Chinese officials united in a peti- tion to the throne, asking that a stop be put to mining coal and iron at a point forty miles distant from the imperial tombs, upon the plea that this mining would disturb the bones of the empress, who had recently been buried. A few years earlier the viceroy at Foo Chow formally reported to the Emperor that p(n-mission ought not to be granted to certain foreigners to erect buildings upon the slope of a hill within the walls of the city. He based his objection upon the asserted fact that a great dragon rested underneath Foo Chow and sup- ported the foundations of the city ; that at the spot named the veins and arteries of the dragon came near to the surface, and hence that the weight of the buildings, if constructed, would impede his circulation. Tung Chih, the Emperor next preceding the present, died in January, 1875. He was not buried until tlie following October, as no place could be found in which his remains could be deposited without disturbing the fi'/ig s/iiii. In order to preserve the balance of spiritual influences, the present dynasty had provided two imperial ceme- 15<^ THE REAL CHlXAMAiV. teries, one about one hundred miles east of Peking, and the other at the same distance to the west. Imperial remains are placed alternately in these abodes of the dead. As Hsein Feng, the father of Tung Chih, had been buried in the eastern ceme- tery, the young man himself, according to rule, should have been laid to rest in the western. But the court astrologers declared, as a result of their divinations, that no place could be found there where he might lie without injury to the State, and hence that he must be buried elsewhere. Months of investigation, repeated references to different boards and departments of the public service, and numerous commands from the new Emperor fol- lowed, until, after nine months of effort, it was finally decided that he positively could not be in- terred in the western cemeter}-, where he belonged, but with certain precautionary and conciliatory measures he might be put under ground in the eastern. This was done as the lesser of two evils. The whole empire had been stirred up over the ques- tion ; it had been the vital question at numerous councils of State, and a large sum of money, esti- mated at $250,000, had been expended, all to de- termine at what spot the remains of a wortliless and vicious )^oung man might be put out of sight. The irreverent person is found in Cliina, as else- where, and there were those who asserted in tea- houses and other places of public assemblage that the difficulty was only the result of a combination, a sort of corner on eligible lots, formed by the as- trologers. They did not too often have the oppor- tunity of controlling the question of an imperial cniNl-isK srpi-:ksTiTiON<;, 151 place of burial, and did not propose to decide the question in this case so long as there was any money to be gained by the creation of difficulties and obstructions. There is, however, no reason to believe that such was tlie case. If a census of the coffins occupied but unburied within the limits of the empire of China to-day could be taken, the re- sult would be startling. They are more commonly deposited in temples, but are to be found in pri- vate houses, in workshops, and are often seen cov- ered by mats in open fields. Lack of time for the elaborate funeral exercises, or of funds to meet the extravagant expenses dictated by custom, is in some instances the cause of the delay, but in a vast majority of cases it is caused b}' trouble about the feng shiii. Every family in tlie country has had its own experience of this sort. The remains must rest, for religious reasons, as shown in another chapter, in the ancestral burying-grounds of the family. The fortune-tellers are invariably consult- ed upon this and other details of the last rites, and they point out that the spirits interpose certain ob- jections. Then arises a fresh question : By what rearrangement of the ground, change in its con- tour, or readjustment of surroundings can these objections be removed .'' In a majority of cases the trouble is easily adjusted, and by some absurdly trivial and inconsequential act, such iis the planting of a tree at a particular spot in the cemetery, or perhaps the removal of a shrub or a stone. But in many instances the spirits are obstinate, and the question remains unsolved for months and even years. In the mean time, he would be indeed a 152 THE REAL CH IX AM AX. brave Chinese who would venture to ignore the feiig shut and bury his dead. It ought to be said that this delay is not objectionable on the score of health, as might be expected, since Chi- nese coffins as a rule are hermetically sealed. Beyond a question, in the enormous class of pro- fessional astrologers and diviners in China there are many rapacious frauds. There are quack doc- tors and disreputable attorne3's in the land. But these are exceptions, not the rule. This feng shui delusion holds the entire Chinese nation in subjection, and the professors of the art of divina- tion are, as a class, as sincerely its victims as are those who employ them to solve its tangled mys- teries in their own affairs. To refer again to the burial of Tung Chili, a large number of the ablest officials of the empire made no effort to conceal their anxiety as to the effect of his being placed in the eastern cemetery. And when, in subsequent years, famine, flood, and other disasters came upon the nation, some of these were bold enough to point out in written memorials to the throne that these calamities came as a result of violated fciig shiiiy as punishments for the interment of the late Emperor in a spot where he did not properly be- long. A volume could be written composed entirely of illustrations of the power which this fcng shut, this topographical superstition, has upon the minds of the nation. It is recognized in the statutes of the empire. A Chinese may sue and recover dam- ages at law against another for any action which can be shown to the satisfaction of the judge to Cn/XKSE SL-rJ'.RSTlTJONS. 153 have unfavorably affected the fi'ii^:; shut of his house or phice of business. A chimney or a win- dow overlooking his premises would at once be ac- cepted as a valid cause of action. And the number of lawsuits based upon this class of complaints is very considerable. Years ago the Secretary of the Chinese Treasury, who was also a celebrated poet, refused to permit a well-known American who re- sided next door to him, and wlio was in the service of the Chinese Government, to build any chimneys to his house, as they would affect the fcn^^ sliui of the secretary's residence. In consequence, the American could have no adequate fires in his rooms during the cold winters, and was forced to depend upon charcoal brasiers and outside clothing. Later, the construction of a high chimney for some gas works in the capital reduced by more than one half the value of all structures within a mile of the ob- jectionable work, except such as could be moved away. Church towers and spires are an indiscretion in China, if not a positive menace of danger to those who construct them, since, in the minds of the peo- ple, their effect upon the locality is liable to be so injurious in a great variety of supernatural ways. The effect of such a system upon the lives of those who accept it can hardly be realized. That it must interfere with business, check enterprise, and hamper that individual freedom of action which is essential to healthy development — all this is evi- dent. But it goes far be3'^ond this. It makes men by turns crazy fanatics and senseless cowards. And no cowardice is so damaging and hopeless as that which fears intangible, unseen dangers — dan- 154 THE REAL C//IXA.VAy. gers which a man cannot struggle against, and from which he cannot run. It can easily be imag- ined that such a system, with its innumerable ramifications and varieties of application, might absolutely block the wheels of organized social and business life, and bring all things to a stand- still. Perhaps it would were not the Chinese re- markable for their capacity of adjustment and for the patience and success with which they manage to evade difficulties and to compromise where they cannot readily conquer. Were they less phleg- matic, good-natured, and practical, the existence of this universal superstition must long since have driven the entire race into lunacy. They have a great variety of methods of placat- ing the spirits of any locality, of so adjusting and rearranging local influences as to ward off evil and invite good. In any given case the diviner is the man who points out the danger, and he also fur- nishes the prescription by following which it may be avoided. In passing through the streets of a Chinese city it is not unusual to see, set in the face of a brick wall, a square stone, upon which is cut four characters which read : " This stone, from Mount Tai, is worthy," or, " This stone, from South Mountain, can overcome," as the case may be. The explanation is simple. " Mount Tai" and " South Mountain" are two famous sacred spots in China. Stones from tliem have been brought, often at no slight expense, cut as de- scribed, and set into walls at particular points as a prescribed corrective of some imaginary evil influ- ences. They are more commonly seen placed in CHINESE SUPERS TITIONS. '55 the wall of a building exactly opposite the end of a street which opens into but does not cross the street (hi which tlie building stands. In such case the theory is that they will cause any evil spirits or PACODA AT YU CHUAN SUAN (iMl'KRIAL SUMMER PAI.ACK). influences which may come down this street to turn at right angles and proceed, whereas but for the presence of these sacred stones they would penetrate the wall and work mischief to the inmates 156 THE REAL CHEXAMAX. of the building. Another simple and inexpensive method of securing good fortune is to write upon a strip of red paper four Chinese characters which mean, " May he opposite me receive happiness," or, " May he opposite me secure wealth." Thus written, tlie slip is posted on the wall opposite to the main entrance to the residence or office of him for whose benefit it is intended. As the word " me" in either sentence refers to tlie slip of paper itself, it will at once be seen to apply to the Chinese across the street, by whom it was posted. A considerable number of the pagodas which add beauty to the Chinese landscape have been constructed with a view to the permanent adjust- ment of these spiritual influences. The Chinese appear to believe in " luck in odd numbers," since they must always contain an odd number of stories. That her^e repi'oduced is one of the most beautiful in the empire. It is built upon the summit of " The Hill of the Jade Foirntain," in the enclosure of the Summer Palace, about eight miles west of Peking. Small shrines are also built for this same object at prescribed points. These are seen upon the roofs of houses in evei'y city. In such cases they are only suitable for sparrows' nests in point of size, and are put in place to correct some disturb- ance of the fciig s/iui. Far more pretentious structures have been built ir[)()n river-banks by im- perial command to placate the local deity, the " river dragon," who in some fit of anger, or pos- sibly ill order to attract attention, had undermined a dyke, or in soni(> otlu-r way caused a flood and llnis devastated the surrounding country. CHIl^ESE SUPERSTITIOXS. 157 There are innumerable forms of supernatural influences courted or feared by the Chinese other than that known as fcn^ shuL There are fortu- nate and unfortunate times and seasons. If land is to be purchased, a lucky day must be discovered upon which the transfer may be made. If a new house is to be occupied, the family can safely enter it only upon a lucky day. If a merchant is to open a new place of business or an official take up a new post of duty, the one may open his store and the other take the seals of office only upon a lucky day. The dates of weddings and funerals are invariably fixed in the same way. The diviner is consulted, furnished with certain data, and with these as a basis, a routine of hocus-pocus is gone through with and a suitable date announced. In the case of a prospective wedding, the fortune-teller goes a step further. He is given two slips of paper con- taining the family and given names of the two matrimonial candidates, the year, month, day, and hour of the birth of each, and from these he deter- mines whether a matrimonial alliance between them would be fortunate. If he decides in the negative, the scheme is dropped at once. There is no thought of appeal from his judgment, and no Chinese would be bold enough to marry in the face of it. As there is never any affection existing be- tween the two persons, the abandonment of the alliance involves no sorrow. There are many varieties of Chinese geomancj'. Space will not allow a description of them, nor are they of sufficient interest or peculiarit}^ to warrant it. It is enough to remark, in passing, that in 158 THE REAL CHIXAMAN: some of their features they bear a very close fam- ily resemblance to similar methods of learning or forecasting the future and the decrees of fate which were -in vogue in Europe more than a cen- tury ago. Neither Asiatic nor European may have borrowed from the other. They either came from a common original source, or their strong resem- blance shows that the human intellect is essentially the same throughout the earth. Times of distress appear to bring to the surface the superstitious ideas of the Chinese, much as they are said to develop the religious feeling of nominal Christians. In seasons of drought the inhabitants of Peking go by tens of thousands to a particular spot in the old Mongol wall of the city, several miles outside of the present enclosure, and there burn incense and pray for rain at an abandoned fox-hole. They literall}' pray to the hole, and not to the fox. His ancestors doubtless misunder- stood the devotional tendencies of their visitors — perhaps thought that they came for blood rather than water — and hence moved away generations ago. This may seem a traveler's fox story, but it is a fact. The course of the Imperial Government in times of lack of rain is not far removed from it in absurdity, and may render the conduct of the populace more credible. In such times of distress the first act of the Emperor is to prohibit the kill- ing of beef. I have never been able to secure an intelligent explanation of this act. It probably has some connection with the fact that bullocks are offered as sacrifices upon tlie altar of Heaven, and CHINESE SCl'ElxSJTnONS. 159 hence are supposed tl''NI. honors. " But," tliey add triumphantly, " the toe-nail artist must sit when performing his duties, even in the presence and upon the person of the PImperor himself." EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. 253 There are three regular degrees conferred upon successful candidates at the government examina- tions. The lowest gives the title of " Hsiu Tsai," or " Budding Talent ;" the second, of " Chu jr-n," or " Promoted Man ;" and the third, that of "Chin Shih," or "Entered Scholar." They are sometimes compared with the Western titles; A.B., A.M., and LL.D., but there is absolutely no basis on which to establish any parallelism. There are three examinations which must be successfully passed in order to secure the lowest degree. These are held in the district and departmental cities. The examination for the second degree is held at the capital of the province, and occurs annually. That for the highest degree occurs but once each three years, and is held only at Peking. The ex- aminations must be taken in order, and no candi- date can enter for a higher degree until he has won the lower. He may try as often as he pleases, spend his entire life, as many do, in attempts and failures to secure the coveted degrees ; but he must take them in order, and is never debarred ex- cept for violation of some of the more serious of the numerous regulations under which the exami- nations are conducted. The receipt of the lowest degree entitles its owner to be entered upon the list of prospective office- holders ; but if he has ambition for anything better than a subordinate position, he continues his studies either alone or under a coaching tutor, and seeks the highest literary honors before making any effort to enter political life. As has been said, many thus strive for a lifetime, and fail at last. 254 THE REAL CHINAMAN. In every triennial examination at Peking — that at which the final honor is conferred — there is always a considerable sprinkling of old men. In one, the lists of which I saw, there was one candidate who was eighty-six years of age, and six who were more than seventy. In another, a candidate died in the course of the examination from fatigue and ner- vous excitement. He was eightj'-eight years old. A posthumous degree was conferred upon him as a reward of persistency and virtuous ambition. By a special act of grace the Emperor confers the highest degree upon all candidates of good moral character who have won each degree but the last, and have tried for that and failed each three years until they have reached the age of ninety ! It is hardly necessary to add that a degree thus con- ferred carries with it no right to an official appoint- ment. A lengthy article could be written upon the pro- visions and regulations under which these examina- tions are held. The most absolute care has been taken to render cheating, collusion, or any sort of trickery impossible. There are three separate sets of government ofificials connected with every ex- amination. Before the first — the Board of Regis- tration, as it may be called — the candidate is re- quired to present himself, satisfy them that he is entitled to enter for that particular degree, and furnish them with a sealed envelope which contains a fictitious name which he has chosen, and which he is to endorse upon the essays written by him in the course of the test. When the candidates pre- sent themselves at the appointed hour to the sec- EDUCATIOjV A/VD T.TTERATURE. 255 ond board — that having direct charge of the test — each one is subjected to a close personal search, and if a scrap of paper containing so much as a single written character is found upon him, he is at once bundled out of the enclosure in disgrace, and forever debarred from competition. Each is shut into a tiny cell, taking with him a few sheets of paper, writing apparatus, and a theme for an essay, which is handed him at the last moment. He is allowed to remain there about twenty hours, and is constantly watched by sentries to see that he has no communication with any other person. The preparation of several of these upon various themes, all selected from the Confucian classics, constitutes the examination. The papers are hand- ed to a third body — the Board of Criticism — who make out the list of successful candidates by the fictitious names found upon each paper. Of course the writers are identified by means of the sealed envelopes deposited with the registrars. Theoreti- cally the names of unsuccessful candidates are never known. The examinations are conducted in the same manner and upon the same classes of topics for all the degrees. That they are rigid and exacting is shown by the fact that the average number who present themselves for each triennial examination at Peking is not far from fourteen thousand, while the average of those who pass is below fifteen hun- dred. As a rule, not more than ten per cent of those entered at any test secure the coveted de- gree. It is said that the scrutiny of the papers is mainly devoted to penmanship, literary style, or- 256 THE REAL CHINAMAN. thodox Confucian ideas, and that any evidence of independent thought is sure of condemnation. They are certainly very severe upon the first two points named. A single error of the pen will cause a man to lose his degree, while a clear, con- cise style, combined with beautiful penmanship, is certain to bring high praise and rapid official pro- motion. Where so many fail, it is not surprising that suc- cess is a matter of great congratulation to the for- tunate man and his family. Feasts are given and much rejoicing is heard. After an examination large bills are placarded all about the streets of the city or town by successful candidates or their friends resident there, of one of which the follow- ing is a free translation : " Good news ! Mr. Wang has the happiness to announce that his son, Ah Sin, by the grace of His Imperial Majesty, has been named number 169 in the list of successful can- didates for the degree of Master of Arts at the re- cent provincial examinations. Rejoice ! Rejoice !" And every one of Mr. Wang's and Ah Sin's friends go and call. Little need be said here regarding Chinese lit- erature. It is more voluminous than valuable, though, when the factor of false religious thought and superstitious idea is eliminated from it, the better portion of Chinese writing is found to rest upon a high moral basis. But those Oriental au- thors, however intellectual and talented they may have been, appear to have preferred to take some small theme and elaborate it to an infinitesimal point rather than to select a great subject and de- EDUCATION AXD LITERATURE. 259 velop it grandly. Their power lies in minuteness of detail. This is not surprising when it is remem- bered that the writings of Confucius form at once the centre, model, and type of all Chinese literary effort, and that any departure from these discredits and injures the author. There are a few excellent Chinese novels, but the bulk of their works of fiction is trash, and trasli of the kind that is sup- pressed by the police. Still the Chinese mind is full of wise and admira- ble sayings, quotations from their ancient and mod- ern authors. Some of these bear a striking resem- blance to familiar sayings in our own tongue. Here are three or four of them : ** The poor are happy, the rich have many cares." " If your children are wise, money will corrupt them ; if foolish, it will magnify their vices." " Keep down the temper of the moment, and you will save a hundred days' anxiety." " To the man who cares not for the future, troubles are nigh at hand." " Consider the past and you will know the fu- ture." " Riches spring from small beginnings, and pov- erty is the result of unthriftiness. " " Nine women in ten are jealous." " Backbiting goes on from morning until night, but be deaf and it will die." " Be friends with an official, and you will get poor ; with a merchant, and you will get rich ; with a priest, and you will get a subscription- book." 26o THE REAL CHINA MA iV. " There is no permanent feast on earth." " The wise man is not talkative, nor the talker a sage." " Study is the liighest pursuit a man can follow." If your fields lie fallow, your granaries will be empty ; if your books are not studied, your children will be fools." CHAPTER XIL ETIQUKTTK AND CEREMONY, Among the Chinese, etiquette may cUmost be said to tiike precedence of morality in importance. So far as rigid adherence to outward forms may go, as a nation they excel all others in the art of politeness. It is true that much of it has degenerated into mere manner- ism. Still, the form survives, and makes up by the minuteness of detail and the rigidity of exac- tion what it lacks in spirit. The observance of these forms is practically universal. Cart-drivers on the streets, ragged and foul beggars by the roadside, country rustics and city fops — all alike practice and exact compliance with them. One may call a Chinese a liar, and, under many circum- stances, he will accept the epithet as a well-deserv- ed compliment ; but either accuse him of a breach of etiquette or neglect any of the proper forms of speech due to liim, and a quarrel will be the imme- diate result. As might be expected in such an ancient country as China, the system of etiquette is not only thor- oughly crystalized and fixed, it is also very com- plicated and tedious in its forms. It enters into the most minute detail of action and speech. To 262 THE REAL CHINAMAN. a large extent it deprives conversation of all fresh- ness and originality by dictating a set form through which it may flow, and so covers simple questions between friends with a varnish or lacquer of ex- travagant adjectives and bombastic nouns, with fulsome compliment and intense but meaningless self-depreciation, as to render it absurd and silly. Take, for example, the following short dialogue, which is an exact translation of the invariable con- versation which occurs between two gentlemen, or beggars for that matter, who meet for the first time : " What is your honorable cognomen ?" " The trifling name of your little brother is Wang. ' * " What is your exalted longevity ?" " Very smalL Only a miserable seventy years." " Where is your noble mansion ?" " The mud hovel in which I hide is in such or such a place." " How many precious parcels [sons] have you ?" " Only so many stupid little pigs." Of course in such a dialogue the various facts sought, all very simple, are given correctly ; but the formula of each question must be carefully preserved in this stilted fashion, and to omit a single flattering or depreciatory word would be noted as a breach of politeness, and hence as offen- sive. It is true that the spirit underlying such a conversation — that of deference — is good. It is that which leads each to prefer the other to himself ; but there is reason to believe that tlie spirit is gone from it, and that it is a mere shell of language, a E7-JQr/:'J'JE AXD CEREMONY. 263 form of words. Were this not the case, by such gross exaggeration it is made ridiculous and inane. Among equals in China it is a gross breach of politeness to call a person by his given name. There are no exceptions to this rule. Between the closest friends or the nearest relatives the rule holds good. A Chinese would be angry if his twin brother addressed him in that manner. It must either be " Venerable elder brother" or " Vener- able younger brother," as the facts warrant, and sons of the same mother have more than once been known to fall instantly to blows for no other reason than violation of this rule. They have a curious way of distinguishing the various sons in a family by numbers. Thus the eldest son of Mr. Jones would be called " Big Jones ;" the second, " Jones number 2 ;" the third, "Jones number 3." Per- sons of equal rank or station, outside the family, may either address them by the titles mentioned above, or as " Venerable Big Jones" or " Vener- able Jones number 2," as the case may be. This is esteemed quite the correct thing ; but to address either of them by the family and given name would certainly give offense. On the other hand, their superiors are expected, or at least are at liberty to use the given name, and are esteemed ignorant or boorish if they use the same form of address that their equals would employ ; and this fact furnishes the explanation to the peculiar etiquette mentioned above. The use of the given name is an offensive assumption of superiority. These minute discriminations, end- less in number, often cause foreign residents to 264 THE REAL CHINAMAN. make absurd blunders in addressing their Chinese servants. One gentleman brought upon himself the ridicule of all the natives about him by invaria- bly calling his porter by the title " Venerable elder brother." Knowing not a word of the language, and hearing other servants address the man by that title, he had, very naturally, concluded that it was his name. A member of a legation in Pe- king was seriously complained of because he had addressed the head of the Chinese Foreign Office as " Prince Kung" instead of " Venerable Prince," as he should have done according to Chinese etiquette. These blunders are sometimes more unfortunate than amusing, since by the Oriental, to whom the form of politeness is often more im- portant than the substance, the foreigners who make them are regarded as boors and barbarians, and thus they may at times seriously affect impor- tant business. Generally speaking, questions of etiquette have played a far more important part in the foreign relations of China, have produced more friction and misunderstanding than can readily be con- ceived. Chinese officials are exceedingly tenacious of their dignity. They have a minute and exact line of ceremony of intercourse among their own officials of varying ranks, and they strongly object, and perhaps naturally, to the payment of higher honors to a foreign official than would be conceded to a native of the same or corresponding rank. Thus, by way of illustration, the main entrance to every government office in China is provided with three doors : a central large door of two leaves and ETIQUETTE A XL) CEKKMOXY. 267 a smaller one of a single leaf on either side. It is a fixed rule among native officials that the great central door can only be opened for the passage of a person equal in rank with the head of the office. The consular representatives at Canton for many years had no interviews with the viceroy there because he declined to open the central door to his palace, and they declined to enter at either side door. Confessedly they were far below him in personal rank, but they insisted that it would be an affront to the dignity of the governments which they represented if they entered by any other than the great door. The question developed much vexatious diplomatic discussion, interfered for years with the transaction of business, but was finally disposed of by the concession of the point by the viceroy. In a similar way the question of audience, about which so much has been written, and which was finally settled in 1873, after a discussion carried on almost daily for six months, was not a question of seeing or not seeing the Emperor. It was purely a question of ceremony. The Chinese never raised an objection to the interview, but they insisted that it should take place in accordance with the native ritual. From time immemorial, whenever a high officer of State, not excepting princes of the imperial lineage, have audience with the Em- peror, they are required to perform what is known in the " Code of Etiquette" as the " three pros- trations and nine knockings," commonly called the "ketow." It consists in going upon the hands and knees three times, and each time knock- 268 THE REAL CIIIXAMAN. ing the forehead upon the floor three times. Not a very dignified or elegant ceremony, it must be confessed. Tlie foreign representatives rightly re- fused to submit to this requirement of Chinese etiquette, upon tlie ground that it was alike de- grading and unbecoming, since they were the offi- cial representatives of governments equal in rank and position with that of China, and also because it required of them the performance of an act to which they had never been asked to submit when presented to the rulers of their native lands. They would not render a greater act of subjection to a foreign ruler than they had ever granted to their own. The Chinese insisted upon the " ketow" for nearly six months, and only yielded upon being shown, by the American Minister, instructions directing him, in case the Chinese persisted, to break off relations and await further instructions, " which would be in accordance with the gravity of the situation." Then His Imperial Majesty gracefully yielded the point, and contented himself with the receipt of three profound bows. Two other minor points caused some discussion. The Chinese objected to the sword which forms an ornamental but useless part of every diplomatic uniform, since it is a most serious breiich of pro- priety for a person bearing a wcajwn of any sort to enter the imperial presence. They also success- fully attacked one of the representatives, who was practically Ijlind when deprived of his eye-glasses. They appealed to his well-known good nature, and begged him to leave his spectacles at home, since it was grossly improper, iwnw a Chinese stand- ETIQ_UKTTli AXD CKRKMONY. 269 point, for any person to appear before the \i\r\- peror wearing them. He consented, and only found his way into the audience chamber by cling- ing to the arm of a colleague. The etiquette surrounding the receipt and con- sumption of a cup of tea, simple as it may appear, has caused more than one foreigner to stumble, and, in one instance at least, produced vexatious results. An American gentleman had occasion to call upon a Chinese official about a matter of busi- ness, when it was very desirable that a good im- pression should be made. He was received with the most formal and ceremonious courtesy. Tea was brought in at once by a servant, and the offi- cial, taking a cup in both hands, raised it to his head, and tlien presented it in a most deferential manner to tlie foreigner. The Chinese host then seated himself, and a second cup was placed before him by the attendant. The guest, being thirsty after a long and dusty ride, seized his cup and swallowed the contents at a single draught. The manner of the Chinese official changed instantly, and from being most scrupulously polite and cour- teous, he became rude and insolent, would hear nothing about the business in hand, and the for- eigner was sent out of his office almost as though he were a servant. The guest had been guilty of two breaches of etiquette, both trivial in Western eyes, yet serious from a Chinese standpoint. In the first place, he should have received the cup of tea standing, when brought to liim by his host. What was far more Important, lie should not have touched his tea, no 2 70 THE REAL CI/IXAMAX. matter how thirsty he might have been, until his host urged him to do so and set him the example, and he should have made that the signal of his de- parture. This part of the etiquette of tea-drinking is peculiar. Had the caller been equal or superior in rank to the host, he might have quenched his thirst whenever he saw fit ; but being inferior to him, he was at liberty, according to Chinese rule, only to follow the motions of the host, who, on his part, would touch the tea when he wished the in- terview to end. The official had never before met a foreigner, and hence was peculiarly on the watch to discover whether, from the Chinese point of view, he was a gentleman. The episode of the tea proved that he was not, and in consequence his visit was resented as an unwarranted and inexcusable intrusion. It is impossible to overestimate the importance which the Chinese, of all ranks and classes, attach to these trifling details of etiquette, which indeed they consider as being essential parts of propriety of demeanor. It is easy to ignore them, but un- wise if a person wishes to stand well with these Orientals, and doubly so if he desires to transact any important business with tliem. They measure the quality of a man by these apparently minute and trifling standards. They are taught to every school-boy, are as old as the nation, and as fixed as the hills. We may laugh at them, find tliem tedious and absurd, as, indeed, many of them are ; yet they are an inherent part of the nation, and conformity to them, except in such as involve un- dignified or degrading acts, is essential to good- ETIQUETTE AXD CEREMO.VV. 271 fellowship with tlie Chinese and to the successful accomplishment of any business to wliich they are parties. A volume mit^ht be written dedicated ex- clusively to illustrations of the evil results wliich have come from ignorant or willful violation of these rules of propriety, which, as has been said, are esteemed of equal or superior authority to the code of morals. I once had occasion to dispatch a consul of the United States to the capital of an interior province to adjust some public business with the governor. The gentleman sent was the proud owner of a Mexican saddle, with its numberless and volumi- nous accoutrements. It may have been an article of beauty upon a large horse, but spread over the average undersized Chinese pony, it left little of the unfortunate animal visible except his begin- ning and end, his nose and tail. Tlius fitted out, and provided with Mexican boots and spurs, a sombrero and a heavy riding-whip, the consular representative of the government of the United States reached the city of his destination in safety, having excited the animosity of every dog en route and the awe and superstitious fear of every celes- tial, who saw in him a new specimen of the iinimal creation. Half an hour after his arrival at the provincial capital, with a jiromptness highly com- mendable, if speed liad been tlie only object de- sired, with the dust of a week's journey still upon his person, he sprang upon his pou}', rattled over the paved streets of tlie city to the gate of the gov- ernor's palace, threw his bridle-rein, or his lariat, whichever it should be called, over a post, banged 2 -12 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. upon the great gate with the butt of his whip, and thrust his card into the hand of the dignified but astonislied attendant. The governor refused to see him. He waited a week in the city, denied an opportunit}' to discuss his business with any offi- cial, and then set out on his return. He was mobbed in a city upon his homeward journey. Tlie business entrusted to him was very seriously complicated by this unseemly performance, and dragged on the wearisome round of diplomatic correspondence for three more years. In order to complete the illustration, and to show the impor- tance of conformity to Chinese etiquette, it ought to be added that at the end of that time I visited the same city upon the same errand. I was re- ceived with excessive courtesy and kindness by the same governor, and concluded the business to my entire satisfaction at the first interview. The con- sul could have done the same had he shown a rea- sonable degree of deference to Chinese rules of propriety. The difference hiy not in the men, but in the manner. Whenever two Cliinese acquaintances, cither riding on horseback, being driven in carts, or car- ried in chairs, meet, each is expected to dismount and miike his salutations to tlie other. Each must hasten to be first upon tlie ground, eacli must urge the other not to alight, and each must insist that the other shall be the first to remount. And they do all tliis with tlie greatest apparent eagerness and sincerity ; yet it is only rigmarole and play- acting. Each knows whicli should descend and which remount first, and woe betide the other if ETIQ ('/■:■/'■/'/■: A. YD c/:A'K.]/o.yy. 273 he yields to his friend's show of entreeity, and either fails to dismount first, or returns to his car- riage while his superior in years or station is stand- in<^ in the street. His acquaintances would fail to recognize him, and his reputation as a gentleman would be gone forever. Yet there is much human nature left in the cul- tivated Chinese, and with them, while a tedious or inconvenient rule of polite conduct is never openly ignored or violated, it is almost uniformly evaded ; and the direct result of tliis cumbersome ceremonial is that Cliinese gentlemen, wlio never walk, always fail to see their friends uj)on the street. If in carts or chairs, the curtains are closely drawn ; if on horseback, they are always looking in another direction, I have known a Cliinese official to bow most politely to me as we met, and at the same moment to fail to recognize an Oriental friend and associate, whom he had met almost daily for forty years. They were close friends ; but while he was at liberty to follow the foreign style of recognition with me, he was bound by another and more laborious code of etiquette regarding the other. Hence the difference in his conduct toward us. There is the same tedious and absurd formula to be observed whenever several persons enter or leave a room together, or seat tliemselves at table. Each knows perfectly his own place, fixed by his rank relative to the others, and hence he knows which will finally enter or leave the room first, have the higher seat at the taijie, and take and leave that first. The rule is absolute and univer- 2 74 THE REAL CHIXAMAN. Siilly understood, and no deviation from it would be tolerated ; yet each one crowds back and urges another to take the precedence, and the friendly struggle must last for several minutes before the various members of the party accept their proper places. If time were of any importance in China, as it never appears to be, the loss involved in these fictitious contests would amount to something quite serious. Take, as a specimen, a visit to the Chinese Foreign Office. I went there one day to speak with the ministers. Two were present when I arrived, and received me. We struggled about the doorway before we could enter in proper order, and again at the circular table, at which business is always transacted, before we could take our seats. During the interview, five other ministers came in, one at a time. With each arrival those already present hurried outside the door and strug- gled in again, and then quarreled kindly for the lowest seat at the table. A considerable amount of time was wasted in this farce, and the order of the persons about the table was changed five times in two hours. Much of the falsehood to which the Chinese as a nation are said to be addicted is a result of the demands of etiquette. A plain, frank " no" is the height of discourtesy. Refusal or denial of any sort must be softened and toned down into an ex- pression of regretted inability. Unwillingness to grant a favor is never shown. In place of it there is seen a chastened feeling of sorrow that unavoid- able but quite imaginary circumstances render it wholly impossible. Centuries of practice in this ETIQUETTE AXD CEREMONY. 275 form of evasion liave made the Chinese match- lessly fertile in tlie invention and development of excuses. It is rare, indeed, that one is caught at THE DONKEY. a loss for a bit of artfully embroidered fiction with which to hide an unwelcome truth. The same remark holds good in regard to all a ^6 THE REAL CI/IA^AMAN'. manner of disagreeable subjects of conversation. They must be avoided. Any number of winding paths may be made around them, but none must ever go directly through. A Chinese very seldom will make an intentionally disagreeable or offen- sive remark. If he is dissatisfied he does not say so, but leaves the person to infer the dissatisfac- tion and to search out the cause, while he is listen- ing to some tale which has been invented with a view to accomplish the same purpose which an ex- pression of the bare fact would secure, but by more pleasant means. If a Chinese servant is not pleased with his work or wages, he never complains. That would be excessively rude ; but he at once kills his father or stretches his brother upon a bed of sickness, all in his imagination, and announces the sorrowful tidings as a cause for leaving ser- vice. If his master is a foreigner, and not well versed in Oriental ways, he probably accepts the statement as true, condoles with him, mucli to his disgust, and, perhaps, loses a valuable servant ; but if he is accustomed to the Chinese methods of indirection, beyond expressing regret at the mis- fortune recited to him, he takes no action until he has learned from another employe the actual cause of dissatisfaction. Then he deals with it accord- ing to circumstances, always, however, keeping up the farce of the fictitious aflliction. To bring the negotiation down to the basis of fact would cause his servant to " lose face," to be put to shame, and then no increase of wages would persuade him to remain. The extent to which the Chinese will gcj in order kTiqUETTK A.\'j:> CERKAlONY. 277 to cover up disagreeable truths, and the efforts they will make to disguise their real feelings and motives, are simply astonishing. This is equally true of all grades and classes. The highest officials or the most cultivated scholars are not more expert or uniform in their olx-diencc to the exactions of this rule of propriety tlian the meanest coolie. If they are obliged to announce an event unwelcome t(3 them, it is done in a tone and manner meant to carry the impression that they regard it as utterly trivial and unimportant. I have known a Chinese to mention the death of his only son with a laugh, as though it was of not the least consequence ; yet, as a matter of fact, it was in his opinion the greatest misfortune that could have befallen him. Only in private, and to his closest friends, would his sense of dignity and the demands of etiquette allow him to uncover his heart and slu)w his actual grief. This hai)it of repression and misrepresentation of feeling has given the outside world the idea that, as a nation, the Chinese are stolid, indiffer- ent, and lacking in nerves. Such is not the case. They are keenly sensitive, proud, and passionate. As might be expected, when, under a provocation too great for endurance, they give way to their feelings, the result, whether it be grief or anger, is as extreme and unre^isonable, from our stand- point, as their ordinary suppression of emotion is absurd and unnecessary. It is dillicult, perhaps unfair, to judge them in this regard, since their standard is absolutely different from ours. They have covered themselves with a lacquer of courtesy 278 THE REAL CHIXAMAX. and etiquette so thick and highly polished that the real fibre of character lying underneath is dis- covered only upon very rare occasions. Half the world believes that the lacquer covers nothing valuable, or containing the finer qualities of man- hood. The fact that his intense exhibitions of passion are called out by what are to us trivial causes, only serves to intensify this mistaken opin- ion. A Chinaman is grossly insulted, and he laughs. A moment later some one carelessly treads upon his toe, and, in an instant, he gives way to an uncontrollable fit of rage. His anger seems childish, and his reception of the insult unmanly. While both of these adjectives may be justly ap- plied in particular cases, it is, after all, only when we know the laws of self-restraint, the canons of propriety, which hav^e governed him for ages, and judge him by those laws, that we can reach any fair estimate of him as a man to-day. Nothing so confuses and disconcerts the Chinese as the blunt and outspoken way in which Western people, especially Americans and the English, ex- press their opinions, or seek to accomplish any de- sired object. They cover up their designs as closely and as modestly as we do our bodies. We expose ours naked ; and if, in intercourse with them, we are often puzzled to the point of exasper- ation to discover what it is, so carefully wrapped and concealed, that tlic}' actually desire, they, on the other hand, are not infrequently misled by our frankness, and give us what we wish, chuckling with the mistaken thought that it was not what we wanted, but that our apparently naked purpose ETIQUETTE AND CEREMONY. 279 was, after all, only a cloak covering another and quite different design. The following incident illustrates another phase or bremch of the complicated system of Chinese etiquette. In January, 1881, the butler employed by the writer, and who had been in his service some ten years, informed him that he must leave his position. Upon being asked for his reason, he stated that on the previous evening he had gone out after dinner, and had thoughtlessly locked the room which he and the fireman occupied together, and had taken the key with him. The fireman was also out, and, upon coming home about eleven o'clock, was, of course, unable to enter his room. He could easily have gone into a room with another servant for the night, but refused to do so, because very angry, and going to the res- idence of the butler's family near by, he had worked himself into a violent passion, raved and stormed up and down the street, calling the butler's wife and mother all manner of evil names, and had effectually roused the entire neigh- borhood. Having performed in this manner for about an hour, he returned to the Legation and went to bed with another servant, as he ought to have done in the first place. The butler added that the offense was so serious and so public, that he had decided to " take the law" to the fireman, and as it would Qot be decent to take such a step when both re- mained in the master's service, he must beg to be released. 28o THE REAL CI/IXAMA.V. I pointed out to him, in the first place, that no Chinese court could take notice of his complaint so long as the fireman remained in the service of an officer of the Legation ; hence, it would be idle for him to give up his position unless the fire- man were also discharged. In the second place, I pointed out to him that to take the matter into the courts would only serve to let five hundred people hear the bad words used, when not more than fifty people had heard them in the first instance. I promised to look into the matter carefully, and if the facts were as stated, to see that the fireman was properly dealt with. I urged the butler not to leave his place, and not to take any further steps until I had made an effort to settle the ditificulty. To this, after some hesitation, the butler con- sented. The writer then sent for the fireman, and asked for his side of the story. Strangely enough, it agreed entirely with what the butler had said. The fireman admitted that he weis entirely in the wrong, said he was very much ashamed of what he had done, and promised to submit to any pun- ishment which the master saw fit to inflict. He was spoken to very sharply about his offense, and told plainly that had he been a foreigner, his words, if used toward the family of another foreigner, would possibly have cost him his life. After allowing the matter to rest two or three days, the butler and fireman were summoned before the master and their fellow-servants. The master recited the facts, which botli admitted to be cor- rect. ETIQUETTE AND CEREMONY. 283 The fireman then confessed his fault, and went upon his hands and knees before the butler, knock- ing his head three times upon the floor by way of begging pardon. He was then sent with the butler and another servant to the butler's house, where he made a. similar apology to the wife and mother whom he had insulted. This was the Chinese way of settlement, and with it the writer supposed the trouble had ended, as the injured party said he was satisfied. But two days later the butler came to his master again to say that while he and his family were satisfied with the apology made, yet the insulting words had been shouted in the ears of all the neighbors, who knew nothing about the fireman's confession and apology, and that the neighbors were already looking askance at him, and, to quote the exact words used by him, " unless he could find some way to repaint his front door" — that is, find some way to make the fireman's apology pub- lic — the neighbors would refuse to have an)^thing to do with him, and might drive him out of the neighborhood. The writer admitted the force of this point, and, after a moment's thought, said : " Well, I think you are right ; and I will fine tlie fireman half a month's wages, and pay you the money. Then you can tell your neighbors thiit I have done so. Here is the money, and 1 will take it out of his wages at the end of the month." Three tlollars were handed to the butler. But he refused tliem, saying : " Oh, no ; I can't do that. It wt)uld onlv make the matter worse. 2 84 THE REAL CHINAMAy. The neighbors would then say that I had allowed my family to be insulted for three dollars." " Well, what shall I do with the case ?" The butler replied : " Give the money to one of the other servants, telling him what it is for, and he will know how to use it." This was done. The money was given to the groom, who was told to use it in whatever manner he thought best, to satisfy the neighbors of the butler that the fireman had made due reparation. The writer presumed that the money would be spent for a feast, to which the neighbors would be invited, and at which the fireman Avould publicly repeat his confession and apology. But three days later the groom came to his mas- ter and said : " I have attended to that matter which you gave me. I paid a dollar and forty cents for paint, and a dollar for a painter. The work has been done, and I have sixty cents left. What shall I do with it?" The writer, astonished beyond measure, said : " I don't understand you. What do you mean about paint and a painter ?" The groom explained then that the butler luul meant literally what he had said about " repaint- ing his front door ;'' that it was a custom in Peking that, in similar cases of insult to the members of a family, the front door should be freslily painted at the expense of the person guilty of the insult, as a public act of apology and retraction. Hence, he had caused the butler's door to have; a new coat ( f paint, and thus public opinion w;is satistied and K TIQ i '/■: TTK AXD CEREMOX Y 285 the insulted dignity iind wounded lioncjr of the butler were avenged ! The groom was directed to return the sixty cents, cash balance in hand, to the fireman. CHAPTER XIII. MERCHANTS AND TRICKS OF TRADE, While there is no such thing as caste in China, and few class dis- tinctions more fixed and permanent than those current in the United States, the entire population is di- vided and ranked in public estima- tion according to the occupation of each individual. This gradation is expressed in the phrase, " Shih, nung, kung, shang, " which every Chinese uses, and which expresses exactly the comparative esti- mation in which the various callings are held, be- ginning witli the highest and grading downward. Translated into English, it runs thus : " Scholars, farmers, artisans or laborers, merchants." This arrangement is not so unphilosophic as may at first sight appear. Scholars rank highest in the social order, since the brain is better than the body. The producer comes next in honor, because he alone is able to develop something out of nothing, or, at least, approximates as closely to that result as any human being can. The artisan or laborer ranks third, since he, by hand and brain, transforms a less valuable article into one of more general utility and adapted to a higher range of Af/':A'(7/.INTS AND 'J'RICk'S OF TRAnE. 22 ■■= ' wtm"^ "^AdMiNa-ivw^ 9 =(nLi ?3 c? - IV sm^ ^/saiAiNO iwv** ^^xmrnwi^ '^- %. 3 1158 00737 6287 UC SOIJTHf RN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY i UC iir^ AA 001 052 825 5 -< div i% rr^