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^ China's ^ Open Door
A Sketch of Chinese Life and History i^ ^
By ROUNSE VELLE WILDMAN, M.A.
Consul General of the United States at Hong Kong, Author of ''Tales of Malayan Coast,'" etc. ^ ^ ^
With an Introduction by *'
Charles Denby '
Former U.S. Mmister to China.
> ILL USTRA TED ^
Boston: Lothrop Publishing Compa
ny
38567
Library of Gon^.r«s«
AUG 25 1900
SECCMP COfV.
Odive.fld t<i
ORDER DIVISION, SEP 6 1900
COPYRIGHT, 1900,
B Y
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
74311
^.^
s^^^
CONTENTS.
CHAPTEH PAGE
I. A Word at the Open Door 1
II. As TO THE Proper Eeading op Chinese His- tory 4
III. Erom Euh-hi to Confucius 42
IV. From the Tsin to the Tang Dynasties . . 63 V. From Wu the Empress to the Last of the
Mings 80
VI. The Rise of the Manchu Dynasty .... 115
VII. From Chien Lung to Hienfung 136
VIII. From the Taiping Rebellion to the Chufoo
Convention 160
IX. Tung Chi and the Regency 184
/X. The Reign op Kwang Su 205
XL The Commercial Outlook 216
XII. Canton, the Typical City 228
XIII.^Peking, the Capital City 270
XIV. The Boxer Uprising 301
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS,
FACING
Li Hung Chang Frontispiece
As Old as China. The Wheelbarrow a Mode of
Travel in China in Use for Ages 12
Confucian Temple. Hall of Classics. Imperial
Pavilion. Forbidden City, Peking 54
Great Wall of China Looking North-east . . . 116
Street Scene in Tientsin 150
Panorama op Hong Kong 170
Street in the Concession, Shanghai 190
The Typical Chinese City, Canton on the Pearl. '*The Streetless City stretches away with its Maze of Shipping, broken Here and There by THE Towering Pawn-Shops and the Open Spaces
about Yamens and Temples " 230
The Cangue : A Form of Chinese Punishment. "It IS the Absence of Nerves that enables the Chinese to endure Pain as Well as Toil . . 266 Camel Train. Outside the Peking Wall. Mili- tary Gate, showing Moat 274
The Examination Halls, Peking, where the Best Student is esteemed the Greatest Man in
China 294
A Bird's-Eye View from the Gulf of Pechili to Peking. Showing the Route of the Relief Expedition of 1900 310
INTRODUCTION.
THIS book is a fit and much needed suc- cessor to the " Middle Kingdom," by Doctor S. S. Williams. As a digest of information touching China, the " Middle King- dom" must always rank first among the books which treat of that empire. Next to it this book will take its place in literature.
Splendid as Williams's history is, the student sometimes complains of dryness; but no such charge can be made against the accomplished au- thor of this book, to whom experience in many forms of writing has taught the lesson that the first requisite of success is to please the reader. In this, Mr. Wildman has preeminently succeeded. This book is written in pure English. It is clear and concise in language, easy to understand, and opens up vistas of information which, until now, have been unknown to the general reader. At the beginning the keynote is struck — the author knows his subject. One sees plainly that he has not drawn his description from books or from the
viii INTR OB UCTION,
chance observations of the hurrying tourist, but from the passing of many clays among the Chinese, and the watching, during many years, their actual life and the political phases of the imperial gov- ernment. The author's own sound declaration is that to understand Chinese history you must know the people. Knowing them, he has built up, stej) by step, a succinct history of China from its early days down to the ujirisal of the " Boxers." I shall not undertake in this introduction to review, page by page, the contents of this volume, but simply to draw attention to the starting-point and the successive stages of historic lore which, in admira^ ble sequence, are brought to our attention.
At the beginning it is asserted that the charac- teristics and peculiarities of the Chinese must be understood in order to judge them aright, and then follows a succi]ict, but complete description of these characteristics. Lying at the bottom of Chinese character is respect for "face." The for- eign resident of China knows that he must not reprove his " boy " before strangers, that he must not unjustly punish him. Once, on one of our men-of-war, when a servant, as the other servants believed, was wrongfully discharged, every China- man aboard the ship left. The author illustrates this underlying principle by many examples, and
INTRODUCTION, ix
he carries his observance into the highest realms of governmental polity. I well remember that the members of the Tsung Li Yamen complained that some foreign representative made them lose " face " by pounding on the table and bawling at them. The portion of the book which discusses " face " is somewhat new in its treatment, and should be carefully considered, because it fur- nishes an explanation of many events in Chinese liistory wliich, before, were obscure.
To the Chinese, as Mr. Wildman intimates, " face " takes the place of patriotism. The dis- cussion of politics, except in the secret societies, has been an unknown art in China. The struggle for existence has been too intense to waste time on the doings of the mandarins or the foreigners. Well does the author say that, in place of patriot- ism, you find " untiring industry, marvelous econ- omy, filial piety, and a calm respect for law."
Americans are the most wasteful people in the world. I look out now from my window over thousands and thousands of acres on which the tall corn is waving its silken tassel. When Oc- tober comes the harvesters will drive wagons along the rows, and they will pull the ears only, and leave the shuck, the fodder, and the stack un- touched. Cattle will be turned in to feed on
X INTRODUCTION.
these during the winter, but they will destroy more than they eat. In China each blade of grass is uprooted and put to some use. At Swatow once there were many refugees, Christians, who had refused to contribute to the fund for the gods and the temples. The missionaries were paying the adults for their support a Mexican dollar a month — then about seventy-five cents of our money — and it sufficed. But the author has told of this better than I can.
The dress, the manners, the customs, of the Chinese are described with a master's hand. On this plan of picturing the common every-day doings of his countrymen Macaulay wrote his history.
Ancestral worship — the fundamental principle of Chinese policy — is well and forcibly explained. Chinese conservatism, which has held China fixed as the northern star, while the nations around her have tottered and fallen, is thoroughly elucidated.
Having pictured the Chinaman as he is, the author takes up the history of China from the re- motest period, and brings it down to the present time. It is not necessary for me to follow him through the various dynasties whose chronicles are touched on sufficiently to fill out the great picture of China. From the reign of Fuh-hi, 2852
INTR OD UCTION, xi
B. c, the contemporaneous history of China com- menced, and thenceforward the historical records are complete. The author pays admirable tribute to Confucius. Nowhere is there a more correct estimate of the character of the sage. Through the great invasion of the Mongols, who conquered China in 1276, and the conquest of the Manchus in 1644, the book goes on, reading like the pages of a historical romance. Names that you have barely heard in your life, for instance, those of Kublai Khan, Marco Polo, the Chaus and the Hans, stand out here in interesting portrayal. It is wonderful what a mass of information has been collected in this book. Incidentally we learn about Burmah, Korea, Siam, Tonquin, Thibet, Japan, in fact the whole of Asia. It cannot be expected that I should agree with everything that the author says ; but as I am not reviewing his book, I do not feel called upon to specify the points wherein I differ with him. They are not many. He treats, I think, the missionaries rather cavalierly, and does not give them as a class the credit they deserve. It is strongly brought out in this book that China has never lost its indi- viduality. Indeed, the Chinese have absorbed their conquerors. Nominally the Manchu dynasty reigns to-day; but the fate of China will be deter-
xii INTR OB UCTION,
mined by the people, and, excepting twenty mil- lions of Manchus, they are Chinese.
On the opium question the author is lenient. It will not do to compare opium with alcohol. The drug is always simply brutalizing, and dele- terious. All things are either good or bad, and the use of opium is unquestionably bad. It is the curse of China. I cannot too highly commend the author's history of what may be called our own times in China — say from 1842 down to 1900. A correct and most interesting account is given of a period which has been treated with accuracy by Williams, but to whose treatment Mr. Wildman has added the touches of glowing and sparkling style. He has brought out many new facts, and his chronology of events is perfect. In the sweep of this panoramic book, we come at last to the reign of Hienfeng, the Taiping Rebellion, the making of the treaties of 1857, the advance on Peking in 1859, the re- pulse of the allies at Taku, the renewal of the attack in 1860, the taking of Peking, the rati- fication of the treaties, the induction of China into the family of nations, and the outbreak of 1900. A fund of anecdote and character paint- ing is found in these pages, much of which is absolutely new. Alas, in some respects, books
INTRODUCTION, xlil
about China will have to be rewritten! Japan "turned a new leaf " when she taught the sleeping giant what modern fire-arms could accomplish. Mr. Wildman describes Eastern diplomacy with many touches of satire, but recent events have changed its tone. New men are coming on the stage ; and if China is not to be partitioned, she will demand the rights which international law insures ; then there will be no more pictures of vacillation, evasion, trickery, but a stand-up fight for justice, in which the conscience of the world will be at her back.
Books on China are greatly confined to disqui- sitions. The " tenderfoot " seems driven to ad- vising China. He sees at a glance how necessary are schools, railroads, trained soldiers, and espe- cially is he conscious of the bad morality of the Chinese officials. When a gentleman, who wanted to sell something, once gave me a splendid essay, showing up all Chinese corruptions, and asked me to translate it and send it to the Yamen, I inquired whether, if he wanted to sell locomotives in England, he would prepare an elaborate attack on the House of Lords, and primogeniture, and the Prince of Wales and all the officials. He said he did not think he would, and then I asked him why he did this thing
xiv INTR OB UCTION,
in China. He did not have any satisfactory an- swer.
Mr. Wildman has not fallen into this error. The book is valuable, because it tells you accu- rately, with dates, things you know, and many things that you do not know. From 1860 to the summer of 1900 the history is minutely accurate. The old, spectacular, historic Li stands out in his well-knoAvn lineaments, and the Semiramis of China, the Empress-Regent Tzi Tsu, fills some pages of description. The treatment of Korea, the episode mth France, the Japanese war, are all told of, with many side-lights which illumine the bare facts. At the last we have the account of the seizure of Chinese territory by Germany, Russia, England, and France, and a luminous recital of the conduct of our Government touch- ing the " Open Door," and we are brought down to the beginning of the "Boxer" movement. With this uprisal for a text, some future writer will unravel the tangled skein of the Chinese situation.
Mr. Wildman's position as consul at Hong- kong has given him great facilities to acquire knowledge as to trade, and the steps necessary to secure it. His chapter on that subject will be worth the price of this book to the merchant.
INTR OD UCTION. xv
Trade is a field which the ordinary tourist leaves severely alone. There is more competition in China than in almost any land on the globe. The syndicates of many nations are on the ground, and, since the appearance of the Germans in the arena, prices are cut to the lowest figure. China is overrun with articles marked, " Made in Ger- many ; " but goods of English and American make excel them in quality. Labels are counterfeited, but I always found the Chinese officials ready to arrest and punish the offenders. There was, at Tientsin, a notable case involving the putting of " Indian Head " labels on cotton cloth made in China.
One of the most readable and most accurate chapters in the book is the one on Canton. This bewildering bazaar city is described in the most pleasing style. It is a vast show-shop, where silverware, jewelry, articles in ivory, embroideries, rare furniture, everything that the mind can con- ceive of, is made under your very eye. You may stand in a street six feet wide, and watch the evolution under the workman's hand of the most precious curios, and when they are finished you can buy them at reasonable prices.
Canton is the most interesting city in China, or, perhaps, in its own realm of the manufacture of
xvi INTRODUCTION,
objects of art, in the world. It is the typical city of the empire as Peking is its metropolis. A chapter on the capital city of China, supplied at Mr. Wildman's request, embodies my own study of Peking, and will, it is hoped, fall in line with the other descriptive matter.
This book is a splendid production. It does honor to the learning, the faculty of composition, and the indefatigable industry of the author.
(1/k.a.^^J^ Gb
«^
Chinas Open Door. I.
A WORD AT THE OPEN BOOR.
CHINESE HISTORY becomes interesting when you know, or think you know, the Chinese. Even a superficial acquaintance explains many things in their national records that on first introduction strikes one as both inane and impossible. Chinese history cannot be compared with that of other nations any more than you can parallel the character of the Chinese with that of any contemporary race. It is a repetition of it- self, many times repeated. The same causes have produced the same effects for four thousand years. The causes lie in the character of the Chinese, and are seemingly unchangeable. The Chinamen of 3000 B.C. are the identical Chinamen that greeted us at the opening of the Treaty Ports. A story like Mark Twain's delightful " A Yankee in King Arthur's Court " would be impossible from
2 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
a Cliinese standpoint. If Confucius had returned to China a thousand years after his death, he would have found everything substantially as he left it. The greatest change in Chinese life was wrought by Confucius himself. He remodeled the entire system of thought, and gave his country- men an intellectual life, — a feat that, to one who has lived among the Chinese and daily experienced their inertia, suspicion, and conservatism, seems little short of the miraculous.
It is not necessary, however, to personally know the Chinese to admire and marvel at their history when taken as a grand result, an accomplished fact. Since the dawn of history China has been a civilized and religious nation with a written his- tory. She has had a continuous national life, and has never been driven from her " Garden of Eden." She has had wars as sanguinary, as ad- mirably conducted, and of as great magnitude, as any of the nations have had from Egypt to Amer- ica. Her arms have generally been successful; but if she were conquered it meant the absorption of her conquerors. There have been good kings and bad kings in tiresome rotation; there have been famines and floods ; but there has been no per- manent decay or death in her national life up to the coming of the European. And who knows
A WORD AT THE BOOR, 3
but that the " break up of China " will be but another case of Chinese history repeating itself, and that she will absorb the white man as fast as he gains admission to her walled cities, and so establish within the next century — and what is a century to Cliina ! — a new dynasty that will insure her existence as a nation for another thou- sand years.
Why have not other nations of the past discov- ered the secret of China's everlasting life, and modeled their own upon it? It is because the secret lives in every Chinaman's face, in his every act, a secret only to those who will not see. The Egyptian, the Persian, and the Greek would have to be born a Chinaman in order to take ad- vantage of this — the so-styled secret ; they would have to possess fully the Chinese character, which is as different from their own in every point of contact as is the atmosphere of Mars from that of the earth.
If Chinese character can be given an individu- ality and pictured so that the reader will know and see the Chinaman as we know and see him in China, then Chinese history will have a throb and Chinese life a fascination. We will be standing before China's slowly opening door with one foot within the threshold.
CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
11.
AS TO THE PROPER READING OF CHINESE HISTORY,
THE Westerner must assume a new view in attempting to understand the his- tory of China. He must first know of Chinese peculiarities and characteristics, and this, of itself, is a new study. For instance, to the Occidental the performance of saving " Face " is a comedy. We attend its rehearsal on the street and in our own compounds until its plot becomes so familiar that it fails to arrest our attention unless we happen to remember that the impassioned actors are giving us an object lesson that typifies one of the all-controlling features of Chinese life. When there is bad blood between Ah Ming our "boy" and Chung the '' Cookee " they do not come immediately to blows, which would be dangerous. They go into the street, and commence to revile each other and each other's ancestors at the top of their voices. As a crowd collects they grow more intense, and every minute
''SAVING face:* 5
threaten to spring at each other's throat. When they have worked themselves up to a pitch of maniacal delirium that promises apoplexy, two men step out of the crowd, and grasp the boy and the cookee by the arm. Both go through a fierce theati'ical struggle for freedom. Then they turn the phials of their wrath on their peacemakers, and to the simple on-looker it would seem that the keep- ers of peace would be killed for their pains. In the meantime Ming and his peacemaker, and Chung and his, are some rods apart, and separated by an interested crowd. Then with a final appal- ling burst they tear away from their guardians, and depart calmly on their separate " pidgins." They have let their bad blood preserve their "face," and, save for mutual hoarseness, are unhurt. Time and again I have watched one of these theatrical exhibitions. In the gathering crowd will often be one or more native policemen. No one smiles, unless some mishap occurs, then every one will scream with laughter. No one thinks of interfer- ing until the right moment, and every one knows exactly what the end will be. It is purely a forensic contest. A boat-woman whose husband has corrected her in the morning and put her in a temper, will v/ait until he is out of sight, and then go to the most crowded spot along the wharves.
6 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
ascend a pile of lumber, and commence to revile her daughter-in-law, who is not present, or any member of the crowd who may address a scoffing word to her. She will go on for an hour, jesticu- lating, running through the entire gamut of the Delsarte school, until the audience leave, or it is time for her to get back to her boat. She has asserted her rights to the free speech which her husband denied her, and said all the things to the world at large that she would like to have said to him. Her " face " is saved. The saving of face starts at the Pink Palace at Peking, and goes all through Chinese life. It has changed history, wrecked dynasties, remade religions, and caused a multitude of law-suits. Its complexities and rami- fications are beyond the comprehension of the Westerner. An Occidental synonym might be prestige, in its commonest definition. A China- man who loses his face loses his credit, his stand- ing, his prestige among his fellows, and becomes the laughing-stock of the meanest coolie. In 1796 Lord Macartney was sent to Peking by the British government to try and open diplomatic intercourse. The Emperor Chien Lung feared to refuse to receive the ambassador ; but he saved his face before his people by flying over the vessel on which the noble lord ascended the Peiho, a flag,
''FACE'' IN CHINESE HISTORY. 7
which read in Chinese " Tribute Bearer from the Country of England." In June, 1873, the Em- peror Tung Chih, to the gratification of the for- eign ministers, graciously condescended to reoeive them in audience. It was looked upon for the moment as a triumph of Western diplomacy and firmness until it was discovered that Frederick E. Low, the American minister, and the ministers for England, France, Russia, Netherlands, and Japan, had been received by the Son of Heaven in the Pavilion of Purple Light, where his majesty re- ceived the envoys of tributary states. Again the Chinese face had been saved. The suicide of gal- lant Admiral Ting, after the occupation of Port Ar- thur, was but the last of a long succession of like cases of saving face by means of death. This char- acteristic is not confined to individuals ; it governs the attitude of one village or clan towards another, and the strife that takes place to preserve the bal- ance of face often becomes a vendetta that lasts for generations. The history of China when read in the light of a knowledge of this national charac- teristic will reveal the reason for many acts that before seemed without sense or rhyme.
It must be borne in mind, however, that this struggle to preserve face is nt>t to be confounded with patriotism or love of country. There is no
8 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
National Face that the 400,000,000 of China are sworn to protect with their Kves. With them it is every man for himself, and the country for it- self. I will wager that the Japanese-Chinese war, a historical fact, is not known to one-tenth of the population of China ; and if they did know of it, they would not feel any more interest in it than did those who were supposed to have taken an active part in the campaign. Public spirit is ab- solutely wanting. In its place is a deep-seated in- difference, that is tempered with a calm respect for law and power. The law may be bad and the power tyrannical, but that is no business of those who have to obey. The life of China has been pre- served through the centuries by moral rather than physical forces. Early in 1898, just after Russia had occupied Port Arthur, Germany Kia Chou, England Wei Hai Wai, and France Kwang Chowan, and it looked as though the dismember- ment of China was at hand, a delegation of rich merchants from Canton waited upon me by a pre- vious appointment, and proposed to buy from the viceroy of the Two Kwangs, and from the indi- vidual owners, all the property on the Honam side of Canton, build wharves, reclaim the waste land, and then remove all their big mercantile interests there. In fact, they proposed to create a rival to
LACK OF PATRIOTISM, 9
Canton, and then cede it to the United States if we would give it the protection of our flag. If we deemed it not feasible to go into inland China, they further proposed to buy a large island adja- cent to Hong Kong and make it their emporium. In reply to my many questions they showed no love foi their own flag, or interest in the " break- up" of China, further than it affected their per- sons.
I was in San Francisco during the Chinese- Japanese War. The little colony of Japanese in that city raised a patriotic fund, and offered their services to their fatherland, while *' Chinatown," numbering over 70,000 souls and representing many millions of capital, did nothing nor made any pretensions. The Chinaman pays his taxes, and submits to all the "squeezes," and rightly considers it as so much money lost, as it never reappears in roads, canals, or public buildings. He does not even have police protection or jus- tice for it. There is no such thing as politics in the empire outside the court, where it is noth- ing more than intrigue. Appointments to office are either the result of literary examinations or court favoritism. Even the claim of a success- ful candidate at a triennial examination has to be backed by a substantial kumshaw at Peking
10 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
before he obtains the coveted official appoint- ment. The salaries of all officials in Cliina are merely nominal, and in themselves would not be worth the endeavor of an honest man to obtain. The government is in a sense patriarchal, and like all patriarchs is supposed to be old enough, wise enough, and strong enough to do without the advice of its children. In the war of 1860 between England and China, the invading army employed Chinese not only for carrying baggage and throwing up intrenchments, but a corps of several thousand strong was carefully drilled to plant scaling-ladders and handle ammunition ; and at the storming of the Taku forts it showed un- expected bravery and an exultant pride in the success of its new master. Patriotism in its na- tive land was an unknown quantity, while rations and good pay were something that every China- man could understand. Curiously enough Chi- nese officialdom did not look upon the members of this corps as actual traitors, and the only pun- ishment they received was to have their queus cut off. The Chinese government itself, the mo- ment the war was over, turned around and begged of their conquerors the loan of a number of Eng- lish officers to drill their men so that they would equal this corj)s of, what the world would style.
ECONOMY A SCIENCE. 11
traitors and renegades. When Knblai Khan was strugglmg for the conquest of China, he found his progress stopped by the strongly fortified city of Siang Yang on the bank of the Han River. His general, Ashu, soon discovered that its capture without the aid of ships would be impossible. He set about the construction of a fleet of war- junks. The Mogul soldiers were, however, not sailors ; and proclamations were posted all over the enemy's country, offering good wages and good rewards for men who were able to manage ships. More than 70,00 Chinese responded, and enlisted to fight their own fatherland under the banners of its most inveterate enemy.
China has no national airl
The very absence of patriotism shows again that comparisons with China are only possible by con- trast, and that patriotism is not necessary to in- sure the existence of a nation. There are other characteristics that take its place, among which are untiring industry, marvelous economy, filial piety, and, as has been before said, a calm respect for law. No Occidental can comprehend the full significance of Chinese economy. Economy to the Chinese is more than a moral principle. It is an art and a science that has been perfected through the centuries. They realize better than we that the
12 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
Lord made nothing without a purpose, and they have discovered what we have not — the purpose. The animal and vegetable kingdoms are as open books to the most ignorant villagers. Every weed has its use, and no part of the animal goes to waste. Two cents a day is a fair estimate per head of what it costs to feed 390,000,000 of China's 400,000,000. Rice, beans, garden vege- tables, supplemented with any kind of fish, make up their daily diet; and as simple as this is, often ten mouths have to be fed from a little plat of ground the size of a New England farm- yard, and the water with which to irrigate it brought from a long distance. Again, the soil has to be often literally made, and when made, held in place by embankments for fear that dur- ing the rainy season it will be washed over on a neighbor's land. They rake the seas with the same untiring thoroughness with which they cul- tivate the land ; and I often wonder when I see them returning with a catch of fish — none of which are larger than a corkscrew — if any ever escape to become respectable in size. The mo- ment the tide goes out — no matter what the hour — the muddy ocean reaches are swarming with (lelvers for mussels, crabs, and seaweed. Men, v/omen, and children, each armed with a board
UNCHANGEABLENESS OF CHINA. 13
skate, that will bear the weight of one leg while they propel themselves over the mud with the other, explore every inch of space for anything that can be eaten. I have watched them on a cold, bitter morning thus gleaning, the women carrying their month-old babies on their backs by the side of their bags of sea-plunder. The chilling water was up to the children's bare feet, and a wind was blowing in shore that made me turn back on my bicycle, and ride a mile to get warm. A pagoda stood against the sky above a bunch of low-spreading banyans, and a little colony of junks swung idly on the incoming tide, their great mat- ting sails slowly drying in the early morning sun. It was a picture for the artist and the political economist. The grinding industry and dwarfing economy of it all was, however, horribly revolting. If any one benefited by these hardships, in this generation or the next, there would be some hope for the betterment of the race ; but the Chinese coolie lives and dies by rule as his ancestors have been doing for six thousand years. If all our mis- sionaries in all our treaty ports could teach them, by precept or example, that cleanliness is next to Godliness, they would do more for China than even Confucius did. They would bring about a reform in the lives of Chinamen and in the body politic that
14 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
would mean the opening of China's ports to West- ern civihzation and Western trade. As long as the Chinese are content to live in huts with their pigs and their fowls, and sleep and eat in their own filth, it is hard to open their eyes to the de- sirability of a clean heart or of American-made prints. I have been in country districts of China that were almost idealic in their beauty; every inch of cultivatable land was blooming with gen- erous crops, dotted at intervals with workers, their backs bent over a paddy-field, and on the lands of the foot-hills which were non-productive stood the stone huts of the population. From a distance the houses looked substantial, clean, and inviting. A group of a half-dozen would be sheltered by the branches of a guard of massive trees. The whole scene was charming; but, as you drew near, the beauty of the place faded away into a picture of such unnecessary uncle anliness and squalor, that you were conquered by the usual disgust. There was no reason for it, as all about there were hun- dreds of dry acres, and scores of clumps of trees.
The land could be had rent free, and the soil is healthy ; and yet they would all huddle together, — men, children, pigs, and fowls, with possibly a shaggy China pony and a half dozen mangy curs. Under these conditions it is not long: be-
NEGLECT OF SANITARY LAWS, 15
fore even a sanitarium would become a pest-hole. I have been in a mandarin's palace that cost a lac of dollars, and had him point out to me with pride his artificial fish-pond, supremely un- conscious that a dead hen and a decayed cat were floating on its surface among the lily pads and lotus blooms. In the great central hall — the hall of his ancestors — he pointed out price- less stone pictures, thousand-year-old vases, and exquisite black-wood carvings, while I held my nose over a pool of malarious filth that was oozing from under the steps ten feet away. The result is plague, smallpox, and enteric fever. In Hong Kong it is a fight day by day to keep the Chinese houses in any thing like a sanitary condition. Chinese who have lived a dozen years under British laws, and Chinese who were born under them, and have seen each recurring scourge of the plague, and are fully aware that it breeds in filth, yet practice every deception to relieve them- selves of the " house-to-house " brigade. They know that the plague seldom attacks Europeans, and never invades the clean European residential districts. They know the efficacy of chloride of lime, of whitewash, and of pure water, and still every day the English Magistrate's Court is crowded with Chinese who have been trying to
16 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
evade the simple sanitary laws of the colony. If a Chinaman is taken with the plague the fact is concealed from the authorities, and the sick man is smuggled on a Canton boat, and conveyed to his native village, where, to his great satisfac- tion, he is pei:mitted to die like a dog. He has thus saved his Hong Kong domicile from fumiga- tion and lime-washing, and has reduced the cost of his funeral expenses by taking himself to his family burial lot. The fact that plague germs are in the house, and that the lack of fumigation may cause the death of his sorrowing wife and children, is neither considered by the living nor the dead, as it conflicts with their system of economy.
Comparisons are odious surely as between the Chinese and any other nation. It is the old proposition of " teaching your grandmother to suck eggs." The Chinese have no idea of our standard of comfort. We wear a hat in all sea- sons of the year. They ask why we should wear a hat any more in summer than heavy gloves. If the sun is too hot and you are delicate, there is always the umbrella ; if it is too cold, there is always the hood. Ah Choy, the consular shroff, goes down to the Chinese gold-shop to change our gold coin into silver, in the heat of the day.
AH CHOW THE CONSERVATIVE. 17
The thermometer registers 100°. I do not believe he feels it, but if the sun gets in his old eyes he holds up his fan. His poll is cleanly shaven every morning, so there is no hair to protect his shining skull. At first I never expected to see him return alive from one of these expeditions. I wear a cork helmet and an umbrella, but since, I have discovered that the only time he ever pro- tects his head is when it rains. He may wear a rimless cap in the office or house to do some one honor, but never in the street. After thirty-five years' association with the Europeans of Hong Kong, Ah Choy still wears cotton clothes, sleeps on a wooden pillow, eats with chop-sticks, uses paper-soled shoes, and continues to be just as uncomfortable as any native of the Sun On dis- trict who has never been in an English colony, or an American consulate. It is this absolute absence of any standard of comparison between the Chinese and the American that makes it im- possible to hold him up to scorn. When the child starts in life wearing a pair of bifurcated bags filled with sand in the place of diapers, one cannot but despair of ever teaching the parents that " cleanliness is next to godhness " in their homes, even if you could dismiss for the time their inherent ideas of economy. In discussing
18 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
the economies of the Chinese, there is no place where you can stop. After eleven years of ex- perience I am amazed every day at some new example. Nothing is lost. Every animal is eaten, regardless of the cause of his demise. The sar- dine and fruit cans that we extravagantly throw into the dump are born again as tin cups and cooking utensils. The weed that cannot be eaten is used as fuel to cook the weed that may be edible. In the autumn the leaves of trees are gathered by children who are too young to labor, and pounded into bricks, and dried for their winter fuel. Even the exploded firecrackers that are used at Chinese New Year and on religious festi- vals are collected for the same purpose. If they burn any oil at night, it is simply a taper sus- pended in a tumbler of peanut-oil and water.
It may be put down as an axiom that there are no idle people in China. A visitor in Canton or Peking may be struck with many cases of coolies or shopkeepers sleeping in the street or in their stalls regardless of the deafening babble that sur- rounds them. It is not idleness, however ; it is a habit, that is responsible for much of the endur- ance of the people.
A coolie is sent with a load of soy or fish from one part of the city to another. He may
CHINESE WITHOUT '' NERVES r 19
have been twelve hours struggling under its ex- cessive load through the congested alleys. When he arrives at his destination, and his burden has to be weighed, measured, and fought over, and haggled for, all of which is no business of his, he squats in an unoccupied space, and goes im- mediately to sleep. It may be for ten minutes, or it may be for an hour. There is very little difference between day and night in Canton. The deep hum of its million workers never ceases. The Chinese sleep when they have nothing else to do ; and they sleep the sleep of the just where a well-bred European dog would not be able to get a *' cat-nap." They can sleep or work in any position, and keep it up for hours at a time. A nervous Chinaman I have never seen, and an ex- hibition of *' nerves " among either gender is unknown. He is never known to take exercise for the sake of exercise. My shroff, or cashier, Ah Choy, has been sitting, bent over a little desk, for thirty years, making out consular invoices. He handles columns of figures, running up into the millions, on his abacus, making the most deli- cate calculations, while a jabbering, pushing, spit- ting mob of coolie runners from the big hongs crowd his elbows. He works calmly on, day after day, in the same cramped position, on the same
20 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
uncomfortable bamboo stool, utterly unconscious of his surroundings, never losing his temper, and seldom making a mistake. I know he never took a walk for any purpose other than to save chair- hire, and yet in the four years of my term of office he has never been away from the consulate for a day on acount of sickness. Shortly after I arrived a wave of pity went over me for Ah Choy ; and I spoke to his superior, the interpreter, about his cramped position and long hours of service ; suggested that the Government could afford a respectable office-chair and that the consulate closed officially at five o'clock, p.m. I even inti- mated that Ah Choy had better take the balance of the day for exercise and rest. Interpreter Chinn smiled, and promised to speak to Ah Choy. Choy thanked me, but put it all down as an idio- sincrasy of his new chief. This ended my mis- sionary labors in my own office. Why should he walk when the Government paid for two coolies to do his walking for him ? Why should he take a stated hour to rest when he could sleep at odd minutes with his head cramped down sidewise across a pile of invoices in a position that would strangle a man with " nerves." It is the absence of nerves that enables the Chinese to endure pain as well as toil. Every missionary doctor or hos-
REASON OF TORTURES. 21
pital surgeon who has worked araong the Chinese relates incidents of operations that have been per- formed without the use of chloroform that are hardly conceivable. Yet in almost every case the Chinaman seemed to experience little pain, and to recover almost immediately. No nation in the world has invented such tortures as the Chinese. Simple punishment, such as confinement with hard labor diversified with twenty strokes of the bam- boo before each meal, would be considered a kind- ness by the coolies so long as the " chow " or food was equal to the poorest of our prison fares. This absence of nerves and ability to suffer is a God- given gift, and makes the Chinese equal to an existence that would blot out the European civili- zation in two generations. One cannot but won- der if, in the struggle for the possession of the earth that is now taking place, the white man of " nerves "may not in the end go down before the yellow man without " nerves."
If to the American the thought that there is no pubKc spirit, no love of country, no patriotism, among the Chinese is abhorrent, what must the Chinaman, the follower of Confucius, feel when he is told that there is no such thing as filial piety, as defined by his classics, in America ? It is little wonder we are looked upon as " Barbarians " when
22 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
the Chinese are told that, when our sons grow up, they leave the roof-tree, go out into the world, marry, have families without consulting any one, go to distant countries without the parents' con- sent, are not responsible for their father's debts or deeds ; their wives do not become the servants of their husband's mother ; that there is no three- year term of mourning, etc. ; for any one in China can tell you that, " of the hundred virtues, filial conduct is the chief ; that a defect of any virtue when traced to its root is a lack of filial piety." Broadly speaking, filial piety takes the place of patriotism. The worship of ancestors calls upon the descendants to protect, worship, and visit the tombs of the ancestors. It requires that the par- ents should be served while they live, and be wor- shiped when dead. It makes sacred any soil in which the dead rests. One of the most dangerous mobs that ever occurred in Singapore, while I was there, was caused by the British authorities legis- lating to remove a Chinese burial-ground for mu- nicipal purposes. The government was to do it at its own expense ; but this did not meet the ob- jection, for no one in Singapore knew who lay in hundreds of the graves. A son, however, in Aus- tralia, Borneo, or America knew; and w^hen he returned in one year or three to worship at the
FILIAL PIETT. 23
tomb of his father, or possibly to convey the ashes to his ancestral temple in Honam, how was he to identify his dead among the hundreds that were removed ? His " face " would be lost, his luck gone, his ancestors angry. A wealthy Chinese merchant from Chicago, who spoke English and had lived since 1882 in the United States, came into my office one morning to see if I could aid him to get his father out of prison in Wuchow. After a long conversation I discovered that some returning Chinaman from Chicago had boasted to the Wuchow mandarin of the wealth of his old schoolfellow in Chicago. The mandarin was evi- dently envious ; so, when one of the numerous clan fights occurred in which several onlookers were killed, he ordered that the father and brother of the Chicago Chinaman should be imprisoned for complicity in the murder. They were, however, notified that on the payment of one thousand taels they would be released. My informer had imme- diately sent the money from Chicago, but it had had no other effect than a summons from the mandarin to appear before him to answer the charge of having incited the murder. He dared neither refuse the summons nor appear in the man- darin's Yamen. In the first instance all his family would be executed, and he would not be permitted
24 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
to worship, or to have his body deposited in the ancestral temple ; and in the second instance he was perfectly sure he would never be allowed to leave the Yamen until he had been " squeezed " of every cash, and then the chances were that his sacrifices would avail him little. This case is but a sample one of dozens that have come under my observation, and is a fair example of the tremen- dous hold that Chinese officialdom has upon the people through this mistaken idea of filial piety. For three thousand years of Chinese history offi- cials were supposed to be promoted in government service for their filial piety and the purity of their characters. Mencius ruled that " There are three things which are unfilial, and to have no posterity is the greatest of them." Hence the custom of child marriages comes naturally, and is followed by the custom of divorce and concubinage when a wife fails to present her husband with a son. A discharged sailor of Dewey's flagship was married in my presence to a comely Chinese girl. He left her a few months later, and the young wife came to me with her sad tale. She kept mentioning her children, and asking how she was to provide for them, as they were large enough to go to school. At last it occurred to me that it was strange that she should be the mother of full-
THE WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS, 25
grown children, and I asked her if she had been married before. She replied quite unconcernedly in the negative. In my position of father confessor I inquired " How you catchy children?" She an- swered, " My buy two piecy boy long time." It seemed that the girl had not married until she was twenty years of age. Having practically given up all hope of marriage, she had bought two baby boys and adopted them, as she naively ex- plained : " No got son, how can get chow when my get old." The boys were her insurance policy for this life and her hold on the next, for she was preserving tlie line of her ancestors. She, like thousands of others, had no particular means with which to provide for the babies when she adopted them, and now she had still less; yet some how she would struggle along until her boys are grown, and then the heaviest yoke in China would fall on their shoulders, and they would have to take up the burden of filial piety in all its ramifications. The worship of ancestors is the true religion of China, and is to a greater extent responsible for the uninterrupted progress of China's national life than any other one thing. It chains the gene- rations of to-day to the generations of the Shun dynasty. It creates a fatherland of tombs that never releases its sons, and calls them from New
26 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
York, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, and from my servants' quarters in Hong Kong, to render the same obei- sance to the shade of the dead as the worshiper expects from his son when his bones rest in the ancestral temple.
The famous general, Chau Pau, was sent by the Emperor Ling Ti, in A. d. 177, to reduce the fierce Sienpi. On the march his mother was seized ; and when the two armies confronted each other, the Sienpi placed the old lady in the front rank, and threatened to murder her unless the son submitted. Chau Pau had to chose between his emperor and country and his mother. His loyalty to the emperor prevailed, and his mother was bar- barously murdered before his very eyes. Chau Pau won the battle that followed, but he had lost all hope of happiness in the next world. He died shortly afterwards of grief and horror at his posi- tion, saying " If I had betrayed my country, I should have been disloyal. I have been the cause, however, of my mother's death, and so I have been unfilial. I bartered my soul for the applause of my king." Nearly seven hundred years later, during the Tang dynasty, a man was tried for the murder of a man who had killed his father. The judge decided : " If we put him to death, there is the danger that we shall do a grievous injury to the
CONSERVATISM INGRAINED. 27
filial sentiment in men, and deter them from doing any thing to avenge the wrongs done to their parents. On the other hand, if he is not punished, we shall encourage violent acts in the community, and men will be taking the law into their own hands, and filling society with bloodshed." The case was compromised by the filial murderer's banishment, and thus the teachings of the Con- fucian classics were reconciled to the laws of the land.
The Chinese may be styled a religious people. In a large way they recognize a supreme being ; but, as has been said, ancestral worship has blotted out the face of God, and made gods of dead rela- tives.
We use the term conservative and conservatism in America, but until you live in China they have no real significance. Chinese conservatism means that everything is done by rule, and in most in- stances the rule is from two thousand to six thou- sand years old ; hence it is hallowed by age and association. You will not be long in China before you discover that your ways and the ways of China do not run along parallel lines. On the first day of November all your servants go from white into blue clothes. Ask the reason, and you are informed that cold weather has come, although
28 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
the thermometer may stand 85° in the shade, or it may be that it has been cold enough for grate-fires for ten days. On the first of May the blue is dis- carded for white, and hot weather has arrived in spite of your own winter clothes. The head of the house offered our laundryman fifty cents a month extra if he would sprinkle her clothes with his hands instead of with his mouth. He ac- cepted the fifty cents gladly, but continued his good old ways. An offer of one dollar a month had no better effect. Since the Spanish- American War American mercantile firms have sent out their agents to try and capture a portion of the presumably large trade of China. The Chinese merchants received them politely, and gave them permission to consign any and all goods they wished to on commission. It made no difference whether the goods were steam-engines or curling- irons ; they would be received if the freight were prepaid, but as for actually buying the things, or helping to introduce any new American product or invention, that was not to be thought of. It was not long before the ambitious American exporter discovered that he must either open his own agency, or give up all hopes of entering the field. Chinese conservatism they found was an unsurmountable barrier. The literary man
CONSERVATISM IN LITERATURE, 29
ranks all other professions in China ; but, unlike our literary men, he is very seldom a producer of original literature. He is merely a student of the classics. Conservatism in literature is even more pronounced than in trade. The writings of Con- fucius and Mencius, commentaries on them, the book of historical documents, the " Shoo King," or " Book of History," are the same to-day as they were five hundred years before Christ, when Con- fucius made them to please his own fancy. They comprise the curriculum of the universities, and the winner of the Bachelor of Arts Degree at the time of Christ would still be able to earn his degree at the triennial examinations at Canton or Peking to-day. Yet one has no right to laugh at a conservatism in literature that has moulded a race and built up a system of government that has lived to see the civihzation of Egypt, Greece, and Rome decay. You never hear of a "lost art " in China. It took a complete overturning of China, and changed the dynasty, to introduce the queue, and it will take a revolution and a change of dynasty to abolish it. The American firm that wrote me they were sending out a representa- tive " to introduce their superior table cutlery " did not realize that their representative should be accompanied by a line of battle-ships and an army
30 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
of invasion. When the knife and fork supplant the chopsticks, a new dynasty will sit on the dragon throne, and China will have entered upon a new chapter of its history. Mahomet might have made Mahommedanism the state religion of China with the aid of the cimeter, but once es- tablished it would require the modern missionary with a maxim gun to displace it. Christ has commanded that we shall go forth to preach his gospel to all the world. The Christian mission- ary in China has to fight ^vith Chinese conserva- tism rather than Chinese infidelism or paganism. Buddhism came to China by royal invitation, and soon made a place for itself by the side of Taoism; and the two religions ran along side by side on the most friendly terms. The Chinaman is entirely impartial in his choice of religions. If his prayers are not answered in the Buddhist temple he will simply step across the street and burn twice as many joss-sticks and paper prayers in a taoist. With all their superstition, their run- ning after strange gods and ancestral worsliip, the Chinese believe in a Supreme Being, and their history from mythical and legendary periods is filled with noble examples of self-sacrifice and religious fervor, many of which parallel the acts of the Old Testament kings. Tang, who ruled
EXAMPLES OF SELF-SACRIFICE, 31
1776 years B.C., delivered his nation from a most grievous drought by offering himself as a sacrifice to the Supreme Being if his people might be saved. After praying all night in a mulberry grove his faith was rewarded, and a copious rain fell for hundreds of miles over the dying country. In memory of God's goodness he composed, like the old Israelite kings, an ode of thanksgiving, which is known as " The Great Salvation." The Emperor Kung (b. c. 1401-1373) removed his entire capital from Kingtai in Chihli to Yin, a town north of the Yellow River in Honam, because the country was not prospering, and righteousness was declining, and he Avished to commence over again, and seek purity on virgin soil. Wu Yih, the emperor who first introduced idols as well as the worship of mountains and streams, was struck dead by a shaft of Hghtning while hunting ; and all historians agree that it was a just punishment by Heaven. The introduction of western medicine, in spite of its ability to recommend itself by cures which to the Chinese looked like miracles, finds itself defeated by this selfsame hide-bound conservatism. In Hong Kong the enlightened Chinese merchants have established a hospital in which the patients can choose between Chinese and Western science, and
32 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
be treated by either free of expense. Yet not five per cent of the inmates will permit an English doctor to treat them, even after the Chinese doctor has given them up. Sir Henry Blake, the gov- ernor of this colony, said in November, 1899, at the laying of the foundation stone of the woman's ward : " The record of the Tung Wah Hospital shows that the proportion of cures effected by western methods over Chinese is fifty per cent."
My "Number One Boy" was looking very sad one morning as he served our breakfast. The mistress asked him if he were sick. "No," he replied in Pidgin English, " my wife he die two hours." By further questioning, we found that the Chinese doctor had given his wife up, and that he was expecting every moment to be notified of her death. The consular surgeon went imme- diately to the bedside of the dying woman, and found that she was suffering from a simple stric- ture of the bladder, and that the Chinese M.D. had been dosing her with Ginsing tea and other nostrums that were only hastening the end. An ordinary surgical operation relieved her, and in a few days she was as well as ever. We congratu- lated ourselves that we had at last made one con- vert to Western science, as the " boy " was most grateful and complimentary. A few months later
NEVER CHANGING FASHIONS, 33
the same boy announced that his baby, a dear little tot, was about to die, and that the Chinese doctor had given it up. We were disgusted, and told the boy what we thought, — among other things, declaring that he was little better than a murderer. The child was not too far gone to be saved by earthly aid, and the education of science triumphed again.
The fashion in mandarin's clothes and insignia was introduced by Topa in a.d. 404, and the fashion has never changed. King Topa might imagine himself in his own court should he return to-day. The civil mandarin of the first rank is known now, as then, by the square embroidered patch on the back and front of his robe, bearing the cunningly worked figure of a Manchurian crane, and by the red coral knob on the top of his cap; the military mandarin by the unicorn and coral knob, and so on down to the tenth or lowest mandarin rank. The fashion in the clothes of the now dominant Anglo-Saxon race has somewhat modified since 404, as has its religion and its social ceremonial !
An American going to France studies and strives to master French rules of ceremony and politeness. He may not approve of or see the sense in all that is required of him ; but when he
34 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
is amoJi.g Romans, if he has common sense, he strives to do as the Romans do. A foreigner, however, never takes the trouble to acquaint him- self with Chinese social procedure. It is not necessary or possible to know the three hundred rules of ceremony or the three thousand rules of behavior that are laid down in the classics ; but a few general principles would save us from much of the scorn that is attached to the term " bar- barian," and go far toward lubricating the hinges of the " open door." The punctilio of the Spaniard is yet in its childhood as compared to the code of hoary China. Every act of daily life is governed by well-established forms. I fear that there is little sincerity or heart in many of them; but at the same time, when the Spaniard tells you that his house, and all that it contains, is yours, it never occurs to you to actually dispossess him. A Chinese merchant comes to the consulate to ask for information, and brings you a box of cigars as a present or as an acknowledgment of the trouble he has placed you to. The cigars are Manilas, of the cheapest quality. He is per- fectly aware that you will never smoke one of them ; he would not himself ; but he expects you to accept them. You had no right to expect anything, as what you did was part of your day's
DEFECT OF CHINESE CHARACTER. 35
work; but he has done the polite thing, and re- lieved himself of all obligations to you. At a wedding the friends of the groom will send bas- kets of impossible cakes or the smallest dried ducks, or half of a pig that has died of disease. The recipient is bound by all the ceremonials of polite behavior to accept them and look grateful, but both parties know that the gifts will be thrown to the beggars as soon as the groom has taken the bride to his home. When calling upon a Chinese mandarin, it is your fault if you do not know that it is time to go when the tea is handed round. If you are not aware that it is a mark of disrespect for your servants to come into your presence with their queues twisted about their heads, so much the worse for you.
A Chinaman is intensely curious, but at the same time he " minds his own business." In Amer- ica, minding one's business is considered a virtue ; but in China it is one of the defects of the Chinese character, personal and national. The Chinaman is absolutely lacking in sympathy, charity, and is utterly indifferent as to the fate of his neighbor, the neighboring city, or any- thing in the body politic that does not actually touch him. The history of China is filled with examples of disasters, brought on by this un-
36 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
sympathetic system of minding one's own busi- ness. It has made every rebellion possible, and been a great factor in the overthrow of dynasties. It encourages piracy, and protects dishonest offi- cials. What is somebody's business is nobody's. A general raises the standard of revolt and cap- tures a city. A city ten miles removed looks on with absolute indifference to the horrors of the oc- cupation, knowing full well that its turn will come next, and also that if the two cities had united their forces they could have put down the rebels. With his reenforcements the victor moves on the next city in his way, and so on until he is master of an entire province. The adjoining province minds its own business ; and when the rebel has perfected all his plans, he marches into it, and re- duces it city by city. It is not until his power has become formidable that the throne deigns to notice him ; and then, if he cannot be bought off with a dukedom or secretly assassinated, a battle is fought that generally decides in one day the fate of the dynasty. The Taiping rebellion could have been crushed in its infancy, had it been any one's business to have done so. When the Chinese fleet surrendered to the Japanese after the battle of Yalu, one of the Chinese men-of- war asked to be exempted from the surrender as
''MINDING ONES BUS IN ESS r 37
it belonged to the Southern division, and was in the fight by mistake, which was literally none of its business. A Chinaman snatched the watch of a Portuguese in Glenealy Road, two minutes' walk from the consular building. There were dozens of coolies passing at the time ; but no one inter- fered, and the thief paid no more attention to them than if they were wooden images. The victim heard one of the onlookers remark as he was passing, " That was a Bold thing to do ! " In crossing the Johore Straits I saw a sampan upset, and the occupant, who could not swim, slowly drown in the presence of a half-dozen passing sampans. Of course there are always other rea- sons than that of " minding one's business." Chinese reasons are many, and not always clear to the Occidental. The rescuer might have been interfering with fate, or the man might have wanted to die, and the rescuer would have become responsible for his support during the rest of his natural life.
The struggle for existence is too intense, too real, for one man to devote any time or sympathy to the business or sorrows of another. From the throne to the hovel it is always a question of the survival of the fittest. The weak perish, and do so resignedly. It is fate. Outside of the imperial
38 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
circle, there is no such thing as politics in the empire. The voice of the people is nothing, simply because the people will not raise their voice. They are in a sense as cruel to themselves as they are to one another. The triennial exam- inations at Canton are public exhibitions of the en- durance, conservatism, and cruelty of the Chinese to themselves. Boys twenty years of age and old men of ninety are huddled together in a thousand stone cells or stalls not fit for a cow, eating, sleep- ing, or working on cold or hot, wet or burning stones as the case may be, cramped and uncom- fortable, taxing their mental and physical endu- rance to the breaking limit ; coming out haggard, disheveled, many prostrated, and some as corpses, a pitiful expose of the lack of human kindness in their characters. The " prize-man " may later become viceroy of Canton, but he does nothing to better the condition of the examination hall. He suffered, let others do the same. This cruel in- difference on the other hand has been of the greatest protection to travelers and missionaries in China. As a general proposition, the mission- aries have been left too much to themselves by the surrounding population to make success in their profession possible. Missionaries have been massacred and missions burned, but nine times
LACK OF SYMPATHY, 39
out of ten it has been on account of some form of insane fear rather than from pure cruelty. The Chinese have been told that missionaries eat children or dissect them, or that their presence is responsible for a flood, a famine, or a plague. In California I have seen all the Chinese driven out of a town by a civilized mob, because they worked cheaper and lived cheaper than the members of the mob. White men are never stoned or de- ported in China for commercial reasons. Last year the viceroy of the Two Kwangs forbade the importation of kerosene-oil in the West River district, and for a time killed the industry. The crops failed that year, and the farmers believed that the soil had been poisoned by the spilling of the new barbarian oil on the ground. The entire population went back to the use of peanut-oil ; but they soon realized the difference by compari- son, and now kerosene-oil has obtained a foot> hold from which it can never be dislodged.
The Chinese have a remarkable sense of humor, even if it takes a cruel form. Ask a Chinaman the best of two roads to a town and he will invariably recommend the worst and longest, and consider it a good joke. A workman falls from a bamboo scaffold and breaks his leg. Immedi- ately every other workman will stop and laugh,
40 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
as though it were the best joke of the season. Lieutenant Kirkpatrick Brice, who was of Gen- eral Parsons's party in surveying the line of the Canton-Hankow Railway, told me that when they stopped at a village at night the natives gath- ered round by the hundred interfering with their work and movements ; they soon found that it was dangerous to try to drive them back, but, instead, one of their party would suddenly seize upon one of the villagers, and pitch him into a mud-hole or a stream. This would cause a tremendous laugh, and afterwards every one w^as good-natured. A deformed Chinaman is the sub- ject of endless jokes and ceaseless mirth. The colliding of two Chinese rickshaws is a standing joke in the Treaty Ports ; while a hawker being led to jail by his queue becomes a target for all the wits along the entire route. The lamenta- tions of Jeremiah would have been impossible in China. They would have been preserved as an example, by some humorous Confucius, of his nation's superior method of ridiculing someone else's misery.
To one who has lived in China for ten years or more there is practically no limit to an article dealing with the character of the Chinese. One thought suggests another until the entire book is
CHINESE PECULIARITIES. il
too short to chronicle what one sees around him from day to day. Whoever attempts to write a chapter on Chinese peculiarities can feel per- fectly certain that it will be skipped by the old residents of China, with the comment that it is superficial ; and the writer's only hope is that this brief essay will, in some measure, form as an introduction of China to a nation that is rapidly becoming one of the great factors in international diplomacy.
42 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
III.
FROM FUH-HI TO CONFUCIUS.
[2852 B.C. TO 478 B.C.]
THERE is an indefiniteness regarding the first thousand years of Chinese history that 1 fear has proven a temptation that most tellers of China's story could not resist. Even the exemplary Confucius was unable to withstand the opportunity to create out of this legendary period a few chapters from which he could point a moral and adorn a tale. The Chinese historical writers knew the full value of having their "novel" open so as to catch the public attention. The emperors, Yau and Shun, who reigned from B.C. 2356-2205 are as familiar personages in the daily conversation of every Chinese school-boy as are Washington and Lincoln in that of the Americans. Their deeds and lives stand out as shining examples to emperors and peasants. They were blessed with every virtue, and were credited with the highest administrative abilities. They " never told a lie," and as far as
THE FOUNDERS OF CHINA, 43
we know they never made a mistake. They may be considered historically the founders of the Empire of China, as they are so accepted by Chinese historians. Yet outside of the mere fact that these two worthies actually lived and ruled wisely, they are both the clever creations of Con- fucius and his distinguished disciple Mencius. Confucius was a worshiper of ancestors ; and as long as he had the opportunity of fitting out his nation with ancestors, it is certainly commendable that he gave them such respectable ones. In doing so he also gave his people a " Golden Age," and quite properly placed it so far back that no one outside of China could dispute it, and no one in China would dare.
Following in the footsteps of Confucius, I think it only fair to start the sons of Shem from the rich basin of the Euphrates, the mother of all races, and allow them to gradually work northeast to the richer basin of the Yellow River. Like the Chaldeans and the Israelites they were a pastoral people ; but as they found the country preempted by " squatters " of other races, which necessitated fierce wars, they were soon forced to cultivate the soil ; and three thousand years before Christ we find records of the weaving of garments from flax, the planting of mulberry-trees, and the establish-
44 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
ment of fairs where the farmers could congregate and barter.
The period which barbarian historians have pro- fanely styled the mythical commenced with the hewing out of the earth and the heavens by the hard-working, but very homely god, Pan-ku. He is the hero of the Chinese cosmogony; and his statue, which is to be found in every Chinese home, represents him with an ax in one hand and a chisel in the other striking at the dome above. Three dynasties followed, each reigning for eighteen thousand years, and each of these labored to de- velop Pan-ku's masterpiece and make it habitable.
Contemporaneous history of China commences with the reign of Fuh-hi, 2852 B.C. Thereafter the kings were men, and the mythical developed into the legendary. The fables of this early period are not as cleverly pictured as those of corre- sponding periods in Egyptian, Greek, or Eoman history, but they are characteristically as interest- ing, and in many particulars strangely similar. Fuh-hi instituted the laws of marriage, taught men how to fish with nets and to rear domestic animals. He invented the lute and the lyre that his people might be charmed with music, and so enabled them to bear more cheerfully the burdens of life. He established family names, and devised the system of
THE GREAT TU. 45
writing by Chinese characters. His modesty for- bade him to claim any credit for these beneficial inventions, and he gave full glory for them to a dragon-horse that came from out the Yellow River bearing a scroll on its back. Hence to this day the imperial insignia is the dragon, and the im- perial throne is known as the " dragon throne."
It is pleasant to hnger over the records of the kings that succeeded Fuh-hi, as the good they did has lived after them, and the evil has been buried in their tombs. They worked singly for the up- building of their people, and whatever evil acts are recorded of them serve only the more vividly to bring out the disinterestedness of their lives. Dur- ing the reign of the Great Yu (b.c. 2205-2197) occurred the tremendous overflow of China's sor- row, the Yellow River, of which Yu recorded "how destructive are the waters of the inundation. They envelop the mountains, and rise higher than the hills, and they threaten the very heavens, so the people complain." This is a description which the vast stream has lived up to ever since. The discovery of the manufacture of wines caused this old sage to remark after he recovered from the effects of his first spree : " The days will come when some of my successors through drinking this will cause infinite sorrow to the nation." Where-
46 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
upon he promptly banished the unfortunate discov- erer from the country as a dangerous character.
Whether it was the too frequent use of this new- found drink, or simply despair of ever being able to Hve up to the high standard set by Yu, it is sufficient to know that his sixteen successors degenerated with mathematical precision. Had the succession to the throne remained as before the death of Yu, a reward to the most distinguished and best quahfied man, without regard to rank or family, it is possible that the dynasty of Hsai would still be on the dragon throne. As Yau chose Shun, one of the people, to succeed him, so Yu desired that his place be taken by Yih, a man of vast ability and probity ; but the feudal princes voted to place Ki, the son of Yu, on the throne, and the hereditary principle was established.
In spite of the cruelty and debauchery of Yu's successors the people did not rebel. It remained, however, for a woman, Meihi, wife of the Emperor Kwei (B.C. 1818-1766), to pile on the straw that broke the camel's back. Meihi, the peerless, was the daughter of the chief of Shih. Her beauty was of the queenly type that conquered men's minds and their passions also. She seldom smiled, but when she did it was with a purpose ; and no man could stand before the longing that possessed
MEIHI, THE PEERLESS. 47
him. The soldier was ready to die to win one more smile, one more glance, from the veiled eyes. The student forgot his books, and considered them worthless, as they revealed no; icharm whereby he might win one sign from the parted lips. Yet morally Meihi was more base than Cleopatra. She loved no man ; she used all ; and she wrecked a dynasty.
The emperor was her slave. He built her a palace of jade, onyx, and gold, surrounded it with splendid gardens, filled with every costly flower and shrub and rare animal that his empire con- tained. There were grottos and dells, artificial lakes and waterfalls, baths of scented waters, bits of wild forest in which spotted deer roamed and birds from all climes sung. The orgies of this fairy-land filled the nation with dis- gust. At night the trees would be lighted, a lake filled with wine, shrubbery hung with confec- tions, and thousands of naked, dissolute men and women would sport about the grounds, dance to the lyre and the lute, or rush into the lake of wine, and drink until drunk or drowned. Because the prince of Shang remonstrated, the emperor built an underground palace, where for a month at a time his dissolute court would disappear, and indulge in the wildest debauchery. Finding words
48 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
and warnings vain, Tang, the prince of Shang, re- sorted to sterner methods, and placed the crown on his own brow, thereby founding the Shang dynasty, which ruled for over six hundred years (B.C. 1766-1122), and which, curiously enough, was wrecked by a woman under almost similar circumstances to those just narrated.
The virtuous Tang was succeeded by twenty- eight emperors, who, with two exceptions, tried to excel each other in cruelty and wickedness. One of them, Wu Yih, has the distinction of introdu- cing idols (B.C. 1199-1194) into China. He did this to show his utter unbelief in God and all religion. Then, to show his contempt for these figures of wood and clay, he ordered the bonzes to fight with them to prove that the gods whose counterfeit presentment they were could not pro- tect themselves.
The Nemesis of the Shang dynasty was Taki, the companion of the last emperor. Chow Sin, and the most beautiful woman in Chinese history since Meihi. If the historical accounts are true, Takai exceeded Meihi both in beauty and general wickedness. She was more than licentious, — she was cruel for the pleasure it gave her. She was Cleopatra, Lucretia Borgia, and Catharine in one. Her beauty was so great that when it was ordered
TAKI AND THE STAG TOWER, 49
that she should pay the penalty of her sins, no one could be found who could stand up before her eyes and carry out the sentence. The victorious General Fa sent soldier after soldier to her prison ; but each returned, declaring that he could not raise his hand to disfigure such divine beauty. Fa was afraid to trust himself, and at length dispatched an aged councilor, who covered his own face, and dealt the fatal blow. The popular belief through- out China to-day is, that she was a human incar- nation of a wolf-demon. Many of the licentious songs of the Chinese are reputed to have been composed for Taki. The emperor built for her the famous " Stag Tower," which afterwards be- came his funeral pyre. It took seven years to erect the Stag Tower, which was more than a mile square, and was surrounded by a vast park. He built other palaces, that taxed the empire to the very limit, and in the building of which thousands of lives were sacrificed through over- work and privation. Watching the workmen in one of the parks, the empress noticed that in fording an artificial stream of cold spring water the young men seemed to feel the cold more than the old. Taki argued that the reason for this was that the young men had more marrow in their bones. The emperor was not convinced ; and
50 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
to satisfy himself he ordered his guards to seize a number of both young and old and break their legs so that his doubts might be at rest. All the orgies of Meihi were imitated and exaggerated by this precious couple.
The punishment for such crimes and abuse of power was not only death, but the loss of throne ; and as the end of every Chinese dynasty has been brought about through the cruelty or weakness of its representatives, so the inauguration of each new dynasty has for a time meant reforms and good times. The founder of the Chow dynast}^ (b. c. 1122-255) ranks with the great founders of the Hai and Shang dynasties. The Emperor Wu Wang, the first of the Chows, if on the dragon throne to-day, would settle the perplexed question of China's future. With a man of his caliber, activity, and honesty at the helm backed by a united empire, there would be little need for international interference. One of the sages has remarked that the king is the dish, and the people the water ; if the dish is round so will the water be. Wu Wang found the nation in much worse straits than Kwangsu, the present emperor, found it when he mounted the throne. The people, however, soon discovered that Wu Wang was honest in his reforms, and that his laws
THE FIRST OF THE CHOWS, 51
were for the great as well as for the small ; and they united to hold up his hands and second every act. Wu, like William the Conqueror, es- tablished the feudal system in China by dividing his kingdom among his lieutenants, and bestowing upon them titles of nobility. He subdivided these estates into allotments on which ten families should reside, and to meet the expenses of the empire put in force the tithing-system. He estab- lished free schools, built homes for the aged and infirm, and carried out reforms with a firm but just hand in every department of his vast empire. His fame spread beyond his dominions, and em- bassies from Korea and Cochin-China waited upon him, and the wild tribes of Tartary and the fron- tier sent him tribute.
In sweeping the augean stables of the last of the Shang kings, Wu accomplished what is con- sidered, in the case of the present dynasty, impos- sible, by the concert of civilized nations. He proved that the dwarfed and stunted tree of national life could be made to blossom and bear good fruit if intelligently and patiently watered and nurtured. China's history is forever repeating itself, and it is possible that the regeneration of the China of to-day will come from within rather than from without. Fortunately for the nation Wu
52 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
was succeeded by an able son, who for tliirty-eight years worked with his famous uncle, the great duke of Chow, to carry on and finish the work of his illustrious father. Wu, however, made one great fatal mistake, in the establishment of the feudal system ; a mistake which in China, as in Europe, has caused more bloodshed, oppression, and misery, than any other one institution in the world's history. It created an excuse for wars that had not before existed, distracted and disruptured the empire, destroyed what little national patriotism there was, and quadrupled the taxation of the people. Emperor after emperor was forced to enter into treaties and compacts with his own vassals in order to save his throne from the grasp of some ambitious vassal, or he was forced to sit quietly by while the great dukes of Chow or Tsin or Sung made unrighteous wars on a weaker duke or princeling, or hj force major absorbed his terri- tory and confiscated his revenues. From time to time there would be a strong emperor like Chau Sing who would reduce the factious and rebellious princes to a state of masked submission, but it was a fight, veiled or otherwise, that only ended with the death of one or other of the contestants. There were centuries when the emperor of China was merely a man and a name, whom the powerful
FEUDALISM IN CHINA. 63
princes indifferently tolerated, and whose title they would protect or attack as it suited their interests. Following the reign of Mu (B.C. 1001-946), to whom belongs the honor of further debasing the morals of the people by introducing a regular scale of prices for crimes in the place of the penal code, the feudal princes, who styled themselves kings, became the real power, and the empire was little more than a confederacy of loosely bound states.
The feudal times of Europe were reproduced in China ; and the great lords raised up and threw down emperors, took the reins of power into their own hands, and made the history of the epoch the narration of their own petty quarrels and bicker- ings. In China as in Europe feudalism developed great captains and daring robber-barons. It created a so-called age of chivalry, but ground down the common people, fostered ignorance, and hindered progress. One of the heroic characters of this age was the duke of Shau, who, when the cruelties of the Emperor Li caused the people to rise in rebel- lion and demand the life of the crown prince as penalty for his father's crimes, took his OAvn son and heir, dressed him in royal robes, and delivered him to the mob, who tore him to pieces believing him to be the heir apparent. Li employed a wizard to point out persons in his court and on the street
54 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
who spoke disrespectfully of him behind his hack. Every denunciation meant death. The people were reduced to such a state of terror that they dared not address each other on the merest subject, and almost universal silence reigned at the capital. The emperor sneeringly remarked to the Duke of Shau, " I have stopped the profane talk of my people, and given them a lesson in good manners."
" You have only dammed up the words in their hearts," he replied, " and that is a dangerous thing even for a king to do ; when the waters of a river are obstructed, they will by and by carry every thing before them."
In the midst of times like those of which Men- cius writes, "the Royal Ordinances are violated, the people are oppressed, and the supplies of food and drink flow away like water," Confucius was born. His birth in the year B.C. 551, was the most momentous event in all Chinese history, as the birth of Christ was the most momentous event in the history of the world. I would not presume to compare the works and teachings of Confucius with those of Christ, neither can there be any just comparison between Confucius and Mahomet. Like Moses and Solon, Confucius was a lawgiver ; and yet he was more than a mere lawgiver; he was a practical philosopher of the Benjamin
CONFUCIUS. 55
Franklin type, a greater leader than Peter the Hermit, and a teacher second only to Christ. Beyond a few fabulous stories about his birth, there is nothing mythical or legendary in the life of Confucius. His is the one strong, masterful figure in Chinese history, that stands out clear-cut and distinct against a vast background of medi- ocracy and of mythical heroes. His words cannot be judged by our standards, — for their influence appears out of all proportion to our interpretation, — but must be respected in the light of the won- derful changes for the better they have wrought in Chinese life and character. It is almost impos- sible to select from the books of Confucius quota- tions expressing to the Chinese all that the Bible does to us, or that commend themselves to our minds as either simply instructive or deeply profound. Personally I prefer "Poor Richard's Almanac," which only proves the utter hopelessness of recon- ciling Chinese methods of thought to American standards. " Virtue," he teaches, " is the basis of good government." All nations admit this axiom, but the question has always been as to how virtue is to be cultivated. " Virtue," Confucius adds, "consists, first, in procuring for the people the things necessary for their sustenance . . . the ruler must also think of rendering them virtuous.
56 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
and of preserving them from whatever can injure hfe and health." As to the duty of the people he says:
" The services of love and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorrow for them when dead, these completely discharge the fmidamental duty of living men." He saw a woman weeping by the roadside, and sent a dis- ciple to ascertain the cause. " You weep," said the messenger, " as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow." " I have," said the woman. " My father-in-law was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also, and now my son has met the same fate." " Why, then, do you not move from this place ? " asked Confucius. " Because here there is no oppressive government," answered the woman. Turning to his disciples, Confucius remarked: " ]My children, remember this, oppressive govern- ment is fiercer than a tiger." A very natural deduction, and one that commends itself to the experience of every Chinaman who has been un- fortunate enough to get into a magistrate's yamen. Confucius had himself been a magistrate, and knew whereof he talked. As a magistrate, he re- formed not only the entire judiciary of his state, but introduced most drastic moral reforms, and made laws in reference to both the living and the
REFORMER AND DIPLOMAT. 57
dead. He arranged that the dependent aged should be cared for, and that all labor should be allotted according to the physical strength of the workers — the weaklings might braid mats, while the strong carried bricks — so all men labored according to their capacities and strength. He ordered that men and women in walking on the public roads should take different sides, so that there should be no promiscuous mingling of the sexes. He decreed that valuables that might have been dropped by the way should not be picked up by the passer-by, but be left to be found by the owner. He would not permit bad work or shoddy materials to be exposed for sale in the market, and reduced the burdensome and lavish expenditure at funerals. His reforms proved so efficacious that other magistrates imitated him, and after one year Confucius was promoted to minister of justice to the Duke Ting. Not only as a reformer and administrator did Confucius shine, but he showed the highest diplomatic abil- ity. He averted a war between the rival states of Lu and Tsi, stopped numerous internecine out- breaks, and made it impossible for ambitious man- darins to raise the standard of revolt by issuing an order that no yamen should contain coats of mail, and that the walls of numerous turbulent
58 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
cities should be reduced in height. Later, as prime minister, he exercised almost royal powers, and made the Dukedom of Lu the model and envy of the entire empire. Unfortunately, Confucius was not a god, nor even a king ; and it was not long before his patron, the Duke Ting, grew tired of being good, and the ungrateful people became weary of the golden rule. The old rival state of Tsi decided to tempt the virtue of the model duke, and sent him as a present eighty beautiful women and one hundred and twenty blooded horses. Confucius vainly urged his duke to re- fuse the gift, and subsequently Confucius resigned his office, and retired from court. Thereafter he devoted himself to compiling, editing, and annotat- ing the literature of China, and of writing out at length his own teachings and pliilosophies. He died in B.C. 478, a natural death — a happiness that rarely came to a public man of the times. A cup of poison or a silk cord, with the compliments of the duke or king, was the usual end of nearly if not quite all the famous statesmen of China to within the last three hundred years.
Confucius was a sensible, practical, brainy, hard-working statesman and scholar, — a statement that cannot be applied to the long line of empe- rors that insisted on deifying him. He did not
CONFUCIUS, 59
strive to build up a religion, or to pose as a god or the prophet of a god. Confucianism became one of the mighty religions of the earth through neither the wish nor the fault of the man from whom it derived its name. It became a religion because Confucian philosophy was so much higher, nobler, and purer than the teachings of Buddha or Laotze. The common people understood Con- fucius as the fishermen of Galilee understood Jesus, and they saw that Confucius practiced what he preached. It was a most natural evolu- tion whereby Confucius became a god and his written words a religion, although he himself did not recognize the existence of a living God, and his teachings contained no hint of a future life, either in heaven or in hell. When asked his opinion of death he said, " How can one know death when one does not know life ? "
" The teaching of Confucianism on human duty," says Dr. Legge, "is wonderful and admirable." It is not perfect, indeed ; " but on the last three of the four things which Confucius delighted to teach — letters, ethics, devotion of soul, and truth- fulness — his utterances are in harmony with both the law and the gospel." " No people," says Mr. Medhurst, " whether of ancient or modern times, has possessed a sacred literature so completely ex-
60 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
empt as the Chinese from licentious descriptions and from every offensive expression. There is not a single sentence in the whole of the Sacred Books and their annotations that may not be read aloud in every family circle. Again, in every other non-Christian country, idolatry has been associated with human sacrifices and with the deification of vice, accompanied by licentious rites and orgies. No sign of all tliis exists in China."
Beautiful as are these tributes, they might with equal justice be applied to Emerson's " Essays." Both philosophers recognized the practical utility of the golden rule as a national policy, but neither promised anything further, or tried to direct any- thing beyond the mind and heart. Confucius made no promises, like the Bible, of future re- ward for doing good, or held up glittering prizes like Mahomet. He was only a teacher, and taught as best he could the doctrine of sympathy and benevolence, whereby man might live righteously in this present life, be at peace mth his neighbors, and enjoy the happiness of a good conscience. He wrote only of what he knew, or of what he or others had experienced. He had nothing to say of miracles, superstitions, or manifestations, as did the early writers of the Roman Christian church. When questioned regarding supernaturalism, he
THE HOLD OF CONFUCIANISM, 61
replied : " A superior man does not talk about mysterious powers and supernatural spirits." Confucius, however, believed in good and evil spirits, like all the great scholars of his age, al- though he would not teach or talk of them. He exactly predicted his own death, because of a report that a unicorn had been caught during a hunting expedition of the duke, which he con- sidered an evil omen.
The wonder of Confucianism is the hold that it has taken on the Chinese race, and on all other races that have come directly under its influence. Even the barbaric Mongols from the wild steppes became easy converts ; and seven hundred years after his death we find the immediate successor of the grea,t Kublai Khan issuing an edict to hold the memory of Confucius in the highest rever- ence, while the next Mongol emperor ordered that the Confucian classic on " Filial Piety " should be translated into the Mongol language.
To-day the child in China learns his characters from the Confucian classics, and the old man dies with a volume in his hand. The consular inter- preter is a graduate of Yale, and has lived for ten years in the United States ; and yet his little son of eight has a private tutor, who comes every day to instruct him in the writings of the master.
62 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
He will learn English later, but nothing must interfere in his being thoroughly grounded in the Confucian classics.
I may be repeating myself, but I cannot help impressing upon the minds of American students that as Shakspere is the greatest of English writers, so Confucius is pre-eminently the greatest writer of another civilization ; that he was no pre- tender or sham, or even revolutionist, — he was simply one of the great actual characters of history, and is no more mythological than his contemporaries in the religious and philosophical revival that was at the time sweeping over the pagan world, led by Pythagoras in Greece, Eze- kiel and Daniel among the Jews, Gautama in India, and Zoroaster in Persia. America and Eu- rope will become better acquainted with China and Chinese history in the next generation, and then Confucius will be better understood and honored for himself rather than for the so-called religion of which he was unwittingly the founder.
THE TSIN BTNJSTT. 63
IV.
FROM THE TSIN TO THE TANG DYNASTIES.
[255 B.C. TO 656 A.D.]
THE example and repeated warnings of Confucius did not save the Chow dynasty. It had become too debased, too licentious, and too effeminate to do more than carry on court intrigue, and plot its own destruction. It, however, will forever remain famous as having produced the three greatest minds in Chinese history, — Laotze (B.C. 604), the founder of the Taoist philosophy; Mencius (B.C. 371), who as a writer and thinker stands only second to Confucius; and Confucius. Around these are grouped a list of distinguished names in war, diplomacy, and literature, whose deeds are still sung, and whose words are still honored.
There is little of interest in the records of the short-lived Tsin dynasty (b.c. 255-206). Its doings were but a repetition of the acts of the last of the Sungs, — rebellions, murders, court cabals,
64 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
and wars along the frontier. The Emperor Chung shocked the court ceremonial of his age by taking to himself the editorial " AVe " and " Us " in speak- ing of himseK; and when it was pointed out to him that none of his famous predecessors had arro- gated such pompous titles, he modestly replied that he considered his virtues and achievements equal to any three of the quondam sitters on the dragon throne, and consequently it was only right that he should address himself in the plural. Be- cause the scholars persisted in drawing invidious comparisons between himself and the illustrious Yau and Shun, and proved their comparisons by quotations from Confucius and Mencius, Chung issued an order that all the classical works in the empire should be burned ; that if two scholars were found talking together about the classics they were to be put to death ; and that if they were heard expressing their belief that the ancient books and customs were superior to those of to- day, they and their families were to be executed. Soon after, finding that the scholars had not im- plicitly obeyed his orders, he decreed that four hundred and sixty of the most eminent be decapi- tated as a gentle reminder, — an example of press censorship that leaves the newspaper men of the Spanish- American war something to be thankful
THE ''JACKSON'' OF CHINA. 65
fori Chung, or as he called himself, Hwang-ti, was a hot-headed, sturdy ruler of the General Jack- son type. He believed that the way " to resume specie payments was to resume ; " and when the Tartars became extremely troublesome on the northern borders it occurred to him that it would be less worry and expense to employ his army to erect a wall along the entire frontier than to deci- mate it in meeting the hardy Huns in the field. The wall was completed in five years. It is fifteen hundred miles long, and broad enough for six horsemen to ride abreast. As the builder of the great wall, which has been accounted one of the seven wonders of the world, Chung has written his name by the side of the architects of the pyra- mids and the hanging gardens of Babylon.
With all his intellect and superb force of char- acter, Chung had his weak points, but he was strong even in them. He had no desire to mount the dragon chariot, and become a guest on high, and he therefore prosecuted the search for an elixir of life with a fierce determination that was worthy of a better cause. He took all kinds of decoctions, and must have been a gold-mine to all the quacks and priests in his dominion. The only result was that Chung commenced to see visions, and discovered his nerves. He called a consultation of doctors;
66 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
and they decided that he was pursued by malig- nant spirits, and that he must arrange to spend his nights so that no one should know in what part of his palace he intended to sleep. Chung did not believe in half-measures ; so he built a palace of a thousand bedrooms, one for each wife, with a great central hall that would seat ten thousand persons. Seven hundred thousand criminals and prisoners were employed in its erection. The scheme worked splendidly, and Chung was able to evade his ghostly pursuers by this game of hide and seek. Unfortunately, however, he grew over- bold in time, and took a tour through his kingdom, during which he became a guest on high in spite of his costly precautions.
It is to be regretted that none of the vast palaces and mausoleums of which we have record were not allowed to remain like the pyramids of Egypt. Each dynasty or, often, each new emperor signal- ized its or his advent to the throne by destroying all the buildings and monuments of his predeces- sors. It was done as a protest against the extrava- gance of a former reign, and as a promise for the future. The son and successor of Chung built a palace under ground for the reception of his father's body. It was luxurious in the extreme, and adorned with gold, silver, and precious stones.
THE HAN DTNASTT, 67
When completed several hundreds of the most beautiful of Chung's concubines and their atten- dants were buried with the royal corpse. The building of this vast mausoleum was the last straw that broke the people's back, and the first act of the rebel who overthrew the Tsin dynasty was to plunder and burn both the palace and the tomb.
The famous Han dynasty, that directed the des- tiny of 400,000,000 people for 427 years (b.c. 20G-A.D. 221), came into royal power through bloodshed and crime, and went out in murder, rebellion, and weakness. The details of each reign are sickening, and a description of the in- human cruelties becomes nauseating. It is char- acteristic that the court historian should have dwelt so largely on his nation's crimes, and seemed to gloat and revel in the record of blood and misery. It is only incidentally that we learn of worthy deeds, great inventions, and kindly actions. The one glaring picture that is held up to view is always Nero and the Inquisition. Yet if we give one look and pass on, there are other pictures that shed a luster on the Han dynasty that saves one from entirely forgetting that the Chinese are human after all.
The action of the Emperor Chung was repudi- ated, and the edict against literature was removed.
68 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
From secure places of hiding came treasured copies of the classics, and from the memories of the old literati were written down the sayings of Confucius and Mencius. The impetus thus given to litera- ture not only reproduced the ancient, but created a new school ; and from nothing the Imperial Library in the next two hundred years amassed 3,123 works on the classics, 2,705 on philosophy, and 1,383 on poetry. In B.C. 179, the emperor, Wun Ti, established two royal mints, and fixed the value of the coins. In a succeeding reign the first property tax was promulgated, and everyone was required to submit an estimate of the value of his worldly possessions, and pay into the treasury five per cent. The art of making paper from bamboo was discovered at the end of the first century, A.D., which was quickly followed by the invention of ink. To a Han belongs the credit of having intro- duced his people to Buddhism, and of making it the court religion. Jesus Christ had been dead sixty- five years when the emperor Ming Ti sent ambas- sadors to India in search of a new religion. There was no pretense at conversion, no arguments ad- vanced, no reasons given why all should pin their faith on the new god Fo which the embassy dis- covered. Ming Ti treated the subject in the same offhand manner with which lie revised the criminal
MING TI SEEKS A NEW RELIGION. 69
law by making it possible to commute capital crimes by money payments. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls amused him, as the scale of rewards and punishments pleased his ministers, and appealed to the popular imagination as it promised a future life. So by a word it was done. Had his ambassadors gone farther, and reached Judea, the same flippant words would have made the gentle teachings of Jesus Christ the religion of China, — a thought so tremendous in its possibili- ties that it makes one stagger to consider it. What would have been the history of China, the history of Asia, the history of the world to-day had some traveler told the emperor the story of the miracle of turning water into wine, or of the loaves and fishes, before he had heard of the Indian sage? What would Christianity have done for the Chinese ?
In war and diplomacy the Hans left an enviable record. They penetrated and subdued the nations up to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Cochin China and the now famous Liaotung peninsula were reduced to feudatories, Yunnan was added to the empire, and diplomatic relations were established with Turkestan and Arabia.
Weak as was the last Han, there was still no man strong enough, by himself, to succeed him.
70 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
The dragon throne was a glittering prize that danced before the eyes of each great feudal lord, and brought about a fierce contest that lasted for forty-three years. Like the War of the Roses and the Thirty Years' War, "the War of the Three Kingdoms " is the unfailing inspiration for poet and story-teller. It is a period full of romance and heroism and hard fighting and great generalship, that reminds one of the stories of the Iliad, and of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. There were Chinese Glaucuses and Diomeds, Hectors and Ajaxes, and the Chroni- cles of Froissart, and curiously enough literature walked hand in hand with war. It was a golden age for the literati, as the deeds of leaders and heroes furnished them with stirring themes and abmidant materials. The names of the great rival generals, Chu Kuliang and Szemai, are to the Chinese what that of Richard Coeur de Lion is to the English, and Sobieski to the Poles. One incident of their picturesque careers has been the inspiration of as many poems and stories as Eng- lish writers have found in the wanderings of Robert Bruce. Szemai had utterly defeated and cut up Chu Kuliang's army, and forced him to take refuge in the walled city of Hanchung, with only three followers. The great general was,
CHU KULIJNG AND SZEMAL 71
however, equal to the occasion. As his rival's armies appeared before the walls he ordered the four gates of the city to be thrown open, while he calmly took a position on a tower over the most conspicuous of them, and began to play the guitar. As the enemy appeared they heard with amaze- ment the music, saw the open gates, and looked in vain for the sentinels. Szemai came personally to examine the strange sight, and listened wonder- struck, to hear his crafty old foe sing joyfully to the accompaniment of his instrument. " He seems too happy, does that man," said Szemai, *' for our comfort, and he evidently has some deep- laid scheme in his brain by which he means to bring disaster upon us all." And rather than risk his freshly won laurels he hastily retreated from before Chu Kuliang and his guitar.
A nephew of the great Szemai ended the age of chivalry and blood, brought the three kingdoms under one head, and established the Western Tsin dynasty (a.d. 265-317). The new emperor established the Salic Law, declaring that, " women should not reign, nor take any part in public matters." A good law, no doubt, as Chinese his- torians aver, but one that the son of Wu Ti found as impossible to put into force as did Adam in the garden, or Antony in Egypt.
72 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
An embassy from the Roman emperor, Theodo- sius, arrived during the reign of Wu Ti, and the making of cloth from cotton was introduced. The Eastern Tsin dynasty broke down from sheer weakness. It produced but one great man, and he became the founder of the Sung dynasty. Added to the usual rebellions which distracted every dynasty, the incursions of Tartars, and " Outer Barbarians," — as all outsiders from the earliest days have been styled, — became more fre- quent and disastrous during the Sungs. Shau Ti, the second ruler of the Sungs, built a wall six hundred miles in length to protect his northern borders, — one of those stupendous undertakings that only the Chinese would project and carry out.
It is told that, during the wars that the Sungs waged on one of their great feudatory kings, the supplies of the royal army were cut off, and a retreat was ordered in the face of a victorious enemy. The retreat was rapidly becoming a panic, and it was only a question of days when the great army of veterans would become hunted fuo-itives in the wilds of Honan. To avert this calamity General Tautsi resorted to a thoroughly Chinese stratagem. During one night he kept his half -famished soldiers carrying sand in baskets,
A MILITARY STRATEGIST, 73
and heaping it up by the roadside. As each man went by the officer in charge the number of loads he had carried was called out. The sound of their voices and the regular tread of the workers could be heard in the camp of the king of Wei, but no one could guess what it all meant. Spies were sent out ; but the night was dark, and although they could more distmctly hear the calling of numbers and the incessant tramp of many feet, they could not satisfy the uneasiness of Wei. Just before dawn the Sung general ordered that the great heaps of sand be sprinkled with a thin covering of rice. When the sun broke out, and the Wei men saw the vast heaps of rice in the opposite camp, they were struck with amazement and chagrin. They believed that large stores of provisions, and no doubt reenforce- ments, had arrived from the capital; and as always with the Chinese a suspicion immediately becomes a fact, the starving Sung army was allowed to escape unmolested.
This is but one of the many incidents that are related of the gallant career of the statesman and soldier, Tautsi. His fame spread far beyond the borders of China, and he was feared by barbarians as well as by his master's unruly vassals. It is typical, however, of the Chinese character that he
74 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
went the way of all servants of the state whose services called for extraordinary rewards — mur- dered in cold blood for fear that he might possibly aspire to the Royal Yellow. It was as fatal for a general to win a battle as it was for him to lose it. In one case he aroused his master's fear, in the other his wrath.
The short-lived Tsi dynasty (a.d. 479-502) was wrecked by a woman. Panfei, the mistress of the Emperor Tung Hwun, the fourth and last of the line, was celebrated for exquisite grace and beauty. For her the emperor built a palace to rival in splendor anything that had preceded it. The walls were rendered perpetually fragrant by a plaster impregnated with musk. The floors were covered with the most costly designs. One room was paved with golden lilies, which was re- sponsible for the artificial cramping of the feet of the women of China. As Panfei danced before the emperor, he was so charmed with her grace that he exclaimed, " See, every step she takes makes a lily to grow," so ever after the small foot was styled the " Golden Lily." There is a true saying in China that, " Every pair of golden lilies costs a jar of tears." Tung Hwun lived and loved, and was murdered by an outraged populace, over-taxed in order that his proud beauty might
DEPLORABLE DESPOTS. 75
outshine Meihi, Taki, and all the beautiful throne records of former dynasties.
The fate of Panfei, however, had little effect on the morals of the three dynasties that followed. For one hundred and sixteen years, to 618 A.D., there is little that can be recorded, except a repe- tition of the deplorable phases of Chinese court history, with which the reader is already too familiar. One ruler deliberately set fire to the royal library of one hundred and forty thousand books, on the approach of an enemy, because " all my reading and study have availed me nothing ... in the hour of my extremity." Another built a wall three hundred miles in length, extending from Chihli to Shansi, in which two million people were engaged ; and for his amusement he organ- ized a gigantic debating society between the priests of the Taoist and Buddhist faiths. Being in the chair, he decided that the Buddhists had the best of the argument, and thereupon ordered the Taoists, on pain of death, to shave their heads and become bonzes. Preferring to lose their hair to their necks, they all cheerfully complied, and the emperor and the barber wrought an instanta- neous conversion. Another emperor was known as the " Merry Monarch," and lived the life of a Haroun-al-Raschid. They had a beggars' village
76 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
built in the royal gardens, where the mendicants of the city were at liberty to take up their abode at night. His majesty, dressed in rags, and like the meanest of them, wandered through the streets of the capital with his straw wallet, the beggar's badge. He would also make his rounds among the mandarins in the palace, and ladies of the royal household. Whoever gave him alms he would reward and surprise with high official posi- tion or costly presents, after he had thrown off the disguise. In a.d. 852 yellow was adopted as the royal color by the Emperor Kautsu, the founder of the Sui dynasty, and the one strong character of the period. To the successor of Kautsu belongs the reputation of building the vast canal system of China, of being a patron of art and literature, and of being the most reckless and wildly extravagant emperor that ever occupied the dragon throne. Wang Ti lived a short life and a merry one ; no expenditure appalled him, and no sacrifice of blood and treasure deterred him from following to the very end any of his fancies. Even the building of the canal system, that has made his name famous, was a whim for the gratification of his own pleasures. He wished to visit all the prominent cities of the empire in the most comfortable and luxurious way. He
IFANG TVS GRAND CANALS, 77
ordered that canals be immediately dug from the river Pien, a branch of the Han, in Hupeh, to the river Sz, a short stream in Shantung; another from Sz to communicate with the river Hwai, and that the existing water-courses be widened. At the same time he ordered built forty thousand *' dragon boats " for the accommodation of his three thousand concubines and immediate court. The canals were not mere ditches, but magnificent examples of both engineering and artistic skill — nothing was left unfinished to offend the critical eye of the dandy. They were one hundred and twenty feet wide, lined with cut stone, with paved roads on either side, shaded by full-grown trees. Taskmasters drove the laborers day and night, and of the million men employed it is stated that over forty per cent died. In the first royal jour- ney from Lohyang, the capital, to Nanking, the procession of boats extended for over sixty miles, and eighty thousand soldiers were detailed to drag them. The royal barge was two hundred feet long and forty feet high, with four decks. Every district through which they passed was levied upon for provisions to support this immense host in transit. The magnificent pageant swept through the empire for eight months, the wonder and ruin of all who came within its reach. The vast pal-
7S CHIN.rS OPEN DOOR.
aces, gardens, towns, artificial lakes and mountains, that Wang Ti the niagniticent built in the short twelve years of his reign were, according to the custom of the times, destroyed by his successor ; but the canals remained a blessinqf to the descend- ants of the laborei's who had died in tlieir con- struction. Nebuchadnezzar, the Pharaohs, Xero, and Louis XIV. were but feeble imitators of this? royal Chinese spendthrift. Cleopatra's barge and Babylon's hanging gardens were duplicated on a magnificent scale by Yang Ti. He had a godlike genius for spending money. In his palace garden, which was so great that it contained an artificial lake three miles wide, and three artificial islands one htmdred feet high, the flowering shrubs and trees were kept in perpetual bloom by skilled workmen, who renewed every fallen flower with such exquisite imitation in silk and satin that no one could tell the natural from the artificial at a short distance. After his death, it was discovered that he had used up all the precious metals in tlie empire, and that money was so scarce that pieces of leather and paper, with their values stamped upon them, had to be used in trade. He took his dethronement with the same gay nonchalance with which he had sat upon the throne. To his queen he said, " Jov and sorrow both come to everv man.
A ROYAL CHESTERFIELD. 79
Lot us, then, \^/ay c/dch as it co^rJf^s, and make the best of ]ilV. we earj ; " and of his princely execu- tioners }je asked — politely disinterestedly — " VVliat sin liave I comrnitt^^d that you wish U) take away my life?" "Sin," they replied, "why, what sin is there tljat you liave not heen guilty of?" *' VViiat you say may be true," answered the royal Chesterfield ; " hand me the silken cord. I have had more pleasure in my life than you can have at my death."
80 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
V.
FROM WU THE EMPRESS TO THE LAST OF THE MINGS,
[A.D. 656 TO A. D. 1644.]
THE house of Tang opened a new era in the history of China, and marked the close of what might be styled " The Middle Ages.*' It has appropriately been called the Au- gustan age of Chinese literature. Each emperor strove to outdo his predecessors in the fostering of scholars and the education of the gentry. Great libraries were established, schools sprang up, and in the place of eunuchs and concubines, poets, essay- ists, and historians thronged the successive courts. "The complete poems of the Tang dynasty" will be found in the home of every well-to-do Chinaman of to-day. The writings of Confucius were annotated and popularized ; and in 740 that deathless teacher was raised to the rank of a prince, and his statue placed above that of the famous Duke of Chow. The sixth emperor of the Tangs founded Hanlin
THE AUGUSTAN AGE OF CHINA. 81
College (a.d. 755), the great post-graduate uni- versity of China. From its fellows most of the ministers of state have been chosen. At the time when scholars, princes, artists, priests, musicians, players of chess, actors, etc., were competing for its degrees and honors, Europe was just emerging from the barbarism into which she had been plunged by the conquest of the Gothic tribes. England was divided among Saxon princes, and France was in the rude state which preceded the reign of Charle- magne. The Emperor Kau Tsu ordered an ex- amination of all temples and nunneries, and turned out to earn their own living fully a hundred thou- sand inmates who had been luxuriating in idleness and immorality, while Teh Tsung sent home a thousand ladies of his harem in order to lighten the burdens of state. War was almost continu- ously carried on with the so-called barbarians on the frontiers, in which the Chinese arms were generally successful, and large additions of terri- tory were made.
The attention of Europe was called to China during this dynasty by two celebrated Arab traders, whose descriptions of Chinese life might pass for pen pictures of the country to-day. They men- tioned the copper money, the rice-wine, and the use of tea as a beverage. They were followed by
82 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
envoys from the pope, who found that the Nes- torian Christians had already been in the field. The most remarkable character on the throne, if not the strongest, was the Empress Wu, whose antecedents and career are almost paralleled by that of the present empress dowager. Although never officially on the dragon throne, Wu ruled China with a rod of iron for fifty-four years (656-710). She permitted no one to stand in her way, and the four emperors who came within her "sphere of in- fluence " were mere puppets in her hands. She was cruel and immoral, and added to the subtle craft of a woman the intellect of a statesman. She made her name known and feared to the remotest corners of the empire, and avenged every outbreak with a merciless hand. The Kitans and Turco- mans soon learned to dread the length and strength of her arm. She reluctantly resigned the reins of power at the age of eighty, and is known in Chinese history by the title of " Wu, the Equal of Heaven." The present Empress Dowager Tsu Tsi, who has ruled China for forty years on much the same lines as her predecessor, will no doubt be satisfied with the more modest title of " The Equal of Wu." Four of the later Tang emperors died from the effects of experimenting with " elixirs of immortality," and it would have been little loss to
''THE MEN OF TANCr 83
the nation's history had the last half-dozen been troubled with the same laudable desire to live *' ten thousand years ten thousand." To be styled one of " The men of Tang " is considered a title of honor ; but the dynasty, with all its glories, went out in weakness and disgrace, as all the dynasties have, and as all probably will so long as China is a nation.
The last of the proud Tangs " voluntarily " resigned the " Yellow " to the murderer of his own father ; and a period of fifty years succeeded, in which the great princes disputed the right of each fresh usurper, and a state of turmoil existed similar to that of three centuries before, when the Tsin dynasty was overthrown. Five different families were represented on the throne by thirteen em- perors — an unlucky number, for most of them died unwilHngly. The only event of note that occurred during these turbulent times was the discovery of the art of printing, five hundred years before it was known in Europe. It is very probable that printing from blocks was in use long prior to this date ; but it is not until 932 that the Chinese his- torian incidentally mentions that the nine classics were printed by imperial order from wooden blocks, and sold to the public. It is curious that it was not thought of sufficient interest to record either
84 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
the inventor's name or to claim the invention :^r the Emperor Ming Tsung. Under the last but one of the rulers of the " five dynasties " there was a great scarcity of copper money, owing to the unprecedented casting of idols and statues to ancestors. The emperor ordered, to the horror of the priests, that these idols should be sent to the royal mint to be re-born as the root of all evil. A deputation protested against such liberties being taken with their gods. His majesty listened quietly and replied, " The man that does right and benefits his fellow men is a true reverencer of the idols. The gods have the good of mankind at heart, and therefore they will be quite willing to have their images broken up. For myself, if my death would bring happiness to my people, I would wilHngly give up my life for them."
Shih Tsung lived up to his noble sentiments, and died after a severe campaign against the hardy Khitans. He was unable, however, to save his throne for his son, or to effectually crush these warlike adventurers, who were destined for a time to become the balance of power in the civil wars during the Sung dynasty. In 982, during the reign of the second Sung, a deputation from a " barbarian ■ ' tribe appeared, that were later to sweep the Chinese, the Khitans, and the more
A CHINESE REFORMER. 85
warlike Kins before them, and become the actual rulers of the empire. These were the Mongols. They came to acknowledge the supremacy of China, and they stayed to overthrow it.
China has never lacked for reformers or at- tempted reforms. As all reforms are pure experi- ments, the clever theories of plausible ministers found pliable material to experiment on among the patient hordes of the Coolie class. They bore with the royal reformers, though much like the Scotchman who was " willing to be convinced, but would like to see the man who could convince him." The so-called reforms, however, usually ended in great suffering for the benefited, with the net result that another fine theory had gone wrong.
Wang Ngan, the prime minister of the Emperor Shen Tsung (1068-1086), was a typical repre- sentative of the Chinese reformer. Some of his acts read like a page out of modern history. He had a commission appointed to tour the country districts, and report on the nature of the soil and the condition of crops, so that he could legislate for the farmer, and alleviate his condition willy nilly. In the summer of 1069 he promulgated his first interesting reform, by proposing that the entire commerce of the country should be carried on by
86 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
the state, so that the people would have nothing to do but produce. The national taxes were to be paid in produce ; and the government was to buy the surplus, and transport it to sections of the country where it would be most in demand. The middle man and money lender were immediately wiped out, as predicted by Wang; but in their place sprang up an army of officials, who were charged with the carrying out of this gigantic undertaking. The country swarmed with them ; and the poor farmers had to entertain them befit- ting their rank, and properly bribe them to obtain a good price for the produce. More and more of the yield of the empire was consumed in taxes, until at last the surplus was hardly worth selling, and it was clearly obvious that the reform needed reform- ing. But like the modern professional reformer, Wang was equal to the occasion. If the agricultur- ists had lost money by his first attempt to make them rich, he was now prepared to advance them money against their crops, which was to be repaid twice a year at the modest interest of twenty-four percent. He modified this later by making a State Loan, compulsory both to rich and poor, at the slightly increased rate of thirty-three and a third per cent per annum. This reform came harder at first on the rich than on the poor, as the poor
WANG AND THE REFORMERS. 87
borrowed with no hope of repaying ; but when a drought came the officials, who were bound to de- liver or pay into the treasury the interests on their loans, found that there were no crops upon which to levy, and began to torture the people ; then all classes united in a wail of lamentation, that reached even the dragon throne. The reform was con- sequently suspended, whereupon heavy rains fell throughout the empire. Nothing daunted, Wang produced from his sleeve another reform that came near being the last straw. This was styled the " Military Enrollment Act," which divided the people of the empire into divisions of ten families, something after the old Jewish law. All able- bodied men were to continue their labor, and at the same time hold themselves in readiness for an instant call. Like the man who called wolf when there was no wolf, practice summons, or false calls became so frequent that able-bodied men by the thousands voluntarily maimed themselves, and even cut off their arms and legs so as not to be subject to the whim of the great reformer. Wang went on with a whole series of reforms, more or less ingen- ious, which are interesting to the reader rather than to the sufferer. If the American would-be reformer, with a bright new idea upon which he wishes to experiment, will study the history of China, the
88 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
chances are that he will find that his particular pet reform has been thoroughly tried a thousand years before he discovered it. Wang was a firm believer in himself. In 1074 the Khitans sent ambassadors, and demanded the cession of two hundred li of Chinese territory. Wang consid- ered this very bad taste on the part of the bar- barians, but advised compliance ; " for," he argued, " when my reforms commence to work they will make the nation strong, and we shall demand it back again with large additions." Wang's faith, however, did not move the mountain; and the first act of the famous Empress Kau, on the death of the Emperor Shen Tsung, was to dismiss Wang from office, and reform his reforms.
The last one hundred and seventy-five years of the Sung dynasty were filled with wars mthin and without. The hardy Khitan Tartars went down before their more hardy relatives, the Khin Tartars ; and they in t-urn were thoroughly subjugated by the Mongol Tartars under the lead of their famous khans, Genghis and Kublai. To the world at large there are not more than five names in all Chinese history that come easily to the lips, — these two great khans, Confucius, Mencius, and Li Hung Chang ; and they belong to the world's pantheon of history-makers. Genghis easily ranks
GENGHIS THE MONGOL. 89
with Alexander and Napoleon, and the territories he overran and conquered were greater than the combined areas and population of the empires of Alexander and Napoleon. His life is one of the great historical romances of the world's story, and a romance in which the chief actor never permits the interest to flag. As leader of the Mongol Tartars he swept everything from the Danube to the Pacific, from the unbroken ice of the arctic to the snow-peaks of the Himalayas, and might, with much more right than Alexander, have sighed for more worlds to conquer. It is noteworthy that of all the races with which he battled, from Cracow to Peking, — embracing forty conquered kingdoms, — the only nation which withstood his consum- mate generalship was the Chinese. One cannot but wonder what would have been the fate of Alexander the Great had he been told, when he stood on the banks of the Indus, sorrowing be- cause the world was so small, that there was an empire north of his greater than Persia, and more warlike and richer than India. Genghis, " the curse of God," died at the age of sixty-six, in 1227, and bequeathed the conquest of the Manchus to his son. Okkodai was a worthy successor of a great father. He organized his armies for the conquest of China with ability and energy, and
90 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
laid siege to Kaif ungf u — the Kin capital, a city of 11,200,000 inhabitants. The investment lasted for three months ; and so great were the numbers and resources wdthin, that it is a ques- tion if the Mongols could have reduced it had the Kin general been worthy of his foUoAvers. With an offer to surrender he sent to the Mongol gen- eral five hundred ladies of his king's court and thirty-seven of the royal chariots. The peace offering, however, did not touch the stern nature of Okkodai, as repeated efforts of the Chinese to reach the great Genghis, through woman's charms, had failed in the past. He gave one look at the assemblage of beauty, and ordered it and the entire city to be put to the sword. The Tartar states- man and the prime minister for both Genghis and Okkodai, — the wise Yeh-lu-chu-tsai, — hearing of the savage order, argued with the khan, " The land must have people on it, for if there are no inhabitants in the country it becomes valueless to the sovereign." His counsel prevailed, and China was saved from the most gigantic massacre in the annals of the world.
The capture of Kaifungfu, with its incalculable wealth, its vast stores and magnificent buildings, practically ended the Kin djniasty, and obliterated from history a remarkable race, who from begin-
THE MONGOL CONQUEST. 91
nings almost as humble as a tribe of North Ameri- can Indians, had gradually risen to such might that they had conquered the warlike Khitans, and so completely possessed the northern part of China, that the Chinese, with all their vast resources and their almost unlimited command of soldiers, had not been able to wrest it from them.
The Mongols were now free to turn their entire attention to the tottering Chinese throne. To Okkadai, as to Genghis, it seemed like an over- ripe fruit, that was to be had for the picking ; but the Mongol soon found that he was not dealing with the Russian or the Persian, but with a race that knew neither defeat nor despair. It was not for him to give the coup de grace to the Sungs. In their decay they held on for sixty years ; and, had there been any unity of purpose or apprecia- tion of events, it is questionable if even Kubiai, the mighty grandson of the mighty Genghis, would have succeeded. The armies of the Sungs fought well only when they were attacked. The court was full of intrigues, and the national policy was weak and wavering. One figurehead followed another in rapid succession, and the different capi- tal cities were evacuated as the enemy advanced. Kubiai and his great generals, Ashu, Alihaiyai, and Bayan, pressed steadily on. They never
92 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
wavered in their purpose, they held every advan- tage, and neither Chinese valor nor Sung diplo- macy could check their course. To the sitters on the dragon throne the iron khan became the very impersonation of fate. To bring the two years' siege of the great city of Fanching in Hupeh to a conclusion, Kublai sent to Persia for guns heavier than had ever been used in China, that threw stones weighing over one hundred and fifty pounds. Yuchang, Hanyang, Hankow, Cliiaho- how, and Nanking fell in rapid succession; and in 1276 the Mongols took the capital, Hangchow, with the emperor, his mother, his queen, and the royal household, and made the brothers of the captured emperor fugitives, the elder of whom, however, was proclaimed emperor, with his new capital at Foochou.
The duel was nearing an end. For four years the royal standard of the Sungs was driven from place to place until the last emperor, Ti Ping, was cornered at the seaport of Yaishan. The Chinese force, consisting of fifty thousand veterans and one thousand war-junks, under their famous general Chang Shih-kieh, were closely blockaded by an overwhelming force. The death struggle lasted for a month, and the Chinese fought like rats in a trap, desperately but without hope. The fate of
THE BATTLE OF TAISHAN. 93
the empire was decided by a tremendous land and sea attack, in which the Chinese were utterly defeated, and the whole of their fleet captured with the exception of sixteen junks with which their gallant general managed to break through the lines. When the prime minister saw that the day was lost, he took the young emperor on his back, and sprang into the sea. The body of Ti Ping was afterwards picked up, and honorably buried by the Mongol general. Over one hun- dred thousand Chinese and Mongols were killed in this last heroic defense of the boy emperor, and the dynasty that had ruled China for three hun- dred and twenty years, and next to the Chow was the most famous in its annals, ended in a glorious defeat. A Chinese historian of the Sungs said they "gained the empire by the sword and kept it by kindness. Their good- ness to the people was not tinged enough with severity, and so the kingdom was snatched from them. Still, through it the empire was main- tained for one hundred and fifty years after it seemed to have slipped from their grasp ; and it caused such men as Chang Shih-kieh and Wen Tien-siang to cling to them to the very last, and finally to give their very lives for them."
The adventures of the loyal Chang Shih-kieh
94 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
after the battle of Yaishan were in keeping with the great name he has made in Chinese history* With his sixteen junks he hastened to Wang- chow to inquire of the queen dowager if there remained any princes of the royal blood under whose standard the war could be still carried on. But the mother's heart was broken ; and she fol- lowed the example of the last of her sons, and threw herself into the sea. Chang was unwilling to give up ; he , sailed to Cambodia and appealed to its king for troops and money ; but finding him- self an unwelcome visitor, he turned northward hoping to seize Canton. As his little squadron was nearing the coast, signs of an approaching typhoon caused the men to clamor that he should put into a near-by harbor and there land. Instead, he ascended a platform high up one of the masts of the flagship, and burned incense to heaven, and testified : '' 1 have served the house of Chau to the utmost of my ability; when one emperor disap- peared I set up another, and he also has perished ; and now to-day I meet this great storm ; surely it must be the will of heaven that the Sung dynasty should perish." So he bravely met his end in one of those fierce and terrible ty^Dhoons that haunt the China seas.
It was near the end of the Sung dynasty, and
MARCO POLO, 95
about the time that Edward I. returned to Eng- land from the Holy Land, that Marco Polo visited the court of Kublai Khan, and gave the European world the first authentic account of this great un- known empire, and during the reign of Mangu, Kublai's successor, Catholic missionaries presented themselves at court, and made brief record of what they did and saw. Marco Polo's account of the pomp and splendor of the Mongol court, of the annual feasts and national holidays, of the in- dustries and advanced civilization, filled Europe with wonder, and demonstrated how little the Chinese historians appreciated the true greatness of their nation and the nations that surrounded them. Even Europe did not realize the signifi- cance of Polo's story, or more justly speaking discovery. He told them of the use of bank- notes, but it took Europe four centuries to under- stand their value to trade. Instead of stealing China's brains, Europe only coveted her money, a mistake which Kublai did not make in the case of Marco Polo, for he made the Westerner his con- fidant, and drew upon him for European ideas and methods. He carefully sifted the wheat from the chaff, and planted it in fertile soil. Polo was a man of ability and action, and Kublai was quick to appreciate him. He dispatched him over his
96 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
empire in the capacity of a licenced critic, knowing that Polo, with his unprejudiced eyes, could find many administrative and political faults that were damaging the welfare of the people but were hallowed by age and custom. He was a most suc- cessful critic ; for in liis extended travels through the provinces of Shansi, Shensi, Szechuan, and Yunnan he corrected a vast number of abuses, and caused the removal of a number of corrupt officials, yet he managed to please alike the emperor, the Mandarins, and the people. As a reward he was appointed governor of the city of Yangchow, and might have become the viceroy of his province had he been willing to have remained in China ; but after three years of gubernatorial power he grew homesick, and requested leave of absence to visit Venice. Kublai had no desire to lose so valuable a servant, and declined to grant his wish. Later, however, it happened that the khan sent him in charge of a young woman, the bride elect of his great-grandson, Arghun Khan of Persia. The Mongols were entirely unaccustomed to the sea, and in the choice of ambassadors it was Hob- son's choice. Marco Polo, his father, and his uncle started out on their hazardous undertaking in 1292, and after a three years' voyage they de- livered the bride to the anxious groom. If we are
KUBLJI KHAN. 97
to read between the lines in Marco's narrative, it is doubtful if she gave more than an unwilling hand to her royal spouse.
Marco Polo's life and adventures in China are as interesting reading as the account of a trip to the moon could possibly be to-day. China, as late as 1300, was almost as much of a terra in- cognito as the continent of America was when Columbus landed on its shores. His narrative is the first view of China through European eyes ; and, unfortunately, it was considered at the time a fairy story rather than a sober recount of facts. Marco Polo's career in this unknown empire forci- bly reminds one of Mark Twain's humorous ad- ventures of a Yankee in the court of King Arthur, Sith the difference that Marco came in contact fth a civilization that was in many respects su- perior to his own, and with a ruler who, other than being a feudal baron, was a statesman, a soldier, and a patron of literature. As Genghis had found it impossible to subdue the Chinese, his more famous successor and grandson, Kublai, had to acknowledge his inabihty to annex the Japanese Islands. Two great expeditions met with most disastrous defeat ; and the ruler of Asia and half of Europe recognized that, however victorious his veterans were on land, they were useless on the
98 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
sea. In religious matters Kublai was absolutely impartial. His subjects, Mongol or Chinese, were permitted freedom of worship as long as their faith was moral; and as for himseK he worshiped by turns in Buddhist, Confucian, and Mohammedan temples; Marco Polo tells us that he likewise favored the Christian religion. As for the Tao- ists, they were so openly corrupt and fraudulent that Kublai ordered a public examination to ascertain whether there was any truth in their writings on geomancy, necromancy, and astrology. As a result of which he ordered that all their books be burned, save one classic — " The Tau-teh, or Way of Virtue." Kublai's religious attitude might have been simply a matter of state policy ; but even so, it did much to consolidate his power for the benefit of his family, which was the aim of his life. The khan profited by the experience of his many unfortunate predecessors, and acknowledged the fatality of wasting the resources of the empire on court orgies, great retinues of dependants and concubines. Instead, he built the Grand Canal (1282-1289), which connected Canton with Pe- king, and also a system of splendid post^roads, that were not only a lasting benefit to the people, but of great strategic value.
Once a year Kublai took a vacation, and es-
THE LAST OF THE MONGOLS 99
caped the hot climate of the lowlands and the enervating ceremonials of court life by a hunting expedition on the cool, bracing steppes of Tartary. He was a fearless hunter and a most skillful hawker; and he kept his muscles hardened and his health unimpaired to the day of his death, at the age of eighty-three, in 1224. He was suc- ceeded by his grandson, Timur, who inherited an empire that extended from the China Sea and the Indies to the northern extremity of Siberia, and from the eastern shores of Asia to the frontiers of Poland — the most magnificent heritage that ever fell to man.
For seventy-three years the Mongols ruled China; but the successors of Kublai lacked his knowledge of men and measures ; and their at- tempts to trample out Chinese customs, and de- prive them of their share in the government of the country, soon alienated the friends made by the founder of the Yuen dynasty; the country was quickly filled with rebellion, and the court with intrigue and corruption. Shunti, the ninth and last of the Mongols, reigned from 1331 to 1366. He left the actual administration of gov- ernment to his ministers, and gave himself up to the joys of doing nothing gracefully. He even neglected the annual hunt, and was a typical
l.«rc.
100 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
sample of the usual end of a dynasty. The logi- cal time seemed to have arrived for the overthrow of the Tartars, and all that the sporadic rebellion needed was a leader to make it succeed.
In the province of Nanking the son of a poor laborer, who had taken priestly vows, was watch- ing the trend of events from his monastery cell. He soon realized what the Chinese lacked, and made up his mind that he was the man chosen by God to deliver the country from its oppressors. Casting aside his cowl for the sword, he sprang into the breach, and organized a rebelhon that swept every thing before him. With Nanking as his capital, he gradually stripped the Mongol em- peror of his possessions, until he was able to march into Peking practically unopposed. He de- clared himself emperor, under the title of Taitsu, in 1368. Shunti fled to Tartary, the home of his great ancestors, and the Ming dynasty (1368- 1644) was ushered in.
Like the founders of each successive dynasty, Taitsu, or Hung Wu as he was better known in history, was a strong man and an eminent ruler. He had not only to effectually crush the Tartar power, quell local disturbances, but what was more serious, replace Tartar laws and customs with the original Chinese. On the whole he was
THE MINGS. 101
successful. He commenced in the orthodox way of razing the most magnificent buildings of his predecessors, reducing the size of his harem, and cutting down all unnecessary expenses. He en- couraged education, and made literary degrees essential to official promotion instead of military renown as under Mongol rule. He reestablished Hanlin College, and made it in fact what it is in name to-day, the Oxford of China. He decreed that women should no longer become priestesses to Buddha and that no man should take monastic vows under the age of forty. Hung Wu reigned thirty-one years ; and although the last few years were tarnished by unjust and savage acts, the glory of his name is safe in Chinese annals. There is no fixed rule of primogeniture among the Chinese. An emperor is supposed to know more about the ability and character of his several sons and grandsons than any one else, and he is left perfectly free to choose his successor. This practice, as proven by the history of China, has little to recommend it, as the choice is either made in the emperor's dotage, or is forced upon him by intriguing ministers or concubines. The founder of the Ming Dynasty, instead of securing the stability of his own house by nominating his war- rior son, the Prince of Yen, succumbed to the
102 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
cabals of his court, and chose his sixteen-year-old grandson, Hwei Ti, his successor. There are only two ways to the throne in China, revolution or birth coupled with luck ; but the favorite way to reach royal power has always been the securing of the appointment of children to the royal yel- low. The mother then is' doubly empress : she commands the king through her motherhood, and the people by means of her regency. The boy emperor is as much her slave as his meanest subject. The Prince of Yen, however, had no in- tention of seeing the throne go uncontested to his young nephew, and he himself become the subject of his sister-in-law. The young emperor was no match for the fearless soldier; and within four years Peking was in the hands of Yen, the queen cremated in her own palace, and the boy emperor a refugee in a Buddhist monastery in Yunnan, where for forty years he remained undiscovered. A weakness for writing poetry, however, caused his recognition ; and he was transferred to Peking, where he died a state prisoner. It is unfortunate that his poetry was not equal to his theme ; for the glories and miseries of his own strange career supplied a subject that with skillful handling might have made his name imperishable, and would have been of untold value to the historian.
TAMERLANE. 103
The Prince of Yen, who took the name Yunglo, changed the seat of government from Nanking to Peking. In spite of his early cruelties and bar- barous reprisals, he was, on the whole, a strong character, and his country prospered at home and abroad. He has left, however, the reputation for great moderation and justice in administering the affairs of government. In the field he was always the soldier, grim and unforgiving. The Tartars learned to fear his northern marches, and he added Tonquin and Cochin China to the empire. Under his direction a commission was appointed to comj^ile the first encyclopaedia of literature. It was completed in 1407, and consisted of 22,877 books, besides a table of contents which filled sixty volumes. Two years previous died the most dangerous enemy of the dynasty, the Tartar Khan Timour, or Tamerlane (" Timur the Lame "), whose conquests almost equaled those of the resistless Genghiz. He was at the time of his death organizing a vast army for the reconquest of China, and it is questionable whether Yunglo the Ming emperor would have been able to withstand his hardy legions and consummate generalship.
Timour is to-day a greater hero in Mongol eyes than either of his two great predecessors. About the fire, when a dozen Mongols are gathered to-
104 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
gether on the wild steppes, their bards still sing his praises —
"We live in our vast plains tranquil and peaceful as sheep,
yet our Hearts are fervent and full of life ; the memory of the golden
age of Timour is ever present to our minds. "Where is the chief who
is to place Himself at our head, and render us once more great warriors ? O great Timour, will thy divine soul soon revive ? Return, return ; we await thee, O Timour ! "
Timour's death relieved China forever from fear of Tartar subjugation, but never during the entire Ming dynasty was the nation free from £he ravages of these daring freebooters. They were often suc- cessful, and at one time slaughtered over a hundred thousand soldiers, and captured the Chinese Em- peror Changtung. While the Chinese were battling with their hereditary enemies, and the history of the vast empire was doing little more than sluggishly repeating itself, Columbus was discovering America, and the Portuguese were rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Rafael Pres- tello, a lieutenant of Albuquerque, landed, in 1516, at the mouth of the Canton River, a few mil 38 from the present site of Hong Kong. His was the distinction of first flying a European flag in Chinese waters. Prestello, however, was more
A PORTUGUESE INVASION. 105
modest than his contemporary Spanish, Portu- guese, and English discoverers in America, and failed to take possession of all the countries washed by the ocean that lapped the coast in the name of his august sovereign. It was a momentous theatrical opportunity lost. With perfect impunity he might have unfurled the Lusitanian banner on Chinese soil, raised his trusted blade above the damp plumes of his helmet, and laid claim to an empire greater than all Europe, and containing more wealth than the newly discovered Indies. Instead of writing himself immortal, Prestello sailed calmly back to Malacca and simply reported favorably on the prospective trade opportunities of the new land. This led to the dispatch of Perez de Andrade for Canton with a squadron of eight vessels. His arrival and subsequent trading operations were of much more importance to China in European eyes than it was to the Chinese, in fact his arrival is not even noted in Chinese his- tory. The behavior of himself and his nationals was such that the new comers were rightfully styled " foreign devils " — a term of opprobrium that is still applied to all foreigners. They rifled tombs, invaded temples, robbed, pirated, and acted upon the same lines as did Cortez in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru ; but unfortunately for them they
106 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
soon found that they were dealing with a race that knew how to treat "Tartars," and the pirate Andrade was arrested, and beheaded at Peking by the order of the Emperor Chiaching. Four hun- dred years of commerce and intercourse with European nations have not been sufficient to correct the impression of foreigners that was obtained from these early Portuguese '* navigators." The career of Fernan Mendez Pinto richly merits the castiga- tion it received from the pens of Cervantes and Congreve. These Christian pirates virtually closed the door in China; and it has taken four centuries, with an expense of millions of treasure and thousands of lives to force it open ever so little. It certainly seems like a judgment that little Macao, with its shallow harbor, should represent all that Portugal realized from its vast primal opportunities. The Chinese empire was not ori- ginally a hermit nation. It was never a seafaring one; it had for centuries carried on free trade with all the nations that touched its frontiers, and would have welcomed the European trader and enriched him had he but come honestly, and respected the laws and customs he found. An empire of four hundred millions, trained in war, and inured to every form of military service, was no mark for a few shiploads of piratical adven-
MACAO 107
turers. The Chinese promptly punished them for their misdeeds ; and the Portuguese embassy of 1520 was sent under custody from Peking to Canton, where Perez, its chief, was thrown into prison, and ultimately disappeared. The Portu- guese government did not resent this high-handed act, and as a result the numerous foreign embassies that humbly knocked at the gates of the " Pink City " were treated with contempt and cruelty.
The Portuguese were permitted to exist on the rocky peninsula of Macao, much as a pariah dog is tolerated at the back-door. It was not until 1887 that Macao was formally recognized as Portuguese territory by China, or more than forty years after the occupation of Hong Kong by the British. To-day the beautiful old city, which resembles a page out of the Spain of Columbus, is hardly more than a health resort for the busy merchants of the near-by British colony. The modern steamer cannot get within three miles of its picturesque roadstead, and the grotto of the poet Camoens and the fantan tables are of more profit than its custom-house. In all these centuries it has not added one acre of ground to its holdings, and the ancient wall across the narrow sandy isthmus still separates the vegetating civilization of Portugal from the vegetating civilization of China.
108 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
It may be that there were good Portuguese in China besides the famous missionary Xavier and Michael Roger, but if so they suffered for the iniquities of their compatriots. It was not until the great Ricci, missionary, scholar, and clock- maker, arrived in 1582 that any foreigner was per- mitted to enter the walls of Peking. Spanish missionaries from Manila attempted without suc- cess to impress the Chinese with the falsity of their native religious belief ; but after one visit they gave the project up, and returned to their more congenial field. They found it quite a different thing to convert a nation by argument than to convert them at the point of the sword. They Avere unable to put into operation in China the revival methods practiced by the holy Catholic church in South America, Mexico, and the Philippine Islands. If we are to judge from results in com- paring the condition of the Chinese with the Filipinos of to-day it is perhaps fortunate that the Spanish missionaries did not obtain a foothold in the Celestial empire. If there be any choice I prefer an honest pagan to a lying Christian ; for it was not long before the Spanish in the Philippines gave the Chinese an object lesson that must have made them smile at the white man's creed of " Peace on earth, and good will towards men."
THE MISSIONARIES, 109
For no other reason save the Spanish fear that too many Chinese were settling in their ishinds, they ordered a general massacre of the unoffending settlers, and slaughtered over twenty thousand of them at one . time. It is little to be wondered at that in the face of the action of the so-styled Christian Spanish, and so-called Christian Portuguese in Malacca, that even the brilliant John Adam Schall, who was revered by the Ming- emperors for his astronomical learning, made little headway in enlisting converts. From 1628 to the day of his death in prison, 1666, Schall worked with untiring zeal for his faith, and never missed an opportunity to preach the word to all who would listen. " Why do you so much trouble yourselves," the Emperor Kangsi asked him, " about a world which you have never entered ? " and intimated that he had better devote his time to " making friends with the mammon of unright- eousness." Under the leadership of such men as Ricci and Schall the Catholics would have made some permanent progress had the different reli- gious bodies been content to work together for the general good ; but this seemed impossible. Jesuits and Dominicans quarreled openly, and spent their opportunities in undermining each other's efforts, until Kangsi seemed justified in asking them to
110 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
make-up their own minds as to their own teachings before trying to become teachers.
China has always been a favorite ground for missionary endeavor. Save at exceptional periods the perils of life and health are no greater in China than in other sections of the earth, while the pleasure and comfort of living is im- mensely superior to most parts of Africa, to the Western territories of the United States, or the frozen regions of the arctic. Missionaries of all denominations live in well-built houses, and are waited upon by native servants who are learning the English language. They take trips home every two or three years, at one- half the regular passenger rates, and manage to lay aside a little money. Their own children are often educated at the expense of their home societies, but the great difficulty to their progress has always been an inability to live contentedly with one another. They can make friends with the Chinese, but for members of two rival mis- sionary bodies to mix seems impossible. Even while writing this book I had a case reported to me from Swatow, where the quarrel between the Protestant American missionaries and the Chinese French missionaries had become so intense that we considered the advisability of sending a war-
SCOUTS OF CIVILIZATION. Ill
ship to Swatow and asking Minister Conger to lay the case before the Tsung li Yumen, or foreign office of China. When the missionary, like Ricci, devotes himself to translating works on Western science into Chinese, or like Schall rearranges the Imperial Calendar, and instructs the literati in the use of geometrical and astronomical instruments, or like the modern medical missionary sets a leg or preaches sanitary law, then the missionary soon makes a place for himself, and the amount of good he can do is only limited by his ability for hard labor. Such men are the scouts of civiliza- tion, the " drummers " of commerce, and deserve every encouragement and help ; but there is a class of missionary that spoils the field, and brings contempt upon the nation sending them forth to Christianize. They are forever quarreling with the Chinese, thinking more of standing on " treaty rights " than of obtaining the good- will of the people about them, insisting on erecting a chapel on ground that is sacred to some ancestral temple, trampling upon old customs, appealing for protection, and sending up, through missionary journals, long wails over their trials and hardships. Every American and British con- sul in China can supply dozens of cases on both
112 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
sides of the shield to verify my experience, but we have long since found that it is useless to publish them. We can only hope that the de- voted labors of the many earnest men will tri- umph in the end, and that Christianity will be a mighty factor in settling the vexed Chinese ques- tion.
In 1566 Chiaching became a guest on high in spite of his vain attempt to obtain immortality by means of elixirs and Taoist charms. His life had not been so agreeable that one would think he would have wished to perpetuate it. His reign of forty-five years was filled with domestic out- breaks and wars with the Mongols and Japanese, the latter of whom at one time were so successful that they held Ningpo, Shanghai, and Soochow. Although Chiaching effectually defeated the Japanese in 1563, neither he nor his successors were able to free the coast from their periodical visitations ; and in 1592 a force under the com- mand of the famous leader and subsequent Sho- gun Hideyoshi invaded Korea and captured Seoul. In spite of their successes they were not destined to obtain any firm foothold on the continent, and retired to their islands much as they did in 1894, for diplomatic reasons. In fact, there are many acts and movements in the Japanese invasion of
THE LAST OF THE MINGS. 113
Korea in 1592 that closely resemble their descent three hundred years later.
The reigns of the last three Ming sovereigns, from 1573 to 1644, were mainly taken up with their combats with the rising Manchu tribes. It was during this period that the Dutch made their appearance by way of Formosa. They took pos- session of the Pescadores, and landed at Amoy, from whence they penetrated as far as Chang Chow and Halting. The Dutch at the time were at war with both the Spanish and Portuguese ; their trading-ships went heavily armed, and sailed as much for prizes as for trade. They defeated the Portuguese armament, captured Malacca and the Spice Islands, and in 1622 made an attack on Macao. Being repulsed, with the loss of their admiral, they returned to the Pescadores in a frame of mind that led easily to a quarrel with the Chinese ; and in the engagements that subse- quently took place on the mainland, they were invariably worsted, and eventually compelled to retreat to Formosa. Like their predecessors the Portuguese, they left a bad impression on the Chinese mind, and by their rapacity and cruelty missed an opportunity of making Holland a world power.
In 1596 Queen Elizabeth dispatched a small
114 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR,
fleet under Benjamin Wood, with letters to the emperor of China, but they never reached their destination; and not another attempt was made until 1637, when Captain Weddell succeeded in reaching Macao. The expedition, however, came to nothing through the jealousy of the Portuguese and the Jesuit missionaries, who egged on the Chinese to drive the English ship from the coast. The Chinese fired without warning, and were well punished by the sturdy old mariner ; but although the Chinese were compelled to permit Weddell to purchase full cargoes for his squadron, the out- look was not promising ; and this fact, combined with the great hazards to shipping, because of the civil wars in England and the war with Holland, stopped all commercial ventures for a quarter of a century.
THE MANCHU BTNASTT. 115
VL
THE RISE OF THE MANCHU DTNASTT.
[A. D. 1676-1722.]
CHINA has never for a moment, in its long and eventful history, lost its individuality. The so-called conquest of the empire by Tartars, Mongols, and Manchus proved in the end to be little more than a forced infusion of new blood into the old and worn-out life. The Man- chus, like the Mongols, the Kins, and the Khitans, came from the north. China's great walls are on the northern frontier, and all her great battles have been fought on the line between the empire as it exists to-day and Manchurian Siberia. The bones of countless armies lie on both sides of this shifting line ; and the Great Wall might stand as the most gigantic gravestone in history. China has never been successfully invaded from the south. Russia is to-day in the north, France on the southern frontier. Russia is advancing on the line of Kublai Khan and Nurhachu, and who will
116 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
dare to predict what the next few years will develop ?
Nurhachu was the Kublai Khan of the new power which to-day rules the destinies of the empire. Like Kublai he welded into a centralized power all the scattered tribes of his race who covered the territories from the Great Wall to the Amoor, but unlike Kublai he himself never sat on the coveted throne. His ambition probably would have been satisfied with the recognized leadership of his own people, had not the Chinese emperor, Wanli, interfered by supporting a rival chief. His first engagement with the dreaded imperial troops taught him the superiority of his own veterans, and aroused him to the fullness of his own genius. He boldly entered the Liaotung peninsula, and signally defeated an army of a hundred thousand. After successfully crushing one army after another he made Moukden his capital, where he died the following year, 1626, in the sixty-eighth year of his age.
So far the rise of the Manchus had been much like the rise of the Mongols, — a small army of veterans, led by a soldier of ability with a clearly defined object, was advancing with unerring step through a half-hearted, badly organized, and poorly commanded mob. The Chinese emperor seemed
INTRODUCTION OF THE ^UEUE. 117
to feel that fate was crowding him ; and when the Portuguese envoy from Macao offered to come to his rescue with two hundred arquebusiers, he gladly accepted the loan. The two hundred men who were to succor an army of two hundred thou- sand marched across the empire from Macao to Peking, and were there told by Wanli, who had for the moment recovered from his " funk," that they might leave their guns and return, which they did at their own expense, and without a thank you. One cannot but speculate as to what would have been the result had Texeira's little force been allowed to go to the front. It was not until two centuries later that China again ac- cepted the loan of a foreign force to save the royal descendants of Nurhachu from the rebel- lious Taipings. Chinese historians incidentally note that it was the custom of the Chinese in- habitants of conquered ■cities to shave their heads in token of submission to their new masters. This is the first mention of the now universal custom of the wearing of the queue by the
Chinese.
Nurhachu was succeeded by his fourth son, Tientsung, who at once undertook the conquest of Korea, and in 1629, at the head of over a hundred thousand men, began the victorious march into
118 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
China, which ended disastrously before the very walls of Peking. The last of the Mings, Chwang Lich Ti, was, however, fated, although he did sur- vive the Manchu chief, Tientsung, and compelled him to retire into Mongolia. Two formidable re- bellions, headed by two powerful leaders, Li and Chang, were distracting the provinces. Li practi- cally reduced the great states of Shensi, Shansi, and Honam, and felt himself of enough importance in 1644 to proclaim himself emperor of China, and organize a government. From Tung Wan, Li marched on Peking, capturing all the important cities on the way. The emperor made no deter- mined stand ; and after a feeble attempt to escape he hanged himself by his own girdle to a tree, leaving behind a pathetic note : " My virtue is small, and therefore I have incurred the anger of heaven, and so the rebels have captured my capital. Let them disfigure my corpse, but don't let them kill one of my people." The tree on which he hanged himself was afterwards loaded with chains in token of the crime it had com- mitted in being instrumental to the death of a son of heaven.
Among the court officials who hastened to pay their homage to the usurper was Wu, the father of the celebrated imperial general, Wu Sankwei,
THE BEAUTIFUL SLAVE GIRL. 119
who commanded the impregnable fortress of Ning- yuen, which had defied the power of all the armies of the Manchus, and had saved Peking from both Nurhachu and Tientsung. The son Wu, with an army of veterans, was on his way to the capital when Peking fell, when he received a letter from his father urging him to submit to Li. Sankwei was on the point of obeying his father's com- mands, and about to tender his allegiance to Li, when he heard that a beautiful slave-girl belonging to him had been seized, and presented to one of Li's officers. Sankwei loved the girl ; and in his love he forgot filial obedience, his own future, and the safety of his family. This slave-girl, who is his- torically nameless, gave the present dynasty its throne. But for her the Manchus would have remained to this day a league of scattered tribes of malcontents on the frontier of China. Sank- wei never saw her again; but he burned on her grave a dynasty, a city, and gave a vast empire to a small body of foreigners. The queue that every Chinaman wears might justly be claimed as a badge of mourning for the beautiful slave-girl of the general, Sankwei. In his grief and anger he wrote two letters that sealed the fate of Li and of Chinese nationality — one upbraiding his father for not protecting his mistress, the other to Dor-
120 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
gun, the Manchu regent, inviting him to join him in the subjugation of the empire. The Manchus did not hesitate, but pushed their army forward by forced marches to a junction with Sankwei. Li, astonished at the turn of affairs, and determined to crush the man who dared dispute his title, advanced rapidly with tAvo hundred thousand picked infantry and twenty thousand cavalry. In the front line he marched the aged father of Sank- wei, who by all decrees of Confucius, Sankwei was bound to obey, even to the sacrifice of his own life and honor. The father not only ordered, but pleaded with him to submit ; but the vision of the outraged girl steeled the heart of his son, and he stood helpless while his father was murdered before his eyes. The battle that followed was one of the most fiercely contested as well as one of the most noted in history. Sankwei was out- matched and outnumbered, but not outgeneraled. He fought with his troops like the very spirit of the fearful storm that raged during the battle ; but in spite of his terrific charges he would have been compelled to confess defeat, had not the Manchu advance guard of twenty thousand vet- eran cavalry thrown themselves into the breach with a rush that was irresistible. The fight, which commenced as a duel, ended in a slaughter.
SANKWEFS REVENGE. 121
For fourteen miles Sankwei pursued the usurper's disorganized forces, and butchered them by the hundreds. Li stayed in Peking long enough to strip the palace of its treasures, and to merci- lessly execute all the family of Wu, and set fire to the government buildings. Sankwei, however, was close on his heels. He left the empire to the Manchus, the sacking of the city to the troops, and the bodies of liis family unburied ; but he swept on, tireless, remorseless, bent solely on re- venge. His mistress was dead, his father mur- dered, his family obliterated, but Li still lived. Battle succeeded battle. Li, deserted by liis fol- lowers, hunted like a mad dog, with all doors shut to him, and even the necessities of life be- coming impossible, was killed by the rustics whom he was plundering for food ; and Sankwei arrived only to claim the corpse of the rebel and murderer who for a few hours had dared to sit on the sacred dragon throne.
Leaving Sankwei to avenge the death of his mistress, Dorgun entered Peking, in January, 1644. He proclaimed his youthful charge emperor, and issued a proclamation to the people assuring them that he had come to deliver them, and that they might return to their daily avocations in peace. He did not, however, offer to restore the
122 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
throne to its rightful owners, the Mings, but sent post haste for his six-year-old nephew, and for- mally transferred the Manchu capital from Mouk- den to Peking. The young lord, who adopted the title of Shunchih, arrived in October, and with his advent the Manchu or Tsing dynasty came into being.
Shunchih reigned eighteen years (1644 to 1662), during which time he completely crushed the Mings, and was able to hand his throne over to his successor, free from all incumbrances and claimants. His first act was to dismiss the eu- nuchs from all posts of honor, and debar them for all time from participating in affairs of state. While the official class and the common people about Peking accepted Manchu rule gladly, the southern districts of the empire remained true to the legitimate, if dissolute, Mings. Fu Wang, an ignorant, drunken grandson of Wanli, was pro- claimed emperor at Nanking, and Shih Kofa, a man of incorruptible virtue and great influence, undertook the hopeless task of winning back his throne for him. Dorgun first tried to open nego- tiations, with this grand old man. He pointed out the impossibility of ever reinstating the worn-out Mings in the affection of the people, and offered amnesty to all, and great honors to Shih, if he
THE MANCHU CONQUEST. 123
would give up the struggle. But it was all in vain, and the. regent ordered his armies to advance. The Manchus were uniformly successful; city after city fell, the brave Shih lost his life at the fall of Hangchow, and within a year from the commencement of hostilities Nanking was in their power, and Fu Wang was a prisoner. It need hardly be recorded that Fu Wang was not long called upon to endure this disgrace. He was exe- cuted with the usual neatness and dispatch. Fu Wang's successor had the pleasure of being called emperor for three days, during which time he dis- tinguished himself by opening the gates of Hang Chow to the enemy. Tang Wang, a descendant of Hung Wu, in the ninth generation, next at- tempted the imperial role without success ; and after losing Ningpo, Shanghai, Wenchow, and Taichow, he fell into the hands of the conquerors with the usual unpleasant result.
Probably the most famous character of this period was Koxinga, variously styled pirate, pa- triot, admiral, and king. On the ascension of Kwei Wang to the so-called throne, Koxinga, who was in command of the fleets as well as sole pro- prietor, became the main hope of the falling cause. Koxinga was the son of Admiral Chang, whose career made a fitting prelude to the more remark-
124 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
able one of his son. Chang was a native of Fuhkin, and in early life professed Christianity to the Catholic missionaries. He was sent to Macao, and from there went to Manila, and later to Japan, in which last clime he married a Japan- ese. Koxinga was the fruit of this union. Chang's next move was not exactly in hne with his reli- gious training. He induced a relative of his wife to intrust him with a rich cargo for the Chinese market. The proceeds of the sale of this ship and cargo, which he promptly appropriated, enabled Chang to fit out a fleet of piratical junks. By Bkillful management he amassed a colossal fortune, and became such a power that the Emperor Shun- chih conferred on him the rank of admiral, and kept him an honored but unwilling guest at Pe- king. The son, Koxinga, declined with thanks the emperor's invitation to join his father in his gilded cage, and assuming command of the fleet, which had grown to over a thousand war-junks, repaired to the Pescadores and espoused the Ming cause. He was, however, as expensive an ally as he was a troublesome enemy. The Manchus could not meet him on the sea, and never knew when he was going to strike on the coast. Shun- chih gave up the attempt to guard his great coast- line, and issued an edict commanding the natives
CHINA'S NEGATIVE POLICY, 125
of the littoral provinces to retire four leagues in- land. The order was carried out to the letter, although it turned fishermen into agriculturists, and changed the diet of several millions of people- It furnishes a curious example of China's historic negative policy.
The cause of the Mings under the leadership of Kwei Wang prospered for a time, and Canton fell into his hands; but his successes were only momen- tary, as the relentless Wu Sankwei never for a mo- ment gave him a breathing-spell. After a series of hard-fought battles the Ming was driven through the provinces of Kw^eichow and Yunnan, and was forced to beg the protection of the Idng of Bur- mah. Had it not been for the murdered slave- girl he would have been permitted to remain there; but Sankwei paid no attention to his pa- thetic letter, reminding him of the honors he had received from the last of the Ming emperors, and begging for his life, but demanded from the king of Burmah his immediate surrender. The king was easily terrified by the famous general, and handed over the prince and his entire family. Despairing of his life, Kwei Wang strangled him- self with a silken cord, in May, 1652, thereby once again cheating Sankwei of his vengeance.
In 1656 the Russian Emperor Alexis, the
126 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
father of Peter the Great, sent an embassy to China, with a view to establishing commercial rela- tions. The Russians, however, were not prepared " to do in Rome as the Romans do," and positively refused to perform the kotow before the Manchu emperor, a ceremony which is the equivalent to an acknowledgment of vassalage, and consists in making nine prostrations, touching the ground each time with the forehead. The Russians were dismissed. Shortly after the Dutch sent a similar embassy. Profiting by the example of the Rus- sians, the Dutch submitted to whatever was re- quired. The Chinese emperors hold their levees at daybreak; and the ambassadors were huddled into a cold outer apartment in their court dresses, and forced to rub shoulders throughout the night with the tributary envoy of a prince of the south- ern Tartars, in a long crimson sheepskin coat, great boots, bare arms, and cap surmounted with a horse-tail ; with an ambassador of a Mongol khan in a blue dress covered with embroidery ; a representative of the Grand Lama, in yellow robe, cardinal's hat and beads ; a Korean and a Bur- mese. The Dutch made the kotow with the rest, and delivered their presents. In payment for their debasement they received a letter from the emperor, which read : " You have asked leave to
KANGHSI AND KOXINGA. 127
come to trade in my country; but as your country is so far distant, and the winds on the east coast so boisterous and so dangerous to your ships, if you do think fit to send hither, I desire that it may be bat once every eight years, and no more than one hundred men in a company, twenty of whom may come up to the place where I keep my court."
Shunchih died a natural death, and was suc- ceeded by his second son, Kanghsi, one of the greatest of Chinese monarchs. He was eight years old when he ascended the throne ; and the first problem that confronted him was the suppres- sion of the pirate king, Koxinga. In 1663 a combined naval attack of Chinese and Dutch had made untenable Amoy, his last stronghold on the mainland; so Koxinga embarked an army of twenty thousand soldiers, and sailed for Formosa, where he was joined by large numbers of Ming emigres. He demanded the surrender of the Dutch forts. A series of desperate battles fol- lowed, in which the Dutch were worsted, and compelled to retire to their colonies in Java. Koxinga assumed the sovereignty, and was recog- nized by Europeans as king of Formosa. He was not content, however, to reign quietly, but kept up his descents on the maritime provinces of
128 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR,
China, an finally, irritated by the conduct of his son, he became mad and died, at the age of thirty- eight, from self-inflicted injuries. His demise closed the career of the premier pirate of all his- tory. He was succeeded by his unfilial son, Ching Chin, who continued his father's policy of ravaging the coast. The Chinese fully realized that they were no match for the veteran pirate, and gave up the struggle when they deserted the coasi>line. On the other hand, the pirates were never able to maintain an equal fight on land. Formosa is an extremely fertile island, and had Ching Chin's followers been willing to become agriculturists, the line of Koxinga might have become the recognized reigning house ; but unable to resist a call to arms which promised plunder, the Formosan king threw in his lot with the famous general and prince, Wu Sankwei, in a rebellion that might have wrecked the Manchu dynasty had Sankwei lived to direct it. Right- fully or wrongfully, Kanghsi did not feel secure on the throne that Sankwei had won for his father, so long as that veteran general had such tremen- dous power in the empire. He was the prince viceroy of the great provinces of Kweichow and Yunnan, besides possessing the prestige of being the most able general in Chinese history. Broad-
SANKWEVS DEFIANCE, 129
minded and generous as was the emperor, it may have been impossible for his Chinese mind to free itself of the suspicion that he would never be first in the eyes of his subjects while Sankwei lived. Kano^hsi first asked for a son of Sankwei to reside in court. This request was instantly complied with. Next, the emperor invited the prince to present himself at the capital. Sankwei diplomatically pleaded old age, and begged the emperor to accept his compliments and excuse. The emperor foolishly pressed the point, and or- dered a commission to report on the condition of Sankwei's health. The martial spirit of the old lion was aroused at the insult ; and he turned on the commission : " Tell your master, whom I made emperor, that I will come to Peking, but it will be at the head of eighty thousand veterans." Sank- wei knew how to strike, and to strike hard. He organized his viceroyalty into a separate state, and in 1674 all of Southern China fell an easy prey to his superb military genius. Kanghsi realized his mistake, and tried to open negotiations ; but, un- fortunately, in the meantime Sankwei's son at Peking had been beheaded by imperial order, and the stern old general scorned his advances. How- ever, the emperor was a foeman worthy of Sank- wei's steel ; and although, like Napoleon, Sankwei
130 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
was always victorious when he led in person, the Manchu forces were able to hold his generals in check, and the Formosan king was unable to make any headway on land. Still, it was not until the death of Sankwei, from paralysis, in October, 1678, that the Manchu dynasty could feel that it was finally in possession of the empire. For three years more the fighting continued, but it was ineffective. Kanghsi tarnished his fame by having the body of Sankwei disinterred, and his bones scattered through the provinces, and by issuing a decree debarring forever his descendants from entering literary examinations or becoming mandarins. Kanghsi missed the great opportunity of his reign to ennoble his name forevermore, by erecting a temple of honor to the grand old general and to the dead slave-girl who had placed his family on the throne.
With the suppression of the rebellion Kanghsi decided to crush the Formosan pirates, so called, who, during the rebelHon, had possessed themselves of the cities of Amoy and Halting. A force of thirty thousand men and three hundred ships dis- lodged Ching Chin, and compelled him to retire once more to his island capital, where he died six months later. In July, 1683, the Chinese fleet set out for Formosa, and the fate of the buccaneer
TOLERANCE TO MISSIONARIES. 131
kingdom was decided in a desperate two days' land and naval battle. The Manchus were suc- cessful ; and although Koshwang, the Formosan king, might have held out indefinitely, and have tired the invaders out by carrying on a guerilla warfare, he preferred the title of duke and a life pension with a residence in Peking to a precarious existence in the mountains. Thus ended the record of the greatest and most successful purely piratical adventure in history, with the possible exceptions of the Cortez expedition in Mexico and that of Pizarro in Peru. Its fate is an example of the impossibility of building up an independent, self-respecting nation from its criminal classes.
The missionaries played a rather important role during the long reign of Kanghsi. The emperor, personally, had a perfect contempt for all reli- gions ; but he was absolutely tolerant, and in spite of the opposition of his officials he permitted freedom of worship, but forbade proselyting. "As we do not restrain the lamas of Tartary," he said, " or the bonzes of China, from building temples and burning incense, we cannot refuse these having their own churches, and publicly teaching their religion, especially as nothing has been alleged against it as contrary to law. Were we not to do this, we should contradict ourselves.
132 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
We hold, therefore, that they may biiild temples to the Lord of Heaven, and maintain them wher- ever they will; and that those who honor them may freely resort to them to burn incense and to observe the rites usual to Christianity." Pere Verbiest, a Dutch priest, who was famous for his scientific and philosophic learning, was employed to revise the Chinese calendar, and discovered that it was an entire month too fast. He was made president of the Astronomical Board, while two Jesuit missionaries, Gerbillon and Pereira, stood equally as high in the emperor's confidence, and in 1689 had the honor of concluding China's first treaty with a European power. They might have done their religion a vast amount of future good had they been more careful of the treatment of the corrupt officialdom around them ; but they believed that it was their mission to expose fraud in high places as well as low ; and in the end they made so many powerful enemies that the mis- sionaries who followed them, and who w^ere not great savants, were made to suffer for their im- politic acts. It was also unfortunate that the different Catholic orders could not live in harmony with each other. They quarreled so fiercely over the proper Chinese character for the name of God, that the viceroy of Canton, in 1716, petitioned
CHINESE CANNONS. 133
the emperor that he might be empowered to forbid them to live in his province. The story of the disputes of the rival orders is very interesting from a scholastic point of view, but they were responsible for the almost utter wreck of the Roman Catholic missions in China.
The invasion of Galdan, the chief of the Eleuths, a Kalmuck tribe, with a formidable force, determined Kanghsi to settle forever the status of his troublesome neighbors beyond the great wall ; and the larger part of the years from 1680 to his death in 1723 were filled with battles with these hardy adventurers. Galdan, the greatest of the Central Asian leaders, was eventually driven to suicide ; and his successor, Tseh Wang Putan, who was made chief by Kanghsi, was afterwards dethroned, with the loss of all his territory. It was in these sanguinary wars that cannon first came into use, and they were quite as effective against the wild fighters of Tartary as they after- wards became against the savage warriors of North America.
Kanghsi died near the close of 1722, of a cold contracted while hunting. He had reigned sixty- one years, and he left a name in Chinese history that ranks him alongside of the great Yau and Shun. He was a man of great natural ability, a
134 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
wise ruler, and a distinguished scholar. His dic- tionary is still the standard one of China, and his " Sixteen Maxims " is part of the course of study- in every Chinese school. During his reign a regular trade in tea sprang up, and in 1699 a factory was established in Canton. In 1703, over one hundred thousand pounds of tea were ex- ported from Canton, and in 1715 the trade had become so well established that a regular line of British tea-ships was placed in commission. Quite a foreign settlement sprang up on 'the Honan side of Canton, and large fortunes were made, in spite of the jealousy and persecution of the Chinese officials. The little colony complained bitterly of its precarious situation and the humiliations it had to stand ; but as long as the trade was so lucrative the European nations temporized with the Chinese rather than risk the possible breaking off of com- mercial relations. In the end, however, commerce had to pay dearly for its early weakness and timidity.
Yungching, the fourth son of Kanghsi, suc- ceeded to the throne. His rule of fourteen years was uneventful, save for the usual number of rebellions and the annual picnic excursions of the Tartars into the northern provinces. The quar- reling Catholic missionaries were formally banished
A DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH, 135
from the empire, and more than three hundred churches were destroyed. In 1727 Portugal sent an envoy to Peking, which, as usual, resulted in nothing. The same year a Russian embassy was more successful, in so far as they obtained per- mission for a number of their young men to reside in Peking to study the language, and that Count Sava managed to place his credentials directly in the august hands of the emperor rather than on the table before the throne. At the time this was considered a great diplomatic triumph; and as petty as it may seem, it may be looked upon as one of the steps that led to China's eventual recog- nition of the equality of all nations. The last step in this whimsical procession towards the throne was taken last year by Prince Henry of Prussia, when his personal call on the Emperor of China was returned in person by the Son of Heaven.
136 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
VII.
FROM CHI EN LUNG TO HIENFUNG.
[A.D. 1735-A.D. 1851.]
WHEN Chien Lung ascended the throne in 1735 at the age of twenty-five, he made a public vow that, " should he, like his illustrious grandfather Kanghsi, be per- mitted to complete the sixtieth year of his reign, he would show his gratitude to Heaven by resign- ing the crown to his heir, as an acknowledgment that he had been favored to the full extent of his wishes." Not one person who was present at the Hall of Imperial Ancestors when the vow was made, lived to see it fulfilled ; but it was thus kept to the very hour and minute, and it is the only example in Chinese history where a monarch voluntarily laid down the royal yellow.
It was not in longevity alone that Chien Lung resembled his great sire. He was a strong char- acter, a great ruler, and a patron of education. His reign was disturbed with rebellions and foreign
RETURN OF THE TOURGOTS, 137
wars ; but the rebellions were not aimed at his administration, and the wars with Nepal, Burma, and Turkestan were not of his seeking, although he never turned aside when once engaged until he was indisputably master of the field. He was harsh with the Catholics, but, as he said, no more so than the Catholics would be with the mission- aries of the Grand Lama of Thibet, should he send them to Europe to proselyte and stir up strife. His court and table were always open to missionaries of ability ; and Jesuits like Castiglione and Attiret, who were artists and skilled workers, were treated with the greatest distinction. One of the most remarkable and romantic incidents of his long reign was the return of the self-exiled tribe of Tourgots from the steppes of the Kirghez in Russia, where they had fled to be free from early Mongol invasion. The return of this tribe of six hundred thousand people to their father- land in 1772 is a most thrilling story, as told by De Quincey in his " The Flight of a Tartar Tribe."
In his war with the Gurkhas of Nepal, it seems that the British in India made a demonstration that very much aided and gratified the Chinese, and the British Government thought this a good time to try to obtain some concessions that would
138 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
relieve the deplorable situation at Canton. Lord Macartney, late governor of Madras, at the head of an imposing suite, and carrying an entire ship- load of presents, arrived at Canton in 1793. He was received by the Chinese with the greatest dis- tinction, and by the governors of all the cities on his way to Peking. His reception at the capital and at the emperor's summer palace at Jehol was most flattering ; although the fact that the flag on the vessel on which he voyaged up the Peiho bore the legend, " Tribute-Bearer from the country of England," marred the joy of the occasion.
All English histories of China devote more space to a narrative of the account of this mission than they do to the rest of the sixty years' reign of Chien Lung ; but other than being a most gor- geous picnic excursion for Macartney, and a vast expense to the English government, not one single thing was gained, commercially or diplomatically. Macartney was dismissed with sweetly bland con- tempt, and his vast array of presents were ac- cepted in the same spirit that Chinese emperors had been accepting presents from tributary states since the days of Shun and Yau. Europe was still valuing China at its own estimate ; and it is curious how small an excuse in the beginning of 1800 would lead to war in Europe, and yet what
A GREAT EMPIRE, 139
gross insults the same nations would submit to from this haughty Asiatic empire.
In 1796 Chien Lung abdicated on his diamond anniversary, although he had three years yet to live, long enough to discover that he had made a great mistake in his estimate of the character of his son and successor, Chiaching. For the first time in Chinese history an emperor was able to turn over to his successor an empire that was at absolute peace, although its boundaries extended from the northern steppes of Mongolia to Cochin China, and from Formosa to Nepal.
It is a wise father that knows his own son, and Chiaching was not long in demonstrating this axiom. He evidently believed that the Tsing dynasty had made such a reputation for ability and virtue during the reign of its three sovereigns that it would permit him to enjoy life with per- fect safety and as he saw fit. He surrounded him- self with actors, bon vivants, and flatterers, and throwing all questions of ceremonial etiquette to the winds, made wine, women and song, the con- trolling influences of his court. His orgies did not rival those of many of his predecessors in magnificence or costly outlay ; but he was always the buffoon, and never the king, and he even car- ried his comedians with him when he offered
140 CHINA'S OPEN BOOR.
sacrifices at the temples of heaven and earth. Sung, one of his ministers, dared to point out to his royal master the disastrous effect it would have upon the nation if its high priest made sport of the holy of holies. The only impression this reproof made was a peremptory summons for Sung to appear in court, and state what punish- ment he deserved. "A slow and ignominious death," which meant quartering, replied the stout- hearted old statesman, who evidently thought that as long as he must die, he might as well ask for the worst. " Choose again," thundered the astonished emperor. " Let me be beheaded," was the answer. Chiaching paused for a moment in deep thought, and a third time put the ques- tion. This time Sung's face beamed with joy, for he believed that he was to be permitted to die an honorable death ; and he almost shouted in his relief, " Let me be strangled." Immediately the emperor dismissed the brave courtier, and made him governor of the province of Hi, or Chinese Siberia, where he could exercise his great talents in battlino- with the frontier marauders rather than with the emperor's shortcomings.
It is sad to chronicle that Sung's reproof had no effect. With such a state of affairs in court, it is little wonder that rebellion and insurrection
THE PIRATE INVASION, 141
sprang up throughout the empire. China has always been a fertile soil for the growth of secret societies. Their object is primarily purely philan- thropic ; but in a time like the present reign, when the official class was given free license to squeeze the people, they became a theater for ambitious schemers and the base for a revolution.
The insurrection of the White Lily sect swept the provinces of Honan, Shensi, Kansu, and Sze- chuan, costing thousands of lives, the greatest suf- fering, and an outlay of over a hundred million taels. Naturally piracy took advantage of this season of terror and the weakness of the central government, to scour the seas, and ravage the coast- towns. At one time their force was estimated at seventy thousand men, with eighteen hundred junks ; and their chief, Chai, made for himself a name almost as terrible as that of the great Koxinga. The imperial navy was so helpless that the emperor had to petition the despised English in Canton to send the war-ship *' Mercury " to safeguard the transport of the Siamese tribute from Bangkok to the imperial coffers. The European tea-ships gained nothing, however, by this action, and not only had to protect them- selves from the pirates, but had to submit to all the petty exactions of the imperial guard-ships.
142 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
In 1802 the English occupied Macao to protect it from seizure by the French; and again in 1808 Admiral Drury landed a force to assist the Portu- guese in case the French made the threatened de- scent; and yet in spite of the obligations which both the Chinese and the Portuguese willingly placed themselves under to the English, both na- tions vehemently protested and threatened when H. M. S. " Doris " brought in 1814 the American sailing-ship '' Hunter " into Macao as a prize. The Chinese even threatened to shut up the port of Macao to foreign trade unless the English took their men-of-war off the coast.
The Russians were no more fortunate in their attempts to open a door into China. In 1805 a Russian embassy reached the great wall, when they were informed that they might save them- selves the trouble of journeying farther unless they intended to do the kotow. Count Goloyken declined, and immediately retraced his long and toilsome journey. In 1816 George the Third, not satisfied with the result of the Macartney picnic, decided to try once more, and dispatched Lord Amherst at the head of another one. Immediately on the arrival of Amherst the question of " to kotow, or not to kotow " was raised ; and as Amherst was firm in his refusal, he also had to
SUFINENESS OF ENGLAND, 143
turn back without gazing on the countenance of the Son of Heaven. As England did not resent the failure of the Macartney expedition, the Chi- nese did not think it worth while to be even polite to Amherst; and as the historian of the expedi- tion puts it, the embassy was treated with " brutal rudeness and insulting demeanor." When it is re- membered that England at this time had won the battle of Waterloo, and was mistress of the seas, one cannot but wonder at her supineness in deal- ing with the licentious Peking court. Chiaching died in 1820, at the age of sixty-one, mourned by none, and execrated by all. It is remarkable that the consequences of his reign were not more serious, and that more sanguinary outbreaks did not occur, as the imperial power was little stronger than that of one of the great viceroys.
The one natural human act of Chiaching's career was his choice of his own son, Taokwang, as his successor. The choice was in the nature of a reward. In 1813 the palace was invaded by a band of armed men bent on the assassination of the emperor. The attempt would have been suc- cessful but for young Taokwang, who sprang to his father's rescue, and in a hand-to-hand fight killed two of the leaders, while a relative shot a third. The emperor thus describes the affair:
144 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
** My imperial second son seized a matchlock, and shot two of them. For this deliverance I am indebted to the energies of my second son."
In one particular the reign is famous in China's long history, as during it the official class learned more surprising tilings than are found in the phi- losophy of Confucius. It was an iconoclastic era, in which the most revered idols were ruthlessly broken by the despised " outer barbarian." To the horror of the " Son of Heaven" he discovered that the sons of earth not only dared to dispute his preeminence on this globe, but were prepared to assert their equality. The hermit nation was forced into the world, and the " tributary nation " fiction and the kotow bugbear were swept into limbo without regard to their hoary antiquity or eminent respectability. The outer barbarian proved to be a veritable bull in a China shop. Taokwang went on to the dread throne of the cen- turies, actually believing himself to be the king of kings, and the most awe-inspiring object on earth ; he died a much wiser but sadder man, with his throne at the mercy of a few English frigates, and his august self the sport of a thousand English soldiers. Taokwang might well have believed that " after me the deluge ; " for no man in all history ever took a fall from such a height in so brief a
TAOKWANG'S SURPRISE. 145
time ; and the joke of it was that with Taokwang it was so unexpected, and so contrary to the teach- ings of the classics, that he really never understood what had happened to him up to the day of his death. No comic opera was ever half so enter- taining as his career.
The first years of the new emperor's reign were disturbed by wars with the tributary tribes of Turkestan, with the Miautze, — the highlanders of China, — and with the Formosans, in all of which the Chinese were successful, in spite of the fact that justice was on the side of the rebels. Until April, 1834, all commercial intercourse between England and China had been through the East India Company; and while the position of the virtual rulers of all India was most humiliating in China, still their wrongs were strictly individual, and not national ones. This state of affairs was not satisfactory to the merchants ; and on the ex- piration of the East India Company's charter, they insisted on holding the home government respon- sible for the redress of their injuries, rather than their late employers. To meet this new condition of affairs, and to provide for an official representative, the English government sent out in 1834 Lord Napier as chief superintendent of trade. Napier refused to communicate with the viceroy through
146 CHINA'S OPEN DOOR.
the usuax lorm of petition, but insisted that his credentials be received as they were written and prepared under the direction of his queen. He proceeded to Canton without asking for a passport at Macao, where he remained three months with- out being officially recognized further than being officially expelled in August, 1834. As a hint to hasten his departure, all trade was suspended with British subjects, Chinese servants were withdrawn from the European settlement, and an embargo placed on provisions. After a hundred years of humiliation, the British at last made up their minds to resent this last insult, and the British frigates " Imogene " and " Andromache " were ordered to Canton. On the way up the river they silenced the supposedly impregnable Bogue forts with about as much difficulty as they would have experienced in knocking down a Malayan stockade. With the frigate's guns covering the factories at Honan, life and property for the time were safe, but trade was dead, and provisions were scarce ; and Lord Napier, believing that discretion was the better part of valor, withdrew to Macao, and the impertinent frigates were ordered down stream, or as the mandarins boastfully expressed it in a memorial to the emperor, the " barbarian eye " (Napier) has been driven out, and the two war-
NO OPIUM TRADE. 147
ships " dragged over the shallows and expelled." Napier died at Macao shortly after his arrival ; and the diplomatic victory for the moment remained with the Chinese, who were openly boastful, and despised the English for sacrificing their honor to protect their trade. But they only dimly appre- ciated the true character of the men