THE 
 
 CHILDREN OF CHINA. 
 
 MxlMx far tl;e CIrilkeit 0f ^itgfeitir. 
 
 By their old Friend 
 THE AUTHOR OF" "THE CHILDREN OF INDIA." 
 
 WITH MAP AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON, 
 
 2j, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 MDCCCLXXXIV. 
 

 SE 
 
 Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Yiuev, Limited, London and Avlesburv. 
 
cbicatii^iK 
 
 THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN FOR ALL ENGLISH CHILDREN, 
 
 BUT ESPECIALLY FOR THE THIRTY-TWO WHO HAVE ASKED FOR 
 
 A BOOK ABOUT CHINESE CHILDREN. 
 
 EMMA ADAMSOir. 
 
 HENRY CHRISTOPHER BAILEY. 
 
 RUTH BARRON. 
 
 LORNA BARRON. 
 
 EDITH BARRON. 
 
 AUfiTYN BARRON. 
 
 MADGE BARRON. 
 
 GERTRUDE BELL. 
 
 AGNES BIRKETT. 
 
 ANNIE CARTMELL. 
 
 SARAH CARTMELL. 
 
 MARY ANN CARTMELL. 
 
 FLORENCE COCKBAIN. 
 
 LILIAN COCKBAIN. 
 
 ANNIE MARIA COPLEY. 
 
 ANNIE GOODALL. 
 
 CECILIA GRAY. 
 
 EDWARD HERBERT COZEN S-HARDY. 
 HENRIETTA .TENNINGS. 
 JANE MAUD KIDSON. 
 ALICE MAUD MILLER. 
 EVA MATILDA MILLER. 
 WALTER RICHARD SAMUEL MILLER. 
 KATHLEEN HARDY MILLER. 
 MARY EDITH PARK. 
 SUSAN GRIMSHA W PARK. 
 WILLIAM PARK. 
 JOHN EDGAR PARK. 
 SARAH PARKER. 
 MARY STOREY. 
 MAY STOREY. 
 FLORENCE THORNTON. 
 
 WITH THE EARNEST PRAYEK THAT THEY MAY ALL BE CHILDREN OF LIGHT, 
 
 AND MAY BEGIN WHILE YOUNG 
 
 TO SHINE AS LIGHTS IN THE WORLD, AND TO SEND 
 
 LIGHT TO THEM THAT SIT IN DARKNESS AND IN THE SHADOW 
 
 OF DEATH. 
 
 119729 
 
you want a book about China. What good guessers 
 you are ! That is just the country I wanted to write 
 about, and had begun to write about, even before I 
 got your letters, hoping you would choose it. I was 
 so glad to hear from you, and to know that you are 
 working for God, and that some of you are thinking of going 
 yourselves to tell the poor heathen about Him. That is following 
 in the steps of Jesus Himself, w^ho left His own happy home to 
 go to those who did not know God and tell them of Him ; and 
 who left behind Him that grand missionary command, with the 
 special promise belonging to it — "Go ye and teach all nations. 
 . . . And lo, I am with you alw^ay, even unto the end of the 
 world " (Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). 
 
 Will you pray very much about this book, which is so 
 particularly your own, that God will make it a blessing to 
 the Children of England, and that many of them may grow 
 up to be His messengers to the Children of China ? 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAKT I. 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. ITS GEOGRAPHY 
 
 II. ITS HISTORY 
 
 III. ITS GOVERNMENT 
 
 IV. ITS LAM'S 
 
 V. ITf5 POPULATION 
 
 VI. ITS TOWNS 
 
 VII. ITS VILLAGES 
 
 PAKT II. 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 1. THEIR CHARACTER 
 
 IL THEIR LOOKS 
 
 IIL THEIR DRESS 
 
 IV. IHEIR FOOD 
 
 V. THEIR LANGUAGE 
 
 VL THEIR LEARNING . 
 
 VIL THEIR Houses 
 
 VIIL THEIR MANNERS AND OCCUPA'JIoNS 
 
 3 
 11 
 30 
 
 40 
 45 
 52 
 G2 
 
 69 
 
 77 
 
 88 
 
 96 
 
 102 
 
 109 
 
 119 
 
 129 
 
CONIENTS. 
 
 en A I'. 
 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 THEIR 
 
 WIVES 
 
 X. 
 
 THEIR 
 
 CHILDREN 
 
 XL 
 
 THEIR 
 
 SCHOOLS . 
 
 XII. 
 
 THEIR 
 
 ILLNESSES AND DOCTORS 
 
 TAKT III. 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 I. 
 
 CONFUCIANISM 
 
 II. 
 
 BUDDHISM . " . 
 
 in. 
 
 TAUISM . . . . 
 
 IV. 
 
 STATE RELIGION . 
 
 V. 
 
 GODS 
 
 VI. 
 
 FESTIVALS . . . . 
 
 VIL 
 
 ANCESTRAL WORSHIP . 
 
 VIIL 
 
 FUNG SHUY. 
 
 IX. 
 
 FORTUNE TELLING 
 
 X. 
 
 OPIUM 
 
 PAKT 1\'. 
 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 I. MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 
 
 II. MEDICAL MISSIONS 
 
 III. LITTLE CHINESE CHRISTIANS ..... 
 
 IV. WILL YOU HELP ? 
 
 PAGE 
 
 145 
 162 
 172 
 
 178 
 
 193 
 
 203 
 221 
 229 
 232 
 241 
 250 
 255 
 262 
 266 
 
 279 
 290 
 293 
 303 
 
 APPENDIX 311 
 
\ 
 
MANCHURIA 
 
 e 
 
 ii-hung 
 
 3)S«^u„p hung I 
 O^^l^iv^C Doroc/1 J A P A iV 
 
 OACELrT 
 
 Hong ch<w 
 
 S £ ^ AHCMiPf ,ff CJiin choV«^ 
 La cTllflL/ .j^^fNir^O'. 
 
 s **^^*^ flO 5,«, 
 
 GAN HWUY«fSfecS^iH,«rsH«, 
 
 p Nao kan?*Jf<iu kiang '^'" 
 
 ' ' "' '"lis. %i'""'''' <l""H<i_H.€-^ l-A N gC" 
 
 i CHAy^j^ 
 
 
 
 SEA ^^^'■ 
 
 '°" "NOBrfl IS. . 
 
 I <b 
 
 . . - CHUSAN 
 ■ -V* o. 
 
 lo(W:hoo 1. >t< MIDDLE IS. 
 • ';*Nawa O 
 
 '°% He 
 
 ^IBlf!^ji, 
 
 <^hl 
 
 Kano 
 
 ,£i 
 
 , i-vLFor S\ fr"ow<Mow 
 
 fHfi.Ki/l''' ' 
 
 f O 
 
 FORMIOSA ^' 
 
 ^at> HONG-KONG t»B 
 
 'P & Victoria/ 
 
 Taiwan 
 
 _iV A 
 
 ' At* 
 
 Longitude E of Greenwic 
 
 SAN-NAMk."™"" 
 
 SOUTW tS. 
 
 CHINA 
 
 T RUOOIMAN JOHNSTON. F.R.Q.S. 
 Scale of EngHali Miles 
 
 Jtodder & SLougJiti.^ 
 7. Paternoster Rovj,^jondon, 
 
 4__ 20 
 
 n 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
PAET I. 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIBE 
 
PAET I. 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIBE 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 ITS GEOGRAPHY 
 
 HE CELESTIAL EMPIEE is one of the nickuames 
 which peoj^le of other countries have given to China 
 hecause the Chinese think their country is such a won- 
 derful one, so much greater and better than any other 
 country in the world (celestial, you know, means 
 heavenly). The Chinese themselves call China " The 
 Middle Kingdom," or " The Centre of the World." They call 
 their emperor "The Celestial Emperor," or the " Son of Heaven;" 
 and themselves the Celestials, because they consider themselves 
 far the nicest and cleverest people in the world. All who are 
 not Chinese they call barbarians. 
 
 But before I go any further, I must tell you what I shall 
 mean by China when I speak of it in this book. Sometimes, 
 when people talk of China, they mean the whole of the Chinese 
 Empire — that is, all the countries that are under the Emperor of 
 China: Mongolia, Manchuria, Thibet, Corea, and China Proper; 
 but sometimes they mean only China Proper, and that is what 
 China will mean in this book ; for when I tried to make a book 
 about all the Chinese Empire, I found it would have to be very 
 large and very dear, and I thought you would like it better if it 
 was a little smaller and a little cheaper, so I have had to leave 
 out all the other coiuitries and write only about China Proper. If 
 you would like to hear about the other countries another time,, 
 you must let me know, but perhaps you would rather have quite 
 
4 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 a different country next time, so you must choose for yourselves 
 again, as you did this time. 
 
 Perhaps you will think that if China is only a part of what 
 belongs to the Celestial Emperor, it will not he such a very large 
 country ; so I had better tell you at once that China Proper by 
 itself is nearly fifteen times larger than England, Wales, and 
 Scotland all together — that is, nearly as large as India; while' 
 the whole Chinese Empire is as large as all Europe with a third 
 part of all Europe added to it ; so think what a great country the 
 Emperor of China rules over. 
 
 I was thinking I must write you a long chapter about the 
 geography of China; but before beginning it I looked in a geo- 
 graphy book like you use in school, to see what it said about the 
 country, and I found out two things — 
 
 1st. That I should have to mention nearly everything that 
 was in the geography, in different parts of my book, and — 
 
 2nd. That the geography book, and I expect yours is very 
 much like mine, tells so much about the country, and tells it so 
 nicely, that it would only be wasting my time and the printer's if 
 I were to tell you about it when you have it all in another book. 
 
 I think you had better ask whoever it is that teaches you to 
 let you learn China for your geography lesson for a little while, and 
 then every now and then you will find something in this book that 
 you know already ; and I always think it is nice to find something 
 in a new book that we had learned all about before; it is like 
 meeting an old friend in a strange country. 
 
 I must tell you just a few things about China itself that 
 perhaps inay not be in your geography, but as you have learned, 
 or are going to learn so much, I shall have to give you a little 
 examination, I think, to see if you remember it. I can easity do 
 that, by leaving a little space every now and then, like this ( ), 
 
 for you to fill up yourselves by putting in what I leave out, so that 
 I shall not quite finish writing the book, but shall leave it for you 
 
ITS GEOGRAPHY. 5 
 
 to do; and tlieu if anybody asks yoii ^Yllo wrote "The Celestial 
 Empire," you can say, " Miss Marston and I wrote it between us.'^ 
 You are sure to find something about the Grand Canal ; I 
 expect you know how manj^ miles long it is ( ), but perhaps 
 
 you do not know that it takes forty days for a ship to go dow^n it. 
 If you have ever w^alked by the side of an English canal, you have 
 seen the locks wdiich are opened to let the barges go through, 
 and are shut again behind them. But in China, instead of this, 
 
 BOAT PASSING A LOCK. 
 
 they have machines by which they can draw^ the ships over the 
 clay slopes that take the place of locks, and put them down again 
 on tlie other side, however large and heavy they may be. 
 
 There are some very large rivers in China, as you will see in 
 the map; one of these, the Hoang-Ho, or Yellow Eiver, three thou- 
 sand miles long, is often called China's Sorrow, because, whenever 
 the mouth of it gets stopped up with sand, which often happens, 
 it overflows higher up and does a great deal of mischief, leaving 
 whole villages half buried in mud. Owing to these sand-banks, 
 
6 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 the river is said to have changed its course nine times in 2,500 
 years. 
 
 As there are so many rivers and canals, most of the travelling 
 is done in vessels called junks, which are very clumsy and some- 
 times not at all strong. In some parts the farmers have little 
 canals running to their own houses. Where there are many canals 
 the only roads are foot-paths running along the canal banlvs. 
 
 Chinese boats are sometimes rowed with one oar instead of 
 two; the oar has a very broad blade, and turns on a pivot placed 
 in the stern ; the upper end of the oar is fastened to the bottom of 
 the boat by a rope. There is one kind of boat that is built in one 
 district only, that of Shao-hing, in the province of Cheh-Kiang, 
 and all the boatmen who use it come from there ; it is worked by 
 the foot, and can only carry one passenger and a little luggage. 
 
 There is a tree that grows in China which you ought to know 
 about because it is so very useful. This is the bamboo. The 
 Chinese think a great deal of it, and you will not wonder when I 
 tell you what they do with it. The young, green shoots are used 
 as vegetables ; the slender stems make curtain rods, umbrella 
 handles, tobacco pipes, and fishing rods ; the leaves are used for 
 thatching boats and houses, because water does not soak through 
 them ; the branches can be very easily split into thin strips, 
 which are used for basket-work, and the larger stems make posts 
 and beams for building houses. From the bamboo the Chinese 
 also make furniture, water-jars, measures, buckets, mats, fans, 
 paper, pens, hats, waterproofs, and many other things. There 
 are sixty different kinds of bamboo to be found in China. 
 
 China Proper, as the geography will tell you, is divided into 
 eighteen provinces ; each province has about ten divisions, called 
 Fu, while in each Fu there are about ten smaller divisions, called 
 Hien, about the size of English counties, and the Hien again 
 contain cities and towns. As you Avill be sure to want them 
 again and again, you had better write here the names of the 
 
fiROUP OF BAMBOOS. 
 
ITS GEOGRAPHY. 9 
 
 eigiiteeu provinces, iu your very best writing, or yoii will spoil 
 the book. 
 
 1. 7. 13. 
 
 2. 8. 14. 
 
 3. 9. 15. 
 
 4. 10. 16. 
 
 5. 11. 17. 
 
 6. 12. 18. 
 
 You will see in the map two large islands, Formosa and 
 Hainan ; Formosa belongs to the province of Fu-Kien, Hainan 
 to Kwangtung. 
 
 You will also have seen tliat there are some very high 
 moimtains, which shut China in from other countries ; this is one 
 reason why the Chinese are so unlike other people, and why they 
 are so little different now from what they were hundreds and 
 even thousands of years ago. There is a great deal of coal and 
 iron in the mountains, but the Chinese do not understand how 
 to work them, and always leave a mine as soon as the water 
 comes in. 
 
 The climate of China, as you will suppose, is very different 
 in different parts. In the north it is terribly cold, and in the 
 south just as terribly hot ; and there are all sliades of heat and 
 cold between these, so almost every sort of fruit and vegetable 
 can be grown in one part or another of the country. In the 
 summer it is hot all over China, while in the south it is mild even 
 at Christmas. Several years ago there was a snow-storm at 
 Canton, and the people, who had never seen such a thing before, 
 could not think what was happening : they caUed the snow falhng 
 cotton, and tried to keep it. 
 
 The winds called Monsoons have a great deal to do with the 
 climate of China. In winter the Monsoon comes from the north, 
 in summer from the south, making the air hotter in the summer 
 
lo THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 aud colder in the winter than it would be if there were no 
 Monsoons. All around ( ), the capital of China, the rivers 
 
 and canals are closed during the winter by the ice, and ships 
 cannot get along even on the sea. In the summer, in the 
 same part, it is so hot that sweet potatoes, peaches, and grapes 
 grow out of doors. At the time when the wind leaves off coming 
 from the north, and begins to come from the. south, when the two 
 Monsoons seem to be quarrelling, there is a great deal of rain. 
 
 Some parts of China are very unhealthy for English people, 
 either because they are too hot, or too cold, or too damp, or 
 change suddenly from very great cold to very great heat, which 
 is trying to people who have always lived in England, where, 
 compared with some parts of China, there is little difference between 
 summer and winter. So that missionaries go to China, as well as 
 to India, not knowing how soon they may have to come home ill, 
 because the climate does not agree with them ; and for the same 
 reason they have to send their little children home to England, 
 or else a great many of them would die. 
 
 Being a missionary, you see, means being ready to give up 
 a great deal for the sake of doing God's work. But then God 
 never takes anything away from us, nor asks us to give up anj^- 
 thing to Him, without giving us something better instead, and He 
 takes care of what we give Him too. I am sure all the mission- 
 aries would say this is true. 
 
GHAPTER II. 
 
 ITS HISTOEY. 
 
 OU learn English history, don't joi\? and Bible history, 
 
 and perhaps French history, and I daresay, when yoii 
 
 get older, 3^011 will learn Grecian history and Eoman 
 
 history ; but I never yet met a little gui or a little boy, 
 
 no, nor even a big girl or a big boy, who had learned 
 
 Chinese history ; so when you have read this chapter, 
 
 if 5'ou read it carefully, 3'ou will know something that very few 
 
 boys and girls in England know, though I expect most Chinese 
 
 boys and girls know something about it. 
 
 The Chinese have alwaj's been very particular about having all 
 their history written. There is a set of men, paid by the Govern- 
 ment, whose business it is to write the history as it happens ; 
 they write it on loose sheets of paper, which are put through an 
 opening into a private drawer, where nobody is allowed to look at 
 them. So that the men who write this history shall not praise 
 the living emperor for the sake of pleasing him, these loose sheets 
 are never copied into the real history until the emperor in whose 
 reign they were written has been dead a long time. 
 
 China's history is a very wonderful one, partly because it 
 began such a long time ago. Enghsh history only begins with 
 Juhus Caesar coming to England (b.c. ), but the history of 
 China begins many thousands of years before Christ, before the 
 time when we believe Adam was made ; at least, that is what a 
 Chinaman would tell j^ou, but then Chinamen make a good many 
 
12 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 mistakes. Tliey say that first of all the kings of China were 
 gods, and that China was the only part of the world where there 
 were any i^eople ; then there were other kings who were men, hut 
 who do not seem any more real than the gods. The first king 
 we read ahout hy name was Puon-koo, who dressed in leaves ; 
 everything about him is very wild and hard to understand. After 
 him came several other kings, who each reigned a thousand years, 
 until B.C. 2,852, that is 500 years before the Flood, when there 
 was a king named Fuhi. After Fuhi's time, the history seems 
 much more likely to be true. 
 
 You see, with Chinese history, as with all other history, except 
 that in the Bible, which must be true, because God wrote it, it is 
 very hard at the beginning to find out how much is true and how 
 much is false. 
 
 Fuhi is said to have invented music and numbers. He lived 
 in the province of Shensi, and was such a wonderful man that 
 he and the two who came after him, Shin-noong and Hoang-ti, 
 are called " The Three Emperors ; " they are said to have invented 
 all the arts and all the comforts of life, such as eating, sleeping, 
 and the seasons of the year, so, you see, the history is only partly 
 true yet. 
 
 Shin-noong taught the people how to cultivate the ground, 
 and Hoang-ti divided all the land into groups of nine equal 
 squares ; all that grew in the middle square of each nine was tO' 
 be given to the emperor or sold for him ; Hoang-ti is said to have 
 lived about 2,600 years before Christ. 
 
 After the " Three Emperors " came five more rulers, and it 
 was most likely in the reign of one of them that the Chinese first 
 came to China, for the people that we first hear of in China were 
 not Chinese, just as the first people we read of in English history 
 were not English. There are several tribes in different parts of 
 China now who are supposed to be descended from the people 
 who lived in the country before the Chinese came. 
 
ITS BIS TORY. 13 
 
 Those Chinese who first came to China Imew how to do many 
 useful things ; they could write, and they understood how to 
 cultivate tlie mulberry tree, to rear silk-worms, and to make 
 clothes out of the silk ; these things are mentioned in their 
 books. 
 
 In some places the Chinese got so mixed up with the people 
 who were in China before them, that their descendants could not 
 tell whether they were Chinese or not, just as the Saxons and 
 Normans got mixed in England ; in other parts the first inhabit- 
 ants were driven into the mountains, where they kept separate 
 from the Chinese and are separate still. The Li and the Miautsi, 
 who live among the mountains now in different parts of China, 
 are thought to be the descendants of some of these aborigines. 
 
 The last two of the five rulers were Yao and Shun, who are 
 looked upon as patterns of what Chinese emperors ought to be. 
 One good thing that Yao did was to refuse to leave the emph-e to 
 his own son, but to give it to Shun instead, because Shun was 
 such a good man that Yao thought he would be sure to make a 
 good king. The story of Shun is always told to Chinese children, 
 to teach them to behave nicely to their fathers and mothers, so 
 I had better tell it to you. 
 
 Shun's father was a very poor man and quite blind ; his 
 name was Ku-sao. He was not at all a nice father, for he was 
 \ery unjust, and expected people to do things that they were 
 not able to do. He treated Shun very badly, and to make matters 
 worse, when Shun was still quite a little boy, his mother died ; 
 and before very long Ku-sao married again, and his second wife 
 was just as wicked and just as unkind to poor Shun as her husband 
 was, and was always scolding and punishing him for naughty 
 things that she said he had done, but of which he really was 
 innocent. 
 
 By-and-bye this second mother had a little boy of her own, 
 and he too imitated his father and mother, and was always saj'ing 
 
14 IHE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 and doing unkind things to Shun ; yet all the while, however 
 unkind people were to him, Shun always behaved nicely to them, 
 obeying his parents in everything, and never answering rudely, 
 even when he was scolded unfairly. 
 
 One day his father sent him to a hill to plough, but would not 
 let him have any animals to help him, he was to do it all himself; 
 but the story says the gods sent some elephants to plough for him, 
 so he got on very nicely, especially when a whole flock of birds 
 came to do the weeding for him, so his work was soon finished. 
 
 Another time Shun was sent a long way off to catch some 
 fish, and while he was fishing a terrible thunder-storm came on, 
 and everybody that was out of doors got hurt in one way or 
 another, except Shun, who came home quite whole and sound, as 
 though nothing had happened, because the gods were so pleased 
 with him for being such a good son, that they took care no harm 
 should happen to him. 
 
 At last the Emperor Yao heard about Shun, and how wonder- 
 fully well he behaved to his father and mother ; he was so pleased 
 with all he heard, that he sent for Shun and made him a prince ; 
 then he made him tutor to his own nine sons, and afterwards gave 
 him his two daughters to be his wives. 
 
 Shun served Yao faithfully for twenty-eight years ; he chose 
 all the wisest men in China to serve under him, and punished 
 them very strictly if they were not faithful ; so the empire was 
 kept in peace and everything went on well. When Yao got to be 
 an old man, he gave up the kingdom to Shun, who thus became 
 " Emperor of all under Heaven," as the Chinese say, or Emperor 
 of China, as we should say, and ever since that time it has been 
 the rule in China that the emperor is to choose who shall reign 
 after him. 
 
 The Chinese say that in Shun's time there was a great flood, 
 and the country was drained by another man named Yu ; it took 
 him thirteen years, but he did it so well that Shun said he must 
 
ITS HISTORY. 15 
 
 be the next emperor, and so lie was. lu the Chinese books he is 
 called Yii the Great. We are told that he was nine cubits high, 
 and that the skies rained gold for three days without stopping 
 after he was made king. He lived about b.c. 2,200, and sought 
 out wise men to be his ministers. 
 
 Yu was the first of a line of kings called the Hea, and after 
 it came another, called Sh;ing, founded by a man named Ching- 
 tang, who was a very mild and wise ruler. Once, wdien there had 
 been no rain for a very loug time, he w^ent out of the city to a 
 grove of mulberry trees, dressed as a mourner, and there he fasted 
 and offered up as a sacrifice his nails and his hair, praying earnestly 
 that there might be some rain ; and very soon the rain came. 
 This line lasted for six hundred and forty-four years, and had 
 twenty-eight kings. The last of them was Chow-wang, who was 
 a great tyrant, so the people all rose up against him ; w^hen he 
 saw that he could not save himself, as he was only one, and there 
 w^ere so many against him, he put on his very grandest clothes, 
 went into his palace, and set fire to it, staying in it himself, so 
 that he w^as burned wdth the building. 
 
 The part of Chinese history that we may be pretty sure is 
 all true begins with a race of kings named Chow^ who began to 
 reign b.c. 1122, and went on till b.c. 240, that is nearly nine 
 hundred years. 
 
 xVbout B.C. 500 China was divided into a great many little 
 kingdoms, wdiose rulers were always quarrelling and fighting with 
 each other. One of these, the King of Tsin, had been for a long- 
 time making himself powerful by conquering the kings round him ; 
 he fought against six other kingdoms and made them all have 
 him for their master ; so the chief government began to be like an 
 empire, wdth the states round it more or less subject to it, till 
 about half of w^hat w^e call China belonged to it, the half lying- 
 north of the Yang-tsi river. 
 
 The first despotic emperor of this country was troubled ver}' 
 
i6 
 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 mncli by some enemies outside Lis country, who were then called 
 Huns ; in many books you will find them called Tartars. They 
 came into China from the north, and were very wild, fierce men 
 (you know, if a little boy is very wild, he is sometimes called 
 a Tartar) ; so to keep them out, this emperor built a tremendous 
 wall, the most wonderful wall that ever was made. It is standing 
 to-day as strong as ever in some parts, though it was built two 
 
 SECTION OF THE GREAT WALL. 
 
 thousand years ago. It is fifteen hundred miles long — that is, 
 nearly four times as long as England from north to south. The 
 inside part of it is made of earth, which is cased with bricks and 
 stone ; there is enough of these materials to make a wall several 
 feet high, long -enough to go all round the world at its largest part. 
 The Great Wall runs up to the top of the highest hills that come 
 in its way, some of them five thousand feet high, and is built 
 
ITS ///STORY. ly 
 
 across the rivers, too, just as strongly and thickly as in other 
 parts. It is twenty feet high all the way, twenty-five feet thick 
 at the bottom, and fifteen at the top ; you will never find a 
 wall the least like it anywhere else, and yet it did not keep the 
 Huns out after all. 
 
 This same emperor did another very wonderful thing, so silly 
 that 3'ou will wonder how it could ever have come into his head : 
 he ordered all the learned books in China to be burnt. Four 
 hundred people tried to keep some and burn some, instead of 
 burniDg all, but the emperor found it out, and to punish them 
 he ordered them to be burned with their books. But all the books 
 did not get burnt, or I should never have been able to write this 
 chapter ; some clever people managed to save some and hide them 
 away : they were not found till sixty years after, and then the 
 most particular book of all, the " Shu King," could not be found, 
 but there was a very old man living who had learnt it all off by 
 heart when he was young, and he repeated it to his daughter 
 a piece at a time, so that she could write it down. The reason the 
 emperor gave this foolish order was that he was jealous of the 
 famous kings who had reigned before him, so he wanted the 
 people who came after to heo.r of no kings before himself, and 
 he thought that by burning the books he should prevent people 
 hearing of the former kings. 
 
 In B.C. 212 another race came to the throne, named Han, 
 and with them began one of the most celebrated parts of Chinese 
 history. The Huns were very tiresome at this time, coming in 
 just as if there had been no wall, stealing anything they could 
 find, and killing the people, in the same way that their descendants 
 did at Eome about six hundred years later ; and the Chinese did 
 as the Eomans did, and as the Saxons did with the Danes in Englisli 
 history — bribed them to go away by giving them their daughters 
 for wives and paying them a great deal of money. But of course 
 they only went away for a time, and then came back again ; a man 
 
 2 
 
i8 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 who was alive when this happened, and wrote about it, says : 
 " From this time China lost her honour." 
 
 In the reign of the ninth Han emj^eror, two Huns came over 
 the Great Wall into China, after all of them had promised to stay 
 at the other side. The Chinese punished these two for breaking 
 the agreement, and this made all the rest of the Huns so angry, 
 that they sent a great army to fight the Chinese. They refused to 
 leave the country unless a princess was given to them, and the 
 Chinese consented and gave one. 
 
 It w^as during the reign of the twelfth Han emperor that the 
 Lord Jesus was born into this world ; but the poor Chinese knew 
 nothing about it, and very few of them know to-day, though it is 
 eighteen hundred years since Jesus first gave the command, " Go 
 ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." 
 
 ( ). 
 
 At the close of the Han line of kings, the country was divided 
 into three states ; the king of one of these three, wdio was called 
 the chief of Wei, conquered the other two, and was the first of 
 another line, called Tsin or Chin, about 260 years after Christ. 
 
 The Chin line ended about a.d. 416, and then China was 
 divided into two chief kingdoms, the north and the south ; Nankin 
 w^as the capital of the north, Honan of the south. I hope j^ou 
 always look in the map for all the places you read about. 
 
 In the two hundred years that came after this, there were 
 five -different races of kings, one after the other, and all this time 
 there was a great deal of fighting and wdckedness. In a.d. 585 
 the north and south kingdoms were joined together, and Honan 
 was the capital of all China. The last king of the last of the five 
 races was deposed (that is, made to give up the throne) by Ly- 
 yuen, who began the line of Tang. This was a.d. 612 
 
 The second of the Tang emperors, whose name w^as Tae-tsoong, 
 was very famous ; he first started schools and examinations, so, you 
 see, the Chinese had these things long before we had, for Tae- 
 
ITS HISTORY. 19 
 
 tsoong lived nearly two lumdred years before Alfred the Great, 
 lu this reign some Christians named Nestorians first went to 
 China, and told the people about Jesus, but very few believed 
 them ; the Chinese history only says that some foreigners came, 
 with blue eyes and fair hair. 
 
 The third Tang emjieror was a foolish man, and let his wife 
 manage him as she liked ; before he died, he said she w^as to be 
 queen after him ; she reigned for twenty years and then left the 
 kingdom to her son. She managed everything so badly, that 
 when the Chinese want to prove that things get on badly that are 
 ordered by women, they always talk about this queen and the 
 harm she did. But if they were to say that to you, you would be 
 able to say that you know of a country that is governed by a 
 queen, and which is the happiest country in the world, wouldn't 
 you? 
 
 In the year 897 a powerful leader killed the emperor and the 
 man who w^as to succeed him, and so put an end to the Tang line. 
 All the country was in great confusion, as one man after another 
 tried to make himself king. There were five hues of kings in fifty- 
 three years, and the Tartars, you may be sure, would take the 
 opportunity of coming again, when everything was in disorder ; 
 at this time they came in at the east end of the Great Wall. 
 
 After a great many civil wars, the soldiers put a man on the 
 throne, named Tae-tsoo, the first emperor of the Soong line. The 
 reason this was done was, that the one who ought to have been 
 emperor was only a little boy, and there was a war just beginning 
 wdth the Eastern Tartars or Manchas, so the soldiers thought 
 it would never do to have such a young king. They fixed upon 
 Tae-tsoong, one of the servants of the last emperor, and some 
 messengers were sent to tell him that he was to be emperor ; they 
 found him quite drunk, and while he was in that state, a yellow 
 robe was put on him, and he was made emperor ; so you see 
 what a low state China had got into. 
 
20 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 Just about this time, the Chinese made a great discovery : 
 they found out how to print. This was five hundred years before 
 anyone in Europe had thought of such a thing. You will not be 
 surprised to hear that from this time there were many more books 
 made in China, so we know a great deal more of what happened 
 after this time than before it. 
 
 We read now of two sets of Tartars, the East Tartars or Man- 
 chus, and the West Tartars or Mongols. The Chinese kept on 
 having wars with the Manchus and then making peace, only to 
 begin fighting again directly after, till the Mongols came with 
 their great chief Koblai Khan, and then everything was changed, 
 as you will soon see. 
 
 In the reign of Chin-tsoong, the third Soong emperor, the 
 Manchus laid siege to a town near Pekin ; the Chinese defeated 
 them, but were obliged in making peace to promise a large gift of 
 money and silk every year. The next Chinese emperor was a 
 very peaceful one, so the Manchus thought they had better get him 
 to give them something else ; they asked for ten districts to the 
 south of the Great Wall, and two hundred thousand taels (that is 
 about .£40,000), besides a great deal of silk. All this the emperor 
 gave them, and also said that for the future he should be tributary 
 to the Manchus — that is, he would only be king under them. 
 
 The next emperors were very weak and had bad advisers, so 
 tbe Manchus went on conquering more and more, till at last they 
 took a large piece of North China for themselves, and it looked as 
 though they would very soon have the whole country ; but before 
 there was time for this, the Manchus were themselves attacked by 
 the Mongols, who lived in the part of Asia between the north-west 
 provinces of China and Thibet and Samarcand. And now, when 
 the poor Chinese were losing their country bit by bit, they thought 
 the wisest thing they could do was to ask the Mongols to come to 
 their help. The Mongols agreed at once, but they did more than 
 they were asked to do ; for first they defeated the Manchus, and 
 
ITS HISTORY. 21 
 
 theu begau to figlit against the Cliiuese and defeated them too, 
 and made themselves masters of the country, just as in England, 
 when the Britons asked the Saxons to help them against the Picts 
 and Scots (I am sure you know all about that), they first fought 
 against these enemies, and then fought and conquered those who 
 had asked their help and took the country for themselves. 
 
 So the Mauchus were put down, hut only for a time, for 
 their descendants afterwards conquered the Mongols in their turn, 
 and got China for their own again, and they are the lords of 
 it to-day. 
 
 The Mongols were very cruel to the Chinese ; the emperor 
 and his family ran away to the sea and were drowned. The 
 religion of the Mongols was not the same as that of the Chinese, 
 so they ordered all the Chinese religious books to be burned. 
 Koblai Khan lived at Pekin, and because he saw that the country 
 round it was very barren, he made a great canal, nine hundred 
 miles long, between Pekin and the most fertile provinces, so that 
 the things that grew there could be easily sent to Pekin. At this 
 time the north of China was called Cathay and the south Manjee. 
 
 The Mongols did not get on so well in China as they did in 
 their own country ; the climate was not so cold as their own, and 
 the warm weather made them lazy {ijou are lazy sometimes on 
 very warm days, I expect), and they learned to be more wicked in 
 China than they were at home, and thought more about enjoying 
 themselves than anything else, so they lost all their old courage and 
 bravery. The Chinese very soon found this out, and thought they 
 might as well try to do something for themselves ; they succeeded 
 so well, the Mongols were obliged to give up the throne and run 
 away to the Manchus and ask them to take care of them. 
 
 . So the Chinese got their country to themselves again, and a 
 new line of emperors began, called the Ming line. The first of its 
 emperors had been a servant at a Buddhist monastery. He 
 changed the capital to Nankin, and gave Pekin to one of his sons, 
 
2 2 THE CELESTIAL EMPLL<E. 
 
 who was afterwards emperor himself, and changed the capital 
 back again to Pekin. 
 
 During the Ming dynasty some Portuguese came to China 
 and took possession of the island of Macao, which you will find 
 in the map, not very far from Canton. Some Jesuit missionaries 
 came too; they behaved so badly, and were so angry with every- 
 one who did not believe just as they did, that the Chinese have 
 had a bad opinion of missionaries ever since, though they are 
 beginning to find out now that all missionaries are not like the 
 Jesuits. Still "it was much harder for the first Protestant mis- 
 sionaries to get the people to listen to them, than it would 
 have been if the Jesuits had never gone to China. 
 
 In 1618 there was another war between the Chinese and 
 the Manchus, who said the Chinese had treated them badly, 
 and must be punished for it. The war lasted a great many 
 years. In 1627 there was a new Ming emperor, who tried to 
 l^ersuade the people that there was no reason to be afraid of 
 the Manchus, and who behaved so badly that he made all his 
 people dislike him, and some of them rebelled against him. 
 
 The rebels took the provinces of Honan and Shensi, murder- 
 ing the chief officers, and telling the people they need not pay 
 any taxes, which, as you will suppose, made them very willing 
 to join the rebels in fighting against the emperor. Before long 
 the rebel army besieged Pekin ; the emperor ran away from 
 one place to another, with his only daughter, but finding that 
 they must be caught very soon, he first stabbed his daughter 
 and then hanged himself; he was the last Chinese emperor, 
 and died in 1643. 
 
 After this the rebel leader got greater and greater, as every- 
 one gave up to him, except one general named Woosankwei, 
 who commanded the Chinese army near Manchuria. Instead of 
 joining the rebels, he fortified himself in a city with his men. 
 The rebel army besieged him there, and brought his father in 
 
ITS HISTORY. 23 
 
 chains to a place where Woosankwei could see him, saying the 
 father should he killed if the son did not give up the city ; hut 
 still Woosankwei held out, and his old father, instead of asking 
 him to give way, so that he should not be killed, told him to go 
 on holding out ; so he did, and the rebels kept their word and 
 killed the old man. 
 
 General Woosankwei was so determined to avenge his father's 
 death, that he made peace with the Manchus and asked them 
 to help him, which they did, and the rebels were defeated. Then 
 the Manchu king, instead of going home again, went to Pekin 
 and made himself king, and so began the Manchu line of emperors, 
 wliicli still holds the throne of China. 
 
 Several cities in the south held out for some 3'ears longer, 
 especially in Fukien, but they all had to submit at last. 
 
 The Chinese men were made to shave their heads and wear 
 pig-tails like the Manchus, and to dress like them, to show 
 they were conquered, but many chose to die rather than do 
 this ; the women were allowed to keep to their old stjde of dress. 
 The only places in which the old Chinese men's dress can be 
 seen now is the theatre, where it is constantly worn by the 
 actors. The Manchus and Mongols are not allowed to marry 
 the Chinese. 
 
 One reason w^hy the Manchus conquered China so easily 
 at this time was, that they had such a wise king. His name 
 was Kang-hy : he reigned sixty years, and was very kind to the 
 people ; he made a treaty with Eussia, and settled where his 
 coimtry was to end and Eussia to begin. 
 
 The next emperor was Yoong-Ching, who persecuted the 
 Eoman Catholic priests who had settled in China. He was suc- 
 ceeded by Kien-lung, who also reigned sixty years ; he encouraged 
 learning and wrote poetry. He also headed an expedition against 
 the Miautzi (I hope you remember who they are), and said he 
 had conquered them, but we may be quite sure he did not, as 
 
2 4 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 tliey did not shave tlieir heads nor wear the Manchu dress, as 
 all conquered races were obliged to do. 
 
 When Kien-lnng had reigned sixty years, he gave up the 
 empire to his son ; this was in 1820, so we are getting near the 
 end, yon see. It was in his reign that England first went to 
 war with China, in 1840, and there was a second war in 1847. 
 I am sorry to say that England has no reason to be proud of 
 either of these wars, but you will hear more about them in another 
 part of the book. This king spent most of his time at the theatre, 
 and was very often drunk. After he had reigned twenty-four 
 j^ears he had a great feast on his sixtieth birthday, and there 
 was merry-making all over the empire. The people wlio had 
 not paid their taxes were told they should be excused, and all 
 who had broken the laws were forgiven. The emperor died the 
 next year. 
 
 In 1850 a gi-eat trouble came to China ; it is called 
 
 THE TAI-PINa KEBELLION, 
 
 and spread over all the southern provinces. It was begun by 
 a man named Hung-sentsweu, who was born in 1813; he was a 
 poor man but very clever. When he was twent}^ j^ears old he 
 went to Canton for an examination, but did not pass. While 
 he was there he read some Christian tracts and part of the 
 Bible, but did not think much of what he read and soon forgot 
 it. In 1837 he tried again to pass the examination, but again 
 he failed, and went home ill. Chinese examinations often make 
 people ill, they are so hard. During his illness his mind wandered, 
 and he had wonderful dreams and visions. 
 
 Six years after this, one of his friends, named Li, was looking 
 over Hung's books, and found the Christian tracts and the Bible 
 among them. He talked to Hung about them, and the two 
 friends read them through together, and made up a religion of 
 
ITS HISTORY. 
 
 25 
 
 their own, partly out of the books, partty out of their oAvn heads ; 
 they baptized each other, aud then both set to work to get other 
 people to join their religion. They began with their own friends, 
 
 and afterwards gathered together a congregation, which they 
 called "The Society of God-worshippers." Who was it that 
 went, as soon as he had found Jesus himself, to fetch his own 
 brother and bring him to Jesus ? ( ). 
 
z6 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. ■ 
 
 Let US learn from these two, the heathen and the Christian, 
 to begin to work for God in our own homes, before we look 
 out for work for Him in other places. 
 
 At last Hung formed his disciples into an army, and everyone 
 who was discontented came and joined them, till the numbers grew 
 so large that the emperor was obliged to fight them, but he was 
 defeated. You can fancy how proud Hung was then ; he pro- 
 claimed himself the head of a new kingdom, which he called " The 
 Peaceful Heavenly Kingdom." He said that the Lord Jesus 
 Christ was his brother, and that he often had conversations with 
 God. He and his followers kept a Sabbath in the camp every 
 Saturday and had a service. By-and-bye Hung got possession of 
 Nankin and killed all the Manchus who were in it ; then he sent 
 an army against Pekin, but this time he failed. For manj'^ years 
 he fought against the emperor, sometimes winning and sometimes 
 losing, but causing trouble everywhere, till at last his followers 
 began to quarrel among themselves. The English helped the 
 Manchus to drive the rebels out of Shanghai ; then they took 
 Ningpo, but were driven out again b}^ the English, who went on 
 taking other cities fi^om them, till at last the rebels went to 
 Nankin, and were there besieged by the Chinese, who would let 
 no food go into the city, so the people inside were starved, and at 
 last gave up, after the rebellion had lasted fourteen years. Hung 
 killed himself, as soon as he saw there was no hope. 
 
 One great evil that came from this rebellion was, that all the 
 public money had been spent in putting it down, so it left the 
 Government very poor ; and another evil consequence was, that the 
 people of China had got used to the idea of rebelling against the 
 emperor, which they had not thought of doing before. 
 
 In 1857, the second war with England came to an end, and the 
 emperor soon after died of a broken heart. His son, who succeeded 
 him, was only nine years old, so his mother managed the kingdom 
 foi' him. He had a very grand wedding, but died a little while 
 
ITS ?I I STORY. ' 27 
 
 after from small-pox, and Ids wife starved herself to death in the 
 palace ; this was in 1875. 
 
 One of the emperor's cousins, a child of four years, named 
 Kwang Lii, succeeded and is still reigning (1884). 
 
 THE CHINESE FAMINE. 
 
 In 1877 a terrible famine began in China, which lasted several 
 years ; it was caused by want of rain, and was made much worse 
 by the difficulty of getting food to the places where the people 
 were starving. The roads in many parts of China are very bad 
 indeed, and at this time the rivers were so low that the ships 
 could not get up them. The famine was worst in the north ; in 
 some parts bread was seventeen times dearer than it generally is, 
 so of coiu'se the poor people could not buy it. 
 
 There were terrible sights to be seen in China then, whole 
 villages and towns full of dead and dying people. Poor, famished 
 old women might be foimd in the fields, digging out the seeds that 
 had been planted a few weeks before and eating them. There 
 were long rows of little children to be seen in the streets, put up 
 for sale, because their parents could give them nothing to eat. 
 For three years there was hardly any rain, and the famine got 
 worse and worse ; whole families killed themselves, because they 
 thought it was better to die quickly all at once, than one at a time 
 so slowly as people die when they have nothing to eat. 
 
 The cities were full of starving people, who came in fi'om the 
 country in the hope of finding something to eat. Some people ate 
 cakes made of stone ground to dust, mixed with husks, and then 
 baked ; and the living even took to eating those who died, they 
 were so hungry ; and if there were any not quite dead, but too 
 weak to help themselves, then they were killed and eaten by the 
 stronger ones ; sometimes mothers even boiled their own little 
 boys and girls and ate them. 
 
28 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 Then there was a disease called the famine fever, and not 
 only the Chinese, but some of the missionaries who had gone to 
 do what they could to help the starving people, caught it and died. 
 
 Even when the rain came, things were no better at first, for 
 then there was no seed left to sow ; the bullocks and horses had 
 all been killed and eaten, so there were none to plough with, and 
 even the men were too weak to do any work. Women and children 
 were sold a cartload at a time. In one house a missionary found 
 a little boy, the only one left alive of a large family. His father 
 and mother and brothers and sisters had all died of hunger ; he 
 himself went out every day to gather the seeds of the wild flowers 
 and weeds, and this was his only food. 
 
 The missionaries worked very hard all this terrible time. A 
 great many people in England collected money and sent it out to 
 them, that they might buy food from other places, and feed the 
 starving men, women, and children. Some English ladies went 
 to China too, and opened orphanages where the little children 
 could come and live. They spent all their time in feeding the 
 hungry people, and telling them about our God and our Jesus, 
 and thus many people heard of the true God and believed in Him 
 who would never have known of Him if it had not been for the 
 famine ; so God can bring good out of even such a dreadful evil 
 as that. 
 
 The present condition of China is not a very happy one. It 
 has become almost a common thing for the people to rebel. The 
 ofiicers sometimes make people pay too much and sometimes bribe 
 them. To get a little money, the emperor allows men to buy 
 of&ce in the Government, so that the rich have a better chance 
 than the poor really, though according to law all have an equal 
 chance of becoming great. 
 
 As people from other countries come more and more into 
 China, the Chinese find out that they are mistaken in many of the 
 things they believe ; and as Chinamen go into other countries, live 
 
ITS HISTORY. 
 
 29 
 
 there for some years, and tlieu come home again, having learut 
 much from other nations, they see how far behindhand their own 
 countrymen are. As they get to he less satisfied with themselves 
 and their country, they become more ready to learn of others, and 
 so the way gets more and more open for the missionaries to teach 
 them of the true God and of His Son Jesus Christ. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 ITS GOVEENMENT. 
 
 ||0U will not be snrprisecl to hear that the government 
 of China is qnite unlike that of any other country ; it 
 is so ancient, and has changed so very little from what 
 it was hundreds and even thousands of years ago, that 
 it must be very strange in some ways. 
 
 The government of China is what is called patri- 
 -archal, that is, the whole nation is looked upon as a large family, 
 ruled by a father. The emperor is called the Father of the 
 Empire, so any offence against him is punished in the same 
 way as an offence against a father or mother, and when an 
 emperor dies everybody mourns for him just as long and just 
 in the same way as if they had all lost their fathers and 
 mothers. Just as the father is complete master of his children, 
 so the emperor is complete master of his subjects. I will 
 tell you about the emperor first, and then about those who 
 rule under him. 
 
 The emperor is treated with the greatest respect. When 
 he goes fi'om one place to another, all the people in the towns 
 through which he passes go into their houses and shut the doors 
 before he comes, because they may not look upon him and live. 
 He has the same honours paid to him as if he were a god, for 
 the Chinese say the emperor worships heaven, and the people 
 worship the emperor. He has a great many titles ; one of them 
 is -'The Son of Heaven," another "The Ten Thousand Years," 
 
ITS GOVERNMENT. 31 
 
 another " The Celestial Sovereign ; " wlien lie writes about him- 
 self he calls himself " The Solitary Man," by which he means 
 that he is quite alone in the world, because no one else is anything 
 like so gTeat. 
 
 When his subjects come before him they kneel down three 
 times, and knock their heads nine times on the floor ; they not 
 only kneel to the emj)eror, but to everything that belongs to 
 him. There is just one person to whom the emperor himself 
 must bow, just as all other people bow to him, and that is his 
 mother ; for, like the people of India, the Chinese are very 
 respectful to their mothers. The ' emperor has several wives, 
 but only one is called Empress, and she rules over all the others. 
 
 The emperor dresses more plainly than all the gentlemen 
 about the court ; the reason given for this is, that he is so great 
 already that he cannot be made any greater by wearing fine 
 clothes. 
 
 In one of the Chinese books there is a description of the 
 food the emperor is to have set before him every day — " Thirty 
 pounds of meat in a basin, and seven pounds boiled into soup, 
 one and one-third pounds of hog's fat and the same quantity of 
 butter ; two sheep, two fowls, and two ducks, the milk of eighty 
 cows, and seventy-five parcels of tea." Then comes a list of 
 what the Empress is to have, and afterwards the allowance for 
 all her servants. 
 
 All Chinese ofiicers are called Mandarins by Europeans ; there 
 are a great many of them, fifteen principal sets, besides many 
 others not so important, all with their own specisd work to do, 
 so I cannot tell you about all of them. 
 
 Besides those who look after the whole empire, every province 
 has a governor-general, with another governor under him ; they 
 have the power of killing any great ofiicers who are not faithful 
 in doing their work, or they can put any of them out of oflice 
 if they like. The governors have to look after their province 
 
32 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 and keep it in order, aud there is a treasurer who has to keep 
 all the public money in the province, which is paid in by the 
 magistrate of each district. Out of this money the treasurer 
 paj^s all the officers and soldiers, and also provides what is needed 
 for all public works that have to be done in the province. 
 
 Every province has a judge of its own too, whose business 
 is to examine and punish anyone who commits a crime, but there 
 are other lower judges under him — the prefect, who manages 
 a county (all the provinces are divided into counties), and the 
 district magistrate, who has charge of one of the districts in a 
 county. 
 
 Once in every three 3^ears the governor-general of each 
 province sends a list of all the officers who are under him, to 
 a comjiany called the Board of Civil Appointments, who appoint 
 men to different offices. In this list he not only puts all the 
 officers' names, but also remarks about them, saying how they 
 have behaved themselves during the three 3-ears, and what sort 
 of men they are. They are expected to tell of themselves too 
 if they have done wrong, and to ask to be punished. According 
 to this report all the men ai-e either raised to a higher post or 
 put down to a lower. If there is a distiu'bance in a province, 
 the governor-general is always punished for it, though he may 
 have had nothing to do with it ; so you may be sure he will 
 do his best to keep everything quiet. 
 
 There is another set of officers, called Censors, who have 
 rather a strange kind of work to do. There are two presidents, 
 one Mauchu, the other Chinese, and forty or fifty members, who 
 are sent about to different parts of the empire as spies, to see 
 whether all the officers are doing their work properly, and whether 
 all the people are in good order. 
 
 No one is allowed to be a magistrate in the ^^rovince to which 
 he belongs, nor to have one of his relations under him ; this is 
 for fear he should let off his friends if the}' did wrong, and to 
 
ITS GOVERNMENT. ' zz 
 
 keep liim from making particular friends and tlien favouring tlicni. 
 Every man who liolds office under the Government is moved to 
 a fresli phice very often. 
 
 Besides tliose who have actually to do with the government 
 of the empii'e, there are a few^ persons wdio have special privileges ; 
 among these are the memhers of the royal family, of which there 
 are two lines : the first is descended from the Manchu Emperor 
 who first conquered China, and the second from his l)rothers and 
 uncles. None of them have any particular office, nor take any 
 part in the government ; their chief use is to add to the grandeur 
 of the emperor hy always heing about him in such large numbers. 
 They are all obliged to come to the palace at new^ moon and full 
 moon, and arrange themselves in a certain regular order before 
 daybreak. When the emperor makes his appearance, they all 
 fall dowm on their faces. They live very idle, useless lives, and 
 are often very troublesome to the emperor, who finds it inconve- 
 nient to have so many relations. They are always known b}' their 
 dress ; those belonging to the first line wear girdles and. scarves 
 of yellow (the royal colour), those of the second wear a sash and 
 scarf of red. There are separate courts of justice for these royal 
 relations, who must not be tried as if they were common people. 
 
 Only the mandarins are allowed to be carried by four bearers, 
 or accompanied by a train of attendants, except at a w^edding, 
 w^hen you will see that this rule is not kept. When the people 
 see a mandarin coming, they stand aside with their arms down 
 at their sides and their eyes on the ground. One rather extraor- 
 dinary duty of the mandarins is to " Save the sun " when it is 
 eclipsed. Before people understood eclipses, the Chinese used, to 
 believe, w4ien the sun or moon was eclipsed, that it was being 
 eaten by a great beast, and needed saving ; so at the time of an 
 eclipse, the mandarins get some priests to help them to save the 
 sun. They put a censer and two candles on a table, and just as the 
 eclipse is beginning, a mandarin comes into the roon^, dressed in 
 
 3 
 
34 
 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 his robes of office ; he takes some incense-sticks in both his hands 
 and inits them into the censer, then kneels down three times 
 and knocks his head nine times against the floor ; after which the 
 priests, making a great noise with gongs and drums, march round 
 the table, singing pra3^ers nntil the eclipse is over. Of course the 
 
 SAVING THK SUN. 
 
 sun comes out in time, so they are always able to say they have 
 saved it from the monster. The mandarins have too much sense 
 and learning now to believe this is true, and most, if not all, of 
 them understand quite well what it is that causes an eclipse ;'but 
 they always go through this form, because it is an old custom. 
 
 All civil aiid military officers wear caps in the shape of a 
 
ITS GOVERNMENT. 35 
 
 coue, with a bull at the point, and by these balls people cau tell 
 whether au officer is a great one, or somebody not very particular ; 
 the balls are different shades of red, blue, or yellow, made of 
 crystal, white stone, or gold, and every ball has a badge belonging 
 to it, a piece of silk embroidery about a foot square with a picture 
 on it ; this badge is worn on the breast and on the back of the 
 dress belonging to the office. Any one who has a government post 
 also wears a necklace of large beads, called court beads, reaching 
 down to the w^aist, and there are different kinds of clasps to go 
 with the different balls. 
 
 But you cannot always be quite certain what a man is from 
 his dress, as some people pay a great sum of money in order to 
 be allowed to wear the dress without doing the work. The 
 only good they get by this is that, if they break the laws, they 
 cannot be punished on the spot, nor until they have been made 
 to give up their balls. But those who only wear balls because 
 they have bought leave to do it, even if it is the highest ball of 
 all, may be summoned by the very lowest magistrate, and if they 
 are found guilty may be punished and beaten, besides losing their 
 balls ; while those who wear them because they deserve them, can 
 only be punished by one higher than themselves. 
 
 Officers in the army are not thought so much of as those who 
 help in the government, because it does not need much learning 
 to know how to fight, and the Chinese think more of learning 
 than of anything else. The only way in which a man can get 
 famous in China, or get a high government office, is by being 
 clever at books, so that the poorest man in the empire may come 
 to be the greatest, next to the emperor, if only he learns enough ; 
 therefore you will not be surprised to hear that all the boys 
 work very hard at their lessons, and do their best to become 
 learned men. 
 
 The Chinese are not at all good soldiers. One reason of this 
 is, that they so seldom have wars, so they have had very little 
 
^6 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 practice ; and another is that the Manchiis are afraid that some 
 day the Chinese will rise np against them and make themselves 
 masters of the country, so they try not to let them he good 
 soldiers. One way in which they do this is by only allowing 
 a Chinese soldier half the pay of a Manchu, so no Chinaman 
 will be a soldier if he can find anything else to do. Chinese 
 swords are very badl}" made, and their guns are very clumsy, but 
 they are beginning now to use better arms and to fight more 
 like Europeans. 
 
 The General of the army must always be a Mauchu, but the 
 lower oflicers may be Chinese. All officers in the army may be 
 beaten, and they very often are, and even the very highest of 
 them are put in the caugue : you do not know yet what that means, 
 but you very soon will. Of late years a few European officers 
 have been admitted into the army. 
 
 The Chinese are generally industrious and contented, partly 
 because their laws are sensible, and not so cruel as those of other 
 countries near them. You will like to hear what a Chinaman 
 once said about his country and its laws: — 
 
 " I congratulate myself that I was born in China. It 
 constantly occurs to me — What if I had been born beyond the 
 sea, in some remote part of the earth, where the cold freezes and 
 the heat scorches ; where the people are clothed with the leaves 
 of plants, eat wood, dwell in the wilderness. He in holes of the 
 earth, are far removed from the good maxims of the ancient 
 kings, and are ignorant of home relations ? Though born as one 
 of the generation of men, I should not have been different from 
 a beast. But how happily I have been born in China ! I have a 
 house to live in, I have drink and food and commodious furniture, 
 I have clothing and caps, and infinite blessings. Truly, the 
 highest happiness is mine." 
 
 I wonder how many of you who read this book have ever 
 thanked God that you were born in a better country even than 
 
C'HIKESE AKTII.I.EliYMeN. 
 
ITS G O VERN. ME NT. 
 
 39 
 
 Cliiiici, a coiiutry where the true God is kuowu and loved and 
 worshi23ped, and where there is nothing to hinder your knowing 
 Him and serving Him. Do not let the Chinese be more grateful 
 for their blessings than you are for yours, which are so much 
 greater, but as you think of the many things which you have and 
 they have not, let gratitude lead you to pray and to work for those 
 who know nothing of the richest gift of all, God's " unspeakable 
 gift" ( ) of His own Son. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ITS LAWS. 
 
 NE reason why the Chinese Empire is so great is, that 
 it is the law that the position of every man must 
 depend on his own learning and talent, not on his 
 having plenty of land or money, or belonging to a great 
 family ; so whoever wants to he great must work hard. 
 Yon will not be surprised to hear that the laws 
 against treason (that is, saying or doing anything against the 
 emperor) are very strict. When a man tried to kill the emperor, 
 in 1803, he was ordered to he killed as slowdy as possible, and his 
 sons, who were all little boys, were strangled. 
 
 If anyone who is less than fifteen years old, or more than 
 seventy, commits a crime not great enough to be punished with 
 death, he may buy off his punishment by paying a fine, and it is 
 not allowed to torture people under fifteen or over seventy. You 
 will be glad of that when you hear what Chinese punishments 
 are like. 
 
 If a man robs another, and uses a stick or any other weapon 
 to help him in the work, he is punished with death ; but if he onl}- 
 steals and does not hurt anyone, he is either beaten or banished. 
 His punishment depends rather on how much he steals. If a man 
 kills another in a quarrel or with a weapon, he is strangled for it ; 
 if he did it accidentally, he may buy off his punishment by paying 
 a fine to the relations of the dead man. 
 
 A father may do almost anything he likes with his children ; 
 
ITS LAWS. 41 
 
 eveu if he kills one of tlieiii 011 purpose, he is only whipped or 
 banished for a year; and if the child struck him first, he 
 will not be punished at all. But, on the other hand, the respect 
 required from children to their parents is so great, that if a child 
 curses or strikes his father or mother, he is punished by death. 
 
 If a man is seen striking another man with his hand or foot, 
 he is punished for it ; so, though Chinamen often quarrel, they 
 seldom fight, and may often be seen in the streets jumpiog about, 
 and abusing and threatening each other, but not thinking of 
 coming to blows. 
 
 If a man goes too long without paying his debts, the person 
 to whom he owes money, if he has sent in his bill and not had it 
 paid, sometimes comes and lives in the house of his debtor, and 
 in some cases even brings his whole family with him ; and no one 
 will interfere with him, unless there is fighting ; so he can get his 
 debt paid by making his debtor feed him. It is considered much 
 more disgraceful to owe money to a foreigner than to a Chinaman. 
 
 It is a law in China, that nobody can be punished for a crime 
 until he has confessed it, so if he refuses to do this, he is tortured 
 till he does. 
 
 Chinese punishments are not at all like English ones; they 
 are so much more cruel. It is thought a great disgrace for a high 
 officer to be killed by an executioner, so if one of them has offended 
 the emperor, and has to die for it, the emperor will sometimes 
 send liim a piece of silk cord, and the man wdio gets this under- 
 stands at once that it means he will have to die. If he waits and 
 does nothing after getting the cord, the emperor will send a man 
 to cut his head off, and the officer will have to go into the next 
 world with a broken body ; so to avoid this fate, he will strangle 
 himself with the silk cord, as that will not break or cut his body. 
 It is considered a very great honour if the emperor allows a man 
 to kill himself in this way, instead of being killed by another. 
 Among the mandarins the favourite way of committing suicide is 
 
42 THE CELESTIAL EMIURE, 
 
 by swallowing gold leaf. Belieadiug and strangling are the two 
 chief punishments for those who are condemned to die. 
 
 Before a man is beheaded, he is carried in a cage through 
 the town where he lives, with the account of his crime written on 
 a slip of paper, which is stuck in his hair. In the cage there is 
 also a pail, ready for his head to be pat in when it is cut off. 
 
 The most frequent instrument of punishment is the bamboo. 
 When a trial is going on, the judge always has beside him a small 
 tube, full of slips of bamboo wood, and when he passes sentence 
 on the prisoner, he takes out a certain number of these slips, the 
 number depending upon how bad the man has been, and throws 
 them on the floor. The ofiicers who are standing by take up these 
 slips of wood, and give the prisoner four blows with each slip. 
 
 Another instrument is the cangue; this is a large board, some- 
 times weighing as much as a hundred pounds, with a hole in the 
 middle, through which the man's head is put. The board is so 
 large, that he cannot put his hand to his mouth, so he always has 
 to be fed by others. On the board is written in large letters the 
 crime for which the man is being punished ; sometimes he will 
 have to wear this board for a month, sometimes for three months ; 
 it is locked on during the day and taken off at night. All day the 
 man has to stand at the road-side, in the evening the constable 
 takes him away. He begs his living from the people in the street, 
 unless his friends like to provide for him. 
 
 Banishment is a common punishment in China, sometimes 
 only from one part of the country to another, sometimes out of 
 China altogether; sometimes for life, sometimes only for a certain 
 number of years. 
 
 Manchus who break the laws are generally beaten v "th a 
 whip instead of with the bamboo, and are made to wear the 
 cangue instead of being banished. 
 
 One of the worst punishments is the bamboo cage, which 
 is just a little taller than the man who is put into it ; his head 
 
ITS L.nVS. 43 
 
 is put tliroiigli a board at the top, and he can just manage to 
 touch the bottom with his toes, so he must either stand all the 
 time on the very ends of his toes, or else hang by his neck ; one 
 way is about as painful as the other ; sometimes the poor man 
 is not allowed to come out of his cage at all, but is stood in the 
 street and left to die of hunger. 
 
 Beating the cheeks or back is another cruel punishment. 
 The man is made to kneel down, and an oflicer comes to him and 
 seizes him by the hair with one hand, while with the other hand 
 he gives him the number of blows ordered by the mandarin, with 
 a piece of leather about a foot long and two or three inches wide, 
 on his cheeks. If it is the back that has to be beaten, he is laid 
 on the ground on his face, and his back is beaten with a strip of 
 bamboo ; if the bamboo is five feet long and two inches wide, he 
 gets forty strokes, but if it is three feet long and one inch wide, 
 he may have any number the mandarin likes to order. Even 
 with the long bamboo the poor man often gets more than the 
 forty strokes, but if he is rich enough he will bribe the officer 
 to beat him lightly. Do you remember who it was who five times 
 was beaten with thirty-nine strokes for the sake of the Lord 
 •Jesus? ( ) 
 
 If a man refuses to confess the crime he is accused of, 
 squeezing the fingers is a means that is often tried to make him 
 do it. The man is made to kneel down, and is tied by his hair 
 to a post. Then a little instrument made of rods is fastened to 
 each of his hands in such a way that one of the rods comes 
 between every two fingers, and the man who is using it, by pulling 
 a cord fastened to the rods, squeezes the fingers between them. 
 The harder the cord is pulled, the more tightly the fingers are 
 squeezed ; the pain is so dreadful that the man always says 
 whatever he is wanted to say before very long. 
 
 Sometimes a man is hung by one arm over a pole, raised 
 several feet fi'om the ground. His other arm is passed under 
 
44 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 bis legs, and then his two hands are tied together by the thumbs, 
 just nnder his knees. No part of his body is allowed to touch 
 the floor, so all his weight will hang on his one arm-pit. If yon 
 are a boy, yon had better get two people to hold a big stick for 
 you, and you try to hang on it as I have described : you will 
 understand better then what it is like. If you are a girl, then 
 get your brothers to try, and you watch them. 
 
 Smoking the head is another punishment. This is done by 
 holding a tub upside down over a man's head and burning incense 
 under it, so that all the smoke goes into the tub and suffocates him. 
 
 One of the most horrible punishments of all is to make a 
 man wear a shirt of iron netting, to which a cord is fastened ; 
 as the cord is pulled, the shirt fits tighter and tighter, and little 
 bits of flesh come through the holes of the wire. Then some one 
 passes a sharp knife all over the outside of the netting, and so 
 cuts off the little bits of flesh all over the man's body. 
 
 There is a whip used in some parts of China, which has 
 at the ends of the lashes five sharp hooks, which stick into the 
 body of the person who is being whipped. 
 
 Sometimes when a man is going to be beaten with a whip or 
 a bamboo, instead of letting him kneel on the floor, he is made to 
 kneel on broken bits of china or glass, or on chains, and some- 
 times is made to stay there till he has had several hundred blows. 
 
 Prisoners are treated very severely in China, and are often kept 
 in prison a very long time. Each prisoner is kept by himself, and 
 is never allowed to see any of the others. The people call going to 
 prison "going to hell." The prisoners are often terribly tortured; 
 the gaolors can treat them just as they like, and very often torture 
 them till they promise them money if they will let them alone. 
 
 It must be Satan who puts such cruel ideas into people's 
 heads ; and the best way of putting a stop to it must be to tell 
 the Chinese more about Him who came into the world on purj^ose 
 " that He might destroy the works of the devil " ( ). 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 ITS POPULATION. 
 
 OW many people does your geography say there are m 
 China ? ( ) That is more than there are in 
 
 India, though the country is not so large. 
 
 You will understand a little hetter how many people 
 there are in China, when I tell you that if 3'ou were to 
 stand still, and all the people in China were to walk 
 past you in a long line, one person in every second, it would take 
 thirteen j^ears for them all to get past. You would be rather tired 
 of standing and looking by that time, wouldn't you ? And if all the 
 people in the world were to walk past you, one by one, every third 
 person would be Chinese, so that a third part of all the people in 
 the world are Chinese. There are as many people in China as 
 there are in all Europe, and North and South America besides. 
 If all the Chinese were put in a row^, they would reach all the 
 way to the moon, or go round the world three times at the 
 equator. We get this account of the number of people in China 
 from the census which the Chinese government has made, but 
 some people think there are really more ; at any rate there are 
 quite as many. I expect the number is really veiy much what 
 the census says, for the government is very particular about taking 
 it correctly. Every district has its own officer, every street its 
 own constable, every ten houses have what is called a " tithing 
 man," and every family is obliged to have a board liauging wp in 
 the house, on which are written the names of all who live in it, 
 
46 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 men, women, and children ; so it does not seem as if the census 
 conld be very far wrong ; but some people say that many names 
 are not written on the board, but are kept back on purpose. 
 
 China is much more thickly j>eopled in some parts than 
 in others ; so while in some provinces the people are very close 
 together indeed, in the province of Yunnan, which is larger than 
 Great Britain, there are only a few more people than there are 
 in London. 
 
 The population of China has not increased much lately. 
 There are several reasons for this. A great many people have 
 been drowned in floods, and many millions died in the famine you 
 read about. Then a great many were killed in the Tai-ping 
 Kebellion, w^hen whole cities were sometiines left empty : in one 
 city alone 700,000 men were either killed or else died from disease. 
 And another very sad reason why the population does not increase 
 very fast is, that many mothers kill their own little girls and throw 
 them away ; so you may be very glad that you are not a Chinese 
 little girl. 
 
 There are a great many people in China who do not live 
 in houses at all ; nor in towns, nor villages, nor out in tlie country, 
 but on the canals and rivers in boats, whole families of men, 
 women, and children. There are a thousand families living on 
 the rivers near Canton, in little boats called egg-houses. The 
 men and w^omen row the boats ; the children have gourds fastened 
 to them to keep them from sinking if they should fall over the 
 sides of the boats into the river. A gourd is a very large fruit, 
 that floats on the water like cork. 
 
 But all the people in China are not Chinese or Manchus. 
 Besides these two great nations, there are several other races. 
 One of these is the Shans, who live in the west and south of the 
 proviuce of Yunnan. They are most likely some of the aborigines 
 of Cliina. What are aborigines ? ( ) 
 
 and were driven to their present home by the Cliinese ; they live 
 
ITS rOPULATION. 47 
 
 among the nioimtains, and sometimes pay visits to the plains 
 to sell the things they have grown or made or found in their own 
 country — capsicums, arsenic, paper, rough rubies and amethysts, 
 and cattle very much like Alderney cow^s. Most of the Shans 
 belong to the Buddhist religion, but a few have become Christians. 
 Some American missionaries have worked amongst them, and parts 
 of the Bible have been translated into their language. 
 
 Then there are the Lolos, also aborigines of China. They 
 live in Si-chuen and Yunnan, and complain that the Chinese have 
 stolen their country. Some of the Chinese call the Lolos " wdld 
 men," but really they are nearly as civilized as the Chinese 
 themselves. The men are tall and thin, and very timid. They 
 have not many bad habits, but one very bad one is that all the 
 men and women drink a good deal of wine. When they come 
 to the Chinese towns to do their buying and selling, they always 
 carry their wine bottles with them. They are very fond of 
 tobacco, but seldom smoke opium, as the Chinese do. 
 
 The Lolo w^omen are very handsome, and much sharper than 
 the men ; they do all the marketing, and a great deal of the 
 outdoor work. Most of the men have shaved their heads, thus 
 showing that the Manchus have conquered them, but very few 
 of them allow their pigtails to be seen. Many of them never comb 
 their hair at all ; some of them make it into about twenty plaits 
 instead of one, and all tlie plaits are matted together with grease 
 and dirt ; then they are twisted into a knob on the front of the 
 head, and a long, narrow strip of calico is bound round tlieir heads 
 and round the knob, to keep it in its place. 
 
 The Lolos who are pretty well off, keep themselves clean, 
 but the poor are very dirty, especially the men. The Lolo 
 language is quite different to the Chinese, but a great many 
 Lolos can speak Chinese as well as their own language. 
 
 The Lolo women wear dresses with frills round the bottom, 
 much more like English dresses than Chinese, and they are very 
 
48 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 fond of jewels ; the men adorn themselves with ear-rings made 
 of beads threaded on cotton. In warm weather their clothes are 
 made of cotton, in winter of felt. They are very good-tempered 
 and cheerful, though their houses are not at all nice, being very 
 low and smoky. Their chief employment is rearing cows, sheep, 
 and horses, and cultivating wheat, oats, maize, beans, and potatoes. 
 
 The Hakka are another tribe who live near Canton, but Fpeak 
 a language that the Canton people cannot understand. They 
 are very poor but industrious. When they first came into Kwaug- 
 tung they used to till the waste lands, and w^ere hired as servants 
 by the people who were there before them ; but they have gradually 
 increased in numbers and strength, till now they possess some 
 of the finest disti'icts in the province. 
 
 The race who lived in Kwang-tung before these other tribes 
 came are called the Punti. They are much more polished than- 
 the tribes who have come since, but they are very deceitful and 
 cannot be trusted at alL They are ver}' proud of being such 
 an old race, and of their language, which they say is tlie oldest 
 form of Chinese, the same that was spoken in the time of the 
 Emperor Yu. 
 
 The Hoklo are a tribe who live in Fukien, and speak a 
 dialect which none of the tribes near them understand at all ; 
 they live chiefly on the coast and along the sides of the rivers ; 
 they are very fierce and unmanageable. In looks they are more 
 like the Chinese than any of the other tribes I have told you of; 
 their skin is nearly the same colour, being of a fair yellowish 
 tint ; they are like the Chinese too in having brown ej^es, not 
 quite straight, and in their hair, which is coarse, glossy, and 
 straight. The Hakka and the Punti have much darker skins. 
 
 All these small tribes get to be more and more like the 
 Chinese in their character ; wherever Chinamen are found, these 
 small races copy them in their manners and customs and religion. 
 
 In the Island of Hainan (Which province does that belong 
 
ITS POPULATIONy^^^^^ _%;^ 49 
 
 to ? ) is a tribe called the Li. They live in 
 
 the mountains of Hainan, while the Chinese live in the plains. 
 Yeiy little is known about them ; they seem to be something 
 like the mountain races that live in the north-west of India. 
 
 The Miau Teibes, 
 
 or Miautsi, as tliey are often called, must have a long piece of 
 this chapter to themselves, because there are so many of them — 
 seventy-two different tribes. They are scattered over the moun- 
 tains in the provinces of Kwang-tung, Kiang-si, and Kwei-chau. 
 They speak several different dialects and have different customs, 
 different governments, and different ways of dressing. Their 
 language is not the least like Chinese, but is something like 
 Burmese. Where is Burmah ? ( ). 
 
 The Miautsi are quite ready to live at peace with the people 
 in the valleys, so long as they are left alone ; but if anyone wants 
 to come into their mountains they fight very hard to keep them 
 out. For a long time the Chinese treated them very badly, so 
 they came dowm fi'om the mountains in great bodies and burnt 
 many of the Chinese cities, wasting all the country as they went. 
 Then the Chinese fought against them, and partly conquered 
 them, and carried away boat-loads of their men, women, and 
 children, and sold them for slaves. Some of the tribes were made 
 to wear the Chinese dress and to shave their heads, but some of 
 them have not done this, and have not been conquered by the 
 Chinese. 
 
 Those who do not wear the Chinese dress have loose garments 
 of cotton or linen. Some of them are called the black Miautsi, 
 because they wear clothes all of a dark colour ; their women 
 wear a tight-fitting black jacket, very much like an English lady 
 might wear, over a short skirt \NTth many folds ; a long strip of 
 dark calico is bound round their ankles and another long piece 
 
 4 
 
so THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 round their heads, besides pieces of embroidery round their elbows 
 ^aud wrists. Some of the tribes have a narrow^ stripe of red on the 
 dark calico ; others have a white band on the edge of the skirt 
 and a kind of ornamental purse in the front of the waist. Their 
 clothes are either made by themselves, or got from the people 
 who live in the plains in return for metals or grain. 
 
 Some of the Miautsi live in tents made of the boughs of trees, 
 others in mud huts. Their dwellings are generally hidden away 
 among trees, in places where it is very difficult to get to them. 
 In this they are very different to the Chinese, who like to live 
 as close as possible to the road-side. They cultivate the ground 
 in a very rough way. 
 
 Their only religious worship is a sacrifice of an ox, or a tiger, 
 or a dog ; sometimes offered up to the founder of their race, some- 
 times sacrificed in the hope that they w^ill as a reward escape 
 sickness and death, and sometimes to persuade the gods who 
 manage the weather to send them the kind they want. Most 
 of them do not worship images, but they know nothing of the 
 true God, and have never heard of the Lord Jesus ; those who 
 have copied the Chinese dress and habits have also copied the 
 religion of the Chinese. 
 
 The Miautsi are healthier and more active than the Chinese, 
 very likely because they have nothing to do with opium. The 
 Chinese always speak against the Miautsi, calling them dog- 
 men and wolf-men, and have made strangers think worse of 
 them than they deserve. They are very shy, and do not mix 
 with the Chinese more than they can help. Only a few of them 
 can speak Chinese at all, and even tliey do not know many words. 
 They have no written language, so they cannot have any books, 
 until some of the missionaries make a language for them and 
 write the books. Both the men and w^omen work very hard 
 and mix with each other ; a Miau woman does not go out of the 
 room if a male visitor comes in, as a Chinese woman does. 
 
ITS POPULATION. 
 
 51 
 
 Veiy, very few of tlie i^oor ^liaiitsi have ever had the oppor- 
 tunity of hearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are no 
 missionaries living amongst them, and though a few who are 
 at work among the Chinese have been to see them, they could 
 do but very little for them, as they did not know their language, 
 and so could only speak to them through someone who knew 
 Chinese and the Miau language too; and as there is no wiitten 
 language, they could not even give them Bibles and tracts ; 
 they could only pity them and pray for them, and ijou can do 
 that, can't you ? Ask God to send someone to teach them, and 
 to make some one loving enough and clever enough to make 
 a language for them, and to get some parts at least of the Bible 
 put into it. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 IT8 TOWXS. 
 
 HERE are a great many cities in Cliiua — 14G0, not 
 reckoning towns — as you would guess from its being 
 so large and so old. 
 
 All tlie principal cities and towns are surrounded 
 by high walls, made of blue bricks, which make them 
 look very strange to English people. These walls 
 are from twenty to sixty feet high, with several gates in them 
 for 23eople to go in and out of the town ; they are very strong too, 
 and so thick that in time of war the troops move about on the top 
 without any fear of their falling off. The gates of towns are shut 
 every night soon after it gets dark. At the end of every principal 
 street there is a strong barrier of timber, which is shut at the same 
 time, to keep people from going in and out ; no one is allowed to 
 pass unless he can give a very good reason for it. 
 
 Sometimes there are houses built on the walls. What woman 
 do we read of in the Bible who lived in a house on a city wall ? 
 ( ).. Most likely these walls were built long ago, to 
 
 keep out enemies, but now you will often find quite a little town 
 outside the w^alls, and wide pieces of ground inside them, where 
 nobody is living. There are about 8,000 miles of wall altogether 
 in China. 
 
 After the Manchus had conquered China, every large city 
 had a little Manchu army sent to keep it, and a separate part of the 
 city was appointed for them to live in. In many places these parts 
 
A STREET IN CAXTOX. 
 
ITS TOWNS. 55 
 
 passed agaiu into the liauds of the Chinese, in others tlie Manchus 
 still keep them. 
 
 As canals and rivers are so much used, you will expect to hear 
 that there are a great many bridges, and so there are ; some of 
 them have shops all along both sides, with only a narrow foot-path 
 down the middle for people to walk on. 
 
 There are very few public gardens or parks to be seen in 
 China. The Chinese say such things are only fit for learned 
 people, so they make gardens for themselves but not for the public. 
 We do not say that in England, do we ? Instead of that, w^e nia,ke 
 public gardens or parks in nearly|^all our large toAvns, where the 
 people who have been w^orking hard all day can go and walk in the 
 evening, and I don't think they would "say they do not care for such 
 things. 
 
 In Pekin and Nankin there are some very wide streets ; the 
 chief streets in Pekin are one hundred feet wdde, but in most 
 of the cities and towns the streets are very narrow. The houses 
 have very broad eaves, so that those on one side of the road 
 nearly touch those on the other side, and a Chinese city seen from 
 a little distance looks like a huge mass of houses and nothing 
 else. 
 
 People who want to see the skj^, and get a breath of fresh air, 
 go on to the tops of the houses, which are generally ornamented 
 wdth rows of flow^ers in pots, and have an ornamental railing all 
 round them. On the roofs there are also a great many jars filled 
 with water to be ready in case of a fire, for as the houses are made 
 chiefly of wood, and are so very close together, there often is a tire. 
 Every now and then in a Chinese street there is a high stone wall 
 between two houses ; this is called a fire-w^all, and is put there so 
 that if a house should catch fire, all the other houses would not be 
 burnt too, as the wall would keep the fire from spreading. 
 
 The houses in Chinese cities are nearly all of the same height, 
 except that here and there there is a temple or a government 
 
56 
 
 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 house, a little liiglier than the rest, and in the southern provinces 
 there are a great many pawnhrokers' shops, which are built with 
 high square towers. In most cities there are large pieces of tilled 
 land, which might be used for building, and then the other parts 
 would not be so crowded; but the Chinese like to squeeze into as 
 little room and live as close together as they possibly can, they 
 think it more sociable and better for trade. 
 
 GEMTLEMAN S SEDAN. 
 
 Chinese streets are not only very narrow, but very dirty; the 
 hardest-working scavengers are the dogs and pigs, who run about 
 and find what they can to eat. There are very bad drains too, and 
 therefore very bad smells, which cannot always get out, as the 
 streets are sometimes shut in by matting at the top, to keep out 
 the hot sun ; it is partly for this purpose that they are made so 
 narrow. In spite of this, however, Chinese merchants and trades- 
 people are generally healthy and live long. 
 
ITS TOWNS. 57 
 
 Horses are very seldom used for carrying things in Chinese 
 towns ; if they were, the streets would have to be wider to make 
 room for them to pass each other. Most of the carrying is done 
 by men called coolies. If the load is light, 02ie coolie will carry 
 it ; he has a bamboo stick on his shoulder, and half the goods 
 are hung at each end, just as yon have seen a milkman carry 
 his tw^o pails of milk. If the load is a heavy one, then there 
 will be two coolies, with a stick between them, and the burden 
 fastened to the middle of it. These coolies trot along all the way 
 as fast as they can go, shouting as they run for people to get 
 out of the way, so a Chinese street is sometimes rather noisy. 
 
 In Pekin and other towns in the north of China there are 
 carts drawn by horses, mules, and donkeys, and sometimes loads 
 are carried by dromedaries. 
 
 People as w^ell as things are carried by coolies. The carriages 
 have a long shaft at each side, which rests on the shoulders of the 
 men. Most people are only allowed tw^o coolies to carry them, 
 but mandarins may have four or sometimes eight, while the 
 emperor is carried by sixteen, eight behind and eight in front. 
 
 The streets are generally paved with long stones, which are 
 always dirty, as there are no proper drains, but only a rude, 
 covered gutter in the largest streets. In some cities and towns 
 there are rows of jars sunk by the side of the streets, each w-itli 
 a wooden shed over it, open towards the road, in wdiich people 
 may put their rubbish ; wdien one of these is full, the scavenger 
 comes and empties it ; if there is a canal near, he puts the 
 contents of the jars into a boat and sends it into the country for 
 manure. 
 
 The names of the streets are not written on the houses as 
 they are in England, but on gates at each end. 
 
 The shops have a ground-floor and an upper story. The 
 upper story is where the people live, the ground floor is all taken 
 up with ih.Q shop itself, which has no windows, but is quite open 
 
58 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 in front. The shops are separated from each other by brick walls ; 
 at the foot of the walls, close to the pavement, are little niches, in 
 which are placed offerings to the god of the trade, whatever it may 
 be, that is carried on there ; for every trade has a god of its own. 
 On these walls are also placed sign-boards, painted in brilliant 
 colours, generally red, yellow, or blue, containing not tlie name of 
 the man who lives there, but the name of the shop, such as " The 
 House of Eternal Happiness." Then there will be a great many 
 smaller boards, containing lists of the things sold in the shop. 
 
 In the markets there is a great deal of cheating. For instance, 
 if a man has some fish to sell, and waits all the morning without 
 anyone buying it, he will stuff something down its throat to make 
 it weigh more ; or if he has a fish which is flabby, and not good 
 enough to tempt anyone to buy it, he will put a reed down its 
 throat and blow till the fish looks and feels like a good one. 
 But the Chinese do not very often cheat each other ; they keep it 
 generally for foreigners, and think it is quite fair to get all they 
 can out of them. I am sorry to say the reason they give is, that 
 foreigners have done them a great deal of harm, and there is a 
 good deal of truth in this. 
 
 In the grandest doctors' shops there are generally to be seen 
 some tablets, given to the doctor by patients whom he has cured, 
 saying how very clever he is. The rest of the things in these shops 
 will be very funny, but I will tell you about them when we come 
 to talk about medicine and doctors. 
 
 A great deal of the business in China is done by people who, 
 instead of having shops of their own, wander about from place 
 to place and sell as they go. Men of all sorts of trades do this^ 
 fruiterers, pastry-cooks, blacksmiths, tinkers, shoemakers, and 
 even bankers, chemists, and booksellers. 
 
 The best streets are those in which the bankers, silk-merchants, 
 and tea-merchants do their business. The inside rooms are very 
 high because there is no upper story, as these are only the business 
 
ITS TOIVA^S. 
 
 6i 
 
 liouses, where nobody lives. The rooms next the street, the 
 offices, are floored with stone or red tiles ; after going through 
 them, you come to courts and warehouses, where the packing 
 is done if it is a merchant's house ; the Chinese are very good 
 packers. 
 
 You would wonder very much where the bankers and 
 merchants live, and you would find it very difficult to discover 
 their homes, for each gentleman's house has such a high wall 
 round it, that it cannot be seen at all, unless it is from the top 
 of a hill, for Chinese gentlemen like to shut themselves in where 
 nobody can see them. A Chinese lady rarely sees anything or 
 anybody outside this high wall ; what there is inside you will 
 know by-aud-bye. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IT8 TILLAGES. 
 
 HERE are so many of tliem that in some parts of the 
 country, if yon were to walk to the top of a hill, you 
 would be able to count fifty or sixty. 
 
 On the Ta Hiong tableland there are four hundred 
 villages, each inhabited by one clan. Some of these 
 clans are made up of two hundred or three hundred 
 families, all having the same surname. How confusing it must be! 
 Fancy, if you lived in a village where there were three hundred 
 people all named Johnson ! You will be glad to know that there 
 are some missionaries at work on this tableland. 
 
 Most of the village cottages are made of bamboo and mud; 
 only the walls of the temples and the house of the head man of 
 the village are made of brick. The framew^ork of the huts is made 
 of thick stems of bamboo, either twisted together or tied with 
 hemp, as this is found cheaper and stronger than doing it with 
 nails. The w^alls are made next, of small branches or thin lathes 
 of bamboo, fastened together and fixed to the frame-work, and 
 then a coating of mud is put over this. In the northern provinces 
 the wood of pine and the stems of millet are used, as bamboos are 
 not so plentiful there as in the south. 
 
 The wind and rain are kept out of the huts by thatching the 
 roofs and walls with rice straw or bamboo leaves, wliich you 
 remember are waterproof. 
 
 Nearly all the working men and women of China live in these 
 

ITS VfLLAGES. 65 
 
 liuts. The villagers are very kind to oue aDother, and always 
 ready to welcome strangers and do anything they can for them, 
 so missionaries can generally do as much work among villagers 
 as they have time and strength for. The country people of China 
 are just the same to-day as they were three thousand years ago ; 
 helieving just the same as their ancestors did then, and living just 
 the same as they did too. They look upon the head man of the 
 village as their father, and are always willing to do as he tells 
 them. The Manchus found this out, so instead of sending 
 Manchu rulers to look after the people in the villages, they left 
 it to these head men to keep them in order ; the Manchu governor 
 of one city often has a thousand villages under him, each with 
 its own head man. 
 
 The villagers are always happy and contented, unless there 
 is a Hood or a famine. All village men more than seventy years 
 old are called elders; they may invite themselves to any feast 
 that is going on in their village, and are always treated witli the 
 greatest respect. 
 
 The village women work in the fields when they are young, 
 and give advice to the younger ones when they get old. 
 
 In the south of China there are often quarrels between 
 different village clans, and sometimes even wars. If an}^ prisoners 
 are taken, they are treated very cruelly; sometimes their wrists 
 and ankles are bound together, and then the rope by which they 
 are tied is tossed over a high branch, and the prisoner is dragged 
 up and down. If a man belonging to one tribe is killed by a man 
 of another tribe, the friends of the dead man will watch for the 
 murderer; and when they have caught him they will avenge the 
 death of their friend by cutting and tormenting his enemy, but 
 refusing to kill him. They know nothing of a religion which 
 tells us to love our enemies and to do good to those that hate us 
 ( ). and they have never heard of Him who " when He 
 
 suffered, threatened not " ( ), and gave His life for those 
 
66 THE CELESTIAL EMPIRE. 
 
 who were His enemies, praying for tbem with His last breath 
 ( ). You know all about that, but have you begun yet to 
 
 follow the example of Jesus, by being kind to those who are unkind 
 to you, and doing all you can to help tbose who hurt you ? Not 
 unless you have made friends wdth the Lord Jesus, I am sure, for 
 it is only when He lives in our hearts that w^e are able to imitate 
 Him. 
 
 A warfare between two tribes will often be carried on for 
 months together without a real battle. Sometimes the men of 
 other villages will try to make peace, but it generally happens 
 that, instead of doing this, those who meant to be peacemakers 
 join in the quarrel, by taking one side or another. When at last 
 the tribes go to war, they do not generally fight themselves, but 
 each side hires a number of men, who make it their business to 
 take up these village quarrels and fight them out. If there are 
 no village contests going on, these men spend their time in going 
 from one village to another robbing the peoj^le ; the government 
 does not interfere, unless one of the villages does not pay its taxes, 
 and even then it seldom makes w^ar upon these fighting robbers, 
 but bribes them not to interfere with the tax-gathering ; for 
 it sometimes happens, that instead of robbing the villagers, the 
 thieves wait till the taxes have all been paid, and then rob 
 the collector, so saving themselves a good deal of time and 
 trouble. 
 
PAET II. 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THEIE CHARACTER. 
 
 ,OST Eiiglisli people who have visited China, and traded 
 with the Chinese, give them a very bad character, 
 much worse than they deserve. 1 expect the reason of 
 this is partly that most English people only see the 
 Chinese who live at the ports and large towns, who are 
 certainly not the nicest specimens, and partly because 
 they judge of the Chinese by the w^ay in which they treat fJiem, 
 which is hardly fair ; because, as I have told you already, a China- 
 man w^ould not think of treating one of his own countrymen as 
 he w^ould treat a foreigner. I think your opinion will be the same 
 as mine, that, taken altogether, the Chinese are as good as you 
 could expect people to be, who know nothing of the true Grod 
 and of the Lord Jesus Christ ; and in some things they are better 
 than many of tliose who have the true religion in their heads, but 
 not in their hearts, aud who have never learned to practise it in 
 their lives. 
 
 To foreigners the Chinese are often very haughty and insolent; 
 the reason of this is, that they are so much more civilized than all 
 the nations round them, that they have learned to think them- 
 selves better than anyone else. They are always looking out for 
 opportunities to cheat foreigners, though if they find that the 
 foreigners are too sharp for them, they are not at all' angry, but 
 only amused. 
 
 A Chinese boatman was once taking a missionary somewhere, 
 
70 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 and wlien tliey came to tlieir journey's end, he asked eight 
 shilhngs for his fare, instead of a penny farthing, which was the 
 proper sum. The missionary was sure this was not right, and 
 refused to pay so much, saying that the other passengers had only 
 paid a penny farthing, and he did not see why he should pay more, 
 as he was no heavier than they were. The boatman thought he 
 was going to be very clever, and answered, " No, perhaps not, 
 but you are taller than the rest ; you take up more room over- 
 head." But the missionary was a sharp man too, and said, " That 
 is true, but the air overhead does not belong to you, so why should 
 I pay you for it ? " Then all the passengers, who were Chinese, 
 began to laugh, and said "the foreign child" understood reason, 
 and the boatman, seeing he was getting the worst of it, made it 
 up by saying he would take twopence halfpenny this time, and a 
 penny farthing every other time the missionary wanted him. 
 
 The Chinese have many good qualities ; they are gentle and 
 peaceable, obedient to their rulers, very industrious, and always 
 respectful to old people. But they have bad qualities too; you can 
 never tell how far they mean what they say, for they are just as 
 ready to tell lies as to speak the truth ; they are jealous, and apt 
 to think the worst of people, rather than the best, never trusting 
 anyone very much, foreigners least of all. They are among the 
 best-tempered people in the world, nearly always cheerful, however 
 poor and hard-worked they may be, and are never ashamed of 
 being poor, as English people sometimes are. The two things 
 most respected in China are high position, if a man has gained it 
 because he deserved it, and old age. 
 
 As you have seen already, they are very devoted to their 
 country, and think there is no other like it; they have a great love, 
 too, for the town or village in which they are born. Often when a 
 Chinaman has been raised to a post of great honour, he will leave 
 it after a little time, so that he may go back to live in his own 
 village ; and when Chinamen go away to live in foreign countries, 
 
THEIR CHARACTER. 71 
 
 as they are beginning to do now in large numbers, tbey always come 
 back to China, as soon as they have earned enough to live on com- 
 fortably, for they have a saying, "If he wdio attains to honour and 
 wealth never returns to his native place, he is like a finely-dressed 
 person walking in the dark ; " by which they mean that, as fine 
 clothes are of no use if they cannot be seen, so riches and honour 
 are of ]io use out of China, because they cannot be enjoyed. 
 
 We who believe in Jesus Christ have other thoughts about 
 riches, for He has told us that money will do us no good any- 
 where, unless we are "rich towards Grod ; " ( ) that is, 
 unless we have a treasure that we can never lose, and that we can 
 enjoy anywhere, even Jesus Himself. If we have Him, we are 
 rich; and if we are without Him, we are very poor, however much 
 mo]iey we may have. Can you say " Jesus is mine " ? If not, 
 will you go to God and thank Him that He has given Jesus for 
 you ( ), and then take His gift ? for He w^ants you to 
 have it, and you will have every good thing after that, for all good 
 is in Jesus for those who have Him. 
 
 The Chinese are very clever in many ways ; they found out 
 how to do several things hundreds of years before the Europeans, 
 and even now they make things which foreigners are astonished at, 
 and have never been able to imitate. Printing, gunpowder, and 
 the magnetic compass were all known in China long before anyone 
 else had discovered them. Printing was practised by the Chinese 
 nine hundred years after Christ, that was five hundred years before 
 anything was printed in England. The first Chinese printing was 
 done with stone blocks, the letters being white on a black ground ; 
 then later they began to use wooden blocks, on which the cha- 
 racters were cut in relief, that is, raised above the ground- work, 
 and the page w^as made white and the letters black. 
 
 There are w^onderful things carved in China out of wood and 
 ivory. Perhaps the most wonderful are the sets of ivory balls, 
 sometimes as many as eight or nine, one inside the other. When 
 
72 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 Europeans tirst saw tliem tliey thougiit the inside one must have 
 been made first, and then the outer ones made in two pieces 
 and fastened together so well that no crack could be seen ; but 
 really they are all made out of one piece, one inside the other, 
 with a sharp, crooked instrument, which is put in through little 
 holes in the outside ; the inside ball, that is the smallest of all, is 
 made first, and then those further out, one b}^ one, till all are 
 finished without a join or a crack. 
 
 There is another thing that they make, almost if not quite as 
 clever as this — tiny snuff-bottles of ngate or crystal, about two 
 inches long; the opening in the neck is not more than a quarter 
 of an inch across, yet they manage to write inside the bottle in 
 tiny letters, so that it can be read quite easily from the outside ; 
 isn't that clever ? 
 
 The Chinese are very inquisitive, and often ask the mission- 
 aries a great many funny questions. I will tell you part of a 
 conversation that took place once in a Chinese hotel, between a 
 Chinaman and an English missionary. 
 
 Gliinaman : " Is your emperor a wouian ? " 
 
 Missionarij : "Yes." 
 
 C. : " A woman ? " 
 
 M. : " Yes, a woman.'" 
 
 G. : " Are there mandarin women too ? " 
 
 M.: "No." 
 
 C. : "If the empercr is a woman, why should not the man- 
 darins be women ? " 
 
 M. : " That is not good reasoning." 
 
 Then there came a string of questions from the Chinaman : these 
 are only some of them — 
 
 " What is your coat made of ? " 
 
 " What is the price of a coat in your country ? " 
 
 "Are the women greater than the men at your side of the 
 world?" 
 
TIJEIR CHARACTER. 73 
 
 " Do tlio iiicu iiijiny the womei], or the women the meu ? " 
 
 " Are boys born with whiskers in England ? " 
 
 " What is the reason tliat your brother's hair is red and 3'oiir 
 own a different colonr '? " 
 
 Another man asked the missionary wliy lie shut his eyes and 
 said some words before he ate his food. The missionary told him 
 of Jesus, and of all that He has told us about our Father in heaven ; 
 how it is He who gives us our food,, and therefore before we eat it 
 we must thank Him for it. Then the man asked, " Does your 
 Heavenly Father give rice and clothes ? " and the answer was, 
 " Yes, He gives us every blessing we have." 
 
 " How are we to get them from 'Him ? " 
 
 ''By asking." 
 
 "But can He hear ? Can He see ? Where does He live ? " 
 All these questions the missionary answered, telling the Chinese 
 that though we cannot see God, yet He can always see us, and 
 that caused another question to be asked — 
 
 " If we cannot see, then how can we be sure ? " The mission- 
 aries often need a great deal of wisdom to be able to answer all 
 the questions that are put to them, in China. One thing that is 
 often said to them is — "- The world cannot possibly be round;" and 
 when they say " Why not?" the Chinamen answer, " Because, if 
 it were, those standing on the other side would drop off." Be- 
 cause of the curiosity of the Chinese, a foreigner can hardly ever 
 be alone, wherever he goes, especially in those parts of China where 
 people from other countries have seldom been ; even if he goes 
 to his bedroom, a crowd of Chinese go after him, to see what he 
 does, how^ he eats, what he looks like, what his clothes are made 
 of, and a great many other things. 
 
 One very good thing about the Chinese is, that they are so 
 steadfast and faithful, not at all inclined to change. So when 
 once a Chinaman becomes a Chiistian, he is almost sure to be 
 true to Christ, whatever may happen. He will be persecuted and 
 
74 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 tormented, but it will make no difference; he will not be persuaded 
 to give up the true religion and come back to the false. They arc 
 very ready to give too, and do all they can to support missionary 
 work themselves. 
 
 Another thing in the Chinese character which helps the 
 missionaries very much is, that they are very easy-going ; they 
 will never take the trouble to stop a missionary who is preaching, 
 and will generally listen to him. They are always ready to talk 
 to anyone too, so that it is easy to have long conversations with 
 them on the road, when the missionaries are going from one place 
 to another. 
 
 I am sorry to say that, as in India, so in China, the best 
 people are to be found far away from the sea-coast, because it is 
 there that they have seen least of Europeans ; and as most of the 
 Europeans who go to China are not Christian men, they have made 
 the Chinese who mix with them worse instead of better. 
 
 The Chinese are very proud and self-satisfied ; they have no 
 wish to be any better than they are in anything, because they 
 think they are quite good enough already, so as you would expect 
 they do not improve at all. English boys and girls who think 
 they do everything perfectly, do not get on very fast, do they ? 
 So the Chinese are almost the same now in everything as they 
 were five thousand years ago. Although they knew how to print so 
 very long before we knew here in England, yet our books now are 
 much better than theirs, because we improve every year, while they 
 stay just as they were and are content to stay there. That reminds 
 me of a text which says, " Let us leave the first principles (that is, 
 the beginning) of Christ, and let us go on to perfection ; " vvhere 
 is it ? ( ). If you are a little boy or girl who has come 
 
 to Jesus, and been saved by Him, do not think that is all that 
 needs to be done for you. He wants you to "grow in grace" 
 ( ), to get more and more like Him. He wants, not 
 
 just to forgive your sins, but to keep you from sinning and to use 
 
THEIR CHARACTER. 75 
 
 yon to do His work. Will you ask Him to do all this for yon 
 coiistautly, and expect Him to do it? 
 
 Though the Chiuese are ofteu rude to foreigners^ they are 
 always polite to one another ; and it is not very easy to be 
 polite in China, there are so many rales to he learned about 
 what is polite and what is not. One rule is, that in speaking 
 to anyone, yon must always call him and everything be- 
 longing to him by the grandest names you can think of, and 
 yourself and everything belonging to you by the poorest names. 
 So if you wanted to ask a Chinaman where he lived, even if he 
 was a very poor man, you would say to him, " AYliere is your 
 honourable mansion?" And he in reply would say, "My mean hut 
 is in such a place ; " and even if he were a great mandarin, and 
 really lived in a mansion, he would still call it liis mean hut. If 
 you wanted to ask anyone how old he was, you would say, " What 
 is yonr honourable age ? " And the answer would be, " My worth- 
 less number is fourteen," or whatever it might be. Or if you said 
 to a gentleman, "Is your honourable wife well?" he would say, 
 "The mean person of the inner apartment is in good health." 
 
 But with foreigners all this is quite changed ; the Chinese 
 generally speak of them as " foreign devils," or " foreign children ;" 
 and at a party, tliongh they would always offer the best place to 
 another Chinaman, they would take it themselves rather than 
 offer it to a foreigner. In some parts of China these things are 
 beginning to change, especially where the missionaries have been 
 working longest; they ofteu have the best seats given to them 
 now. 
 
 Some English children, I know, and grown people too, are 
 always very kind and polite to strangers and visitors, but are 
 sometimes cross and not quite polite to their friends, especially 
 their own brothers and sisters. I think w^e may learn from the 
 Chinese to be polite at home, and ready to give up the most 
 comfortable seat, and the nicest books, and the prettiest toys to 
 
76 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 other people ; and instead of making onrselves miserable b}' it, 
 we shall be happier than the people who get the best of every- 
 thing, for the Lord Jesns Himself said, "It is more blessed to 
 give than to receive " ( ) ; and nobody ever gave so much 
 
 as He did, so He must know better than anyone else how 
 blessed it is to be always giving. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THEIE LOOKS. 
 
 >XE very fimny thing about the Chinese is, that they 
 all look alike, or very nearly alike, you would say. In 
 England some people are tall and some short, some 
 have black hair, some brown, some golden, some auburn, 
 and some red ; some have curly hair, some wavy, and 
 some straight ; their lips are sometimes thick and some- 
 times thin, their noses are of different shapes, and their eyes of 
 different colours. But in China all the people are what we should 
 call of the middle height, neither tall nor short, though they are 
 taller in the north than in the south. They all have straight, 
 shining black hair, and small dark eyes, rather thin lips, flat 
 noses, and small hands and feet, at least, smaller than those of 
 Europeans ; so now you understand why the Chinaman was sur- 
 prised that the missionary's hair was not the same colour as his 
 brother's. The Chinese do not admire large eyes at all, and do 
 not think people with blue eyes can see as well as those with 
 black. 
 
 Tlie faces of the people in China are very dark, much darker 
 than the rest of their bodies ; this is because the sun is so hot ; 
 the ladies, who live indoors, have almost white faces. The 
 Chinese are often very nice looking when they are young, but 
 as they grow older their faces get less round, and their cheek- 
 bones show more and more ; the old people are often very ugly 
 indeed, even though they may have been handsome when they 
 were young. 
 
78 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 The Chinese idea of good looks is, that women, to be good- 
 looking, ought to he slender and weak, men stout and 
 strong. 
 
 -_y There are some very silly customs in China, which make 
 people look ugly, we should think, but there they are thought 
 nice. Both gentlemen and ladies let the nails of their left hands 
 grow till they are as long as birds' claws, sometimes five inches 
 long ; in some parts only the gentlemen do this. Of course the 
 poor people cannot easily do it, as they would break their nails 
 if they tried to work ; so when anyone has these long nails, 
 it is a sign that they have no hard work to do, and that is why 
 those who have them are so proud of them. What a silly thing 
 to be proud of, isn't it ? Even the poor people try to keep a 
 long nail on tlieir little finger, though they cannot manage to 
 keep all the five long. Sometimes these nails are so long that 
 they are in great danger of getting knocked off or broken 
 by accident, even when no work is being done ; so their owners 
 are obliged to tie two little bits of bamboo wood to each finger, 
 one at each side, to keej) the nails safe. 
 
 There is another custom more foolish than this, because it 
 not only hinders people from working, but hurts them very much, 
 besides which the long nails could be cut off, if the person to 
 whom they belonged became wise enough to see the folly of them ; 
 but this other custom, when once it has been begun, is very 
 difficult to give up. It is only practised b}^ the women, not by 
 the men. 
 
 Did you ever see a Chinese lady's shoe ? I remember seeing 
 one when I was a little girl ; and when I was told that it had 
 been worn by a grown-up lady, though it looked to me only large 
 enough for a big doll, I wondered very much how a lady's foot 
 could ever be made small enough to get into such a shoe. It 
 was not till I was grown-up myself that I found out all about it, 
 and it was so very interesting to me that I think, whether you 
 
IBEIR LOOKS. 79 
 
 liave seen Chinese shoes or not, you will like to know some- 
 thing ahout the tiny feet that go into them. 
 
 In case you have not seen one, I had hetter tell you first 
 of all, that the proper length for a grand lady's shoe is from two 
 to three inches, and they are very narrow too. 
 
 In some parts of China all the women have these wonderfully 
 small feet, in other parts only the richer ones. In some places 
 one girl in a family has little feet, just to keep up respectability, 
 while all the others have large feet, so that they can do the hard 
 work. You can quite understand that a woman with feet the 
 size of a doll's could not walk far, nor work in the fields, without 
 getting very tired. 
 
 The reason the Chinese women pinch their feet is, that it 
 is the fashion ; their mothers and grandmothers pinched their 
 feet, so iliey must do it, and they can get cleverer and richer 
 husbands if they have little feet. So they pinch for these two 
 reasons — to be like other people, and to get on in life. 
 
 We think them very silly ; but let us take care that we do 
 not imitate them, for have not we sometimes done silly things, 
 and even wrong things, because we could not bear to be different 
 from other people? So we have just gone with the stream, even 
 though we knew it was running the wrong way. There is only 
 One whom it is always safe to copy, because He always did the 
 things that pleased His Father in heaven ( )• Let 
 
 us seek to follow Jesus in little things, even when it seems as 
 though we should lose by it. 
 
 Now I am going to tell you what hapjiens to a little girl in \ 
 China, who is to have small feet when she is grown up ; for if 
 her feet once grew big they could not be made small, so the I 
 thing to do is to keep them from ever growing big. | 
 
 But the foot-binding, as it is called, must not begin when I 
 the little girl is a baby, for if she did not learn to walk first, her 
 feet would ne^er be strong enough for her to learn after, so slieJ 
 
THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 waits till she is three or four years old, or even five, and can 
 walk and run properly. 
 
 It generally takes two or three years to get the little girl's 
 feet in such good order, that they will never grow again, and all 
 that time she suffers very much. 
 
 When it is time for the feet to he hound, long white handages 
 are hougiit, one for each foot, about two inches wide and four 
 yards long, made on purpose. If you want to understand exactly 
 how it is done, I think you will have to take off your boot and 
 try on your own foot with a pockethandkerchief. The end of 
 the bandage is laid on the inside of the foot at the instep, and 
 is taken over the top of the toes and under the foot, so as to draw 
 the toes with it underneath the foot on to the sole (you will have 
 to pull very tight) ; then it is brought back nearly to the place 
 it started from, it is passed over the toj) of the foot again and 
 round the heel, and pulled tight, till the toes nearly touch the 
 heel, and the foot bulges out at the instep. Then the bandage 
 is passed over and over again, in the same waj^ to make it quite 
 firm, until all the strip is used up. and then the end is sewed down 
 to the rest of the bandage. The foot is quite doubled up, so that 
 the ends of the toes can be seen on the inside of the foot under 
 the ankle. Alum is always sprinkled on the toes and on the sole 
 of the foot before the binding is done, to prevent ulcers or sores, 
 but it does not always keep them off. 
 
 ~ When the foot is tied up so tightly as this, the blood cannot 
 run in it, and so it stops growing and shrinks up ; you can fanc}' 
 just a little how it hurts. 
 
 x\fter the first binding, the bandage is not taken off for a 
 whole month, so all that time the little girl cannot wash her feet : 
 bat then, as she cannot use them, they do not get dirty. At 
 the end of the month, the foot, with the bandage on it, is put into 
 water as hot as the child can bear it, and after it has soaked for 
 a long time, the bandage is unwound very slowly, the dead, dry 
 
THEIR LOOKS. 
 
 8i 
 
 skiu beini^- taken off at the same time ; the foot nearly always 
 bleeds while this is going on ; often a large piece of the sole comes 
 off', and sometimes two or three of the toes drojD off. 
 
 When the foot has been well soaked, it is rubbed and wiped 
 quite dry, some more alum is sprinkled on it, and then it is tied 
 up again in a clean bandage, five feet long, tighter than ever, soj 
 
 GIIU. WITH SMALL FEET. 
 
 that tlie toes are pressed still further under the sole. After this 
 the foot is never unbound again ofteuer than once a month, unless 
 by old women, who do not care so nnich about keeping their feet 
 properly. If a lady with small feet were to try to walk without her 
 baudages, she would fall down. Ladies' shoes are made with very 
 high heels, so that they almost walk on tip-toe, as we should call it ; 
 only their toes are underneath their soles, so it isn't quite that. Of 
 
 6 — 
 
82 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 course people with feet like this cannot walk properly ; thej' totter 
 a great deal, and take very little steps and very quick ones. 
 
 When the little girl's feet are first being bound, she suffers 
 horrible pain for two or three months, sometimes for a whole year, 
 till her feet are quite dead. She gets no rest night or day. When 
 she goes to bed she cannot lie straight, as you do, nor even 
 curled up ; the most comfortable way is to lie across the bed on 
 her back, so that the edge of the board at the side of the bedstead 
 comes under her knees ; then her legs get benumbed, and to make 
 he pain seem less, she swings her feet backwards and forwards; 
 but even then they hurt very much, and I expect she lies awake 
 Vand cries a great many nights. 
 
 The children say the pain is like needles running into their 
 flesh, and that it gets less when their feet are very cold. 
 
 A girl can seldom walk for the first year that her feet are 
 bound. If she wants to move about, she has two little stools, on 
 which she kneels, and which are tied to her, so that really she 
 walks on her knees ; if she wants to go out of the house, she has 
 to be carried on a woman's back. In about two years her feet 
 will generallj^ be quite dead, and then they will not hurt any more, 
 so long as she wears her bandages ; luit they are quite spoiled by 
 that time, and can never be brought back to quite theii* right 
 shape. They are so ugly, too, that she will never like anj^one to 
 see them with the bandages off as long as she lives. 
 
 i^^ ^ I think there is a little lesson for us to learn from this, about 
 
 the power of habit. You see if a Chinese lady becomes a Christian, 
 and sees how foolish it is ^r peoj)le to try to make their feet 
 smaller than God meant them to be, it is too late for her to change ; 
 her feet must stay as they are, unless she likes to take off her 
 bandages and never put tbem on again, and that will cost her 
 terrible suffering, worse even than when her feet were first pinched, 
 and her feet will not grow to their proper size either. This shows 
 us how important it is for us to form good habits when we are 
 
THEIR LOOKS. 83 
 
 j^ouiig, and to give up bad ones before they liave become our 
 masters. If ^'ou try to bend a little shoot that is only just 
 beginning to grow, you can do it quite easily, but if you wait 
 till it is a full-grown tree, and then try to bend it, you will find 
 it is too late. And so if you come to Jesus, and give yourselves 
 to Him while you are little girls and boys, He can make 
 you so much more useful and hoi}', and get so much more joy out 
 of 3'ou, than if you wait till you are big, because He will be able 
 to bend you which way He likes, and keep you from ever getting 
 into those bad habits, which are so easily formed and so difficult 
 to break. . ^ 
 
 You will think that the Chinese children must very much ' 
 dread having their feet bound, and would be very glad if they 
 could persuade their mothers not to bind them ; so you will be 
 surprised, I expect, to hear that they often tighten the bandages 
 themselves, and that the children who have the smallest feet 
 are those who do their own binding ; they are so anxious to be 
 fashionable, and to have feet as small as other ladies, or smaller 
 if they can. "^ 
 
 No one knows exactly when the Chinese began to pinch their 
 feet, nor what made them do it. The Chinese gentlemen admire 
 the helpless way in which the ladies move about, and say they 
 look like trees shaken hy the wind. The Manchus have never 
 followed this practice, so their ladies' feet are the proper size. 
 
 I am sorry to sa}' that even the Christian women in China 
 sometimes hind their children's feet, because they do not want 
 them to be different to other girls ; and that the Chinese gentle- 
 men who have become Christians often like their wives to have 
 small feet, altliough they know they cannot be so useful as they 
 would be if they could walk about easily without getting tired. 
 
 The missionaries are doing all they can to stop foot-binding. 
 In most of the Mission schools they make it a rule that tliey 
 will take no girls with bound feet, unless they may have them 
 
84 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 unbound at once, and sometimes they succeed in persuading a 
 Christian man to marry a Christian woman with large feet, and 
 then this father and mother will let their children's feet grow^ 
 properly. Very soon I hope there will he no such thing as 
 Christian parents wdio bind their children's feet. 
 
 r~~~" But it is not only the feet of the poor Chinese women and 
 
 / children that are bound ; their souls are bound too, and will 
 never be free, till they know Him who came "to preach deliverance 
 
 1 to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are 
 
 \ bound " ( ). 
 
 W- If English missionaries find fault with foot-binding, the 
 
 Chinese often tell them that it is worse for English ladies to 
 
 pinch their waists than for Chinese ladies to pinch their feet. 1 
 
 think one is as bad as the other, what do you say ? 
 
 r—-^ All the men and boys in Cbina shave, so you would seldom 
 
 / see a Chinaman with a beard or a moustache ; in some parts of 
 the country, however, the men wear a moustache after they are 
 forty years old, and a beard after they are sixty; that wall help 
 you to understand another of the questions put to the missionary. 
 Women and girls often shave tlieir heads to make their hair 
 stronger ; it makes it very coarse too, almost like horse-hair. 
 The men have their heads shaved all over, except a piece on 
 the top, about as large as a saucer ; the hair on this patch is 
 left to grow very long, and is drawm up very tight and made into 
 a long plait, hanging down behind them. Very often they plait 
 up silk or braid with their hair to make the plait longer, and some- 
 times they mix false liair with their own ; it is considered elegant 
 to have a tail which reaches to the ankles. When Chinamen are 
 in mourning they allow^ their hair to grow all over their heads. 
 
 One way of punishing thieves is to cut off their pig-tails, 
 which is considered a great disgrace. When labouring men go 
 to their w^ork they often bind tlieir plaits round their heads and 
 tie them up to get them out of the way. 
 
HEAD-DRESSES FOR GIRLS. 
 
THEIR LOOKS. 
 
 «7 
 
 Some of the ladies do their hair in a veiy wonderful way ; 
 sometimes it is all drawn np to the top of the head and arranged 
 to imitate a vase of flowers, or a hird with its wings stretched 
 out, or the handle of a teapot. They use the gum of a particula/i' 
 tree instead of pomade, and this helps to keep the hair in the 
 shape in wdiich it is arranged. It takes a great many hours to 
 do a lady's hair in this way. 
 
 Chinese ladies w^onld often be pretty if it were not for their 
 pinched feet, and for another silty practice they have of painting 
 their faces red and white. They cut their eyebrow^s too, when 
 they are young, till they are only a fine, curved line, wdiicji 
 they compare to a new moon, or to a young willow leaf. ^ 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THEIR DRESS. 
 
 OW that yon know a little what the people of China look 
 like, yon will want to know what clothes they wear. 
 They have some funny ways about dress too, as they 
 liave ahout most other things ; at least they are funuy 
 to us. I expect our ways are just as funny to them. 
 If you were to see a Chinaman first in the summer, 
 and then in the winter, you would think he had grown stont very 
 quickly, but when the next summer came he would look thin 
 again. The reason of tliis is, that in China people do not have 
 fires in their houses to keep them wann, as we do in England ; 
 instead of that, the colder it gets, the more clothes tliey_. wear, 
 putting on several pairs of trousers, one over another, and a_good 
 many jackets ; the richer people hue their clothes with fur in the 
 winter. 
 
 Another difference between summer and winter dress, is in the 
 gentlemen's hats. Tn the summer they wear a poiuted cap made 
 of bamboo or straw with the ball on the top which shows their 
 office, and a fringe of silk or horse-hair, hanging from the place 
 where the ball is fastened on. The winter cap fits closer to the 
 head, and has a turned-up brim all rounrl, made of black velvet or 
 fur, with the ball and fringe the same as in the summer cap. 
 ~ As soon as the hot or cold weather begins, the greatest man in 
 the province changes his cap ; then it is put in the newspapers 
 that he has done it, and every man wlio is working for the 
 
THEIR DRESS. 
 
 89 
 
 goveruijient changes liis cap too ; but tliey always wait i(n" the 
 chief man to set them the example. 
 
 In Slimmer the gentlemen wear a long loose gown of silk or 
 gauze or linen, very loose in the neck and sleeves : when they are 
 in full dress, this robe is fastened in with a silk girdle ; hanging 
 from this there is often a sheath worked in silk containing a fan — 
 for gentlemen use fans in China as well as ladies — and a small 
 leather bag in which are a piece of flint and a little bit of steel for 
 lighting a pipe ; the tobacco is kept in an embroidered pouch. 
 
 In winter they wear long, loose trousers, fastened round the 
 ankles, a long dress of silk or crape, reaching nearly to the feet. 
 
 i^l\. 
 
 MANDARIN S SUMJIEH CAl". 
 
 MANDARIN S WINTER CAP. 
 
 and over that a jacket with large sleeves, reaching only as far as 
 the hips: this jacket is often made of fur. In summer the neck is 
 generally left bare, while in winter it is covered with a collar of 
 silk or fur. The dresses always fold over to the right breast, and 
 are often fastened from top to bottom with buttons. 
 
 The working men wear loose cotton trousers, tied round the 
 waist, and a loose shirt or smock, generally blue or black. Their 
 hats are very broad, like umbrellas, and ai'e made of banjboo, but in 
 winter they wear felt caT)s. In rainy weather they have water- 
 proof cloaks, but instead of being made of cloth, they are of reeds, 
 like the thatch of a cottage, from which the water runs off in 
 streams. 
 
 J 
 
90 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 All who can afford them wear stockings of cotton or silk, or 
 sometimes of cloth in very cold weather. The poorest kind of 
 shoes are made of straw, and only cover the sole ; t^iey are fastened 
 
 CHrXKSE GKNTLKMAX. 
 
 to the foot with a straw^ band. The coolies generally wear shoes of 
 this kind. Another kind, a little better than these, are made of 
 rushes, sometimes mixed wdth coarse cotton : these are worn by 
 
THEIR DRESS. 
 
 91 
 
 the men that wander about from place to place, selling then- goods. 
 The next best are made of dark calico, and the toes are trimmed 
 
 Cf^M^'[^c^pS^ 
 
 CHINESK LABOUREH. 
 
 with pieces of cotton velvet ; the richer people wear satin shoes, 
 with the toes embroidered in silk. 
 
 All men's boots are made with ver}' thick soles, and when 
 
92 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 tliey want to liave them cleaned they have the sides of the 
 soles rubhed witli wliitmg, so they wliiten their boots instead of 
 blacking them : that is one of the many things in which the 
 Chinese do just opposite to the way we do. Ladies gene- 
 rally wear socks, and gentlemen stockings ; that is backwards 
 again, isn't it ? Some of the children's shoes are made of l)rown 
 or pnrple calico bound with red, and worked on the toes with 
 colonred silk ; the soles are made of pieces of coarse cloth stitched 
 together. The richer children wear shoes of scarlet satin, and 
 on the toes the}?^ have ej'es and ears, to make them look like tigers' 
 heads. In the summer they sometimes wear shoes made of fine 
 open rush work, with a bright coloured lining showing through, 
 and the toes are worked with little pieces of velvet and gold thread 
 to imitate butterflies. These shoes will not cost very much, as 
 they are only three inches long. Ladies' feet are called "golden 
 lilies " in China, if the}^ are very small. 
 
 All these shoes are made for dry weather ; when it is wet 
 "rain shoes " are worn, made of leather, raised about half an inch 
 from the ground on iron pegs ; the poor people's rain shoes are 
 sometimes made with wooden soles an inch thick. 
 
 When boots and shoes want mending, they are not sent to 
 the shoemaker, but kept until a cobbler passes by, and he sits near 
 the house and mends them, just as you have seen men sharpening 
 knives in the street in England. 
 
 ■^ One thing that is very seldom seen in Chinese dress is white 
 linen. This is true of other things as well as of clothes, for there 
 are no sheets and no table-cloths ; but people in mourning dress 
 all in white or else in blue, just as we in England dr-^ss all in 
 black. 
 
 The skins of nearly all animals in China are made into clothes ; 
 sheep, cats, dogs, goats, squirrels, rats, and mice, so that many 
 winter dresses are made of fur. Expensive fur dresses are handed 
 down from father to son, for there are no changes of fashion in 
 

 
 ^^^^^ C-^ ^1 IK 
 
 .2^d'j:-<.\-s^' 
 
 L.\DY AND SEKVAXT, SOUTH CHINA. 
 
THEIR DRESS. 95 
 
 China, but the people wear just tlie same kind of clothes, and 
 sometimes the very same clothes, that their grandfathers and great- 
 grandfathers wore before them. The onl}' people who have the 
 right to set the fashions are those who make up " The Board of 
 Eites and Ceremonies," at Pekin ; this board gives orders as to the 
 shape and colour of the dresses of all the people, male and female, 
 rich and poor, and even saj^s what stuff they are to be made of. 
 
 All the cotton in China is spun and woven by the women, for 
 they have no machinery to do it with as we have ; the dressmakers 
 are men, except among the poor, whose dresses are generally made 
 by women ; all the most delicate embroidery, too, is worked by the 
 men. 
 
 The women's dresses never ht close to the body, but are very 
 loose and graceful, and suit them very nicely ; the rich ladies wear 
 a great deal of silk and embroidery. Pink and green are colours 
 often worn by women, but never b}^ men. It is thought very im- 
 proper for a Chinese lady ever to let her hands be seen, so to keep 
 them out of sight, very long sleeves are worn. 
 
 The Manchu dress is very nearly the same as the Chinese, 
 only Manchu women wear more earrings than Chinese women, 
 a great many pairs at once, the number depending on the rank 
 of the wearer. 
 
 There is nothing like a lady's bonnet ever seen in China ; 
 the ladies wear a kind of head-dress, which is just a band of silk, 
 or velvet, or fur, rather broad where it passes over the forehead, 
 but getting narrower and narrower, as it gets to the back of the 
 head, where it is hooked together under the hair. 
 
 The dresses of the women are much more like those of the 
 men than they are in England. 
 
 You will have seen that most of the clothes in China are 
 made either of silk, or cotton, or hemp, or fur ; the only things 
 made of wool are hats and the soles of boots, both of which are 
 made of felt in the north of China. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 THEIR FOOD. 
 
 EOPLE in China do not eat such absurd things as 
 some books sa}^ they do. Their food is not very much 
 like English food, but rather more like French, because 
 instead of having joints and plain food, their dishes are 
 made up of a little of a good many things mixed 
 together in hashes or stews. There are always a great 
 many vegetables in their meat dishes ; it is said that no people in 
 the world eat so little meat as the Chinese, or so much fish and 
 vegetables. 
 
 Beef is hardly ever eaten in some parts of China, partly 
 because there are so many Buddhists, who will never eat any part 
 of a cow, because, like the Hindus, the Chinese are afraid the soul 
 of one of their relations may be living in it, and would be turned 
 out into a worse animal, if the cow were killed. Another reason 
 why beef is not eaten, the Chinese say, is that it would be so 
 ungrateful, after the cows have supplied them with milk, to return 
 their kindness by killing and eating them. Still in some parts of 
 the country a great deal of beef is eaten. More animal food is 
 eaten in the north than in other parts ; nearly all the people who 
 live in cottages keep pigs, and pork is thought the nicest food ; 
 the animals that are most eaten are wild-fowl, pheasants, 
 partridges, snipes, wild ducks, wild geese, and woodcocks. Mutton 
 is very cheap in the north, because so many sheep are reared in 
 Mongolia, which you will see is not far off. 
 
THEIR FOOD. 
 
 97 
 
 Dogs, rats, aud mice are eaten by the very poor in some parts 
 of China, but they are not regular Chinese dishes, as has some- 
 times been said. 
 
 The chief article of food in China is rice, which takes the 
 place of bread in England, and is very nourishing. Two kinds of 
 rice are grown in China, white or fine and red or coarse. Rice is 
 grown first in a small patch of ground flooded with water ; in two 
 
 WATERING RICK-FIELD. 
 
 or three days the young shoots spring up, and when they have 
 reached the proper height, about six inches, they are taken up 
 and planted in little holes made for them in the fields, six shoots 
 being put into every hole, with six or eight inches between each 
 bunch ; the fields are always kept wet and are often weeded. 
 When the rice turns yellow, that is a sign that it is nearly ripe, 
 and then the water is gradually drawn off the field, and by reaping 
 time (the end of June or the beginning of July) it will be almost 
 
 7 
 
gS - THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 dry. After reaping, the rice is tlireslied or wiuuowed; tlieu the 
 husks are taken off by pounding the rice in stone mortars. There 
 is a second harvest in November. 
 
 The rice-iields have little banks of earth between them, for 
 the men to walk on, and to keep the water from running out of 
 one field into another. 
 
 If the poor people cannot get enough rice to satisfy theii" 
 hunger, the}^ make the most of w^hat they have b}^ mixing it with 
 water or potatoes, and so making a kind of gruel. Tlie poor 
 seldom have any food but pork, fish, rice, vegetables, sugar, water, 
 and salt, but they make a wonderful number of dishes out of these 
 seven things, by mixing them in different quantities ; they are 
 very careful never to waste anything. 
 
 Chinese dishes are often cooked in oil, as French ones 
 are, but what do you think ? the oil comes from the very 
 same tree w^hich gives castor oil ; however, wdien it is used 
 fresh, it has not the same taste, and it does not make people 
 ill either. 
 
 The Chinese very much dislike eating or drinking anything 
 cold ; they hardly ever drink cold w^ater, but one reason of this 
 is that there is very little good water in China. Wine is always 
 drunk warm, and though the Chinese take a great deal of it, for 
 they drink it at every meal, they very seldom get drunk. Most of 
 their wine is made of rice, which is soaked in water for several 
 days, then boiled and allowed to fermeait ; the water is drawn off 
 and put into earthen jars : out of the rice that is left, another 
 drink is made, stronger than wine, something like whiskey. Now 
 and then wine made of fruit, especially of peaches, is found on the 
 tables of rich people ; there are plenty of grapes in China, but 
 they are not used for wine. The Manchus have another strong 
 drink, made of mutton. 
 
 Another thing that is used for food, that you will think very 
 funny, is birds' nests, at least the inside coating of swallows' 
 
THEIR FOOD. 
 
 99 
 
 nests, wliicli is a kind of jelly, and is chiefly used for making soup ; 
 it tastes like strong chicken broth. 
 
 The food that is most eaten, next to rice, is pe-tsae, a white 
 cabbage, very much like lettuce, which is grown all over China. 
 It is kept fresh either by planting it in wet sand, or burying it 
 deep in the ground. 
 
 DLIK EATING WITH CHOPSTICKS. 
 
 In the south there are cucumbers, sweet potatoes, Freuch 
 beans, and peas ; the peas are put into stews, pods and all. 
 
 The Chinese generally have two substantial meals in the day, 
 one in the nforning, the other about sunset, with a lighter meal 
 at noon. Instead of knives and forks, they use chopsticks, two 
 small round sticks of wood or ivory, both held between the fingers 
 of the right hand, one tightly, the other loosely. Fancy eating 
 
loo THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 rice that way, and yet never letting it drop, and tliey always do 
 manage to get it to their mouths, just as well as you would with a 
 fork or even a spoon ; but, then rice is nearly always eaten boiled, 
 so that it sticks together in masses. 
 
 At grand dinners there are always a great many courses, some- 
 times as many as fourteen, but the visitors only eat a very little 
 of each. Perhaps what you would like best would be a description 
 of one of these dinners. I think you would get tired of one with 
 fourteen courses, so I will tell you about one where there were 
 only six. 
 
 The first course was made up of little dainty dishes, which 
 the visitors were supposed to eat to make them hungry ; one of 
 these dishes was cold, salted earth worms, there were also little 
 pieces of salted or smoked fish ; Japan leather, — that is, a sort of 
 skin, hard and tough, with a strong taste, — pigeons' eggs cooked 
 in gravy, ducks and fowls cut into very small bits and cooked in 
 sauce, crabs, little balls made of sharks' fins, pounded shrimps, 
 and birds' nests, cut up into little threads like vermicelli, with very 
 little taste. 
 
 The second course was very amusing, but one that constantly 
 comes into a Chinese dinner. Four large bowls were put on the 
 table close together, making a square, then three more were i^laced 
 on the top of the four, and another on the top of the three, making 
 eight altogether, all of them filled with stew (sometimes rice is put 
 in instead of stew). It is the rule with this course for everyone 
 to say '' No, thank you," when the host asks them to have some, 
 so the servants carry all the bowls out again. 
 
 The third course was all kinds of things made of pastry and 
 sugar, and a salad made of the young shoots of the bamboo. The 
 fourth course was rice, a bowl for each person ; the fiffh fi'uit ; and 
 last of all came tea, not in a teapot, but each visitor had his tea 
 made in a cup all to himself. That is the way the Chinese nearly 
 alwa-ys drink tea, just as it is, without sugar or milk, and very 
 
THEIR FOOD. loi 
 
 weak ; tliey caniiofc understand how we can like it mixed up with 
 other things. They always drink tea hy itself too, never eating 
 anything with it. 
 
 Another thing I must not forget to tell you about parties 
 is, that instead of all the visitors sitting round one large table, 
 there are a great many little tables, generally only large enough 
 to hold four people, but if it is a crowded party, sometimes six or 
 even eight people sit together. 
 
 There are a great many taverns and eating-houses for the 
 middle class of people, and public houses for the poorer ; these 
 last are not what you would call houses at all, but open sheds 
 by the roadside, wliere there is a great deal of drinking and 
 gambling. 
 
CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THEIR LANGUAGE. 
 
 SHALL have to write you a whole chapter about the 
 Chinese laDgnage, because it is such a very wonderful 
 one. It is one of the oldest languages in the world, 
 and one of the hardest to learn ; even the Chinese them- 
 selves find it very difficult. 
 
 If you were going to teach a little boy or girl to read, 
 you would begin ^dth the al^^habet, would you not ? and when 
 a missionary wants to learn the language of the people he is going 
 to teach, he begins with the alphabet too. But if you wanted 
 to learn Chinese, you could not begin with the alphabet, 
 because there is none. Fancy a language without any letters, 
 and of course if there are no letters, nobody can learn to 
 spell. 
 
 Then how do Chinese people learn to read ? Every single 
 word in the Chinese language has a separate sign of its own, 
 so that if you wanted to read a Chinese book, you would have to 
 learn every sign in the book and what it meant, and even then 
 you would only be able to read that one book, and when 3'ou got 
 to a second, you would find many new signs that you had not 
 learnt in the first, and all these would have to be learnt too, 
 so that, however long you had learned to read, you would be sure, 
 in almost every new book, to find some new signs. The number 
 of these signs, in the best Chinese dictionary, is about forty thou- 
 
THEIR LANGUAGE. 103 
 
 sand, but only beWeen five and seven tliousand of these are in 
 common use. 
 
 Yon may imagine a little of the trouble the missionaries had 
 to take, before they could put the Bible into Chinese, especially 
 when I tell you that a great many of the words in the Bible had 
 no sign at all in the Chinese language, as nobody in China had 
 ever heard of the things themselves, so of course they had made 
 no signs for them. 
 
 There are six different kinds of writing and printing in China, 
 just as we have different kinds in England, such as CAPITALS, 
 Roman letters, Italics, and SDID (ZBUtjllsf), and every Chinaman who 
 has learnt to read can understand any of these written characters, 
 whatever form of the language he may speak. So if a Chinaman 
 from one part of the country met one from another jDart, and the 
 two could not speak to each other because their languages were 
 not the same, yet, if they knew how to write, they could let each 
 other know by writing what they wanted to say. 
 
 You will understand this, if you think of the figures wo 
 use in England. If a little girl or boy from France, and another 
 from Germany were to come to see you, and you had never learned 
 German or French, and they knew no English, you would not be 
 able to speak to each other, but if you were to write on a piece of 
 paper viii. or 8, the little girls would understand at once that you 
 meant eight, only instead of calling it eight, one would call it 
 kuit and the other aclit, and that is how it is that Chinamen can 
 read .each other's writing or printing, when they cannot under- 
 stand each other's talk, for some of the Chinese dialects are 
 as unlike each other as French, German, and English, though 
 others are much more alike. 
 
 • The Chinese printed language is used not only in China, but 
 also in Japan, Loo-Choo, Manchuria, and Cochin China, so an 
 educated Chinaman can make himself understood in any of these 
 places. 
 
I04 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 But among tlie poor people there are a great many who 
 cannot both read and write, though some can read but not 
 write. So if one of them wants to send a letter to a friend, he 
 goes to a school-master or some other learned man, and tells 
 him what he wants to say ; the school-master writes it down 
 for him, and when his friend gets it, if he cannot read, he 
 will take it to a learned man iu Ids town, who wdll read it 
 to him. 
 
 But the strangest thing about the language is, that a sign 
 only stands for a thing, not for a sound. If you look at the 
 letter A, you not only know what letter it is, but you know 
 also what it sounds like ; but the Chinese signs are more like 
 pictures, they make those who see them think of the things 
 which they stand for, but not of the names of the things, so 
 that you might be able to read quite well to yourself, with- 
 out being able to read aloud at all. It is not quite so hard 
 to learn the spoken language, as it is to learn the written 
 one. 
 
 One thing that makes it so difficult to learn to talk Chinese, 
 is that there are so few sounds, or rather syllables. All Chinese 
 words are of one syllable, only sometimes two or three words are 
 joined together to make another word, just as w^e make horse-hair, 
 sugar-tongs, paper-knife. There are only about four hundred of 
 these Chinese syllables altogether ; if you want to understand 
 how few that is, just get an English dictionary, and count the 
 first four hundred words, and then think how funny it w^ould 
 be, if those were all the sounds there were in the English 
 language. 
 
 But though there are only four hundred syllables in China, 
 there are a great many more than four hundred words, because 
 the meaning of the syllables depends entirely on the tone in which 
 they are pronoimced. Pronounced in one tone they mean one 
 thing, and in another tone they mean something quite different ; 
 
THEIR LANGUAGE. 105 
 
 one syllable ma}' have lialf-a-dozen different meanings, expressed 
 in lialf-a-dozen different tones of voice, so think how difficult 
 it must be for a stranger to learn to imitate all these different 
 ways of making the same sound, and then to remember what 
 they all mean. For every different meaning there is a separate 
 sign. 
 
 There are a great many syllables, too, which are pronounced 
 alike, but have different meanings, and it is this which makes 
 it so difficult for the Chinese to understand preaching, or the 
 Bible if it is read aloud. For instance, there is one word — Kung — 
 which may mean either just., a lahouring man, to attacJi, merit, 
 respectfid, or to i^rovide ; whichever it meant, it would be 
 pronounced just the same, and if the word came in a sentence 
 which a missionary was saying, the j^eople who were Hstening to 
 him would not know which of all the meanings was the right one, 
 unless they could find out by what went before, which it is 
 not always possible for them to do, if they have never heard anyone 
 speak on the same subject before. . Of course Chinese Christians, 
 who have read the Bible before, and know what it teaches, would 
 understand what the word meant, but the rest would not, and so 
 would often not know any more about Jesus after listening to a 
 sermon or hearing a chapter read out of the Bible, than they 
 did before ; or they might even think the missionary meant just 
 the opposite of what he really did mean. 
 
 There is one language which is spoken nearly all over the 
 north of China. The Chinese call it Kwan-Niva, foreigners call it 
 mandarin dialect, because it is always used for writing govern- 
 ment orders or books, and has to be learned by everyone who 
 wants to get work under the government ; a great many Chinese 
 story-books are written in this language. It is much easier to 
 read than the general written language, and for this reason most 
 of the Bibles used in China are written in mandarin. Those 
 who have not learned to read at all before find it less troublesome 
 
io6 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 to learn tliis laDguage tliau the other. Here is the text John 
 iii. IG, in mandarin — 
 
 f. 
 
 W) 
 
 h 
 
 ^» 
 
 I& 
 
 ^' 
 
 % 
 
 % 
 
 'i 
 
 m 
 
 f\. 
 
 "» 
 
 4« 
 
 pf 
 
 %. 
 
 
 JL 
 
 A, 
 
 
 # 
 
 S 
 
 
 fi 
 
 ¥ 
 
 
 e^ 
 
 M 
 
 
 :^ 
 
 m 
 
 
 s 
 
 4^ 
 
 
 M 
 
 T 
 
 This is what the words mean in Enghsh, 1, 2 God. 3 pity- 
 ingly. 4 loved. 5 world's. 6 men. 7, 8 to the extent of. 9 
 taking. 10 only. 11 begotten. 12 Son. 13, 14 bestow npon. 
 15, 16 them. 17 cause. 18 all. 19 believe. 20, 21 Him. 22 
 not. 23 come to. 24, 25 destruction. 26 certainly. 27 obtain. 
 28 eternal. 29 life. 
 
 The first word, ], means the top sign at the right hand, 
 2 the sign under 1, and so on; when you get to the bottom of 
 one row, begin again at the top of the next. 
 
 In reading, the Chinese do the opposite to what we do, for 
 they begin at what we should call the end of the book, and read 
 from the top of the page to the bottom, instead of across the 
 
THEIR LANGUAGE. icy 
 
 page, and from right to left instead of from left to right. The 
 name of the book and the number of the page are written down 
 the right-hand side of the book in a margin, and what we should 
 call foot-notes are at the top of the page instead of the bottom. 
 
 The Chinese think a great deal of their language ; they will 
 never allow even a little bit of it to be thrown away, and thiuk 
 it is very barbarous of us to destroy so much paper that has 
 writing or printing on it ; they suppose the reason we do it is, 
 that our language is so poor, we do not mind how it is treated. 
 
 Every scholar in China keeps a paper-basket, in which he 
 puts every bit of paper, however small, that has any writing on 
 it, and which he does not want to keep. 
 
 From time to time a crier goes round, calling out as he 
 goes — " Eevere and spare printed paper." Whenever his cry is 
 heard, the basket is taken to the door and emptied into the 
 collector's basket, which is a very large one. When this basket 
 is full, all the paper in it is burnt in a fireplace which is used 
 for nothing else, and which is often built in one of the courts 
 of a temple. Very strict scholars will not even let the ashes 
 of their paper be thrown away, but will have them taken to a 
 stream and put into it. 
 
 If you were to go to one of the large seaports in China, where 
 there are many English merchants and traders, you would hear 
 some people speaking a language that would puzzle you very 
 much, because you would understand a little of it but not all ; 
 some of the words are English and some not, and the English 
 words you would think are used in a very strange way. This 
 strange language is called " Pigeon English," and is used by 
 Chinamen who are too busy or too lazy to learn English, and by 
 Englishmen who are too lazy or too busy to learn Chinese, so, as 
 you would expect, the language is partly one and partly the other ; 
 there is a little Portuguese mixed with it too. There are only 
 a few hundred words in it, so one word has to do instead of a 
 
io8 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 great many. Yon will understand how funny it is if I give you 
 a little bit of it. Here is an English poem, which has been 
 translated into Pigeon English. In English it begins like this — 
 
 " My uame is Norval ; on the Grrampian Hills my father feeds his flock ; 
 A frugal swain, whose constant care is to increase his store ; " 
 
 and the translation of these two lines is — 
 
 " My name h'long Norval ; top-side Keh-lam-pian Hill, my fader chow-chow he sheep : 
 My fader very small heartee man, too much likee dat piecie dolla.'" 
 
 It would make you laugli to hear people talk like that, wouldn't 
 it ? Some of the words in this language are so changed that 
 they mean something quite different from what they meant at first. 
 For instance. Pigeon English means business English, because 
 it is the language in which the merchants of different nations 
 do their business with each other ; but when the Chinese tried 
 to say business they found they could not pronounce it right, and 
 " pigeon " was the nearest they could get to it ; not much like it, 
 is it ? 
 
 In some parts of China, where the people are ver}'' ignorant, 
 the missionaries have printed books for them in English letters, 
 spelling the words as nearly as possible as the}^ are pronounced ; 
 the children in the mission schools and the poor ^^eople who have 
 not much time, manage to learn to read this, though they cannot 
 learn to read their own written language. 
 
CHAPTEB Yl. 
 
 THEIR LEARNLN'G. 
 
 OR tliey are veiy learned, only in quite a different way 
 from the people of other nations. Almost all the men 
 know how to read and write more or less, but you will 
 understand that a great many can only read some words 
 and that very few can read all, and this will explain to 
 you why some books say that nearly all the Chinese can 
 read, and others sa.j this is not the case. The truth is that nearly 
 all Chinese can read something, but nothing like all of them can 
 read everything. 
 
 One reason why the Chinese are so particular about everyone 
 learning to read is, that they say a man cannot be punished for 
 not doing what he does not know he ought to do, and that the 
 only way to know what is right is, to read good books, written by 
 good men ; so there are schools in all towns, and rich people have 
 tutors for their sons. There are a great many Cliinese books too, 
 histories and geographies, novels and poems, and lives of clever 
 or good men and women. 
 
 In China nobody is thought much of because he is rich, but 
 everj^one is thought a great deal of if he is learned, and every boy 
 means to be a learned man, for he knows he shall never get on if 
 he is not. If a man has learned sons, he is greatly respected, but 
 if his sons are ignorant he is despised by everyone. Paper, ink- 
 slabs, ink and brushes are called "The Four Precious Things;" 
 brushes are used instead of pens, for the Chinese use wliat we 
 
no 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 call Indian ink ; we use it like paint, and so do they, for tliey rub 
 their ink on a little piece of slate and then put it on the paper 
 with a little brush made of rabbit's hair. 
 
 I have read a story of one little boy, who wanted very 
 much to become a learned man, but he was so poor he could not 
 afford a candle, and the evening was the only time he could study ; 
 but he found out that in the house next to his there were 
 always candles in the evening, and that a little light came into 
 
 BOOKSELLEU. 
 
 his room tlirough a chink in the wall ; so lie used to stand 
 close by this chink and read and learn. 
 
 Another boy who was in the same difficulty managed to 
 catch a fire-fly and shut it up in a bottle, and by this light he 
 used to study. 
 
 Then there was a third who had a trouble of another kind ; he 
 always fell asleep when he was learning his lessons, so to keep 
 himself awake, he used to tie his pig-tail to a beam in his room, 
 so that if he nodded he might get a good pull, which would wake 
 
THEIR LEARNING. iir 
 
 liim. If only you took as much trouble to learu, what clever boys 
 and ghis 3'ou might be ; and the more learning we have, if it is 
 learning of the right kind, the more we can do for God, for the pro- 
 verb is a true one, " Knowledge is powder." But the knowledge 
 that gives the most power, and the best kind of power too, 
 is the knowledge of God, so whatever else you may be able to 
 learn or not learn, ask- God to teach 3'ou to know Himself, and the 
 better you know Him the more you will be able to do for 
 Him. 
 
 You will understand better about the learning of the Chinese, 
 if I tell you about their examinations, which are all for men, not 
 for women. A few w^omen in some places know how to read, but 
 that is all. Chinese examinations first began to be held in a.d. 
 COO, that is long before there were anj^ examinations or even any 
 schools in England. 
 
 There are four great examinations in China, perhaps the 
 most wonderful ever known anywhere. It does not matter how 
 rich a man may be, he can only get rank and honour by passing 
 these examinations ; while, however poor he may be, no one can 
 hinder him fi'om passing his examinations, and becoming a great 
 man, if only he can learn enough. The only people who are 
 not allowed to go in for these examinations are play-actors, 
 executioners, and jailers ; thirty mandarins were once turned out 
 of their posts because they let a play-actor try to pass an 
 examination. 
 
 The first great examination is held in every city once a year, 
 and everyone who wants to try to pass it, has to fill np a 
 paper, giving his own name, the names of his father and grand- 
 father and principal teacher, of his next door neighbours on 
 both sides, his own aje, his height, and his complexion. 
 
 When he goes iuto the room where he is to be examined, 
 he is only allowed to take with him his paper, ink,^brush, and as 
 much food as he will eat before the examination is over. After he 
 
112 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 has gone into the room where all the other students are, his 
 examination paper is given him — not questions to be answered, 
 hut subjects to be written upon. He will have to write two 
 essays in prose and one poem ; what about, do you think ? Not 
 Grammar, Geography, History, French, Greek, Latin, or any 
 other language, but on little pieces taken from " The Four 
 Books," as they are called, which contain a great many wise 
 sayings, either written or collected by a man named Confucius, 
 whom the Chinese think more of than they do of anyone 
 else, so I shall have to tell you all about him in another 
 place. 
 
 The students may take as long as they like to write these 
 papers, except that they must finish them in a day, and each one 
 must write his name in a corner of his papers, and then fold the 
 corner over and paste it down, so that the name shall be hidden; 
 it may not be uncovered until his papers have been examined, and 
 it has been decided whether he has passed the examination or 
 not. This is done to prevent any favour being shown, in case 
 the examiners have any friends among the students, whom 
 they might allow to pass, although their papers were not good 
 enough. 
 
 Even if a man does his papers very well indeed, he has not 
 finished yet, but must have another examination just as hard as 
 this, for fear it was by chance that he passed the first time, 
 because the subjects given happened to be just those that he 
 knew best. If he breaks a rule, lets somebody help him, leaves 
 his name uncovered, or goes out of the room to fetch something 
 before he has finished, then he is not allowed to try this second 
 time, but has failed altogether. You would think it rather hard 
 to have double examinations like that, wouldn't you ? I expect 
 you think one is bad enough. 
 
 If a student gets through these essays and a poem, then 
 he has next to wiite from memory any piece he may be asked 
 
THEIR LEARNING. 
 
 i'3 
 
 for out of another book, called " The Sacred Edict ; " if he makes 
 the smallest mistake, he will not pass, so he will really have to 
 know the whole book by heart. If he can do this last thing 
 (j[inte right, then the examination is over, and his name will 
 be published in a list of those who have been successful : he 
 will be above the common people, bat not j^et fit to be employed 
 
 I 
 
 
 CHINKSE STUDENTh. 
 
 under the government. Those who have passed this examination 
 have the title of " Budding Talent," and may wear gold buttons in 
 their caps. 
 
 The second great examination is only held once in tliree 
 years, in all the capital cities of the eighteen provinces ; there 
 are generally between five and ten thousand students at the 
 
114 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 examinations. In every capital there is a hall built on purpose 
 for them, large enough to hold ten thousand people ; but instead 
 of all writing in one large room, each man has a little cell to 
 himself, so that no one shall help any one else, or copy from 
 another. Those who go into these cells to be examined, take 
 with them not only their food, but also their beds, for the 
 examination lasts two days, and if they came out at night, they 
 might ask someone outside to tell the'm something they did not 
 know or had forgotten. During these two days, no one may go 
 into the hall from outside, and no one would think of coming out 
 from inside, unless his papers were finished. 
 
 This time three essays have to be written and one poem, the 
 subjects being again taken from " The Four Books." When the 
 papers are finished, they are given to a set of examiners, who look 
 over them to see that there are no very great mistakes, and 
 whether all the rules have been kept. If they see any great 
 fault, the papers go no fm-ther, and the writers are told they have 
 failed ; but if not, then they are given to some scribes, who copy 
 them all out in red ink, so that nobody shall be able to find out 
 who \\Tote them ; but in spite of all this care, there is sometimes 
 cheating. When the copying is done, the two sets of papers, 
 those in red ink and those in black, are given to another set of 
 men, who compare them, to see that no mistakes are made 
 in the copying, but that they are really exactly alike ; and 
 then at last they are given to the real examiners, who go 
 over them all very carefully. If they are not satisfied witli 
 them, they go no further, but if they are, then they put a 
 round red mark on them, and after this they go to the chief 
 examiners, who choose out of them all those that they consider 
 the best. 
 
 On the morning of the third day of the examination, the 
 doors of the hall are opened, and the students come out. They 
 are received with music and a great firing of guns ; but they are 
 
|!ll-,! I'll.. 
 
 l|w,|i;[:;' , ,,, .'. ' '''L 
 
 l!!liii:i;!iyii iiiJiiiiiiiii.iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!ii: :ii:jii.iiii iii^^ i i'.i!i i d ^ ..i n-a \n'i:-..: isi 
 
THEIR LEARNING. 117 
 
 only let out for one day's rest ; after that, those who were success- 
 ful go back for another two days like the first, except that the 
 examination, instead of being in " The Four Books," is in " The 
 Five Classics," another collection made by Confucius, Then 
 comes another day of rest, followed by a third examination on all 
 kinds of different subjects. 
 
 Now that you know how hard it is, you will not be surprised 
 that only about one in a hundred gets through, and that some of 
 them die after going through the examination, because they are 
 so exhausted by the hard work. A student who has passed this 
 second examination has the title of the " Promoted Man," and 
 can get work in the lower government offices. 
 
 The third examination is also held once in three years, but 
 instead of being at all the capitals of the provinces, it is only held 
 at Pekin, the capital of the Empire, and in case some of the 
 students should be too poor to be able to afford to travel there, the 
 expenses of all who go are paid by the government. Generally 
 between tw^o and three hundred pass this third examination ; that 
 is very much fewer than the number who pass the first and second. 
 Those who fail in the third, but have passed the other two, are 
 scattered over the country in their own towns and villages, 
 and help to keep up the love of learning and the desire for it. 
 Many of them are school-masters, those who have passed the 
 second examination taking more advanced pupils than those who 
 have only passed the first, and others of them are employed as 
 clerks. Those who do succeed in passing the third examination 
 can get high places in the government, and have the title of 
 ''Advanced Scholars." 
 
 The fourth examination is only passed by a very few of the 
 most learned, who want to be quite at the top of the tree and 
 to have the highest government offices of all. Their title of 
 Academician is given them with a great deal of pomp at the 
 emperor's palace. Those who liave passed any examination after 
 
ii8 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 the first, are allowed to have a tablet put over the doors of 
 their houses. 
 
 Another thing that is rather strange is that what we call a 
 " coach " in England, that is a gentleman who prepares other 
 gentlemen to pass their examinations, is called a "horse" in 
 China. 
 
CHAPTEE YIL 
 
 THEIR HOUSES. 
 
 X China, as iu England, there are all sorts of houses for 
 all sorts of people, so that I cannot possibly tell you 
 about all of them ; but I will try to tell you enough to 
 make you understand some of the ways in which 
 Chinese houses are different from ours. I will tell you 
 about the better sort of houses first. 
 They are nearly all built entirely on the ground floor, so that 
 in most of them there is no such place as "upstairs." The 
 Chinese who have travelled to Europe have been very much 
 surprised to see the houses so high ; when an emperor was once 
 told about them, he asked whether it was because European 
 countries were so small that the people in them lived on the top 
 of each other. It is a common opinion too that it is very unlucky 
 to live in a high house, and there are no people in the world who 
 believe more in luck than the Chinese do. In large towns, where 
 there is not much room to spare, the shops and some of the other 
 houses have a story above the ground floor, and sometimes on the 
 flat roof people sit and get a little fresh air in hot weather. 
 
 The houses are built of brick, sifted earth, wood, matting, or 
 thatch. The only part to be seen from the street is a blank stone 
 wall with no windows. The Chinese object very much to be 
 looked at when they are at home by people outside ; they like 
 then homes to be quite private, so all the windows are made 
 
I20 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 to look into a. courtyard instead of into the street, and tlie court- 
 yard is shut in by the house itself. 
 
 The grandest country houses have a gate-way with three 
 openings, a large folding-door in the middle, and a smaller one on 
 each side ; the smaller ones are used all day and every day by 
 people going to the house or coming from it ; the large one is used 
 only on great occasions, as for instance when some very grand 
 person comes to pay a visit. 
 
 Large lanterns are hung at the side of these gates, for there 
 are no gas-lamps in China, and on the lanterns are written the 
 names and the titles of the gentleman and lady who live in the 
 house, just as you sometimes see the name of a tradesman painted 
 on the lamp that hangs over his shop. There are a great many 
 lanterns about Chinese houses, both inside and out, made of 
 different kinds of paper ; they are nothing like so nice as our oil 
 lamps, for they give very little light and make a great deal of 
 smoke ; you know we always call lanterns made of paper " Chinese 
 Lanterns." 
 
 Another thing that you would find in all Chinese houses, is a 
 number of little bits of writing, sentences written outside the 
 houses and on the walls, all about, everywhere, not for the sake 
 of the sentences, but because the Chinese are so fond of their 
 language that they think nothing else could ornament their houses 
 so nicely. 
 
 When you go through the gates, you find yourself in a court, 
 where the carriages are kept ; not coaches to be drawn by horses, 
 but wdiat we should call sedan chairs, to be carried by men. This 
 front court is generally adorned with shrubs or flowers in pots or 
 in stands. 
 
 If the house is in a town, or not grand enough to have one 
 of these gateways, there will be a screen of wood or brick to hide 
 the front court from passers by, and for another still stranger 
 purpose — to keep out evil spirits, or the ghosts of poor relations 
 
2 HEIR HOUSES. 123 
 
 who have died, aud who may be coming to the house to torment 
 their friends, either because they have not fed them properly or to 
 persuade them to give them more attention. For the same 
 reason the Chinese always take care to build their houses in 
 such a waj^ that one door shall not come opposite another, as they 
 believe that spirits can only move in straight lines, so if they 
 came into one room of a house, they would not be able to get into 
 another. 
 
 If you want to go into the house, you will cross the court, 
 and go up a few steps to get to the front door, and inside that 
 you will find a hall, in which the ancestors of the people of the 
 house are worshipped, and where visitors are received. When you 
 leave this hall, you will come, not to more rooms, but to another 
 courtyard like the first, except that it is surrounded by rooms, and 
 io these rooms the men of the house live ; for in China as in India 
 the ladies are kept shut up. This court is ornamented too, and 
 more grandly than the first, for it generally has a fish-pond crossed 
 by wonderful little marble bridges, as well as tiny trees, ferns, and 
 temples, aU small together. 
 
 At one end of the courtyard there is a room that is only used 
 as a sort of state apartment, in which to receive any very particular 
 gentlemen friends or relations, and feed them with tea and cakes. 
 The walls are hung with scrolls, some of them having pictures on 
 them and some waiting. All the sitting-rooms and bed-rooms for 
 the gentlemen are round this second court, and beyond it is a 
 third, very much like the second, only it belongs to the ladies 
 instead of the gentlemen. 
 
 Chinese ladies are better ofi" than Hindu ones in this, that 
 though they are kept shut up all over the country, in some j^arts 
 very strictly indeed, aud are not allowed to see so many of their 
 male relations as ladies in India may see, yet their rooms are 
 often as nice as the gentlemen's, and their courtyard is just as 
 nice too. 
 
124 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 In every large house there is what is called a receptiou 
 room for tlie ladies, where they all sit together and talk and do 
 their needlework, and where an image of the chief idol is kept. 
 The ladies' bedrooms open out of this room, and when the}^ want 
 to be by themselves, they can always go to their own rooms ; tliey 
 very often invite their visitors to go in with them, so that they 
 can have private talks. The reception-room is also used for a 
 dressing-room, and the ladies' servants use it to sleep in. 
 
 Not even the most intimate male relations may enter the 
 ladies' part of the house ; and here they spend all their time, with 
 the children, smoking and gambling and gossiping with their 
 female friends and slaves. The children play about amongst the 
 rockeries and watch the little fishes in the pond. The courts 
 themselves are paved with marble or red tiles, and the rooms are 
 of grey brick, if they are not of wood. There is generally a 
 covered passage leading from the second court to the third ; how 
 the ladies must sometimes wish they could go down it, and see 
 what there is to be seen at the other end, and who is there, and 
 what they are doing ! At both ends of the passages, there are 
 several doorways to be gone through, to get into the courtyards, 
 none of them opposite each other, so that the evil spirits may not 
 be able to get about. 
 I If there is a very grand feast going on, and actors are hired to 
 
 \ perform for the amusement of the company, they are generally 
 j allowed to act in the ladies' court, so that the women can see 
 without being seen. 
 
 It generally happens that a grandfather and grandmother, 
 their sons and daughters and grand-children, all live together, 
 ^ven as many as eighty people in one house, but each family has 
 separate rooms : they all eat together, and work on the same 
 land if they have any, the money they earn being divided between 
 them once a year. 
 
 There are a great many hotels and inns in China, not such 
 
THEIR HOUSES 125 
 
 comfortable ones as we have in England. The hodrooms are very 
 low, and there are several beds in one room, so the travellers 
 cannot often be alone. There is often no furnitnre in the bedrooms, 
 except the beds and a lamp, and the wind and rain can both get 
 in very easily through cracks and openings. The beds are only 
 a few boards raised about two feet from the floor, with a mat on 
 them. Id hot weather the travellers just lie down to sleep on 
 these mats, with nothing to cover them but the clothes they are 
 wearing ; in cold weather there are coverings made of cloth and 
 padded with cotton, in which the men roll themselves up as 
 tightly as they can. These covers are scarcely ever washed, and 
 are used till they are so old that they are only a bundle of dirty 
 rags. Travellers generally carry their own bedding with them. 
 
 The inns are often only small huts made of mud ; inside there 
 are tea-tables, forms to sit on, and a large oven. The chief drink 
 taken at these inns is tea (I wish people got nothing worse than 
 tea at English inns), but at some of them there is sold a kind of 
 drink something like whiskey, which is very cheap indeed. In 
 some parts there is not much tea sold at these inns, though there 
 is a good deal drunk, for a traveller generally carries his tea with 
 him, and only has to buy some hot water. 
 
 Another very unpleasant thing about Chinese hotels and inns 
 is, that nobody is supposed to want ever to be alone, so that even 
 if a man should pay for a bedroom to himself, au3^body in the 
 town or village who likes will walk into his bedroom without 
 knocking, to look at him or ask him questions, especially if he is 
 not a Chinaman ; and as the windows are often only made of paper, 
 it is of no use to try to shut people out, for they have only to poke 
 one of their fingers through the windows, to make a hole large 
 enough to see through. 
 
 Sometimes a farmer's house will only be one room, and in this 
 all his family will live and sleep, besides the hens and ducks and 
 pigs, and any other animals he may keep ; all the furniture will be 
 
126 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 a pot to cook food in, a few pans, a table, two or three stools, and 
 a god : instead of a bed, in some parts of China, especially where it 
 is very cold, there will be a square piece of brick or mud, raised 
 about two feet from the floor, large enough for four or live people 
 to sleep on, or even more. This platform is a very warm place, 
 because the chimney runs along under it, and when once it is well 
 heated, it will keep warm for a long time. 
 
 The xDOorest houses of all are made by bending bamboos and 
 sticking them into the ground, so as to form an arch, like a 
 croquet hoop ; over these hoops mats are thrown, so very coarse 
 that the dayhght comes in through them, so plenty of wind comes 
 in as well ; if the man who makes the house can afford it, he 
 covers the mats with straw to make the hut warmer. Thousands 
 and thousands of Chinese live in houses like these ; they do not 
 cost much, for the bamboo branches can be got for nothing, and 
 four mats only cost sixpence, while a dozen of them are quite 
 enough to make a house for a man and his family ; the w^hole hut 
 only takes up as much room as a large bedstead. How would you 
 like to live in such a place as that ? Did you ever thank God for 
 giving you a nice house to live in ? If not, I think you will now. 
 
 Another thing that the Chinese do backwards is house- 
 building ; for when a builder is making a house, he begins at the 
 wrong end, we should say, and puts on the roof the first thing, 
 after putting up a few poles for scaffolding ; a very sensible thing 
 to do for one reason — the men can work hour after hour in the 
 rain without getting wet. This first roof is always made very 
 light, and not much time is spent over it, for it is not meant 
 to stay long ; when the walls are built, a new. roof is put on, much 
 stronger and better than the first. 
 
 Most of the rooms in Chinese houses have no ceilings, but 
 end with the roof. Ceilings are only to be found in the grand 
 houses, and then they are not at all like ours, for instead of being 
 made of plaster, tliey are only light frames made up of several 
 
THEIR HOUSES. 127 
 
 squares : over each square a sheet of white cloth is stretched, or 
 sometiroes a piece of embroidery or silk. Ceilings of that sort 
 would not do for houses with one room over another, would they ? 
 
 The walls between the rooms are very thin. The floors are 
 generally made of cement or earth, and there are no carpets, oul}^ 
 now and then a piece of matting. The windows are made of 
 lattice-work with thin oyster shells or oiled paper instead of glass, 
 but sometimes the lattice-work is left quite open. The doors are 
 seldom shut, unless they open on the street, so there are plenty 
 of draughts. There is very little furniture either, except tables 
 and chairs ; the chairs stand in a straight row, and there 
 are always eight of them in a properly-arranged room ; if more 
 than eight are wanted, extra ones are brought in from other rooms. 
 Sometimes there is a couch as large as a bed, with a little 
 table fixed in the middle, about twelve inches high, which is used 
 either as a rest for the arm, or to put tea-cups on. The places on 
 the sofa at each side of this table are considered the best seats in 
 the room, for the greatest people to sit in ; of the row of chairs, 
 the one nearest to the sofa is the most honourable, and the one 
 farthest from it is for the person of lowest rank. 
 
 If the emperor is in the room, no one else may sit on a chair 
 at all. Instead of this, everyone sits on a cushion on the floor to 
 show their respect for him, and the tables are made very low, 
 so that all can reach them from their humble seats. 
 
 Chinese beds are not at all comfortable. Most of them are 
 only two or three boards laid on benches for the summer, and a 
 thin mattress to cover the sleeper in the w^inter (that is backwards 
 again, to sleep under the mattress instead of on it), and a few 
 bamboo sticks on which to hang a net in the hot weather to keep 
 the mosquitoes out. Sometimes there are curtains of cotton or silk 
 in winter, hung from the bamboo poles. When people pay visits 
 to their friends, they take their bed-clothes with them — tliat is, 
 their covering ; bedsteads only are provided by the host. 
 
128 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 lu the south of China the onl}^ way tlie people have of 
 warming themselves in winter, besides by putting on more clothes, 
 is by using a kind of warming pan for their feet. It has a lid with 
 holes in it to let out the heat. It is filled three parts full of wood 
 ashes, and then two or three fire-balls are laid on a clear fire till 
 they are red-hot, when they are put into the ashes and covered 
 over w4th them. These balls are made of fine charcoal-dust, mixed 
 with w^ater or thin paste into a kind of dough, which is put into 
 an iron mould and afterw^ards turned out and diied in the sun. 
 They will keep red-hot for twelve or fifteen hours, without being 
 touched, and the pan is carried by the handle. In some parts 
 baskets with little pots in them filled with charcoal are used as 
 foot- warmers. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 THEIR MANNEES AND OCCUPATIONS. 
 
 OU will have fouud out a good deal about these already, 
 so I will only tell yon a few things that I have left out 
 in the other chapters. 
 
 As yon would expect in such a large country, there 
 are many different ways of earning a living besides 
 working in government offices, and I think you will like 
 to hear about some of these. 
 
 There is very little cattle-rearing in China, because the 
 country is so full of people, that there is no room for fields for the 
 cattle to graze in. In some parts of China you could not get any 
 milk at all, however much money you might offer for it, nor any 
 butter either. A Chinese woman who was travelling in Ireland 
 with an English lady a few years ago, said, as they drove through 
 the green country, *' How wasteful you must be to let all the land 
 be left empty like this, — how many houses you might build 
 on it ! " 
 
 There are a very large number of barbers in China, for no 
 Chinaman ever thinks of shaving himself, but he likes to be shaved 
 at least once a week by a barber. There is another class of men 
 whose business it is to collect the hair that comes off ladies' 
 heads and make it up into tails, which are sold. In the north of 
 China the barbers have shops, but in the south they wander 
 about, carrying their tools with them in little cupboards, which do 
 for seats for the men to sit on who want to be shaved. Inside 
 
 9 
 
I30 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 each cupboard is a metal basin to hold the water, which is kept hot 
 by a little charcoal furnace below it. Fastened to this is a pole, 
 
 
 CHINKSE BAKBEli. 
 
 the sign of the barber's tiade : barbers in England have poles too, 
 don't they? 
 
 The customer tirst has his head shaved, and then rubbed with 
 a damp, hot cloth ; after this his face is shaved, not only in what 
 
THEIR MANNERS AND OCCUPATIONS. 131 
 
 we should call tlie proper places for shaving, but also inside his 
 nose and ears ; then his eyelids are shaved, and his eyes cleaned ; 
 this is one reason why the Chinese suffer so much from sore eyes, 
 and so often go blind. Next his ears are cleaned out with a 
 little instrument, and last of all his sj^ine is punched all down. 
 The charge for doing all this is sometimes only a halfpenny, but 
 it depends on whether the man is rich or poor. The women do 
 not have barbers, bat do their own hair, or have it done by their 
 maids ; the poor women often do theirs in the street. The 
 Chinese like to wash themselves in very hot water, but their 
 clothes in cold. 
 
 The piece of money chiefly used in China, called a cash, is very 
 much like our halfpenny, but it has a square hole through the 
 middle, and is only worth a tenth part as much as a halfpenny, for 
 twenty or even twenty-four cash go to one of our pennies. Cash 
 are not quite of the same value all over the empire. As they are 
 worth so little, everyone has a great many of them, so instead of 
 keeping them in a purse they thread them on a piece of string. 
 There are dollars too, worth from nine to twelve hundred cash, 
 and lumps of silver are used to pay for expensive things ; in some 
 cities pax:)er money is used. Many of the notes are false, but they 
 are used all the same, only a good note is worth ten times as 
 much as a false one ; there are often false cash mixed up with 
 the good ones in the south of China. 
 
 A great many Chinese are always busy about tea, and as 
 so much of the tea we drink comes from China I must just tell 
 you a little about it. 
 
 Green tea is grown chiefly in the provinces of Kiang-si, Kiang- 
 su, and Chey-Kiang, black tea in Fukien. From one port alone, 
 Kinkiang, more than eighteen million pounds of tea are shipped 
 every year. 
 
 The tea shrub is something like a gooseberry bush, from 
 three to six feet high ; it grows best on the sides of mountains. 
 
132 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 The younger and more tender tlie leaves are, the dearer the tea 
 will be. The difference between green tea and black is that 
 the leaves of the green tea shrub are rather thinner and longer 
 and of a lighter colour than those of the black. In picking black 
 tea, the stems and part of the stalk are gathered and dried with 
 the leaves ; in picking the green the leaves are pinched off just 
 
 WOMEN riCKlN(! TEA. 
 
 above the leaf-stems. The green tea plants are never allowed to 
 grow large, and the tenderest leaves of all are made into an expen- 
 sive Idnd of tea called Loongtsing, which is thought a great deal 
 of in Cliina, and is never sent to Europe. A pound of it costs 
 twenty-live dollars in China, that is <£5 in English money. The 
 finest black tea is called Pekoe; we get that sent to England; it 
 is made of the spring leal-buds, just as they begin to o^qw out. 
 
THEIR MANNERS AND OCCUPATIONS. 133 
 
 The leaves of tea shrubs are picked four times a year, till the 
 plants are three years old. The leaves are rolled up and care- 
 fully dried, partly in the sun, and partly in an iron pan over a 
 charcoal or wood fire ; then if the tea is to he exported it is 
 taken in sacks to the ports, where it is packed in boxes and sent 
 to other countries by foreign merchants. The black gets more 
 drying over the fire than the green, and that must make the 
 difference in the colour, for of course they are both green at first. 
 In some parts of China the poor people use dried fern-leaves 
 instead of tea. 
 
 Now I don't think you can ever forget to pray about China 
 
 BRANCH OK TEA SHRUB. 
 
 till you give up drinking tea, because the smell and the taste of 
 the tea will always remind you of the country it came from ; so if 
 you have forgotten to pray for it when you get up, you will 
 remember at breakfast time and at tea time, and if j'ou are 
 afraid of forgetting again before you can go away by yourself, you 
 can pray just where your are, sitting at the table ; and really I 
 think that if all the hoys and girls who read this book pray for 
 the Chinese as often as they drink tea, China will be the 
 better for it. 
 
 Then china is made in China, as you would suppose. The 
 most famous works are at a town called King-te-chin, in the 
 
134 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 province of Kiang-si, where more than a million men are con- 
 stantly working. The reason why Chinese china is so good is 
 that it is very hard, and can be made very hot without cracking, 
 but it is not so well painted and gilded in China as it is in 
 England. It is made chiefly of flint and clay, and to make it 
 look glossy the ashes of ferns are put in it. When it was first 
 seen in England people thought it was made of egg-shells. All 
 the painting on china is done by hand for very little pay, and is 
 not so good now as it used to be. The Chinese began to make 
 china about twelve hundred years ago. 
 
 SILK-WOEM. 
 
 There is a great deal of silk made in China, and a great 
 many silk-worms are kept. Silk-worms, as I expect you know, get 
 on best if they are fed with mulberry leaves, so many Chinese 
 are employed in cultivating mulberry-trees. The young leaves 
 are best for the worms, therefore all that the people care about 
 is to get plenty of these ; when the trees are getting old and 
 beginning to bear fruit, they are not cared for any longer ; a 
 mulberry-tree is perfect for feeding silk-worms when it is three 
 years old. 
 
 Did you know that silk-wornjs cannot bear noise ? If any- 
 one shouts suddenly near then, or a dog gives a loud bark, it 
 
THEIR MANNERS AND OCCUPATIONS. 137 
 
 kills tliem ; sometimes whole broods die in a tlmnder-storm. For 
 tliis reason the houses iu which silk-worms are kept are generally 
 built in the middle of a plantation, w^here everything is quiet. 
 
 Silk-worms' eggs are kept on sheets of paper, and as it is 
 better that the little worms should come out of their eggs in the 
 spring, when the young leaves will be just ready for them, they 
 are kept back b}' being put into a cold place, if they seem to be 
 getting on too fast, or helped to come out by being put in a hot 
 one, if they are too slow. When they do come out they are 
 very carefully fed with leaves cut up into little bits and weighed, 
 to be quite sure that they have just enough but not too much, 
 and the rooms in which they live are kept very clean and quiet. 
 The worms are put on small hurdles of basket-work ; as they 
 grow larger, and want more room, they have more hurdles. When 
 they are full-grown, and have got quite yellow and transparent, 
 they are taken off the hurdles, and put each into a separate place 
 ready to do their spinning, which takes them a w^eek. At the 
 end of th;it time there are no worms to be seen ; each has made 
 a little ball for itself and is hidden away in the middle : these 
 balls are called cocoons. Some of them are put away and kept, 
 so that there may be some new eggs later on ; the rest are put 
 in jars under layers of salt and leaves, which quite shut out the 
 air ; this kills the w^orms inside, but I expect they are fast asleep 
 and know nothing about it. Afterwards the cocoons are soaked 
 in warm water, and then the silk is wound off them on to reels ; 
 this is what we call raw silk. When it is all wound off, instead 
 of dead worms being in the middle of the ball, there are funny 
 things like dead w^asps without any legs or heads. You remember 
 some of the cocoons were put aw^ay with these funny things in 
 the middle of them, chrysalises we call them ; they stay like that 
 for a long while, and then out of the bundle comes, not a dead 
 wasp, nor even a hve one, but a large butterfly, which just lives 
 for a few days, and lays a great many eggs, and then dies. 
 
138 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 You will know all about this, if you have ever tried keeping 
 silk-worms yourselves ; if you have never had any, I think you 
 had better get some, if you can. 
 
 Tailoring is the business that is worse paid than any other 
 in China, because the tailors always steal the stuff that is given 
 them to make the clothes of. There are no tailors' shops, so 
 when a gentleman wants a dress, he engages a tailor to come 
 and work at his house for so much a day. When a Chinese tailor 
 sews, he does it backwards, pushing his needle from him instead 
 of drawing it to him, sewing from left to right, instead of from 
 right to left. 
 
 Chinese girls are set to work when they are quite young. 
 One thing in which they spend a great deal of their time is pasting 
 bits of old rag on to boards, till they are about as thick as strong 
 pasteboard. These are put to dry in the sun, and then the rag 
 is pulled off the boards and cut up into soles for the common 
 kinds of shoes. 
 
 The Chinese are rather clever at painting birds, insects, and 
 flowers, and they know how to make a great many very beautiful 
 colours. But one funny thing about their pictures is that they 
 never have any shadows. A mandarin was once looking at some 
 of the portraits painted by the best European artists, and he asked 
 whether the people who were painted had the left sides of their 
 faces a different colour from the right ; he thought the shadows 
 of the noses quite spoiled the pictures. 
 
 Chinese music is very funny. I expect if you were to hear it 
 you would put your Augers in your ears, and say it was all out of 
 tune ; and that is just what tlie Chinese do when they hear 
 European music. Their music is very old. More than two 
 thousand years before Christ they used twelve tubes to make music, 
 six for sharp notes and six for flat, made of rods or bamboos. 
 That was about the same time as Noah. 
 
 There are at least fifty kinds of musical instruments now in 
 
THEIR MANNERS AND OCCUPATIONS. 141 
 
 China, some made of wood, some of stone and metal. Nothing is 
 known of what w-e call harmony— that is, playing or singing two 
 or more different notes at the same time. If the Chinese hear 
 foreigners singing in parts, they laugh and can see no music in it ; 
 hut they can easily he made to cry hy the shrill tones of one of 
 their own fiddlers. 
 
 There are an immense number of beggars in China. Manj^ of 
 them only beg because they like it. Sometimes they paint 
 themselves in such a w^ay as to make believe they have dreadful 
 diseases, and then they tell people they are going to die, and ask 
 them to help to pay for their funerals. Sometimes they starve 
 their children, or even cut them or wound them, and then carry 
 them about crying and moaning, wrapped in filthy rags, and ask 
 for money for them. They wear very funny clothes. Often all 
 that a beggar has to cover him is an old hamper, or a sack or a 
 piece of matting, or even tough paper ; dresses of this kind are 
 handed dowm from father to son as great treasures. 
 
 Begging is quite a business in China. In some parts the 
 beggars tell all the shop-keepers in a street that they must pay 
 them a tax ; if a shop-keeper agrees, the beggars give him a red 
 ticket, and then he will not be troubled by a beggar again that 
 day ; but if he refuses, a wdiole stream of beggars will come upon 
 him, and make such a noise all round the shop, that if anyone 
 comes in to buy, he cannot make himself heard, and at last in 
 despair the tradesman will generally pay the beggars to go away. 
 The beggars care for no laws except those they make for them- 
 selves or each other. 
 
 Another class of beggars write sad tales of their misfortune on 
 the side of the road with chalk, or else on a large board, and beg 
 of the passers-by ; it is often very difficult to find out whether 
 these people are really in trouble or not. 
 
 When a Chinese gentleman goes to visit a friend, he " sends 
 in his card ; " but iu stead of being really a card, it is a sheet of 
 
142 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 red paper, with his name and titles written down the middle ; 
 sometimes the paper is so large, that if it were opened out it 
 would stretch right across a room. 
 
 When the host has received the paper, he comes out to 
 receive his guest, but how far he will come will depend upon the 
 rank of the visitor, and so will the number of bows the host will 
 make to him. 
 
 If a polite Chinaman knew you, and were to meet you in the 
 street, he would shake hands; but instead of shaking your hand, he 
 would shake his own. If he were introduced to you for the first 
 time, he would ask you your name, how old you are, where you 
 live, and most likely after that he would say what you would think 
 rather rude, for he would ask how " your honourable old father" 
 was, and then would enquire for " the old lady," by whom he would 
 mean your mother. He would ask these questions, even if he 
 knew that your father and mother were both young, for in China 
 it is considered a mark of respect to call anyone old. 
 
 The cheapest way of getting about the country in some parts 
 of China is in wheelbarrows ! A man will push a very long way 
 for very little money. But they are very uncomfortable. The 
 seat is just over the wheel, and the barrow gets narrower towards 
 the front, so that there is only room for the passenger to have one 
 foot up, while the other is in a stirrup. 
 
 Large wheelbarrows sometimes have a pony or a mule to 
 draw them, and some even have a sail to help them along in 
 windy weather. In Pekin people ride on ponies, in other parts 
 they use sedans. 
 
II ni<:'.i.iii;L'jii!ii''Mi i':'li:il'ili!:i"iHji;iUiiiiliilH;i 
 
 
 •^ H '1. ' 
 
 ^^'■'""^W..^ 
 
 nilVl>t:i '..:>..'ii;iliiiini«lli«l<'<i»iiiu 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THEIR WIVES. 
 
 r seems, from the Chinese census, that there are at least 
 150,000,000 women and gMs in China. Of course, as 
 this book is written for children, the Chinese children 
 must have chapters all to themselves ; but you will 
 understand the children's lives all the batter if you 
 know something about their mothers first. 
 From reading some books about China, you would think 
 that all men have several wives, but this is not quite right. In I 
 some parts of China men can have more than one wife ; in other / 
 parts only one wife is allowed to each man, but he may have i 
 a great many concubines, as David and Solomon had, something 
 between a wife and a servant, like Hagar was to Abraham. The 
 real wife must be of the same rank as her husband, while the 
 concubines can be bought for money, and are treated almost like 
 servants. In some places it is not thought proper for a man to 
 have a concubine, unless his own wife has no sons by the time 
 he is fort}^ j^ears old (in China, as well as in India, I am sorry 
 to say, " girls don't count ") ; then he may have a concubine, but 
 the real wife will still be the mistress, and even if the concubine 
 should have sons, tlie wife will be considered their mother, and 
 will have the chief care of them. _ 
 
 One reason why it is considered better to have only a wife 
 and not concubines is, that there are sure to be quarrels in the 
 house if there is more than one mistress, for the Chinese have 
 
 10 
 
146 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 (__a proverb — " Nine women in ten are jealous." Sarah and Hagar 
 were not very good friends, were they ? 
 
 Another Chinese proverb is, "A married woman can commit 
 no crime," because she is supposed only to do what her husband 
 /tells her, so he and not she is to blame for what is wrong ; but 
 I this proverb is contradicted by another, which says that women 
 begin to sin when they marry, but till then they have no sin. 
 God has told us that " all have sinned," ( ) and that we 
 
 are born in sin ( ) ; so even children, we know, need 
 
 a Saviour who will take their sins away ; and God has given them 
 this Saviour, who Himself said that "little children " might come 
 to Him ; ( ) so none of you need think you are not 
 
 big enough. I am sure Jesus would rather you should come to 
 Him when you are little, than when j^ou are big. He would 
 rather have all your life, than only part of it.' Will you let Him 
 have it all ? 
 
 When a Chinese woman marries, she takes her husband's 
 siu-name, just as English women do ; but there is a law in China 
 that no man may marry a woman whose surname is the same as 
 his own, whether she is related to him or not ; and as there are 
 only about two hundred different surnames in all China, this rule 
 causes a good deal of difficulty. 
 
 There is a law, too, that no government officer may marry 
 an actress ; if any man does, both he and his wife get sixty blows. 
 There is a great deal of play-acting in China, and, therefore, a 
 great many actors and actresses, but they are all wicked people, 
 and are very much despised. 
 
 A man may send away his wife for certain reasons, rather 
 strange ones some of them : for being disobedient to her husband's 
 parents, for talking too much, for stealing, or for getting into 
 tempers, but he must not send her away unless her parents are 
 alive to take care of her. 
 
 Widows sometimes marry again, but it is thought very 
 
THEIR WIVES. 147 
 
 improper. Sometimes a widow's parents will make lier marry 
 again, because they do not want to keep her, but if they are found 
 out, they are very severely punished. So long as a widow remains 
 a widow, she is her own mistress, and the mistress of her children 
 too, so Chinese widows are better off than Indian ones. If 
 a widow refuses to marry again, and remains a widow to the end 
 of her life, she has a tablet put up in the street after death, 
 praising her for having been so faithful to her husband ; this is an 
 honour which no Chinese mfe would willinglj^ miss. 
 
 The Chinese like people to be married young, but they are not 
 so particular about it as the people in India are. They believe 
 there is a spirit called " The Old Man of the Moon," who ties to- 
 gether, with a silk cord that nobody can see, all the boys and girls 
 that are to marry each other, and that when once this cord has 
 been tied, the marriage could not possibly be prevented, whatever 
 anybody might do. The age at which people are generally " en- 
 gaged" in China is between ten and fourteen ; nearly all women 
 who are more than twenty years old are married. Between the 
 time when a girl is engaged and the time of her wedding she has 
 to keep herself very private ; she is never allowed to see any visitors 
 who come to the house where she lives, and only the very nearest 
 of her relations. 
 
 There are a great many things to be settled before anyone 
 is married in China, so the parents of the bride and bridegroom 
 choose women called "matchmakers," to make all the arrange- 
 ments for them. TJie bride and bridegroom themselves are not 
 allowed to have anything to say in the matter; but the fortunes 
 of the two have to be compared, to see whether they will match, 
 as well as the year, the month, the day, and the hour in which each 
 of them was born. Every person in China has a sign of one 
 of twelve animals, which is decided by the time of his birth ; the 
 twelve animals are : the mouse, the cow, the tiger, the rabbit, the 
 serpent, the horse, the sheep, the monkey, the cock or hen, the 
 
148 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 dog, the pig, and the dragou. A man and woman may not marry 
 
 \ if one of them has the sign of the dragou and the other the sign 
 
 ; of a dog, nor if one of them has the serpent and the other the pig ; 
 
 or one the rahhit and the other the cock or hen ; so a great 
 
 , many marriages are prevented, because the signs do not agree. 
 
 The matchmakers dress very neatly ; they always have small 
 
 leet, and never wear anything on their heads, but whether it is 
 
 wet or fine they always carry umbrellas, with very loug handles ; 
 
 \ each of them has a district of her own in which she works. 
 
 If all the fortuue-telling business is got over without 
 difficulty, the bridegroom sends presents to the bride and her 
 parents, but half of them are always sent back, as this is con- 
 sidered polite. The bride does not generally send presents, nor 
 does she have money given with her when she is married ; instead 
 of that, her husband pays money to her father and mother for 
 letting him have her. A card is sent from the bridegroom to the 
 bride, and another from the bride to the bridegroom. The one for 
 the bridegroom has a dragon painted on it, the one for the bride, 
 a phoenix. Before these cards have been exclianged, the engage- 
 ment may be broken ofi" if either side has any objection to 
 it, but never after. The cards are fastened to each other with a 
 red cord, to show that the boy and girl are joined together, and 
 are placed in the boy's home, before the tablets which are put up 
 in memory of his dead ancestors. 
 
 j Then a lucky day has to be fixed for the wedding, and this is 
 a very important thing ; if anything should be found out by the 
 fortune-tellers that would prevent the fixed day being a lucky one, 
 the wedding may be put off for months. The most lucky time 
 of the year for a wedding is thought to be the spring, during the 
 first moon of the year ; that is the same time as our February. A 
 month before the wedding the bride gets some more presents from 
 the bridegroom ; what do j'^ou think they are ? Her wedding- 
 dress, some ornaments, and the wedding cake, only instead of there 
 
THEIR WIVES. 151 
 
 being one large^cake, it is vgi;eat number of little ones, sometimes 
 several dozen, sometimes even four or live hundred. The bride 
 does not eat them herself, but gives them away amongst her 
 friends. You would not think them so nice as English wedding 
 cake ; thej^ are very soft and flabby, of a kind of grey colour, and 
 quite in the middle are little bits of fat pork and sugar. 
 
 Some time before the day fixed, the bridegroom has a new 
 cap put on his head, and he takes a ^newjiame, besides those 
 he had before ; after this he is supposed to be no longer a boy 
 but a man. At the same time the bride is changed from a girl to 
 a woman, b}' having her hair fastened up, instead of letting it hang- 
 down her back, as she did before ; her eyebrows are pulled out 
 too, and as they will never grow again, she will always afterwards 
 be known to be a married woman. 
 
 The Wedding Day. 
 
 To begin with, the friends of the bridegroom send p resents to 
 the bride and her friends, with their good wishes : arnong these 
 presents, there are generally some live geese, because geese are 
 supposed to be the emblems of agreement between husband 
 and wife — I wonder why. For the same reason, there are often 
 geese in the wedding procession. The bride's relations send 
 presents too, generally something to wear, and her younger sisters 
 and female friends come to see her and cry with her, though 
 I expect they stop crying when a new present comes to be looked 
 at. These presents are often carried round the town for every- 
 _bqdx to seeT ^ 
 
 In some parts of China the bride is taken to the bride- 
 groom's house (which is generally his father's house and some- 
 times his grandfather's too) in the morning, in others not till 
 the evening, while in Shantung weddings always take place in the 
 night. 
 
 A sedan chair is sent from the bridegroom's house to fetch 
 
152 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 her, with music aud lanterns ; sometimes, the bridegroom brings it 
 himself, sometimes his friends come instead ; the sedan-chair is 
 always red, and is carried by four men. The ground from the 
 bride's room to the sedan is covered with red carpet. Lanterns 
 are carried before the sedan, on which are pasted pieces of 
 red paper, with the bridegroom's surname on them ; then 
 come some more lanterns with the bride's name, then a large red 
 umbrella, and after that lighted torches and a band of music. The 
 brothers and friends of the bride and bridegroom walk near 
 the sedan. 
 
 
 BRIDAL SEDAN. 
 
 Half way between the bride's house and the bridegroom's the 
 procession stops, and a funny form is gone through, called 
 '' receiving the bride." Her friends stand in a group, and a httle 
 way off the bridegroom's friends stand in another group. The 
 bride's friends show a red card, having on it her family name ; the 
 bridegroom's friends produce another red card, wath his family 
 name on it ; tbe two groups exchange cards, every man in them 
 shakes hands very hard with himself, and bows towards the other 
 group, and then the bride's fiiends go back to her old home, taking 
 her lanterns with them, Avhile the rest of the procession goes on to 
 the bridegroom's house; after this the bride takes the bridegroom's 
 name, because the lanterns with his name on them are still in the 
 
THEIR WIVES. 155 
 
 procession, while those witli lier name have goue, so she gets her 
 uew name before she gets ]ier husband. This is the last she will 
 see of her friends ; the rest of her wedding-day will be spent 
 entirely among strangers, except that a few of her own female 
 servants will stay with her. 
 
 If a widow marries, she is not allowed to wear a dress of red, 
 or any bright colour ; it must be black, or white, or dark blue, and 
 she must be carried in a black sedan, instead of a red one. 
 
 When she reaches the house, the bride is carried in by some 
 married ladies who have sons ; at the door there is a pan of char- 
 coal, over which she is lifted, after being held for a little while 
 above it ; this is supposed to drive away evil spirits. At this time 
 the bridegroom disappears ; he goes into his bed-room, and stands 
 by the bed with his face towards it, and the bride is carried in and 
 put by his side. Then they both sit down on the edge of the bed. 
 The bridegroom manages, if he can, to sit on the bride's dress, as 
 a sign that she is always to give way to him ; but slie tries to sit 
 on his dress, to show that she will expect him to give way to her. 
 They sit quietly side by side for a IHtle while ; then the bride- 
 groom gets up and goes out of the room. Sometimes he is per- 
 suaded to rub the bride's feet before he leaves her ; this is taken to 
 be a sign that they will never be made to ache by running about 
 too much for him. x\ll this time the two have never seen each 
 other, because the bride has such a thick veil on that she can 
 neither see nor be seen. 
 
 Xext, the two together worship before the ancestral tablets 
 of the bridegroom's family, bowing down to them eight times, and 
 then the bride is led back to the bed-room, and there her husband 
 takes off her veil and they look at each other for the first time ; if 
 they do not like each other's looks, it cannot be helped, it is too 
 late now to go back. x\re you not glad that boys and girls are not 
 married like that in England ? 
 
 After this comes a dinner, at which the bride may not eat, 
 
iS6 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 although she drinks some wioe with the bridegroom from a cup 
 called the "cup of alliance," while a lady, the mother of many 
 sons, pronounces a blessing over them, 
 
 All this time the rest of the gentlemen are having a great 
 feast, and very soon the bridegroom goes to them, while the bride 
 
 BHID.VL DINNER. 
 
 goes back to her bed-room, and has to be satisfied with hearing the 
 laughing and talking of her husband's friends in the distance ; a 
 great many women will come to see her, so she will not be dull, 
 only very strange. When bed-time comes, the bridegroom's 
 friends sometimes bring him to the bed-room door and then go 
 home. 
 
THEIR IVn'ES. 157 
 
 Tliat is not a veiy nice sort of wedding-day for the poor girl, 
 is it ? And yet it is the nicest sort a Chinese woman ever gets, 
 unless she is a Christian. Very, very often it is far worse than 
 this, for at many weddings the hride, almost as soon as she gets 
 to her husband's house, is made to stand before a latticed window 
 looking either on to the street or else into a court full of people, 
 where anyone who likes can come and look at her, and the people 
 in the crowd say such terribly rude things to her, that she longs 
 to run away and hide her face and not look at anyone ; but there 
 she must stand all day, with her poor little feet pinched in her 
 very tightest shoes, which are sure to be new ones ; even when it 
 is time to go to bed, and she is sleep}-, as well as tired and miser- 
 able, she may not sit down, nor go away from her window, but must 
 stand there all through the night, unless the peoj)le choose to go 
 away. Just think how hard you would feel that, and then think 
 what it must be to a Chinese girl who has never been looked at 
 by a man in her life, unless it was her father or uncle or brother, 
 and who has left all her friends, and has not anyone near her who 
 cares for her, to comfort her or to feel sorry for her. 
 
 Afteewakds. 
 
 The next day is often called " The Women's Day," because 
 then the bridegroom's lad}^ friends are invited to a great feast. 
 On this day the bride and bridegroom again worship the tablets 
 of his ancestors, and also worship his living ancestors and the god 
 and goddess of the kitchen. 
 
 On the fourth day two sedan chairs are seut to the house b}" 
 the bride's parents, to fetch her and her husband to pay them a 
 visit ; but instead of going together, they go at different times ; 
 both of them during their visit w^orship the ancestral tablets of the 
 bride's family, as well as her living ancestors. 
 
 The first month after a wedding is given uj) to amusements, 
 just as English people generally spend it in taking their wedding 
 
158 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 tour, only tliere is this great difference, that in England the bride 
 and bridegroom enjoy themselves together, but in China they do 
 it apart. At the end of the month, there are grand entertainments 
 for all the relations, and then everybody settles down again. 
 
 The poor people's weddings are not done in such style as this. 
 Yery often a father will buy a w^ife for his son, when she is a very 
 little girl, sometimes almost a baby, because then she will not cost 
 much, and his wife can use her for a servant till she is sixteen ; 
 
 GOD OK THi: KITCHEN. 
 
 then a dress will be hired for her to be married in, and the feast 
 wdll be just as good as they can afford. 
 
 No Chinaman is allowed to marry a foreigner, nor one of the 
 ]\Ieautsi ; at least that is the law in China, but it is a very 
 common thing now for a Chinaman who goes to another country 
 to find himself a wife there, and to take her back to China with 
 him when he goes. 
 
 I It is considered "very unlucky if a boy dies after it has been 
 decided whom he is to marry, but before the wedding has taken 
 place; and so if such a thing happens, the girl's parents do their 
 best to keep it secret, and will not even let the girl herself find it 
 
THEIR WIVES. 159 
 
 out, if they can help it. As iu most cases she has never seen the 
 boy, or at all events not since they have been engaged, her 
 parents can easily manage to find another boy for her, and let 
 her think it is the same that she has been engaged to all along. ^ 
 
 Sometimes a wife will kill herself when her husband dies, by 
 poisoning or starving or drowning herself, — either because she 
 really loved her husband so much that she does not care to live 
 after he is dead, or because she does not know how to earn enough 
 money to keep herself, or else because her husband's relations 
 are unkind to her or want her to marry again. Often a wife will 
 kill herself in a public place, where she stands on a platform, 
 with a crowd of people watching her and thinking how good and 
 brave she is. If you have read "The Children of India," you 
 Avill remember that this used to be done in India as well as in 
 China, until the English Government put a stop to it ; but the 
 Emperor of China has never forbidden wives to kill themselves 
 when their husbands die. Are you not glad your mother is not 
 a Chinese lady, but an English one ? Yet it is not the country 
 that makes the difference. I do not believe it would be any nicer 
 in England than it is in China, if it were not that in England 
 we have the Bible, and the true God is known and worshipped. 
 And if only the Bible were read and believed all over China, the 
 Chinese women would be just as happy and just as well treated 
 as the Enghsh ones. 
 
 The Chinese ladies have a little more to do with their time 
 than the ladies in India have, as they are taught embroidery, 
 music, and painting on silk; in Ningpo nearly all the women, 
 both rich and poor, spend most of their time iu spinning silk. 
 Then some of the women spend a great many hours every day in 
 painting their faces, doing their hair, and binding their feet. In 
 some parts of China, however, the ladies only do their hair once 
 in two or three weeks, and so that it shall not get rough when 
 they go to bed, they have pillows made to fit into their necks. 
 
i6o THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 There is very little of what we call education among the 
 women of China. In some parts not one in ten thousand is able 
 to read, wdiile in others sixty or seventy in a hundred can read ; 
 but being able to read often means only knowing a few words of 
 one book. The w^omen in Canton are better educated than in 
 other parts of China ; they learn chiefly out of two volumes, called 
 " The Girls' Four Books," which tell them how they are to behave 
 to their parents, their husbands, and their cliildren. 
 
 It is against the rules of politeness in China for any man to 
 speak to a woman, even a poor woman, unless he knows her well, 
 so that the gentlemen missionaries cannot talk to them, because 
 it would be thought so very improper, and w^ould make the 
 husbands so angry. You see then that lady missionaries are 
 wanted in China even more than in India ; but where are the 
 missionaries, and where is the money to send them ? Do you 
 not think that if you were first to pray about it, and then to tell 
 all the grown-up ladies you know about the poor Chinese women, 
 one of them might say, she would go herself and perhaps another 
 might say, "Well, it would not be right for me to go, because I 
 am wanted at home, but I have some money to spare, so- 1 will 
 pay for some one else to go instead of me " ? Then these would 
 be your own missionaries — yours and God's ; wouldn't you be a 
 happy little boy or girl, almost as happy, perhaps quite, as if you 
 were a man or w^omau and could be a missionary yourself ? 
 
 Women are more respected in China than in India, and the 
 older they are the more politely they are treated. Generally 
 the women have their meals with the men, if there is no one in 
 the house excej^t their own families ; but if there are any visitors, 
 the women eat in one room and the men in another. If a family 
 are sitting together, and a man of another family comes into the 
 room, all the women are expected to get up and go away. The 
 laws about this are much stricter in some parts than in others. A 
 foreign gentleman ^s'as once driven out of a Chinese village by 
 
THEIR WIVES. i6i 
 
 the mob, because lie Lad asked a woman who was standing in 
 the road the way to the next town. 
 
 In spite of this, however, the poorer women in China are 
 expected to do all the work. A horse and a donkey and a woman 
 ma}" all be seen yoked to the same plough, while the man only 
 guides it, but Chinamen think this is quite natural and proper, 
 not at all disrespectful. The Christian religion, so far as I 
 know, is the only one which teaches that women ought to be 
 treated as well as men, and even better. "In Christ Jesus," we 
 are taught, " there is neither male nor female" ( ), 
 
 and men are told that they should honour their wives, because 
 women are not so strong as men ( ). These poor 
 
 Chinese women must be told of Jesus and His religion, if ever their 
 lives are to be made holy, happy, and useful. Will any of you go 
 and tell them, or pray and work for others to go ? 
 
 
 n 
 
CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THEIE CHILDEEN. 
 
 T last we have got to them ! We have been a very long 
 time about it, have we not ? But you will be able now 
 to understand exactly the sort of world they are born 
 into, so I shall only have to tell you what happens to 
 them, after they have come into it. 
 
 Little boys are longed for and cared for even more 
 in China than in India, if that is possible. There is wonderful 
 rejoicing in a Chinese house when a little boy is born in it, but 
 little girls are thought nothing of at all, and have a \erj bad time, 
 even worse than in India. 
 
 In many families the girls have not even any names of then 
 OAvn, but are called number 1, number 2, number 3, and so 
 on. When a Chinese girl marries, she is called Mr. So-and-so's 
 wife, and as soon as she has a little boy, she is called Mr. So-and- 
 so's mother. 
 
 You will understand how sorrowful a httle Chinese girl's life 
 is, when I tell you that in some places, for three days after she is 
 born, she is left to lie on some rags on the floor, to show how little 
 care will be taken of her as long as she lives. 
 
 — Some very funny things are done to a Chinese baby that you 
 will like to hear about. When it is three days old, it is washed 
 with charmed water to make it lucky ; in this water there are 
 pepper, dates, walnuts, soap, chips of acacia trees, and other 
 things ; it is sui)posed to wash off the baby's outside skin. Next 
 
THEIR CHILDREN. 
 
 i6- 
 
 it is washed iu some more water, in which have been put some 
 cash, chestnuts, dates, and silver ; this washing is intended to 
 make sure that the baby shall be rich when it is grown up ; the 
 things in the water are given for a present to the nurse. Then a 
 large plaster is put on the baby, made of pitch and a plant that 
 we call mugwort ; this plaster is meant to prevent its having 
 any aches and j)ains. After this, its skin is smeared with the 
 white of Qgg., to give it a good complexion, and then it is beaten 
 on the hips with an onion to make it clever. It would be a 
 
 SHAVING CHILD S HEAD WHEN A MONTH ULD. 
 
 wonderful child if all these things did what they are supposed to 
 do, but I am afraid they do not always. 
 
 About the same time that all this happens, another thing is 
 done, called "Binding the wrists;" there are different ways of 
 doing it. Some children have a few old cash tied round each of 
 their wrists with a piece of red cord; some have a red string 
 without any cash, and others have silver toys tied to their wrists 
 as well as cash. The same piece of string is tied to both wrists, 
 but as it is about two feet long it leaves a long- piece between 
 them, so that the baby's hands do not feel as if they were tied 
 together. This string is sometimes worn till the child is fourteen 
 days old, and sometimes for several months.- It is supposed to be 
 
1 64 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 very useful, for the wrists are tied to keep the child from being 
 naughty afterwards, and from being frightened and throwing its 
 arms about ; the cash are to keep away evil spiiits, and the toys 
 to make it a happy child. 
 
 When the baby is a month old, it has all its hair shaved off, 
 generally by a woman who has some sons of her own ; you see 
 women with sons are allowed to do a great many things that no 
 woman without sons may do. If the baby is a boy, his relations and 
 friends are invited to a feast the day his head is shaved, and most 
 of them bring him a present ; in some parts of the country, one 
 of the presents is always a silver plate, on which is engraved "Long 
 life, honours, and hajDpiness." On this day the baby gets its name, 
 but it does not keep it all its life, so this first name is called the 
 milk-name. A girl is generally called by her milk-name till she 
 is married, but a boy gets a new name the first day he goes to 
 school. The Chinese always put the surname first instead of last, 
 just as you sometimes see them written in England in lists of 
 subscriptions. 
 
 That reminds me of another thing the Chinese do backwards, 
 only really I think in this their way is forwards, and ours is back- 
 wards. In writing the address on a letter, instead of putting 
 
 Master John TnoMrsoN, 
 36, Broad Street, 
 Liverpool, 
 England, 
 they would put 
 
 England, 
 Liverpool, 
 Broad Street, No. 36, 
 Thompson, Mastee John. 
 
 Now that is more sensible, because the first postman that had 
 
THEIR CHILDREN. 165 
 
 to do with the letter would see England first, so he would seud it 
 to England. The next postman would see Liverpool, so he would 
 send it to Liverpool. The next would see Broad Street, so he 
 would give it to the postman who goes to Broad Street, and when 
 it got to No. 36 Master John Thompson would soon find out 
 that it was for him ; so I think the Chinese way of addressing 
 letters is hetter than ours. 
 
 For the first year after it is born, it is thought dangerous to 
 put a baby into water, so it does not have a nice bath every day, 
 Hke your baby brothers and sisters do ; it only has its face and 
 hands wiped with a damp cloth ; the rest of its little body is left 
 dirty; that is not nice, is it ? Its head is shaved very often, to 
 make the hair grow fast, and when it is an inch or two long, it is 
 plaited into a tiny tail on the top of the head with a bit of silk or 
 cord tied to it to make it a little longer, and the baby's cap is 
 made with a little hole in the top for its tail to come through ; 
 some babies have two tails, some only one. Over the cap is a stiff 
 band of silk or velvet, embroidered with smart colours and trimmed 
 with little bells, and very often there is in the front a small image 
 of an idol to take care of the baby. 
 
 Baby-clothes are never white ; if the parents are poor, the 
 clothes are of blue cotton. They wear a long petticoat, open 
 behind, and a shorter dress over it, with a high neck and long 
 sleeves. Scarlet, green, and purple, are the colours that the 
 Chinese mothers like best to trim their baby-clothes with. In 
 very cold weather, these clothes '^re padded, to keep the babies 
 warm. In hot weather, the very poorest Chinese children hardly 
 wear anything at all, sometimes only a chain round their necks, 
 called a Long-Life Ring, made of silver or wire, which is supposed 
 to keep them from dying. If they get too big or are too respectable 
 to go without clothes, they wear small loose cotton trousers in the 
 hot weather, and often a little dress without sleeves over these. 
 
 One thing that you will think very funny about Chinese babies' 
 
i66 
 
 THE CELESJIALS. 
 
 is, t"hat they never get any kisses. Instead of kissing them, their 
 mothers smell their faces, and instead of saying what darlings they 
 are, they say how nice they smell. In some parts, instead of being 
 kissed they are pinched on their cheeks, but not hard enough to 
 hurt them. 
 
 A great many of these things that I have told you about are 
 
 ^■1^_2^^4^^ 
 
 MANNER OF CAnHYINO CHILDREN IN CANTON. 
 
 often only done for baby-boys, but not for girls. The most terrible 
 thing about little girls in China is, that great numbers of them are 
 killed as soon as they are born, because nobody wants them, and 
 even their fathers and mothers would rather kill them than have 
 to spend money on their food and clothes. More baby-girls are 
 killed in the southern provinces than in the northern, because 
 
THEIR CHILDREN. 167 
 
 there are more poor people iu the south tliau iu the north. They 
 are generally killed by being thrown into a tub of water, or a stream, 
 with something tied to them to make them sink, just as people in 
 England drown little kittens ; or else they are burned alive, which 
 is much more cruel; it is generally their fathers who kiU them. In 
 some parts of China even rich people kill their little girls, when 
 they have as many as they care to keep. This is the reason why 
 in some places there are so many more boys than girls. 
 
 There was one Chinese father, a blacksmith, who had two 
 little daughters one after the other, who were both taken ill when 
 they were quite little, and both died. By-and-bye a third little 
 girl was born, and the father and mother made up their minds that 
 it must be the same spirit that was in the other two babies, who 
 had come back in the third, and that it must be a wicked spirit, 
 as both the other babies had died. So the father collected a great 
 pile of wood, and made a big fire on his forge, and then put his 
 own little baby on the top, and stood by and watched it till it was 
 burnt to a cinder ; then he tied a stone to it, and threw it into a 
 canal. 
 
 There was another little baby girl, whose mother did not want 
 her, just because she was a girl and not a boy ; so she left her on 
 the floor all night, and took no notice of her. In the morning the 
 father came into the room, and when he saw the baby, he went to 
 fetch some water to drown it ; but while he was gone, a poor 
 woman came in, and saw what was going to happen ; so when the 
 father came back, she asked him not to kill the baby for a little 
 while, and then she went away to a lady missionary, who she knew 
 was very fond of children, and told her about it. The lady came 
 directly and asked the father to give the baby to her, instead of 
 drowning it, which he was quite ready to do, as he only wanted to 
 get rid of it. 80 the lady took it "to her own house, and fed it and 
 dressed it, and took care of it, but it very soon died. A little 
 while after, the same woman came to the lady with another story 
 
1 68 . THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 about a father aud mother who wanted to sell their little gui, and 
 who meant, if nobody would buy her, to take her to some hills, and 
 leave her there to be eaten by wild dogs. This time, instead of 
 taking the baby to her own house, the lady said she would pay the 
 woman if she would nurse the baby for her ; so she did, and this 
 one did not die. 
 
 Another father, as soon as he found he had a little girl, laid 
 her on the ground and covered her over with a large dish, and 
 left her there to cry till she was smothered and died. 
 
 There are a great many dead children to be seen in China, 
 besides those who have been killed. Sometimes they are wrapped 
 up in mats and thrown into the river, or outside the walls of 
 cities ; sometimes they are hung from branches of trees, and 
 sometimes thrown into a baby-house — that is, a small building 
 with a hole in the side, built on purpose to put dead babies in. 
 
 The reason of this custom is a very strange one. When a 
 baby dies, it is supposed that its father or grandfather had not 
 paid his debts, and that the man to whom the money was owing 
 had died, and his spirit had come back in the baby to trouble the 
 family who had not paid him, by giving the care and expense of 
 a sick baby to nurse ; and that after doing this the spirit had gone 
 back home, leaviiDg the dead baby behind. So though the baby's 
 friends may take great care of it while it is ill, not being sure it 
 is an enemy, directty it is dead it is taken out of the house, 
 without a coifin, and thrown away. As it is carried out, the 
 house is swept, crackers are fired and gongs are beaten to frighten 
 the spirit, and keep it from coming back. 
 
 Some fathers and mothers, who do not want to kill their 
 little girls aud yet do not care to keep them, sell them to other 
 fathers and mothers to be mves for their sons. They are generally 
 sold when they are between three and ten years old, and live with 
 the people who buy them as if they were their children. The 
 price of a little girl is generally eight shillings for every year she 
 
THEIR CHILDREN. 169 
 
 has lived, if she is vevij Httle, but if she is old enough to work 
 she will he more expensive. If a little girl has poor parents and 
 lives with them till she is married, they exp%ct her husband's 
 parents to pay them for having fed her and clothed her so long, 
 so that really parents may be said to buy wives for their sons. 
 
 _A Chinese child is not generally allowed to sit on a chair 
 till it is four months old; then it is supposed to need to be 
 taught how to sit ; this is done by covering the seat with soft 
 candy, so that the child sticks to it. I do not know whether 
 this is done all over China ; most likely not, but it is done in the 
 province of Fukien. 
 
 When the child is old enough to eat, it has boiled rice in 
 a basin and eats it with a spoon ; when it is three or four years 
 old, it begins to eat with chopsticks. 
 
 When a boy is about three months old, he has several things 
 placed in front of him — a pair of scales, a pair of shears, a 
 measure, a mirror, a pencil, some ink, paper, books, and other 
 things, and from what he first touches people say what he is going 
 to be when he grows up. If he puts his hand on a book or a pen, 
 they say he wiU be a great scholar ; if he touches the scales, they 
 suppose he will get rich in business ; and so on with the other 
 things. 
 
 The very first thing a child is taught, is to worship idols 
 and the spirits of its dead relations, by moving its hands up and 
 down a few times. There is one goddess, called " Mother,'"' who 
 is supposed to take particular care of children till they are sixteen 
 years old; her birthday is kept on the fifteenth day of the first 
 month ; she is worshipped \r^ women all over China. 
 
 Children are taught to work almost as soon as they can 
 walk, and to work hard too, so that they are much too grave for 
 children —more like little men and women. Sometimes when a 
 visitor comes to a house, he asks to see the little boys ; then they 
 are sent for, and as soon as they come into the room, they kneel 
 
lyo THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 down before the visitor, and knock their heads on the floor 
 several times, and then they get up and stand facing him, but 
 some distance off. All this is considered respectful, and very 
 great care is taken to teach Chinese children how to behave. 
 
 They have very few games or toys to play with when they 
 are little, but as soon as they go to school, they are told that 
 they must hehave like gentlemen, that they must not run and 
 jump, but walk soberly, and obey their teachers ; so it is not very 
 strange that they soon begin to copy men in bad things, and 
 learn to gamble with cards and dominoes, and anything that 
 can be gambled with. For the Chinese are terrible gamblers ; 
 if they have nothing else left, they will "even gamble with their 
 wives and their children, and then themselves, promising that if 
 the men they are 'playing with should be the winners, they will 
 give themselves to be their slaves ! 
 
 Still cards and dominoes are not the only toys that boys and 
 men play with, though I do not think women and girls play with 
 anything else. The Chinese are the best makers and flyers of 
 kites in the world. They make them of all shapes, and so cleverly 
 that at a very little distance you could not tell the difference 
 between a real bird and a kite in the shape of a bird. They use 
 cords to fly them with, put through a round hole in such a way that 
 while they are in the air they make a noise like humming-tops. 
 
 The}^ I)lay several games with shuttlecocks too, but instead 
 of using a battledore they use their feet. One way of playing is 
 by kicking the shuttlecock behind them with the sole of the foot, 
 and then turning round so quickly that they can kick it again 
 before it drops ; that must be rather difficult, I think. Just go 
 out in the garden and try, if it doesn't rain, and see if you can 
 do it. They can keep up a shuttlecock in another way too for 
 as many as a hundred, or even two hundred kicks, by kicking 
 first with one foot and then with the other, now in front and 
 now behind. 
 
THEIR CHILDREN. \ii 
 
 They play at tip-cat too, and snobs or five-stones, and mud- 
 rubbing. Now, you cannot guess what that is. Five boys play 
 together ; one of them stoops down, and under his long dress 
 rubs one finger in the mud ; then the other four boys guess which 
 finger it was, but the one that guesses right loses instead of 
 canning, and has to drum gently with his fists on the backs of 
 the other four, which makes what they think a very nice feeling. 
 I expect you would think that rather poor fun. Would you like 
 a Chinese cricket-match any better, I wonder ? Not if you care 
 very much for English cricket matches. In a Chinese cricket- 
 match only two can play at once, and this is how it is fought. 
 The boys have a small bamboo tube, open at both ends, and each 
 has a stock of live crickets. One boy puts his cricket into the 
 tube at one end, and the other boy puts his in at the other, head 
 first. The crickets run up the tube and meet in the middle, and 
 then they fight. The ends of the tube are kept blocked up until 
 one cricket runs away, and as there is not room for them to pass 
 each other, the one that runs back to the end of the tube is the 
 beaten one, and the boy to wdiom the other belonged has won 
 the game. 
 
 They play " Puss-in-the- corner " too, only they call it " Four 
 Corners," and at chess and puzzles ; and in the tea-shops and at 
 public entertainments there are jugglers, musicians. Punch and 
 Judy shows, and marionettes. 
 
 As long as their parents are alive Chinese sons and daughters 
 obey them in everything. A grown-up man must not think of 
 choosing for himself what trade he will follow, or what woman 
 he will marry ; his father and mother settle it all for him. He does 
 not keep his own wages either, nor even spend his own money 
 without their consent ; at least, this is the rule, but the parents 
 often ask the sons what they would like, and let them have their 
 own way in many things. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THEIE SCHOOLS. 
 
 CHINESE boy generally begins to learn to read when 
 
 j he is six or seven years old ; he goes to school when 
 
 he is ten, aud stays till he is fourteen or fifteen. There 
 
 is a very ancient law that every town and village must 
 
 have a school. In large towns there are night schools 
 
 for those who are at work in the day. 
 
 The schools open very early in the day, about seven o'clock, 
 
 and go on till four or five in the afternoon ; how would you like 
 
 such long hours as that ? 
 
 When a little boy begins to go to school, he also begins to 
 dress like a man, and to think himself very big indeed. The first 
 time he goes to school he takes with him two candles, three 
 sticks of incense, two pieces of paper money, worth about a half- 
 penny each, and three sheets of paper with pictures of clothes 
 on them. When he gets to the school he goes to the tablet of 
 Confucius, which stands in nearly every schoolroom in China, and 
 in front of this he lights his candles and burns his incense and 
 afterwards his paper, which he thinks will go to Confucius in the 
 form of money aud clothes. Then he bows down before the 
 schoolmaster four times. This is done, not only on first going to 
 school, but also on coming back after the holidays. 
 
 There is no propej' time allowed for dinner, but when the 
 master tells a boy he may go, he walks home and eats some rice 
 
THEIR SCHOOLS. 173 
 
 and comes back again directly ; Lis dinner only takes a very 
 few minutes to eat. 
 
 And what lessons does lie learn ? you will want to know. 
 The very first thing a Chinese boy learns (but then most of them 
 learn this before they go to school) is a few of the chief signs, 
 just as you begin with A, B, C. Most likely he will learn them 
 out of a book with pictures to show what the signs mean. Next 
 will come a little lesson in rhyme, which he will have to learn 
 by heart, and then he will begin a book called " The Three 
 Character Classic," which will also have to be learnt by heart. 
 This is the first little bit of the book put into English : — 
 
 " Wlien men are born their nature is good. Naturally men are 
 alike, but habit makes them differ ; if they are not taught, their 
 nature will change." That is very different from what we learn 
 out of the Bible, that men are born in sin ( ), and that 
 
 they cannot be good, unless they get good hearts ( ). 
 
 It takes a boy about two months to learn through this book 
 and most of that time will be spent in learning it and saying it. 
 The first hour at school in the morning is generally spent in 
 repeating the last lesson learned the day before ; then the boy 
 will learn another piece, and in the afternoon he will first repeat 
 what he learned in the morning, and then learn some more. 
 
 After the "Three Character Classic" comes the "Thousand 
 Character Classic," which was written for rather a funny reason. 
 A great mandarin in the reign of the Tsin Kings had ofi'ended 
 his sovereign and was going to be beheaded ; but the king sent 
 him word that he would forgive him, if he would write a good, 
 sensible book with a tliousand difierent signs in it, without ever 
 using the same sign more than once, — a very difficult task. The 
 man was so anxious not to be killed, that he set to work at once 
 and wrote the book, and the king was so pleased with it, that he 
 forgave the man, and let him be a mandarin again. 
 
 The next book to be learned is a veiy strange one for a 
 
174 
 
 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 school-book. I expect yon would think it wasting time to learn 
 ont of it, for there is nothing in it hut a list of Chinese surnames. 
 You remember I told you there are only about two hundred 
 
 
 CHINESE TEACHER. 
 
 different ones altogether. The most common surname of all is 
 
 Chang. 
 
 Now the boy is ready to begin " The Four Books " that I 
 told you about before, and I think you will understand without 
 my telling j^ou any more, what else he will have to do, if he means 
 
THEIR SCHOOLS. 175 
 
 to be a clever mau. Of course lie must learn to write, aud this 
 lie will be taught in a copy-book, but not like yours. I expect 
 you had a copy on the top line of your book, and you had to write 
 some more like it below with a pen or pencil ; but a Chinese boy 
 learns to write with a brush, and he writes on paper that he can 
 see through, with the copy underneath it, so that he writes over 
 the copy instead of below it ; he has very large signs to begin 
 with and smaller ones afterwards. When he can do this quite 
 neatly, he will have to do without the copy underneath ; instead 
 of it, there will only be a piece of paper, ruled in squares, and in 
 these squares he will have to make the signs from memory. 
 
 Instead of a slate, he has a board painted w^hite, and when he 
 has written his exercise and had it corrected, he washes it off. 
 
 So you see Chinese school-boys spend nearly all their time in 
 learning and repeating ; they do not even understand the meaning 
 of the words they learn, and the teacher never explains them till 
 the boys know the books right through. It must be rather dull 
 work learning like that. There are no lessons in geography 
 or arithmetic, languages, music or drawing, very little of the 
 history of China, and none of that of any other countr3^ 
 
 The lessons are all learned aloud, so think what a noisy j)lace 
 a Chinese schoolroom must be. The boys all stand round the 
 master at first wdth their books open ; he reads a few words, and 
 the boys repeat them with him till they know the names of all 
 the signs in the lesson ; then they go to then- places and shout 
 it, not all together, but each for himself, till they all know it ; I 
 think it would make your heads ache to sit with them for an hour. 
 
 When a boy knows his piece, he does what he calls " Backing 
 the Book," what you would call saying his lesson. Instead of 
 standing mtli his face to the teacher, he turns his back to him, 
 so that he shall not be able to see the book ; but shall I tell you 
 w^hat he does instead, if he can manage it ? He agrees with 
 another boy that he will hold bis book so that the other can see 
 
176 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 tlie lesson he is sayiug, on condition that the other boy will do 
 the same for him, so there is plenty of cheating in Chinese schools. 
 
 The schools in China are generally small ; there are not often 
 more than thirty boys in one school. They have no playground, 
 and what you would think still worse, I expect, hardly any 
 holidays. There is no weekly day of rest either, so they just 
 go on at school, day after day, seven days in every week, only on 
 a great festival day they get a holiday, and they have a few weeks 
 when the New Year begins, that is all. Now, if you are an 
 English school-boy and think you have a hard time of it, and 
 are a little inclined to grumble sometimes, because the lessons are 
 hard, and the master is strict, and the holidays are not half long 
 enough, just think how much better off you are than a Chinese 
 schoolboy, and instead of grumbling again, work as hard as ever 
 you can, and take as much pains to be a clever boy, as the Chinese 
 scholars generally do. 
 
 A few very good directions are given to boys when they go 
 to school. They are told not to say things with their mouths, while 
 their minds are thinking of something else, and not to be satisfied 
 with half understanding a thing, but to ask that it may be 
 explained. There is very little punishing in Chinese schools : 
 instead of punishing the boys for being naughty, the masters 
 praise them for being good, and try to persuade them to be better 
 still. I think that is how God likes }li8 scholars to work, not 
 because they are afraid of being punished if they do badly, but 
 because they know He will be pleased if they do well, and the 
 very happiest thing in the world is to please God. 
 
 If a boy will not be persuaded, but keeps on being naughty, 
 he is made to stay on his knees before his seat, or else at the 
 door, till a stick of incense, which he holds in his hand, has burned 
 down to a certain point. Whipping is not tried until everything 
 else has failed. Sometimes the master will strike a boy's head 
 with his knuckles; if that does no good, he beats his hands and 
 
THEIR SCHOOLS. 177 
 
 his back with a piece of wood ; if the bo}^ is still naughty, the 
 master lays hiin across his knees, and beats him with a bamboo. 
 Another punishment is to make a boy hold a vessel quite full of 
 water on his head, and whip him if he spills any. 
 
 There are plenty of children's books in China ; most of them 
 are full of stories of boys who studied hard and became great 
 men, or of loving sons who got on well in life, because they were 
 good to their parents. 
 
 And what about the girls ? In a very few places there are 
 schools for girls, taught by female teachers ; but generally girls are 
 not sent to school at all, and even the missionaries' wives often 
 have to pay them to come to their schools, because the mothers 
 say they cannot afford to do without the children's work, and 
 the fathers say that girls are hard enough to manage when they 
 are not taught, and would be still worse if they were. Sometimes, 
 however, the richer parents will let their daughters be taught at 
 home, especially if they have a private teacher for their sons, 
 instead of sending them to school ; then they will let the girls 
 study with the boys till they are thirteen or fourteen years old. 
 The old books say that women and girls ought only to learn to 
 behave well and to look after the house, but that they should 
 never open a book, or if they forget that they are only girls and 
 open one, the}' must not read it, but shut it up directly. Are 
 you not sorry for the poor little girls ? and would you not like 
 to do something for them ? 
 
 12 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THEIR ILLXESSE8 AND THEIE DOCTORS. 
 
 HINESE doctors are very strange people, you will 
 think, and they do very strange things to their patients, 
 because they have such strange thoughts about sick- 
 ness. They believe it is always caused by the anger 
 of a god or else of a spirit ; so when anyone is taken 
 ill, the first thing his friends do is to try to find out 
 which of these two causes has made him ill. If they think it is 
 a god who has done it, they offer sacrifices, to j^ersuade him to 
 make the sick man well again. If they think it is an evil spirit, 
 they send for a priest to drive it out. 
 
 Diseases that seem to settle in a place — epidemics we call 
 them — are said to be arranged by five gods, called " The Five 
 Emperors." A common way of frightening a child is to tell it 
 that the Five Emperors will catch it ; there are a great many 
 temples where j)eople go to pray and sacrifice to these gods 
 
 AVheu any member of a family begins to be ill, his relations 
 sacrifice before the ancestral tablets, in case it may be one of 
 his dead relations who is troubling him. If he does not get 
 better after this, they send for a priest, to tell them whether it 
 is the spirit of one of his relations who is making him ill, or a 
 beggar spirit, who is trying this way of getting food and clothes. 
 If the priest says it is a relation's spirit, they put a great deal of 
 money before the ancestral tablets ; if he says it is a beggar spirit, 
 they burn paper money outside the street door. 
 
THEIR ILLNESSES AND THEIR DOCTORS. 179 
 
 Every person is supposed to have three souls, one in his head, 
 one in his chest, and one in his feet, so if a sick man gets uncon- 
 scious, or his feet grow cohl, the reason is said to be that one ot 
 his souls has left the body, or has been caught by a wandering 
 spirit, so one of his relations goes outside the door with a lantern 
 and a dress belonging to the sick man, and calls to the spirit to 
 come back. 
 
 There are no good Chinese doctors. In England, you know, 
 it takes a gentleman a long time and a great deal of trouble to 
 be a doctor, and he will have to pass a great many examinations 
 before he may order medicine for sick people ; but if a Chinaman 
 wants to be a doctor, he can do it without learning anything, and 
 many Chinese doctors keep a shop where they sell medicines — 
 such strange medicines, too : tigers' bones, goats'[horns and blood, 
 boiled and ground and made into cakes, and other things just as 
 funny. Many of the medicines are tied up in little packets, only 
 holding one dose each, and on the outside is written what disease 
 they wall cure. 
 
 Another idea is that for a disease in the upper part of the 
 body, such as a headache or stiff neck, the proper medicine to 
 take is the top part of a plant ; for a disease in the middle part 
 of the body, such as side-ache or a pain in the back, a Chinese 
 doctor would give the middle part of a plant ; while for corns or 
 chilblains on the feet, he would give the root of the plant — that 
 is an easy way of doctoring, is it not ? However, in spite of 
 these strange notions, Chinese doctors generally know a good 
 deal about herbs, so that they are often able to cure small diseases 
 very quickly, and even foreigners go to ask their advice if they 
 are only poorly, and not seriously ill. They tliiuk a great deal 
 of sleep too, and say that ten nights of sleep will not make up 
 for one night of lying awake. 
 
 But they know nothing about the insides of people's l)odies, 
 because they would never thiuk of cutting up a dead man, or 
 
i8o THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 even a dead animal, to see liow they are made ; and if a man had 
 a very bad leg, he would much rather die and keep his leg on, than 
 have it taken off and keep alive, because he would expect that if 
 he died with only one leg, he would only have one in the next 
 world, so few Chinamen would ever think of letting an}^ part of 
 their body be cut off, however much diseased it was. People who 
 belong to the Buddhist religion will sometimes burn their fingers, 
 and even their arms and legs, to give them to Buddha, but then 
 they expect a great reward for this. In places where Europeans 
 are known, some of the less bigoted Chinese are beginning now to 
 consent to have operations performed on them, if they cannot be 
 kept alive without. 
 
 The Chinese suffer very much from sores, partly because they 
 are so dirty ; and the doctors, instead of trying to make them 
 better, very often try to make them worse, so that they shall have 
 them as patients for a long time and get more money ; then when 
 they are as bad as the}^ can be, they tr}^ to cure them, but as you 
 will easily imagine, it is often too late then. If a sore breaks, a 
 doctor will put on what he calls a plaster, really a p)atch of stuff 
 like pitch, which often makes the sore much worse than it was 
 before. 
 
 There are a great many blind people in China, chiefly because 
 the doctors do not know how to cure weak or sore eyes. I have 
 read of a little girl who went to a doctor to see if he could make 
 her eyes better when they were sore, and what do you think he 
 did to her ? He got a blunt needle, and picked her j^oor little eye 
 with it, till he had made a wound a quarter of an inch long ; so it 
 is no wonder Chinese people go blind, is it? Blind people are 
 supposed to be able to see things that nobody else can see, and to 
 tell other people things that are going to happen, so when children 
 are born blind, or go blind afterwards, they are sent to older blind 
 people, who teach them how to tell fortunes. It takes them a long 
 time to learn — till they are thirty years old, and then they can 
 
THEIR ILLNESSES AND THEIR DOCTORS. i8t 
 
 earn tlieii* own living by fortuue-telling. You will be pleased to 
 hear that the Bible Society have printed parts of the New Testa- 
 ment in raised type, on purpose for the blind people in China to 
 read ; so if only they get this given to them, they can find out 
 really how to make their own fortunes and how to teach other 
 people to make theirs, by laying up for themselves/' treasure in 
 Heaven" ( ). How much have you goi there, 
 
 I wonder ? Is your fortune made yet ? Mine is. If yours is all 
 " laid up " for you, where no one can ever get at it, to take it from 
 you, then you can give all your thought and care to other people 
 who have no fortune, except " where moth and rust doth corrupt 
 and where thieves break through and steal" ( ). 
 
 Perhaps if you tell them about your fortune, they will lay one up 
 for themselves in the same place where yours is. -^_^ 
 
 Another strange idea in China about sickness is, that there I 
 are five elements in every person's body — gold (or metal), wood / 
 (or vegetable), water, fire, and earth, and that as long as tJiere / 
 is just as much as there ought to be of each of the five, peoj^le will/ 
 be quite well, but that if there is too much of either, there will be 
 sickness. A Chinese gentleman once said to an English one, " I 
 used to be so sorry when I saw how much roast meat you ate, but 
 now I see why it does not hurt you — you drink so much cold 
 water, and that puts the fire out." 
 
 There is a law in China that if a doctor hurts a man so much 
 that he dies, either with instruments or medicines, he must not be 
 allowed to be a doctor any longer, and that if he kills his patient 
 on purpose, he must be beheaded. 
 
 If a Chinese man or woman dies, there are a great many 
 strange things to be done, but they are generally left undone when 
 children die, or men and women who are not married. 
 
 As soon as it is seen that the sick person is really dead, all 
 the people in the house begin to cry as loudly as they can. The] 
 spirit of the dead person is supposed to be in the dark, and not to 
 
1 82 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 be able to see the way it has to go, so some candles are lighted as 
 quickly as possible and put on a chair at the side of the bed ; a 
 cup of water is put outside the door, so that the spirit ma}^ have a 
 last drink if he is thirsty. Then a sedan chair, made of bamboo 
 and j)aper, is burnt, so that he may be able to ride to the spirit-world 
 instead of walking ; some paper men are burnt to be there to carry 
 him, and some wine and cakes are sent for their wages ; the food 
 is not burnt, but only offered up, as the idea is that sj)irits cannot 
 eat solid food, but that they feed on the essence or smell of it. It 
 is sup230sed to take a man forty-two days to get to the spirit- world, 
 and to find out that he has died, A suit of clothes is burnt next, 
 so that the spirit may look respectable when he arrives in the 
 spirit-world, and that the police there may treat him like a gentle- 
 man. A family will often spend nearly all their money in getting 
 a handsome coffin, to make the spirits believe that their relation 
 was a very grand man, and must be treated with great respect. 
 So much is thought of this, that a poor man will sometimes sell 
 himself to die instead of a rich one who has been condemned to 
 death, on condition that he may be dressed like a mandarin when 
 he dies. 
 
 Before a dead body is put into a coffin, it has a great many 
 grave-clothes put on it, sometimes as many as twenty-one gar- 
 ments, one over the other ; the best are made of red silk lined with 
 blue, and thickly padded. Then several pieces of cloth are wound 
 round to keep it all tight, and a mattress and pillow are put in, 
 so, as you would expect, the coffins have to be very large. They 
 are very carefully made too, and so heavy that it takes twelve or 
 sometimes twenty men to carry one. Peoj^le often have their 
 coffins made long before they die, and keep them either at the 
 undertaker's or in their own houses ; there are often several to be 
 seen in one bedroom, belonging to people wdio are alive ; they are 
 shown to visitors and are thought a great deal of ; a coffin made of 
 the best wood costs from twenty-five to sixt}^ pounds. It is con- 
 
THEIR ILLNESSES AND THEIR DOCTORS. 183 
 
 sidered a mark of great respect for a son to present liis father with 
 a coffin. The Chinese name for a coffin is ^' Long-Life Wood." 
 
 After the coffin-lid is nailed on, all the children of the dead 
 person, if there are any, go into the ancestral hall and place 
 there a chair, a table, a footstool, a pair of shoes, and a wooden 
 frame, on which is hung the pictm-e of the dead man. Incense 
 is kept burning on the table for seven weeks, and there are also 
 put on it a pair of candles, a pair of chop-sticks, a bowl to hold 
 rice, and a cup for wine. The table, chair, and picture are kept 
 in the room for forty-nine, sixty, or a hundred days ; some families 
 let them stay for three years. _ 
 
 The Chinese believe that the king of the spirit- world keeps 
 a little servant to show the sj^irits the way, so on the corner of 
 the table they put another pair of chop-sticks and a small bowl 
 of rice for the servant ; some money is burnt for him too, so that 
 he may not lead the spirit wrong. This money for the dead is 
 made of thin paper, cut into square pieces, with a patch of tin- 
 foil in the middle. Many of the Chinese women spend all their 
 time in making it ; some of the squares have gold in the middle' 
 instead of tin. A great deal of it is burnt after any one dies, so 
 that he may be able to bribe the officers in the spirit-world to 
 be kind to him, for the Chinese think that in the world of spirits! 
 things are very much like they are in this world, and you' 
 remember a great deal of bribery goes on in Chinese prisons 
 and courts of justice. 
 
 Three bowls of rice are offered for the dead man, to comfort 
 him before he starts on his journey. One of his three souls is 
 supposed to stay near the table, so early in the morning some 
 warm water is put there, for him to wash with if he likes, and 
 twice a day rice and vegetables are brought for him to eat. At 
 bed-time every one in the house wishes him good-night. If his 
 wife is alive, she is expected, in some parts of the countr}-, to 
 kneel for a day and a night at the head of the coffin. 
 
184 
 
 2HE CELESTIALS. 
 
 AXCESTRAL TABLET. 
 
 As long as the coffin stays in the house, which is often a 
 very long tnne, the dead man's sons sleep on some straw near 
 
THEIR ILLNESSES AND THEIR nV^TCTRS. 185 
 
 it, to keep him company through the night, and any visitors 
 who come to the house bow down before the picture, one of the 
 family alwa3^s worshipping with them. Some woman of the 
 family, hidden where no one can see her, cries bitterly wliile 
 this worship goes on. [ 
 
 Before the table is taken away, dishes of food, such as pork, 
 fowls, beans, rice, wine, and tea are placed on it, and the dead 
 man is supposed to know by this that for the future he will have 
 to cook his own food, for his friends do not intend to look after 
 him any longer, but they burn a great deal of paper money so 
 that he may be able to take care of himself. When the table 
 is taken away an ancestral tablet is put in its place. This is a 
 small, four-cornered piece of wood, higher than it is broad, on 
 which is written the name of the dead man, the date of his birth 
 and death; and sometimes his office. Every morning and night 
 the father of the family, or one of the sons, burns incense and 
 worships before this tablet, and twice every year an offering is 
 made before it of rice, candles, wine, money — everything that 
 the spirit could possibly want. 
 
 The Chinese believe that after five generations the spirit may 
 come back to the world in another body, so after that time they 
 do not worship the tablet. Some of the poor people are obliged 
 to bury their friends a few days after they die; this is looked 
 upon as a sign of the very greatest poverty, and is called '' Blood 
 Burial," because the dead person's blood is supposed not to be 
 dried up so soon. 
 
 In Pekin nobody is allowed to die in a bed, if it can be 
 helped, for fear the spirit should haunt it afterwards. 
 
 When a woman is put in her coffin, a great deal of jewellery 
 is put on her ; her bracelets are put by her side, but not on her 
 arms, for fear the spirit should use them as handcuffs for lier. 
 A mandarin never wears his necklace in his coffin, in case it should 
 be used as a chain to bind him. No fur is ever put on a dead 
 
1 86 THE CELESTIALS. 
 
 body either, for fear the dead person's spnit might make a mistake 
 and go into one of the animals from which tlie fm* was taken, 
 thinking it was tlie body that he belonged to. 
 
 There are a great many other forms to be gone through when 
 any one dies, some in one part of the country and some in another, 
 but I think I have told you quite enough to show you what a 
 dreary thing death is to the poor Chinese, and how much they need 
 to be taught of Him who " hath abolished death, and brought life 
 and immortality to light through the Gospel " ( ). 
 
 A funeral is never allowed to take place on an even day 
 of the month ; it is believed that if this were done, someone else 
 belonging to the family would die very soon. If a man is rich 
 enough, he will always be buried in his native place, even if he 
 died a long way from it. No graves are allowed in cities or 
 towns. 
 
 ( A Chinese funeral is very noisy. Gongs are beaten, and fire- 
 works are let off, as the j^rocession goes to the grave, while 
 servants scatter paper money along the road to keep the evil 
 spirits busy, so that they shall do no mischief. When the pro- 
 cession gets to the grave, it is often found that there are a great 
 many beggars sitting in it, who will not come out till they have 
 some money given to them ; they will not be satisfied with paper 
 money either, but will have real cash. 
 
 A great many paper things are burnt at the grave for the 
 dead man, — houses, clothes, furniture, servants, all kinds of things. 
 While they are being sacrificed, the tablet of the dead man stands 
 by the gi-ave ; the people all kneel down before it, and the eldest 
 son prays that the bones and flesh of his father may go into the 
 earth, but that his spirit may go into the tablet. After the fimeral, 
 the tablet is taken home and put into a niche that has been got 
 ready for it in the ancestral hall, where it stays for a long time, 
 in some places for three years, in others for five. Of the man's 
 other two spirits, one is supposed to stay in the body, and the 
 
THEIR ILLNESSES AND THEIR DOCTORS. 
 
 189 
 
 other to go to the spirit- world. If the family of the man is not 
 rich enough to have an ancestral hall, the tablet is put in the 
 best room of the house on a shelf. 
 
 All the visitors who go to a funeral help to bear the expense 
 of it. 
 
 You see there is no religious service at a funeral. Nobody- 
 knows anything about Jesus, who said, " I am the Resurrection 
 and the Life ; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet 
 shall he live " ( ). It is all darkness and uncer- 
 
 tainty and gloom, as death must always be to those who do not 
 know Jesus. Is death a gloomy thing to you ? If it is, I can 
 only say — Seek Jesus ; and when you have found Him, you 
 will know what those other words mean — " He that liveth and 
 beUeveth in me shall never die" ( ). 
 
PAET III. 
 THINGS THAT ABE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 CONFUCIAXISM. 
 
 HE religion of Chiaa is, in many ways, among the 
 strangest in the world. I said religion, but I did not 
 mean by that that there is only one religion in China ; 
 there are three chief religions, — Confucianism, Tanism, 
 and Buddhism, but one strange thing about them is that 
 many Chinese believe more or less in all three, and 
 belong to each as much as to the others, though there are a few 
 who believe in one and not in any other. The learned men and 
 the mandarins like Confucianism best, while the poor, ignorant 
 people prefer the other two. 
 
 Confucianism, the oldest religion in China, can hardly be 
 called a religion at all, as it only teaches about man, and about 
 this life ; not about God, nor about what will happen to men after 
 death. Buddhism partly makes up for this, as it does teach about 
 another world, and how it may be prepared for, but it never 
 teaches that God has anything to do with men while they are in 
 this world ; Tauism teaches that the earth and the sea and the 
 sky are all full of gods who care for men while they are alive ; so 
 you can see how a Chinaman may be a Confucianist, a Buddhist, 
 and a Tauist all at once, worshipping the gods whose help he 
 feels he most needs. All his prayers, however, will be selfish, 
 asking for the things he wants; he will never ask to be made 
 holy, or to have his sins forgiven ; all he thiuks about is getting 
 on well in this world. 
 
 13 
 
194 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 Yet the Cliinese believe that their souls will live for ever, 
 and that after death there will be rewards for sorae and punish- 
 ment for others. Kewards they say are of two kinds, — first to be 
 saved fi-om punishment, and secondly, to be made greater and 
 richer the next time they are born into the world, than they were 
 before ; but as in this world, so in the next, they think that they 
 can escape punishment by bribing the officers, so the fear of what 
 they may have to suffer in the next world has very little, if any, 
 power to keep them from doing wrong in this one. They think 
 too that they can save money in this world and get it in the next ; 
 they do not know that God has taught ns, "We brought nothing 
 into this world, neither may we carry anything out " ( ). 
 
 Nobody knows how many temples there are in China. If we 
 reckon by the number to be found in one city, Ningpo, we may 
 suppose that there are in China as many as three hundred thou- 
 sand, built for the worship of men who liave become gods, of whom 
 about thirty thousand different ones are worshipped ; there are 
 many temples in different places for the same idol, that is why 
 there are more temples than gods. Besides these, there are the 
 temples of the Tauist and Buddhist idols, of which there are 
 about three hundred thousand more, and temples for the worship 
 of ancestors, of which there are many more than of any other sort ; 
 so that we may safely say there are about a million temples in 
 China, costing altogether about two hundred million pounds, be- 
 sides all that is spent for sacrifices, and in mending the temples. 
 
 Buddhist sacrifices are generally vegetables ; the others are 
 fowls, fish, or pork ; the food used in sacrifices is afterwards eaten 
 by the people who offered them. The Chinese never think, in 
 offering sacrifices, that they are giving something else instead of 
 themselves, or that the sacrifices have anything to do with sin or 
 forgiveness ; they only give them as presents to the gods or to 
 then- dead fidends. 
 
 One thing in which the Chinese religion is better than the 
 
CONFUCIANISM. 1 9 5 
 
 Hiutlii is, that there are no wicked gods ; if a man is made a 
 god, it is a reward for his goodness, so if the people do not 
 love their gods, at least they respect them. 
 But now I must tell you ahout 
 
 Confucius, 
 
 the founder of the religion called Confucianism. He was horn 
 B.C. 551, in the Province of Shantung, when his father w^as more 
 than seventy years old. He was of royal descent, and his ances- 
 tors can he traced hack for 2,700 years before Christ. His father 
 died before he was three years old, when his mother was left 
 very poor. We know very little of what happened to Confucius 
 while he was little, but he tells us himself that by the time he 
 was fifteen years old he had made up his mind to be learned 
 and clever. He married when he was about nineteen, and the 
 next year he had a little boy, whom he named Li, and v/ho 
 was his only son. At this time his business was to take charge 
 of some stores of grain ; afterwards he looked after some public 
 fields. 
 
 When he was nearly twenty-thre6, he began to teach, not 
 little boys, but grown-up men, who found out that he was very 
 wise and learned, and came to ask him questions. He did not 
 make them pay him much for teaching them, but he would only 
 help those who reahy wanted to learn. In this same year, 
 B.C. 528, his mother died, and this was a great trouble to him, 
 for he loved her very much. He had his father's coffin dug up 
 out of his grave and carried, with his mother's coffin, to the place 
 where his ancestors had Hved, and there he buried them both 
 together, and his scholars raised a monument over the grave. 
 
 For the next ten years Confucius went on studying and 
 teaching. Then a great Chinese minister died, leaving orders that 
 his son should go to Confucius to be taught, so after this he 
 was much more famous, and richer too. He visited Pekiu, and 
 
196 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 there lie met Lfio-tsze, the founder of the Tauist religion. Then 
 he returned to his home and went on teaching, thousands of men 
 coming to learn from him ; they did not live with him, hut came 
 to him when they wanted advice. 
 
 In B.C. 500 Confucius was made the chief magistrate of the 
 town Chung-tu, and the people there hecame at once so orderly 
 and well-behaved, that a higher magistrate, the Marquis of Lu, 
 asked him whether the laws by which he governed this town 
 would not do for the whole State. Confucius said yes, so he 
 was raised at once to a higher post, that of Assistant Minister 
 of Crime ; but his power over the people was so great, that there 
 was no crime in the State, and no one to be punished, so of 
 course the State got very great, and all the ministers of the 
 States round it grew jealous, especially the Marquis of Chi, who 
 tried by presents to persuade the Marquis of Lu to separate from 
 Confucius. He succeeded in this, and Confucius soon left the 
 State, and travelled from one place to another for thirteen years 
 with some of his disciples, hoping to find a ruler somewhere 
 who would be wise enough to govern according to his advice, 
 but in vain. After suffering a great deal of want he came back 
 to Lu, where the Marquis received him very kindly. Confucius 
 did no more public work, but spent all his time in reading and 
 teaching. 
 
 One morning he got up very early, and with his staff walked 
 about outside his door, saying, "The great mountain must 
 crumble, tlie strong beam must break, and the wise man wither 
 away like a plant." After a little time he went into the house 
 and sat down. One of his disciples had heard what he had said, 
 and thought to himself, " If the great mountain crumbles, what 
 shall I lean on? I am afraid the master is going to be ill." Tlien 
 he too w^ent into the house, and Confucius told him a dream he 
 had had in the night, which he thought must mean that he was 
 going to die; and then he said, "There is no wise king, no 
 
CONFUCIANISM. 
 
 197 
 
 priuce in the kiugdom will make me his master, my time has 
 come to die; " and so it had, for he very soon went to hed, and 
 seven days after he died, in b.c. 477. His disciples gave him a 
 very grand funeral ; some of them built tents near his grave 
 and lived in them for three years. 
 
 After Confucius was dead, the Chinese began to find out how 
 wise he was, and to worship him. In a.d. 57 a law was passed 
 that sacrifices should be offered to him in all government colleges. 
 
 CONFUCIUS. 
 
 and now there is a temple to him in every large town in the 
 Empire. In these temples sacrifices are off"ered to Confucius in 
 spring and autumn. The emperor goes himself at these times 
 to the royal college at Pekin, and sacrifices to Confucius and his 
 four chief disciples. There are no images to Confucius, because 
 the Chinese say that if they made images of him it would be 
 treating him as if he were no better than any other god, so instead 
 of an image there is a tablet in the most public place in every 
 
198 T/I/A'GS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 temple, on which is written in gold letters, "The Great and Holy 
 Sage." 
 
 Confucius said himself that he did not make anew religion, hut 
 only passed on an old one, which he found out from the old hooks. 
 He taught a great many wise lessons to his disciples. He was 
 the first we know of who taught what we call " the Golden Eule." 
 The Lord Jesus said, *' Whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do unto you, even so do unto them " ( ). Confucius 
 
 never heard of the Bible, and lived five hundred years hefore 
 Jesus was horn into the world, yet one of his sayings was, " What 
 you do not want done to yourselves, do not do to others." But 
 after all, though the two rules sound very much alike, there is more 
 in what Jesus said than in what Confucius said, for Confucius 
 only said really, "Do not do an}^ harm to any one," hut Jesus 
 said, " Do good to every one," and there is that difference between 
 Confucianism and Christianity ; Confucianism tells people not to 
 do wrong, Christianity tells them to do right, and teaches them 
 too how to get the wrong forgiven, and how to get the power to 
 do right. Confucius could teach neither of these two things, for 
 he did not know them himself. 
 
 Confucius taught nothing at all about what happens to people 
 after death, except that their souls live on. 
 
 The teachings of Confucius are all found in the S-shu, or 
 "The Four Books," and the Wu-King or "The Five Classics." 
 The Four Books are : — 
 
 Geeat Leaeking, which contains eleven parts, of which 
 Part I. was written by Confucius ; the ten other parts are all 
 about Part I. 
 
 The Doctrine of the Mean, composed by a grandson of 
 Confucius. 
 
 The Sayings of Confucius, written by his disciples after his 
 death. 
 
 The Teachings of Mencius. 
 
CONFUCIANISM. 199 
 
 The Five Classics are : — 
 
 The Yi-KiN(i, or Book of Changes, which gives the Chinese 
 stoiy of the creation of the workl and of the changes which it says 
 are always taking place in Nature. 
 
 The Shu-King, the oldest book in China. This is not perfect, 
 as there are only fifty-eight pieces out of a hundred ; the rest were 
 destroyed in the great fire I told you about in the History chapter. 
 It is about the two great Emperors Yao and Shun, whose sayings 
 Confucius quotes as being patterns of perfection. 
 
 The Shih-Kixg, or Book of Odes, contains about a hundi-ed 
 sacred songs, chosen by Confucius ; every well-educated China- 
 man can repeat all the most famous ones. 
 
 The Ly-King, or Book of Eites, is full of laws about manners 
 and behaviour, and as the Chinese always act according to this 
 book, you can understand how it happens that their manners 
 to-day are just the same as they were two hundred years ago. 
 
 Chun-t-sien, or Spring and Autumn, gives the history of Con- 
 fucius' own time, written by himself. It is called " Spring and 
 Autumn" because the examples and teaching it gives are said to 
 be life-giving like spring, and its rebukes withering like autumn. 
 
 These nine books teach history, the laws of Grovernment, 
 biography, poetry, but hardly any religion, and yet they are the 
 great sacred books of the Chinese. 
 
 The chief things Confucius taught about, were what he called 
 the Five Eelations and the Five Virtues. The Five Eelations are 
 those between emperor and subject, father and son, liusband and 
 wife, elder and younger brother, friend and friend ; but you see 
 the highest relation of all, that between God and man, is left out 
 altogether. The five virtues are Benevolence, Eighteousness, 
 Propriety, Knowledge, and Faith, and this is what Confucius 
 meant by them. Benevolence — what you do not want done to 
 yourself, do not do to others. Eighteousness — that which your 
 conscience tells you ought to be done. Propriety — outward forms, 
 
2 00 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 behaviour to each other of men in different rauks. Knowledge — 
 learning of all kinds, but especialty the knowledge of men and 
 of yourself. Faith — truthfulness and trust in other people. 
 
 Confucius has had more power over the minds of men than 
 any other man who was not taught by God what he tauglit to 
 others, so it is a very good thing that he gave such wise rules as 
 he did. Like most heathen teachers, he did not think very highly 
 
 of women ; he thought they were worth about as much as slaves, 
 and were quite as hard to manage. 
 
 The Confucian priests are all chosen and paid by the govern- 
 ment. 
 
 The greatness and wealth of China is very greatly owing to 
 the people being guided by so wise a man as Confucius. This 
 makes one very great difficulty for the missionaries ; it is so hard 
 to persuade the Chinese that an}^ religion can be better than their 
 own. 
 
 Next to Confucius, the teacher most respected in China is 
 
CONFUCIANISM. 201 
 
 Mencius, who was born b.c. 371 and died b.c. 288. He taught 
 the same things as Confacius and wrote the Fourth Book. It is 
 said to have been his mother's teaching and care that made him 
 such a good man. As soon as he was old enough, she sent him 
 to school, and she herself stayed at home to earn a living for them 
 both b}' spinning. Her son did not get on very well at school, 
 60 she went to the schoolmaster and asked how it was. He told 
 her it was because the boy was lazy and would not learn, so she 
 went home and tore to pieces the silk she was spinning, partly 
 because she was angry, and partly because she thought it would 
 be a good way of teaching the boy a lesson. For of course he 
 wondered w^hy she was wasting her work, and asked her what she 
 meant by it ; she told him that if he did not take pains with his 
 lessons, all his time at school would be as useless as that which 
 she had spent in spinning her silk, and then destroying it. The 
 boy took the hint, and began to work hard, and became a very 
 wise man. 
 
 One da}^ he saw some animals being killed, and asked his 
 mother why it was done. She said, " To feed you ; " but after- 
 wards she wdshed she had not said this, for she thought, as 
 Mencius would most likely never eat any part of those particular 
 animals, she might be teaching him by her example to tell lies, 
 so she bought some of the meat and gave it to him, to make her 
 words true. The Chinese always hold her up as a pattern mother. 
 
 Mencius did not get much honour till after he had been dead 
 twelve hundred years ; then au Emperor built a temple to him in 
 the place wdiere he w^as buried, and after that had a niclie made 
 for him in the temples of Confucius. 
 
 One of the sayings in Mencius' book is the answer he gave, 
 when it was said that an unjust tax ought to be lightened — " This 
 is like a man wuo should steal his neighbour's goods, and on being 
 found fault with sliould say, ' I will steal a little less every montli, 
 and next year I will stop stealing.' If you know a thing to be 
 
202 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 unjust, give it up instantly." Let us who belong to Jesus follow 
 the counsel of Mencius. If the Lord shows us that anything 
 we have been doing is wrong, let us give it up altogether at once, 
 not a little bit at a time ; and do not let us stop to think about it, 
 for all the while we wait, it will get more and more difficult to 
 give it up ; it will be easier to let it go to-day than to-morrow, and 
 easier just this minute than it will be five minutes later ; let us 
 be all for Jesus, and always for Jesus. 
 
 f 
 
CHAPTEIi II. 
 
 BUDDHISM. 
 
 HIS religion did not have its beginning in Chiua, but 
 in India, tliougli now there are not nearly so many 
 Buddhists in India as in China. 
 
 The Indian story of the beginning of Buddhism is, 
 that about a thousand years before Christ a man named 
 Buddha tried to take away some of the power of the 
 Brahmins and also to make them better. He was of royal birth, 
 but chose to live very plainly. Many of the princes of India gave 
 up their belief in Brahminism and followed Buddha ; they gave up 
 caste too, which was one of the things Buddha did not bcheve in. 
 Very soon, as you would suppose, the Brahmins rose up against 
 the Buddhists, and each sect tried to put the other down ; in the 
 end the Brahmins got the best of it; and the Buddhists were 
 driven out of India. Buddhism was brought into China about 
 A.D. 65. The Chinese Emperor Ming-ty, when reading the books of 
 Confucius, C8me to someihing which he thought meant that about 
 this time a great prophet w^ould appear in the w^est, so he sent 
 some men to see if they could find or hear anything of him. 
 
 The Chinese were not the only people who at this time were 
 looking for a great king to appear ; if the messengers had only 
 gone a little further, they w^ould have heard about the " Teacher 
 come from God " who had come into the world sixtj" years 
 before. Who called Jesus by that name, and were do we 
 read it? ( ) 
 
204 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 When they got to India, asking as they went whether anyone 
 could tell them wdiere to find this prophet, they met some 
 Buddhists, who told them that their Buddha must he the prophet 
 they were looking for, so they went hack to their own country 
 and took some Buddhists with them to teach their religion. The 
 Chinese say that in the country of the west (that is, India) Buddha 
 was hotli a priest and king, with a queen whom he made into a 
 goddess ; that he was obliged to leave his throne, and live in 
 secret for twelve years, in which time he taught about the trans- 
 migration of souls ; that is, about the soul of man passing, wdien 
 his body dies, either into an animal, or into another man; this 
 Buddlia would find in the Hindu books ; afterwards, some of the 
 Chinese stories say, he came back to his throne, and died when 
 he was a very old man, and was at once made into a god called 
 Fu, or Buddha. 
 
 The Stoey of Buddha. 
 
 There are few stories of Buddha, as a little boy or a young 
 man, and it is difficult to say how much of the story that is told of 
 him afterwards is true and how much is made up. I will tell it 
 to you just as it is told to Indian and Chinese children. It is said 
 that he married when he was nineteen, and that nothing more is 
 kuown of him till he was twenty-nine ; then he left home and gave 
 up all his time to studying religion. His reason for doing this 
 was that a little son had just been born, and Buddha was afraid 
 he should love him too much, so he ran away the same night. 
 Before going he went to have a last look at his wife and baby, who 
 were both asleep ; he wanted to take the little boy in his arms 
 just once more, but he was afraid of w^aking his wife, so he went 
 away wdtli only a look ; one of his servants named Chauna 
 went with him. They had not gone far before they met an evil 
 spirit, wdio tried hard to persuade Buddha to go back, and 
 promised to do wonderful things for him if he would, but Buddha 
 
BUDD/r/S.U. 305 
 
 said no. He rode a long way, and then he stopped and took off 
 his garments, and gave them with his horse to Channa, telling him 
 to take tliem hack to his home. Channa wauted to stay with his 
 master, hut Buddha would not keep him, as he wanted his father 
 and mother to know what he had done, and there was only 
 Channa to tell them, so he sent him back. When Channa was 
 gone, Buddha cut off all his hair and changed clothes with a poor 
 man, and began his life as a beggar. 
 
 Several liermits had made their homes in the caves of 
 mountains, so Buddha went to one of these for teaching, but as 
 he did not l)eUeve he taught the truth, he went to another, who 
 gave him lessons in the Hindu religion, telling him amongst other 
 things that if he wanted to be very good he must fast a great deal, 
 and hurt himself as much as he could. So Buddha went into some 
 jungles with five of his disciples, and lived there for six years, 
 fasting and cutting himself, and doing all tlie dreadful things he 
 could think of to himself till he was quite ill and wasted, but at 
 the end of the six years he found that although he had made 
 himself very famous, he had not made himself happy. 
 
 A great many people have tried, like Buddha, to make them- 
 selves good, and to find happiness through their own works, but 
 they have found, as Buddha did, that neither holiness nor happi- 
 ness can be gained by anything people can do for themselves. 
 There was no one to tell Buddha the real way of holiness and 
 peace, as we have it told to us in the Bible, where w^e read that 
 the way is Jesus Himself, and that if we only come to Him in 
 our sinfulness and weakness, and take Him for our own, we 
 shall find everything we want in Him, to make us holy and 
 happy too. 
 
 One day, Buddha was walking up and down thinking, when 
 all at once he staggered and fell under a tree. For a long while his 
 disciples thought he was dead, but by-and-hye he came to himself, 
 and said he had learned that men could not make themselves lioly 
 
2o6 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 or liappy by hurting themselves and going without food, so he 
 was not going to do either any longer. His disciples were so 
 angry with him for this that they all left him. 
 
 A little wdiile after this a devil came to him, with a great 
 many wicked angels, who all began to fight him with all kinds 
 of weapons ; the stars fell from the sky, and there were clouds 
 and darkness and earthquakes. The devil tried to persuade him 
 to give up seeking for holiness and to go home ; he stayed with 
 him all day, but in the end religion got the better of the devil, 
 and religion to Buddha meant from this time self-control and 
 love to others, which was good so far as it went ; but the highest 
 love of all, love to God, caused by the knowledge of God's love 
 to man, Buddha could not teach about, because he had never 
 heard about it. 
 
 Buddha was afraid to tell people what he thought, for fear 
 they would not understand him, but at last he decided that out 
 of love to men he would tell, whether they believed or not ; and 
 first he thought he had better go to the two hermits who had 
 been his teachers, but he found they were both dead ; so he went 
 to Benares, where his former disciples were living, but they would 
 not have anything to do wath him, because he had given up 
 fasting ; however, when Buddha told them why he had done it, 
 they said he was right, and that they would learn from him again. 
 He told them that they must keejD to the middle path, between 
 seeking their own pleasure and trying to torment themselves. 
 
 Buddha stayed for some time in a wood, teaching all who 
 came to him, both men and women. After he had done this 
 for three months he called all his disciples together (there were 
 sixty of them by this time), and sent them all away to different 
 places to preach. He himself always spent the rainy season, 
 from June to October, in one place teaching his followers, and 
 the rest of the year he travelled about preaching. 
 
 Wl>ile he was doing this for the first time, he got a message 
 
BUDDHISM 207 
 
 from liis father asking liim to come and see him before he died ; 
 so he started to go, and stoj^ped when he got to a grove outside 
 the to^YU where his home had been. His father and his other 
 rehxtious came there to see him, and were not at all pleased to 
 find that he was living as a beggar, and all went away without 
 giving him anything, though it was the custom for everyone to 
 give presents to religious beggars. The next day Buddha started 
 with his disciples, as was their custom, to go begging from house 
 to house, each carrying a bowl to hold what was given to him. 
 
 Buddha's father soon heard of this, and w^ent out to him and 
 scolded him for doing such things. Buddha answered, " This is 
 the custom of our race." His father asked him wdiat he meant, 
 and reminded him that he w^as descended from a race of great 
 warriors, and that not one of them had ever begged his bread; 
 to which Buddha answered, " You and your family may claim to 
 be descended from kings ; mij descent is from the Buddhas of 
 old (the word Buddha means a prophet), and they have always 
 begged ; but, father, when a man has found a hidden treasure, 
 it is his duty first to present his father with the most precious of 
 the jewels." Then he went on to teach his father that he should 
 seek to live a holy life. 
 
 The father did not answer ; he only took his son's bowl out 
 of his hand, and led him to the house, where all his friends came 
 to do him honour, except his wife, w^ho said, "If he cares very 
 much about me, he will come to me, and I would rather have 
 him all to myself." Buddha went to see her, and talked to her 
 about his religion ; she said she would be what he was, and she 
 became one of the first of the Buddhist nuns ; their son afterwards 
 became a inouk. 
 
 Buddha soon went away again to preach. Five years later 
 he heard that his father was ill, so he went again to see him ; 
 his father died of this illness at the age of ninety-seven. 
 
 The next year Buddha went to the world of spirits to preach 
 
2o8 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 to his motlier, wlio had died a week after he was born. Then 
 he came back and went on teaching. In the forty-fifth rainy 
 season from the time when he first began to preach, he was taken 
 ill, and said he was sure he would not live long. When October 
 was past he went slowly about the country, telling his disciples 
 to keep to what he had taught them, and that he should die in 
 less than three months. At a place called Pava a goldsmith gave 
 him a meal of rice and pork, and this, the story says, must have 
 disagreed with him, for he died that night. 
 
 xlnother story says that Buddha's body was taken to his 
 father, who was still living, and that he had an image made of 
 his son, in gold and precious stones, and ordered all his people 
 to worship it. 
 
 About 950 A.D. the Chinese Emperor sent three hundred 
 Buddhist priests to India, to see if they could find any of Buddha's 
 books or any signs, of himself. They went to Ceylon, and said 
 they found there, on a mountain near the sea f called Adam's peak, 
 because the Saracens say Adam is buried there), the print of a 
 foot three cubits long. At the bottom of this hill is a temple, 
 where the body of Buddha is said to lie, and near it are his 
 teeth and other relics of him. 
 
 Buddhism was not exactly a new religion, for Buddha always 
 considered himself a Hindu, and many of his disciples were 
 Brahmins. All that he tried to do was to make Hinduism better, 
 and especially to do away with caste, which none of his disciples 
 observed. He said very wisely that men were all born of one 
 caste, for none of them was born with a sacred thread. He said, 
 too, " Not by birth does one become low caste ; not by birth does 
 one become a Brahmin. By his actions alone one becomes low 
 caste; by his actions alone one becomes a Brahmin." That is 
 as far as any teaching can go which is not received from God 
 Himself. He tells us of a new birth, by which we become sons 
 of God ( ). He tells us too that by our actions we 
 
BUDDHISM. ' 209 
 
 shall show whether we are born agaiu or not ( ). 
 
 That does not mean that by our actions we are to become children 
 of God, bat that after we are His children we are to show it by 
 onr actions ; not being holy so that we may be saved, but being 
 holy because we are saved. Yet how often we try to begin at 
 the wrong end, and serve God before we have given ourselves to 
 Him, but we can never do it. Let us go to God, if we have not 
 done it already, and tell Him about our sin, and ask Him to take 
 it all away, for the sake of what Jesus has done for us, and then 
 let us begin at once to serve Him, that we may show Him, and 
 show others, by our actions, that we love Him, and that we believe 
 in His love to us. 
 
 What Buddhism Teaches. 
 
 Now I must tell you what the Buddhists believe, for their 
 religion is not very much like Hinduism. 
 
 In most Buddhist temples, especially in the North of China, 
 there are three very large golden images, called " The Three 
 Precious Ones." If you were to ask a priest what they meant, he 
 would tell you that they were all images of Buddha — Buddha 
 Past, Buddha Present, and Buddha Future, but the common people 
 think they are three different gods. Others say that Buddha is 
 only one god, but that he has three forms. He is supposed to have 
 visited the earth in at least four hundred different shapes — first as 
 a snake, then a plant, then a butterfly, then in the bodies of larger 
 animals, and after thousands of years of transmigration, he came 
 as a man in the person of Buddha. He said himself that he was 
 only one of a long line of Buddhas who would appear from time 
 to time and teach the same things. There are in some of the 
 Buddhist books names of twent3^-four other Buddhas, who came 
 before this one of whom I have told you ; lie is called Buddha 
 Gautama, and it is taught that a new one will appear five 
 thousand years after Buddha Gautama discovered the truth under 
 
 14 
 
2IO THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 tlie tree; his name is to be " Tlie Buddha of Kiuduess." It is 
 very likely that the list of the twenty-four before Buddha Gautama 
 has been made up since his death. 
 
 But you will want to know what Buddha taught. These 
 are some of his rules — 
 
 "You should not destroy life. 
 
 "You should not take what is not given. 
 
 " You should not tell lies. 
 
 " You should uot beg a drink of intoxicating liquors. 
 
 " You should not eat unwholesome food at nis^ht. 
 
 " Yon should not wear wTeaths or use perfumes. 
 
 " You should not sleep on a mat spread on the ground." 
 
 All Buddhists are obliged to keep the first four rules, and 
 they are advised to keep them all. They may make a vow to 
 keep them all their lives, or for a shorter time if they like, but it is 
 considered wrong to break any of them on a sacred day, of which 
 there are four every month — the first when the moon is new, the 
 second when it is half full, the third when it is quite full, and 
 the fourth when it is half-way back to new. There are two other 
 rules for beggars : — 
 
 " To give up dancing, music, singing, and acting. 
 
 "Not to use gold or silver." 
 
 Here are some more sayings of Buddha ; some of them are 
 very wise — 
 
 " Never in this world does hatred cease by hatred— hatred 
 ceases by love, this is always its nature." ( ) 
 
 " Not where others fail, or do, or leave undone, 
 
 The wise should notice what himself has done or left undone. 
 
 ( ) 
 
 " Like a beautiful fiower full of colour without scent, 
 
 " The fine words of him who does not act accordingly are 
 
 fruitless, ( ) 
 
 "Like a beautiful flower, full of colour and full of scent, the 
 
BUDDHISM. 211 
 
 fine words of him who acts accordingly, are full of fruit. 
 
 ( ) 
 
 "One may conquer a thousand men in battle; but he who 
 conquers himself alone is the greatest victor. ( ) 
 
 "Let a man overcome anger by kindness, evil by good ; let 
 him conquer the stingy by a gift, the liar by truth ; let him speak 
 the truth ; let him not yield to anger ; let him give when asked, 
 even from the little he has." ( ) 
 
 I could not help thinking (I wonder if you thought the same) 
 how much there is in these sayings of Buddha like what we read 
 in the Bible, and it made me feel more than ever what a wonderful 
 book our Bible is ; we find in it all the good things of other 
 religions, besides those wonderful things that no other religion 
 teaches anything about. 
 
 I thought of a text for nearly all those sayings of Buddha 
 that I have told you of, and I thought you would like to think of 
 them too, so I have left some spaces for you to write them in ; 
 if you cannot find them all, you must let me know^ and I will 
 tell you what 1 put. 
 
 There is nothing in Buddhism that does not change. Heaven 
 and hell, as well as earth, are always changing, and even the 
 gods are not always gods, but may become men again, or even 
 lower things. 
 
 There is a great deal in Buddhism that is very hard to 
 understand. It teaches that there is no part of man which lives 
 for ever, and yet it teaches transmigration. But you will wonder 
 how it can teach transmigration at all, when I tell you that 
 learned Buddhists do not believe man has a soul, and by trans- 
 migration we mean a soul going out of one body into another, 
 when the body dies that it belonged to before. 
 
 The Buddliist religion teaches, that as soon as a man, or an 
 angel, or an animal dies, a new angel, or animal, or man is made, 
 either happier or more miserable than the old one, according to 
 
212 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 whether that old one was had or good ; so it is a new soul, and 
 yet, in some way or other, it is tlie same as the old one ; that is 
 hard to understand, is it not ? You will he glad to know that the 
 Buddhist teachers themselves say that no one can understand it. 
 
 They say that just as you can light one flame by another, 
 so one life can come from another ; it is not the same, and yet it 
 would never have been but for the other. 
 
 You remember how much Buddha talked about holiness. He 
 said the path to it was divided into four stages. The first he 
 called " Entering upon the Stream," or conversion; that is, getting 
 into the Path. This, he said, is done by keeping company with 
 good people^ hearing the teaching about it, sensibly thinking about 
 it, and doing good things. The second is the path of those who 
 will only come to this world once after they have died ; those who 
 have got to this second stage are free from all doubts, do not rely 
 on forms and ceremonies, and have almost as little sin as it is 
 possible to have. The third is the path of those who will never 
 come back to the world wdien once they have died, because every 
 little bit of sin has been destroyed in them, and they have no wish 
 at ah to get good things for themselves ; and no wrong feeling 
 towards anybody else can ever come mto their hearts. The fourth 
 is called " The Path of the Holy Ones," and in this, it is said, 
 people do not wish to live any longer, either as men or angels or 
 anything else : they know nothing of sin, and do not care about 
 anything, hardly tliinli about anything. This state is called Nir- 
 vana; that is, the state in which everything is gone that would 
 . make a man wish to go on living after death. If a man can stay 
 in this state always, whenever he is awake, he is a perfect man, 
 so holy that he could never be better. 
 
 This is how it is explained — iVs a flame of a lamp cannot burn 
 without oil, so life only goes on while we cliug to earthly things. 
 If there is no oil in the lamp, the flame will go out, at least as 
 soon as it lias used up the oil that is left in the wick, then no new 
 
BUDDHfSM. 213 
 
 llame can be lighted there. So if a man has uo siu, all his powers 
 and all himself will he dissolved, and no new being will be boru 
 from hinij the wise man will pass away, go oat like the flame of 
 a lamp. The body of the perfect man is still to be seen, living 
 and moving, though his soul has ceased to act, like the wick of 
 the lamp which burns for a little while, because some oil is left 
 in it ; but it will soon decay and pass away, and as no new body 
 will be formed fi'om it, where there was life there will soon be 
 nothing at all ; so death is not Nirvana, but Nirvana leads to 
 death. We are only told of one or two beggars and two laymen 
 (that is, men who were neither priests nor monks nor beggars) 
 who got to this state of Nirvana after Buddha's death. 
 
 So you see the very best thing a Buddhist can wish for after 
 this life, is to be nothing, and the best thing possible in this life, 
 is to care for nothing and think of nothing ; Nirvana is much 
 nicer than Paradise, he thinks, because a man may go to Paradise, 
 and then be sent back to earth, to go through another list of 
 transmigrations ; and yet some Buddhists are so anxious to get to 
 Paradise, that they kill themselves in the hope of being there 
 soon. The Buddhists say there are no women in Paradise ; they 
 must be born again as men, before they can get there. Paradise, 
 they think, is a beautiful country in the west, full of lovely lakes 
 with golden sands, with plenty of lotus flowers, and birds that 
 sing more sweetly than nightingales. All the people there get 
 their bodies born again out of lotus flowers, very beautiful, and their 
 hearts are full of wisdom, without any sorrow. One description 
 of Paradise says — "They dress not, and yet they are not cold; 
 they dress, and yet they are not hot ; they eat not, and yet they 
 ai-e not hungry ; they eat, and yet they are not full ; they are 
 without pain and sickness, and they never grow old." The reason 
 they use the lotus-flower so much in descriptions of heaven is, 
 that it is such a pure white, and yet it grows out of mud, I think » 
 if we are Christians, we ought to be like lotus-flowers, in the world 
 
2 14 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 and yet unspotted by the world ( ), with sin all 
 
 round us, and yet kept from the evil." ( .) 
 
 The Buddhists believe in a place like the Purgatory of the 
 Eoman Catholics, where people are sent after death, to be punished 
 for their sins and made holy. Tho punishments ai'e — pounding 
 in a mortar, being sawn in two, or tied to burning pillars. Liars 
 have their tongues cut out, and thieves are thrown on a hill made 
 of knives. After being tried in Purgatory, the good people are 
 sent to Paradise for a time ; the middling ones come back to earth 
 in other bodies, to be rich and honoured ; the wicked either come 
 back in the bodies of animals, or are sent to Hell. 
 
 The poor Buddhists have really no Heaven, you see, and no 
 hope worth having. They have no Sabbath either. 
 
 There are many Buddhist temples in China and many priests. 
 Some of the temples are very large and some are small. Some 
 have monasteries belonging to them, where the priests live, as 
 many as two hundred together sometimes. Some are built by 
 private gentlemen, and some by public subscriptions, while some 
 belong to the Government. You will be glad to hear that two 
 Chinese gentlemen, who had built temples for Buddha, have given 
 them up to the missionaries for churches. 
 
 There are a great many idols in the Buddhist temples ; most 
 of them are men who are supposed to have been taken into 
 Buddha and become part of him ; altogether there are more 
 than six thousand gods of this kind alone. There are generally 
 more women than men to be found worshipping in these temples, 
 and more old women than young ones. The gods' birthdays are 
 generally the days when most people go to worship them. 
 
 The Buddhist priests get their food chiefly by begging. They 
 shave all the hair off their heads, and in many ways are very much 
 like Roman Catholic priests. They do not marry, they fast, pray 
 for the dead, use holy water, and worship relics. They say their 
 prayers in a language which they do not understand — Sauscrit, 
 
BUDDHISM. 2T7 
 
 because it is the language iu which Buddha wrote his books. 
 Mauy people think that a great deal of the religion of the 
 Buddhists in China was added to the old Buddhism as it came 
 from India, by the Koman Catholics who went to China hundreds 
 of 3"ears ago to teach the Chinese. One thing that makes it seem 
 likely is that among the stores of the Buddhist gods and saints, 
 there is the history of Jesus, some of it true, some of it made up. 
 It says He was beaten with 5,400 stripes, that before He w^ent 
 back to heaven He told His disciples to go everywhere and preach, 
 and gave them some holy water to wash away the sins of those 
 who listened to them, and that ten days after this a god came 
 down from heaven to fetch the mother of Jesus, who was made 
 queen of heaven and earth, and the guardian of men and women ; 
 that is just what the Roman Catholics would be likely to add. 
 
 There are nunneries for Buddbist women, as well as monas- 
 teries for men. Little Chinese girls are often sold by their parents 
 to be nuns, especially if they are born on an unlucky day. Some- 
 times, w^hen a little girl is born, the fortune-teller says that when 
 she grows up she will marry a very bad man and alwa3'S be in 
 trouble, so to make sure that this shall not happen, her father 
 will make her a nun, for nuns may never marry. 
 
 When she is taken to the temple all her hair is shaved off, 
 and she is dressed in long, loose clothes. When she is old enough, 
 she is taught to read the Buddhist books, though she does not 
 know what the, words mean, and to sit cross-legged on a stool ; 
 while she sits there, her hands must be put together and raised 
 up to her chin as if she were praying, her eyes must look straight 
 down to her hands, and she must count her own breathing, to 
 keep her from thinking of anything but Buddha. Sometimes little 
 girl nuns are made to sit like this for hours together, and even 
 all night. They must get up as soon as it is light, and be ready 
 to chant prayers before an idol when the bell rings ; then they 
 sweep and dust the temple, and cook the rice for breakfast, and 
 
2l8 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 wait on the older nuns, and afterwards do the sewing or anything 
 else they are told. If they are at all slow or stupid, they are 
 beaten. 
 
 When they are a little older they are sent out to beg rice 
 from door to door, or to ask for money to pay for the temple to 
 be mended; they also have to wait on the women who come 
 to worship, light sticks of incense for them, and give them cups 
 
 A BUDDHIST NUN. 
 
 of tea, and so earn a few cash ; at sunset they chant their prayers 
 again. 
 
 In some parts of China the nunneries have been put down 
 altogether, because the nuns living in them were so wicked that 
 the people would not give any money or rice to support tlieni ; 
 in Foo-chow all the nunneries have been closed for this reason. 
 
 One way in which women can gain blessings for themselves 
 in the future world is by what is called " worshipping books" in 
 this world ; they have to worship all the words in certain sacred 
 
BUDDHISM. 219 
 
 books, oDe after auotlier, bowiug down to an idol at each word ; a 
 little more tliau one page can be worshipped in a day. 
 
 Buddhism is a much worse religion now than it was in the 
 daj^s of Buddha, or even when it was first brought into China. 
 Most of the priests now are very ignorant, many of them not being 
 able to read at all ; this is one reason why educated Chinamen 
 despise Buddhism. The Buddhist beggars at first were only those 
 who longed to be wise and holy, and who fancied that by giving 
 up all they had and becoming beggars, they would grow holier 
 than others, but now most of them are idle men who like to get 
 food without working for it. Tlie}^ beg from door to door, each 
 carrying an earthenware bowl, like a soup-tureen without a cover. 
 When they get to a door, they do not say anything, but only stand 
 still. If anyone gives them something, they utter a blessing on 
 him ; if nothing is. given, they pass on to the next door without 
 speaking. 
 
 At first nearly all the monks lived in groves or gardens, but 
 soon rich men began- to build houses for them ; several were built 
 while Buddha w^as ahve. 
 
 The rule about dress is that no monk may have more than 
 two sets of robes, and that he must never buy nor beg a new one ; 
 the people are expected to notice when the monks' clothes are 
 worn out and to give them some more. The onl}^ other things 
 a priest used to be allow^ed to have for his own, were a girdle, a 
 begging-bowl, a razor, a needle, and a water-strainer, through 
 which he must strain all the water he drank, for fear he might 
 swallow some little animals and so kill them ; but now the priests 
 often have books, lands, and houses of their owm. 
 
 In their public services they sing nearty all the prayers, but 
 instead of singing together, each monk sings a difi"erent line, so 
 that they can get through a whole chapter in the time it would 
 take to sing one line properly. They do not pray because they 
 want to ask for something, but just for the sake of getting through 
 
2 20 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 a certaiD uuniber of prayers. 1 hope you never pray like that ; 
 some boys and girls do ! But I am sure they do not get answers to 
 their prayers, for God always listens to what our hearts say, and 
 takes no notice of what we say only by our lips, except to be sorry 
 that we do not mean it. I am sure He would rather 3^ou only 
 j^rayed one sentence every day really from your heart, than that 
 you spent a great many hours in asking for what you do not want, 
 and without thinking of what you are saying. He would rather 
 you did not ask for anything, than that you should ask that way. 
 
 All strict Buddhists live on vegetables, so that they may 
 not have anything to do with taking life. When a priest dies, his 
 bod}^ is burnt instead of being buried. 
 
 The Chinese Government does not care much about Buddhism 
 in the south of the empire, but on the north side of the Great 
 Wall, where the people do not know and think so much, the 
 Buddhists get on better. 
 
 Some people think Buddhism is dying out in China, and 
 that by-and-bye it will come to an end there altogether. It is 
 certain that the temples are not kept up as they used to be, and 
 that the people are not so ready to give their money for building 
 or mending or ornamenting them. 
 
 But China will not be much better, if Buddhism dies out, 
 and no other religion takes its place. So, if it is true that the 
 people are losing faith in this false religion, that is only another 
 reason why we should work harder than ever to send them the 
 true one. 
 
CHAPTEE III. 
 
 TAUISM. 
 
 "" \HIS is a very difficult religiou to explain. The CliiDese 
 say themselves that they cauuot uuderstaud it, so if 
 you find it i^uzzles you, you will know that it need not 
 be because I have described it badly, or because you are 
 not sharp, but because it is so puzzling. 
 
 At first Tauism was not a religion at all, but only 
 a kind of study or philosophy ; but when Buddhism was 
 brought into China, the Tauists saw that they would soon come 
 to nothing if they did not have some temples and i^ublic services 
 like the Buddhists. 
 
 All we know of the j^hilosophy of Tauism is found in a book 
 called the Tao-Teh-King, written by Laotsze. You remember I 
 told you Confucius went to see him and had a talk with him. At 
 that time, b.c. 517, Confucius was thirty-five years old, and 
 Laotsze eighty-eight. After they had had their talk, Confucius 
 said to his disciples, " I know how birds can fly, fishes swim, and 
 animals run ; but the runners ma}' be snared, the swimmer hooked, 
 and the flyer shot by an arrow. But there is the dragon ; I 
 cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and 
 rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Laotsze ; 1 can only com- 
 pare him to the dragon." I suppose he meant by that that he 
 could not understand what Laotsze meant when he talked, and 
 you will not be surprised at that, when i tell you some of the 
 things he wrote in liis book. 
 
2 22 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 Laotsze himself was as strange as liis writings. He lived at the 
 capital of the Cliau kings, hut one day he went to the gate leading 
 out of the state on the north-west. The keeper of the gate said 
 to him, " You are going away out of sight. I beg you to write 
 a book for me." So Laotsze wrote his Tao-Teh-King, and then 
 went away, and nobody ever heard what became of him, or where 
 he died. 
 
 The Tao-Teh-King is all about Tao, which means " The AYay," 
 and yet no Chinaman could tell you what Tao is. If you were to 
 ask twenty, one after another, to explain it to you, they would all 
 tell you something different, and would all end by saying that 
 nobcdy ever explained it nor ever wdll. 
 
 When we read what Laotsze said himself, when he tried to 
 explain it, it seems sometimes as though by Tao he must mean 
 God, but then at other times he said things which make us think 
 it was something quite different. This is what he says of Tao — 
 " We look at it, but do not see it, it is named the colourless. We 
 listen for it and do not hear it, it is named the soundless. Its 
 upper part is not bright, its lower part is not dark. It is always 
 at work, and yet it cannot be named. In the end it becomes 
 nothing, it is Tiio. There was something confused and complete 
 before the birth of heaven and earth; how still it was and formless; 
 standing alone, never changing, going everywhere, and in no 
 danger of being ended, it may be regarded as the mother of all 
 things. I do not know its name, but I call it the T^io, and if 
 I must give it a name, I call it ' The Great.' It might appear to 
 have been before God." 
 
 In other parts of the book it seems as though Tao meant the 
 state in which everybody would be, if they were quite calm and 
 contented with everything, as Laotsze said they ought to be. He 
 taught that for a person or thing to be useful, it must be empty. 
 " Clay," he says, " is made into vessels, but it is its emptiness and 
 hollowness that make a vessel useful. Doors and windows are 
 
TAUJSM. 223 
 
 cut out to make rooms, but it is only the empt}^ space betweeu 
 them that makes tlie room good for anything." For a man to be 
 empty, so that he can be useful, Laotsze says he must be free 
 from all selfishness. Doing nothing, being nothing, and wanting 
 nothing, he thinks is the highest happiness. He says a great deal 
 too about being humble. AVhen he wants to compare the Tao to 
 something, he generally chooses water. " The highest goodness," 
 he says, "is like water. Water does good to all things, and it 
 always takes the lowest place, which all men dislike, without 
 trying to do anything else ; so its nature is like the nature 
 of Tao." 
 
 I am thinking of another Teacher, who not only taught His 
 disciples to take the lowest place ( ), but who 
 
 took it Himself ( ), though His own proper place was 
 
 the highest of all. ( .) 
 
 In another part of his book Laotsze says, "There are three 
 precious things, which I prize and hold fast. The first is gentle 
 compassion, the second economy, the third humility. It is the 
 way of Tfio not to act selfishly, to manage things without feeling 
 the trouble of them, to taste without noticing the flavour, to 
 consider the great as the small and the small as the great, to 
 return injury with kindness." 
 
 Laotsze spoke against war, and against killing a man because 
 he had killed someone else, but he did not care at all about 
 learning, or about people getting better, or richer, or wiser ; rather 
 than this, he thought it would be better if people went back to 
 what they were at the beginning of the world. He says — "In a 
 small state with very few people in it, I would so order it that 
 the people, though they had all kinds of tools, should not care 
 to use them ; though they had boats and carriages, they should 
 have no need to ride in them ; though they had soldiers' coats and 
 weapons, they should not wear or use them. I would make them 
 return to the use of knotted cords instead of printed letters ; they 
 
224 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 should tliiuk their coarse food sweet, their poor houses places 
 of rest." 
 
 Poor Laotsze must have felt very louely, having such strange 
 thoughts, and not heing ahle to tell anyone what he meant. He 
 says of himself, "All men look pleased, as if enjoying a feast, as 
 if mounted on a tower in spring ; I alone am quiet and care for 
 nothing, my wishes not having yet shown themselves. I am like 
 an infant that has not yet smiled ; I look forlorn, as if I had 
 nowhere to go. All others have enough and to spare, I alone look 
 as if I had lost everything. My mind is that of a stupid man ; I 
 
 WSjs:si^ 
 
 THE THREE PURE ONES. 
 
 am in a state of confusion ; I am drifted about as the sea ; I am 
 carried by the wind, as if I had nowhere to rest. I alone am 
 different to other men, and what I need is the nursing mother, 
 that is the Tao." 
 
 There are a great many Tauist gods now^, and a great many 
 temples too ; new temples and new gods are made every year. In 
 most of the temples, there are three images, called the Tan Cli'ing, 
 or the three Pure Ones — The Perfect Holy One, the Highest Holy 
 One, and the Greatest Holy One ; the first, the Chinese sa}', is 
 the same as Adam, and the second is Laotsze. After these three 
 
TAUISM. 225 
 
 tlie greatest is Yii-waug, who manages all the business of the 
 world, and all the people in it. 
 
 Most of the Tauist teachiog is to be found in tracts, which 
 have a great many wise things in them, borrowed from the Con- 
 fucian books, mixed up with a great deal of nonsense. One thing 
 taught in them is, that there are spirits who notice all the wrong 
 things men do, and make their lives long or short, according to 
 whether they see few wrong things or many. Some of these spirits 
 live in the stars, three in the human body (these are the three 
 souls), and there is one called " The Spirit of the Furnace." These 
 last four go to Heaven from time to time to tell what they have 
 seen. A great sin costs twelve years of life, a small one a hundred 
 days. If a man is very good indeed, he may hope to be immortal, 
 that is, that his soul may live for ever. If he wants to be 
 immortal in Heaven, he must be able to prove that he has done 
 thuieen hundred good deeds ; but if he will be satisfied to be 
 immortal on earth, that is, to keep on beiug born over and over 
 again into the world, three hundred good deeds will be enough. 
 
 And what do you think the Tauists mean by sins ? Here 
 is a list of them. Dancing on the last day of the month or year ; 
 shouting or getting into a passion on the first day of the month 
 or in the morning ; crying or sj^itting with the face turned to 
 the north ; sighing, singing, or crying in front of a furnace ; pointing 
 at a rainbow, or looking for a long time at the sun or moon. 
 There is a certain time, according to Tauism, appointed for all 
 men to live ; every one of these sins shortens the time, and when 
 a man has got to the end of his time, then he dies. So you see 
 how difficult it must be for the missionaries to persuade these 
 men that they are sinners, or even to make them understand 
 what sin is. 
 
 If all a man's looks and deeds are good for tliree years, then 
 he will get blessing ; if they are evil, he will lose blessing. 
 
 Tauism teaches too that there is a Purgatory and a Hell ; the 
 
 15 
 
2 26 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 difference between the two being, as the Roman Catholics teach, 
 that in Hell people stay for ever, but in Purgatory only for a time, 
 to be punished for their sins ; this belief the Tauists have 
 borrowed from the Buddhists. In Purgatory they say there are 
 ten courts ; their place is at the bottom of a great ocean, in the 
 depths of the earth. If a man repents after he gets to Pm-gatory 
 and can persuade two others to repent, he will have his punish- 
 ment shortened. Those who have never sinned go straight to 
 Heaven when they die. Those who have done just as many good 
 deeds as bad are born again among men. If there are more bad 
 deeds than good ones, they go through the courts of Purgatory, 
 and then are born again. If they behave well after their second 
 birth, they go to some happy place for a little while, after they die 
 the second time ; but if their second life is a bad one, they go 
 through Purgatory again, and then are born into a very miserable 
 state, and after that go to hell for ever. No women are allowed 
 in the Tauist heaven, except in the same way as in the Buddhist 
 religion, after they have been born again as men. 
 
 Now I must tell you what the Tauists think will happen to 
 them in Purgatory. It would take too long to tell you about all 
 the ten courts, so I will only tell you of one, the ninth. It is 
 divided into sixteen rooms. In the first of these, the people have 
 their bones beaten, and their bodies scorched. In the second 
 their muscles are drawn out and their bones rapped. In the third 
 ducks eat their hearts. ; In the fourth dogs eat tlieir lungs. In 
 the fifth they are splashed with hot oil. In the sixth their heads 
 are crushed in a frame, and their tongues and teeth are pulled out. 
 In the seventh their brains are taken out and their skulls filled 
 with hedgehogs. In the eighth then- heads are steamed and their 
 brains scraped. In the ninth they are dragged about by sheep 
 till they drop to pieces. In the tenth they are squeezed in a 
 wooden press and pricked on the head. In the eleventh their 
 hearts are ground in a mill. In the twelfth boiling water drops 
 
TAUISM. 227 
 
 on their bodies. In the thirteenth they are stang by wasps. 
 In the fonrteentli they are tortured by ants and maggots, then 
 stewed and wrung out like clothes. In the fifteenth they are 
 stung by scorpions, and in the sixteenth tormented by snakes. 
 And this is only one court out of ten ; so you will not wonder 
 now that the Chinese burn so much money for their friends after 
 they die, as they think the officers in Purgatory may be bribed 
 to let them escape some of these tortures. And yet it is not love 
 for their friends which makes them do so much for them, but 
 fear that if they are not properly cared for, their spirits will come 
 back and torment their friends. 
 
 There is a head of the Tauist religion in China who has much 
 the same powder that the Pope has over the Roman Catholics. 
 His family name is Chang, and his special name, which is passed 
 on to the one who takes his place when he dies, is Teen-sze, which 
 means "The Messenger of Heaven." The office has been in this 
 family ever since the first century after Christ ; the spirit of the 
 first head is supposed to have been handed down from father to 
 son all that time, and to be in the man who is now the head. 
 His palace is in the jDrovince of Kiang-su. He is said to have 
 power over a certain class of evil spirits which go into the bodies 
 of women and make them ill. The Teen-sze casts them out for 
 money ; in his house there are several rows of jars, some people 
 say as many as a million, in which these evil spirits are supposed 
 to be shut up. 
 
 There are a great many Tauist priests in China. Anyone 
 who sees a priest can tell whether he is a Tauist or a Buddhist 
 by his hair; the Buddhists shave it all off; the Tauists either 
 let it all grow, or shave the sides of the head and plait up the 
 rest of their hair and twifct it into a coil on the top of the 
 head. 
 
 The idols in Tauist temples are generally small, much smaller 
 than those in Buddhist temples ; and there are not many women 
 
228 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 to be found in them, except that on the gods' birthdays, some of 
 them go to give presents of money to the priests. 
 
 One of the chief Tauist idols is Lu-tsu, the great medicine 
 god of China. Then there are the three rulers of Heaven, Earth, 
 and Sea. The Dragon is supposed to reign over the sea, as well 
 as over lakes, rivers, and ponds ; all the live creatures in the sea 
 are his subjects. The emperor is often compared to the Dragon ; 
 his coat of arms is a dragon, and he is spoken of as sitting on 
 the dragon throne. We know there is really no such thing as 
 a dragon, but the Chinese think it is a real animal, and some of 
 them say they have seen it. The earth god's images may be 
 seen in almost every town and village by the road-side. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STATE EELIGION. 
 
 HE strange thing about this religion is that the rulers 
 are the only people who are allowed to take part in it, 
 the rest of the people have nothing to do with it. 
 
 Nobody knows when the State worship began ; 
 we read of it in the time of Shun, two thousand years 
 before Christ, so you see it is very old. In after times 
 very savage things were done. At one time bundles of straw, 
 made to look like men, were carried to the graves of dead kings 
 and buried with them as their servants. After this, figures of 
 painted wood were buried instead of straw ones, and later still 
 live people were put into the graves with the dead. At the funeral 
 of Chi-Hwang-ti, one of the kings of the Tsin line, all his wives 
 and concubines who had had no children, as well as all the work- 
 men who had made his grave, were buried with him alive ; but 
 about nine hundred years ago the emperor made a law that no 
 human beings were ever to be offered as sacrifices, so there have 
 been none since then. 
 
 The rules as to how and when State Worship is to be per- 
 formed are written in the Book of Rites. In the capital the 
 emperor and the high officers belonging to the Board of Rites 
 worship and offer sacrifices of tea and silk, calves, bullocks, sheep, 
 and pigs, to three diff'erent sets of objects — 
 
 1st. To heaven and earth, the sjoirits of the dead kings 
 
2jO THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 of the present line, tlie gods of land and of grain, and the special 
 guardian gods of the kings of China. 
 
 2nd. To the sun and moon, to the spirits of the dead kings 
 of China belonging to lines before the present one ; to Confucius, 
 to the gods of agriculture and silk weaving and of the present 
 year. 
 
 3rd. To the gods of medicine, to the spirits of dead statesmen, 
 and others who have done much for China, to the clouds, winds, 
 rain, and thunder, as w^ell as to five famous mountains, four seas, 
 four rivers, and other celebrated places. The emperor wears sky- 
 blue robes when he worships heaven, and yellow when he worships 
 earth, red for the sun, and white for the moon ; the princes and 
 officers wear their usual court dress. 
 
 No priests or w^omen are allowed to be present, except when 
 the goddess of the silk manufacture is worshipj^ed ; then the 
 empress and the grand ladies of Pekin go into the temple, while 
 the gentlemen stay outside. The common people are ordered to 
 be strangled or banished if they join the emperor in worshipping 
 heaven and earth. There is only one temple to heaven in China 
 and one to earth, both in Pekin. 
 
 In other towns the worship is not so important. In each 
 city there is a temple for the guardian god of the place, the walls 
 and furniture of which are yellow (the royal colour), and on the first 
 and fifteenth days of every month officers of the towm visit this 
 temple, bow down before the god and burn incense. If the town 
 is in any danger or difficulty, the officers go to this temple to ask 
 for advice from the god. If there has been no rain for a long time, 
 or there is a great deal of sickness in the place, they go and ask 
 the god to help them. 
 
 The same god does not always take care of one city ; they are 
 supposed to change every now and then, just as the officers do. 
 The same images are always kept in the temples, but it is sup- 
 posed that the spirits iuside them change places with each other. 
 
THE STATE RELIGION. 
 
 231 
 
 You \Yill see now ciuotlier difficulty tliat Chinese Cliristiaus 
 liave to meet. All the maudarins have to worship the god of the 
 city they live in twice every month in his temple, so no Christian 
 can be a mandarin ; when he finds Jesus, he must lose his honour 
 and his work and his pay. But the Lord Jesus has told us that if 
 we lose our life for His sake, we shall find it ( )• I 
 
 am sure if we lose anything else for His sake we shall either find 
 it again, or something much better than we lost. 
 
 There are also some Tauist State gods. The three chief are 
 — The Fathers of Medicine (three in one), the god of War, and the 
 god of Literature. A special officer goes to the temples of these 
 gods twice a year to offer sacrifices and to pray for the long life of 
 the emperor. 
 
CHAPTEK V. 
 
 GODS. 
 
 HINA is a country where there are "gods many and 
 lords many" ( ), some belonging to the 
 
 Tauist religion and some to the Buddhist, but not 
 even the priests can tell you for certain to which religion 
 the gods belong. I can only tell j^ou about some of 
 them. 
 
 The one who is worshipped as much as any in China, is the 
 God of Kiches. Every Chinese shop has a little image of him. It 
 is said that he was first of all a tax-gatherer, and that one day he 
 called at a house, where the people said they could not pay their 
 taxes ; so he made up his mind to stay with them until he got the 
 money or the money's worth. The first night, just before he went 
 to bed, he heard an old hen talking to her chickens. What a 
 clever man he must have been to understand hen-language ; per- 
 haps he was beginning to be a god already. This is what the wise 
 old hen said, " My master has a visitor ;n his house, and means 
 to kill me to-morrow for dinner. Whatever will become of you, 
 my poor dear little chickens, so weak in your bodies, and knowing 
 nothing of the ways of the world ? I must give you some ad\ice 
 before I leave you, as you will soon have no one to watch over 
 you. Above, you must be careful that the hawk does not pounce 
 upon you ; below, you must take care that men do not tread on 
 you ; you must not eat too much, and then you will never be ill. 
 As you were all born in the same nest, you must not quarrel." 
 
GODS. 233 
 
 Tlie tax-gatherer listened to all this and thought to himself— "If a 
 fowl that will not live long, shows so much sense and makes such 
 plans for the future, how much more should man, who is so much 
 cleverer. He determined to give up the world and hecome a monk 
 and seek after virtue ; so he went away from the poor man's house, 
 and I expect the old hen did not get killed after all. 
 
 As the tax-gatherer was walking along he met a lion, but he 
 was not at all frightened ; he rushed up to it, seized hold of its 
 mane, jumped on its back, and rode away to a quiet jolace in the 
 woods ; there he became so very good that after he died he 
 was made a god. If we want to be holy, God does not ask us to 
 go away and live hy ourselves, but only to seek Him and to follow 
 Him, and we can do that with people all round us. Instead of 
 hiding ourselves in the woods, or shutting ourselves up anywhere, 
 He wants us to go about in the world, shining for Him, living 
 for Him and speaking for Him, so that we may help others to find 
 Him too. 
 
 Chinese houses, you will remember, very easily catch fire, so 
 of course there is a God of Fire for people to pray to. If a man has 
 had a fire near him, wdiich burned other houses, but not his, he 
 makes an offering to this god. I wonder whether you spend as 
 much time in thanking God for keeping you from harm and for 
 giving you good things, as you spend in asking Him for what you 
 want. I believe the people w^ho get the most from God, are the 
 people who thank Him most for what they have already, and that 
 the way to get more is to praise more. 
 
 The Goddess of Mercy is worshipped by Buddhist women in 
 the north of China, very much as the Roman Catholics worship 
 the Virgin Mary. In her images she is made with a great man}^ 
 hands and feet; the women wdio come to worship her bring her 
 presents of shoes, which are left lying in front of the image till 
 they rot or till someone steals them. In Kwei-yang there is 
 an old rotten tree, on which great numbers of shoes are constantly 
 
234 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 hanging. It is said that the Goddess of Mercy appeared to 
 someone under this tree, so great crowds of women go there to 
 pray^for children and give shoes to the goddess. 
 
 Not very far from this ^olace, there is another tree which 
 is worshipped. It is said that a mandarin's wife was very ill, and 
 one'day a man came to her husband ia a dream, and said he could 
 
 
 WORSHIPPING THE GOD OF THE KITCHEN. 
 
 cure his wife. The mandarin asked him his name and address. 
 He said his name was Ch'ing, which means green, and that he 
 lived outside the North Gate. When the mandarin woke, he 
 found his wife was quite well, and he said it must be the man that 
 had visited him in his dream who had cured her, so he went to the 
 place that he had been told of in his sleep, to see if he could find 
 the man, and give him some money. When he got to the place. 
 
GODS. 235 
 
 he found there was no such person, and the neighbours said 
 nobody named Ch'ing hved anywhere near there ; so he started to 
 go home again, and on his way he found a tree, covered with green 
 leaves. He said to himself, " This is Ch'ing; it must be the spirit 
 that cured my wife." So he worshipped the tree, and put a paper 
 on it, telling wdiat it had done, and asking it to go on caring for 
 him. The story soon spread about, and numbers of people came 
 to worship the tree, and to bring prayers, which are written on 
 slips of paper and stuck on the trunk of the tree, and on a wall 
 near it. There is sure to be a temple built there very soon, if it is 
 not done akeady. 
 
 The God of the Kitchen is worshipped in every Chinese house. 
 On the last day of the year he is put into a paper sedan chair and 
 burnt, and is supposed then to go to heaven to tell how the people 
 in the house have been behaving. So towards the end of the year 
 he has a great many 23resents given to him, to put him in a good 
 humour, and make him give a good account. He comes back 
 again at the new year, when a clean, new picture of him is 
 hung up. 
 
 There is a God of Literature and a God of War, a God of 
 Sailors, and a God of Play-acting, Gods of Thunder, Rain, Land, and 
 Rivers, a God of Gambling, a God of Babies, and a God of Thieves. 
 There is a God of Swine, who is deaf, so when people come to 
 worship him, they have to tickle his ears and beat his back to let 
 him know they want something ; then, if their pigs are lost, they 
 tell him so, and ask him to look for them ; if they find them after 
 this, they give the god a present. There are numbers of other 
 smaller gods, too many to be counted. 
 
 There is a theatre belonging to every temple, where plays 
 are acted to amuse the gods, and sometimes platforms are put up 
 in the street, on which plays are acted. Nobody ever has to pay 
 to see a play acted in China ; some rich man generally gets it up, 
 and pays all the actors himself. 
 
236 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 In some parts animals are worshipped — the monkej^, whose 
 image is hke a man with a monkey's head ; the fox, who is 
 worshipjDed by mandarins ; the tiger, who is prayed to by gamblers 
 and by mothers who want good things for their children (the 
 goddess of children is made sitting on a tiger's back), and the 
 dragon, who is supposed to give rain. 
 
 Chinese idols are chiefly made of clay, because the Chinese 
 
 A CHINESE THEATRE. 
 
 are very good clay modellers but very bad sculptors. All the idols 
 are worshipped from fear, not from love, and always for selfish 
 reasons, in the hope of getting something good from them. That 
 is the way some people worship God, just for the sake of what 
 they get from Him, but I think that is the very lowest kind of 
 worship, and the kind that God cares least about. If we really 
 worship Him " in spirit," I believe it will be more from love to 
 Himself, and gratitude for what He has done, than because of what 
 
GODS. 239 
 
 we hope He will do. You would not care veiy much, would j'ou ? 
 for the love of a little friend, if you knew he only cared for you 
 because he got a great many presents from you, and thought that 
 the more he went with you the more he should get. So do not 
 let us give God only a seltish love, that we should not care to have 
 oui'selves from anyone else, but let us ask Him to teach us more 
 and more to love Him for His own sake, and to show us more and 
 more what He is ; and the better we trust Him, the more we shall 
 love Him, I am sure ; and the more we love Him, the more we 
 shall care about pleasing Him, rather than enjoying ourselves. 
 
 It is often easy to persuade the Chinese that their gods 
 cannot help them, because they know how often they pray to 
 them without getting what they ask for ; but it is not so easy 
 to get them to see that their clay gods cannot hurt them, because 
 they take all sickness and pain and sorrow as marks of the anger 
 of their gods. 
 
 As you will have seen already, the Chinese believe a great 
 deal in spirits of many different kinds. The chief are the genii, 
 who are supposed to be people who turned into spirits without 
 dying. If a man has a nightmare, or a bad dream, or starts in 
 his sleep, he thinks it is these genii who are troubling him. So 
 as soon as he wakes he begins to curse the spirits. If this makes 
 no difference, he gets another man to sleep in his room who never 
 has nightmares nor bad dreams, and who is suj)posed to keep 
 the spirits out. If this will not do, a sword is dipped in blood 
 and shaken over the bed, or else a man is hired to shoot the spirit, 
 and looking-glasses are put about the room to frighten it. 
 
 The largest class of spirits are those of dead people, who 
 were not quite wicked enough to be kept in hell, but whose time 
 has not yet come for returning to earth in another body. It is 
 believed that in August and September the gates of hell are 
 opened, and the spirits who live there are let out for a holiday. 
 The reason for thinking this is, that so many people are ill in 
 
;40 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL 
 
 these two months, so at this time of the year many offerings are 
 made to the spirits to persuade them to let the people alone and 
 not make them ill. 
 
 There is another class of spirits, whose bodies are supposed 
 not to turn to dust when they die, and who roam about in 
 the night, doing all the mischief they can, and another class who 
 help people to tell fortunes. 
 
 It is supposed that a spirit cannot do people any harm, unless 
 he know^s their names, so the Chinese often call themselves by a 
 name that is not their own in order to cheat the spirits. In some 
 places those whose eldest sons have died call the second sons 
 by girls' names, and sometimes they even let them grow up till 
 they are men, wearing girls' clothes and being treated as if they 
 were girls, to cheat the spirits. 
 
s 
 
 ,: \ ^-1 i-it^ 
 
 (Ip^^-j^^r^ 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 FESTIVALS. 
 
 HE Chinese year begins some time between the twenty- 
 first of January and the nineteenth of February, not 
 always on the same day, as witli ns, because time is 
 measured by the moon. The months always begin with 
 the new moon, so you can always tell in China about 
 what day of the month it is by the size and shape of 
 the moon ; but as it does not take exactly a month for the moon 
 to go through all her changes, or phases as they are called, and 
 as our months are not always exactly four weeks, you cannot 
 tell what day of the month it is in China, by what it is in 
 England. The day is divided into twelve hours instead of twenty- 
 four, so what the Chinese call one hour you would call two. 
 
 One reason why you would not care to be a Chinese boy 
 or girl, is that nobody's birthday is kept much in China until they 
 are fifty years old. The greatest birthdays of all are every ten 
 years after fifty ; that is, when people are sixty, seventy, and so 
 on. I think that is a mistake, don't you ? because if Chinese 
 people are at all like English, they care much less about their 
 birthdays when they are old, than when they are young. 
 
 No people have so few holidays as the Chinese. There 
 are only about forty important festivals, and of these some are 
 kept in some parts of the country and some in others. The only 
 great rejoicing time that is kept all over China is at the New 
 
 16 
 
2 42 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL 
 
 Year. The last part of the Old Year is spent in paying bills, as 
 it is considered a disgrace to begin the year in debt. 
 
 All public offices are closed ten days before the New Year 
 comes in. The last night of the Old Year everybody sits up. 
 They all offer sacrifices to the god of the kitchen, to their 
 ancestors, and to the spirit of the Old Year. At midnight the 
 fireworks begin, and go on all night. Early in the morning of the 
 first day of the new moon crowds of people go to the temples in 
 their best clothes, and all friends meet if possible. They send 
 New Year's cards to each other too ; most of them have three 
 pictures on them — a child, a mandarin, and an old man with a 
 stork. The first means "I hope you will have plenty of children ;" 
 the second " I hope you will be a mandarin; " and the third " I 
 hope you will live a long time," for t-he stork is the emblem of 
 long life. 
 
 For three days it is considered unlucky, if not wicked, to do 
 any work more than can be helped ; many people take a holiday 
 for twenty days. There is visiting and feasting going on every- 
 where. The chief New Year's gifts are fruit, sweets, tea, silk 
 and ornaments A list of the presents is generally sent with 
 them, written on a red ticket, wdiich the man wdio carries them 
 takes back w4th him, after the person to whom they were sent has 
 written on it " Received with thanks." Then another set of 
 presents of the same sort will be sent in return. It is considered 
 a great insult to refuse to take these presents, but if there are a 
 great many of them, the proper thing to do is to take some, and 
 send the rest back. 
 
 The Feast of Lanterns is kept on the day of the first full 
 moon of the j^ear, when everybody buys lanterns to carry about 
 and to hang up in the houses : w^onderful lanterns in all sorts of 
 shapes, made of silk, or horn, or paper, or glass, some with moving 
 figures of men on horseback, pictures of birds and beasts and 
 many other things, all moving about as fast as they can. This is 
 
FESTIVALS. ■ 24;, 
 
 managed by liaviug wheels inside the lanterns, which are turned 
 by the draught caused by the heat of the lamp. Everyone hangs 
 lanterns in his hall or outside his house, and there are long pro- 
 cessions through the streets, in which everyone carries a lantern. 
 
 Another festival is called ''Meeting the Spring." It is kept 
 either just before or just after the New Year. The Governor of 
 each capital of a province goes in state to the east gate, to meet 
 a long procession, in which is carried a huge buffalo made of 
 clay, and litters covered with children dressed very smartly and 
 decorated with flowers. When the procession gets to the 
 governor's house, he makes a speecli, recommending the people 
 to cultivate the ground. He strikes the buffalo three times, and 
 then the people fall upon it with stones and break it to pieces. 
 It is full of little images, which tumble out when the big one is 
 broken, and all the people scramble for them. 
 
 About the same time of the year, the Emperor goes to a field 
 close to the Temple of the Earth at Pekin, and after offering a 
 sacrifice, ploughs a few furrows, and all the princes and ministers 
 do a little ploughing too. Five different kinds of grain are then 
 sown in the field, after which it is given up to an officer, who has 
 to collect all that grows in it afterwards, and keep it for sacrifices. 
 
 In the fourth month there is a festival in honour of the gods 
 of the five elements. What are they ? ( 
 
 ) 
 
 This is one of the grandest feasts, millions of pounds are 
 spent on it every year. Grreat numbers of men dress themselves 
 in brick red (the colour prisoners wear) with manacles on their 
 hands, and call themselves culprits. They are really people who 
 have been ill during the past year, and have come dressed like 
 this to return thanks to the god who has cured them. 
 
 On the fifth day of the fifth month there are great boat-races : 
 the most noted is at Canton. There are long narrow boats built 
 on purpose, some holding from forty to sixty men with paddles, some 
 
246 THINGS J'HAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 even eighty. They keep time to the beat of a gong, which is 
 held by one of the crew, who stands up in a boat. These boats 
 are called " Dragon Boats," because they are so long ; very often 
 they upset and break. 
 
 In the ninth moDth the Empress sets an example of industry, 
 by sacrificing to the inventor of the silk manufacture, and then 
 collecting some mulberry leaves, for the royal silkw^orms to eat. 
 
 Sometimes a feast is prepared, to which a certain number of 
 spirits are invited. Every possible comfort is provided for them, 
 and all kinds of dainties. When they are supposed to have 
 finished their meal and gone back to the spirit w^orld, the family 
 invite their friends and neighbours to come and eat what the 
 spirits have left. 
 
 Then there is the Festival of the Tombs in spring, when 
 people visit the graves of their friends, to sweep them and paint 
 them, and put in a little flag, or a red and white streamer, to 
 show that they have done their duty by the dead. 
 
 All the gods have birthdays too, when people go specially to 
 their temples to pray and give presents. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ANCESTRAL WORSHIP. 
 
 HIS is the strangest thing of all in the religion of the 
 Chinese, and has more power over the minds and 
 hahits of the people than anything else. All Chinese 
 men and women, boys and girls, practise it, whichever 
 religion they belong to, unless they are Christians, and 
 it is one of the most difficult things for a man to give 
 up after he becomes a Christian. It is one of the oldest religious 
 customs loo. Men and women seem all to be made so that they 
 must worship something, and as in the most ancient religion of the 
 Chinese, there were no gods for them to worship, only some that 
 the Emperor w-orshipped instead of them, they took to worshipping 
 their dead fathers and mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers. 
 Confucius taught that the great duty of men is to honour their 
 parents while thej^ are alive and to sorrow for them after they are 
 dead, but Ancestral Worship was practised long before the time of 
 Confucius. You remember it is said of Shun that the reason he 
 came to be king was, that he was so good to his father and mother, 
 and it seems hkely that even so far back as his reign (when was 
 that ? ) the worship of ancestors was known. 
 
 The one thing that makes a Chinaman happy, more than 
 anything else, is to feel sure that his children and grandchildren 
 will care for him and w^orship him constantly after his death ; and 
 it is the fear that this wull not be done, which makes a man so 
 miserable if he has no sons, and so auxiour. to have many of them. 
 
248 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 As you Lave seen, the Chinese have no love and no resjoect 
 for their idols ; nearly all the respect they have, is given to their 
 ancestors, and CA^en this is not altogether the respect that comes 
 from love, but is very greatly the effect of fear, because they have 
 been taught so thoroughly and so long that if they do not take 
 proper care of their dead fiiends they will be tormented by their 
 spirits. Of course the priests encourage the people to believe this, 
 because they want to be paid a great deal of money for doing all 
 that they say must be done for the dead. 
 
 Sometimes a priest will go to a rich family, and tell them that 
 one of their ancestors is in great trouble in the world of darkness, 
 and that if they will give him some money, he will find out what 
 the trouble is ; the man's friends pay the priest, and tell him to 
 find out as soon as he can. He soon comes back and says that the 
 man is shut up in a dreadful pit, and that a policeman is torturing 
 him, or that something else very bad is happening to him, and 
 then he tells the friends that the only thing they can do to save 
 him, is to pay a large sum of money, and generally it is paid. 
 Then the priest fixes a day, and when it comes, all the relations of 
 the dead man come to his son's house with a crowd of priests and 
 visitors ; the priests, who are generally Tauists, march round and 
 round the Ancestral Hall and sing, nearly all day and all night. 
 
 On the second day, the head priest will generally say that the 
 ofiicers in the spirit world sa}^ they must have more money, or 
 they can do nothing ; so if the son has given all he can, he will 
 borrow some more. Then there will be more singing and a great 
 deal of crying too. By and bye the priest says that the man is 
 soon going to be set free, and the next day he will ver}^ likely say 
 that the officers will not quite give him up without a little more 
 money, and then the family will pawn their jewels and clothes to 
 get some more ; after this the priests will sing again, and then, if 
 they feel sure they have got all they can get, they will say the 
 man is free ; but when they think his relations are getting rich 
 
ANCESTRAL WORSHIP. 
 
 249 
 
 again, the}' Nvill often come back with the same stoiy, or one 
 something hke it, and the whole thing will he done over again. 
 It is onl}- 80118 who can do any good to their fathers after 
 death, so yon can understand now^ wli)' the Chinese care so much 
 about having boys and so little about girls. It is the eldest son's 
 business to perform the Ancestral Worship as long as he lives ; 
 
 HOUSE-SHOE GRAVE. 
 
 therefore when a father dies, he alw^ays leaves more money to his 
 eldest son than to tlie others. If a man has no sons, hut his 
 j^ounger brothers have more than one, he wdll adopt one of them; 
 if he dies without doing this, it is the duty of the younger brothers 
 to set apart one of their sons to perform the Ancestral Worship 
 for his uncle. 
 
250 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 If a man does not attend properly to the worship of his 
 ancestors, he may he punished hy the government ; that is one 
 reason why it is so hard for the Christians to give it up, for you 
 rememher that want of respect to parents is punished by death, so 
 a Chinaman must he ready to forsake " his own life also " for 
 Christ's sake, if he wants to he His disciple. ( ) 
 
 You will have found out already much of what is done after 
 the death of the father of a family, and you know all about the 
 funerals and the ancestral tablets. The tombs are always the 
 same shape as the one in the picture ; rich men's tombs are often 
 very large, with a great many stone figures of animals about 
 them. 
 
 It is not only when a man dies that sacrifices are offered 
 to him. Spring and Autumn are the times fixed for especially 
 attending to Ancestral Worship, particularly the spring, when the 
 Festival of the Tombs takes place. All the members of families, 
 as far as possible, meet together, to do honour to their dead 
 fathers and grandfathers. About the fourth or fifth of April, great 
 crowds of people may be seen pouring out of the towns and going 
 to the hills, for nearly all graves are on hill-sides, for wdiich reason 
 the worship at the tombs is often called '' The Eites of the Hills." 
 The graves are all swept and trimmed ; a table is placed before 
 each, on which are spread food, candles and incense with a paper 
 imitation of the ancestral tablets. iVfter a little waiting- time, 
 during which the spirits are supposed to be feeding, the eldest son 
 of each family worships before the tablets, crackers are let off, 
 then the food and tables are taken away and the party goes home. 
 At this time the women and children are ornamented with flowers 
 in their hair. The poor people only burn a basketful of paper 
 money at their tombs. Even robbers come home at this time of 
 the year to sacrifice to their ancestors. 
 
 Sometimes a piece of ground is bought close to a family tomb, 
 and different mem hers of the family cultivate it in turns, year by 
 
ANCESTRAL WORSHIP. 251 
 
 year, agreeing to pay the cost of the yearly worship from what 
 they get by this piece of ground. 
 
 The reason the Chinese burn so many things for their dead 
 friends is, that thej^ saj^ w^hen their friends have become invisible 
 (that is, so that tliey cannot be seen), all that they want mnst be 
 made invisible too, before it can be of any use to them, and the 
 
 WORSHIP BEFORE ANCESTRAL TABLET. 
 
 only way to make things invisible is to burn them. If a dead ]nan 
 has nothing sent to him in this way, the Chinese say he is as 
 badly off as those who die at sea or in war or in foreign lands, wdio 
 cannot be fed and clothed by their friends, because no one knows 
 wdiere they are buried, and therefore cannot get at their spirits. 
 All these neglected ones have to depend on public charity for all 
 
252 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 they want, aud if their needs are uot supplied, they will torment 
 living peo^^le by making them ill ; so in a Chinese city, at the 
 gates, by the bridges, at every corner, is to be seen a niche, where 
 offerings are made to these spirits. The Chinese are much more 
 ready to give to dead beggars than to living ones, because they do 
 not give for the sake of doing good to others, but for the sake of 
 sparing suffering for themselves. 
 
 The beginning of the practice of feeding dead beggars was 
 in the early years of the Ming emperors. One of them lost the 
 bodies of his father and mother, and was so grieved not to be able 
 to sacrifice at their tombs, that he ordered all his subjects to 
 sacrifice three times every year to the spirits of those whose graves 
 were not known. Some of the priests make a great deal of money 
 at this time, as they go about making collections to buy food for 
 the beggar spirits, aud they spend half of what they get and keep 
 the rest. Some of the people think the priests do this, and do not 
 see why the beggars sliould not give them the credit of all they 
 spend on them, so they burn paper monej' before their houses, 
 instead of giving real monej^ to the priests. 
 
 If a man has an only son, and that son becomes a Christian, 
 think how miserable the father will be ; for to him it means that 
 not only he himself, but his father and his grandfathers for five 
 generations back, will be beggar spirits for ever, or at least till 
 they are born again into the world ; and think too what courage 
 it would need for an only son to be a Christian and to confess it. 
 One father whose only son became a Christian, threatened to kill 
 himself on purpose that he might be able to torment his son from 
 the spirit world. An only son who becomes a Christian, and 
 whose father tells of him, is treated as if he were his father's 
 murderer, and is beheaded. If a man gets to the world of dark- 
 ness without a head, the ofiicers there are supposed to understand 
 at once that he has been a bad man, and so will treat him cruelly. 
 If there has been a war aud some of the soldiers have lost their 
 
ANCESTRAL IVOR SHI Pf*^,„^^^_^^^ 253 
 
 beads, their friends will do all they cau to get the heads back, aud 
 fasten them to the bodies, in the hope that the officers of the spirit 
 world wdll never find it out ; some have paid as much as a hundred 
 and fifty pounds for the head of a friend. 
 
 Sometimes a man's friends will burn a paper trunk for him, 
 with a lock and key, to keep his things in, so that the other spirits 
 shall not steal them ; horses and boats are burnt too, everything 
 that the man could possibly want. I have some of these very 
 things in front of me now^, that a lady from China gave me ; I wish 
 I could show them to you. There are eight different kinds of 
 caps, tw^elve dresses, three pairs of trousers, eight pairs of shoes 
 and boots, a bag, a fan, a square thing that looks like a picture, 
 a snuff bottle, and other things, and all these are on a piece of 
 paper ten inches long and seven inches broad ; for they are 
 only little pictures of the things, not the things themselves. I 
 have some of the paper money too that is burnt for the dead, 
 little bits about five inches and a half square. More than thirty 
 million pounds are spent every year in China on offerings for the 
 dead, and only about severity thousand pounds are spent in a 
 year on all the Protestant missions in China. That looks as 
 though people of false religions were more earnest than those of the 
 true, doesn't it ? It is supposed that half the women of China 
 spend all their time that is not wanted for house work in making 
 this paper money (which is called dien) and other things for 
 the dead. 
 
 If a noise is heard at a window at night, though it may be 
 only the wind, the Chinese think it is a hungry spirit asking for 
 food. How timid the children must be, if they fancy every 
 strange noise they hear is a spirit comiug. 
 
 Some rich families build ancestral temples, very large and 
 costly, with shelves round the walls for the tablets to stand on, 
 one above another, like the seats of a gallery. In some of these 
 there are ah the tablets of the family for a thousand years back. 
 
254 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 lu these temples there are very seldom any tablets for women or 
 for uumarried men. Sometimes if a young man dies before he 
 is married, he is betrothed and married after death to a dead 
 woman, and then one of his brother's sons is reckoned as las son, 
 and his tablet may be put into the temple. 
 
 A great deal of harm is done by this ancestral worship. It 
 wastes a great deal of money and a great deal of time too ; it 
 makes the Chinese marry young, for fear of dying without sons ; 
 it leads them to have concubines for the same reason, and often 
 makes them stay in China, when if it were not for the fear of 
 being buried in a foreign country, they would go abroad and their 
 own country would not be so much too full as it is. 
 
CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 FJJNG SHUY. 
 
 HIS is another very odd part of the behef of the Chinese, 
 
 and one that comes into all their thoughts, and makes 
 
 a difference in all their actions. It is rather difficult 
 
 to explain too. What wise children you ought to he 
 
 by the time you have finished this book, and read about 
 
 so many things that clever men cannot understand. 
 
 The Chinese descriptions of what is meant by Fung Shuy 
 
 are not all alike, — at least, not in everything, but in the chief 
 
 points they all agree. 
 
 The words " Fung Shuy " mean wind and water ; but 
 perhaps the word that best describes what the Chinese mean by 
 Fung Shuy is Juck^ which you know they believe in very much. 
 Wind and water have something to do with it though. The Chinese 
 have noticed, as most people have, that nearly all plants seem to 
 die in winter, and yet somehow find out when summer is near, 
 and spring up again. Men too feel a change when winter goes 
 and spring comes, and even if they cannot understand what makes 
 the difference, they look upon the cause, whatever it may be, as 
 a good influence. They have noticed too that the wind from the 
 south brings warmth with it, and with tlie warmth come life and 
 brightness to plants and animals and men ; while the cold wind 
 which is known to come from the north, brings barrenness and 
 death ; so they look upon the cause of the cold as an evil influence. 
 Therefore they consider these two points, north and south, as the 
 
256 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 points of good aucl evil ; the influence from the one (the south) 
 makes everything fruitful and beautiful, the influence from the 
 other (the north) brings loss of beauty and fruit, and in the end — 
 death. 
 
 From seeing this, the Chinese say there must be a good 
 influence always moving gently from the south like air, which will 
 do good to all living things, if nothing comes in its way to stop 
 it or disturb it ; so a Chinaman always likes to have his house 
 facing the south, and would expect to be always in trouble if it 
 faced the north. 
 
 Then, as they see that not only men and animal's but even 
 plants feel the good influence of the spring, which comes from the 
 south, they suppose that dead peojDle must feel it too, if their 
 bodies are placed in such a way that the south wind can always 
 reach them. When a grave is placed so that it can get the full 
 force of the south wind, it is said to have good Fung Shuy, and 
 it is supposed that a family whose graves are placed Hke this, 
 will get on well in the world, and have plenty of money, honour, 
 and sons. 
 
 If this is what good Fung Shuy means, you will understand 
 that bad Fung Shuy is just the opposite, — an evil influence from 
 the north with nothing to stop it, blasting and killing all that it 
 comes against. A dead man who is not buried according to the 
 laws of good Fung Shuy, is left to be hurt by the bad Fung Shuy, 
 which will chill him and make him miserable ; and he in his vexa- 
 tion at being so treated, will torment his childi'en and grand- 
 childi'en with ruin, sickness, and death, till the whole family dies 
 out. Anything that could destroy good Fung Shuy, or make it 
 divide and go on in two streams instead of one, is bad Fang Shuy. 
 
 So you see, if a man wants to get good Fung Shuy for his 
 house, or his grave, or any other place, he has two chief things to 
 do, after he has built it facing the south — fii'st, to take everything 
 out of the way, that would keep the south wind from coming to 
 
FUNG SHUY. 257 
 
 it, and secondly to put as much as he can behind it, to keep the 
 north wind fi'om coming to it, and yon would hardly believe at 
 first how much trouble this gives, and how it keeps the Chinese 
 from improving themselves and their country. 
 
 Tliere are a great many professors of Fung Slmy, whose 
 business it is to tell men where to find places to build in with 
 good Fung Shuy, or how to alter places whose Fung Shuy is bad. 
 It takes a great many years' study for a man to become a good 
 professor of Fung Shuy, understanding all about the rules. No 
 man ever builds a house, or a shop, or a grave, without sending for 
 one of these men to tell him whether the Fung Shuy is good ; then, 
 if he does what the professor tells him, and afterwards does not get 
 on well, he will say the professor did not understand his business, 
 and he will not employ him again ; but if a man gets on very well 
 after a 2:)rofessor has told him where to build, that professor will be- 
 come famous, and hundreds of Chinese will come to him for advice. 
 
 It is thought a very good thing to have some water at the 
 south of a grave or of a house, because without water neither 
 plants, animals, nor men can live, so now you know why this 
 funny thing we are talking about is called Fung Shuy. 
 
 If a man wants to be quite sure that his family will get on 
 well after he is dead, he sends for a professor of Fung Shuy to go 
 with him to find a place for a grave. If they come to a place that 
 seems nice, they look at the country north and south of it, to see 
 if there is anything to keep out the north wind and let in the 
 south, and whether there is any water to the south or not. If it 
 is all right so far as the wind is concerned, but there is no water, 
 the man will make a pond in front of the place, but a river or 
 stream is thought better, because running water does more good 
 than still water. If there is another grave, or a house, or a hill, 
 or a clump of trees, or a road running east and west, to the south 
 of the place, it will prevent good Fung Shuy, so another place 
 will have to be found. 
 
 17 
 
258 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 A hilly place is very good for Fung Sliuy, as graves and houses 
 can generally be made with their backs to the hill, in such a way 
 that the hill will keep off the north wind ; so the south sides of 
 hills are generally dotted all over with graves. In flat parts of 
 the country, trees are used as defenders instead of hills, especially 
 large trees, with thick, bushy tops. There are many stories told 
 in China of men that have tried to cut down good Fung Shuy 
 trees, and whose right arms have been paralysed as a judgment, 
 even if they have only cut off the lower branches. Rich men, 
 whose graves are on flat ground, often make hills on the north 
 side of them, in the shape of a horse-shoe, so that the graves can 
 be inside them, and so be shielded from the north. 
 
 Sometimes shields are fixed on the houses, to give good 
 Fung Shuy — boards with signs painted on them, which are sup- 
 posed to bring luck; they are generally put over the doors or 
 under the windows. 
 
 Good Fung Shuy can easily be destroyed. For instance, a 
 man may build a nice house for himself witli very good Fung 
 Shuy, the north wdnd all shut out, and nothing in the waj^ to 
 prevent the south wind coming to it : and then another man maj?- 
 build a house a little higher than his, farther to the south, and 
 so spoil his good Fung Shuy, by coming between him and the 
 south wind ; or a big tree on the north side of his house may blow 
 down, and so expose him to the north wind. When good Fung 
 Shuy is destroyed, a broom and a basket may be hung up outside 
 the house to sweep away the evil from the north. Every boat 
 carries wdth it a brush for this purpose, fastened to a stick, and 
 hung up somewhere in the stern. 
 
 Men are often brought up before the magistrates because, 
 while they have been improving their own houses, they have, 
 sometimes without knowing it, put up something, or taken down 
 something, by which tliey have interfered with their neighbours' 
 Fung Shuy. 
 
FUNG SHUY. 26 1 
 
 This belief in Fung Sliuy has more to do with the Chinese 
 way of building houses than anything else, and it is very tiresome 
 often to foreigners. The Chinese manage all their houses so that 
 they shall be very low, all about the same height, and with no 
 chimneys, in order not to disturb each other's Fung Shuy ; then 
 perhaps an English merchant will come to a Chinese city, and not 
 understanding, or at all events not caring about Fung Shuy, 
 will build a big warehouse, which may destroy the good Fung 
 Shuy of hundreds of houses, or he will build himself a house with 
 chimneys like ours in England, which will have the same effect. 
 This is one reason why the Chinese do not like foreigners to come 
 to China, and why no Chinaman will live next door to a foreigner, 
 if he can help it. 
 
 I think you will easily see too how the belief in Fung Shuy 
 keeps the Chinese from improving themselves. There is a great 
 deal of coal in China, deep down in the ground, but the Chinese 
 will not dig mines and get it out, because they could not do it 
 without destroying some old graves, or making mounds, which 
 would spoil somebody's good Fung Shuy. They do not like to 
 make railways nor put up telegraph wires, because the stations and 
 the posts would all destroy good Fung Shuy. They cannot build 
 higher houses for the same reason, and the missionaries are sure 
 to make a good many people very angry if they build churches 
 with towers to them. Sometimes after a church or a school has 
 been built, there will be sickness in the place, or great troubles 
 maj^ come to a few families, and when thej^ call in the Professor of 
 Fung Shuy to ask the reason, he will say it is all the "foreign 
 devils'" doing, and then the people will dislike the foreigners 
 more than ever, and if they cannot get rid of the building, will put 
 up a pagoda, a kind of very high temple, which is supposed to 
 change bad Fung Shu}^ to good for as great a distance all round as 
 can be seen from the top. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FORTUXE-TELLIXG. 
 
 ORTUNES are told iu all sorts of ways in China, — from 
 the stars, from table-turning, from spirit-writing, from 
 the looks of the face, by the palm of the hand, by 
 drawing lots, by every means that people could possibly 
 I invent, and everybody believes in what the fortune- 
 tellers say, from the emperor down to the lowest of his 
 subjects. 
 
 As soon as a child is born, its fortune is told ; a boy cannot go 
 to school, nor learn a trade, nor be engaged nor married, without 
 the fortune-tellers having a hand in it. No man will go on a jour- 
 ney, nor build a house, nor buy a coffin, nor dig a grave, without 
 the advice of a fortune-teller. 
 
 One way of telling fortunes is by " Sticks of Fate," of which 
 there are sixty-four in a set. They are thin slips of bamboo, on 
 which are written short sentences, which can be made to mean 
 almost anything. People who come to have their fortunes told 
 by means of these sticks, generally come with some particular 
 question that they want answered ; so they draw one of the 
 sticks from among the sixty-four, and from what is written on it 
 the fortune- teller always manages to make up an answer to the 
 question. 
 
 Another way is to write several important words, each on a 
 thin slip of cardboard, made up into a little roll ; several hundreds 
 of these are shaken up in a box, then the man who wants his 
 

 -TKEfT l-ORTrNF.-TKI.LKI!. 
 
FORTUNE-TELLING. 265 
 
 fortune told draws one out, aad the fortune-teller explains what 
 the word means and what it has to do witli him. Most of the 
 fortune-tellers are Tauists or Buddhists. They like to keep up 
 the helief in fortune-telling as much as they can, for the sake of 
 the money it brings them, for all fortune-tellers must be paid. 
 
 One day a fortune-teller came to a missionary, and told him 
 that he was a Christian and wanted to be baptized. He seemed 
 to mean all he said, but the missionary told him he could not be 
 baptized so long as he remained a fortuue-teller, he must give up 
 his profession and come another time for baptism. The man 
 went away, and tried to find some other way of earning a living, 
 but in vain, so he went on telling fortunes. 
 
 Again the time came round for examining those who wished 
 to be baptized, and again the man came to the missionary, more 
 anxious than ever for baptism. But the missionary said, " No, 
 not so long as you tell fortunes." He said all he could to persuade 
 the man to give up his business for Jesus' sake, even if he starved 
 through it ; the man would not promise, and went away in great 
 trouble. 
 
 The time for the baptisms came, and many Christians were 
 gathered together for the service. Just as it was going to begin, 
 the fortune-teller came in, with such a happy look on his face, 
 and a big bundle in his hand, wrapped in a carpet. He opened 
 out the bundle, and showed the peoj^le his books and sticks and 
 other things that he had used for telling fortunes ; it was all he 
 had in the world to depend upon. He took all the things into the 
 court-yard and set them on fire, and before the fire had quite gone 
 out, he was baptized. Of course God took care that he did not 
 starve. Where does it say in the Bible that if we give up things 
 for Jesus' sake, we shall get more than we lose, even in this world, 
 besides getting Heaven by-and-bye ? ( .) 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 OPIUM. . 
 
 THINK this will be the saddest chapter iu the book, 
 not only because it is on such a sad subject that I have 
 to write, but also because it is the work of our own 
 country that is the cause of nearly all the sadness. 
 
 For opium is the thing which more than all others 
 
 is ruining China, and hindering the missionaries, and 
 
 it is the English who send the opium to China, though the 
 
 emperor and the people have begged them over and over again 
 
 not to send it. 
 
 It is made, as perhaps you know, from the juice of a poppy, 
 which is growm chiefly in India ; the juice is hardened and made 
 into cakes, and then sent to China. Opium is not generally eaten, 
 but smoked in a pipe like this. The only people who eat it 
 
 (except in very small doses, when there is not time for smoking), 
 are those who want to kill themselves in the easiest way, for it 
 only takes a very little to send a man so fast asleep that he wdll 
 never wake again ; so i)eople generall}^ take it at night, when they 
 
OPIUM 267 
 
 go to bed, and by the morning, even if they are not quite dead, 
 it is too late to do anything for thein. 
 
 If a man or woman once begins to smoke opium, it is ahnost 
 impossible for them ever to give it up. None of them, wlien they 
 begin, mean to smoke very much, any more than English men and 
 women mean to be drunkards, when they drink their first glass 
 of beer or wine, but the habit gets hold of them so quickly, and 
 every day they want a little more ; and with opium, even more 
 than with beer and wine, it is the case, that the more people take, 
 the more they want. 
 
 Doctors and missionaries are getting to be less and less hope- 
 ful of curing those who have formed the habit of opium-smoking, 
 and it is very difficult to know whether a man is cured or not. 
 Sometimes men are sent out from a hospital, and everyone thinks 
 they are cured, but in eight months' time, or sooner, they are 
 brought back just as bad as ever. I believe none but Christians 
 have ever been known really to give up opium, after they have 
 once begun to smoke it. If a man uses it for a fortnight, the 
 habit gains such power over him, that nothing less than the powder 
 of God can make it possible for him to give it up, for besides all 
 the other harm it does, opium makes men so weak in body and 
 mind that they cannot giA'^e it up. When a man really comes to 
 Jesus and takes him as his own Saviour, then, because the power 
 of Jesus is stronger than the power of habit, he is able to give up 
 opium. There is no habit so strong that the power of God cannot 
 conquer it ; so if you are one of God's children, and you know of 
 one bad habit, or two, or even three that you have, do not make 
 up your mind that you must have them always, but go to God 
 directly and tell Him all about them, one by one, and ask Him to 
 conquer them altogether for you, and to be the Master of them 
 and of you, and then just expect Him to do it, and I know He will. 
 
 I must tell you a story about this that I heard a long while 
 ago, if I can remember it, because it will explain one thing that I 
 
2 68 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 waut to sa}^ about habits — It is no use ashing God to cure ns of 
 had liahits, if we do not really ivant to give tliem iq). There was a 
 little tiuy boy who had a habit of sucking his thumb. Of course 
 you are too big to suck your thumb, so first think what your bad 
 habit is, and put that in the story instead. The little boy's papa 
 talked to him about it, and told him it was not at all a nice thing 
 to do ; I think he told him to ask God to cure him of it. Anyhow, 
 when the little boy prayed that night before going to bed, he said, 
 "Please, God, make me a good boy, and don't let me suck my 
 thumb any more ; " but very soon after, his prayer was changed, 
 and this was the new one — " Please, God, don't make me a good 
 boy, for I must suck my thumb." You see, it is no use for you 
 to ask God to cure you of a fault, if all the while you are thinking 
 that you must keep on doing it, either because you like it too 
 much, or because you are not quite sure that God can or will cure 
 it for you. 
 
 Years ago it was said that four hundred thousand people died 
 every year in the Chinese empire from opium-smoking, that is, 
 that out of every hundred who smoked opium, ninety were killed 
 by it, most of them in less than twenty years after they began to 
 smoke it. And it has not got any better since, but much 
 worse. 
 
 Smoking opium gives what the Chinese think is a very 
 delightful feeling, like going to sleep and having beautiful dreams, 
 so fairy-like and lovely that as soon as they wake they long to 
 be asleep again. If they do not keep on taking it, this nice feeling 
 soon goes, and they begin to be very faint and sick and thirsty, 
 with a dreadful burning in the throat, and nothing will make them 
 better except more opium. The longing for it is something so 
 terrible that no one could even think what it is like who has not 
 felt it ; if the man does not get any more, he becomes dizzy and 
 weak, his body aches all over, and before long he dies, unless he 
 is a very strong man indeed. 
 
OPIUM. 269 
 
 The richest men in China have become beggars through 
 spending all their money in opium ; and wlieu they get to the end 
 of their money, still they cannot stop, but sell their land, their 
 houses, their furniture, their own clotheSj their beds, the clothes 
 of their wives and children, and even their wives and children 
 themselves, to get more opium. It takes away every wish to 
 be good themselves, or to do good to others, every wish for 
 anything, except more and more opium. 
 
 Even the smokers themselves say that opium is bad and only 
 bad, for the man who is a slave to opium, and has none, w^ill do 
 anything, however bad, to get some. A Chinese mandarin once 
 said, " It is not the man that eats the opium, but the opium that 
 eats the man." 
 
 You may imagine what a terrible thing it is to a Chinese wife 
 or mother to find out that her husband or son has begun to smoke 
 opium, and she knows too well wdiat the end will be. A little 
 while ago, the women in the villages round Canton wrote a 
 petition, begging that the sale of opium in their villages might be 
 stopped. This is part of what they said : — 
 
 " When in youth we went to the homes of our husbands, we 
 did not suffer from cold and hunger ; but from the time our 
 husbands and sons smoked opium, the children that were dressed 
 in green and red, in the twinkling of an eye came to rags ; 
 ornamented halls and grand houses all vanished in smoke ; those 
 wdio before took care of their families have now come to look like 
 beggars. The beds have no covers, the dishes have no food left 
 on them. Hungry, there is nothing for us to eat ; cold, there are 
 no clothes for us to wear; the fault is surely with opium." 
 
 Even the children whose fathers have been opium smokers are 
 not like other children, but are always pale and sickly. 
 
 Kich men often have special rooms in their houses, where 
 they go to lie down on beds and smoke ; the poor go to opium 
 shops, which are always open, like our public-houses. They are 
 
270 
 
 THJNGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 generally in low, dark streets, whicli would remind yon, I expect, 
 of the words of the Lord Jesus — " He that doeth evil hateth the 
 
 i.,|iii'ii'iiiiil|ir / ji'fsv 
 
 AN OPIUM DEN. 
 
 light, neither cometh to the light " ( ) ; they are very 
 
 dirtj^ places too, filled with bad air and lighted only by dim lamps, 
 just enough to show the men lying on benches, which are either 
 
OPIUM. 271 
 
 quite bare or covered with a straw mat. The men themselves 
 have often hardly any clothes on. Some of them are quite yonug 
 and healthy looking, as they have only just begun to smoke ; 
 others look like living skeletons, all they have in the world being 
 a filthy rag to cover them. 
 
 The number of opium-smokers gets larger every day ; in some 
 cities on the coast, fifty out of every hundred men smoke opium, 
 though in other places there are not so many. In one city alone, 
 with 400,000 people in it, there are 2,700 opium shops, that is 
 one shop to 14:8 peo23le, and out of the 148 only about thirty would 
 be men, and the rest women and children. There are not many 
 women in China who smoke opium, compared with the number 
 of men who do, still I am sorry to say there are some. The 
 Chinese used to be the most sober people in the world, and now 
 they are fast becoming slaves to opium, which is taken by rich 
 and poor alike. 
 
 Why does not the Emperor make a law, you will say, that 
 the people are not to buy it ? So he has, but the law is never 
 kept, because the mandarins, who have to punish those who break 
 the laws, smoke opium themselves, and do nothing to others who 
 use it, because they know they would get into trouble themselves 
 if they did. 
 
 And yet the very men who take it are angry with themselves 
 for doing it, and say they would give anything to be saved from 
 it. They constantly come to the missionaries, begging them to 
 give them some medicine which will take away the longing for 
 opium, and the missionaries who speak the most strongly against 
 opium are those who are most loved and respected by the Chinese. 
 
 A Chinaman once went to the English Hospital at Swatow, 
 and asked to be cured of the habit of opium-smoking. He was a 
 learned man, but a great smoker ; he had got so used to having 
 opium, that he almost died when he gave it up, so, as the only 
 hope of saving his life, the doctor gave him back his opium pipe 
 
2 72 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 and let him smoke again ; then he began to get better. As soon 
 as he felt his strength coming back, he asked the doctor to try 
 again, but the doctor said, " I have tried already, and you were 
 almost dead ; I cannot venture to try again." The poor man's 
 answer was, " Teacher, whether I live or whether I die, I want 
 you to try to cure me, I take all the risk." So the doctor tried 
 again, and this time the man was cured, though he suffered 
 terribly and was in great danger. 
 
 More than ten million pounds are spent every j'ear by the 
 Chinese on opium. And who do you think gets all the money ? 
 This is the saddest part of the whole thing, that although the 
 Chinese have asked again and again that opium may be kept out 
 of their country because it is ruining them, large quantities are 
 constantly forced upon them by England, because the money paid 
 for opium is paid to the British government in India, and rather 
 than give it up, they have even gone to war twice with China, 
 in 1840 and 1847, to make them take it, or rather to force the 
 emperor to give permission to the Chinese merchants to buy 
 opium of the English merchants in India, when the emperor and 
 all his people want to have a law forbidding opium to be bought 
 or sold in China, except in very small quantities for medicine. 
 
 It was in the year 1773 that opium was first taken to China 
 in large quantities, and ever since then the Chinese have used it 
 more and more. In 1776, a thousand chests were bought, in 1833 
 there were twenty thousand chests, costing more than three 
 million pounds, that is, more than China got from England for tea. 
 Opium merchants now settle in all parts of China. When a shop is 
 first opened in a town or village, it never gets on well, because the 
 people there have not learned to like opium, so the owner of 
 the shop gives away little bits and persuades the people to buy 
 it, and when once they try, they soon come back for more, and 
 get it very cheap at first, till they have got so fond of it, that they 
 are willing to buy it at any price, and so the evil habit spreads. 
 
OPIUM. 273 
 
 You will not wonder that the Chinese are puzzled to know 
 how it is that the same country should send missionaries to teach 
 
 01>rUM SMOKER. 
 
 them a pure, holy religion, and opium to destroy hotli their bodies 
 and their souls. A Chinese ambassador said to an English gentle- 
 man a little while ago — '' You say that England is a more moral 
 
 18 
 
274 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 country tlian China: why tlien does England insist upon onr taking 
 her opium ? " This question is constantly being asked of the 
 missionaries. Men say to them, "You tell us that Jesus taught 
 men to love others as well as themselves, and always to bear in 
 mind the golden rule, " Do to others what you would like thein 
 to do to you,' but every year you send opium to China, aud 
 injure millions of your fellow-creatures : when men only think of 
 what will profit themselves, and do not care how much harm they 
 do to other people, how can they be said to love others as them- 
 selves ? how can we believe and follow their religion ? " 
 
 Some people say to the Chinese — " Well, but you need not 
 smoke opium if we do sell it ; you are not obliged to buy it." To 
 this the Chinese reply : " If you will stop sending it from India, 
 the emperor will make a law that it shall not be made in China, 
 and then there will be none to smoke ; but so long as you keep 
 sending it to us, it will be of no use for the emperor to say it is not 
 to be made here ; the only difference that would make would be, 
 that we should buy it all from you, instead of some from you, and 
 some from each other." 
 
 Then others say — " If we do not sell opium to the Chinese, 
 there will not be enough money to keep up the Indian govern- 
 ment." I think the youngest of you would be able to answer tliat. 
 Wrong is wrong, even if good comes out of it. It is like a thief 
 saying, " I must steal, because if I don't, I shall die of bunger." 
 And after all, many wise people think that England would not 
 suffer at all by giving up the opium trade, because the fields that 
 are now used for growing poppies might be used for rice or cotton 
 or other things. And besides this, if the Chinese did not waste so 
 much money on opium, they would have more to spend on other 
 things made by English people. The money spent now on opium 
 by the Chinese is about as much as i\i^ Chinese get from England 
 for both tea and silk, so they have no money left to bay English 
 goods. 
 
OP/VM. 275 
 
 A great statesmau, who died a few years ago, said that if we 
 were to add up all the money we had got frora China for forty 
 years for opium, we should find it had not come to anything like 
 so much as we had spent on the wars with China, caused hy our 
 trying to force opium upon them. 
 
 England loses in another way too. So much of the hest land 
 in India is given up to poppies, that there is not enough for rice 
 and other things for the people to eat, so there are often famines 
 in the parts of India where poppies are grown ; and it costs the 
 government a great many millions of money to feed the starving 
 people. Then the people in India where the opium is made are 
 beginning to smoke it, so that our own subjects are sinking lower 
 and lower, as well as the Chinese ; so you see we have lost 
 every way. 
 
 One more set of figures I must give you, and this will be the 
 last. In one year, quite lately, nearly nine million pounds were 
 paid by China to India for opium, and in the same 3'ear only 
 seventy thousand pounds were spent by England on missions 
 to China ; so is it any great wonder that the Chinese do not like 
 the English, and think we do them more harm than good ? Less 
 money is spent by England on missions to China in five years, 
 than is spent in England on beer and wine in one day ! For the 
 money spent in England in strong drink in one year is a hundred 
 and thirty-five million pounds ; that is very much more than the 
 Chinese spend in opium, and yet think what a little place England 
 is compared to China. There are five millions of people in England 
 who have said that they will never touch wine or beer or spirits, 
 because they see how much harm it does to people, and they want 
 by theii* example to do all they can to keep it from spreading any 
 further. If every boy or girl who reads this book will promise 
 never to drink these things, there will soon be more than five 
 million, and I think England will have a better right to tell the 
 Chinese not to take opium, when the English have given up using 
 
276 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE NOT CELESTIAL. 
 
 things that are almost as bad. See if you can find a text which 
 shows that it is a good thing to give up drinking wine and beer. 
 Perhajos you will find more than one, so I will leave you a whole 
 line to put them in. 
 
 ( ) 
 
 You will be glad to know that a great many people in 
 England are trying very hard to get the Government to stop send- 
 ing opium to China. There is a society on purpose for this, that 
 you will see mentioned in the list at the end of the book. I have 
 often seen petitions to the parliament about it, prepared for 
 people to sign. I hope, when you are old enough for such things, 
 you will all sign them, and that till then you will often send in 
 a petition to a still higher government, the King of heaven and 
 earth, asking Him to help the people who are trying to stop it, 
 so that no country may have to say of us, that we go to it with the 
 Gospel in one hand, and destruction to soul and body in the other. 
 
PART IV. 
 THINGS THAT ABE CELESTIAL. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES. 
 
 )W that you know so much about China and the 
 Chinese, I am sure you will be wondering what the 
 missionaries are doing for them, and how they are 
 
 getting on. 
 
 The first 
 were neither 
 Catholics sent 
 
 men who told the Chinese about Jesus 
 Protestants nor Englishmen, but Italian 
 Roman Catholics sent by the Pope. They got on very well 
 indeed, because they told the Chinese that even if they became 
 Christians, they might keep on worshipping their dead relations ; 
 and that is the part of their own religion which the Chinese think 
 more of than any other ; so they did not so much mind giving up 
 their belief in other things, if they might keep this. As you have 
 seen already, part of the Roman Catholic religion has got mixed up 
 with Buddhism, so that it does not make much difference to a 
 Buddhist if he becomes a Roman Catholic ; he worships saints 
 instead of gods, and eats meat ; that is nearly all. 
 
 It is only since the year 1800 that Protestant missionaries 
 have begun to go to China. The first that went was Dr. Morrison, 
 in 1807, and you may fancy a little, from what you have read, 
 what very hard work his was. First he had to learn the language, 
 and that was very difficult, and when he knew it he could not 
 teach the people much, because there were no words in Chinese 
 for the things he wanted to talk about ; so he had to make new 
 words, and even then the Chinese could not tell what the words 
 
2 8o THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 meaut, till tliey were explain ed to them. Dr. Morrison worked 
 very hard and prayed very much for China. By the time he had 
 been there seven years, he had managed to put all the New 
 Testament into Chinese, and four years later, with the help of 
 another gentleman who went to him from England, he finished the 
 whole Bible, and the British and Foreign Bible Society printed it 
 for him. Since then many better words have been made, and new 
 translations, so that it is not Dr. Morrison's Bible that is used in 
 China to-day. 
 
 When he had finished the Bible, Dr. Morrison wrote a 
 Chinese and English Dictionary ; I think that must have been 
 even more difficult than the Bible. He wrote books and tracts 
 too in Chinese, and he had a dispensary, where sick people might 
 come for medicine, so you see he worked very hard indeed. In 
 1821 he came home for a holiday, which he wanted very much, 
 and in 1826 he went back again, and preached and worked in 
 China for eight years more, and then he died ; and after all his 
 twenty-two years of hard work, he only knew of three or four 
 Chinese wdio had come to Jesus, and there was not one church or 
 school. But Dr. Morrison had opened the way for other mission- 
 aries, and interested English people in China, and made it easier 
 for them to learn the language, so that after he died other people 
 went to China, and now, fifty years later, there are thirty-two 
 different Protestant societies working in the Chinese Empire, 
 and nearly five hundred missionaries. 
 
 But what can five hundred missionaries do for three hundred 
 and sixty millions of people ? There would only be one missionary 
 for every seven hundred thousand people, even if the missionaries 
 were scattered all over the country ; but instead of that, most of 
 them are in the large cities and towns on the sea-coast ; and in 
 some parts in the inside of the country, away from the sea, there 
 is not so much as one missionary to two million people, so that 
 nearly thirty-three thousand Chinese die every day, without ever 
 
MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES 281 
 
 liaviug heard of Jesus and His love. It is only lately that English 
 people have been allowed to live anywhere except at large sea-side 
 towns, but now missionaries are beginning to go all over the country, 
 especially those belonging to the " China Inland Mission," which 
 has sent missionaries into fifteen out of the eighteen Provinces. 
 
 But even of those Chinese who do hear, very few care, and 
 yon will be able to understand many reasons for this. Perhaps the 
 greatest reason of all is, that the Chinese dislike English people so 
 much, and because they dislike the English, they dislike their 
 religion. This dislike is most strongly felt on the sea-coast, where 
 most of the missionaries are, because it is there that most English 
 people live, and it is there that most opium is brought, so it is not 
 very strange that the Chinese should think that Christianity and 
 opium have something to do with each other, and that as the one 
 is all bad, the other cannot be very good. 
 
 Another difficulty is, that the Chinese think they are so much 
 better than any other people, that their religion must be better 
 than any other religion ; so though they will listen to preaching 
 out of curiosity to know what the barbarians' doctrine is, they will 
 not often even try to find out whether it is better than their own. 
 This is why people in the villages, where they are not so learned, 
 are often more ready to become Christians than those in 
 the towns. 
 
 But though the learned men will not listen thoughtfully to the 
 missionaries, they are nearly always ready to take books and 
 tracts ; so we cannot tell how many are reading and thinking 
 about Christianity, though nobody knows about them. A 
 gentleman was once travelling about in the middle of China, far 
 away from the sea, where there were no missionaries at all ; he 
 had been sent by the British and Foreign Bible Society to try to 
 sell Bibles and Testaments to the Chinese. One day he sold a 
 New Testament to a Chinaman, who took the book home and 
 began to read it ; he was so interested, that when the night came, 
 
282 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 lie quite forgot to go to bed, but read straight on till the morning, 
 by which time he had just got to the end of St. Matthew. He 
 only stopped to eat, and then went back to his book, and hardly 
 left it till he had got right to the end. And then he thought he 
 had better tell someone else about it, so he invited all his friends 
 to his house, and read the book to them. They all hked it so 
 much, that they sent to ask a missionary to come and teach them, 
 and now there is quite a group of Christians in that place. 
 
 Think hciw uncomfortable it must be for the missionaries who 
 go to live in out-of-the-way places in China, with no nice houses 
 like we have here, and with quite different kinds of food to eat, 
 often with nowhere to sleep, except in those dreadful hotels that 
 yon have read about, with no doctor to come to them if they are 
 taken ill, and no trains to take letters to their friends, or to bring 
 letters from them, despised by all the people round them because 
 they are not Chinese, and perhaps hardly able to speak to the 
 peo23le, or to understand what the j^eople say to them, because 
 they do not know the language well enough. 
 
 A missionary in China is much more lonely than a missionary 
 in India, because there are not so many English people about, and 
 because travelling is so much slower and more difficult. 
 
 But if the missionaries love God and love the Chinese well 
 enough to suffer all this for the sake of telling the Chinese about 
 a God who loves them and a Saviour who died for them, don't you 
 think it ought to be very easy for you, even if you only love God 
 and the Chinese a very little bit, to go without some of the things 
 you like, for the sake of helping God to let the Chinese know 
 about the great Present God has given for them and for you 
 ( ) ? Of course God could send angels from heaven 
 
 to preach to the Chinese if He liked, or He might put money 
 into the fishes' mouths ( ) for the missionaries, or send 
 
 them bread and meat by the birds, as he did to one missionary 
 long ago ( ) ; but He does not do this, because He 
 
NATIVE PREACHING AT NINGPO. 
 
284 THINGS TEAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 wants you to do the work for Him. Yon see it is not everything 
 we can do. We cannot make the world light in the morning and 
 dark at night ; we cannot make it rain or snow or freeze ; we 
 cannot make the flowers grow, or the corn or the trees ; so God 
 does all that for us ; but we can tell people about Jesus, and give 
 money to other people to go and tell those that we cannot get at 
 ourselves ; so God leaves this for us to do. How many of us 
 are doing it, I wonder ? 
 
 And what about the Chinese who do become Christians ? 
 They have a great many difficulties too. Chinamen often say 
 they would become Christians, if they might go on smoking opium 
 and working on Sundays. The Eoman Catholic missionaries let 
 them do this, but not the Protestant ; so if a man wants to be a 
 Protestant Christian, he must give up a great deal for Jesus' sake. 
 If he keeps a shop and shuts it on Sundays, he will lose many of 
 his customers, if not all, as they will choose rather to go to a shop 
 that is always open ; and if he has work in a government office, he 
 will rot be allowed to keep it and rest on Sunday. He will have to 
 give up worshipping his ancestors, and most likely all his friends 
 will hate and despise him for this, even if they do not take him to 
 the judge and get him punished. 
 
 One good thing that comes from this is, that there are very 
 few half-and-half Christians in China ; if a man loves God well 
 enough to give up his business and his father and mother, and 
 to be hated and despised by all his friends rather than disobey 
 God, he is pretty sure to be a real, earnest, working Christian. 
 Some of the Chinese Christians are paid by the missionaries to 
 teach in their schools, or to go about the country preaching ; 
 then their friends mock them and say they are only " rice 
 Christians," by which they mean that they have only become 
 Christians for the sake of what they can get by it ; yet a great 
 many Chinese Christian workers get no pay at all, but ask the 
 missionaries to let them work for nothing. 
 
MISSIONS AND MISSIONARIES. 285 
 
 There is a special reason now why Christian people should 
 work harder than ever for China ; that is, that the Chinese are 
 beginning to leave their country in great numbers. Some of 
 them go to America, but others go to Sumatra, Java, Borneo, 
 the Philippine Islands, the Sandwich Islands, and many other 
 places where people from Europe cannot live, because the climate 
 makes them ill; but the Chinese can live there without getting 
 ill at all. Many go to live in Thibet and Mongolia and Manchuria, 
 where there are very, very few missionaries, so that if only the 
 Chinese were Christians, millions of other people would hear about 
 Jesus through them. 
 
 And the Chinese make good workers for Jesus too. One 
 day a missionary's servant was going through a part of the country 
 where he had not often been before, and he saw a crowd of men 
 at a httle distance, so he went up to them to see what was 
 happening. He soon found that it was a Chinaman talking to 
 Chinamen, so he listened to hear what he was speaking about, 
 and think how surprised he was to find that he w^as preaching 
 about Jesus ; of course the other men were listening as they never 
 would have listened to a " barbarian." When the address was 
 over", the servant went up to the man and asked him where he 
 had learned all this that he had been teaching, and the man 
 said he had often been to the misson chapel and listened to the 
 preaching of the missionary (the master of this servant) ; that he 
 had never spoken to anyone there, but that what he had heard 
 had led him to give up his false religion and to become a servant 
 of the true God. Afterwards the missionary found out that there 
 were three hundred others working in the same office with this 
 man, and that nearly all of them had heard from him about 
 Jesus. 
 
 And the zvomen of China, what is being done for them ? 
 There are ver}^, very few lady missionaries working amongst them, 
 only about a hundred altogether, besides the missionaries' wives, 
 
MISSIONS AND M/SSWNARIES. 287 
 
 ill all that great country, with its himdred and fifty millions of 
 women and girls. The gentlemen missionaries would speak to 
 the women if they could, hut no Chinese woman would ever 
 think of listening to a man talking in the street, and the men 
 would think it terrihly rude if a strange man were to sj)eak to fi 
 woman in the road ; so you see the only way in which the women 
 of China can ever hear of Jesus is by Christian women of other 
 countries, who know^ and love Him, going to them to tell them 
 of Him, and only this very small number have gone yet. 
 
 The poor women can very easily be got at ; they are nearly 
 always ready to listen, and are very pleased if English ladies 
 will go into their houses to speak to them, or open a room where 
 they may come together to hear of Jesus. The richer ladies, 
 who are kept shut up, are not so easily told about Him. Very 
 few rich houses have been visited yet by the missionary ladies, 
 and no lady would ever dare to go to one of them, unless the 
 master or mistress of the house invited her, which does not often 
 happen, never unless they have in some way got to know the 
 missionary lady and to like her. This is because foreigners are 
 so much disliked ; even tiny children are told dreadful stories of 
 what the foreigner will do to them, if he can catch them, so that 
 often they will run to their mothers screaming with fright, because 
 they have seen a foreign man or woman. As more and more 
 missionary gentlemen and ladies go to China, tho Chinese will 
 find out that they only want to do them good and not harm, and 
 that the foreigners who tell them of Jesus are not the same as 
 the foreigners who bring them opium ; so the thing to do is to 
 send more ladies, and I think there is no fear of their not finding 
 plenty to do when they get there. 
 
 Some of the Chinese women themselves are beginning to work 
 as Bible-women; a lady in Foo-Chow (Where is that? 
 
 ) Las started a class for any Christian Chinese 
 women who would like to give up their lives to telling their 
 
2 88 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL, 
 
 countrywomeu of Jesus, aud who are able to do it ; iu tliis class 
 they learn to read the Bible and to uuderstaud it. As, when 
 they are sent out, all their time is spent in going from house to 
 house, reading and teaching, you will see that they must be paid 
 for doing it, or else they would starve ; but all the money they get 
 is sent b}^ English people, so I shall j)ut the Bible-womeu in the list 
 of Societies at the end of the book, iu case any of you would like 
 to help them. It would not cost very- much for you to keep a 
 Bible-woman of your own. I do not know exactly how much, but 
 the lady whose name I have given in the list will be sure to know 
 and will be pleased to tell you, if you will write and ask her. - 
 
 For the children there are a few schools taught by the 
 missionaries both for boys and girls, but generally only the sons 
 of Christian parents go to the boys' schools. The heathen fathers 
 and mothers like to send their sons where they will learn all that 
 other heathen boys learn, and all that they will have to know if 
 they are to pass their examinations. 
 
 There are missionary boarding-schools for girls in China. Two 
 sets of little girls go to these — those whose fathers and mothers are 
 Christians, ajid are very glad to let them go with the missionaries 
 and be taught by tliem ; and the poor little gh'ls whose fathers and 
 mothers do not care enough about them to keep them at home, or 
 who would have been killed when they were babies, if the mission- 
 aries had not taken care of them ; just a few little girls are sent to 
 school because their fathers aud mothers do not want them to be 
 dunces. 
 
 In the missionary girls' schools, the children are taught 
 reading, writing, arithmetic, and needlework, but a great deal of 
 time is spent in teaching them about Jesus, and to read and learn 
 the Bible. Then when these girls leave school, they tell other 
 i;irls what they have learned, and in this way a great many children 
 iiear of the true God and His Son Jesus Christ. 
 
 A Christian gentleman in China once found quite a crowd of 
 
J//SS/O^^S AND MISSIONARIES. 289 
 
 little girls, thirty of them, all sitting round another girl who was 
 teaching them. The gentleman talked to them and asked them 
 questions, and found that they knew a great deal about the Bible. 
 They told him that this girl had a class for them every Sunday 
 afternoon, and that she herself had been a pupil in a Christian 
 boarding-school, where she had learned what she was now teaching 
 them. It was quite by accident that the gentleman found this 
 little girl teacher, and I do not think she is likely to be the only 
 girl in China who is teaching other people about Jesus. I am sure 
 she is not, for many times people have come to the missionaries 
 asking to be baptized, and when they have been asked how they 
 came to know about Jesus, they have said that they had heard it 
 all from girls who had been to school and learned of Him there. 
 I wonder whether all the Christian little girls who read this book 
 do as much for Jesus as these little heathen girls do. 
 
 There is a Children's Scripture Union in China, too, and I can 
 tell you one very nice thing about it. There is a boarding-school 
 in Hangchow, where many of the little girls belong to the Scripture 
 Union, and every Sunday morning they have a little prayer- meeting 
 of their own, to ask God to bless all the little boys and girls every- 
 where who are in the Scripture Union ; so next Sunday and all 
 the other Sundays, when you pray for the Scripture Union, as I 
 hope you all do if you belong to it, you will not forget, will you, 
 to pra}^ for the Chinese boys and girls who are reading the same 
 verses as you ? 
 
 19 
 
CHAPTEK II. 
 
 MEDICAL MISSIONS. 
 
 HESE are quite as useful iu Cliiua as in India, and 
 even more needed, for the Chinese women need them 
 just as much as the women of India, and the men need 
 them too, because their own doctors understand so 
 little of medicine and surgeryj w^hile in India there are 
 plenty of good doctors. 
 Chinamen are very troublesome patients, especially when the 
 doctor wants to perform an operation. Many of them would rather 
 die than lose an arm or a leg. Do you remember whj^ ? (see 
 page 180), though now they are beginning in some places to be 
 more sensible, and to let foreign doctors perform operations on 
 them. 
 
 You remember what I told you about the Chinese doctors, 
 and the strange • medicines tliey give, don't you? What would 
 you think of having boiled cockroaches for medicine, or powdered 
 pearls, or deer's horns ? A medical missionary at Swatow, iu the 
 Province of Kwang-tung, once saw an old man creeping out of the 
 cellar under the hospital with a small tin in his hand, the mouth 
 of which he was trying to fill up with newspaper. When the 
 missionary asked what he was doing, the old man said he was 
 collecting cockroaches for his little grandson, who had drops}-, and 
 who had had some proper medicine given him two days before at 
 the hospital. His friends thought he was not getting well fast 
 enough, and so called in a native doctor, who said the child was 
 
MEDICAL MISSIONS. 291 
 
 suffering from wind, not water, and that boiled cockroaches would 
 cure him. 
 
 You see then that there is more need for medical missionaries 
 in China than in India, and you will be sorry to hear how few have 
 gone 3'et. There are only twelve hospitals belonging to all the 
 missionary societies in China, and to these women are not allowed 
 to go for advice or rhedicine, because they are kept by men, so 
 that the poor women of China can have no help w;hen they are ill, 
 until the Christian women of England and other countries take it 
 to them. 
 
 There is not one English lady doctor in China now ; there 
 are a few American medical missionary ladies, but only about a 
 dozen altogether from all countries. Just think for a minute, 
 before 3'ou read any more, of all those hundred and fifty millions 
 of women in China who have nobody to take proper care of them 
 when they are ill, or to give them anything to make them better, 
 unless it is a few herbs which they have learned to know the use 
 of ; so that little things which would easily be understood and 
 cured by one of our English doctors, get worse and worse, and 
 the poor women often die just for want of the doctor. Think of 
 them next time you have to take some medicine that you don't 
 like, and think of them too when you thank God for His care 
 of you ; and ask Him to send some clever EngUshwomen, who 
 love Him and the poor Cliinese more than they love their own 
 comfortable homes, to care for their bodies and their souls too ; 
 wlio knows but He may send one of you some day ? 
 
 Medical missions do good in more ways than one, for the 
 Chinese cannot help seeing that the foreign doctors are wiser 
 and cleverer than their own, and thus they learn to trust in 
 the missionaries and to look up to them. We can see how much 
 they think of the cleverness of foreign doctors, by the numbers 
 who go to them ; in one year no less than a hundred and thirty- 
 five thousand Chinese came for medicine to the missionary 
 
292 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 hospitals. There is a mission hospital at Tien-tsin built entirely 
 with money that the Chinese themselves gave for it ; the gentle- 
 man that gave the largest sum towards it was the viceroy of the 
 province of Chili. So the missionary doctors, whether they are 
 ladies or gentlemen, are sure to get plenty of patients, and while 
 they are doing all they can to cm-e the sick bodies, they get many 
 opportunities of speaking about the Great Doctor who came into 
 the world on purpose to heal those whose souls were sick, and 
 who is just as glad now as He was then to heal all that come 
 unto Him. ( ) 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 M 
 
 I^Sie 
 
 LITTLE CHINESE CHRISTIANS. 
 
 HAVE got two stories for 5^ou this time, oue about a 
 boy and oue about a girl ; you shall have the boy first. 
 Some years ago two missionaries paid a visit to 
 a town near Hankow, in the province of Hupeh. It 
 happened that just at the same time a great theatrical 
 entertainment was being given in the open air, and 
 tliousauds of people from all parts of the country round were 
 pouring into the town to see it. This was a bad thing for the 
 missionaries in some ways, for when the crowd saw. these two 
 foreigners they began at once to shout at them and mock them 
 and persecute them ; they were curious to know all about them, 
 to examine their clothes and their faces, and to find out whether 
 the wonderful stories they had heard about the ways of the 
 "barbarians" were true, and their way of finding it out was 
 not very pleasant. 
 
 It was a good thing in another way that the town was so 
 full, for a great many of the people bought Christian books from 
 the missionaries, and many others listened to them as they 
 preached at the corners of the streets. 
 
 Very soon, however, some wild men in the crowd set upon 
 the missionaries ; they tore their clothes and stole their books, 
 and threw stones at them, till at last they managed to drive 
 them out of the town. 
 
 There was a little boy living in the place at this time named 
 
2 94 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 Kan ; I do not know whether he saw the missionaries himself, 
 bnt at any rate he heard other people talking about them, of 
 what they had spoken abont, and of how they had been treated, 
 and he knew that they had been teaching what was called " the 
 Jesiis doctrine." 
 
 A long time after this Kan went to pay a visit at Hankow, 
 and he thought he should like, if he could, to find out something 
 more than he knew of the strange men \vho had visited this town 
 years before, and caused such excitement. 
 
 So he went to the room called ''The Good Tidings Hall," 
 where a missionary and a native teacher tell about Jesus and His 
 love every day to anybody who will come in and listen. People 
 come into this room just when they like, and stay as long as 
 they like ; they bring with them the things they have been buying 
 and put them down on the benches beside them, while they rest 
 and hear what the Christians have to say to them. 
 
 There Kan came amongst the rest, and heard for the first 
 time the wonderful things in the Bible which you have known 
 about ever since you can remember, and Kan was so surprised 
 and pleased at what he heard, that he came time after time, and 
 Hstened, and thought, and learned, not only from the missionary, 
 but from the Lord Himself, till He knew Him, and beheved in 
 Him, and loved Him, and made up his mind he would belong 
 to Him and follow Him all his life long. He had a great many 
 talks with the preacher too, who helped him and encouraged 
 him, and taught him the meaning of many things he wanted to 
 understand. 
 
 At last the time came when his visit w^as over, and he must 
 return to his heathen home. It was just at the time of the New 
 Year ; you remember what a w^onderful time that is in China, 
 and how many heathen customs have to be attended to, so you 
 wdll be able to understaod how hard it would be for Kan to go 
 home just then. But he knew^ it must be wrong for those who 
 
LITTLE CLILNESE CHRISTLANS. 295 
 
 believed in the true God to liave auyfcliing to do with idols or sacri- 
 fices to ancestors, so he made up his miud he must refuse to take 
 part iu any of them, whatever trouble he might come to through it. 
 
 His father and mother were very angry indeed when they 
 found that Kan had given up the old religion of his country, and 
 taken ujj the new one, as they called it, of the " barbarians ; " they 
 told him he was a rebellious, disobedient son, who cared nothing 
 for his father and mother, and they even said they would kill him 
 if he did not give up being a Christian. They treated him so 
 cruelly that at last he ran away and went back to his Christian 
 friends in Hankow. 
 
 He stayed there quietly for some weeks, and then his father 
 and uncle came to look after him. They did not speak unkindly 
 to him at this time, for they had been thinking that perhaps if 
 they tried another way, they might be able by kindness to per- 
 suade him to come back to heathenism, though they had not 
 been able to frighten him into it. 
 
 So Kan went back to liis home once more, but not before 
 he had publicly showm, by being baptized, that he did not mean 
 to forsake Jesus in order to- escape suffering, or even to please 
 his friends. Poor Kan ! he had a very hard time after this, for 
 on the first day of every month, and again on the fifteenth, 
 sacrifices were offered to the spirits of his ancestors, and whenever 
 the days came round, his friends tried to force him to kneel down 
 and worship before the tablets. Everyone was against him, and 
 there was no friend in the town to wliom he could go for 
 comfort and help; but he had one Friend close to him all the 
 time, and He took care of him and comforted him and strengthened 
 him, so that he was always able to stand firm and to refuse to 
 do what he knew would grieve God. 
 
 Then the time came for the great Festival of the Tombs, 
 and Kan was obliged to go with his parents when they visited 
 the family graves, to clean them and offer sacrifices to the spirits 
 
296 THINGS THA T ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 of their dead ancestors. Kau helped to put the graves in order, 
 hut when he was told to take his part in the sacrifices, he steadily 
 refused. 
 
 And Kan w^as the only son, so to his parents this refusal 
 meant that, after they w^ere dead, their spirits, and the spirits of 
 their fathers, must wander for ever hungry and homeless, as 
 heggars of the spirit world, and they said it would he better to 
 have no son at all, than to have one who believed in this " Jesus 
 Faith." So they were more angry than ever, and as it seemed 
 as if they really would kill Kan if he stayed with them, he w^as 
 obliged a second time to leave his home. His father, however, 
 took away from him his outer clothes and his bedding, which 
 you remember the Chinese always carry about with them. 
 
 It was just at the time of the heavy spring rains ; Kan had 
 no money to pay for a night's lodging, and very soon the few 
 clothes he had on were soaked through. The only place he could 
 find to hide himself in was a shed made of mats, by the side of 
 the road, where a band of beggars had settled for the night, and 
 Kan stayed with them there. 
 
 In the morning he started to go to the capital, and when he 
 got there he told the Christians he wanted to find some way 
 of earning a living for himself; so they gave him some small 
 things to sell in the street, and with the money he got for these 
 he was able to buy some more, and to keep himself as well. 
 He always used to be seen at the Christian prayer-meeting, 
 which was held once a week in the city, and a lady w^ho was 
 there says she well remembers how earnestly he prayed that his 
 father and mother might know Jesus as he did ; but the answer 
 to his prayer has not come yet. 
 
 Kan still lives in the city, and God has helped him in his 
 business, for now he has w^ork in an office, so- he does not have 
 to sell in the streets any longer. He has found out the truth 
 of the words of the Lord Jesus, " Seek ye first the Kingdom of 
 
LITTLE CHINESE CHRISTIANS. 297 
 
 God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added 
 unto you." ( .) 
 
 Now I must tell you about the little girl. You know akeady 
 how some of the Christian girls in China are living and working 
 for Jesus ; so you will not suppose that all the boys and girls that 
 come to Him go to Heaven directly, when I tell you that this 
 little girl that the story is about is there. It is nice to think 
 that while so many Chinese children have grown up to be workers 
 for Jesus, yet there are some whom we sliall find in Heaven 
 when we get there. 
 
 The Story of Teh- Sing. 
 
 You remember I told you that often Chinese fathers and 
 mothers give their children to the missionaries, either because 
 they do not care to keep them, or because they are glad to get 
 them fed and clothed ^^ithout having to pay for them. The little 
 girl this story is about, was given to a missionary lady for the last 
 of these reasons, in the year 1870. She was then about seven years 
 old, and the lady gave her a name, a very nice one, Teh- Sing, 
 which in English means Victory. The reason she got this name 
 was that the lady missionary hoped and believed that before very 
 long the little girl would find out for herself that Jesus had 
 given her the victory over her enemies. And though Teh- Sing 
 was a Chinese child, and you are an English one, your enemies are 
 just the same as hers were. I can think of eleven enemies that 
 we read about in the New Testament, that God has given us the 
 victory over, if we belong to Him. I will tell you where to look, 
 and you see if you can find their names. Rom. viii, 35, 37 ; 
 1 Cor. XV. 65, 57 ; 1 John v. 4. 
 
 1 4 7 
 
 2 5 8 
 
 3 6 9 
 10 11 
 
298 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 The lady's praj^ers were answered, for after Teh- Sing had 
 been a few years at the school, she fonnd Jesns, and gave herself 
 to Him, and He gave her the victory. 
 
 Teh-Sing was a very qniet little girl, and did not often tell 
 people what she was thinking about, so it was only by watching 
 her that they could find out how much she cared about God. If 
 people tried to find out how much ijou care for Him, in the same 
 way, what would they find, do you think, and how long would it 
 take them ? 
 
 After Teh-Sing had been eleven years at school, she began to 
 be poorly, and her mother wanted her to leave the school and go 
 home ; but the teacher did not want her to go directly, because 
 she thought the doctor would be able to do her good, and she 
 would soon be quite well again, so she kept her a little while to 
 see how she went on. But Teh- Sing, instead- of getting better, 
 got worse very fast, and soon the teacher saw that she had a 
 sickness that no doctor could cui*e, and that God was going to 
 take her little scholar away to His own home. 
 
 When the teacher knew this, she wrote to Teh-Sing's mother 
 to tell her about it ; but several days passed and the mother did 
 not come, and all the time Teh- Sing was getting worse, so that by 
 the time her mother came she was too ill to be taken away. 
 
 For three months the little girl went on getting weaker and 
 having a great deal of pain. For the last fortnight of her life 
 there was always somebody in the room to watch her, because 
 no one knew how soon Jesus might call her away to go to Him, 
 and many times during those two weeks all the people in the house 
 gathered round her bed, thinking the hour had come when she 
 must leave them. 
 
 And then there was a change in Teh- Sing, and instead of 
 keeping all her thoughts to herself, she began to talk about God 
 and about Heaven as she had never done before, and though she 
 only lived for about twenty-four hours after this, everyone who 
 
LITTLE CHINESE CHRISTIANS. 
 
 299 
 
 saw lier and heard her felt that she had doue a ^v()l•k for God, aud 
 had left behind her words that they would never forget. 
 
 It was a little after twelve o'clock on a Friday morning that 
 one of the girls in the school went to the teacher, and told her 
 that Teh-Sing seemed to be dying. The teacher went to her at 
 once, and found the children all gathered round the bed watching 
 Teh- Sing, who was lying quite still, with her eyes shut, l)ut 
 breathing very loudly. The teacher said to her, " How is it with 
 you now, Teh-Sing?" She wanted to know whether her little 
 inipil was frightened at the thought of dying. Teh-Sing knew 
 what she meant, and answered, " Oh, I am so happy ! do not cry, 
 you need not be sorry; you must not cry, I am going to Heaven. I 
 cannot tell you how happy I am. T have seen the Lord. I have 
 seen Heaven. It is so good ; very.^ very good." 
 
 Then the teacher asked her if the pain was all gone, and she 
 said, " Only my chest is sore, but that will soon be over. In 
 Heaven there will be no pain, no sorrow, not even a little. Heaven 
 is so good ; j^ou cannot even fancy how good it is. Oh ! I am 
 happy ,^ happy." 
 
 Was it not a good thing that Teh- Sing had come to Jesus 
 when she was strong and well, and had not put it off till she 
 was ill ? I do hope all the strong healthy boys and girls 
 who read this book will give themselves to God while they 
 are well and able to work for Him. And if there should be one 
 sickly child who will read it, I should like to say to that one — Go 
 to Jesus now, without waiting till you get better or till you get 
 worse. Just tell Him that you want to be His own child, and ask 
 Him to take away all your sin and to teach you how to live for 
 Him even while you are ill. Then the bad part of the sickness 
 will not be half so bad ; if you get better, you will find out that it 
 is just as good to have God for your Friend when you are well, 
 as when you are ill ; and if like Teh-Sing you should get worse 
 instead of better, still it will be all right, and oh ! how glad you 
 
300 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 will be then to know that you belong to God and that He is going 
 to take you to be always with Him. 
 
 Teh- Sing looked round on all the people who were in the room 
 with her, and thanked them for having been so kind to her, saying, 
 " We shall meet again in Heaven." When some one asked her if 
 she knew them all, she said, " I know you every one ; but I do not 
 Uke to see you looking so sad. You need not cry, you must not 
 cry; we shall meet in Heaven. Its door is very wide, so that 
 whosoever will may come in, if only they will trust in Jesus." 
 Then she asked her mother to come to her, and taking her hand, 
 she said, " You must repent and trust in Jesus. You must become 
 a disciple and meet me in Heaven. Heaven is so good. I shall 
 wait for you there. I shall soon see ^tsia, and live with the 
 angels." ^tsia was Teh-Sing's little friend at school, and had 
 gone to -Heaven a short time before. 
 
 The children sang the hymn " There is a happj^ land ; " so 
 yoa see Teh- Sing knew the same hymns that you do, only of 
 course she knew them in Chinese and you know them in English. 
 When, after this hymn had been sung, the teacher asked her 
 which other she should like, she said, " Kock of Ages." When 
 this was finished she said, "It is only because of what Jesus did 
 that I am pure. I could do nothing to save myself, no, not the 
 least thing." Then she said, "I shall soon see ^tsia," and slie 
 wanted to know if the teacher would not go to Heaven with her. 
 She told her God had not sent for her yet, because her work was 
 not quite finished. To this Teh- Sing said, "I wish you could 
 come. There is nothing to fear. But the Lord says you must 
 wait a little." Then she held her thumb and finger about two 
 inches apart and said, "The water is only about so deep." She 
 had been reading about Christian crossing the river in the 
 "Pilgrim's Progress." 
 
 By this time Teh-Sing was very tired, and rested quietly for 
 a little while. Most of the people who had been watching her 
 
LITTLE CHINESE CHRISTIANS. 301 
 
 went away, feeling so glad that slie had been able to tell them all 
 how happy she was. 
 
 Not thinking that Teh- Sing was listening, the teacher said to 
 one of the children, "Do you remember that verse, ' death, 
 where is ihy sting ' ? " Before the child could answer, Teh- Sing 
 said, "It is in Corinthians. That is like me now ; my name is 
 Victory ; ' ' and first touching herself and then pointing up, she 
 showed she meant she was getting the victory then. 
 
 In the evening her breathing got very bad again. About 
 ten o'clock she said to the teacher, " I want a text, I think it is in 
 the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, but I am not sure." The 
 teacher asked if she could tell her a few words out of it, so that 
 she might know which text she meant. Teh-Sing tried to tell her, 
 but the only words the lady could hear were "king" and 
 " servant." Then one of the girls put her ear close to Teh- Sing's 
 lips, and was able to find out what she wanted. It was about the 
 King saying to those on His right hand, " I was sick and ye 
 visited me ; " you can find it, can't you ? ( ). Teh- Sing 
 
 said, " Yes, that is what I want, I give it to you all." When they 
 thanked her, she said "No, these are not man's words; thank 
 Jesus, He gives it you." 
 
 Soon after this, she asked the teacher and the children to 
 go to bed, saying they would be so tired to-morrow if they did 
 not ; so every one went except a woman who sat up with her. 
 
 Just as it was getting light, she said slie felt very ill, and 
 asked the woman to pray that the Lord would come soon to take 
 her away. An hour afterwards she said, " I am going now," and 
 asked for the teacher and her mother ; she smiled at the teacher, 
 but looked sorrowfully at her mother, because she knew she was 
 not a Christian. Afterwards she looked at a.ll those who were 
 round her and mentioned all their names. 
 
 It was only a very little while after this that the Lord came 
 and fetched Teh- Sing, but she went away with Him so quietly. 
 
302 
 
 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 that though so many were looking at her, nobody knew exactly 
 when she left them. It was like a tired child going to sleep, they 
 said ; but how sj^leudid it must have been for Teh- Sing when she 
 woke, and found herself in heaven with God and with Jesus. 
 The most s^Dlendid thing I can think of, next to that, is to know 
 that we have God and Jesus with us here, and we may all know 
 that. Do ijoii know it ? If not, ask God to teach it to you, and 
 to keep you from forgetting it ; and when you know it, one of 
 the best ways to remember it, if not the very best, will be to 
 pray and to work for those who do not know it, whether they 
 are your own little friends in England or the boys and girls in 
 China. 
 
CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 WILL TOU HELP? 
 
 OW, who says " Yes" to that question ? I wonder whether 
 
 what I told you in " The Children of India" has come 
 
 true — that when you began to give your money to God, 
 
 you would begin to get richer. I expect it has. And 
 
 if you are richer now than you were last 3'ear, you 
 
 will be able to go on giving as much money to India 
 
 as you have been giving, and have some left for China too. 
 
 For money is the only thing you can send for China, unless you 
 
 send yourselves. 
 
 By this I mean that you cannot dress dolls, and make scrap- 
 books and needle-books and frocks and pinafores, and all sorts 
 of pretty things to send to China, because the people there either 
 would not care for these things, or they have plenty of their 
 own. But money is wanted yqyj much for China ; money to 
 send more missionaries, money to keep the missionaries that have 
 gone already, money to keep up the schools, money to buy books 
 and tracts, and money to pay for gentlemen and ladies to learn 
 to be doctors, so that they can cure sick people in China. 
 
 Keally I do not believe that if all the boys and girls in 
 England worked and saved as hard as ever they could, they 
 would earn more money than the Missionary Societies could 
 use for China ; and you can work for it, because, although it is 
 no use to make clothes to send to the Chinese, you can make 
 as many pretty things as you like, and sell them to your friends, 
 and give the money for China, can't you ? 
 
304 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 Or perhaps you have found out how nice it is to go without 
 things, so that the Lord Jesus can have the money that they would 
 have cost ; and if you have gone without one thing to save money 
 for India, you may he ahle to think of something else that you 
 can give up for China. I know some little girls have given up 
 sugar for India, and I expect they would say that tea without 
 sugar is sweeter than tea w4th sugar, if it is to make money 
 for Jesus. 
 
 And a little money goes a long way in China. It only takes 
 five pounds to huy food for a Chinese Christian for all the part of 
 the year in which he can go about preaching, and I think if you 
 worked very hard and prayed very much, some of you would find 
 it easier than you think to get five pounds, and just think how 
 many Chinese might hear about Jesus through it, if the man that 
 got the five pounds went about day after day, preaching wherever 
 he went, for the greater part of a year. 
 
 I must see if I can think of a few ways of getting money that 
 perhaps you have not thought of. If you have an empty room or 
 a large empty cupboard in your house, or even a corner where you 
 can keep a sack, I can tell you of one thing you might do, only 
 you will not make money very fast by it, at least not unless you 
 have a good many friends, whose fathers and mothers do a great 
 deal of writing. Save up all the old clean paper you can find, and 
 every bit you get put it into the room or cupboard or sack. If 
 you have two or three sacks or cupboards, you will get on better 
 still, for there are four different kinds of paper that you may collect, 
 but you must not mix them. 
 
 1. Account-books, exercise-books, or copy-books, without 
 covers. 
 
 2. The covers of this kind of books. 
 
 3. Old written papei's, envelopes, bills, or letters, but not post- 
 cards or halfpenny wrai')pers. The letters ]nay be torn up into 
 little bits if they are private. 
 
WILL YOU HELPi 305 
 
 4. Old printed books without covers, magazines, circulars, old 
 music, all on (jOiul paper. The paper may all liave writing on it, 
 but it must all be clean, and no newspapers, nor brown paper, nor 
 any sort of wrapping paper will do. When your sacks are full, you 
 can send them to 
 
 Me. E. Lloyd, 
 
 Paper Mills, 
 
 Sittingbourue, 
 Kent 
 
 and he will send you some money for the paper. The price is not 
 always the same. Just now he pays ten shillings for a hundred- 
 weight of the first kind of paper, nine shillings for the second, seven 
 shillings for the third, and four shillings for the fourth. A little 
 while ago it was worth much more than this, and perhaps by-and- 
 bye it will go up again. 
 
 If you set up as a paper collector and all your little friends 
 help you, you might be able to get quite a nice sum of money. 
 When your bag is full, your best way would be to write a little 
 note to Mr. Lloyd, saying you want to send him some paper, and 
 asking him to send you a form to fill up ; then you will soon get a 
 printed paper from him, telling you the price of paper at the time 
 he sends it, and giving you all the directions you will want, with 
 another paper for you to fill up, saying which kind of paper you are 
 sending and how much. 
 
 Perhaps some of you have little gardens of your own ; if you 
 have, you might grow some pretty plants in tiiem, snowdrops, 
 or crocuses, or daffodils, or hyacinths, or tuhps, and when they look 
 nice, put them into pots and sell them, and give the money for 
 China. 
 
 Or perhaps some of you have papas with a nice lot of shillings 
 in their pockets, who would not like to give them to you to waste, but 
 would be very pleased to let you have some to start a trade with, 
 
 20 
 
3o6 TIJINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 if tlie profits were to go for China ; then if yon live in tlie conntiy, 
 you might have some hens of your own and sell the eggs ; wouldn't 
 that he fun ? 
 
 All sorts of ways there are of earning money, hut do you know 
 I think it is hardly fair that I should have to think of them all, 
 and tell you. It seems to me the best way will be, for all of you to 
 think what you can do to get money for the missionaries, and after 
 you have thonght of a way, and have tried it for a little while, 
 write to me and tell me what you are doing, and how much money 
 5'on are earning in a week or a month. Then, even supposing only 
 twenty of you find out one way each, I shall be able in the next 
 book to tell of twenty difi'erent ways of getting money for missions ; 
 then you would hear of nineteen new ways, and all the other 
 nineteen boys and girls would hear of nineteen new ways too, and 
 3'ou would all see which way pays the best. Now don't you think 
 that would be a capital plan ? I do, and I shall soon begin to look 
 out for piles of letters. You may address them, — 
 
 3I1SS A. W. Makstox, 
 (yare of Messes. Hoddek and Stoughton, 
 
 27, Paternoster Eow, 
 
 London, E.G. 
 
 And if any of 3'ou want any more books about any more children, 
 tell me that too. Three little boys and six little girls have asked 
 for one country, one little boy and three little girls for another, 
 and one little girl for another, besides all those who have asked 
 for China. Perhaps some of you will want the same as the nine, 
 or the four or the one. Any way, I should like to know what ijou 
 would like. 
 
 And what about that present I told you of in the other book, 
 that the Lord cares for so much more than He does for 3'our 
 money, the present of yourself to Him, to be His own always? Of 
 course you are His, whether you want to be or not, because He 
 
WILL YOU HELP? 307 
 
 has bought you and paid for you ( ), 
 
 so you cauuot ever belong to yourself ; but some little boys and 
 girls take what is not theirs, and use it as if it were, sometimes 
 because they think it is their own, and sometimes because they 
 forget it is not. 
 
 And then, although God has bought us and paid for us, 
 and so made us His own. He wants us to give ourselves to Him, 
 just as if we were our own, and could do what we like with 
 ourselves. This is because He loves us so much, and He knows 
 how nice it is to give away things, so He wants us to have the 
 joy of giving Him something, and it is a joy to give anything 
 to God, most of all to give Him ourselves, because that pleases 
 Him better than anything else, and the most joyful thing in the 
 whole world is to please God. 
 
 Have you ever pleased Him, do you think ? Some people are 
 always trying to please God, and they never do it, because they 
 begin at the wrong end. They keep themselves for themselves, 
 and give God their money, or their time, or something else, and 
 He is not pleased at all, only sorry, because the thing He wants 
 most is just the thing they will not give. But it makes God so 
 happy, and Jesus so happy, and all the angels so happy, when a 
 little boy gives himself to God, or a little girl either ; and when 
 we have given Him ourselves, then we can keep on pleasing Him, 
 all day and every day, working for Him, and learning for Him, 
 and playing for Him, and giving for Him all our life long. I must 
 tell you a story about this that I am sure you will like. 
 
 Many years ago, there was a missionary meeting in Scotland, 
 where several gentlemen talked about the poor heathen who knew 
 nothing of God, and about the need of missionaries to go to help 
 them. It was a large meeting with a great many gentlemen and 
 ladies at it, some of them with plenty of money, and some with 
 only a little ; but away up in the gallery, in one corner of a pew, 
 there was a tiny little boy, who had come all by himself. Noba ly 
 
3o8 THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 took any notice of him except God, Ke took a great deal ot 
 notice, a,nd got a great deal of pleasnre ont of him that night. 
 Por as the boy listened, his heart was filled with love and pity 
 for the poor people who had never heard of Jesus, and he said to 
 liimself and to God (nobody else knew), " If ever I grow np into 
 a man I will be a missionary." 
 
 When the gentlemen had finished talking, one of them said, 
 " There wdll be a collection at the doors after the meeting," and 
 then the little boy's face got very hot, and the tears came into 
 his eyes, and he felt very unhappy, for he had not even a halfpenny 
 of his own to give for the heathen, and he lelt as if he conld not 
 bear to go past the plate without putting something in. 
 
 So he thought to himself, " I will stay up here till everybody 
 has gone, and till the man with the plate is not standing at the 
 door any longer, and then I will creep downstairs and run away 
 home, and nobody will think I did not care, because I put no 
 money in." So he waited till everything was quite quiet, and he 
 thought the room was empty, then he began to creep dowm on tip- 
 toe; but you know sometimes when ijou have done that, something 
 has made a dreadful creak, and so it was with this little boy, and 
 the creak was so loud that the man with the plate heard it, and 
 thought, " Why, there is somebody upstairs still. Who know^s ? 
 perhaps it is a rich man with some money ; anyhow^ I will w^ait 
 at the foot of the stair till he comes dowm." Poor little boy ! He 
 thought he w^as going to get away without anyone seeing him, and 
 when he got to the bottom of the stairs, there was the man wdth 
 the plate, waiting on purpose for him. 
 
 When he got down, the man held the i^late out to him, but 
 the little boy had made up his mind what he would do, and said, 
 " Hold it a little lower, please, sir." The man thought it w^as 
 because the boy w^as so little, he could not reach, so he held the 
 plate low^er, quite low^ enough for him to put his money in ; but 
 the boy said, " Lower still, please, sir." The man wondered what 
 
WILL YOU HELPl 309 
 
 lie meant ; perhaps lie thought he wauted to see how much inouey 
 there was ; anyhow he put it lower. But it would not do ; the 
 boy only said, " A little lower yet, please, sir ; " and when the man 
 put it down almost even with his knees, he said, '' Please lay it on 
 the ground, sir." The man, more puzzled than ever, laid it on the 
 ground. Then the little boy stepped into it, and said, " I have no 
 money, but I give myself; I mean to be a missionary; " and so 
 he was. 
 
 I think God must have been very pleased with the collection 
 that night, don't j^ou ? And you can please Him just as much 
 to-day, by giving Him yourself, even if you are not able to say, as 
 the little boy did, "If I live to be a man, I will be a missionary."' 
 But perhaps you can say that too. I have had some letters that 
 pleased me very much from some of the boys and girls that read 
 " The Childi'en of India." Perhaps the very nicest were those 
 that said, "I hope to be a missionary when I am big," and some 
 of them did say that. Have any of ijou said it, after reading this 
 book ? I hope you have, and that God will get a whole army of 
 missionaries out of the boys and girls of England. 
 
 But let me say again, I hope you will not w^ait till you are 
 grown up, but begin at once to prepare for being missionaries 
 abroad, by being missionaries at home. That is the very best 
 practice you can have. Only yesterday, I read about a little girl 
 missionary, who was going in the train, and just before she started, 
 a prisoner was brought into the station with his hands tied ; he 
 was a very bad man, and w^as going to prison for twenty years. 
 The little girl looked at him, and at first she did not like him ; 
 but when she saw how miserable he looked, she began to pity him. 
 She let go of her father's hand, and ran up to the man, and 
 whispered to him — " Man, I am sorry for you," and there were 
 tears in her eyes when she said it. The man only looked angry, 
 and the httle girl ran back to her father, quite frightened. But in 
 another minute she went to the man again and said — " ]^Iau, Jesus 
 
31 o THINGS THAT ARE CELESTIAL. 
 
 Christ is sorry for you ; " tlieu the train came, and she did not see 
 the man any more. But he could not forget what slie had said ; 
 it reminded him of his mother, who had talked to him of Jesus 
 when he was little, but who had died long ago, and he made up his 
 mind he would never rest till he had found God ; and when people 
 w^ant God, they always do find him, so of course this man did. 
 He had to stay in prison all the same, and he is in prison now, for 
 the twenty years are not up yet ; but he is living for God in the 
 prison (not an easy place, but people may live for God anywhere) ; 
 andw^hen people ask himwdiy it is that he is so different from other 
 prisoners, he tells them the story of the little girl. And she herself 
 laiows nothing about it, unless she has seen this story in a book, 
 for, as the prisoner does not know her name, he cannot tell her how 
 God blessed her words ; but God knows all about it, and the little 
 girl will know, when she meets the man in Heaven, if not before. 
 
 Will you all be missionaries at home '? angels at home ? for 
 angels and missionaries both mean the same — messengers ; so you 
 are doing angels' work, when you tell of Jesus, and live for God 
 and work for God, for that is just wdiat the angels do. Only 
 remember that talking is after all the smallest thing we do for God ; 
 our lives speak much louder than our words, and very often it 
 happens that our best words do no good, simply because w^e do not 
 live what we talk. Give your heart all to God, so that He may 
 live in you ( ), and then He will be sure to speak 
 
 in you ( ). 
 
 I have put a list for j'ou at the end of the book, of some 
 Missionary Societies that work in China; they will all be more 
 glad tlian I can tell you if you will send them some money. I 
 think they all have missionary boxes, and I expect most of them 
 have collecting cards, so you can ask for which you like, or both 
 if you like, and when your card or box is full, send the money to 
 the same address in the list. 
 
 ^ OF THE '^P 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
APPENDI 
 
 A LlJST OF SOME OF THE PROTESTANT MISSIONARY SOCIETIES 
 
 WORKING IN CHINA. 
 
 Name of Society. 
 EDrNBTJRGH MEDICAL MISSION,— 
 
 Children's Auxiliary for those under 18 
 (^undenoiiiinational) . 
 
 BRITISH AND FOREIGN BIBLE SO- 
 CIETY i^undeno)iiinationrd). 
 
 CHINA INLAND MISSION {undenomi- 
 national). 
 
 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING FEMALE 
 EDUCATION IN THE EAST {umle- 
 no mi national). 
 
 ZENANA AND MEDICAL MISSION— 
 Home and Training School for Ladies. 
 For teaching Ladies to be Doctors and 
 Missionaries (undenominational). 
 
 CHINESE BIBLE WOMEN, Foo-Chow. 
 
 CHURCH MISSIONARY 
 
 {C'JnircJi of Emiland), 
 
 SOCIETY 
 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS 
 
 (Eni/fis/i /'reshi/terian). 
 
 COMMITTEE 
 
 Treasurer : 
 
 Wlio will supply Missionary Box or Collect- 
 ing Card, anl I'eceive Money. 
 Rev. J. LuwE, 56, George Square, 
 Edinburgh. 
 
 J. HoARE, Esq., 146, Queen Victoiia 
 Street, London, E.C. 
 
 Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, '6, Pyrland 
 Road, Mildniay Park, London, N. 
 
 Miss Webb, 267, Vauxhall Bridge 
 Road, London, S.W. 
 
 W, MoNRiER Adams, Esq., 71, Vincent 
 Square, Westminster, London, S.^V. 
 
 Mrs. J. G. Watsox, 20, Clanricarde 
 Gardens, Hyde Park, London, W. 
 
 Miss Ellen Smyly, o5, Upper Fitz- 
 william Street, Dublin. 
 
 Major -General G. Hutchinson, 
 Ciiurch Missionary House, Salisl)ury 
 Squiii'e, London, E.C. 
 
 INlij. J. Le(!(;att, Offices of the Presby- 
 terian Church of England, 7, East 
 Indian Avenue, London, E.C. 
 
3T2 APPENDIX. 
 
 NAME OF SOCIETY. TREASURER, 
 
 WOMEN'S MISSIONARY ASSOCIA- Miss M. T. Hamilton, Upper Terrace 
 TION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN House, Hampstead, London, N. 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 
 
 WESLEYAN MISSIONARY SOCIETY. Rev. J. Kilner, Wesleyan Mission 
 
 House, Bishopsgate Street, London, 
 E.C. 
 
 LADIES' COMMITTEE FOR FEMALE Mrs. Hall, 40, Holland Park, Ken- 
 EDUCATION {]YesUyan). sington, London, W. 
 
 LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY {Con- Rev. R. Robinson, London Mission 
 gregational). House, Bloomtield Street, London, 
 
 E.C. 
 
 LADIES' COMMITTEE {Congregational). Rev. R. Robinson (say, "for Female 
 
 ^Mission Fund "). 
 
 BAPTIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY. A. H. Baynes, Esq., Baptist Mission 
 
 House, Castle Street, Holborn, 
 London, E.C. 
 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS COMMITTEE T. B. Wilson, t:sq., 22, Queen Street, 
 {EstahlisJied Church of Scotland). Edinburgh. 
 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS BOARD {Cnited J. Slight, Esq., College Buildings, 
 P7'eshijterk('n). Castle Terrace, Edinburgh. 
 
 COMMITTEE FOR FOREIGN MIS- J. Macdonald, Esq., 15, North Bank 
 SIGNS {Free Church). Street, Edinburgh. 
 
 LADIES' AUXILIARY ASSOCIATION Dr. John Pringle, Offices of the Free 
 {Free Ghnrch). Church, Edinburgh. 
 
 FEMALE ASSOCIATION {Preshyterkm Mrs. Lemon, Edgcumbe, Strandtown, 
 Church in Ireland). Belfast. 
 
 SOCIETY FOR THE SUPPRESSION OF Ald. R. N. Fowler, Queen Anne's 
 THE OPIUM TRADE. Mansions, St. James's Park, London, 
 
 s.w. 
 
 7 
 
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