Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub

1

After destructive storms, the native gentry put up sheds in temple grounds, and pay doctors to attend there upon the injured; and such specially British forms of philanthropy as total abstinence societies (to put down drinking and opium smoking) find a counterpart in China. There are societies for the relief of poor widows, and for assisting men to get married. Free libraries, as we have already seen, are numerous, and there is actually a building at Canton called the Free Discussion Hall, where political matters are debated with the knowledge of the Government, which finds it more advantageous to ascertain and influence public opinion than to suppress its utterances. It is said, however, that the expression of public opinion by the essays of candidates in the Government examinations is now restricted, and that political questions in which the affairs of the present dynasty are concerned may not be alluded to by examiners or candidates—a corruption of ancient usage which conservative scholars would have the sympathy of the West in rectifying.

The examinations, it has been observed, form, as it were, the avenue to the "hustings, the Church, the Bar, and the learned professions all at once," 3 and their character is thus a valuable indication of the quality of the education received by the competitors. The merits of the merely literary exercises are of course unappreciable by foreigners, who will be tempted to share the emperor Yung-ching's distaste for "sonnets to the moon and clouds, the winds and dews," which serve no practical purpose and do not help to "regulate the age and reflect glory on the nation.” But the following questions, quoted from the "History Paper," set in an examination for the second degree, seem to be fully up to the standard of Western universities, and demand a kind of information which it is extremely important for each generation of practical politicians to possess. "From the earliest times great attention has been given to the improvement of agriculture. Will you indicate the arrangements adopted for that purpose by the several dynasties?" "Give an account of the circulating medium under different dynasties, and state how the currency of the Sung Dynasty corresponded with one use of paper money at the present day?"

It is said that towns where the examinations are held are somewhat liable to disturbance when filled with candidates, and anti-foreign demonstrations are particularly to be dreaded at such times. But, as Cooper observes, there are few countries in which the presence of a few thousand undergraduates brought together from different parts, and subject to no common authority, would not be likely to conduce to a row. And as, even in the West, schoolboys and undergraduates are apt to make their demonstrations in the interest of Conservatism, what can be expected from Chinese undergraduates but the liveliest contempt for the goggle

1 Chinese Repository, xiv. p. 264.
2 Middle Kingdom, vol. i. p. 488.
3 The Chinese and their Rebellions.
4 The Chinese. W. A. P. Martin, pp. 36, 51.

T. T. Meadows, p. 327.

eyed, grotesquely attired barbarians? This contempt, however, is not likely to show itself by noisy violence, unless it happens that the examinations coincide with the outbreak of a local grievance connected with the aggressions of French missionaries or English opium-sellers. As an English traveller observes, "Chinese boys and men never do wanton mischief," and we can readily believe the assurances of General Tchengki-tong that Chinese students as a class are studious, and content with tranquil and mildly intellectual pastimes.

Chinese houses of the well-to-do class, are large, serving to receive what is more like a clan than a family. Each male member of the clan brings his bride home to the ancestral house, where each natural family occupies a separate apartment, though the women and children associate freely and amuse themselves as they please within the enclosure. The discovery that space conduces to harmony was made many ages ago, no less a person than the philosopher Chuang-tze having written: "If there is no room in the house, the wife and her mother-in-law run against one another." Houses in Southern China are always one storey high, and in the North, where two storeys are common, the upper floor is used rather as a summer-house than for everyday habitation.

Houses are described as having a frontage of three, five, seven, or more rooms, as the case may be, because the arrangement is the same, whatever the width. The hall, drawing-room, and dining-room lie one behind the other, and are each flanked with an equal number of rooms on the right and left, the number varying with the size of the house. The different sets of rooms are separated by courts, of which there may be any number in the largest houses. A modest middle-class dwelling of three rooms to the front, with the equivalent of three floors, one behind the other, lets for £2 10s. a year. A walled garden, with summer-houses and artificial rocks, is an indispensable appendage to the house in all wellto-do families; and as the women of such families do not frequent public entertainments, it is common for shows of various kinds to be summoned to give a private performance indoors for their amusement. The largest houses of this kind occupy with their gardens many acres, though of course much smaller than a "gentleman's place" of corresponding importance in England; and the grounds are made to appear larger than they really are by winding paths, trellises covered with climbing plants walling off one part from another, and all the other devices of a landscape gardener's art.3

All Chinese relaxations are required to have an æsthetic flavour. They play chess out of doors, in chosen spots commanding a picturesque view,+ or in an elegantly furnished room, with tea or wine; they enjoy music on the water, and inscribe appropriate verses on their works of art. Strange to say, there are no professional artists. Painting, like poetry, is in the

1 Gill, p. 314.

2 Les Plaisirs en Chine, p. 9.

3 P. Osbeck, Voyage to China (1751), ii. p. 306; Mrs. Gray, p. 275.
4 Les Plaisirs en Chine, p. 189.

hands of amateurs.1 Busts and portraits are executed by professionals, but otherwise the decorative work done by artisans is all applied to household or other furniture. According to a well-known novelist, a few days after a poem is produced at court, every family in the capital has a copy. Chinese verses have to be "shown," not read, because so many of the characters have the same sound.

Theatrical performances are given in restaurants, by desire of the guests, as well as in public places and private houses. On these occasions the Chinese applaud the actors and performances they like; if not pleased, they keep silence, which is regarded as the most eloquent condemnation. The Chinese writer so often quoted truly regards this trait as typical. "Jamais de critiques directes, d'improbation bruyantes, de clameurs indiquées. Le silence suffit. Il condamne sans discussion et sans

appel." The critic's dignity and self-respect would be imperilled if he had to violate the rules of propriety to the extent of saying anything uncivil; but when it is the rule to say civil things, what can be more crushing than silence? An autocrat who is displeased with a courtier's remark says nothing, and the courtier is annihilated. And on this point, as on others, the democratic Chinese have imperial instincts.

A good many European complaints of the insincerity of Chinese statesmen are due to the imperfect comprehension of the traditions of Chinese politeness and the obligations it imposes on diplomatists. The Chinese have a strong sense of personal decorum and dignity, and carry reserve to an extreme. Parents and children do not kiss; intimate friends do not touch each other, either playfully or caressingly; husband and wife, even among the peasants, begin the day by exchanging formal bows. With such habits, and a profound sense of the importance of mutual respect underlying and inspiring the habits, it is almost impossible to reply with a point-blank No to any request from a person with whom you are on terms of civility. Accordingly there is a want of courtesy in driving any one into a corner, and compelling him to reply either rudely or unveraciously.

If European officials wish to arrive at the true intentions of Chinese statesmen, they must employ at least as much diplomacy as they would think necessary in dealing with a very powerful and not very friendly European court. In such a case, they would not ask point-blank for what they want; they would endeavour diplomatically to ascertain what the answer would be if they did ask for it. If they know that the other high contracting party is resolved not to grant what they want, they would not court a direct refusal, nor would they be deceived by an evasive answer; and a very slight familiarity with Chinese literature would show that a verbal assent may signify something widely removed from an intention to perform the promised act.

A Chinese official thinks it less discourteous to tell a lie than to refuse a request urged upon him personally with unbecoming vehemence. But

1 Les Plaisirs en Chine, p. 189.

2 Les Deux jeunes filles lettrées, p. 32.

he feels as strongly that the European negotiator is an unmannerly barbarian for forcing him to lie, as the European does that his lying under pressure is uncivilized and immoral. The Chinaman would feel humiliated if what he asked for was refused, and it is really as much from the habit of politeness as from cowardice that he promises without meaning to perform.

This ought to be as well known to the representatives of European countries in China as another fact, which they have been slow to recognize; viz., that the Imperial authority, though nominally supreme, is quite impotent to resist or counteract the will and habits of the nation, so that the Chinese Empire is no more to be bound by a treaty inconsistent with its unwritten constitution, than the Chinese people are to be terrorised by looting a palace in which, contrary to propriety, the Son of Heaven has collected a great many valuables and curiosities. European pressure misapplied might conceivably result in the overthrow of the Mantchu Dynasty called Tsing; but, fortunately for the Chinese people, it will be powerless to affect their material life except on the veriest fringe and outskirts of all that is essential to its national character.

CONCLUSIONS.

A SKETCH of English history and social growth compressing the records of 800 years into half as many pages is apt to repel by the dulness that comes of brevity. A survey of five times as many centuries would need to be ten times as long to become less tedious; and the charitable reader is entreated to believe that the foregoing pages might have seemed shorter if they had been a great deal more numerous. They will have served their purpose if they induce any earnest students who have not yet found a speciality that promises to occupy a life's devotion, to take the antiquities, the literature, and the economic history of China seriously, and deal at length with some of the topics of which the surface only has been skimmed above.

The attempt to arouse interest in a China which is not that of the European trader or the European missionary, but only that of a few hundred millions of native Chinamen, has never yet been crowned with success. If it has been made once more, it is not altogether for its own sake—as a true Sinomane would wish-but to complete the sketch of pre-alphabetic civilisation, and let China take the place which is probably genealogically her due, as a sister nation of the Egyptians and Babylonians.

If we knew as much of the life of the "little people" of ancient Egypt and Babylonia as we know of the Chinese, it might be equally necessary to plead for a respectful and sympathetic construction of the many traits unintelligible to the Western world. But as the glamour of ancient history and legend has made us desire more knowledge than we can ever have of the people of the Nile and the Euphrates, when the theory of their kinship with the Chinese is established, details about the latter will have the advantage of satisfying a ready-made demand. The trade of Mesopotamia and the agriculture of Egypt must have gone on, so far as the masses of the people were concerned, in much the same way, on the same principles, and with not dissimilar results, as in the one surviving empire of similar origin and similar longevity. The records of successive dynasties and reigns which we seek painfully to rediscover, might be as dull as the Kang-mou if we had them in full; but, on the other hand, the national life of which the kings were but the figure-head, probably went on as peacefully, as contentedly, and perhaps with the same slow tendency to a growth in peaceable content, as the national life of China.

Past nations lived their life as their fate and choice determined, with no view certainly to the instruction of posterity; and hence the truth of

« PredošláPokračovať »