a THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES IN MEMORY OF CARROLL ALCOTT PRESENTED BY CARROLL ALCOTT MEMORIAL LIBRARY FUND COMMITTEE Other Books by Paul Myron Linebarger Brothers Publishers, announce the following future issues of booths by Paul Myron BOOKS ON CATHAY Chinese John. To correct our false im- pressions of the Chinese. Latch Strings to China. An interpreta- tion of Chinese life through tales of tragedy, mystery and humor. ROMANCES OF TRAVEL Daniel Dares. A round the world de- scriptive novel which centers its romance in the Latin Quarter. The World Gone Mad. The intimate study of a woman's love as influenced by the horrors of war. Miss American Dollars. In which an American girl shows the mettle of her patriotism while journeying through war- ridden Europe. RELIGIO-PHILOSOPHIC Christian Science from a Wesleyan View Point. A popular study of Chris- tian Science compared with the teachings of John Wesley. Linebarger Brothers Publishers Milwaukee, Wis., Linebarger Terrace Photo by Rio V. De Sieux. General Hwang Using, China's Man of Action. OUR CHINESE CHANCES EUROPE'S WAR By PAUL MYRON WITH ILLUSTRATIONS CHICAGO LINEBARGER BROTHERS PUBLISHERS Linebarger Terrace, Milwaukee, Wis. M C M X V COPYRIGHTED 1915 BY P. W. LINEBARGER 7/v CONTENTS PART I. CHINESE RAPPROCHEMENT CHAPTER PAGE I. Thoughts That Bring Us Nearer to the Chinese 9 II. China is Not Overpopulated 14 III. The Passing of Feng Sui 24 IV. Early Marriages and Secondary Wives 31 V. Lily-Foot Vanity 35 VI. Everyday China 39 VII. From the Yangtse to Peking 60 VIII. The Vulture Dragon Capital 77 IX. Spirit Tombs 90 X. The Great Wall of Peace 97 XI. The Chinese Emigrants 103 XII. Hongkong, the Brightest Jewel of the British Colo- nial Crown 118 XIII. Manchu Influence on Chinese Cities 125 XIV. The Mission of the Missionaries 130 XV. The Assembling of a Nation 139 XVI. The Chinese Abroad 144 XVII. The Chinese as the Brown Man's Guide 148 XVIII. An Asiatic Melting Pot 153 XIX. The Future Religion of China 156 XX. The Illumination of Chop Suey 159 3 1167219 4 Contents PART II. BUSINESS IN CHINA CHAPTER PAGE XXL American Commerce in China 161 XXII. Hints to Merchants and Manufacturers 170 XXIII. Trade Chances in China and South America Com- pared 178 XXIV. Effect of Europe's War 182 XXV. Preparation for Chinese Trade 186 XXVI. The China of Tomorrow 189 PART in. YUAN AND THE WEAKNESS OF DESPOTISM XXVII. General Hwang Hsing, Patriot 191 XXVIII. Yuan the Red 197 XXIX. The Back Stairs to Peking 202 XXX. Sun Yat Sen 207 XXXI. Chinese Nationalist League and Lin Sun 211 XXXII. Japanese Peril in China 214 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS FACING PAGE General Hwang Hsing The Iron Willed Frontispiece Pagoda Anchorage, Foochow. Rice Junk Near Kiukiang. Sur- face Graves Near Shanghai. Prayer Wheel, Peking 30 January in Old Shanghai. January in Canton. From Signal Station, Hongkong. Bridge of 10,000 Ages, Foochow 46 A Common Road Bridge. A Glimpse of China; fair even in winter. Boys who do Men's work on Baby Rations. Their First Aeroplane 62 One of Peking's Wall Towers. Part of Peking Wall 78 Pailow, Llama Temple, Temple of Heaven, Bell Tower, Peking 94 Entrance to Ming Tombs. Typical Approach to China's 1001 Walled Cities. Little Chinese John! Our Best Friend and May He Always Remain So. A Lapidary 110 The Flowery Pagoda, Canton 126 One of Soochow's Bridges. Three Storied Roof Anchoring whole Structure. A Soochow Pagoda. Gateway to a Nabob's Compound 142 Chien Men Street, Peking. Camel Caravan .' 158 Five Storied Pagoda, Canton 174 China's Brightest Hope 190 Sun Yat Sen, China's Herald of Liberty 206 Lin Sun, President Chinese Nationalist League 212 PREFACE In the lull of the terrible European conflict which is sweep- ing around the world, we hear a word from Great China, and it is still for peace, although groaning under the despotism of Yuan Shih-K'ai and menaced by the Japanese. Therefore, what moment is more auspicious for a considera- tion of the Chinese as our friends and to aid them to throw off despotism, and what time more opportune to cement our good will with that wonderful Cathay, now the only other great nation of the whole planet not at war with another, and whose favor is especially valuable to us in trade opportunities for which and elsewhere other nations are now actually in armed contest ? This book will give information to the American business man concerning the general conditions and consequent busi- ness chances in China, now particularly favorable because of the large withdrawal of German and English competition on account of the war. In an attempt to make the information more entertaining, descriptive and personal narratives of the author's three visits to China, the third of which was just the year past, have been freely indulged in, some of which are used to illustrate his conclusions against common miscon- ceptions of China and its many distinct peoples. The Chinese are, indeed, not much different from our own race, and we are rapidly coming to a closer appreciation of their racial nearness to us. This rapprochement is not new; it has always been there, but we are only just commencing mutually to realize its force as China, the most understandable country of the Orient, falls in line with the advance of the whole world's progress. To show this, the first twenty chapters 7 8 Preface consider the Chinese generally, the last six, the present trade opportunities, and the following close the volume as an arraign- ment of the despotic rule of Yuan Shih-K'ai. Yes. Our great commercial chance is there. Shall we not profit by it, even though offered by the terrible misfortunes of Europe's war? And to profit by it, shall we not have to speak and act against the tyranny of Yuan which is holding Great China in the slavery of despotism, for awhile so successfully broken by those brilliant leaders: Sun Yat Sen and Hwang Hsing and their colleagues. PAUL MYKON. CHAPTER I THOUGHTS THAT BRING US NEARER TO THE CHINESE The cause of Chinese self-containedness and isolation is entirely geographical, and does not, in any measure, come from the character of the Chinese themselves. By nature they are extremely friendly and gregarious and fond of social inter- course, readily adapting themselves to any environment, how- ever foreign and strange it may be to them. Throughout its whole history China has been the victim of a strangely un- paralleled national imprisonment. All of its land boundaries were fixed by nature in arid steppes, embattled mountains, icy plains and uninhabitable plateaux. On its sea boundaries it was no less prescribed; for beyond stretched the vast expanse of the Pacific, a pathless sea, undiscovered and undreamt of even by the Occident until comparatively recent times. Can we wonder then that the Chinese, although naturally an aggressive and enterprising people, after finding themselves in undisputed control of the entire world, as then known to them, building up their civilization alone from their own native genius, without aid from foreign sources, would finally come to that resting point in their development from which, by the very nature of their environment, further progress was im- possible? Their civilization was to them a finished work, upon which every Chinese gazed with reverence as he crowned it with the halo of Confucianism, always looking backward rather than forward for his models. Nor was this national isolation all; for internally the sep- arate provinces of China were largely lost to each other in helpful influences by reason of the lack of connecting water- ways from north to south, the solid interior of the country 9 10 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War being only broken in its immensity by turbulent rivers, all rushing onward to the irrevocably sealed Pacific. What wonder then that the Chinese rested upon the laurels of their finished civilization ? They had advanced as far as nature allowed them, so they composed themselves and waited. If the system of the American Great Lakes, which during the ages were almost of no profit to man, had been by Providence placed midway between Thibet and the Pacific and Mongolia and the Ira- waddy, as a highway of communication as well as a reservoir to regulate the floods, what a different story China would tell today! And to arouse this sleeping giant of Chinese Nationalism from his contented dream was not the casual exertion of a single call. Neither the pin pricking of the opium wars nor the light caress of missionary advance disturbed him in his trance. It took the Japanese conflict to even cause a move- ment from his huge frame, and not until the invasion of the allied forces at the Boxer outbreak did he finally realize his deplorable situation in the new world, upon which his eyes had been opened and which he viewed with humiliation amid the dangers which everywhere surrounded him. But once con- scious of the peril, see with what promptitude Chinese fitness strikes its way out of difficulty! In a few months, a time so short as to allow no other comparison with great political re- forms in the whole world's history, the awakened giant, no longer standing abashed in the midst of the Nations, suddenly appears as a modern Colossus prepared to take his place with dignity and strength, as soon as the preliminary political dis- turbances are settled, among the peoples of the earth. Much information about China has come through the cen- sorship of the English opium trade, which for sinister pur- poses has considered it necessary to misrepresent the Chinese, portraying them as a vicious and debauched people. Hence they have been reported to us from our earliest knowledge of Nearer to the Chinese 11 them as an immoral and deceitful race, corrupt in public and degraded in private life, who, without patriotism or civic pride, were only held together in some frail semblance of government by fear of barbarous tortures and inhuman death. But this unjust and misconceived portrayal is dissolving in the bright picture of the Chinese as they really are; a people very much like ourselves, whose waning vices and waxing virtues will ultimately place them among the most advanced and favored nations. As has been stated, the Chinese are not more unprogressive nor less intelligent than our own or the European nations. As far as commercial conditions go, racial distinctions are count- ing for less from day to day. The world's trade miscegenation is a simple question to solve compared with the mere social question of color, which nowhere is of such import as in America, nor elsewhere more prejudicial to the impartial study of another race. Color and creed are forgotten by all races when men buy and sell, but it is left for the Chinese to lead humanity into the broadest and most tolerant respect for all other races and their thought, and in that respect they are unique among the Oriental races. In fact, no one knowing the Chinese well would consider them Orientals except geographically. Let us also disabuse ourselves of the common misconception that the Chinese are a dark, mysterious, enigmatical people, entirely incomprehensible and altogether of a different moral and mental makeup from ourselves, for, on the contrary, frank- ness and ingenuous cordiality are their strong characteristics, and there is no emotion of which we are capable which does not find its counterpart in their own nature. The old recital of the races into mere color distinctions of the white, yellow, brown, black and red has become a vague kindergarten division, no longer to be seriously considered. If you separate the whole human family according to the shape of the bones of their cranium, the Chinese must be classed among the round heads 12 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War and our race among the long heads, and although they other- wise differ from us in physical being, still in the psychology of their average type they are not dissimilar to our own average. The early European traders in China who had little occasion to look beneath mere appearances started the report, which is still accepted by many, that the Chinese are an enigma, never to be solved by another people. Far from being impenetrable, the Chinese are equally ingenuous and communicative with our- selves. Meet a Chinese from any part of the Middle Kingdom, and in opening conversation with him, for which he is always eager, you will find him evincing the liveliest interest in you and expecting you to show the same interest in his own affairs. He will ask you the most pointed personal questions concern- ing the success of your calling, your worldly goods, and even your age, evincing genuine sympathy should you relate any mis- fortune. From continued friendly association with them one must believe that they are much more easily understood by the other races than any other division of the human family. Much of the misconception of the Chinese comes from taking seriously the statements of foreigners, who consider that mere length of residence gives a knowledge of the Chinese, and that the longer the residence the weightier the opinion. I have met those who have resided upwards of thirty years in China whose observation faculties were so dulled by the monotony of their surroundings that their actual knowledge of the Chinese was pitiable. Fresh impressions, verified by repeated visits to China, supplemented by omnivorous reading and questioning, offer the best means for really understanding the Chinese. Foreigners live so much among themselves that it is hard for them to come to independent conclusions. Another ground of misconception comes from interpreting the Chinese by mere personal idiosyncrasies. For example : A twenty-year resident of China qualified the whole nation as incomprehensible upon numerous data of idiosyncratic in- Nearer to the Chinese 13 stances, such as the following: During the Revolution, while the Imperialists and Republicans were in action at Hankow, with the shrapnel bursting between and on the lines of the opposing forces, a Chinese farm coolie calmly walked out into the battlefield and unconcernedly drove home a flock of geese, from which the resident deduced that all Chinese are foolhardy. It is the above sort of Chinese interpretation, well intentioned perhaps, but most unfortunate, which propagates serious mis- understanding. To interpret a nation of four hundred million by casual examples of freakish temperament is, of course, absurd, but such version is none the less accountable for much of our confusion in the study of this great and wonderful nation. CHAPTEE II CHINA IS NOT OVER-POPULATED A country cannot be likened to a sponge, capable of only absorbing just so much population as the sponge absorbs liquid ; drinking in to the last point of absorption, beyond which it is incapable of absorbing another drop. Population should rather be likened to water flowing in a river bed, conforming itself to the shape of the channel, yet at the same time widen- ing and deepening its course as the volume and current of the stream requires. Just as the river overflows its bed and rushes in a torrent upon plains and through valleys when over- charged by its tributaries, just so does population flow out be- yond its original confines when overpressed by the volume of its sources. But the modern genius of man, as his culture widens his opportunities, is continually inventing dikes and levees to con- trol and contain the volume of population so that overflow, causing famine unless relieved by invasion to other lands, be- comes less frequent with each generation. The whole population of today's medieval China is con- tained only in the natural river bed of its channels and hence appears to be a much over-populated country, but as soon as the figurative dikes and levees of Occidental science increases the breadth and depth of those beds there will be abundant channel for the whole volume of its population. Mere per- square-mile enumeration proves nothing as to over-population, since the supporting capacity of land depends entirely upon its kind, nature and location. The United States have only about twenty people to the square mile, and even should we increase the number five times to correspond with conditions in China, 14 China is Not Over-populated 15 we would not be even over-populated in this present scientific day of increasing food supplies. So-called Chinese over-population is really only over-concen- tration of population. Vast domains of farm lands, which communications and modern methods of farming would render richly productive remain entirely unoccupied, while the cities teem with underfed millions. As soon as railroads are built the cities will disgorge their surplus population, and the con- flicting currents of Chinese economic life will find their levels in sufficiency and comfort. In illustration of this and also to show the great recuperative powers of China, take the floods of the Yangtse which, on an average of every five years, over- flows a great stretch of its banks for a distance of fifty miles on either side, fertilizing the inundated land much as the Kile does Egypt, but causing great ruin and destruction. Dur- ing the floods the Chinese crowd the cities in great numbers, hardly able to sustain life, but after the flood has subsided, when they return to their farming, a single crop puts them in a state of comparative ease. No. China, far from being over-populated, is actually under-populated from the standpoint of the Occident. There are two principal reasons for crowding the cities. First: The Chinese never like to leave the place where they were born. Their old proverb says: "To leave home is to come to naught." If there is a theft, the hue and cry is, "Stop stranger!" Hence millions are born, have their being, and die in the radius of a few square miles. For them there is hardly any greater misfortune than to be a stranger in a strange city. The first Chinese emigrants were deported by kidnapping, although eventually the large earnings abroad caused them to remain and send for their relatives and intimates, as was par- ticularly the case in the rush gold period of California. But even with the offer of very easy work and generously high pay, but comparatively few Chinese willingly leave their homes. A 16 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War half loaf with family and friends is better than a full loaf abroad with strangers. Thus they crowd and throng the cities, the human swarm increasing from year to year, generation after generation, regardless of their health and welfare. Kesi- dence is hard to obtain in China and not readily or carelessly relinquished when once established, for home to them is only where their great ancestor is buried. Answering the question, "Are you a native here?" the response may come, "No! We have only lived here two generations." Why should they want to leave home when domicile with its protection and the con- venience of ancestral residence is so difficult to acquire? The easiest solution to the over-peopling of the cities is government encouragement of emigration from the heavily to the less popu- lated provinces. The second principal reason for condensed population is the lack of communication and means of transportation through- out the vast extent of China. The farmers can't plant where the soil is at all remote from centers of population. They with all other Chinese must live either in cities or on rivers near cities, so that they can get to the great centers of popula- tion and by the waterways which form their only means of transportation. Five miles back of the river, no matter how fertile the soil may be, but few inhabitants can be found, for what is the value of a harvest which cannot be taken to market ? Everything must be carried on the backs of natives until rail- roads are built, since coolie labor, no matter how cheap, is too expensive for long freight transportation. How taunting is the lot of those city dwellers, painfully striving for their pit- tance of bread, while just beyond as far as the eye can reach is the uncultivated soil of virgin fields ready to bring forth an abundance for all. I have watched farmers fertilizing their growing crops with human excrement diluted with water. Horrible as that long ago discovery was, with the consequent elimination thenceforth of salads from my Chinese bill of fare, China is Not Over-populated 17 this method of soil enrichment was a necessary expedient to bring those much overworked patches of land to that extreme degree of productivity exacted by the high rental of urban property. Some years ago, in the province of Shensi, the crops were so abundant that they lay rotting on the ground, but in the adjoining province of Shansi the people were starving. With the increase of highways and railways this sad and ruinous condition will not, of course, be continued. It must not, however, be inferred from the foregoing that China has no roads, for there are in fact thousands of miles of excellent narrow, stone paved public ways which have well served the purpose for generations, but they are what might be called independent trunk lines with insufficient branches to cover the whole of the surrounding country. The Chinese take no care of their roads when once constructed any more than they would of any other public or private construction. For the Chinese go on the theory that when anything is worn out it is of no account, and in a country where labor is as cheap as it is in China, it is frequently wiser to tear down and build anew from the old materials added to certain new parts than it is to continually patch and mend. In the matter of roads, everybody's business is nobody's business, the government never having had a well organized road building and maintenance system. In some provinces the wear on the roads grinds them into dust which, being washed away by the rains, leaves the roads, after the wear of countless years, lowways rather than highways, which during the rains become impassable river beds. To add to the ruin and devastation of the roads, the farmers have been permitted by custom to dig in the roads after a heavy rain, in order to restore to their high fields on either side of the highways the soil which has been washed from them. Farm earth is valuable in China, and since nature has taken it from him why shouldn't the farmer restore it to where it was originally 18 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War washed, by digging out the roadway, is the method of reasoning to which no semblance of objection is interposed. So the farmers, replenishing their fields from the roads, together with the wear of travel and the action of the wind and the rains, have converted the highways into ditches and gullies, some- times resembling miniature canons. But even with poor roads, primitive methods of farming and a large waste of energy from crude methods, China is not really so bad off. It is not so much a lack of food that makes China appear poverty stricken as it is the lack of fuel and a scarcity of water, for the Chinese consider that it is unhealthful to bathe in cold water. Fuel is very expensive, and the water wells are deep and quickly drained so that hot water is a com- bination of luxuries, whereas in Japan, with its abundance of mountain brooks and fuel, it is a plentiful and common neces- sity. Thus the poorer classes, for lack of hot water to bathe in, look very soiled and begrimed, and since dirt with us is asso- ciated with hunger and squalor, many a traveler goes home with dreadful tales of famine when, in most cases, it is merely a case of unwashed faces. Eeally, the poor in certain parts of China fare as well as the poor of London in winter. For China is a land of excellent table produce and good cooks. The packing of the cities has at least the one advantage : provid- ing the poor with thoroughly cooked food in an appetizing, wholesome way at a minimum cost. For fuel, as I have before remarked, is very scarce in China, owing to the despoilment of their forests to supply the building and fuel demands of the untold generations that have passed. This wood poverty is apparent in all parts of China. Every chip and twig or root and shaving is made use of. In the north of China so saving are they of their fuel that the family cook stove is made to heat the platform used as a bed by means of a flue built through it. I was surprised when visiting the ruins of the Tartar City at Nankin, shortly after the Anti-Manchu Eevolution, to find China is Not Over-populated 19 that the walls of masonry had been pulled down at great labor to obtain here and there the few pieces of wood which were a part of the construction. Traveling through China one is im- pressed with the scarcity of trees in districts which, at one time, must have been covered with forests. But now even the few pine cones which fall from the diminutive trees that shade the small ancestral cemeteries are looked on as a part of the family treasure and eagerly picked up, one by one, as their growth is carefully followed. But all this belongs to the Old China, living from hand to mouth as it did perhaps a thousand years before the birth of Christ. Even under those dead conditions China's lot has not been intolerable. But now! The New China with an in- heritance which equals one-tenth of the whole value of our planet today ! How wonderful the real estimate of these actual riches ! The fabled fancies of our childhood and the calculated estimates of our practical life fail in enabling us to grasp the unprecedented value of the hoarded wealth concealed beneath these rugged mountains and far-reaching plains. Vast treasures of gold and silver ncjijains,_oJLOppej, especially in Yunnan and Kweichau, zinc, coal and iron, abundant antimony in Ilunnan and Kwangsi and mercury in Kweichau still intact and untouched, besides fields and depths of precious and semi- precious stones all these natural riches are the heritage of modern China. How immense the value of these accumulated stores of treasure, awaiting man's service during the ages, and all conserved for the enjoyment of these generations of the modern world. All the gold and silver, all the enormous aggre- gate of all the useful metals taken from the mines of America from the time of its discovery to the present day, would only represent in part the great ultimate accessible mineral wealth of China. The next great gold discovery will be in China, without, however, the usual rush to the new mines, for the Chinese are determined to proceed more orderly and methodically 20 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War in the unearthing of their treasure than has any other nation before it, for they have an abundance of good labor and can profit by the experience so costly to other nations. Other fields of nature's treasures will also be discovered, but far richer than mere gold and diamonds will be the great reward attending the industrial development favored by the abundance of coal and iron. But what is our authority for believing that China is so wonderfully mineralized? To give even a general indication of the mineral deposits of China as now understood and blocked out would require several volumes, so for our present purpose it may be sufficient to state that not only has China by reason of the immensity of its territory a large pro rata share of the average mining wealth of the world, but it is in certain provinces as highly mineralized as Mexico. In west China coolies make their day's good wage and occasionally a rich find by sifting out from the dirt of the river beds gold that has been washed down from mountains hundreds of miles away. As I write, a grate fire is gleaming with a clean anthracite, brought from mines whose known volume of high grade coal is enough to supply the world indefinitely and accessible to iron mines which likewise have a relatively inexhaustible amount of that metal. It is estimated that in the province of Shensi alone there are several hundred thousand square miles of coal and iron. The Chinese, because of the Feng Sui superstition to be discussed in a following chapter never dug in the ground deeply, limiting themselves to mere surface scratching for the beautiful marbles and semi-precious stones such as jade and amethyst, agate and cornelian, in which China abounds, but even with such superficial search the great rich underlying veins and strata were apparent. With cheap and reliable labor everywhere in China, it will not be long before the mineral exploitation is well under way, and the question of caring for the increasing population will China is Not Over-populated 21 then be solved. Although labor conditions are excellent, indus- trial organization among the Chinese is undergoing some ex- perimental disappointments. The following may serve as an illustration: At Tansanhwan, below Hankow, a Swiss had lost a fortune in a colliery and it finally passed into the hands of a Frenchman who, having better luck with its drainage, was able to produce coal at a dollar and a quarter a ton which he sold for four dollars. The owner was making money so fast that the Hupeh government, under the Manchus, bought him out for one hundred and sixty thousand taels, and after running it very successfully for six weeks, by inattention to the drain- age allowed the mine to be flooded, drowning about one hundred and fifty men and putting the mine back to where it was before taken over by its former owner. The fault of Chinese organization is that there isn't any organization at all, not because every Chinese wants to have his own way, but it is because there is not a complete comple- ment of service. For example, in the above illustration, the disaster was caused by a mdkee learnie pidgin boy, as an appren- tice is called in pidgin English, being left in charge with an inadequate idea of his duty. What the Chinese need is more direction. There are never enough foremen as with us. They give splendid results if properly directed, and the commonest coolie labor can be absolutely depended upon if taught the separate duties under one responsible chief. The hard thing in China is to find out who is responsible. For example: I happened to be one of the first passengers on the through express between Tientsin and Pukow. The management and control of this railroad are entirely Chinese, and I was pleased to note in what apparently good working order everything was. The spick and span engine had been groomed until it shone like a new dollar. In the engine cab was the young engineer with two firemen, none of the three probably ever having seen an engine two years before. The coaches were clean and im- 22 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War maculate, the windows of the observatory car being continually polished by a porter especially for that service. The sleeping cars, although suffering the disadvantage of being divided into sections of four berths each, were well equipped and attended. In the dining cars a meal was served for fifty cents which would have done credit to the best French restaurants. All seemed to be in perfect order to obtain safety and comfort on the long twenty-seven hour journey. We congratulated our- selves upon the prospect of that still rare desideratum in China a comfortable voyage. Everything ran along smoothly for the first hour or so, when a noticeable lowering of the ther- mometer called forth frequent ringing of the bells by the chilled passengers, with requests of the porters to kindly turn on the heat. The order was seemingly promptly complied with and the passengers complacently gathered their rugs around them to wait for the longed for warmth, but to their ultimate dismay they found the cars growing colder and colder. More bells, more expostulations with more apparent obedience on the part of the porters, but still the thermometer continued to fall. Finally it was discovered that the steam heating pipes were burst and the long journey had to be accomplished in the bitter cold, to the hardship of all. There was no one to whom we could appeal ; no chef de train, no one who had authority to remedy that simple situation which could have been corrected by ten minutes' work on the part of any mechanic. Someone offered to do the work if he were furnished the tools, but there was no authority for such action. The engineer's duty in that regard ended in turning on the steam, but un- fortunately no one had been instructed to drain the pipes after the run was made, so that one had frozen and burst and no one had authority to bother with them until the end of the voyage was reached. A chef de train would have immediately disposed of the matter. I am not of those who believe that the Chinese are so de- China is Not Over-populated 23 sirous of having their own way that they will never submit to the discipline of an organization nor of those who cite examples in the army where even decapitation for minor offenses will not promote discipline as they claim, further alleging that the Chinese is a great gambler and will even gamble with his life to have his own way. I am convinced that the Chinese within the perspective of half a generation, both by the perfection of their industrial and commercial organizations, as well as by the excellence of their army and navy, will astonish the world by their adhesion and fidelity under authoritative leadership. Today filial and ancestral reverence make up the elementary obligation of the Chinese in their simple form of patriarchal government, but taking on as they are the responsibilities of a modern people, they will quickly respond to the new exactions made of them. CHAPTER III THE PASSING OF FENG SUI Feng Sui has been the winged dragon-monster which, mounted for centuries in guard upon the hidden treasures of China, has conserved them for the enrichment of the present generations. There is always a little good in even the greatest evil, and the nonsensical superstition of Feng Sui, which has ruled China for a thousand years and more, must be in part credited with having saved the great mineral wealth of its provinces from the rapacious governing classes of the past. Feng Sui is the doctrine of the wind and water, requiring among other exactions that the dead shall be buried in certain favorable spots so that their spiritual nature shall be in accord with the natural phenomena. High and low alike have some regard for this strange super- stition, its greatest tribute being the wonderful tombs of the Mings for the most part planted upon the distant slopes of the lonely and isolated mountains of North China. The Chinese, like all other civilized people, cherish the bodies of their dead, but burial to them was more than a mere indication of love and respect, for the grave became their altar of ancestral worship and their nearest approach to the un- fathomable mysteries that lay beyond. Feng Sui is not a religion it is a mere superstition formed in the disordered imagination by a process similar to that which made some of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors believe in witches and hang innocent old women for being possessed of evil spirits. They laugh about it at times, sometimes make use of it to drive a sharp bargain in selling land for public uses, sometimes justify it as an old fabled tradition which after all does no harm. Feng Sui teaches us one thing, however, that the Chinese, by their continuance of this super- stition, are a much more religiously natured people than is 24 The Passing of Feng Sui 25 generally believed. For the traveler in China is particularly struck with the absence of places of worship, their temples, such as they are, generally having an abandoned and neglected appearance and but little frequented by worshipers, and there is but small indication of the nature of devotions or whether they be Taoist, Buddhist or Confucian. The Chinese con- sistently accept any or all three of these religions. The literate Chinese scoffs at all except the philosophy of Confucius, but frequently when troubles beset him he betakes himself to the half-ruined Taoist or Buddhist temple for devotional comfort. No one should be surprised with the adhesion of Chinese to more than one religion, for we ourselves of the Christian faith believe not only in the teaching of the Nazarene, but also in the Jewish faith up to the time of Christ, thus from the Chinese standpoint embracing two religions. I was surprised to find on my last sojourn in China that the large revival of the Buddhist religion which I recently observed in all parts of Japan, manifested in the building of costly new temples and the careful repair of the old has not reached into China, which will, however, be the case if Nipponese statecraft in its 1915 exactions in China is able to include in its aggression the influence of Japanese Buddhist priests. The temples of China are in a most dilapidated shape, and in a recent tour from Peking to Canton through the principal cities, I failed to find any new religious edifices except an occasional small temple such as stands by the Bubbling Well in Shanghai. The old city temples, crowded as they are among the surrounding structures, are disagreeable of approach because of the waiting beggars, disfigured by the most dread- ful contagious diseases, clad in filthy rags and polluting the air with their sad condition, have nothing about them to sug- gest the exaltation of worship. Tawdry painted images be- grimed and soot laden by the choking clouds of cheap, foul incense, struggling against the obscured light of the roof open- 26 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War ings, are the principal inanimate objects in the throng of holiday worshipers who half-heartedly burn their joss paper in smoking incense burners, their figures almost seeming a part of the infernal regions. Feng Sui superstition, with its approach to nature wor- ship, amid grass grown grave mounds and the overhanging ever- greens, is uplifting compared with the reeking surroundings of the multitude as they crowd about the, to us, meaningless images of the city temples. The dainty Japanese Shinto temple, the spacious area of the Mussulman's mosque with its fountains of ablution, elevate, and even the dingy Hindu temple suggests some thought of the divine, but in the squalor and contamination of Chinese public worship is only to be found a forlorn confession of the power of hell. Not frequently will the traveler, however, have an oppor- tunity of witnessing temple worship as described, for the temples are open only on set holiday occasions in all their extent, although the casual worship at single shrines is a matter of daily observation. The Chinese have ordinarily no congre- gation worship as with us. Each worshiper follows his own wish in the matter of attendance and prayer. There is no state religion which actually corresponds to that of, say, Spain. All are free to follow whatever creed they desire. A move- ment is now on foot among the Christian Chinese to evangelize their people into a Christian state religion, a tremendous task but which, if only in a very small part accomplished, will do everything for the uplift of China. Feng Sui received its first blow in the building of the railroads when the graves with their Feng Sui were planted else- where as they were taken up on the right of way. For the graves of the Chinese are not planted in communal cemeteries as with us. Each family selects such a parcel of land as may be indicated to them by the necromancers as favorable, accord- The Passing of Feng Sui 27 ing to the doctrine of their superstition and, acquiring title by purchase, enter into its possession for perpetuity. The graves are heaped up into high mounds, that of the ancestor being much larger than those of his descendants. Nearby and partly surrounding the graves a crescent shaped mound is raised. This is to protect the spirits of the dead from the ghouls and evil ghosts which might otherwise disturb them. A grove of pine trees, when circumstances permit, is planted as an in- closure around the whole group of graves. This picture, as I have attempted to show it, is common in all parts of China. For many miles from any village graves thickly dot the land- scape, the cultivation of the fields coming up to their very base. Once every year the family gather at these graves to keep the mounds raised and perform acts of reverence. As one passes along by rail through some of the provinces, mounds of earth and gravel, formed for the convenience of farmers and laborers for use in case of inundation from the rivers, are sometimes mistaken even by the long residents for graves, for graves are so numerous in China that one expects to find them anywhere, there hardly being any spot along routes of travel for thousands of miles where one or more are not visible. With the beginning of Feng Sui decline it will rapidly die away, its influence being now very largely lost in the matter of building construction. Formerly if one wanted to construct a building he had first to consult with his neighbors in con- junction with the necromancers to discover if the ethereal spirits, which were supposed to be lurking around for a proper wind from a certain direction to bear them on in their good or evil work, would be affected by the obstacles of the construction. For example: The construction of a chimney might turn aside a good spirit from his favorite haunt, and the building of windows in certain positions might prove an invitation for evil spirits to pass through into a new field of visitation. The necromancers gave themselves up seriously to the study of 28 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War mysticism, and much of the stability of the institution of Feng Sui is undoubtedly due to these illiterate men who superstitious and ignorant themselves apparently believed earnestly in their vocation from which they derived but a scant subsistence. The decisions of the necromancers were followed with great atten- tion, even to the placing of screens before dwellings made of the same solid material as the buildings themselves and so arranged that the wind could not blow directly into the dwelling. Sometimes looking glasses were set in such way that the evil spirit, in trying to enter the dwelling, would see his own re- flection which was presumed to be so ugly that he would hasten away in great fear of his own image. Ill-omened ghosts were always supposed to have a great affinity for dark places and hence the old Chinese custom arose, particularly prevalent in Central China, of screaming or shriek- ing upon entering any dark street in order to overcome the spirit by fear. One of the most serious effects of the burial catalogue of Feng Sui was the suspension and delay in the interment of the dead until a favorable time and place had been decided upon by the necromancers for the final disposition of the remains. The corpses of the moneyed classes were held in the guilds, temples or charnel houses. Those of the poorer classes were allowed to remain along the outside of the walls of the city where they were generally left until only the bones remained. Many thousands of bodies were thus allowed to go unburied for months and even years in utter disregard of the contagion of which they were a constant menace. Cases were common where the burial had been so long delayed that the coffins, falling to pieces from age, would disclose whatever was left of the gruesome remains. But sanitary provisions are now being pro- mulgated against this practice. Interesting indeed would prove a collection of the stories of foreigners who have encountered difficulties in putting up The Passing of Feng Sui 29 buildings which were not in accord with the rules and regula- tions of the necromancers. I will indulge in telling of the instance of an American in Szechuan Province, who, not having even heard of Feng Sui, although a resident of China for many years, let a contract for a large building. After the building was almost up the property holders of that vicinity interposed a strong objection against its completion, saying the necro- mancers declared that Sui was on that side of the street where the new building was in progress of construction and that con- sequently there would be more deaths there than on the other during the ensuing year. The necromancers in that part of Szechuan Province were mostly Taoists who, as elsewhere, prac- ticed their black art as the Chinese practice medicine, merely hanging out their sign and learning their profession by the daily experience they acquired and evidently were lacking in adroitness in making their declaration positive beyond the power of modification, for the following year there were more deaths on the opposite side, Sui having gone to the other side of the street. Hence the natives declared that the foreigner's building favored rather than disturbed the Feng Sui of its neighbors, and he was looked upon with great favor ever after. There is no question, as I have before indicated, of not only the rapid passing of Feng Sui, but of all superstitions as well. The Revolution did wonders in changing the old order of things. Temple practices and feast days are everywhere being abandoned. Here is an interesting example of the modern trend : Ever since the repopulation of Szechuan Province, that province being almost entirely depopulated under the misrule of the Manchus in the early part of their dynasty, so that two cen- turies and a half ago it only numbered a quarter of a million inhabitants whereas it now has a population of seventy million, there has been revered in Che-Suen, a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants, a ten foot high image, probably con- structed from models brought from India. Worship at the 30 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War shrine of this image was supposed to be so efficacious that thou- sands came for the yearly feast in the hope of being cured, to the direct profit of the town merchants and priests. A medical missionary at that city prepared himself with large quantities of boracic acid, and on the occasion of these feasts treated with the most happy results many of the afflicted pilgrims as they came to the shrine. The year after the Revolution, when the merchants and priests asked permission of the Shen to hold the annual feast, the Shen, acting undoubtedly upon orders received from his superiors, said: "No! For two hundred and fifty years this annual feast has been given to that image, but he shall have no more. You all know that he never cured anyone anyhow, for the American doctor has really effected the cures So, go you your way with your humbug ! There will be no feast." The conduct of the priests and merchants thereafter showed a very common and praiseworthy Chinese characteristic. In- stead of complaining against the prohibition of a custom recognized for two and a half centuries seriously affecting their gaining a livelihood, they accepted the decision as final instead of appealing to higher authority and conformed themselves accordingly. There is a tendency on the part of foreigners to exaggerate the prevalence of superstition and particularly Feng Sui. There is even or has been a tendency to exaggerate Feng Sui by the anti-foreign Chinese themselves, who after the Boxer outbreak sometimes invoked that ancient custom merely as a part of their Boxer political propaganda. After all we can't be harsh in our criticism of Chinese superstitions, for the Salem witchcraft barbarities are still fresh on the pages of history, and I remember very well as a small boy how we looked with awe on a tall man armed with a pronged divining rod who was held to be of assistance in discovering the most favorable spots for digging wells. Pagoda anchorage, Foorjion'. Surface graves near Woosung. Rice junk. Prayer wheel, Peking. CHAPTER IV EARLY MARRIAGES AND SECONDARY WIVES A large proportion of marriages among the poorer classes is brought about by the mother of the husband in order to obtain the services of a daughter-in-law, the bride being really married to a family rather than only to her husband and be- coming thus an additional child of the family. The boys are frequently married at the age of twelve to women half again their age. Our silly joke against the mother-in-law is made sillier still against the hard working daughter-in-law by the Chinese when they make the mother in a jest say to the daughter-in-law: "Come! Thy husband is wearied with his toys. Take him and put him to bed !" The only justification for these extreme marriages for con- venience is that sometimes a wild boy may eventually become a substantial man by having, as it were, two mothers interested in his good conduct rather than one. We Americans, with our chaos of marital conditions resulting from overindulgent divorce laws recklessly applied, can hardly afford to criticise the Chinese in their domestic relations, for as a rule they are felicitous and free from the broken pledges of the Occidental divorce courts. The mother of a son among the poorer classes is anxious to have her son marry as early as possible a fully matured young woman in order to enjoy the benefit of her services, and the prospective daughter-in-law is anxious to marry the boy who has the kindest mother so that her lot in life may not be made onerous and miserable. The prospective boy husband is generally too young to pay much attention to his matrimonial venture and accepts his bride as selected by his mother with 31 32 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War gracious apathy. This custom of marriage is frequently a great hardship on the girl transient member of the family, who upon her marriage will be entirely lost as an economic factor in the family. Socially, however, she keeps up her relations with her family on those rare visits allowed away from the drudgery of her mother-in-law's household. It is only on these visits that the poor creature really has any respite from her daily routine of domestic labor in the communistic family of her adoption. Such marriages take from the wife the two most inherent rights of her existence affection and an independent home of her own. The husband is deprived of the element of affec- tion in such marriages and frequently makes up for it when he can afford to do so by taking a secondary wife who, although she has no actual legal status, cannot be discarded unless proper provision is made for her. Among all classes the Chinese first wife, Kit-fat, is selected by the parents of the husband. This fact, together with the custom of ancestral worship, is largely responsible for the institution of secondary wives which strangely enough, however, does not seem to destroy the recognized sense of sex equality strongly prevailing among the Chinese. The existence of secondary wives in the household of all wealthy Chinese or in separate houses if fortune permits such misfortune, is a matter of common information, but owing to the fact that it is exceedingly bad form to speak to a Chinese on this subject or on any other relating to the female members of the family, first-hand information of such and such a Chinese in this regard is exceedingly scant. There is not now, however, nor will there probably be for a generation or so yet to come, any law passed making bigamy and polygamy an offense as with us. Many of the political leaders of the present new order of things have secondary wives and are realizing too late that bigamous relations are a serious hindrance to modern Early Marriages and Secondary Wives 33 progress. All thinking Chinese are united, I am sure, upon the abolition of the custom, and it will gradually be abandoned upon the grounds of common propriety and the Kit-fat will reign supreme. Rarely does the question of secondary wives come up in the matter of church work among the missionaries because Christian converts come generally from a class who cannot ordinarily afford more than one wife. But such cases as do arise are about as the following: A Chinese, the owner of a small farm, joined with his wife the Methodist Mission Church in one of the cities of Szechuan Province. At the time the missionary took it for granted that the wife presented was his only wife. Considerable time elapsed when the missionary discovered that the convert had two wives, the one who had joined the church with him being only his secondary wife, the principal wife living apart from her hus- band but in the same neighborhood. Upon being questioned the convert expressed some sur- prise that such a small detail should be made a matter of church inquiry, stating that he, having married his first wife in boyhood in conformance with his father's wish, had had no male issue by her and consequently married his second wife also upon his father's request, he wishing to gratify his desire for descendants. The missionary finally adjusted the matter by reducing the convert and his secondary wife from full membership to proba- tion. As I have suggested the Chinese justify the secondary wife custom upon the natural right of a man to become an ancestor, and instances are not infrequent where the sonless Kit-fat will insist upon her husband's taking a secondary wife in the hopes of obtaining a male descendant who becomes by adoption the son of the Kit-fat. In this contention he is supported by many of our State laws making impotency a ground for absolute 34 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War divorce. The Chinese look upon divorce with abhorrence. To them a divorce is immoral because it allows the parties to promiscuously marry, which is obnoxious to the Chinese standard of ethics. Monogamy is the rule and polygamy modified as above narrated is only the extreme exception of the wealthy, and eventually the influence of the Chinese girls now being so generally educated in mission schools will correct this evil, for Chinese women, vigorous minded yet kindly persuasive, will themselves, throwing the veil of compassion over the secondary wife, find the way to dismiss her from the stage upon which she has so long played her tragic and sorrowful role. CHAPTER V LILT-FOOT VANITY No other custom seems to be as censurable as foot binding. From the age of six to twelve years the young aspirant for tiny feet gladly submitted to painful deadening of the circula- tion in her feet so that those members would not keep pace with the healthful unfolding of her maturity. Although decrees have been published against this practice it is still lingering, but will eventually die out. The origin of this practice, like all other Chinese ancient customs, is lost in the lapse of time. One story ascribes it to the example set by an imperial princess born with small club feet but otherwise so beautiful that all other women wanted to imitate her physical perfection and defect in every particular. A Chinese scholar in Nankin gave me a story of its origin which I am sure is new and has never been published. I give his words as nearly as I can recollect: "An ancient Chinese emperor, whose name is lost to his- tory and fortunately so because he was the most debauched of all our sovereigns, was accustomed to give theatrical enter- tainments in his palaces to which he invited all his subjects with their daughters in order that the latter might take parts to be assigned to them in the imperial entertainments, and as candidates in an exhibition of their beauty and talents strive to become a part of his household. In the debauchery of his nature he gave these entertainments many novel and unusual features, and on one occasion caused his stage artisans to prepare with other accessories golden foot pieces with the device: 'She who places her feet in these lilies shall be my favorite.' "A large concourse of aspirants exhausted every means to crowd their feet into the golden lilies, but without success until 35 36 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War after waiting a dozen years a candidate presented herself who passed the test and was accepted, her wily old mother having bound her feet for the purpose. Great was the envy of the other mothers, and thus the custom of foot binding was origi- nated." Although we know nothing of the origin of the custom, we are cognizant of the cause of its end an awakening to the barbarity and silliness of the practice. Nothing will do more to abolish this fashion than the adoption of simple European footwear of leather in the place of the dainty Chinese shoes of figured satins and fancy cheviots, the former exposing the deformity in detail without any concealment of colored cloth or raised foot sole to hide it. Bound-foot women have to walk on their heels in a stiff, stilt-like manner, the spinal column suffering direct concussion at each foot fall since there is no absorption of the shock by the muscles of the leg and forefoot. European shoes without heels and bound feet cannot wear them with heels do not become a woman's fashionable dressing nor add to the stature of the sometimes rather diminu- tive Chinese lady. Hence one vanity overcometh another! Vanjiias vanitatis! Foot binding, being a practice particularly prevalent among the lower classes, will not disappear among them as rapidly as among the better classes. Only the Chinese have this custom, the Manchus having condemned it as fit only for the Chinese but not themselves. Occasionally the tourist will observe, particularly in Peking, a woman apparently Manchu, judging from her black satin butterfly bow hat and her gown, who has bound feet. Such types are not, however, Manchu but are really Chinese women who, marrying Manchus, adopt the customs of their husband's people as near as they can. These marriages, which were pro- hibited by the law up to 1900, are now becoming very common. And with the bound feet will likewise disappear the harm- ful and ugly hairdressing of the Chinese women, whose aim Lily -Foot Vanity 37 seems to be to conceal and destroy their beautiful heavy black hair rather than use it to enframe and add to the attractiveness of the face. They pull and slick their hair back in a greased plaster and mat shape, drawing and combing it as tightly as possible, holding it as a mould in place by fancy close fitting head bands with jade or other ornaments, only allowing the coil in loops at the back of the head to give an indication of the treasure of beautiful hair, thus ruthlessly concealed by the rude dictates of their fashion. This combing and straining at the hair roots is with malaria the cause of the frequent baldness among middle aged Chinese women who make no attempt to conceal or protect their sometimes almost bare scalps with wigs or other artificial hair accessories. Women, except the Manchus, generally wear no headdress as before indicated, and those of the north in winter time wear a man's style of hat which can be pulled down over their ears and made of fur or cloth to suit the taste of the wearer, richly embroidered and with colored satin scarfs hanging from the back. What mysteries, these Chinese women ! Some delicately complexioned, perfumed and unctuous, adorned with costly gems and dressed in rich brocades; others parchment skinned, un- kempt, hacking out a hollow cough that tells of nights spent over earthen floors in the foul damp air of the hovels that serve them as homes; but all under the protection of men who cherish them as they do their song birds tied to sticks or con- fined in covered cages. Labor beyond the threshold of their abode is not their lot, nor with it the unrestraint of family, yet where else the whole world over will you find women more independent in the enjoyment of luxury or more happy in the endurance of destitution? When the pathetic figure of the Chinese woman stilting along on her stumped feet with hands ever ready to balance the uncertain step, her luxuriant hair radiantly plastered and curiously adorned, her eyes heightened in their brightness by 38 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War rich toned silks and the sluggish glow of jade, her rounded trousers grotesque beneath the flaring skirts, stoical and proud but' keenly observant and ever ready with the response of her gracious smile or low musical laugh; when she shall have passed away the curtain will fall upon the most striking tableau vivanf of our times and the picture of a thousand years will be forever lost in the unalterable change of a single genera- tion. But in the meantime she is still proud of her plastered hair and lily feet, and looks with pity on the over-redundant hair dress and with horror on the corseted waistline of the foreign lady. CHAPTEE VI EVERYDAY CHINA The traveler seeking the wonderful in architecture and the beautiful in art will be rudely disappointed in China, for of such there is but little to be seen. Excepting the ramshackle pagodas with their gaping sides and grass grown roofs, there is not much to attract in the way of building design, although the lover of the picturesque never will tire of the unique land- scape setting which many of these pagodas possess. The student of history will also find disappointments in his futile efforts to locate points of historical interest, for compared with other countries China is strangely lacking in history, even in folklore and legends. Let us hope that in eventual excavations in the alluvial deposits, particularly of Central China, much light will be thrown upon Cathay's history by the discovery of monuments and other treasures of the forgotten past. Any ancient landmark can be properly represented accord- ing to the picturesque use of Chinese hyperbola as a thing of ten thousand years. Long did I linger upon the beautifully arched bridge of Foochow looking upon the ever-changing scenes of the river fronts with a thought of regret that such a beau- tiful and comparatively modern bridge should be burdened with its inappropriate name of "The Bridge of Ten Thousand Ages." There is today very little of the very old in China as com- pared even with India. One reason assigned for the imper- manency of Chinese buildings is that they are not built as with ms on deep set foundations, but are only anchored as it were to the ground by the weight of their heavy roofs. The amateur of sculpture and painting will find but a pass- ing interest in the Chinese standards so wonderfully improved 39 40 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War upon and idealized by the Japanese. But to devotees of the trades and crafts and to the keen observers who love to read the romances and tragedies of men as portrayed in the chang- ing scenes of their daily life, China becomes a land of enchant- ment. The Chinese have ever been described as an industrious and peace loving people, but more than this they are the most home attached and domestic race of the earth, so devoted to their homes that they will make any sacrifice to maintain their quiet enjoyment. The walls which still today surround a thou- sand Chinese cities, stand as monuments to their home loving instinct. War, howsoever honorable, was to them atrocious. By their artisan intelligence they could until comparatively recent times within the safety of their fortifications enjoy un- disturbed the peace and quiet of their firesides. In building walls they dispensed with the burdens of the soldiery, whom they looked upon as a needless element of society whose occupa- tion begot idleness and provoked mischief. A trade or other honest calling was the irrevocable exaction made of all those who enjoyed the protection of those bastions and walls. There could be no idleness in the city; there was no room for drones. All had their fixed employment, save the unfortunate sick or decrepit, who were charitably allowed to seek their pittance from door to door. The Chinese did not so much regard them as beggars ; they were rather considered as pensioners by reason of their misfortune and treated accordingly with unusual com- miseration. The tolerance and even respect shown beggars throughout China is a beautiful commentary of the teachings of Confucius. On the slopes of Purple Mountain near Nankin, while I was watching the drilling of Eepublican troops, a whole battalion of infantry changed its line of march to avoid dis- turbing an old beggar who was dragging himself along the highway. In a crowded city street I saw a crippled mendicant, his little dog trained to kowtow in a droll manner before him, Everyday China 41 take up the best part of the packed thoroughfare as the crowd passed good naturedly on either side of him. Until the advent of the Republic practically no police were deemed necessary to keep order within the cities, and upon my return to China after the Revolution no innovation im- pressed me more than the armed city guards who, among the gowned throngs which have passed and repassed for hundreds of years just as they are passing today with the stamp of some labor or calling upon them all, intent upon their business, pushing ahead but with no undue jostling, the coolies' begrimed cotton against the fresh brocade of the merchant, forecast the disappearance of a social life which has lasted longer than that of any other race. Governed by the simple rule of patriarchal obedience and restrained from evil doing by the never ending tasks of their callings, these busy denizens had as little need of constabulary within as they had of soldiery without. Once at Nankin I watched a modern application of the real power of the patriarchal institution of authority. In the midst of the street, surrounded by a silent and respectful crowd, a father with a club was belaboring his strapping twenty-year old son for some presumable misconduct. The son on his knees and with upheld hands begged for mercy until finally satisfied that even justice had been meted out in punishment, the father, with the air of one who has done his full duty without anger or imprecation, leaving his offspring dazed and only half-conscious, limp upon the ground, and accompanied by his wife marched quietly but superbly away. A couple of police stood by with never a thought of in- terfering in the serious assault. They still recognized in the authority of the parent a force superior to the innovation of modern government; a natural combination of executive and judicial authority existing under the most irrevocable law of man the law of custom. The patriarchal institution did much 42 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War to hold China in the mold of its social lethargy, the principal reason for which, however, is found as we have noted in Chinese geographical isolation. As we walk about the noisome Chinese streets, the fetor and squalor only relieved at rare intervals by temple spaces or tea house rockeries or more frequently a bird or florist's store, where the warbling song or the flower's scent are a wel- come respite from the depressing scenes about to properly in- terpret the Chinese in these precious crowded spaces within the city walls, we should recall what in all likelihood was the condition of our own racial ancestors some two thousand years ago. Well vaccinated and with court plaster over any broken parts of cuticle, there is as little danger of contracting disease in lingering and rambling about a Chinese city as there would be in a stroll along the boulevarded part of the foreign settle- ment. Palanquin chairs are all well enough to obtain general im- pressions, but to really know a Chinese city you must ramble. I do not say walking for that fashion of locomotion is far too orderly and connected to adapt itself to the slow and un- certain progress of a curiously observed foreigner in a Chinese city, where pushed and jostled by greasy shoulders, bumped by swinging baskets of provisions stepping quickly out of the way of straining coolies as they pant along, calling their step to each other, taking up half of the street, their heavy load swinging from a bamboo pole importuned by beggars, squeezed by wheelbarrows, good naturedly eyed by all, getting about is more like a never-ending game of hop, skip and jump than mere walking. The Chinese love activity. Without wishing to idealize them in a single particular, I must say that they are the most eternally alert and wide-awake people on our whole planet. They are always moving about and in a long day's journey it Everyday China 43 is hard to discover one of them who is idle. If they haven't anything to do for the moment they stand expectant ready to recommence their work. They neither sit down for rest like Europeans nor squat like all other Asiatic people. As long as the day's labor lasts they are agile and keenly watch- ful for the next move. The poorer classes nearly always eat their food standing. A Chinese asleep in the daytime is a ridiculous impossibility in China. It is in his nature to stir around as long as the sunlight lasts. The very marrow of his bones seems to tingle with activity. Yawning with them does not seem as common as with us. Hard labor leaves no mark of fatigue upon their faces, even though their limbs drag with exhaustion. They love the excitement of motion not by fits and starts but the onward orderly motion like the turning of a great wheel propelled by the rise and fall of its shaft. Such an exhibition of modern enginery as this or any other to them, great wonder, will hold a crowd spell- bound with interest. The Chinese love method even in motion. They themselves are methodic and orderly. Every motion must count with them, even to the rickshaw men who so measure their breath that they arrive at the end of their course without panting, although they will strain themselves to the extreme if required. The secret of Chinese individual inde- pendence may be found in the fact that each man works at his calling alone. Every artisan has his set labor regardless of the labor of companions. Even the coolies work singly, except where the nature ">f their work requires the combined strength of two or several. They are, therefore, largely their own masters. They follow their vocation without direction or orders, although much will be gained when they submit to the discipline of organization. And so they have finally taken the independence of their daily labor into their social life in all of its ramifications, finally coming to the point where they will neither offer nor brook interference. 44 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War Loving activity the Chinese naturally love crowds, for their crowds are rarely stationary although nearly always compara- tively noiseless. Their streets, though thronged with passing multitude, are frequently so still, except when carriers pass, that the light sounds of the silversmith tools can he heard by an attentive passerby. The only crowds that most Chinese have ever known are the street crowds as they curiously gather in a common impulse of observation at some strange or unusual sight. During your rambles do not feel annoyed at the good natured crowds that will in some cities gather about you, for the white face is still much of a rarity in most parts of interior China. Not only our physical appearance but likewise our clothes in- terest them. Someone in the crowd will get the detail of every button. Fond as I am of children, I have frequently felt sorry for little Chinese children who would run from us in great fright. In Peking once we stopped to watch some caravan camels, and while doing so a father ran into his house to bring out his whole family of little ones who shrinkingly and wonderingly gazed upon us. I once saw a Chinese albino. In spite of his strong Asiatic features he might have passed for some fair skinned European dweller of the north. He at- tracted much attention among the Chinese, but not as much as I, a foreigner, which leads me to believe that our style of dressing is the great object of their curiosity. And really we must appear outlandish to them ! Our women with their stays and high-heeled shoes; our men with collar, cravat and derby hat! One of the most distressing experiences in a ramble in a Chinese city are the beggars. Their condition is dreadful beyond description, and they frequently expose afflicted parts of their person, such as a diseased arm or limb, so that amid their rags they produce an impression so shocking that delicate persons are sometimes hours in recovering from its effect. To Everyday China 45 add to the sadness of the situation one dares rarely to give them any alms, for the word will be quickly carried along to other beggars who will come swarming with dreadful out- stretched hands and with open sores of virulent contagion, thrusting their loathsome bodies through the crowd until they arrive directly against one. Flint hearted and callous indeed would be anyone who would not gladly and generously respond to these unfortunate afflicted beings if it were possible to do so without grave personal exposure to contagion. Nearly all beggars in China are worthy of charity. There are few fake beggars as in India, although one is frequently importuned by children following and crying vigorously for cumshaw, a word derived from "Come Shore," meaning money given the sailors to come ashore with and which was supposed to be spent with the prodigality that only drunken seamen affect. Outside of the cumshaw children's begging of the port towns, there ia little mendicancy in China as compared with India. Perhaps in your meandering about the streets you may be fortunate in running into a fair. In Peking, which is the most enjoyable of all Chinese cities for a ramble, there are numerous fairs, nearly all of which are arranged in temple grounds. Describing one held at the temple grounds of Hou- kouosieu may be entertaining. The streets leading up to the temple grounds are filled with people and lined with the wares of small merchants who sell everything from a dwarfed pine tree to a fish pole feather duster. Many brilliantly vermillioned women's faces are seen in the throng, which calls for a word of explanation. Chinese and Manchu girls and women paint themselves as a mere matter of decoration, just as they would sew a bright colored band to their hats. There is no attempt at deception, for it is laid on as thickly as the paint on a house. Little girls, dressed in rags, humble little chips of humanity just beginning to have a likeness for pretty things, paint themselves up when 46 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War they can get hold of the color, and all crimson with their daubs are seen mopping up the floors or throwing out the dish water that they have warmed their hands in if it be winter time. Mothers to amuse the children sometimes paint their children's faces, and they are thus seen like grotesque little clowns in the street. The custom of face painting has no significance in China. Our women paint to improve the appear- ance of their complexion; Chinese women paint just for fun for the mere strangeness of the decoration. But to return to the fair. Inside the dilapidated temple grounds is disclosed an endless chain of pleasure seekers and bargain hunters, crowding in orderly columns through the nar- row gateways of the temples unless deflected into narrower files, directed toward particular booths of merchandise. Chinese crowds are very quiet compared with ours; no loud laughter, although everyone is good natured and smiling. No hum of voices for they are close observers and have little desire to talk when there is something new to see. Here and there in the temple grounds medicine dispensers are proclaiming in husky voices, much as the singing salesmen of city wares, the excellence of the concoctions offered for sale. One of them is a strong, powerful, low statured fellow who, throwing aside his fur coat and disclosing his half-naked body, cries out, "How potent is the power of medicine when properly prepared. See! I am strong because I use these tablets. Let those who are ailing profit by my words !" With that he seizes a bundling mass of heavy ship chains loaded with weights of blunt metal which he throws into the air, pulling them down upon his naked breast with a sickening thud, repeated a score of times amid his yells and grimaces of self-inflicted pain. Finally, exhausted with his exertions and overcome by the force of his own ingenious assault, he drops the irons to take the tablet of medicine proffered by his attendant, and reviving himself with a cup of tea he follows the lively sale of his alleged medicine with interest. January in Old Shanghai with snow on Tea House Bridge. Hongkong Peak from Signal Station. January in Canton tcith front of shops open. (llintpse of Foochow bridge of Ten Thousand Ages. Everyday China 47 A few yards from this spectacle is a pole thrower who, pro- claiming the virtues of a certain medicine, hurls and spins a thirty-foot pole in the air regardless of the fact that a single slip may brain a half dozen of the admiring crowd beneath. Still farther beyond is a sword swallower, a tall handsome fellow who, with dramatic gestures and poses, finally seizes a wide glittering sword longer than his body is wide, plunging it down through his throat and aesophagus, where he allows it to re- main a surprising length of time, the secretions of his throat and gullet meantime draining along the blade. Another vender of cures in pantomime tragically exhibits a plaster which he places upon various parts of the bodies of those who present themselves for treatment with many grandiose movements of his hands and arms. These jugglers, mountebanks and medicine men are very common in China, and their skill and dexterity would bring forth a storm of applause were they on the American vaude- ville stage. Their accessories are very simple. The novelty and skillfulness of their sleight-of-hand is wonderful and only obtained by continued practice from childhood. Quite a com- mon trick is blowing clouds of smoke and spouts of fire from their mouth in astonishing volumes, which, when quenched apparently by chewing up into the mouth from time to time a sort of mealy looking mixture, suddenly belches forth anew, crackling and exploding into a great shower of sparks a most inexhaustible pyrotechnic. The Chinese, although lacking in many other forms of entertainment, have developed the art of legerdemain into a state of excellence hardly to be expected in the full light of open air exhibitions and pathetically scant paraphernalia. The entertainments are generally public, the Chinese magician depending upon the generosity of spectators for his reward in case he offers nothing to sell. It is surprising how liberally even poor Chinese respond by a voluntary contribution of 48 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War cash when they deem the performance worthy. One reason why the theatre has not thrived in China is found in the unwilling- ness of the natives to pay in advance for an entertainment of whose value they are uncertain. A German established a mov- ing picture show at Chentu, in Szechuan Province. At first the Chinese would not patronize it, complaining because an admission fee was charged and the entertainment all secretly enclosed, for the entertainments are, with the exception of certain metropolitan theatres, held in public by voluntary con- tributions much like the fairs in some of our American coun- tries. After they discovered, however, that the show was worth the money they patronized it very largely. These magicians, as I have above told of them, must not be confused with the fortune tellers and necromancers who, prevailing in large numbers, are a serious detriment to modern advance by continuing ancient superstitions, particularly since their art is frequently hereditary as is that ofttimes of the Chinese physician. They are not all mere unkempt rascals such as are commonly noticed with their cabalistic charts before them in the busy streets of every Chinese city. They some- times, by their personalities and their adroitness in handling their patrons, establish quite a local reputation for sooth- saying and enjoy large emoluments from the exercise of their calling. I remember one fellow at Nankin who, in a retired corner where the congenial sunshine of a winter's after- noon made his open air consultations comfortable and pleas- ant underneath a canopy of canvas, richly robed, immacu- lately barbered, leaning back with a sort of judicial dignity in his easy chair with his servants in awestricken attendance as the future of a prosperous looking patron was forecast. The patron, hanging upon every syllable of the necromancer with a couple of divining sticks in his hand, sat transfixed with attention as his fortune was cast in signs and characters upon the writing slate before him, while the accompanying Everyday China 49 words of explanation were uttered solemnly and convincingly with wide and grandiloquent gestures. As the soothsayer, paus- ing in his rich elocution, happened to observe the presence of foreigners, he abruptly stopped, and with a low word to his patron, setting his features in a fixed expression rather of resignation than chagrin, politely lapsed into a reverie, entirely suspending the seance and erasing the inscriptions which covered the slate. As we passed away he immediately resumed the consultation, undoubtedly informing his client of his good fortune in having escaped the influence of foreign shadows fall- ing upon his horoscope. A stringent law under severe penalties directed against these necromancers will eradicate much of the Chinese superstition in a decade, and they will soon descend to the innocuous level of our gypsy fortune tellers in Europe and America. The practice of necromancy as well as what are known among us of the professions of medicine, ministry and dentistry are free and open to all without let or hindrance, the Chinese proceeding on the theory that if an avocational man doesn't know his business he can get no patrons and will, therefore, do no harm. Every turn in the road, however, brings spectacles of disease, which a few days' simple treatment with the proper washes or other medicine would greatly alleviate or entirely cure. The other day I saw a native dentist working away on a suffering woman's teeth, causing her undoubtedly great pain, when a simple antiseptic treatment would probably have been all she needed. The Chinese, from a modern standpoint, have no idea of prophylactics, and their comparative freedom from sickness in the filth and foulness of their daily surroundings is an unquestioned indication of their virility. Epidemics have never obtained the proportions here, all things considered, as in Europe during the medieval period. During the terrible cholera outbreak in the Philippines in 1902, few Chinese suc j cumbed, for the Chinese tea drinking custom with its enforced 50 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War boiling of water as well as eating their food hot from the fire, make them immune from cholera as well as certain other in- testinal complaints. But in speaking of everyday China, let us know something of their food, for it is not the soupy, hashed-up stuff as is commonly believed. Although some of their favorite and prin- cipal dishes are made of fresh meats and vegetables sliced but not chopped, delicately flavored with spices or highly seasoned with peppers, according to taste, others of their most common dishes are made up of greaseless, roasted foods, among which their delicious sweet potato ranks high. What might be called the tub oven is a most efficient and economical means of roast- ing and baking at the same time, for the fuel expense in the preparation of a dish largely enters into the calculation of its expense. The tub oven consists of a large buoy shaped clay vessel, open at both ends, and standing upright reaching to the convenient height of the waist of the cook. The clay vessel is the oven, the tub being merely to protect, hold upright and insulate it to allow its convenient transportation by a coolie swinging it from his pole. A hole is cut into the side of the bottom for draft, and being placed in the direction of the wind, the slightest movement of which the native cook detects as readily as our American Indian, the draft fans, with the passing air, a bright and glowing fire in the charcoals on the floor of the vessel. Immediately about the fire are laid the un- ekinned sweet yam potatoes, and in the walls are fastened, by mere adhesion, cakes and flat biscuits of various kinds, the whole filling the air about, in the process of baking and roast- ing, with a most appetizing odor. A fine large sweet potato with its seasoning will cost half a cent, a biscuit another half cent, a bowl of noodles with meat another half copper which, with an abundance of tea for another half cent, will make up a splendid meal for two cents, unrivaled both in excellence of its raw products and preparation. Everyday China 51 Upon the theory that there is more sickness caused by bathing than not bathing, the Chinese have another advantage over other nations, for they bathe less frequently perhaps than any other people. The Japanese bathe not alone for cleanliness but for the pleasurable warmth of the water. The Chinese, in spite of the exposure frequently of half their bodies while working in zero weather, have comparatively few colds. As I write I can look from the window upon a stream of coolies and rickshaw men, many of whom are barefooted in the snow and biting wind. No other nation can give such examples of endurance as these. Their vigor and robustness seem to be general in all parts of China, regardless of the stature. For the Chinese are lower statured in the south than in the north where six footers are commoner than with us. Nor do they seem to lose in dexterity as they gain in height. It is some- times laughable to see a great, brawny Chinese waiter, his cue and broad gowned back making one think of some fabled race of giants. One of the world's champion boxers, and perhaps the most intelligent of them all, once told me that he believed that the best period of a man was between the ages of twenty- four and twenty-six. Assuming for the purpose of illustration that this statement is true, the Chinese have a great advantage over us, for they consider a man a boy in strength who is not thirty. Those who claim to know tell me that their best coolies are never less than thirty, and that their age doesn't seem to cut any figure after that. They simply keep on going until some final day they draw their wages and go home to die in the harness as it were. But upon these subjects it is very hard to get any information, owing to the fact that the white man has so little to do with the laboring class. To one who has spent any time in the Philippines where there is now an entente cordiale between the Chinese and the other races, where the Chino marries the native woman and where the white man takes him into his most intimate confidence, such a condi- 52 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War tion appears strange indeed. But it is a positive fact that the representation of our white race in China lives, even to the missionaries, entirely apart from the Chinese, except for formal meetings, commercial relations, educational association or domes- tic service. The general indifference of old residents and the whole foreign public generally, excepting the missionaries, to any interest in the Chinese which does not appeal to their pocket books is at times incomprehensible. Think of it! Europeans who are unloading thousands of pounds worth of products daily upon these people, and who have been here for a score and more of years living in ease and even luxury upon the large profits exacted, barely taking enough concern in their surroundings to observe the most common of the rules of polite- ness prevailing among them. How can the Chinese respect us when our race manifests such coarse and selfish indifference toward them? A little incident which I once observed from the window of my lodging will serve to illustrate the general attitude of our people toward the Chinese. The heaviest snow of years having fallen in Shanghai, two young French school boys profited by the occasion to go out to play in the snow. From throwing balls at each other they finally asked an Italian barber standing near if it would be all right to throw snowballs at the Chinese passersby. The Italian barber not only indicated that it was proper, but packing some balls of snow himself commenced to aim them at a group of shivering rickshaw men who, some with their feet and legs entirely naked, were standing nearby in the ice and snow. To them the occasion was not particularly appropriate for the teasing, for they were standing keenly alert for prospec- tive customers, and when the snow was thrown at them re- peatedly, they all retired into a doorway except one who, also picking up some snow, concluded that he might as well join in the Christmas merriment and indication of the white man's good will. Being a lusty, dexterous young fellow, he warmed Everyday China 53 to the sport of the unequal contest at short range of three against one in this strange international and allied forced duel, forgetting himself to the point of actually striking one of his opponents with a snowball, upon which with great affright at his temerity he took to his heels with the barber in pursuit, who finally caused his arrest. This is a case of sauce alone for the goose but not for the gander. The unfortunate Chinese was probably sentenced to a casual term at hard labor for assault, for European prestige must be maintained at all hazard of injustice. The young lads, thus encouraged in their manly sport, con- tinued to pelt all Chinese, regardless of age or sex, with their hard packed balls of snow until they finally became tired and the barefooted rickshaw men were freed from their tor- mentors. This little example may indicate in a small measure some- thing of our conduct toward these people. We have done the Chinese no intentional good but much deliberate harm. The only extenuation in our whole allied effort and attempt to oppress these people is found in the unappreciated but splendid work of our poorly supported missionaries. The white man's burden is a myth in China a myth to excuse the wickedness of the opium traffic and commercial aggrandizement at the point of the gun. "What good have we ever intentionally tried to do the Chinese beyond the missions? The whole history of the white race in China shows that our own selfish lust for China's wealth has gone to the greatest extreme that the cunning of diplomacy or the shedding of blood in armed force could attain. This arraignment I know is extreme, but from long observation in China I regret to conclude that it is justified. We hear much said concerning the backwardness of China in accepting modern standards, as though that country were both ungrateful and unappreciative of the opportunity to assim- ilate western progress. Can China be blamed for such back- 54 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War wardness when it sees the kind of taskmasters who await with vulture-like eagerness to profit by the confusion resulting from the first trembling movement of such a gigantic nation, fixed and stationary upon a social foundation unchanged in cen- turies ? We have always treated the Chinese with contumely. Fail- ing to understand him ourselves we blame him for not under- standing and imitating us. With itching palms we survey the riches of his markets and try to devise means to possess them. We despise him when we should confide in him. But Chinese rapprochement is certain. We shall soon understand each other better. On the occasions when your rambles are interrupted by the rain, take your position at some comfortable window op- posite a tramstop on some street in the Foreign Settlement, leading up to the Chinese City and watch the stream of real motion pictures of which every figure becomes a tableau. Note the many different customs, for the Chinese are as fond of variety as we, and have more independence in the gratification of their taste. Many years ago in the Straits Settlement, as I went with a holiday crowd to visit Johore, a party of young Englishmen laughed very rudely at a young Chinese matron brilliantly gowned in scarlet and imperial yellow, and made some coarse comment in criticism of her taste. Her delicate ivory complexion flushed at hearing the words which she was not supposed to be able to understand, and gathering her servants about her with a curious but proud heightening of her eyebrows, she walked away with a significant glance at the marmot and mouse colored tweeds of the young Englishmen. Undoubtedly she thought that the best rebuke to the insult was a polite indication of comparison between her own really beautiful costume it was during the Chinese New Year and the coarse and colorless cheap clothing of her deriders. Everyday China 55 The Chinese always dress with appropriateness and with regard to their comfort, particularly in conformance with the demands of the weather. It is only on gala occasions that their women come out in light, bright colored materials. Nearly all their heavy clothes are in elegant subdued colors as with us, the linings and revers alone adding a touch of brightness to their costume. And amid all the varieties of costume which you see pass- ing before you, is it not surprising that there are so few uni- forms? Our brass buttons and liveries are entirely lacking. The Chinese believe little in a meaningless outward display of semi-military uniforms. Never having been a military people they have no regard for such dress. A simple button or decora- tion on the top of the hat is generally enough indication of rank and authority under their keen observation. And now from your window look at the types as they pass by bedraggled with the rain. The poor are particularly un- fortunate as usual, for if they have shoes for their feet they perhaps will have no umbrella or waterproof. The sight of a rickshaw man, barelegged and barefooted, splashing through the cold slush, but with a new mackintosh over his shoulders, is common today, for that particular coolie, in common with thousands of his fellows, never seems to get enough money together at once to properly and entirely clothe himself. And yet the foreigners begrudge him a few cents extra as a tip for a rickshaw ride when they throw out their quarters and shillings very liberally among the serving class at home. Frequently the Chinese coolie has to stand for impositions even today in the concessions in the foreign treatment he receives that are indeed unjust. If he is struck and beaten by a foreigner he has frequently no redress, even though the assault may have been almost murderous, for the offense was committed in a foreign settlement where each foreigner mistakenly and too often believes that it is his duty to stand up for every other, 56 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War and where the foreign judges come to their decisions through the same erroneous impulse. Eight is right, and if justice discriminates between men as members of different races there is no justice. Look at the difference between the Chinese treat- ment of the foreigner and the foreigner's treatment of the Chinese. I go about in their cities at will, regardless as to whether they are treaty ports or not. They accord me a kind and good natured treatment, and although in the remote parts their natural curiosity is sometimes annoying because of the crowds that quickly gather, they are always good natured, answering smile for smile. The Boxer outbreak was not a Chinese machination. It was the result of direct obedience to a Manchu order, promulgated by a vicious, bad woman whose ignorance and wickedness for one so high in power stands unparalleled in the world's history. The Boxers were originally never formed for any purpose save that of protest against the foreigners denying the Chinese in China the same rights which the Chinese accorded willingly and gladly to the foreigners. The Boxers go down in history with the recorded stigma of assassins. Some of them should be remembered as martyrs. For years the European and American public discussed in eulogy and praise Li Hung Chang, whom they called the "Grand Old Man of China !" History has proven that Li Hung Chang was a traitor to his country, and much of the foreign aspersion of Chinese officials comes from the operations of that truckling, piratical school whose recognized head and master was Li Hung Chang. Under such a betrayal of their interests, can we wonder at the indignant but patriotic outburst of the Chinese against the danger which threatened them? Yes! By natural impulse the Chinese have shown them- selves to be as large minded as we. Comparisons are always odious, and racial comparison offensive, and the thought of a white man admitting in any way the superiority of another race is with us almost a misdemeanor. Everyday China 57 There is none of the yellow dog about the Chinese. They are thoroughbreds. For centuries the Chinese have had the custom of giving their daughters in marriage to well recom- mended strangers, the more distant and stranger the better. This is still the custom. The magnitude of their cities made this convenient and possible. The bride, with her new and different ideas, became an education to her husband, enlarging his mental horizon to new purposes of life. She, in her turn, found in this stranger man, her husband whom she had never seen before she arrived at his home with her bed and clothing, for there is never any ceremony of marriage as with us among the Chinese, the bride being merely escorted to the house of the bridegroom finds a wonderful world in his recital of his family associations, of his own ambition and aims in life. With us marriage is a mere question of sentiment and convenience; with the Chinese it is a means of reviving the sluggishness of an ancient race, and then besides there are no alimony hunters in China. I do not defend the Chinese custom of marriage. For me there is only one marriage that which, conceived in love and respect, is ended only by death itself. But last night as I was eating my dinner in a Shanghai hotel dining room, where a rich coal merchant, a Chinese, was presiding at a table with four wives a very remarkable occurrence in public even in these reform days my reflections led me to a more tolerant excuse for the doomed institution of secondary wives. His mother to whom I was afterwards introduced sat at one end of the table, he at the other. His primary wife sat to the left of the mother and the secondary wives occupied the intermediate positions. He looked like the precocious father of a grown family of daughters in his rich and voluminous folds of brocade and satin. The fingers of the mother were covered with diamonds; the wives had none. Every plate was passed to the old lady before any of the wives could partake 58 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War of it. When she spoke everyone stopped eating and listened. Her head was bald and she was bent with age, but she had the consideration of all at that table as though she were a young, beautiful, enthroned princess. When she finished they all promptly concluded their own meal and, followed by her son and his four wives, she proudly left the room. Two years or even one year ago such a spectacle would have been impossible in this country. A Chinese never even speaks of his female relatives, of his mother, sister or wife. ITow wonderful to see them then coming now into public hotel dining rooms in this manner! And how more wonderful this ancient reverence for the mother. Even the polygamous rela- tion was somewhat extenuated by the respect for that old decrepit woman. Years ago in Salt Lake City I engaged in conversation with one of the apostles of the Mormon Church. He frankly discussed the tenets of his faith, and among other things said : "Yes, polygamy is a useful system because under it every man is held responsible for the misconduct of women. There can be no fallen women among us !" His assertion struck me with such ridicule that I could hardly suppress a laugh. The Chinese have no such silly excuse to give for their iniquitous practice of modified polygamy. They have the sounder and better reason, which in a small measure mitigates the wicked- ness and turpitude of the custom, the consideration of the family and its perpetuation as a part of the greater family, the tribe in which all are subject to the certain authority of wisdom as obtained by age. And before we go back to the window again, let me say a few words more about what I said concerning the Chinese quality of being a thoroughbred. In America we boast fre- quently of our melting-pot and the excellent quality of racial metal which its fused mixture is bringing us. The British, Germans, Latins, the new strange peoples of the Balkan States, Everyday China 59 the Finns, Greeks, and all the other nations of the earth brought together in one common race ! How strong and wonderful it must eventually appear by the very force of its admixture! Such is frequently the popular rhapsody. The truth really is that from homogeneous crossings alone can racial development in man be perfected. As a young lawyer commencing his prac- tice in the criminal courts of Chicago, I was surprised to find that the majority of my clients who were guilty were the offspring of widely divergent nationalities, and I became convinced that the melting-pot theory of racial benefit was an hallucination. The Jews are to us in Europe and America what the Chinese are to the world, a strong, virile, well developed race whose long intermingling admixture has improved rather than impaired the individual virility of its members. The Chinese, with the Jews, are the only pure races on the globe today. With purety of race comes that tenacity and vigor which defies the ravages of war and surmounts every obstacle placed in the road of its eventual progress. Destroy every semblance of Chinese autonomy and they will still prosper and increase in power and multiply in numbers just as they have done in the United States, even in spite of the most radical exclusive and disfranchising laws history has ever known. Like the Jews, mere political organization is not much of a hindrance to their steady development even when used as a machine of persecution against them. The Chinese are too pure a race to be de- pendent upon the casual vicissitudes of politics. There is a great chance that they will eventually and for a long time control the world by the very tenacity of their racial instincts. CHAPTEE VII FROM THE YANGTSE TO PEKING Pukow, the new railway terminus opposite Nankin, gives the same impression of great possibilities that many other railway-made towns in China now indicate and which have been touched in the wilderness of their desolation by the magic wand of modern transportation. With readjusted laws of land conveyancing, their local town booms under the clever management of real estate agents and promoters, a class which does not as yet exist in China, but which will when eventually organized repeat the wonderful work and obtain even larger profits than have the well rewarded thousands of land owners and agents in America. Some of the largest fortunes of the new China will be made out of the rapid increment of land values, and the forebears of many a future Chinese millionaire are now plodding behind primitive ploughs over worn-out land which some day will become the site of villages and cities. Pukow is now only an agglomeration of miserable mat hovels, the quarters of the railway coolies. The long white line of the engineer's messes and lodgings loom up in the foggy Decem- ber morning as we stand amid the huge piles of bagged rice and soya beans, with the lines of cars covered with the frost which will rapidly disappear under the warmth of the rising sun. The shimmering Yangtse is wonderfully wide with its broad expanse covered with junks, merchant ships and foreign men-of-war and with great landing hulks of dismantled vessels on the Nankin side. As the fog disperses we look with delight upon the purple hills, almost unnatural in their deep brilliancy as their color deepens with the advance of the sun. There was only an express train twice a week between 60 From the Yangtse to Peking 61 Pukow and Tientsin, and as this did not allow any chance for sightseeing, even against the advice of our friends we took the local train which jogged along in a sort of a jerk-water fashion during the day hours and then as it were tied up for the night. The rolling stock of the railway had been very badly used by the soldiers transported during the Revolution. The windows and doors in our first class compartment were so poorly fitted, allowing draughts to blow through unmercifully, that we made frequent visits to the second class compartments to warm ourselves up between intervals of shivering. These visits greatly added to the interest of the voyage, and coming and going we were always greeted by the most cordial and good natured curiosity. A young Chinese engineer, whom hardly anyone would have taken for an Asiatic in his European tweed and fashionable haberdashery, carrying a crop, took great pleasure in showing us the points of interest as we were going along. Crowning the hillside to the right was the inevitable pagoda, while beyond stretched the plains on towards the empurpled mountains of the distance. Great commotion of earnest talking in one part of the car aroused our interest. A Chinese passenger with a third class ticket concluded that as the third class was crowded he was entitled to ride second class. So with his baskets and bundles he comfortably ensconced himself, only to have his dream of ease disturbed by the guards. The fellow put up such a good argument concerning the injustice of letting the second class go vacant when the third class did not give sufficient accommodation that he consumed about an hour in his defense which, although admitting the technical correctness of the guard's position, elegantly dwelt upon the natural justice of his right to ride second class. Finally, in the midst of the argument, the fellow got up and with superb dignity stalked back to the third class, evidently with a very contemptuous estimate of railway order. 62 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War The Chinese are very susceptible to plausible argument which appeals to their natural sense of justice. When the bombs were thrown at Yuan Shih-K'ai at Tientsin the soldiers immediately made a number of arrests in the vicinity of the bomb throwing, among them being a Chinese, undoubtedly one of the real culprits, who, loudly complaining against his arrest, asked them what proof they had to warrant such action. "I have no bomb," said he. "Why don't you search for those who have some of the guilty instruments in their posses- sion?" The fellow was so eloquent with this and other arguments that the guards, in the excitement of the moment, released him. Of course he had no bomb because he had thrown his. At one of the stations as we rode along, I noticed the ludicrous spectacle of some soldiers marching a prisoner toward the guard car. The prisoner, who had no towchang, had his. tousled long hair very neatly plaited into the end of the rope with which the guards restrained him. Someone in the crowd laughingly remarked: "Now you know why the Manchu made us wear the queue. They made us carry our own rope to hold and strangle us with," and they all laughed, even the prisoner as he was bundled into the guard coach probably on his way to death. Wherever the railroad has made a cut, cones of dirt are left to show the depth of the excavation as a standing record of measurement, a wise precaution which shows how new China is trying to break away from the squeeze of extortionate contract work. A large part of the country through which we passed after leaving Pukow is subject to those discouraging inundations which have been the scourge of China since its earliest history. These people can indeed sympathize with at least one part of the Old Testament the narration of Noah's Flood for anni- hilating and devastating floods form a part of every generation A common road bridge. A. glimpse of China fair even in winter. \Boys who do men's work on baby rations. Their first aeroplane. From the Yangtse to Peking 63 of their history. Certain Christian biblical historians find, in the great flood which was recorded in the reign of Shun, a recital of Noah's Flood nearly four thousand years ago. The day, still distant and removed, but nevertheless certain, will surely come when all the surplus waters of China will prove her blessing rather than her scourge, and rivers flowing through deserts, too deep in their channels to serve for irriga- tion, will be eventually engineered to the lasting benefit and further enrichment of China. The Chinese farmer's life looks much more wholesome than that of his brother in the city, although the farmer's surroundings are far from being what they should be. His house, out-buildings and farm yards are all enclosed in a high wall of roughly hewn stone, filled and plastered with clay. The buildings are built low of the same material, adobe in appearance, thatched with straw, frequently joined in a workmanlike, neat fashion at the outside edges with a sort of a ridge trimming of plaster trimly set. His life and that of his family is a very hard one, much of the labor which could be saved by modern farm implements being crudely and painfully performed with the help of the rudest tools. There is a great scarcity of beasts of burden. The picture of a farmer with a donkey yoked to a bullock trying to carry his produce over an almost impassable road in a large wheelbarrow, the donkey pulling one way and the bullock another, while he strains every nerve and muscle to keep the wheelbarrow upright, is a common and laughable feature in the provinces. His recourse to the most sulphurous profanity would seem justified and a comparatively virtuous indulgence on such occasions. The fields, beautifully cultivated with all the finished effect which only hand labor can procure, are frequently broken by a family cemetery with its rows of mounds, the highest wall being that of the chief ancestor with a circular ridge for 64 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War Feng Sui. The whole is evenly marked as a geometrical design. Up to these graves the farmer cultivates as nearly as he can without disrespect to the dead. Under the hard conditions of his surroundings it is little wonder that to increase the number of workers the boys are niarried off when very young to bring another working adult into the family in the struggle for existence. Nganhui and Kiangsu Provinces particularly partake of China's characteristic of tree barrenness, but the monotony of the plains is broken by the variety of the color of the soil which, by its composition and the refraction of light, brings out the terra cotta, mahogany or rich brown with stretches of purple, and even here and there a patch of chalky white in those seasons of the year when the lands are mostly bare of the vivid green of the growing crops. Over the fields pass the indigo colored gowns of the farmers and their family, busy even in the winter time with the precious soil to which they look gratefully for their subsistence. All Chinese farmers seem to be truck gardeners as well. I have looked with wonder on many an acre of crisp salad plants growing up out of the apparently frozen soil. These blue gowns are in every shade of light royal and dark navy, the faded light blue and the fresh color of the new gar- ments contrasting beautifully upon the newly tilled fields or the occasionally flaming green of a winter growth. The lot of the farmer is so hard that history repeats itself here as elsewhere, in that the sons leave their farm homes for work in the cities. Eailway building is a blessing to them. We look with interest at the gangs of coolies who, for ten cents gold daily, perform ten hours of hard labor. It was Sunday to us but no Sunday to them. Time is too precious to the Chinese and the machinery of their lives too complicated with demands to admit of Sunday. Only twice during the lunar month, at its beginning and at full moon, certain of the From the Yangtse to Peking 65 hardest worked crafts, by the sheer necessity of their fatigue, take a holiday, but the mercantile life rolls on as usual, and it is only at New Year that a vacation is indulged in to balance accounts and recreate in family reunions and assem- blings. In their patched gowns of blue, their bare legs and feet red with the blustering wind, the coolies frequently make a pathetic picture. But they are never sorry for themselves. With all their hardships they smile and show their white clean teeth in a perfect exuberance of good nature. The com- monest coolie cleans his teeth twice daily. It is the one in- dulgence in cleanliness of which even their most indigent poverty cannot deprive them. They perform their labor with lighter tools than we, with longer handles for the leverage, and they work correspondingly quicker. They do not use the wheelbarrow for carrying earth or heavy material as we. In its place they employ light bowls and small baskets swung from the shoulders. Each coolie works largely for himself and to himself. There is little gang direc- tion. Each worker merely follows along in the endless human chain until the task is completed by their common effort. Every individual, however, is jealous of his right to use his own intelligence in the manner of his endeavor. In India's capital even, I have seen women earth carriers on the government contract work of the Qutab Minar cruelly lashed into line by the overseers, a thing which would be impossible in China. In Canton I watched one of these strange river tread- wheel boats. Although the coolie treaders kept step as they rose up from one tread to another, there was none of that deadlock stamp in their work which we boastfully call discipline. One of the most hopeful assurances in China's rapid progress is found in the independence and intelligence of its enormous laboring classes who, never having been enslaved by feudalism nor 66 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War dominated by the depressing influence of a profligate nobility or domineering aristocracy, preserve their self-respect and man- hood more than any other Oriental nation. At times the country seems strangely like theNebraskan and other Western and recently preempted plains, but the fields are in smaller patches and separated by ridges of un- ploughed land instead of fences. Here and there we may per- haps see a beautifully arched stone bridge standing in the midst of cultivated land with no road leading to or from it; no water course beneath it, a strange emblem of some long bygone day. In a few places there are stone monuments of men and animals larger than life and sometimes inscribed pillars upon a tortoise base likewise standing in the midst of the otherwise vacant fields. One of the most pleasing reflections of the voyage on this railway passing through the three provinces of Xganhui, Kiangsu and Shantung, is that few women are to be found doing coolie labor as in other Oriental countries. During my several visits to Japan I saw perhaps a hundredfold more of coolie women laborers than in China. Even in some parts of Europe, particularly in the Balkan States, I have seen more women laborers than among the Chinese. But the sad sight of a decrepit old woman, whose patched rags hardly cover her shriveled limbs, begging in a plaintive voice with shrunken arm outstretched as she balances herself on her hoof-like distorted stumps of bound feet by the aid of her cane, is unfortunately ever frequent. Some of them, too proud to beg, peddle cakes and pickled eggs of a foreboding green color or crackling fritters fresh from the griddle. But the distress at the sight of these unfortunate women is overcome by looking at their more fortunate sisters in the coaches. One of them, a fine featured young woman with a beautiful babe, presses upon us presents of thorn dates with millet and small sugared apples. All the women in the car evince From the Yangtse to Peking 67 a lively interest in us, particularly in my wife. One young woman who, with her livid painted face to the window and her trousers drawn tight, however, sleeps on unconscious of the grotesque picture she offers to us until she is finally awakened to join in the jollity with the Occidentals, smilingly taking the elaborate silver pipe tendered her by her maid and draw- ing a few diminutive puffs while absorbing the novelty of our appearance with pleasure. They are all delighted with the books we show them. Every passenger has his pot of tea replenished from time to time, and steaming towels are passed out by the train boy to refresh by wiping the face and hands, an indulgence in which we found no favor. We practiced our Mandarin Chinese and, far from being amused at our mistakes, they entered very heartily into the role of an instructor from our conversation book. How curious this coach interior! New found friends com- ing and going with every station ! Women with trousers ! Men with skirts! The painted faces of girls and women in a circle with the beardless faces of men, all friendly and cour- teous. As they would leave at the different stations, in sedan chairs or strolling away with groups of friends, sometimes they would pause to wave us a good-bye. "Mountains cannot meet, but men must meet," sang the old Persian poet, and traveling in good natured China frequently suggests this verse. At the noon hour we went into the dining car where we were disappointed in having none but European dishes, the delicious Chinese food being entirely lacking, even to the sauce which to them generally takes the place of the salt and pepper. When I asked for some of it the waiter proudly told me that their food was all European and produced a bottle of Worces- tershire sauce in the place of the desired Chinese article. We were passing through a wonderful game country where duck and heron frequently speckled the sky. The poor farmer, how- 68 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War ever, cannot replenish his larder from the abundance of these fowl, since he is not allowed to possess firearms and has little time to attend to his primitive traps. Herons were served, heads, bills and all, but so great was our pleasure in watching these beautiful birds that we hadn't the heart nor the appetite to pick out what little flesh there was on their slender bodies. After tiring of the loneliness of our first class coach we again returned to the second class where we noticed a fine look- ing military cadet, very proud of his long sword, immaculately uniformed with tassels and spotless white gloves. After awhile the janitor of the car, whose chief duty was to attend to the fires, came along and, throwing himself on the double seat by the cadet, was soon lost in sleep. The relaxation of his limbs as he slept crowded the cadet, who indignantly awoke him to call his attention to the unjustifiable trespass. Without any show of anger the awakened porter gave a contemptuous look at the soldier and then readjusted his posi- tion even a little closer to him, and again went to sleep. Why not ? He was tired with his labor ! The cadet was in no need of rest and if he did not respect labor enough to move to another seat it was time that he learned. So under the pretense of being asleep the porter finally crowded his long limbs over against the soldier until, with his sword, white gloves and all, he was forced to leave the seats to the grimy porter who, with his mouth open and clutching a monkey wrench in his dirty hand, spread himself out in languid ease with a satisfied yawn. As a child I remember someone saying that all Chinese look alike. They only look alike until one is really familiar with the racial types, when they show as much individuality in fea- tures and personality as we ourselves. I remember my first im- pressions of the native Annamites in French Indo-China, whose sex at first I could not determine since both sexes dress and wear their hair alike. It was only a short time, however, before From the Yangtse to Peking 69 I could readily distinguish between them, regardless of their similarity of clothing and hairdress. So it is with the Chinese in a measure, for the monotonous sameness of the hair arrange- ment of both sexes, although different for each sex, and the lack of variety in the cut and color of garments, make their types at first appear somewhat confusing. The so-called oblique eyes, considered a characteristic of the Chinese race, is not at all unvarying and pronounced. Sit- ting in a car where you can study their faces, you would be surprised at the number of types approaching ours. As a gen- eral rule they have, however, eyes very brown or black and set bead-like in their sockets and not frequently sunken as with us, but set out on a line with their straight foreheads and with less eyebrows and lashes than with the white race. But this type is not always fixed. I have seen rickshaw men whose thin features and eyes deep sunk with fatigue made them into something of our type. European clothes cause them to lose much of their supposed great difference from us. Many Chinese women in European clothes would pass in Europe for handsome brunettes, for the possibilities of hair arrangement give women more opportunities to approach certain of our types than men. It is, however, surprising how many Chinese soldiers would be mistaken for European soldiers by their pro- nounced features alone. Eventually they will more nearly re- semble us than the Japanese, for their proportions of body and stature are more similar to ours. The study of the disappearance of the queue is interesting. Wherever the Revolution has made itself felt the towchang has disappeared. Europeans who are anti-Republican occasionally encourage their servants to keep their towchang, and I know of one who foolishly considered it a personal affront to him- self when some revolutionary soldiers seized his servant and cut off his queue. We found few towchang s in Nankin, but as we got farther away from the Yangtse there was hardly a 70 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War queueless head to be found outside of the soldier's ranks. A Mandarin got on at a station in Nganhui Province, he and all of his guards wearing queues. When I spoke to him of his queue he laughed and merely said that the change of custom had not reached his part of China yet. In Peking, even a year after the Revolution, and in spite of both Republican and Manchu being against its wearing, hardly one out of ten among civilians had cut off his towchang. The Chinese, with their usual caution, believe that it is easier to keep a towchang than to grow a new one, but with a year or so more of de facto test of the Republican government the Manchu emblem of sub- mission will disappear. When we think that the Chinese have worn the queue since the days of American Colonial witchcraft hanging, and that it has been during all that time the badge of civil respectability of which the person convicted of misdemeanor was immediately deprived as a part of his punishment, we can readily under- stand how reluctant some Chinese are to part with it until indeed satisfied that the new order of government will protect them in its loss. Early in the evening we arrived at Suchefu, where the train stopped for the night. The gloomy prospect of having to spend the long, tedious wait on the earthen floor of some Chinese inn was banished by the appearance of a sleeping car which, warmed and immaculate, had been side-tracked for the accommodation of travelers. About Suchefu spreads the usual winter landscape of that part of China bare, brown and gray hills and plains, with hardly a tree to break the expanse of vacant farm land between the railroad station and the high wall of the city which, in a long unbroken line, rose up in the cold dawn over the gloomy plain now so easily invaded by the railroad after an eternity of isolation. Above the walls appear the form of hills within the city, surmounted Chinese-like by pagodas, one standing as From the Yangtse to Peking 71 a sentinel alone upon its eminence, reminding me of the loneli- ness of an abandoned castle crag such as I have seen on long rambles in Southern Spain. The other pagoda is a part of a group of buildings, about which trees spread their branches, the whole making a very pretty picture even in winter time. The steeples of a large church, together with the spreading roofs of the city gates, complete and enclose the extent of Suchefu which, like many Chinese cities, is more lovely when viewed from without than when closely inspected within, as it lies in the plain with the abrupt purpled mountains, pin- nacled and mirage like, forming a background in the far dis- tance. We started off on our second day's journey with the water frozen in the wash basin and the floor slippery with icy mop- ping. About noon we inquired as to prospects of obtaining food and were told that the excellent dining car of the day before had been left behind, but that we could obtain our luncheon in the improvised diner attached for that purpose. In my visits to nearly every principal country on the globe I have had some rather interesting experiences with things I have eaten and with places where I have eaten them, but as an unusual and exciting experience I believe that my attempt to provide my wife with a meal in this improvised dining car will ever stand out foremost in my recollection. With appetites whetted sharp by the keen air we repaired to the so-called dining car, which evidently during the Revolu- tion had been used as a sort of an ambulatory officer's mess. It was a mere steel freight truck, roughly mounted without springs, compared with the motion of which a lumber wagon going over a pile of cobble-stones would be poetry itself. Some windows in ill-fitting frames had been set into the sides of this freight car, and a couple of loose sliding doors placed at either end. The noise made by this peculiarly adapted car was as deafening as the rattle of a rolling mill. Guiding our- 72 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War selves by hanging onto the tables, riveted ship-like to the floor, we reached the places assigned to us where fresh linen was the only sign of preparation for the meal. We soon understood why no further service was set, for as soon as the plates, knives and forks were laid upon the table there commenced such a devil's dance among them that we had all we could do to keep them from jumping away, the oil and vinegar cruets fairly leaping out of their holders. A boy was detailed to hold the articles down, and we proceeded to "enjoy" our meal as best we could, yelling out our needs to the waiter at the top of our voices but hardly piercing the roaring confusion about us, stabbing with knives, spearing with forks, grasping at this dish and then at another, as the car lurched from side to side, dashing madly onward like a doomed ship in the clutch of a storm. Amid all this pandemonium the cook, from his galley in the corner of the car with an assistant to keep his pots and pans together, imperturbably and smilingly watched the progress of our meal, a great joint of beef banging back and forth over his head, while occasionally boiling water would splash from the kettle which his assistant held in its place with a poker. We had to finally give up in despair to wait for the next stop. While waiting, however, we were informed that the car might be taken off at the following station, so with renewed courage we bravely tackled the omelet served us which finally, in spite of all our precautions, in a sudden lurch of the car spilled out over our clothes closely followed by the butter and condiment dishes. After this we decided that we had had enough, and steadied our way back in a dazed, bewildered condition, glad to get out of the tumultuous riot of our surroundings. Wheelbarrows with their passenger seats covered with cloth in festive style and a beautiful sedan chair lined with high grade ermine attracted our attention at Chincifu. The wealthy Chinese revel in the fur of the ermine which is only white From the Yangtse to Peking 73 upon the animal itself in winter time. At this station we also saw great quantities of potted plants, flowers and dwarfed trees in large earthenware pots. Above the walls of the city appears an interesting pagoda, the large stories below being duplicated by smaller ones above. The day, though bitterly cold, was sunny and clear, and we eagerly awaited our approach to the pilgrimage haunt of Taichan, the most ancient and renowned of all Chinese sacred hills and enwrapped in the mantling traditions of all three of Cathay's predominating beliefs, Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, with its Ling-yen-ssu monastery of the Divine Cliff. The mountains stretched out around and about us like a huge lizard-shaped dragon the national emblem of China and which, hard to understand, holds a place in the minds of the superstitious. The fabled monster form changed its contour and position in the distance as we approached it. While the train stopped and the engine went some distance for water, we had a precious twenty minutes to inspect the mountain and to find out whether there were suitable inn accommodations to remain. A large splendid railway station was nearing completion. The town itself could not be seen from the spot on which we stood, nor that part of the mountain where the temples most abound, but as we looked up at the solid mass of Taichan we wondered at its sphynx-like face looking out over the fertile plain; a strange fantastic mass, cleft and ridged with the courses of those wild torrents that, to the play of lightning's flash and the accompaniment of the thunder's roll, pour down over the bald head and naked form of the rock mountain as it alone stood supreme in the midst of those terrible displays of nature, striking terror to the hearts of the simple primitive herders who, centuries before the dawn of our civilization, pastured their sheep beneath the shadow of that portentous creation of nature. Can we wonder that those simple folk, 74 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War trying to pierce the mysteries of the unknown, should take this grim mountain and accept it as the eternal abode of the Divine? Strata pinnacles, fantastic crags, grotesque shapes, which in the starry nights took on the appearance of spirit forms and in the glare of day sullen and foreboding, loomed out with beetling brows upon the awe-stricken herders beneath. Black and foreboding, confused in jumbled shapes of dark recesses into which the gleam of the radiant sun but cast a deeper shadow; seared and scarred as though it were eternally washed by the mighty unrelenting waves of some spirit sea, can we not understand that, sublime and unchanged in its giant form in the strange "mountain philosophy" of China, it partook of the supernatural and became an object of reverence to the simple folk of ages passed away? From the cluster of mud plastered homes at its base we look up the sheer precipice of rugged rock, so high that a man on the summit would pass as an unnoticed speck. What super- stitions have been born and given to the world in the tales of the dwellers in these humble huts of generations past, as in their rude fancy were woven the tales of their mountain idols! Taoism becomes more comprehensible as we stand beneath Taichan. I found that adequate accommodation for my wife could not be had at Taichan, so we continued our journey on through Shantung Province, whose latest cause of political conspicuity comes from its having originated the Ikhetuans or Boxers, arriving at Tsi-nan-fu very late and very cold. Much fatigued we followed our baggage over the viaduct out into a perfect pandemonium of creaky wheelbarrows which, in the bitter cold air with a hundred rickshaw lights throwing their shadows, pro- duced a strange impression. One wheelbarrow loaded down heavy with the bulk of an enormous Chinese on one side and the equally heavy and bulky burden of his baggage on the other, got directly before us as the wheelbarrow coolie strained From the Yangtse to Peking 75 from one side to another in an effort to balance his quarter ton load. Suddenly a heavy thud was heard, and down went the human side of the wheelbarrow with all his bags and boxes showered upon him, while the poor coolie stood a picture of despair at the thought of having caused such a mishap. The roars of laughter which came from all sides could be heard even above the unearthly creaking of the wheels. We went to one of the two German hotels in Tsi-nan-fu, where we were soon seated at dinner with a graphophone play- ing "to cheer things up" as the landlord's wife described it. At the table next to us sat a couple whom I at first thought to be a wealthy Chinese lad and his tutor. As the meal pro- gressed, however, my attention was called to the small bound feet beneath the table and the diamonded fingers, when I imme- diately knew that the "lad" really was a modern Chinese wife, taking dinner a la Europeenne. There was a party of card players, German merchants, to whom we said good-night upon going to bed. When we came out the next morning about four o'clock to catch the train for our third day's journey we found them still seated in their original positions. They told me they did not get together very often, but when they did they always played all night. Leaving Tsi-nan-fu we passed an occasional tall chimney, left from the kilns built for making brick for the adjacent station and other railway buildings, it actually being cheaper to build a brick kiln and manufacture brick on the spot than to transport it. Such an apparent waste of labor in construct- ing these tall chimneys would seem strange indeed in any other country except China, where labor is cheap and artisans plentiful and expert. At Sang Yan we enjoyed greatly the unusual sight of trees, greenly vivid over the wall on the brown plains which in the distance made us think of the flat plateau of Central Spain. As we proceeded to Tientsin the white soda lands in- 76 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War creased in area. We arrived there late at night, and in the biting cold went through the well built foreign quarter to the excellent hotel where, with both steam heat and a chimney fireplace as well, we soon regained some of our traveler's en- thusiasm. Dreadful tales were told us of the Revolutionary and Manchu looting of a few months previous, of decapitated bodies lying by scores along the principal thoroughfare and other conditions too sad to repeat. From the clean pleasant surroundings of the foreign settle- ment we ventured into Chinese Tientsin, where the usual condi- tion of squalor and dirt prevailed. The fine tramways system of the city is practically unavailable to foreigners because of there being only one class cars which, as they pass, look very uninviting indeed. There is little to attract the tourist in Tientsin outside of the international life to be seen in the foreign settlements with their representations of soldiers. CHAPTEE VIII THE VULTURE DRAGOX CAPITAL Peking makes me think of the picture of the vulture dragon breathing in the highest winds of the heavens and drinking up the deepest waters of the sea with a never satisfied and ever unappeasable thirst and voracity. Stretched out upon the Northern Plain in the provincial set- ting of Chihli, in the midst of the dreary surrounding expanse only broken by gaunt-ribbed mountains, Peking has during the centuries looked out as a vulture dragon over the whole expanse of China, ever discerning an easy prey in the great toiling mil- lions of the fertile lands beyond who, in their turn, looked back towards the great mystery of the winged monster and satisfied its demands to the utmost limit of their strength. Peking during the restless period of modern progress was the incubus which, hanging over China, concealed as in a pall the light of progress. The great northern capital in the greed and avarice of the governing classes absorbed the surplus wealth of China, holding millions of its subjects in the inexorable grip of poverty. China poured its wealth into Peking and received nothing in return. The jeweled fingers of the Man- darinate were ever outheld to obtain more from the suffering poor. Everything went into Peking. Nothing came out. The extravagance of the officials became, towards the end of the Manchu Dynasty, a matter of comment even amongst them- selves. And of all the money wasted there is but little to be seen in the public exterior of Peking today. The money was squandered in the eat-drink-and-be-merry spirit of the time behind gilded walls in the secrecy of which the Manchu 77 78 Our Chinese Chances Through Europe's War Mandarinate, wheedled by eunuchs, blandished by flower girls and riotous in vice and corruption, sank still lower and lower in the very spirit of its own self-contempt. The public build- ings of China's capital are not commensurate nor worthy of a city which for centuries has been the political center of the largest nation of the world. As the years rolled along the city shriveled up within its walls, like some strange animal fearful of a blow which was to be struck at it. Yet as we go about through these lines of streets and pass from one enormous gateway to another of these tremendous walls enclosing thousands of acres of vacant, unproductive land, the uncanniness of the city grows upon us and it seems as we view it from some eminence as it lies stretched out before us in all its wonderful detail, to have now become the mere dis- membered remains of that figurative monster, the dragon vul- ture of our fancy, whose power of evil is at last ended. To one who is acquainted with other Chinese cities there is some- thing very un-Chinese in Peking which speaks of those bygone ages of the North and their generations who have left the im- print of their existence upon these people we see about us. There is something in it all that takes our thoughts back to the reaches of the farther Northland. There is but little of that prosperous crowded condi- tion to be expected of all Chinese cities, for the struggle for existence is hard in Peking, since it was not selected by reason of natural advantages but rather by the mere caprice of the dragon vulture. However, from a sanitary condition, the streets are better than those of any other Chinese city. They are wide and from the new main arteries appear vacant and deserted. In the Imperial City you can walk for hours about the Grand Dame Road between houses whose doors rarely open and where all is wrapped in a pastoral silence, only broken by an occasional wheel or footfall. Within the walls the distances are great, J Just one of the toicers about Peking. A f/Umpse of Peking's W