ASIA 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE WASON 
 
 CHINESE 
 COLLECTION 
 
Cornell University Library 
 DS 703.5.E23 • 
 
 Modern China :tliirty-one sliort essavs on 
 
 3 1924 023 104 908 .»,.... 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023104908 
 
MODEEN CHINA: 
 
 THIRTY-ONE SHORT ESSAYS ON SUBJECTS AVHICH ILLUSTRATE 
 THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D. 
 
 SHANGHAI : 
 
 SOLD BY KELLY 6- WALSH, LD., AND BY W. BREWER. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 SOLD BY TRUBNER & Co., LUDGATE STREET 
 
 1S91. 
 
MODEEN CHINA: 
 
 THIRTY-ONE SHORT ESSAYS ON SUBJECTS WHICH ILLUSTRATE 
 THE PRESENT CONDITION OF THE COUNTRY. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH EDKINS, D.D. 
 
 SHANGHAI : 
 
 SOLD BY KELLY &' WALSH, LD., AND BY W. BREWER. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 SOLD BY TRUBNER & Co., LUDGATE STREET 
 
 I89I. ^.:^^'^^^^^^'^ '■ 
 

 vV^^-^-S-^i 
 
INDEX. - 
 ** — 
 
 PAGES. 
 
 Numerical Increase of the Chinese Race i 
 
 The Temple of Heaven 2 
 
 Need of Tree Planting in North-China 4 
 
 The Chinese Language 5 
 
 Foot Binding 7 
 
 The Art of China and Japan 9 
 
 Change in the Chinese Climate 11 
 
 . Chinese Views on Science 12 
 
 A Museum at Peking 14 
 
 The Migration of Industries 16 
 
 China's Turkish Province 18 
 
 ,_— Medicine in China 20 
 
 Changes in the Agriculture of North-China 21 
 
 Chinese Accounts of the Mammoth 24 
 
 Rice 25 
 
 Industrial Missions 27 
 
 Pawn Brokers , 29 
 
 Chinese Opinions on Novels ■ 30 
 
 The Yangtsze River 32 
 
 Feng-shui 34 
 
 Irrigation 36 
 
 The Floods in the North 37 
 
 The Chinese Treatment of Cholera .^ 39 
 
 The Climate of China 40 
 
 Chinese Educational Colleges 42 
 
 The Mariner's Compass a Chinese Invention 43 
 
 The Use of Cotton Yarn 46 
 
 ,„— Chinese and Foreign Medicine : 47 
 
 The Chinese Q^fiKe 49 
 
 Tartars as Sovereigns 51 
 
 Local Disturbances 53 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 THE NUMERICAL INCREASE OF 
 THE CHINESE RACE. 
 
 The rapid growth of the United States 
 in population is due to immigration as 
 well as to the industrial prosperity of 
 the country. But in China there is no 
 great infusion of outside races to aid in 
 accounting for the remarkable increase 
 of the population of this country since 
 the reign of Kang-hi. The rapid growth 
 of the people in numbers is due to 
 industrious habits, to mild and paternal 
 government, to the extension of trade 
 and the effect also of the intellectual 
 vigour of the people. If any one should 
 attempt to account for the swift growth 
 of India in numbers and wealth, the 
 political and commercial causes would 
 be set down as the most energetic of 
 the forces which give to the decen- 
 nial census in that country its wonder- 
 ful spring upwards. The vessel of the 
 state is there guided with a firm hand, and 
 robbery and violence are kept in re- 
 straint. Railways and convenient sea- 
 ports allow of a rapid increase in those 
 products of India which are suitable for 
 foreign markets ; and those ^.rticles of 
 European make which India will buy are 
 cheaply conveyed to every inland city. 
 Such are the chief causes of the in- 
 crease in the number qf the Hindoo 
 population. But in addition to these 
 there is also the subdivision of occupa- 
 tions ; the religious castes, the mer- 
 chants, the inferior castes and all the 
 varieties of Hindoo social distinctions 
 ten.d to increase the population and 
 operate against emigration. If there 
 must be a separate person to do every- 
 thing and make every article that 
 Hindoo life requires, there will be in 
 each community some one to do that 
 particular thing. This increases thq 
 population so fat, and the check is found 
 in the limitation of the means of living. 
 
 So it is in China. Foreign trade has 
 increased the growth of silk; and with 
 that the number of mulberry tree ten- 
 ders, of silk worm feeders, of spin- 
 ners and weavers, of retail and 
 wholesale merchants has increased in 
 proportion. Out of the 380 millions of 
 China, if we adopt the native census, as 
 we are compelled to do for want of a 
 better, we may roughly estimate the 
 number of persons engaged exclusively 
 in agriculture as 38 millions, or one in , 
 ten. One Chinaman in a hundred is a 
 bricklayer or mason. .The blacksmiths 
 are one in 140. One in a hundred arid 
 twenty is^ a tailor. The washerman is 
 quite as commonly to be met with. A 
 carpenter is to be seen in every hundredth 
 man. Something like this is the pro- 
 portion in England, and it may serve us 
 for a convenient comparison. In Eng- 
 land, in the census lists there are 
 about a hundred divisions of occupa- 
 tions, and there are nearly as many in 
 China. Of course there are some 
 Chinese occupations which have nothing 
 correspondipg to thetn in Europe ; and 
 some professions, astrologers for ex- 
 ample, .which it is a rare thing to meet 
 with in England, abound in China. It 
 is to be noted that, supposing the occu- 
 pations of the Chinese ■ to be about a 
 hundred,, each adds to the population 
 its own percentage ; and When food and 
 clothing, with the etceteras, are to be had 
 there will be some one engaged in that 
 occupation in every community. But 
 if they cannot be had because the 
 people have grown poor and do not 
 need such a person, he moves to a 
 place of larger population. Thus small 
 places grow smaller and large places 
 ' larger. The subdivision of occupations 
 is a powerful force in increasing the 
 population; and the principal limit which 
 so operates as to check the rate of 
 growth is the qu9,ntity of food produced^ 
 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 The question has been asked, "What 
 have been the chief causes of that still 
 increasing energy of the Chinese race 
 which enables them to absorb other 
 nations and always be found conquer- 
 ing in the struggle for existence ? The 
 population tables shew that they did 
 not grow at any time beyond about 60 
 millions until, at the end of the I7th 
 century, the great body politic began 
 to assume gigantic proportions. This 
 growth has continued in the face of 
 families, wars and pestilences, and it now 
 causes that overflow which in the United 
 States and Australia occasions a serious 
 political disquietude. The causes appear 
 to be the absence of vexatious inter- 
 ference with the people by the govern- 
 ment, the extension of foreign trade, the 
 eifects of stimulus given to education, 
 by the examinations, and the spread of 
 emigration. As to the government, the 
 two reigns Kang-hi and Chien-lung both 
 lasted sixty years and the wars under- 
 taken were then always successful. The 
 laws were ameliorated, the poll tax, 
 which acted as a check on population, 
 was abolished, and the people were al- 
 lowed to have their own way to such an 
 extent that it may be. said that China 
 is democratic, while in theory ruled by 
 a despotic government. The upward 
 movement of population was delayed in 
 the Kang-hi period by the wars with 
 Wu San-kwei and Koxinga, but as soon 
 as universal tranquillity was restored the 
 increase indicated by the census returns 
 shewed that political peace is the great 
 tiling required by the Chinese race to 
 ensure its prosperity. 
 
 Another powerful cause is found in the 
 educational system. The encouragement 
 given to literature by the government 
 reaches to every village throughout this 
 vast country. The number of school- 
 masters, doctors, secretaries to man- 
 darins, caligraphists and a host of other 
 professions is thus greatly increased, 
 over and above the places secured in 
 the mandarinate high and low by stu- 
 dents successful in the high examina- 
 tions. Foreign trade has also been a 
 substantial cause of numerical growth 
 
 during the present dynasty, because it 
 has increased greatly the number of 
 merchants, burden bearers, and silk 
 and tea cultivators. Lastly, emigration 
 encourages population ina remarkablede- 
 gree. In China as in England the places 
 of those ' who leave are soon filled up ; 
 and when emigrants return rich the 
 wealth they bring operates powerfully 
 to increase the population, because it is 
 used as capital in adding to local 
 industries. 
 
 THE TEMPLE OP HEAVEN. 
 
 On the 10th September, 1889, the 
 Temple of Heaven was destroyed by fire 
 and the cause was its being struck by 
 lightning. The building thus destroyed 
 is the Chinien-tien which stands on the 
 northern altar. It was 99 feet high and 
 had a triple blue roof which was elabo- 
 rately repaired a century ago. It diifered 
 from Buddhist pagodas because the roofs- 
 were circular, and one' above another. 
 The very striking appearance of this 
 edifice has led many visitors to regard it 
 as the most sacred part of the erections 
 embraced in the Temple of Heaven. 
 Yet in fact the south altar without any 
 edifioe built on it is the most primitive 
 and in some sense more sacred. There 
 is no very clear classical precedent for 
 the building over the altar which has 
 now been destroyed. The altar is essen- 
 tial. The edifice over it is a later addi- 
 tion and does not certainly date from a 
 time earlier than A.D. 483. In that 
 year at Nanking, then the capital of 
 South China, there was a discussion at 
 court as to whether a roofed building 
 should be erected on the altar^'for the 
 spring sacrifice or not. There never was 
 a question as to the south altar where 
 sacrifices are offered at the solstices 
 whether a temple should be built 
 on it or not. It was thought more 
 reverential to worship at an open altar. 
 But in reference to the spring sacri- 
 fice it was decided that a building 
 might be allowed. " If in the ancestral 
 temple of the Emperors" said one of the 
 courtiers " the round tent there used at 
 
THE TEMPLE OF HE A VEN. 
 
 sacrifices has been changedinto a tem- 
 ple and carpets spread there, why should 
 not the same be done at the Altar of 
 Heaven ?" Another remarked that the 
 law-book of antiquity, the Chow Li, 
 certainly spoke of felt carpets and it 
 was therefore probable that there was a 
 house. The Emperor approved. The 
 opposition was silenced, and a temple 
 was built, to be used in the first month 
 of the calendar, when at the Opening of 
 spring the Emperor leaves his palace 
 to pray for a fruitful year. In this 
 temple there was space to arrange the 
 tablets of the emperor's ancestors as 
 assessors with the tablet of the Supreme 
 Ruler of the Universe. In this way 
 the imperial tablets on the east and 
 west shared in the banquet of the 
 sacrifices with the Supreme Ruler. The 
 day was after the sixth of February 
 each year on the first occurrence of the 
 character hsin, " new" the eighth in the 
 series of ten names attached to days. 
 That the lofty blue-roofed temple now 
 destroyed should at all have a secondary 
 character in the Impeirial worship may 
 seem in itself unlikely, but it must be 
 remembered that the ancient Chinese 
 idea of the worship of the Supreme 
 requires simplicity and humility with 
 reverence. Thusa temple havingabettuti- 
 fuUy coloured roof covered with glazed 
 tiles, having blue, yellow, and green 
 paint under the glaze, or blue only, is 
 not allowed on the ' round altar where 
 worship is performed at the winter 
 solstice. The chief of all the sacrifices 
 is that of the, 21st of December and this 
 has nothing to do with the temple now 
 destroyed. It will be performed as 
 usual.' 
 
 The next occasion when the burnt 
 temple would have been used will be in 
 February of 1890. If it should be 
 decided not to rebuild the temple the 
 round altar on which it stood is still 
 there with its beauty of carved marble 
 balustrades and flights of marble steps.- 
 The ceremonies as in the time before 
 A.D. 483 can be performed in their full 
 splendour. It would be a return to. 
 antiquity ; it would be paying honour to 
 
 the ritpal of the ancient Emperors not 
 to rebuild the temple at all, but to per- 
 form the gr«at national act of worship 
 for the commencement of spring on the 
 open altar as at the altar where the 
 sacrifices of June and December are 
 offered. Next February, as a matter of 
 necessity, this will be done. The ruins 
 of the beautiful structure of the Ming 
 dynasty will be removed, and new shrines 
 and tablets for the Imperial line of 
 deceased Emperors will be prepared; 
 The ritual will be the same. The care- 
 fully selected bullock will be consumed 
 by fire in the furnace altar on the south 
 east as before. The Emperor will kneel 
 on the round centre stone of the altar 
 t6 prostrate hi mself before the tablet as 
 ,his ancestors have done at the southern 
 . altar for two centuries and a half, and , 
 the retinue of two thousand persons 
 will be there as usual on these occasions. 
 The slaughtered bullocks, one in honour 
 of each Emperor worshipped, will be 
 placed in order before the tablets. The 
 prayer will be read and burnt that 
 it may fly upward in smoke and flame 
 to the azure sky. Only the magnificence 
 of the temple now destroyed will be 
 wanting, and this is not essential to 
 the completeness of the worshipw 
 
 The best course to be pursued would 
 be for the Councillors of the Emperor 
 to study history on this point. If tbey 
 find that the temple was first erected on 
 the altar in the time of Ch'i Wu-ti 
 whose dynasty only lasted twenty-three 
 years and only ruled South China, they 
 might see reason not to rebuild it. ■ If 
 however it should be rebuilt, it will be 
 the work of years, because three circles 
 of teak pillars of the largest kind, those 
 of one circle being ninety feet high, are 
 required to support the three roofe and 
 the conveyance of these from Yiinnan 
 will occupy much time. In view of 
 the opening of the railway from Peking 
 to Hankow, the fire is unfortunatfe be- 
 cause it will give strength to the 
 enemies of progress. They will after this 
 fire make new eff'orts to stay the hand 
 of the government in prosecuting 
 this enterprise. The effect of t^is 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 catastrophe on the minds of the Imperial 
 family will be most painful. Those 
 among the statesmen of China at pre- 
 sent who are friendly to progress will 
 be much impeded in their endeavours 
 to promote the prosperity of their 
 country. In time-honoured theory this 
 beautiful temple, which can only be 
 seen now in pictures and photographs, 
 is connected by inseparable links with 
 the safety of the dynasty, but this view 
 may be shaken and modified by this 
 very occurrence. It is to be hoped 
 that some Censor may suggest that the 
 fire is to be interpreted as indicating 
 other things rather than danger from 
 railways, and that one chief lesson to 
 be learned from it is the need of light- 
 ning conductors to preserve Chinese 
 ' high buildings from the thunderbolt of 
 destruction. The Court is however 
 more inclined to take the incident as 
 an indication of the displeasure of 
 Heaven at the negligence of oificials in 
 charge of the sacred building. 
 
 NEED OF TREE PLANTING IN 
 NORTH-CHINA. 
 The desiccation of North-China which 
 has now rendered it much more liable 
 than the south and west to the destruc- 
 tive effects of famine is due among 
 other things to the general cutting down 
 of trees. The excess of population 
 renders individuals poorer and sub- 
 divides the land into lots which are too 
 small for the decent maintenance of a 
 family, and when drought comes trees 
 rapidly disappear because the inhabi- 
 tants are too poor to buy fuel. Every 
 time of drought leads to a vast destruc- 
 tion of vegetable life for fuel, ^nd the 
 restorative power of nature cannot com- 
 pensate for it in sufiicient time, because 
 the number of human beings needing 
 vegetable matter to bum is too great, 
 Ku Yen-wu tells us that North-China 
 was formerly rich in bamboos, so that 
 when an embankment had to be made 
 in Chang-te prefecture in the extreme 
 north of Honan province bamboos were 
 used to strengthen it. Much diliieulty 
 
 and delay were caused lately previous 
 to the closing of the Chengchou gap in 
 the Yellow River embankment by want 
 of sufiicient millet stalks. In ancient 
 times bambo'os were forthcoming in 
 sufficient quantity and of course were 
 more serviceable than millet stalks, 
 which are used now because nothing 
 stronger can be had, to strengthen the 
 embankments. This was in the western 
 Han period. In the eastern Han in the 
 time of the Emperor Kwangwu, his 
 minister cut down more than a million 
 bamboos to make arrows for the army 
 which was engaged in vanquishing 
 Wang Mang the usurper. The name 
 of this Minister was K'ou Hsiin and it 
 is a noted name. These bamboos grew 
 in Wei Hui prefecture. Confucius and 
 ^encius had both visited this country 
 a few centuries earlier. In their days . 
 the country would look well wooded. It 
 is. one of the great evils attendant on 
 political trouble, that military necessity 
 destroys woods and groves without 
 mercy. Here is an instance of it. One 
 time of anajchy needs a century to 
 follow it before a devastated region can 
 recover its former prosperity. Farther 
 west, in the valley of the Wei in Shensi, 
 a continuous grove of bamboos of a 
 thousand mow, or 166 acres, is casually 
 mentioned in history about B.C. 100, 
 and the Ch'm Emperors before this had 
 an officer styled Inspeptor of Bamboos. 
 The industry of the same native author 
 finds also allusions in various books to 
 the bamboos which grew in Shantung in 
 the prefecture of Tai-an Fu on the south 
 of the Tai-shan mountain range in the 
 Lu country, and on the north of the 
 same range in the Ch'i country. It may 
 be concluded then that the vegetable 
 growth of the plains of NorthTChina 
 has been" much diminished and the 
 change not only greatly increases the 
 poverty of the people, but adds also to 
 the dryness of the atmosphere because 
 trees draw water from the subsoil 
 through their roots and this moisture 
 finds its way into the air. , 
 
 The Chinese are now engaged in con- 
 structing a. railway from Peking to 
 
NEED OF TREE PLANTING IN NORTH-CHINA. 
 
 Hankow. It, is undertakeijiby the gov- 
 ^ernment and will be conducted on the 
 joint stock principle under the direction 
 of the Viceroys. After leaving Peking 
 and proceeding for two hundred miles 
 in a south-westerly direction the line 
 will proceed in a direction nearly due 
 south. When it reaches Chang-te, four 
 hundred miles from Peking and Wei- 
 hwei 470 miles from the same city, it 
 will be passing through the same region 
 where large groves of bamboos and other 
 trees once beautified the face of the 
 land and moistened the air. It would 
 be a wise act, a benefit likely to prove 
 of incalculable value, if in connection 
 with the railway now to be constructed, 
 the Governor of Honan, a man of tried 
 energy and large knowledge, should 
 take measures to restore the former 
 aspect of the country in those portions 
 of his" province which border on the 
 new railway and on the Yellow River. 
 The benefits derivable from tree planta- 
 tions are manifold. The railway will 
 always, need wood for consumption. 
 The Yellow River always needs wood 
 or bamboo for strengthening the em- 
 bankments; bamboo groves would supply 
 northern markets with poles for burden 
 bearers and for the scaffolding which is 
 required everywhere to erect lofty 
 awnings for marriage feasts and funerals, 
 and for coolness in all large hquses in 
 summer. Possibly the climate during the 
 twenty centuries that have elapsed has 
 seriously deteriorated. Even in this case 
 bamboos could be cultivated in sheltered 
 situations. If protected from cold winds 
 by poplar or other plantations more 
 hardy than bamboo they would be likely 
 to flourish. If grown in localities v/here 
 there was a city wall to windward, or' 
 on the south and. south-west of moun- 
 tains ,their chance would be still more 
 improved. For tree planting the lee 
 side of mountains and hills is to be pre- 
 ferred, but the broad plains of Chihli, 
 Honan and Shantung must have planta- 
 tions of trees also, because the air there 
 is too dry and trees, while they equalise 
 the rainfall when it occurs, iticrease the 
 evaporation which moistens the atn;ios- 
 
 phere in dry seasons. On the south side 
 of, every high embankment and city 
 wall, there should be trees planted to be 
 under the care of a special department 
 assisted by the officers who have charge 
 of the Yellow River and of the local 
 authorities of every city. It is to be 
 hoped that Ni W^n-wei, the Honan 
 Grovernor, will do this in his province 
 and that the Viceroys, Li and Chang, 
 will also become aware that the con- 
 structioa of this great railway affords 
 a most favourable opportunity of 
 securing many excellent sites for tree 
 planting. Certainly it is to be ex- 
 pected that they will welcome the 
 idea that the wooded appearance of 
 the country when it was looked on by 
 the great sage in his travels ought 
 to be restored. 
 
 THE CHINESE LANGUAGE. 
 
 The difference between the Chinese and 
 Japanese at the present time is plainly 
 seen in their attitude in regard to foreign 
 manners and habits. The Japanese are 
 rapidly changing their costume and they 
 have adopted a code of laws based on 
 European legislation. They are also 
 making great efforts to Roihanise their 
 writing and dismiss Chinese tradition 
 from their schools. The Chinese are 
 not at all likely to change their costump 
 or their laws. Nor will they abandon 
 their mode of writing. They are on the 
 way to school improvements, and science 
 will soon force an entrance into the 
 literary examinations. There is a rumour 
 that the Emperor is himself fond of 
 mathematics and astronomy. It is 
 likely that the new College at TTientsin 
 erected by the Viceroy of Chihli for the 
 scientific education of youth will be 
 open to receive pupils in the Spring of 
 1890. But while the Chinese will learn 
 science they will not for a Ibng time to 
 come abandon their mode of writing as 
 the Japanese many of them would like 
 to do. Western science is coming more 
 to the front than it was and to know 
 it is a necessity, but the Chinese will 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 not tire of their own language. Many of 
 'them now learn English and afterwards 
 they can if they choose acquire a com- 
 petent knowledge of science from read- 
 ing western text books. Nor will science 
 remain shut up in European modes of 
 speech. The Chinese language as the 
 natives use it has great force, fluency, 
 and directness. It is practical as the 
 nation is practical, and those who use it 
 are too independent to abandon the 
 speech and writing handed down to 
 them through so long a line of ances- 
 tors. It will be made the medium of 
 instruction in science and is very suit- 
 able for becoming so. They have con- 
 tractions for all their characters which 
 foreign students do not trouble them- 
 selves to learn, but the use of which in 
 fact qualifies the Chinese to become 
 short-hand reporters of speeches in their 
 own language. They do not practise 
 speech making, but if they did and if 
 the native newspapers formed a staff of 
 short-hand reporters they would not 
 need to learn any foreigi\ system. They 
 can report quite fast enough themselves 
 with a little practice and they write 
 the contractions with wonderful quick- 
 ness. Their hand muscles are pliable, 
 their fingers small, and the writing brush 
 they employ is as an instrument superior 
 in speed to the steel pen or the quill. 
 The scribes at an imperial audience 
 probably write all or nearly all that is 
 said. Scribes who are paid by the 
 piece get through a large amount df 
 copying in a very short time. Yet let 
 no one expect a teacher who is paid by 
 the month to write fast. He has every 
 reason to be slow. But copyists paid 
 so much for a thousand characters try 
 natura% to transcribe as many thou- 
 sand in a week as they can. The rapid 
 work of such copyists, especially if they 
 are allowed to use contractions, favours 
 the conclusion that by using Chinese 
 characters specialists could easily write 
 all that a good speaker says. As to whe- 
 ther they could compete with the quick- 
 est European stenographers may perhaps 
 soon be brought to a trial in Japan, where 
 many thousands are now learning to 
 
 write in the Roman character. The new 
 school will soon proceed to add short- 
 hand to Romanisation and then it will 
 soon be decided which is the best adapt- 
 ed for swift and accurate reporting. 
 
 The Chinese character is at present 
 used in China, Japan, Corea and Cochin 
 China. In all these countries the 
 educated class express their ideas in 
 this form. "Whence did it come ? Is 
 it a purely native invention or is it 
 of foreign origin ? Let it be remembered 
 that the old writing df China before the 
 seal character was invented about B.C. 
 800 was called the "tadpole writing " 
 from the stroke being round and thick 
 at one end and pointed at the other. 
 Attention was drawn to it by Kung-an- 
 kuo a great scholar in the second cen- 
 tury before Christ. It was on occasion 
 of the discovery of a valuable collection 
 of books in the house of Confucius 
 about B.C. 150. The prince of Lu had 
 ordered the house to be taken down, 
 and in secret repositories in the walls 
 several separate and complete classical 
 works were found and entrusted to 
 Kung-an-kuo who was head of the 
 Confucian family at 'that time. In 
 Legge's Classics in the Prolegomena to 
 the Discourses of Confucius and to the 
 Book of History this fortunate discovery 
 is described. The writing looked strange 
 becausa it had gone out of use. The 
 Revolution of B.C. 220 had among the 
 many great changes then made altered 
 the writing too. The Han scholars there- 
 fore adopted the name K'o-tou "tadpole" 
 to denote the strange old writing which 
 had been common four centuries before. 
 What is seen of the early writing in 
 native books now is the seal cha- 
 racter. The ancient mode of writing 
 which Confucius used, presenting to the 
 eye a grouping of strokes thick at the 
 beginning and finishing with a point, 
 the true Koo-wen, is not represented in 
 books. If it were present to the eye 
 ' the Babylonian origin of the Chinese 
 writing would at once be obvious. What 
 the Han scholars called tadpole shaped, 
 we may call cuneiform writing, applied 
 to the Chinese. 
 
THE CHINESE LANGUAGE.— FOOT BINDING. 
 
 But it may be objected t]|»t the K'o- 
 tou writing common in the time of 
 Confucius was not the ancient writing 
 seen on bells, vases and other antiqui- 
 ties. To this it may be replied that the 
 Babylonians had a pre-cuneiform writing 
 as well as the cuneiform itself It 
 was to a large extent ideographic and 
 possibly the earliest Chinese writing 
 may have been founded on the older 
 Babylonian writing, as the tadpole 
 script was on the new styl6 known as 
 the cuneiform. That the old Chinese 
 writing seen on bells and vases was a 
 foreign invention is probable because 
 it is connected with an advanced know- 
 ledge of astronomy. That the mode of 
 writing with which Confucius was fa- 
 miliar was the latter Babylonian is 
 very likely, because the Chinese had in 
 his day already begun to write num- 
 bers from left to right with strokes in the 
 Babylonian way precisely. For example 
 ^|{ = J_ nil ~ ] H would at that time 
 have been understood to be 89 6 4 2 1 3, 
 both at Babylon and ^n China as used 
 in both countries. In China this mode 
 of writing numbers has been tept up till 
 the present time as supplemental to the 
 ten characters in ordinary use. 
 
 FOOT BINDING. 
 
 In the Monthly Journal of the Ethno- 
 graphic Society of France, there is in 
 the number for August of the year 1889 
 a paper on the deformed feet of Chinese 
 women. In 1861, M. de Fusier, a 
 surgeon in the English and French 
 expeditionary force which captured 
 Peking, found the remains of a female 
 foot in a tomb near Palikap ten miles 
 to the east of the capital. A battle 
 was fought there between the Chinese 
 troops and the French and English 
 forces. There was no one to check the 
 examination of a tomb. The woman 
 had been buried apparently not long 
 before. The cofSn was broken and the 
 foot accessible. M. de Fusier found 
 that it was impossible to preserve the 
 
 soft parts of it, but he kept the bones. 
 He published a minute acoount of the 
 injuries sustained by each of the foot 
 bones through the habit of tight band- 
 aging, with drawings of the deformed 
 foot and of the shoe worn by women and 
 girls who have been subjected by the 
 fashion of their country to this cruelty. 
 The account appeared more than 20 years 
 ago in a French Journal of Surgery and 
 Medicine and on this the paper which was 
 read before the Ethnographical Society 
 was based. Marco Polo does not men- 
 tion the tight bandaging of women's feet 
 nor the limp of Chinese women walking 
 as they always do, only upon the back 
 part of the foot. In the 14th century 
 a traveller who wrote in old French 
 was the first European to describe this 
 capricious deformity. • His statements 
 were brought to light by Pauthier who 
 was an ardent archasologist in all 
 matters connected with China. Some- 
 times a bone is removed to diminish 
 the size of the growing foot more rapid- 
 ly. At fifteen the bones cease to grow 
 and it is only then that pain is no 
 longer felt. Little girls weep from the 
 pain of tight bandaging but the sympa- 
 thising mothers -think it a necessity and 
 dare not allow their little feet to, re tain 
 their natural shape. The reason that 
 the husbands do not object to deformed 
 feet is stated to be that they think it 
 much better for wives to be always at 
 home. Unfortunately women submit 
 much too willingly to an absurd custom 
 from a desire not to be unfashionable. 
 Pressure on the foot bones and adjacent 
 nerves, says the French account, tends 
 to paralyse the thigh muscle known as 
 the triceps, and in other ways to pror 
 duce disordered action in neighbouring 
 localities by sympathy. The women of 
 the middle class imitate the rich and 
 even in poor families there are some 
 who have small feet the result, of ban- 
 daging when they were children. The 
 empress and all the Tartar ladies of the 
 court have feet of natural size, and 
 it need scarcely be said that no censor 
 has ever been known to present a me- 
 morial animadverting on what from a 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 Chinese point of view must be considered 
 a great irregularity. 
 
 Now as to the origin of this cruel 
 custom, the Chinese have themselves 
 traced it to the usages of a court in 
 the province of Kiangsu in the tenth 
 century. There seems to be no doubt 
 that the conclusion arrived at by the 
 native investigators is correct. It is, 
 however, based) not upon contemporary 
 diaries public or private but on circum- 
 stantial evidence. Li Yi was a prince 
 of the Imperial house of Tang who 
 after the fall of his dynasty retained 
 for a time a small principality and kept 
 his court at Nanking. The city was 
 besieged and taken in A.D. 975 by the 
 troops of Chao Kuang-yin founder of 
 the Sung dynasty. Too prudent to 
 commit suicide, Li Yi allowed himself 
 to be taken prisoner and was sent to 
 Kai-fing Fu, the new capital, to await 
 the pleasure of' the emperor. This 
 prince was in good humour having now 
 conquered the whole empire. The 
 highborn captive was treated kindly, 
 received a duke's title, and died in 978. 
 At Nanking he had in his prosperity 
 an inferior wife named Yao Niang, 
 whose dancing pleased him much. He 
 had a golden lotus made six feet in 
 height in his dancing hall. It would 
 be of stucco work gilt. Through the 
 interstices of the flower was seen the 
 new moon shining among floating clouds 
 of many colours. Li Yi wished the 
 feet of Yao Niang while dancing to look 
 like the new moon. He commanded 
 her therefore to bind her feet with silk 
 bandages so as to bend them into a 
 shape like the new moon. This became 
 the type of Chinese beauty in the feet. 
 The front part of the sole is forcibly 
 bent downwards, four of the toes are 
 bent under the sole, and the whole foot 
 assumes the appearance of a curve like 
 the new moon. This custom by follow- 
 ing which nine-tenths of the women 
 of China have to endure the pain of 
 tight bandaging from seven years of 
 age to fourteen or fifteen, really began 
 in this Fay. A man whom history con- 
 demns as hesitating and incapable, and 
 
 of whom no good and worthy actions 
 are recorded, became the founder of 
 this capricious fashion. He wished his 
 favourite wife when dancing before him 
 fo represent in her dress the clouds of 
 the evening sky and coloured as they 
 are coloured, and in her feet the moon. 
 A poet addressed to her one of his 
 compositions and from the expressions 
 he uses it is concluded that the custom 
 of foot bandaging really commenced 
 with her. The desire to have extremely 
 small feet cujved like, the moon- became 
 a mania which from Nanking spread 
 over the whole empire- gradually. So 
 imperceptible was the movement and 
 so entirely the effect of fashion unaided 
 and unimpeded by any imperial decree, 
 that the historians took no notice of 
 it and left it to poets and painters as 
 a part of their sphere to preserve the 
 record as to how and when it began. 
 The French account, exaggerates the 
 evils resulting to the 'system from the 
 cramping of the fore-foot and the de- 
 struction to a larger or smaller extent of 
 its bones, nerves, and muscles. Evidence 
 for these evil . results on the system 
 generally among the Chinese them- 
 selves is not forthcoming. la say- 
 ing too that infants are thus tormented 
 the French statements are wrong, but 
 the astonishing fact remains that for 
 nine centuries the women of China have 
 submitted to all this pain and to this 
 deprivation of freedom in motion for the 
 sake of having a beautiful foot and 
 because of the tyranny of fashion. This 
 country has great need of enlightened 
 views on mediciile and on the anatomy 
 of the human frame. It needs also 
 teaching in true art that the people 
 may learn in what real beauty consists. 
 The men are to blame for not enlighten- 
 ing the women on these points and the 
 women are greatly to blame for allowing 
 little girls of seven and eight years old 
 to be subjected, with or without their 
 own will, to this perfectly unnecessary 
 torture. 
 
THE ART OF CHINA AND JAPAN 
 
 9 
 
 THE ART OF CHINA ANJ> JAPAN. 
 "The Paris Exhibition of 1889 has 
 revealed Japan as the first nation in 
 the art of decoration. It is at the 
 ffeet of the Japanese Gamaliels that the 
 men of the West seek inspiration, to 
 apply krt to industry." Such is the 
 view of the correspondent of the North- 
 China Daily News writing October 19, 
 1889, and, he probably gives the opinion 
 which he heard commonly expressed in 
 the French capital. 
 
 This must mean that Japanese work- 
 men have an eye for the arrangement of 
 colour and for artistic grouping as well 
 as a perception of the beauty of forms 
 such as the European cannot equal. It 
 is a sign of the times that Chinese 
 and Japanese art are in the view of 
 ' European criticism destined to enlarge 
 our acquaintance with the beautiful. 
 Atkinson's works have' shown that 
 China and Japan help to fill up certain 
 vacant places in the sphere of art. 
 This need not surprise us, for patient 
 labour conquers all difficulties. Labor 
 omnia v'incit improbus. Such 'patient 
 working, carried on for a long period 
 by a large number of skilled workers, 
 is sure to be rewarded occasional- 
 ly by the impulses of genius which 
 come at one time or another quite un- 
 certainly to some favoured person, who 
 then by his work in carving or grouping 
 convinces observers that he is endowed 
 with " the vision and the faculty divine." 
 It has been the happy fortune of 
 European nations to be to each other 
 stimulating neighbours for many succes- 
 sive centuries in matters relating to 
 art. When Italy obtained deep glimpses 
 into the world of beauty through her 
 great painters and sculptors, all Europe 
 reaped the benefit. Our own Enghsh 
 artists of repute were able to attain 
 higher excellence in their ideal composi- 
 tions because, by studying great paint- 
 ings, they practically placed themselves 
 under the instruction of the men of 
 genius who produced them. European 
 excellence in art has been great in 
 proportion to the amount* of good in- 
 fluence thus exerted in each century 
 
 on students by the works of their pre- 
 decessors in their own and neighbour- 
 ing couritries. Ideas in design, beauti- 
 ful effects in grouping and the intro- 
 duction of every sort of improvement 
 in materials and workmanship are 
 easily imitated when the worker has 
 them before him, and so the progress 
 of one nation becomes the progress of 
 many. But it is perfectly possible that 
 certain fashions may rule for a time 
 and may have a limiting effect on the 
 advance of the sesthetic student. Eu- 
 ropean art has not penetrated into every 
 region of the universe of beauty. Re- 
 sults still remain to be achieved be- 
 cause fashion has held back the aspir- 
 ing student and forced him by its in- 
 fluence into certain paths where he 
 could attain a temporary popularity. 
 He has been kept from pursuing certain 
 other paths where new beauties would 
 have rewarded his efforts because the 
 suggestion was wanting. The Japanese 
 and Chinese artists have been working 
 for centuries in a world of their own and 
 derived suggestions from other sources 
 than those of Europe. Their art is 
 Buddhistic instead of being Christian. 
 The power of the Christian faith in 
 elevating the sphere of European art 
 is shewn in the works of the Italian 
 painters. The greatest men of genius in 
 the West have chosen Christian subjects 
 as richer than any other in sesthetic 
 suggestiveness. Nowhere could they 
 find such examples of moral purity and 
 aspiring spirituality of thought as were 
 presented in Christianity. This religion 
 elevated the powers of the great painters 
 as nothing else ever has done. Sympa- 
 thy with their favourite subjects gave 
 to Raphael and Domenichino their 
 undoubted superiority in their delinea- 
 tion of beauty in the realm of art. The 
 artists of China and Japan never had 
 these special advantages. Indian art 
 is €!ssentially grotesque and these . 
 artists . trained under Buddhism were 
 obliged to work therefore. very much 
 on grotesque subjects. So also it is . 
 with the mythology of the genii in 
 China. An old man with an exaggerated 
 
10 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 head sitting under a tree with a crooked 
 staff beside him, or riding on a coW, 
 is to them a subject of high art. They 
 wish to glorify old age and they draw 
 it in the form of one' of the genii,' who, 
 with the deep lines of age upon his face, 
 looks contentedly upon a bright sky 
 above or on the waters of a river flowing 
 past him. Such is the limited height to 
 which Chinese art can attain, because 
 the vision of the Christian immortality 
 has never shone upon the painter's mind. 
 Yet restricted as is the sphere of ses- 
 thetie suggestiveness in Buddhist coun- 
 tries, the world of nature is the same in 
 the east as in the west. Human life 
 has abundant variety and may furnish 
 without limit interesting subjects to the 
 artist working in China and Japan. 
 Flower forms grow spontaneously and 
 with much independence, as if they 
 will not be restricted, whatever the 
 gardener may do to control them by the 
 fashions of an age. The native artists 
 of these countries for a thoug3,nd years 
 or more have studied flowers and 
 drawn them with Chinese ink or with 
 colours, and probably their productions 
 may be quite safely brought into com- 
 parison with the flower painting of 
 Holland and other European countries. 
 Here perspective does not affect the 
 question ; but when landscape enters, 
 the eastern painters lose in the com- 
 parison. As a compensation, however, 
 for the want of perspective, they have 
 acquired the habit of writing with 
 the Chinese brush with the hand 
 resting upon the wrist only. This 
 gives the artist the advantage of being 
 able to make beautiful curves with 
 enviable facility. The grace; beauty 
 and energy of curved lines made with 
 the Chinese brush by those accustomed 
 to use it in writing from boyhood, are 
 the special appanage of Chinese and 
 Japanese art. This is 'perhaps the chief 
 element of power which now enables the 
 artists of these countries to take a not 
 undistinguished place in the art ex- 
 hibitions of the west. But to this must 
 be added the decorative insight revealed. 
 at the competitive exhibitioir in Paris. 
 
 Mr. Josiah Conder has lately written 
 a paper on the Theory of Japanese 
 Flower Arrangements, in which he shews 
 that the Buddhist custom of offering 
 flowers in the temples of Shakyamuni 
 and Kwanyin has led to the develop- 
 ment of a peculiar art known to prevail 
 only in Japa'h. In accordance with the 
 custom of that country there is the 
 principle of centrality and that of diver- 
 gence. The flowers may be arranged 
 round an upright stem, or they may 
 follow it as it bends wilfully to the one 
 side or the other. The vases and baskets 
 in which flowers may be placed vary in 
 form and they may be disposed in rela- 
 tion to each other according to rules of 
 art. The Japanese have for centifties 
 practised this art and it is still flourish- 
 ing among them. It is a curious fact 
 that a Chinese basket maker and his 
 daughter many hundred years ago are 
 mentioned as having furnished a Daimio 
 with certain basket shapes which have 
 since become highly fashionable. Mr. 
 Conder 's paper is richly illustrated with 
 woodcuts and it is printed in the tran- ' 
 sactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 
 for October, 1889. In Mr. A-nderson's 
 works on the Pictorial Art of Japan 
 and that of Professor Rein on the In- 
 dustries of Japan there is a full recogni- 
 tion of the part that China took in the 
 origination and diffusion of art in Corea 
 and Japan. These authors are, however, 
 too decided in their condemnation of the 
 Chinese art of the present time. They 
 say it is an utter ruin. Nothing is left 
 of aspiration or achievement. This is 
 certainly a noticeable exaggeration. The 
 fact is that the province of Kiangsu 
 holds just now a high place in calligraphy 
 and in painting. In several of the cities 
 of the Soochow plain there are living- or 
 lately deceased artists whose productions 
 have won for them an almost national 
 fame. When decorative pictures are 
 needed to ornament expensive buildings 
 in other provinces it is to this province 
 that orders aje sent, because the artists 
 of this locality fi.re specially gifted with 
 originality afld skill.. It need, not tlien 
 be asserted that Chinese art is dead. 
 
CHANGE IN THE CHINESE CLIMATE. 
 
 11 
 
 Yet it is indubitable that^Jhe modem 
 Japanese school to which it gave origin 
 in the Tang dynasty has now gone for 
 ahead of it in the race of excellence. 
 
 CHANGE IN THE CHINESE 
 CLIMATE. 
 The climate of Asia is becojning colder 
 than it formerly was, and its tropical 
 animals and plants are retreating south- 
 ward at a slow rate. This is truQ of 
 China and it is also the case in Western 
 Asia. With regard to tropical animals 
 in Europe it will be remembered that 
 the lion formerly inhabited Thrace. 
 The elephant in a wild state was hunted 
 by Tiglath Pileser, King of Assyria, 
 near Carchemish which lay near the 
 Euphrates in Syria. This was in the 
 eighth century before Christ.' Four or 
 five centuries before this Thothmes III, 
 kiiig of Egypt, huijted the same animal 
 near Aleppo. The region on the right 
 bank of the Euphrates now belonging 
 to the pachalic of Aleppo must at that 
 time have been warmer than now. 
 Formerly when China was .well wooded, 
 and the people few in number, wild 
 animals would abound. This explains 
 the fact that in high antiquity the 
 elephant and rhinoceros were known to 
 the Chinese, that they had names for 
 them, and that theii: tusks and hornS' 
 were valued by them. "When . two 
 centuries before the Christian era 
 they conquered Cochin-China and Cam- 
 bodia the name of the prefecture 
 most to the south," that is to say,, 
 where Saigon now is, was "the Elephant 
 prefecture" and afterwards "Elephant 
 forest." South China 'has a very wafm 
 dlimatb which melts insensibly into 
 that of Coehin-China so that the animals 
 of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula would, if 
 there has been a ' secular cooling of 
 climate, retreat gradually to the south. 
 This is just what seems to have taJcen 
 place. For some centuries past elephants 
 have been occasionally sent, as presents 
 by the King of Cochin-China to Peking . 
 to supply the emperor with the most 
 noble kind, of draught animals; For 
 
 the worship of the Temple of Heaven 
 they have been repeatedly used. But 
 it is too cold in Peking, where the 
 latitude is 40 degrees north, for the 
 animal to enjoy good health and adapt 
 himself to his duties. The keeper can- 
 not venture to pronounce any of them 
 suitable for the' office if they shew the 
 least remainder of their wildness. Years 
 have passed since an emperor has gone 
 to the Temple of Heaven drawn by 
 an elephant. Instead of this he has 
 been conveyed there in' a sedan on 
 the shoulders of the ordinary sixteen 
 bearers. Now Jerusalem is about the 
 latitude of Shanghai, and Aleppo and 
 ancient Carchemish are in the latitude 
 of Shantung and Honan. We find in 
 the history of Tso Ch'iu Ming that in 
 the time of Confucius elephants' were 
 in use for' the army at Chingchou 
 between Ichang and Hankow on the 
 Yangtze river. The latitude of this 
 place is very little south of Shanghai. 
 The passage reads (Legge p...756) "the 
 king to keep back the army of Woo 
 made the men lead elephants with 
 torches tied to' their tails so as to rush 
 upon the troops of Woo." A hundred and 
 fifty years after this we find Mencius 
 speaking of the tiger," the leopard, the 
 rhinoceros, and the elephant, as having 
 been in many parts of the empire driven 
 away from the neighbourhood of the Chi- 
 nese inhabitants by the founders of the 
 Chou dynasty and previously by the Em- 
 perors Yao andShun. Tigers and leopards 
 have been diminishing in numbers ever 
 since, but they_ are not yet by any 
 means extinct in China. The elephant 
 and rhinoceros are again spoken of in 
 the first century of our era. Wang-mang, 
 the usurper, trained his troops to bold- 
 ness by sending them to hunt for wild 
 beaists and for these among the rest. 
 This he did to win favour with the 
 people whose crops greatly suffered from 
 the incursions of hungry animals. Such 
 hunting must have been, however, so far 
 as elephants are concerned, in the ex- 
 treme sotith, for the author of the Shwor 
 wen who wrote in the second century 
 says the elephant is a beast of the 
 
n 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 southern Yue country by which he 
 would mean Kuangsi and other ad- 
 jacent parts of South China. The last 
 occasion on which elephants with torches 
 tied to their tails were used to rout 
 enemies in battle appears to have been 
 in the early part of the sixth century 
 when a general of the Liang dynasty 
 adopted tlfis manoeuvre. If to these 
 particulars regarding elephants be added 
 the retreat from the rivers of South 
 China of the ferocious alligators 
 that formerly infested them, the change 
 in the fauna of China certainly seems 
 to shew that the climate is much less 
 favourable for tropical animals than 
 it formerly was. In fact it appears to 
 have become dryer and colder than it' 
 was. The water buffalo still lives and 
 is an extremely useful domestic animal 
 all along the Yangtze and south of it 
 but is not seen north of the old Yellow 
 River in the province of Kiangsu. The 
 Chinese alligator, a mild species, is found 
 still in the Yangtze but so rare is its 
 'appearance that foreign residents in 
 China knew nothing about it till it was 
 described by M. Fauvel. It will probably 
 not survive many years after the 20th 
 century has begun. 
 
 The flora is also affected by the in- 
 creating coldness of the climate in China. 
 The bamboo is still grown in Peking 
 with the aid of good shelter, moisture 
 and favourable soil, but it is not found 
 naturally growing into forest in North 
 China as was its habit two thousand years 
 ago. It grows now in that part of the 
 empire as a sort of garden plant only, 
 so far as is known at present. It is in 
 Szechuan that the southern flora reaches 
 farthest to thenorthward.Orangesflourish 
 there under the protection of high moun- 
 tains and, with the aid of the mild 
 climate there enjoyed. So also the lichee 
 is found there. In the neighbourhood 
 of Shanghai oranges do not grow in the 
 open air, nor can the trees weather the 
 winter unprotected except in the island 
 of Situngting in the great lake near 
 Soochow. In Ch^kiang oranges are met 
 with growing in the open air at W^nchow 
 in about 28 degrees of latitude. Western 
 
 China is somewhat more tropical in its 
 cliinate at the same latitude nortji than 
 is the case with eastern China. The 
 growth of the orange and lichee in Sze- 
 chuan is an illustration of this fact. 
 The reason is found in the high moun- 
 tains which in that vast province pro- 
 tect the cultivated plains from the cold 
 winds of the north. 
 
 In the selected passages of beautiful 
 writing read all over China under the 
 name of Koo Wen is one by Han Wen- 
 kung. He addresses the genius of the 
 alligator and appeals to him as the 
 new prefect of Chaochoufu appointed 
 by the Emperor, to submit to his will 
 and leave the Swatow river if not in 
 three days, then in five, and if not in 
 five then in seven. Go he must, and 
 cease to eat men, oxen, deer, bears, 
 pigs and other animals in that part of 
 the territory marked out of the empire 
 by the great Yiii If he refused, the 
 prefect would select a force of his 
 strongest and most skilful people and 
 pursue him with the strong bow and 
 poisoned arrows till he and all his 
 kindred were exterminated. The alli- 
 gators obediently disappeared from the 
 Swatow river and Were never seen there 
 again. This document was immensely 
 admired and has been highly popular 
 ever since. It dates from the beginning 
 of the ninth century. From it we learn 
 that it was then that the Canton climate 
 became slightly colder than it had been 
 previously,and thus freed the inhabitants 
 from a scourge which they had always 
 suffered from before. 
 
 CHINESE VIEWS ON SCIENCE. 
 The views now held by intelligent 
 Chinese on the origin of science are that 
 the knowledge possessed by their ances- 
 tors leaked out to the men of western 
 nations, who improved on the informa- 
 tion they, received and gradually deve- 
 loped the sciences and inventions of the 
 modern age. This idea was started by 
 .Mei Wu-ngan in the reign of Kanghi 
 and has been maintained ever since with 
 singular persistence. The cultivated class 
 
CHINESE VIEWS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 IS 
 
 in this country have consoleithem&elves 
 with this thought during the past two 
 centuries. ' On the face of this theory- 
 there is no small amount of absurdity, 
 but the party of progress know how to 
 make efficient use of i]b as an argument. 
 The Chinese have been accused of many 
 things. But no one ever yet acc^sed 
 them of want of astuteness p putting 
 reasons in a forcible way, or of not being 
 able to make a good case out of a bad 
 one. This may.be ejcempli^ed in the 
 use the literary Chipese hwe, made of 
 tjie result of Mei Wu-ngan's researches 
 into antiquity. Those who are really 
 in favour of introducing foreign im- 
 provem&;nts say, we wish to make 
 use of the knowledge of western men 
 because we know that what they 
 haxe attained in science and invention 
 hfis he,eii through the help that our 
 sages gave them. We have a good 
 rigit to it. None of our people ought 
 to hinder our getting tb^ full beneiit 
 of what is our own. There is a class 
 who are extremely jealous of the intel- 
 lectual superiority which may be claim- 
 ed by Ei«:ope on account of progress in 
 ciyilis^'ticin. Those who belong to this 
 class s^-y, we wiU »ot for a moment 
 allow the cj4ims to superiority. What 
 Europe has doiie she has done through 
 thp help we gaye. If we did nqt exsict- 
 ly give science to Europe we gave them 
 the fruitful germ' which produced it. 
 They have the science of optics, but in 
 our Motsz we find that refleptipn from 
 mirrprs was l^nown in the days of Men- 
 cius. The men of the west hold that 
 the earth is round. Thi? was believed 
 also by our poet Chii Yuen, who in his 
 ode on astronomy announces this doc- 
 trine; and this was not many years after 
 Mencius. This being so we ought not, 
 they ad?l, to be ashamed of the study 
 of western science. We are the rivals 
 . of the western kingdqms and it is good 
 policy to use thfeir spears in order to 
 pierce their shields. We ought to 
 train our youth in western science so 
 th^t we may know how best to 
 meet the meil of the west in the 
 struggle to resist their encro^hqientg. 
 
 By .arguing in this way the Chinese 
 shew that according to their way 
 of thinking political autonomy and 
 national independence are closely linked 
 with the claim of intellectual equality. 
 'Political necessity drives them to 
 adopt a certain arrogance of tone 
 whick the facts do not justify. If 
 they were politically strong they could 
 do as the Romans did with Greece. 
 The Romans governed Greece and 
 cheerfully admitted that the country 
 they had conquered was the mother of 
 philosophy, science and arj. They 
 m^de no claim to equality with Greece 
 in scientific inventiveness but sent their 
 sons to Athens as to a university. The 
 Chinese are stronger now than they qver 
 wejre, but they are not strong enough 
 to be able to resign the claim to intel- 
 lectual equality. 
 
 Mei Wu-ngan and others read the 
 bo(jiks transla,ted by the Jesuits,including 
 Euclid and the teaching of astronomy, 
 and they were delighted with -the new 
 views. The Jesuits, however, were in 
 high favour at Court and while they 
 basked in sunshine the native majihe- 
 mfiticians shivered in the shade. This 
 was not agreeable and the native 
 astronomers went home each day from* 
 Court dissatisfied. Yang Kwang-hsien 
 particularly took a bold stand. He 
 ventured to foretell an eclipse, ^dam 
 Schaal foretold the same eclipse 
 and his hours, minute^, and seconds, 
 agreed with the reality. This was a 
 crucial case. All Peking was waiting 
 with interest to know the result. The 
 prophecy of the foreigner proved by its 
 fylfilment the i^rrors of the Chinese 
 mathematician who retired in disgrace 
 from the position which he held. He 
 went back to his hojme in Hweichou to 
 write the book called " The Inevitable 
 Exposure," which consisted of a series of 
 calumnious and grossly iintrue accu- 
 sations against the Jesuit fathers. This 
 bad book made him much more notorious 
 th^n did his works on mathematics. 
 The unscrupulous enemies of the western 
 men and of their i;eligion have reprinted 
 this book again and again. At the 
 
u 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 present time they still do so. But a more 
 intelligent and fair-minded class are 
 ashamed of the book and would burn 
 every copy if they' could. Very different 
 was the tone of Mei Wu-ngan who was 
 invited three days in succession by the 
 Emperor (Kanghi) Shengtsu to converse 
 with him for a long time upon mathema- 
 tical subjects. His attitude was patriotic 
 and scholarly. He had a fondness for 
 mathematics and read voraciously. He 
 was therefore in a position to criticise 
 western knowledge in an appreciative 
 manner. • He says, of the precession of 
 the equinoxes thatthe western astronomy 
 explains it not as a slow movement of 
 the ecliptic but of the stars in the sky, 
 while Chinese astronomy has always 
 held it to be a slow motion of tha 
 ecliptic. He rejects the Chinese view, 
 which dates from the fifth .century, 
 but was wrong 'in doing so for it 
 was in fact more rational than the 
 other. Sir Isaac Newton, who was 
 the first to explain the precession , of 
 the equinoxes, was living at the time, 
 and. he taught that the apparent dis- 
 placement of the stars known as the 
 precession is due to a twist in the 
 earth's axis of revolution, making its 
 ' north and south poles revolve round 
 the poles of the ecliptic in 25,000 
 years. This new view condemns both 
 that of the Jesuits and that of the 
 Chinese, for neither do the stars move 
 fifty seconds in a year nor does the 
 ecliptic move that distance. But of 
 the two, the Chinese view is certainly 
 more nearly right. The Jesuits, how- 
 ever, were not then allowed to teach 
 the daring doctrines of the new astro- 
 nomy. This great scholar died with- 
 out knowing the advantage in argu- 
 ment that belonged to his country's 
 astronomy' on this point. 
 
 Netv views on the shape of the earth 
 and the properties of a right-angled 
 triangle were known very early to the 
 Babylonians and Egyptians and first 
 reached China somewhere about eleven 
 hundred years before Christ. They were 
 taught in the schools of China from that 
 time, but only in those where mathema- 
 
 tics was studied. The ordinary literati 
 did not know these doctrines., YetTseng- 
 tsz, author of. the first of the Four Books, 
 knew of the rotundity. Medical writ- 
 ings of the third century before Christ 
 state the rotundity with unfaltering 
 distinctness. Chii Yuen the poet, in 
 undertaking like Lucretius to describe 
 the system of the universe, gives us 
 the Ptolemaic theory of nine hea- 
 vens, or nine concentric spheres, which 
 involves a belief in the rotundity 
 of the earth. This theory is called 
 Ptolemy's but in fact it was both 
 Babylonian and Egyptian, and, as we 
 now know, Chinese. It was on these 
 undeniable facts that the great scholar 
 Mei, the friend of Kanghi, planted his 
 foot firmly and said science belonged to 
 China before its light shone over Europe. 
 The Europeans received it from us. 
 It was our sages who gave them the 
 knowledge of the rotundity of the eaitth 
 and the first principles of geometry. 
 
 A MUSEUM AT PEKING. 
 On account of the large influx of 
 students at the examinations in Peking 
 a museum in that city would be of great 
 advantage. Provision for food andlodging 
 on these occasions has to be made for 
 20,000 or 30,000 strangers for about a 
 month. This shews the capacity of 
 Peking for entertaining. So also, the 
 arrival and departure of high officers, 
 civil and military, causes the entrance 
 and exit of thousands of persons every 
 year. This is so much the more the 
 case because of the great roads leading 
 from the metropolis into Manchuria, 
 Corea, Mongolia, Russiji and the Turkish 
 province. The Government appoint- 
 ments of officials to the provinces of 
 China proper and correspondence with 
 them involves an enormous amount of 
 travelling to and from Peking. The 
 constant influx of strangers thus ca,used 
 would render an attractive museum 
 very useful. It is a city, too, where 
 education is favoured and it should 
 be remembered that in Peking there 
 is an unusual number of schools 
 
A MUSEUM AT PEKING. 
 
 15 
 
 and colleges which might Jje brought 
 into occasional relation with the sup- 
 posed museum. This would be greatly 
 to the . advantage of students who are 
 receiving an education on foreign prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 The best position for the museum 
 would be at the Office for Foreign Affairs, 
 in connection with the College which 
 will ultimately have conceded to it; it 
 is to be hoped, the powers that will con- 
 stitute it a real Government Univer- 
 sity. Such an affiliated institution would 
 have the benefit of the superintendence 
 and efficient aid of the President and 
 Professors of the Tung-wln-kuan. It 
 could thus be worked without friction 
 by the same wheels and movements 
 which work the college. With regard to 
 the objects that should be placed in the 
 museum, they should be similar to those 
 found in national museums in Europe and 
 America as well as those found in special 
 museums and in observatories. The Chi- 
 nese part should embrace the exhibition 
 of archaeological specimens, of books, 
 rubbings of inscriptions, local products, 
 commercial samples. There should be 
 a foreign and native depaitment. No 
 one knowfi how far the inmates of ;the 
 palace go to visit the Zoological collec- 
 tion of stuffed animals in the west park 
 adjoining the Cathedral. They were 
 stuffed under P^re David's superintend- 
 ence. Several hundred specimens of 
 birds, beasts, and insects are found 
 there, some of them from foreign coun- 
 tries. Many visits must have been paid 
 by occupants of the palace of all grades 
 to see this collection since the Cathe- 
 dral was acquired for the palace. This 
 ■collection is not at all likely to be 
 thrown open to the public. Mongol 
 visitors were formerly allowed to visit 
 certain buildings containing many curi- 
 ous things of a Buddhist kind in the 
 northern part of the park on the edge 
 of the lake. The park is now assigned 
 to the empress dowager and no such 
 liberty can in future he allowed. 
 Mongol visitors in winter are extreme- 
 ly fond of sight-seeing. A museum 
 adjoining the government college would 
 
 prove interesting to the princes and 
 their suites who come long distances to 
 pay'homage at the new year, especially 
 if the emperor should confer on them 
 the privilege of visiting the museum as 
 a mark of imperial favour. The reason 
 why this mode of conferring the entree 
 to the museum as a mark -of favour 
 is here mentioned is the possibility 
 that without the emperor's express 
 permission official persons would not 
 be persuaded to go see it. Many 
 a Peking resident in the rich families 
 would like to go to Tientsin, see a 
 steamer and take a trip on the railway, 
 but cannot venture because." his duties 
 do not call him there.'' Some plan 
 needs to be carefully excogitated which 
 should ensure 'the proposed museum 
 being inspected by official persons as 
 such and at the same time prove no 
 bar to the inspection of the museum by 
 non-official persons and by ladies. Vast 
 crowds visit the fairs of Peking and 
 none more than the new year fair for 
 the sale* of curios, books, precious stones 
 and pictures. This provesj that Peking 
 is inhabited by a population taking great 
 pleasure in sight-seeing. 
 
 The native archaeologists of China 
 have for several centuries done much 
 useful work and during the present 
 dynasty they have shown great activity.' 
 Every antique cash, vase, mirror, foot 
 rule, musical instrument or inscription 
 has been studied and written about 
 with ingenious elaboration. It is time 
 that there should be a museum in Peking 
 accessible to students who wish to 
 examine antiques or copies of antiques. 
 The stone drums are already there and 
 thfere is no bar to observing them. The 
 Confucian temple where they are kept 
 was built in the time of the Mongol 
 sovereignty of China. They were 
 brought there from Honan, where they 
 were kept for several centuries while 
 the capital was in that province. They 
 are now in the gateway of the templie, 
 so that the great scholars of the coun- 
 try seem not to have known exactly 
 what best to do with these relics. They 
 should not be removed, foi they are 
 
16 
 
 MODERN {JHtNA. 
 
 well under coyer fiiid 'are not likely to 
 be injured by weather. But other such 
 relics should, when found, be provided 
 with a refuge' in the museum. It was 
 not loijig ago that a considerable collec- 
 tion of coins of the Roman Emperors 
 was discovered. Money minted in 
 Europe in the first and second cen- 
 turies found its way to China and 
 was there recently recovered. It is 
 a pity that these coins should not 
 be retained in China in ■ a public 
 museum, because Europe has number- 
 less Roman coins and caji very well do 
 without thes,e. They ought to be pur- 
 chased fqr a museum in Peking, and in 
 the catalogue of such a museum the 
 circumstances of their discovery jn 
 Shansi should be related and their 
 similarity to coins in Eujtopean museums 
 pointed out. Sv^P^h a catalogue in 
 Chinese would be a very saleable 
 bopk, because there are archaeologist^ 
 in .every provipcp and pi;efepture. Ad- 
 mission to the museum should be 
 free and a profit • made by the sale 
 of catalogues. The, catalogues should 
 be prepared by the professors, each 
 taking charge of his own department. 
 There would be an international and 
 
 ' legal chamber, a chamber .for natural 
 philosophy, astronomy and chemistry, 
 
 'for physiology and anatomy, for zoology 
 and botany, for the products of England, 
 France, America, Germany, Russia, 
 Africa, India, and other countries. Such 
 a museum would not only gratify the 
 sight-seer, but have a most important 
 educational influence on the country. 
 
 THE MIGRATION OP INDUSTRIES. 
 
 The inevitable result of the gradual 
 change ta.king place in the Chinese 
 climate is the migration of jjndustries 
 from North to South. This is true for 
 example of varnish and gilk, which in 
 the most ancient times were products 
 of North China as the valuable geogra- 
 phical record, the Yii Kung, tells us. 
 These articles so characteristic of China 
 and so useful in promoting the industry, 
 and qivilisation, and thereby the wealth 
 
 and population of the country, are 
 spoken of together in that treatise as 
 tribute from Shantung four thousand 
 years ago. The yarnish tree is mentioned 
 also in the Booji of Odes in ' a poem 
 located in Weihwei Pu, now belonging 
 to north-eastern Honan. Though the 
 produce > of the tree is not mentioned 
 there, yet the fact that that part of 
 China has the same latitudje as .Shan- 
 tung, renders the fact a ypiluabie one, 
 Also one of the tributaries of the 
 Wei in . north-western China was called 
 the Varnish River, and the resident 
 population civilised by the Chow im- 
 perial family about B.C. 1200 had.partly 
 come from the neighbourhood of this 
 river. The name would naturally 
 originate, if not bestowed on ^cconnji 
 of the dark colour of the channel or 
 the banks, from the trees that, grew near 
 it. At present the yarnish tree grows in 
 Szechuan, in Kueichow, and to a small 
 extent on the hills of Ningpo. 'A. 
 large part of the varnish which pays 
 duty at the foreign custom houses finds 
 its way to Hankow from the ,south ^.nd 
 west and there becomes distributed, 
 eight thousand piculs leaving Hankow 
 eagh year. Shanghai distributes 3,000 
 piculs of varnish in a year through th^ 
 foreign customs. The lacquer ware ojf 
 Ningpo has a good repute and here 
 1,100 piculs of varnish are imported, 
 yearly. This is an instance of the mi- 
 gration of industry. The lacquer ware 
 of China which is the parent of the 
 lacquer ware of Japan, would be first 
 made in the northern provinces, when 
 varnish was produced .there. Now how- 
 ever the lacquer ware industry flourishes 
 in central and southern China chiefly. 
 South China receives a good portion of 
 its varnish from Sg.igon and Cochin 
 China. As this tree formerly produced 
 varnish in thirty-six degrees of latitude 
 and now prodiices it in the belt qf 
 country south of about 32 degrees, 
 we may suppose that Shantung four 
 thousand years ago had as mild a 
 winter as Shanghai has now, and the 
 Yellow River would not be frozen over 
 perhaps in any part of it course. 
 
THE MIGRATION OF INDUSTRIE^. 
 
 17 
 
 In regard to the silk indust*)^ it should 
 be noted that the merchants who in the 
 times of the Roman Empire engaged in 
 , the silk trade as then conducted by the 
 Central Asian route.in taking with them 
 silk manufactured into cloth, would na- 
 turally take that of north China. North 
 China has ever since the earliest, men- 
 tion of silk in the Yii Kung, continued 
 to produce silk, and there is no province 
 where the mulberry tree and the silk- 
 worm are not found, but with the cool- 
 ing of the climate the main production 
 of silk has dome to belong to the central 
 provinces ; so that last year Shanghai 
 exported 116,000 piculs. Wuhu and 
 Hankow produced, for export 1,800 and 
 21,000 piculs respectively. Ichang ex- 
 ported 11,000 piculs. Thus in the 
 Yangtze valley 150,000 piculs were 
 exported, while from Canton, Kowloon 
 and Lappa the ambunt was not much 
 more than- a fourth of that, or 40,000 
 picuts of silk. Ohefoo exported 14,000 
 piculs and Newchwang of oak leaf silk 
 13,000 piculs. This is the result now 
 after more than 4,000 years of the 
 cultivation of the mulberry and the 
 silk worm oak and the production of 
 silk. The proportion of silk culture in 
 . north China then is now one fifteenth 
 of that of all China. Three-fourths of 
 the whole export is from central China 
 and to make up the remaining fourth 
 •Canton sends a^way three times as much 
 as Chefoo. The conclusion to be drawn 
 from these facts is, th»t north China is 
 becoming gradually less suitable than 
 it was for the mulberry tree and 
 the silkworm, which prefer a wafmer 
 temperature than they now JEind there. 
 The Governors of the Southern pro- 
 vinces may well aim at an extension of 
 the silk culture in their jurisdiction. 
 This they are now doing. Among the 
 latent causes which lead them to this 
 action is in reality this one, the gradual 
 cooling of the climate. The origin of 
 the silk culture of central China must 
 be dated about B.C. 1200 when the 
 Chow family sent out a colony to Soo- 
 chow. The Chow family would teach 
 the aborigines on the banks of the 
 
 Yangtze agriculture, house building 
 and weaving. At least we know by the 
 Book of Odes that they did this in the 
 upper valley of the Wei in Shensi a 
 little earlier. What they did for the 
 aborigines in Shensi in shewing them 
 how to build suitable houses they would 
 do in the Soochow plain in introducing 
 silk weaving. The silkworm is native 
 to the north and feeds. on oak leaves as 
 well as on leaves of other trees. In • 
 central China the mulberry is planted 
 purposely and the silk industry in all its 
 departments may safely be regarded as 
 introduced from another locality. The 
 Soochow plain was the appanage of a 
 great- colony settled in the Shang , 
 dynasty and governed by members of 
 the Chow imperial family. The colonies 
 of the ancient Chinese were led by men 
 who taught both useful arts aild good 
 morality. It was in this- way that the 
 foundations were laid of the great ho- 
 mogeneous nation which we now see 
 ■ occupying China Proper. Unity was 
 produced by uniformity in instruction. 
 ..No outside races were prevented from 
 absorption, but while they were absorbed 
 they became thfe possessors of a like in- 
 dustry and morallity with the race which 
 absorbed them. We see how-the system 
 works at Newchwang. On account .of 
 quick growth of population in Shantung 
 the Manchurian province was colonised. 
 Many Shantung people went there by 
 junk from Chefoo. They introduced 
 the industries with which they were 
 familiar. This was the origin of silk 
 manufacture there. The Quercus Si- 
 nensis grew wild and the cocoons which 
 were found on it were capable of being 
 utilised by the new emigrants. About 
 twenty years ago the silk of the oak 
 leaf silkworm began to- be exported 
 from Newchwang, to meet a demand by 
 the manufacturers of plush and velvet. 
 The natives of Shantung were well able 
 to extend the production in Manichuria, 
 because they were thoroughly accustomed 
 to this culture in their own country. 
 Their success shews that oak silkworms 
 in forty degrees of latitude do well, but 
 probably produce a finer silk in latitude 
 
18 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 thirty-six. Mulberry fed worms do fairly 
 well in latitude thirty-six, but thirty- 
 one suits them better, while on the left 
 bank of the West river in Canton province 
 in twenty-lhree degrees they also do re- 
 markably well. There is a good demand 
 in Europe for Canton silk which is pro- 
 duced in twenty-three degrees of latitude. 
 The planting of the silk industry in 
 eastern Canton ought to be a success as 
 also in Kuangsi and Kueichow. The 
 Chinese high officials who are seeking 
 to spread sericulture in those parts of 
 the country are to be commended for 
 the effort, which it may be expected 
 will result in making the people richer 
 and increasing the revenue of the 
 empire. The mulberry tree silk was 
 formerly produced in latitude thirty-six 
 with a minimum temperature of twenty- 
 five in the winter. The industry 
 migrated southward when the winter 
 minimum sank to ten in the north and 
 the Yangtze valley acquired the trade 
 . which earlier was enjoyed by the popu- 
 . lation that lined the Yellow River. 
 
 CHINA'S TURKISH PROVINCE. 
 
 Since the Chinese government extin- 
 guished tire internal rebellions which 
 caused such widespread anarchy in the 
 reign of Hsien Fgng, its policy has been 
 to extend the number of provinces and 
 change military for civil government 
 wherever it was possible. This has been 
 done in Chinese Turkestan and in the 
 Moukden province. In doing this, the 
 object has been not to introduce a new 
 system but to expand the area of the 
 existing civil administration. The mi- 
 litary commandant of Moukden was 
 changed for a civil governor. So also 
 Sin Keang, when conquered by Tso 
 Tsung-tang, was reduced to a province 
 to be ruled on the same principles as 
 China proper. The Mahommedan re- 
 bellion there was crushed and Chinese 
 rule re-established on a more secure 
 basis than before. The Turkish and 
 Persian Mahommedans cannot be per- 
 mitted to separate themselves from 
 Chinese control within the Chinese 
 
 territory, any more than autonomy 
 could be allowed to the Mahommedans 
 in India or in Russia. The advantage 
 of appointing a governor is found in his 
 beino; able to control the civil officers 
 of each city as well as those who are 
 military. Iifimediately under him are 
 the brigadier-general (chen tai) who 
 has the troops in his care, and the tao- 
 tais, who govern the city magistrates. 
 After the successive attacks made in 
 Formosa ' by the Japanese and the 
 French, the Foochow governor was 
 transferred to Formosa in order that 
 there might be in the island a central 
 authority who could decide matters of 
 doubt, and act with promptitude in 
 emergencies. This step was not taken 
 till after it had been long thought 
 about. Political events hastened it 
 after the accumulation during some 
 years of documents 'sent to Peking to 
 point out its advantages. The exten- 
 sion of this system of civil administra- 
 tion in Tartary, both in the Turkish, and 
 Manchu provinces, is likely to prove 
 quite successful because of the increase 
 of emigration from China proper in 
 these two regions. The fecundity of 
 the Chinese race in all parts of China 
 proper has been specially remarkable 
 during the last two centuries, and as 
 droughts and floods have never been 
 more destructive than they are now, 
 emigration .becomes ingvitable. This- 
 renders it a necessity to extend into the 
 agricultural tracts of Tartary the civil 
 administration to which, the emigrants 
 were accustomed in their original homes. 
 A Chinese writer says that western 
 maps are defective when they come to 
 those parts of Asia which are not acces- 
 sible by sea and are seldom visited by 
 travellers. Once, however, he tells us, 
 when he was in Calcutta he looked at 
 one map in a museum which gave very 
 minute details of the Chinese posses- 
 sions in central Asia. He copied it and 
 translated the names of places, rivers 
 and mountains into Chinese. On return- 
 iBg.to his own country he compared his 
 map with Chinese maps made in suc- 
 cessive periods and with the information 
 
CHINA'S TURKISH PROVINCE. 
 
 19 
 
 given in Chinese history, adding more 
 minute particulars found in books 
 of the present dynasty. He inserted 
 boundaries, telegraph lines, railways and 
 other novelties in the Russian portion, 
 marking them with appropriate colours 
 for greater distinctness. He .made his 
 map, he says, so that the T'sung-ling 
 chain, bet-v^een Russian ' Turkestan on 
 the west and that of China on the east, 
 was just in the middle. This chain he 
 describes as dividing from each other 
 the three great empires of Asia. The 
 mountain mass of which it is composed 
 is very lofty, full of windings, and ex- 
 tremely precipitous. It is a sort of first 
 ancestor of alt the mountains of the 
 continent. On the east is Chinese Tur- 
 kestan and Tibet, on the south art the 
 possessions of England in India. On 
 the west and north are the Russian 
 provinces. The T'sung-ling chain has 
 been known to China for two thousand 
 years and has frequently been made the 
 western frontier of the empire. Many 
 have been the vicissitudes in the govern- 
 ment of the territory lately rnade into 
 a new province by the Peking adminis- 
 tration. First there were . thirty-six 
 kingdoms. These were afterwards in- 
 creased to fifty. Probably at that time 
 we may suppose that the inhabited oases 
 in the new province were wider than 
 now and more numerous. Desert sands 
 • tend to spread with the lapse of time. 
 The pomegranate and vine have appa- 
 rently disappeared recently from Hami, 
 where they were a thousand years ago 
 a very prominent object, as we learn 
 by comparing Hiuen Chwang's travels 
 and those of Fa-hien with modern Rus- 
 sian accounts. One of the chief 
 peculiarities in the Sinkeang province, 
 as it is now termed, has been the 
 change- of religions. Before Buddhism 
 there was the religion of the old Turk- 
 ish stock, mixed with Persian elements. 
 This was changed for a Hindoo religion, 
 because a northern race conquerednorth- 
 western India. Buddhism spread mo- 
 nasteries over the oases of that country 
 and they remained there from ".the 
 second to the eighth century, when 
 
 Mahommedanism drove out Buddhism 
 by its superior ' vigour. The Turkish 
 population submitted to the brighter 
 intellectual force of the Persians, who 
 had then become devout Mahommedans. 
 The Mahommedan religion has been 
 there now for a thousand years. It 
 would gladly have founded a govern- 
 ment of its own, but lacks the force to 
 be derived from the foreign weapons of 
 attack and foreign drill which the Chi- 
 nese now have. Tso Tsung-tang's 
 campaign overthrew Mahommedan hopes 
 of autonomy, and made it possible for 
 our Chinese author to imagine himself 
 on the summit of the Tsung-ling 
 chain in the centre of the world, 
 looking out on the three empires of 
 China, England and Russia where they 
 meet. For several centuries also the- 
 Npstorian missions spread Christianity 
 in parts of Sinkeang. Prester John was 
 a king somewhere in that country, or 
 rather near it, who favoured Christianity 
 and whose daughter was a Christian. 
 Christianity was a somewhat weak 
 power in those parts for six centuries 
 till it was overwhelmed by Tibetan Budd- 
 hism when reinvigorated by the cele- 
 brated Tsungkdba. All through these 
 ages China was large enough for the 
 Chinese, and. their merchants in the 
 silk trade simply came and went'along 
 the northern and southern roads of 
 Sinkeang. But China is now, notwith- 
 standing her misfortunes, in a new era 
 of prosperity, characterised by rapid 
 growth in the population as its most 
 striking feature. Under the new 
 regime all the space available for agri- 
 culture in thfr oases of the Sinkeang 
 plains ought naturally to be filled by 
 Chinese emigrants flying from those 
 droughts and floods which hopelessly 
 beset them in their own country. Sud- 
 den poverty, the loss of harvest, the 
 destruction of homes, poor at the bfest, 
 by an unexpected deluge, all compel emi- 
 gration, and when the new province is 
 filled by the fugitives, Russia might 
 well open her arms to receive the over- 
 flow and provide them with lands to 
 cultivate and flocks to tend. 
 
m 
 
 MODERN. CHINA. 
 
 ■ MEDICINE IN CHINA. 
 TSE'gift of healing tends powerfully 
 in modern, times to promote the upity 
 and brotherhood of mankind. Medical 
 missions • form a prominent part of the 
 modern missionary enterprise; and this 
 connection will be in the future more 
 and more developed because medical 
 knowledge and skill readily become self- 
 propagating. Few persoijs are aware how 
 extensively vaccination is practised in 
 China by native operators, who learned 
 the art in the first instance at Canton 
 almost at the beginning of this century. 
 At that time a surgeon' on the staff of 
 the East India Company, under the im- 
 pulse of philanthropy introduced the 
 practice of vaccination , and it has been 
 spreading in the country ever since. 
 This gift to China has already proved 
 of immense value, and the incidental 
 cause of its diffusion is found in the 
 rotatory nature of the mandarinate, 
 which takes officers of intelligence to 
 Canton, for instance, for a time, and 
 then transfers them after a few years' 
 residence to some other part of the 
 country. Magistrates are removed from 
 city to city, and this has aided in the 
 propagation of Western improvements 
 which in the old days entered China at 
 Canton exclusively. The practice, of 
 vaccination in Peking is known to have 
 commenced in this way, and from that 
 city it has extended and is still extend- 
 ing through the eleven prefectures of 
 the province. At the meeting of the 
 Missionary Conference at Shanghai in 
 1890itwas mentioned that the rapid sale 
 of morphia pills has fixed the attention 
 of medical missionaries at the present 
 time as an evil to be deplored, and their 
 earnest advice was tendered to the 
 missionary body to discourage it firmly 
 among the Christians. A remarkable 
 feature in the missions at present is 
 the'increased number of medical men, 
 of whom no fewer than twenty were 
 present at the Conference. The excel- 
 lent works prepared by Dr. Hobson 
 in Chinese on medical subjects thirty 
 years ago are still on .sale, and these 
 books have been extremely useful 
 
 in opeliing the way to the know- 
 ledge of the Western art of liealing for 
 Chinese readers. How many valuable 
 works of others, such as Drs. Kerr, 
 Dudgeon, Porter, Osgood, and Douth- 
 waite have been more recently produced \ 
 the book .lists show. The amount of 
 knowledge, not only strictly medical, 
 but dietary, sanitary and scientific thus 
 communicated to the Chinese has been 
 very great, and this is all recognised by 
 the missionaries generally and by the 
 societies who send them out as an 
 essential part of the enterprise to which 
 they, are committed. Contemplating 
 medical missions from another very 
 important point, of view, missionaries 
 who heal the ailments of the Chinese 
 are iSie representatives of the whole 
 medical profession of Europe and 
 America,abody essentially philanthropic, 
 and are. engaged in introducing as 
 rapidly as it is possible to do every 
 beneficial feature in the healing art as 
 now practised in the West. 
 
 Medicine in China is very old. In the 
 year 579'before Christ cure by the moxa 
 and acupuncture were already practised 
 by Chinese physicians, for it is in that 
 year that this treatment is first men- 
 tioned in any book, Chinese or foreign. 
 The passage will.be found in page 374 of 
 Legge's Chinese classics, volume fifth. 
 In addition to this there wds the cele- 
 brated Pien-tsio, who some time during 
 the period from the eighth century 
 before Christ to the sixth performed 
 remarkable cures by feeling the pulse~ 
 first and basing his treatment upon the 
 indications. On one occasion he was in 
 attendance on a prince who was in a 
 state of unconsciousness for five days, 
 and he depended on pulse feeling for 
 his knowledge ofthe patient's condition. 
 He was probably a native of Hoehienfu . 
 in Chihli. The stories told cannot all 
 have been true of him. as an individual, 
 belonging as they do to different cen- 
 turies. They indicate, however, that the 
 feeling of the pulse was in use among 
 physicians at that early tiriie. Hippo- 
 crates, the founder of Greek medicine, 
 certainly lived in the sixth century, and 
 
MEDICINE IN CHINA. 
 
 n 
 
 in his time the pulse had already 'be- 
 come the fulcrum of Chinese medical 
 practice. The knowledge of this fact 
 helps in fixing a limit for the field of 
 investigation into the healing art of 
 China. The history of that art spreads 
 over six centuries before Christ, and 
 nineteen centuries afterwards. Medicine 
 flourished when literature and philo- 
 sophy flourished. The great books of 
 Chinese medicine, the 800 wen and the 
 JAng ck'oo, were written at about the 
 same time as the Pour Books or a little 
 later. Thus they belonged to the age 
 of the sages. They mark the first 
 prosperous period of this noble art, 
 ' when it had escaped from the hands of 
 exorcists and diviners who in earlier ages 
 had been accustomed to care for the sick. 
 They are the ckssics of Chinese medicine 
 and in them its theory and princi- 
 ples are enshrined. In these books we 
 find such statements as that metal and 
 water combine, in accord with the in- 
 fluence of Venus and Mercury. The soul 
 is spoken of as something distinct from 
 though included in the body. Madness, 
 fever, apoplexy, paralysis, cholera, are 
 here all described. The five elements 
 are represented as revolving powers and, 
 they correspond to the five planets in 
 the heavens. The earth moves west- 
 ward through space which surrounds 
 it below as well as above and around. 
 Ignorance of astrology is stated to be a 
 cause of disease and death. Interlaced 
 with the doctrine of the five elements is 
 found the doctrine of the dual principles 
 of darkness and light each divided into 
 greater and lesser. The veins and ar- 
 teries are here described as canals or- 
 iginating in the skin which consequently 
 is that part at which all disease com- 
 mences its invasion on the human frame. 
 The possibility of the human subject se- 
 curing immortality by Taoist methods is 
 discussed and the affirmative is believed. 
 The Soo mm having in it these and 
 other curious things, such as the rotun- 
 dity of the earth and the doctrine of a 
 universal and primseval vapour, and 
 having as already said a distinct tincture 
 of the Mesopotamian astrology, consti- 
 
 tutes in itself a convincing proof that 
 China was receptive of Western know- 
 ledge to a large extentin thefifth, fourth, 
 'and third centuries before Christ. From 
 that time during more than two thou- 
 sand years China has been under the 
 dominion of the philosophy of this book. 
 She has been so through the whole range 
 of native medical thought. The com- 
 position of new • medical books has 
 never ceased during that long coftinued 
 time. Among these works the Fen-ts'au, 
 theMateria medica of the Ming dynasty, 
 is the most useful and comprehensive. 
 
 It stands to reason that Chinese 
 medicine deserves to he studied, and a 
 fuller account of it than we yet have 
 ought to be given in the English tongue. 
 The number of physicians now embraced 
 in the missionary circle is so great that 
 there is hope that some one of them 
 will become the historian of Chinese 
 medicine, by preparing a careful narrative 
 of its growth and present state, and thus do 
 whatSprengel has done for the history of 
 medicine in Europe. It may be confid- 
 ently predicted that such a work would 
 shew that Chinese medicine, being the re- 
 sult of the uninterrupted experience of 
 two thousand five hundred years, in spite 
 of its Babylonian theory, now exploded 
 by modern discoveries, is deserving of 
 high respect for its practical utility in 
 many impprtant ways. 
 
 CHANGES IN THE AGRICULTURE 
 
 OP NORTH-CHINA. 
 In the province of Chihli maize has 
 become a common product during the 
 last half century. The grains are large 
 and very nutritive and the stalks useful 
 for fuel. The cost of living when maize 
 meal is used is much less than for wheat 
 flour. In a climate which is so cold 
 in winter as that of the province of 
 Chihli wheat 'flour is a very favourite 
 article of food and is felt to be more 
 satisfying than others. The well-to-do 
 like it on this account. If the population 
 , of Chihli were appealed to as to what 
 cereal suited them best for daily food 
 they would by a large majority vote 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 for wheat flour. The rich, however, 
 being able to purchase animal food 
 have rice daily. Rice is stored in the 
 granaries, and distributed to the ban- 
 nermen for themselves and their 
 families. These families use the cheaper 
 kinds, but sell the dearer.. If poor, 
 they live on maize meal chiefly as being 
 cheaper than;other sorts of food. Maize 
 has spread from western Asia into 
 China •during the present dynasty. 
 Excellent rice is produced on river 
 banks in favourable positions and always 
 commands a good price. Such favour- 
 able positions are however fen. The 
 chief product is small millet for human 
 food and Barbadoes millet for animals. 
 Small millet which is used as bird 
 seed in Europe is now perhaps the 
 chief food of man in the northern 
 provinces. But was this always so ? 
 Probably the recent application of the 
 word ku, formerly meaning all kinds of 
 grain, to signify ordinary millet is an 
 index to the fact that anciently the 
 ordinary food was not millet and that 
 there has been a change. The northern 
 people- when they gradually came to 
 adopt this kind of small niillet as their 
 staple article of food, at the same time 
 as if by unconscious general agreement 
 united to call it by this name. So also 
 wheat is corn in England and maize is 
 corn in the United States. 
 
 The oldest quotation in the Chinese 
 Classics mentioning the five elements, 
 water, fire, metal, wood, and earth, adds a 
 sixth ''grain." These were early singled 
 out as the six classes into which the 
 governor of the country could conveni- 
 ently distribute the objects coming 
 under executive control. But grain did 
 not remain in the classification long. 
 The five elements of China and of 
 Persia were after this time regarded as 
 complete without a sixth. The grain 
 sown in various localities came soon to 
 be spoken of as the "hundred grains" 
 or " the five grains." Among the five, 
 rice stood first. They were rice, hemp, 
 millet, wheat, beans. Now 'wheat as 
 we know was then grown in mountainous 
 regions and ancient writers tell us that 
 
 rice and pulse were the food common in 
 the plains. To these we must add 
 millet and panicled millet. Thus we 
 have in view the five grains of China 
 twenty-five centuries ago. In the time 
 of Confucius the tall millet also, reach- 
 ing ten feet high, was grown for the 
 food of animals as it is now everywhere 
 in north China. 
 
 Wheat and oats bear cold weather best, 
 and oats grow in a colder climate than 
 wl^eat. At present wheat is 'produced 
 abundantly in Kiangsu but it gives the 
 best flour in Shantung and the climate 
 of that province is probably the most 
 suitable for wheat of any in China. 
 Oats grow as far south as Yunnan 
 because of the height, from four to six 
 thousand feet, of the plateau of the 
 province above the sea. It is a high- 
 land grain by "preference and will alsO' 
 grow on low grounds where there is a 
 moist cold winter. It is modern like 
 maize and potatoes in China, and on 
 account of the stimulus applied to its 
 cultivation by the growth of papulation 
 it is on the ascending grade. Oat^, 
 potatoes, and maize are employed as • 
 food just now more than ever in north 
 and west China for the three reasons, 
 that the isothermal lines are, as com- 
 pared with two thousand years' ago, 
 retreating towards the south, that com- 
 merce has brought these productions 
 recently to China by the central Asian 
 route, and -that in a nation with a grow- 
 ing population domestic economy re- 
 quires this change in food to counter- 
 balance the increasing poverty. Po- 
 tatoes foT example are spreading in 
 highland China with unexampled ra- 
 pidity, just as they did in Ireland at a 
 time when the people of that island grew 
 in a few decades from two or three mil- 
 lions to eight millions, and the relief of 
 emigration was required to reduce the 
 too great pressure on the means of 
 subsistence. Over a great part of north 
 China now, wheat and rice are the food 
 of the well-to-do. Autumn and'sprino- 
 wheat are both pi:oduced extensively. 
 Rice is grown once in the year in the 
 warm summer where rivers favour 
 
CHANGES IN THE AGRICULTURE OF NORTH-CHINA. 
 
 irrigation, and there is no J)etter rice 
 than that cultivated a few nriles from. 
 Peking on the west where the Hwun Ho 
 issues from the mountains, and has 
 during myriads of years scooped out a 
 valley of itsownwhich'nowpossesses a few 
 alluvial tracts supplying excellent white 
 rice for the wealthy families of Peking. 
 But the great rice-growing region is 
 not here., It is in central China, on 
 the Yangtze River, that rice is grown 
 for export on a large scale. The reason 
 is that the heat of the climate there 
 is jus't sufficient to suit this product. 
 In 1888 from- the port of Shanghai 
 four million and a half piculs of rice 
 were shipped to the northern and 
 southern provinces. In 1887, the quan- 
 tity shipped was 3,800,000 piculs. Last 
 year on account of floods and a pro- 
 hibition to export, except under special 
 permit, the quantity sank to less than 
 2,000,000 piculs. Most of this large 
 export reaches Shangha,i from rice grow- 
 ing grounds up the river, the land near 
 Shanghai being pre-occupied with cotton 
 and indigo required by the nutive looms 
 of all the villages in the Shanghai plain. 
 But the main product of the soil from 
 Shanghai west along the great Yangtze 
 valley to Hankow is rice. At Shanghai 
 rice is sown once in the year and the time 
 is May, the harvest being in September. 
 This is in latitude tl;irty-one. Just a 
 little farther to the South there are two 
 crops of rice in the year. At Ningpo, 
 latitude ■ thirty, rice is sown in April 
 and July and harvested in August and 
 October. Shanghai is thus the centre of 
 the national rice trade and the rice 
 merchants of this port do an enormous 
 business. 
 
 Let us compare this state of things 
 with what we know of ancient China, 
 This will help us to decide whether the 
 climate of China is gradually getting 
 colder. In the Cfmo U, a book of the 
 time before Confucius, we have a section 
 upon the products of the different parts 
 of north und central China. There were 
 then in the country thirty-nine tribes 
 of various races ruled by the Chinese. 
 The races to which they belonged were 
 
 six who were, we may suppose, Coreans, 
 Turks, Tungus, Tibetans, Burmans, and 
 Shans. We may apply these names 
 because they seem roughly to answer 
 the question "what languages' those 
 six races spokfi' ?" : Chinese civilisation 
 taught all '.these aborigines to plough; 
 sow and weave cloth, and they became 
 by intermarriages a part of the great 
 Chinese nation. Theproductionsof the 
 old nine provinces are briefly mentioned. 
 Rice occurs as a prominent product in 
 all but three of the modern provinces. 
 The exceptions are Shanse, Shensi and 
 Kansu. Thus Shantung produced rice 
 and wheat : Hupeh and Hunan produced 
 rice only. Bird seed millet and panicled 
 millet were then the common grain of the 
 Wei valley in Shensi and of Shansi. In 
 the Peking province these two cereal^ 
 with rice were the farmer's favourites. 
 In the southern part of the same province 
 the farmer sowed the two millets. ' In 
 Kiangsu the only cereal was rice. It 
 was quite too warm and low for wheat. 
 The people all wore skins, or silk gown?, 
 or cloth made of hempiand other plants 
 having a suitable fibre. , Cottop ;and 
 indigo had not then been introduced 
 and it was about fifteen centiaries after 
 the time we are describing before the 
 Chinese learned to cultivate these produc- 
 tions. Altogether : it may be concludepl 
 that some cause, such as great height 
 above the sea, prevented the cultivqiion 
 of rice in the extreme north and north- 
 west corner of the empire, and that else- 
 where throughout the country rice was 
 freely grown, aided by the fertilising 
 waters of the Yellow River, especially 
 in Honan and Chihli. The climate 
 therefore must have been warmer then 
 than it now is. 
 
 This independent argument from 
 changes in agricultural products for 
 the increasing coldness of the Chinese 
 climate, is to be added to the disappear- 
 ance of the varnish tree industry and of 
 the greater and better part of the silk 
 industry from the northern provinces. 
 Altogether it seems difficult if not 
 impossible to evade the conclusion that 
 a slow change in climate is proceeding. 
 
^4 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 and that any given isothermal line is 
 Sow t© the south of its former posi- 
 tion. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 CHINESE ACCOUNTS OP THE 
 , MAMMOTH. . 
 THEgtadual cooling of the Asiatic climate 
 inay be supporteid by the existence of i 
 the bones of the mammoth in northern 
 Siberia. This hairy elephant lived in 
 that cou&try when the air was temperate 
 and when abundant forests supplied it : 
 with the yoiing twigs on which it lived. 
 Since that time northern Siberia has 
 become an intolerably cold desert. The 
 'ground there is constantly frozen to a 
 depth of more than two feet below the 
 surface and produces only mass with a 
 few modest lookiiig flowers. The Inam- 
 moth very early drew the attention of 
 the Chinese. It is first mentioned in the 
 ^r-^aand nextinChuang-tse in the third 
 'century before Christ. The enormous 
 quantities of valuable ivory which the re- 
 mains of the mammoth in Siberia furnish 
 made known to the ancient Chinese 
 the existence of the animal through 
 their trade with Tartary. On account 
 of its being found in very many locali- 
 ties imbedded in the soil and in rocks, 
 old books always speak of it as a mon- 
 strous mole living underground. It 
 was found, they tell us, in China and 
 in Tartary. Chuang-tse wrote as a 
 poet and pictures it (yew shu) as drink- 
 ing a river of water before its thirst 
 was satisfied. He had been told of the 
 fossil bones or seen them and filled up 
 the picture by the aid of imagination 
 either his own or that of those from 
 whom he heard the story. Seven cen- 
 turies afterwards a medical writer, Tao 
 Hung-king, says "^it is found in forests, 
 and is as large as a water buffalo. It 
 is in form something like a pig. Its 
 colour is a greyish red,- its feet are 
 like those of the elephant. Its breast 
 and upper tail are white, and blunt 
 though powerful. Its flesh is eaten 
 and is like that of the cow. It is known 
 by the name " King of the Shu tribe. 
 In calamitous years this animal often 
 appears." 
 
 In the , seventh century this account 
 of the animal was discredited. Its great 
 size was not believed. Its hiding and 
 walking in ' the earth were thought 
 absurd. These disparaging criticisms 
 were made by Ch^n T'sang-chi, an 
 eminent writer, who does not seem, to 
 have been shewn any of the bones of 
 the animal.' Yet in the 11th century 
 8u Sung defended the statements of 
 early writers on this subject. Bones of 
 some large unknown animal had been 
 found at T'sangchou near Tientsin, 
 just as the Tsin History states that at 
 Siuencheng, a little way south-west of 
 Nanking, there had been. found similar 
 remains in the third century. It was 
 also related that the same animal 
 existed in Tartary where the larger 
 specioiens weighed 1,000 catties and 
 Vsras fond of living in water. It was like 
 an elephant in the legs though it had 
 the hoofs of a 'donkey. Another place 
 where it was found was at Tsihning 
 near Pingyang Fu in Shansi. The people 
 called it the " recumbent cow." It used 
 to wander among the mountains at times 
 and drop its hair in the fields. Each one 
 became a rat and great was the conse- 
 quent damage to the crops. The Liang 
 history says that in Japan there is a largs 
 animal like a cow of the Shu class which 
 is eaten by a great serpent. These are 
 all instances of .the mammoth yin shu 
 •{yin " hidden,") and prove tha correct- 
 ness of Tao's words. Tao has been 
 blamed without reason by men who had 
 not themselves inquired into the truth 
 of his statements. The name by which 
 this animal js known in Shensi is " the 
 small donkey." Such are the testimonies 
 of the existence of the mammoth col- 
 lected by the author of the Penfsao. 
 The Chinese accounts of a monster 
 animal as given in the Pent'sao could 
 not if taken alone be regarded as agree- 
 ing with the Siberian mammoth except 
 in a rough way, yet they are very im- 
 portant. Early in this century the 
 remains of that animal were found in 
 so many parts of Siberia and the ivory 
 was of such great commercial value 
 that the whole scientific world was 
 
CHINESE ACCOUNTS OF THE MAMMOTH. 
 
 interested. Cuvier in JBrance was 
 absorbed in the contemplation of the 
 remarkable bones submitted to him and 
 decided that as the mammoth was met 
 with often ; with the flesh undecayed, 
 there must have been a sudden change 
 of climate from temperate to extremely 
 cold to account for the frozen condition 
 in which the remains were found. 
 Klaproth who was then at Kiachta 
 visited the Chinese drug shops and 
 "found that the bones were known to 
 the Chinese there. They • gave him 
 the name of the animal as it was 
 recorded in the Pents'ao. It was 
 he that suggested that the throne of 
 ivory of the Mongol Emperors was 
 formed of the tusks and teeth of the 
 Siberian mammoth and that Chinese 
 traders for two thousand years wpuld be 
 ready to buy on any occasion the ivory 
 wliich was from time to time discovered 
 and brought away. He went home to 
 Berlin and made known to the learned 
 world that the Chinese had accounts of 
 the animal. The passages he trans- 
 lated are' apparently those which are 
 found in the Pents'ao in the chapter 
 on the class Shu which includes the 
 Bodentia with the squirrel, sable, 
 ermine, and weasel. There can be no 
 doubt that the mammoth and possibly 
 other fossil animals known to the Chin- 
 ese are assigned to the class Shu, 
 because they were supposed to hide 
 themselves in the soil of cultivated 
 fields and to have died, underground in 
 the position where their bones were 
 afterwards found. 
 
 In a work published in 1887, " The 
 Mammoth and the Flood," by Henry 
 Howorth, M.P., author of a History of the 
 Mongols, the attempt is made to prove 
 that the change of the Siberian climate 
 from mild to severe was sudden. Lyell's 
 nniformitarian doctrine is opposed. Yet 
 the evidence from China of a gradual 
 change of climate in that country was 
 not known to this author, and if he had 
 had this evidence before him shewing 
 as it does that there is a very slow re- 
 frigeration taking place, pausing gradual 
 changes in tte vegetable as well as the 
 
 animal world, he might have modified 
 his theory. Perhaps the best form for 
 the hypothesis to assume is that of a 
 rapid local refrigeration in Siberia, joined 
 with a slow refrigeration generally over 
 the Asiatic continent. The Chinese 
 facts on climate point distinctly .to, a 
 slow refrigeration, but do not in any 
 way suggest a sudden catastrophe by 
 which the heat shewn by the thermo- 
 meter was reduced to a large extent. 
 The Chinese mammoth has been found 
 in four, principal localities; in the 
 Yellow River alluvium near Tientsin, 
 in the loess formation near the centre 
 of Shansi, in Shensi, also on the banks 
 of the Yangtze River in Anhui. It 
 was this last discovery that drew the 
 attention of Tau Hung-king, who be- 
 longed to Nanking, and being a noted 
 Taoist and a writer of the school of 
 Pao Pu-tsz woul4 feel the deepest in- 
 terest i;i the discovery so near his 
 home. 
 
 RICE. 
 The time when the Grand Canal was 
 made separates the Middle Ages of 
 China from the modern period. Just at 
 that epoch the dryness of the northern 
 climate which had been increasing 
 century after century rendered a great 
 water communication necessary to link 
 the north and south together, and this 
 could only be effected by a powerful 
 dynasty like that of the Mongols, which 
 for the first and only time in all history, 
 combined Persia, Russia, Siberia and 
 China in one empire. The Mongols had 
 no civilisation of their own, but they 
 had an instinct for accomplishing, great 
 things and they had faith in themselves 
 and in their destiny, a faith which gave 
 them political energy. They believed 
 themselves to be visibly aided by the 
 Providence of the Eternal Heaven. 
 This favourite and energetic expression 
 was then their word for God. The idea 
 of, joining Hangchow, the capital of 
 Southern China, with Peking, the capital 
 of Northern China, the one on the 
 thirtieth degree of latitude and the 
 
m 
 
 MODERN CHIKA. 
 
 other on the fortieth, pleased the Mon- 
 gols. It was too ' early then to change 
 the provincial tribute into silver. It 
 was better to send it in the form of 
 grain, according to the old traditional 
 plan. When the south was conquered 
 the question came up for consideration, 
 how shall the tribute of the south be 
 conveyed ? The answer was, by the 
 cohstruction of a great canal. Silver 
 could not then be found in sufficient 
 quantity. Grain at that time was as it 
 had always been a sort of national 
 currency. As copper cash was money 
 so also grain in pints, bushels and piculs 
 was money. There was no way of avoid- 
 ing the necessity then felt for a great 
 canal by which the government might 
 receive its dues and support the metro- 
 politan population of soldiers, civil 
 officers, and traders. This is what the 
 Peking administration just six hundred 
 years ago were thinking about. Their 
 great army of dependents in the two 
 hundred boaTds and officers of the capi- 
 tal were paid their salaries half in graiin 
 and half in paper money. What the 
 cabinet had to do was to amalgamate 
 north and south as best they could. 
 The Cathay of European old geography 
 was North China, which had then been 
 a separate kingdom during a century and 
 a half. The Manji of old geographers 
 was South China also, including Hupeh 
 and Szechuan. This great political 
 achievement of the Yuen dynasty syn- 
 chronised with the change brought about 
 in agriculture by the increasing dryness 
 of the climate. The time had come 
 when millet, raised by dry agriculture 
 had replaced rice, raised by wet agri- 
 culture, all over the north. The Mon- 
 gols drove out the Golden Tartars from 
 North China and conquered from the 
 Chao imperial family the whole of rice- 
 growing China. 
 
 If any one will look into Kang-hi's 
 Dictionary under tao, " rice," he 
 will find it stated that the Ywn-hwei, 
 a dictionary of the Yuen dynasty, re- 
 marks of tao, that it is the white rice now 
 cnltwated in the south for the people's 
 ordinary food. This mode of speaking 
 
 certainly implies that the writer, living 
 six centuries ago, had an impression that 
 a change had taken place in agricul- 
 ture on a grand scale. In the way 
 that old books speak of rice we see 
 proof that wherever water came down 
 in streams over the northern plain 
 country so as to be suitable for irriga- 
 tion, rjpe was grown. But at present the 
 way of speaking is different. The ex- 
 pression found in the dictionary in 
 question of the 13th century is a' 
 specimen of it. Then let us also take 
 into consideration and carefully weigh 
 the classical expression 8Mh yu hu tao, 
 "rice is reaped in the tenth month." 
 It is found in the Book of Odes, in that 
 section which contains the local poetry 
 of the Pin duchy in the western part of 
 Shensi, latitude thirty-five. The ques- 
 tion -is, was rice reaped in November 
 or in September in the valley watered 
 by an affluent of the Wei River, 
 three thousand years ago ? The jiew 
 calendar of Woo Wang was promul- 
 gated about B.C. 1120. The months 
 were so altered in the new calendar 
 that November instead of being the 
 tenth month as it was previously, 
 became the eighth month. Chinese 
 native scholars are of opijiion that the 
 poetry preserved the old expressions 
 and that it iSl November, that is meant. 
 In changing the calendar for official 
 use, the old poem would remain un- 
 altered. Even if it was September that 
 was meant and if the text of the poem 
 was changed to suit the new calendar, 
 it still remains to be explained how it 
 was that an ordinary agricultural pro- 
 cess of this kind could then take place 
 in north-west China in the latitude of 
 thirty-five degrees, when it suits that of 
 thirty much better. We seem to be 
 driven to the conclusion that the climate 
 in north-west China was both moister 
 and hotter three thousand years ago 
 than it is now. We had better accept 
 the account given by Chinese ilative 
 scholars of this calendar and in accord- 
 ance with their judgment relegate the 
 poefti in which these words occur to the 
 beginning of the fifteejlth century before 
 
BICE. 
 
 £7 
 
 Christ, previous to the titofi of the 
 change of tlie calendar in the twelfth 
 century. If we do this, and if the 
 document is free from mistakes, we 
 learn that .about B.C. 1400 November 
 was the time when near the Yellow River 
 in Shensi rice was harvested, for it was 
 about that time that Kung Lew, the 
 representative of what afterwar^ be- 
 came the Chow imperial family; was 
 living in that region. 
 
 At present rice cultivation extends 
 from Hankow all the way up the Hau 
 river to Hauchung Poo, in the thirty-third 
 degree of latitude. Richthoven when 
 travelling describes the remarkable 
 change in the character of the country 
 when the Ch'inling range is crossed by 
 a traveller southward bound. The lofess 
 is left and South China with its rice 
 cultivation is reached at once. This 
 mountain range is the southern bound- 
 ary in this longitude of the loess agri- 
 culture. The whole of the loess region 
 is now devoted to agriculture without 
 irrigation as a rule. Formerly on the 
 other hand rice was cultivated over a 
 large portion of the same tract of country. 
 For example there is evidence of it near 
 Taiyuen Fu in the heart of the loess 
 country. We find in the time of the 
 Three Kingdoms sixteen hundred ypars 
 ago, that it is casually mentioned that 
 the people there were urged by an able 
 administrator to cultivate rice by irriga- 
 tion on the banks of a stream called the 
 Water of Longevity. This was intended 
 as an extension of rice cultivation for 
 the production of food in time of drought. 
 The province of Hupeh still retains rice 
 cultivation through its whole extent, 
 and the southern part of Shensi also. 
 This renders the dividing line of the 
 loess and the non-loess country very 
 irregular. It is remarkable that the 
 Golden Tartars should have possessed 
 the loess country almost exclusively 
 while the Sung dynasty possessed the 
 remainder of China. Here we see the 
 operation of Buckle's principle that 
 climate controls history and that the 
 natural features of a country have much 
 to do with the course of public events. 
 
 INDUSTRIAL MISSIONS. 
 Industrial missions have done im- 
 mense good in various countries, and 
 they would certainly be beneficial in 
 modern China. In the early part of 
 this century, Radama, the first King 
 of Madagascar,, requested the London 
 Missionary Society to send him artisans. 
 Among those who went were some iron- 
 smelters. Prom them the Malagasy 
 learned the art of extracting iron from 
 stone, and when after years of persecu- 
 tion the mission was re-established, and 
 the arts of civilisation were extensively 
 taught to the people, it was found that 
 the mode of smelting iron was one of 
 those which had been retained by the 
 natives, all through the long period of 
 persecution and intellectual darkness 
 which had intervened. 
 
 Among those who have strongly 
 advocated industrial missions in phina 
 was and is Baron von Richthoven, who 
 in his letter on the provinces of Chg- 
 kiang and Anhui makes the following 
 remark : " Incalculable benefit might be 
 conferred on China by -establishing 
 industrial missions in which practical 
 men would teach the inhabitants im- 
 provements in agriculture and industrial 
 pursuits." He represents civilisation 
 as preceding Christianity. But in fa'ct 
 that complex being, man, is.on the whole 
 always ready for moral instruction and 
 mechanical occupation contemporan^ 
 eously. Education trains all the facul- 
 ties of men, and it should find both 
 moral and physical occupation for the 
 pupil in a school during parts of the 
 same day. Every good school in- 
 cludes in the curriculum a carpenter's 
 shop, horticulture, gymnastiics and those 
 muscular exercises called out-door 
 games. The modern educator sees 
 that the whole of human nature is 
 trained to excellence. His eye watches 
 the pupils in every department, to note 
 who is deficient in this or that talent, 
 and he then aims to stir it into, activity 
 by special tasks. To suit a ' boy' for 
 his futuTe life his mind, hands, feet, 
 eyes, and ears all go through contem*^ 
 porary training. Western civilisation 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 of the Christian type is now being 
 taught to the Chinese in the missions. 
 Tiiey are not by any means instructed 
 in dogma only. The missionary periodi- 
 cals and translated works on science 
 shew that the Protestant missionary 
 agency is wide in its scope. So also 
 the schools embrace a very wide curri- 
 culum. Dr. Mateer, for example, at 
 Tungcnow takes his pupils through a 
 twelve years' course ; and some very well 
 skilled mathematicians and electricians 
 have left his school after going through 
 the whole of that course of study. Dr. 
 Nevius also has introduced great im- • 
 provements in fruit culture in Shantung. 
 These instances in the activity of one 
 of the missions shew what a wide scope 
 is embraced in the Protestant, mission- 
 ary propaganda of this century. Such 
 being the mode of development in the 
 evangelical agencies of our timp, the 
 proposition to found agricultural and 
 other industrial missions will not be 
 likely to appear strange or unreason- 
 able when brought before the executive 
 Boards of the missions. These Boards 
 are largely composed "Df laymen engaged 
 in commerce, and they will willingly 
 give their attention to a suggestion of 
 this kind. 
 
 ' Baron von Richthoven during the years 
 1860 to 1872 visited all the provinces to 
 make geological observations, and at the 
 same time to institute inquiries of a 
 general nature and particularly such as 
 threw light on the prospects of the ex- 
 tension of foreign trade. The thought 
 of industrial missions struck him when 
 in the Fenshui valley to the west of 
 Hangchow. Here a party of western 
 agriculturists might be located. The 
 valley is very rich in semi-trOpical 
 vegetation. Forest trees grow luxu- 
 riantly, with a dense jungle of shrubbery 
 among which are the most exquisite 
 flowers known in Europe. The gorges 
 are filled with foliage of the most varied 
 kinds. The soil is highly fertile, and 
 yet, when he saw it, was left almost a 
 wilderness. A walk through any part 
 of this region is an experience of the 
 teenest enjoyment. Not far away is 
 
 the Kienmushan, on the slopes of which 
 grow large groves of forest trees. The 
 land, here was reported to Baron von 
 Richthoven as purchasable at that time 
 for five dollars an English acre. Before 
 the devastation wrought by the Taiping 
 rebels it was worth two hundred dollars 
 an acre. Here one of the Christian 
 industrial missions might be located. 
 Besiae grain crops, timber of various 
 kinds could be grown. A.n immense 
 number of cattle could be reared here 
 and by an industry of this kind a most 
 favourable change could be introduced 
 into Chinese produce. The fertility of 
 this smiling valley would feed thousands 
 of cattle, the value of which would be'a 
 large addition to the collected wealth 
 of the neighbourhood, and animal labour 
 to a large extent might be substituted, 
 for that of man. An improvement of 
 this kind would be one of the most 
 palpable first successes of such missions, ' 
 and it would be much appreciated in 
 depopulated, districts where cheap 
 animal labour for ploughing, grinding 
 and carrying burdens would be 
 riiost welcome. In addition to this 
 there would be a proportionate increase 
 in manure for the. grain crops, which 
 need it three times during the growth 
 of the plant. This traveller attributes 
 the want of cattle in the valleys of 
 Ch^kiang entirely to lack of thought 
 on the part' of the Chinese. He would 
 urge on missionary philanthropists 
 that in conducting their operations the 
 improvement of agriculture should be 
 especially kept in view. European 
 methods and foresight are in his view a 
 necessity to transform and improve 
 Chinese agriculture. The rapid growth 
 of vegetation under the hot sun ofCh§- 
 kiang in its many lovely valleys points 
 to the want of domestic animals ; and the 
 addition of these throughout all districts 
 of South China where vegetation now 
 runs to waste is a perfectly feasible 
 enterprise. South China consists of 
 hilly country with a hot sun and a mild 
 winter, while North Cjiina consists of 
 alluvial plains with a hot summer and 
 a severe winter. Agricultural missions 
 
INDUSTRIAL MISSION. 
 
 would, in any valley in Smith China 
 where vegetation is abundant and land 
 purchasable at a moderate rate, become 
 readily self-supporting. There would 
 be an annual surplus which would easily 
 be made to sustain the ecclesiastical 
 expenditure. In his views on this 
 matter Baron von Richthoven is not 
 likely to be wrong. We all knew how 
 . dilatory the Chinese are in initiating a 
 new departure. They suggest a thou- 
 sand difficulties. They spend great 
 energy in obstruction. They prefer 
 waiting to action whenever any proposed 
 improvement is a novelty. The' only 
 thing to be done is for that class of 
 foreigners who will work quietly and 
 loyally to come in and shew them the way. 
 This -is -the niche which the Protestant 
 missions may fill with an excellent 
 chance of success and obvious benefit 
 to the- country at the present time. 
 Of course, when agricultural improve- 
 ments are fairly commenced, many 
 changes will take place of which no 
 travellers who have visited China have 
 yet thought. Even without the aid of 
 resident foreign agriculturists it is quite 
 phenomenal how widely maize, oats, 
 potatoes,, and unhappily the poppy, have 
 dispossessed older familiar crops during 
 the present century. 
 
 PAWN BROKERS. 
 
 The character of the Vioeroy of Hu- 
 kuang may be judged of by an act of 
 his which is, although despotic, a move 
 in the right direction as regards the 
 poor. He is a man of strong character 
 who wraps himself in privacy and sees 
 as few visitors as he well can. Such 
 tendencies as his prevent him from 
 being soon understood. His patriotic 
 love for his country, however, was proved 
 at the time of the negotiations with 
 Russia about Hi, and during the French 
 war. That he desires to see the condition 
 of the poor ameliorated is evident from 
 ■ his recent action regarding pawn- 
 broker's interest at Hankow and Wu- 
 ebang. In conjunction with the Gov- 
 
 ernor of Hupeh he has -now issued a 
 proclamation to reduce pawnbroker's 
 interest from three amd from two 
 and a half per cent, a month to 
 two per cent; This is, in fact, to 
 reduce it from thirty-six and thirty 
 per cent, per annum to twenty-four per 
 cent. Soon after the Viceroy's arrival 
 at- the seat of his government ' he 
 directed his attention to pawnbroking. 
 This he describes as the convenient in- 
 stitution that helps those who are in 
 need. He speaks of it, in fact, as Euro- 
 peans speak of banking. The people, 
 he says, of Hankow, Hanyang and Wu- 
 chang have not yet quite recovered from 
 the three captures by the Taipings of 
 thirty years ago. They are still poor 
 and need money help to surmount dif- 
 ficulties. In these circumstances, the 
 pawnshops provide them with loans ; 
 but three I per cent, a month is a 
 very large interest to pay, and this 
 has been hitherto th? rate charged 
 by some , pawnbrokers. More than 
 twenty establishments in Wuchkng 
 charge 2J per cent, and this in China 
 always means per month : the others 
 charge three per cent. This high in- 
 terest causes great distress to the poorer 
 classes, so as soon as the Viceroy was 
 settled in his new post he moved the 
 Taotai and prefects with the district 
 magistrates to confer with the pawn- 
 brokers on a reduction. This was done 
 and the result is the present system of 
 pawnbrokers' rates, which is to take 
 effect from the first of the sixth month. 
 The Viceroy and Hupei governor claim 
 to have arranged this out of pity for 
 the borrowers and not to have feared 
 to take from the rich and give what 
 was thus taken to the poor. Thirty- 
 five pawnbrokers, one-third south of 
 the river and, two-thirds on the north, 
 are stated to have consented to 
 the Viceroy's plan, and will conse- 
 quently in future never charge more 
 than two per cent. He praises ' them 
 for their liberality and philanthropy. 
 Such is the mode in which things are 
 done in China ; the officials give the 
 order, the capitalists consult and 
 
30 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 consent, and then the officials praise 
 them for their benevolence. 
 
 .The Viceroy and Governor proceed 
 to speak of the official loan system 
 which has hitherto been in use. Loans 
 were made at one per cent, a month or 
 at 9/lOths of one per cent. But it is 
 now fixed that government money, at 
 the disposal of the high officials • at 
 Wuchang, shall be lent to the people 
 at half of one per cent, a month as a 
 fixed rate. That is to say, that with 
 certain funds lying idle at Wuchang, 
 the high officials will now be content 
 with six per cent, a . year as interest 
 from borrowers. The high ofiicials 
 can obtain sufficient guarantees to en- 
 able them to do this. It is evident 
 that those who cannot find sureties, 
 that is the very poor, cannot borrow 
 money cheaply at all, and that six per 
 cent, loans can only be obtained by men 
 having local credit, and well to do friends 
 who are willing to be responsible for 
 them. 
 
 The special favour shown to the 
 capitalists on this occasion by the Vice^ 
 roy and Governor is to relieve them for 
 ten years from special contributions to 
 the government service. It will only be 
 after that time that they will be again 
 called on for help to the government. 
 Of course something must be done to 
 reimburse the official loan office for 
 offering to lend at so low a rate as 
 six per cent, per annum, so the loss 
 thus sustained is to be made up from 
 the new native opium receipts fund. 
 This fund, under the care of the 
 Provincial Defence Board, will be able 
 to support the Official Loan Board in 
 doing business on the moderate scale 
 of profit on which the high officials 
 have now decided. In the proclamation 
 the people are told that the funds in 
 the hands of the officials for extra- 
 ordinary public works or for charity 
 must be guarded from loss in this way. 
 The levy on native opium of twelve cash 
 an ounce here referred to will yield 
 19,200 cash a picul, or one tael four 
 mace nearly. Hankow and Wuchang 
 require probably at least 7,000 piculs a 
 
 year of native opium, and assuming this 
 amount theDeifenceBoardwill have8,000 
 or 9,000 taels a year from this source. 
 Beside this, dpium firms have to pay, as 
 a sort of registration fee on receiving 
 official recognition, the sum of about 
 300 taels each, and this is also credited 
 to the Defence Board. 
 
 Such is the state of things under a 
 vigorous Viceroy in an immense com- 
 mercial centre like Hankow, at the 
 present time. There appears to be no 
 part of China where the poor can borrow 
 a little money at less than two per cent 
 a month, and the interest is often far 
 above this. Even in Shanghai, where 
 money is plentiful and native bankers 
 will pay on deposits nine per cent per 
 annum, the poor have to pay as a rule 
 two per cent a month in the pawn- 
 brokers shops. Gradually with the ex- 
 tension of foreign intercourse this rate 
 will be regularly lowered, till the poor 
 get their share of the benefits which 
 the rich now enjoy. It is a great 
 calamity if a poor man wishes, in order 
 to support himself and his family, to 
 buy a boat, or a small piece of land, or 
 the goodwill of a shop, or goods to start 
 in a little business, that he should have 
 to pay 24 per cent per annum for the 
 money he borrows. Viceroy Chang is 
 willing to help those who can find good 
 security by allowing them to have small 
 loans at 6 per cent., and other Viceroys 
 will probably follow this good exemple. 
 But it is the increase of intercourse 
 with the western world which alone can 
 bring about a time when the Chinese 
 middle classes shall have better incomes 
 and more of the comforts of life, while 
 the poor shall be able to exchange their 
 miserable homes and their abject sur- 
 roundings for decent cottages, sufficient 
 food and remunerative occupation. 
 
 CHINESE VIEWS 'ON NOVELS. 
 The writing of novels began in the 
 thirteenth century and continued to be 
 a favourite occupation of Chinese writers 
 for about three centuries. After this it 
 was felt that enough had been provided, 
 
CHINESE VIEWS ON NOVELS. 
 
 31 
 
 and the production almost ceased. It 
 was principally in North Ihina a^d 
 under the Tartar dynasties that the 
 tendency began to display itself. It 
 may be regarded as in some way re- 
 sulting from the introduction of foreign 
 plays, actors and music. Novels were 
 contemporaneous with stage plays, and 
 the composition of romances for sing- 
 ing with foreign music, for reading 
 in a colloquial f(jrm, and for acting 
 on the stage was carried on vigorously 
 for about three centuries. The au- 
 thors concealed their names. The 
 moral teaching of the Confijcian school 
 was too powerful for those able men 
 who loved to give rein to their ima- 
 gination in novel and play writing to 
 be able to ve^nture on publicity. The 
 Confucianists have always been censors 
 keeping watch over morality. It was 
 never with the consent of the always 
 dominant moral philosophers that novels 
 grew to the position of influence they 
 now possess in China. 
 
 The censorship of the press, exercised 
 by the Confucianists is not at all 
 extinguished at the present time. On 
 July 22nd there appeared in a Chi- 
 nese newspaper in Shanghai a paper 
 written by an anonymous Confucianist 
 against novels. He writes from Soo- 
 chow and calls himself a country farmer. 
 He is deeply impressed with the need 
 of continuing the crusade against licen- 
 tious literature and romances com- 
 menced by Chien Kung-yen during the 
 last century, when he founded a school 
 in Soochow for the promotion of healthy 
 study of the classical books. He held 
 that novels are now so prevalent that 
 they amount to a fourth estate in the 
 realm, of teaching ; the Confucian, Bud- 
 dhist, and Taoist literatures being the 
 first, second, and third. But instead of 
 iiiculcatingvirtue they lead men into vice. 
 Reading men, farniers, traders, and boys 
 and girls in good families, learn to read 
 them, and those' who cannot read hear 
 the story from others who can. It may 
 be questioned whether the moral influ- 
 ence for evil of Chinese works of ima- 
 gination is, he says, not greater than 
 
 that of the books of the three religions 
 for good. They suggest to young men 
 that they should lead a licentious life, 
 and represent killing a man as a noble 
 . action. To read of these things produces 
 disastrous results on public morality. 
 The many cases of crime in the courts 
 and the numbejr of those who adopt a 
 robber's career are wondered at by those 
 who do not reflect on the dangerous 
 effect of Chinese novel reading. This 
 author was led to make these observa- 
 tions by the boldness in crime and 
 general immorality of Soochow and its 
 neighbourhood. A very great propor- 
 tion of this evil state of things is, he 
 thinks, to be attributed to reading books 
 of a bad influence. 
 
 This author was followed by Shih 
 Cho-;ta,ng, who set tire example of estab- 
 lishing a paper-burning urn in his 
 family court , Into this urn went 
 unhesitatingly all novels, and every sort 
 of vicious literature on which he could 
 lay hands, and especially the blocks from 
 which they were printed. For these 
 he made wide search in the hope of 
 extinguishing the evil at its source. In 
 order to find money to buy them up, h^ 
 first used his spare funds and then sold 
 clothing and even his wife's ornaments, 
 in order that the -work of destruction 
 might be more complete. After him 
 another helper in the crusade was a 
 conscientious provincial governor who 
 came to Soochow in 1838. His name 
 was Yu Ch'ien. His being first judge 
 and afterwards governor prolonged- his 
 connection with Soochow and aided 
 him to watch the effect of his pro- 
 hibitory proclamations. A fourth name 
 in this series of the champions of 
 morality is Wang Chung- ts5ng, prefect 
 of Soochow. He issued proclamations 
 al^o against vicious pictures. A great 
 effect was pl?servable in the book trade 
 of Soochow. Representatives of sixty- 
 five of the most respectable firms, went 
 together to the city temple,burnt incense 
 and made a vow not to engage in the 
 trade in immoral b'opks. An office was also 
 opened in the Confucian temple of the 
 magistracy for buying up the blocks of 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 all iinmoral books, including npvels, to 
 the number of between lOO and 200 
 separate works. The criterion adopted 
 was that all printed books, blocks in- 
 cluded, which glorify aiid gild a vicious 
 life and a thief's career ought to be 
 burnt. Not only novels were condemn- 
 ed but also songs of a vicious tendency 
 made more seductive by musical accom- 
 paniments. The consequence, was an 
 immense combustion of this dlaSs of 
 literature in the city of Soochow, so that 
 it became hard to meet with vicious pub- 
 lications. This was, however, nearly half 
 a century ago, and there has been time 
 since for the evil to crop tip afresh. After 
 a short time surreptitious editions were 
 cut and copies were once more in exten- 
 sive circulation. The governor of 25 
 years ago. Ting Ji-ch'ang, issued a new 
 proclamation reiterating the order prohi- 
 biting immoral publications. At the 
 present time the flood of books of a bad 
 influence is disheartening. Such reading 
 as they furnish has more effect in 
 leading young minds wrong, says the 
 Confuciaiiist censor of tnorals,' than all 
 the influence on the side of right of the 
 teaching of the Sages. He rejoices that 
 the present Treasurer of SoOchow, Huang 
 Tsz-chien, is a man who thoroughly 
 sympathises with the crusade which has 
 been led successively by the above men- 
 tioned persons during the past century 
 in the city of Soochow. 
 
 The foreign reader'of Chinese books 
 of an imaginative kind cannot con- 
 demn them indiscriminately, because 
 they contain beautiful chai^cters both 
 of men and Women, which exhibit an 
 admirable idea of bravery, filial piieity, 
 purity of life, loyalty and <Jther noble 
 qualities. But there can be no doubt 
 of the bad influence of many of the 
 native books which familiarise the minds 
 of the young with scenes bf Vice, and 
 hold up successful crime to sympathetic 
 admiration. It must also 'be rdmem- 
 ' bered that whatever evil there may be 
 in the aetnal life of the -Chinese, they 
 have among them the firm friends of a 
 high morality. The national conscience 
 and the national literature alikrf testify 
 
 with unfaltering voice to the duty of 
 every one to be moral, just, and humane. 
 
 THE YANCTZE RIVER. 
 The Yangtze River flows from Minshan 
 to the sea in a course of about 2,000 
 miles in length. Chinese accounts do 
 not recognise the claim of the " River of 
 golden sand "to be the true Yangtze. 
 This tributary stream is much larger and 
 longer than the Min, but it is with the 
 Yangtze as with the Missisippi, the 
 smaller stream rules. If a large river 
 like the Missouri comes into another, a 
 smaller one like the Missisippi, at a 
 right angle, it does not on account of its 
 being larger give its name to that other 
 on its . way down to the sea.- It is a 
 separate river and kefeps its proper name. 
 Local usage determines these matters. 
 There is no doubt on Chinese usage in this 
 case for Confucius is reported to have said 
 " the great river has its source in the Min 
 mountain, and there it is as small as a 
 wine cup, but when it reaches Kiang- 
 chin (near Chungking), unless you haVe 
 a square-built boat and a day without 
 wind you cannot cross it." The Chinese 
 have always beenfond of enriching their 
 literature with topographical works ; and 
 oneof the oldest of these, the Book of Hills 
 and Seas, describes this river as com- 
 mencing on two ouiliers of the Min 
 mountain on its north-east side. This 
 river flows south from the north border 
 of Szechuan for 150 miles till it reaches 
 theCh^ngtu plain, known as the garden 
 of China and deservedly called so on 
 account of its marvellous fertility. 
 Thus the river does not pass through 
 any part of Tibet and is entirely a 
 Szechuan river till it leaves Szechuan 
 at the Gorges. This is as Chinese maps 
 trace the river. The Minshan range . 
 runs out to the east, gradually takes a 
 south-'east direction, and assumes other 
 names while continuing to divide the 
 province from Shensi. The two pro- 
 vinces have a common boundary till 
 Shensi reaches its southernmost point 
 at about fifty miles north of the gor- 
 ges. The Minshan river and the 
 
THE YANGTSZE RIVER. 
 
 35 
 
 Yanfjtze proper must, takenPtogether, 
 have flowed at this point for neafly a 
 thousand miles through the viceroyalty 
 of the Grovernor-Genefal of Szeohuan. 
 Although the Yangtze is a Szechuan 
 river, flowing first south from 33° latitude 
 to 29° and then north-east through six 
 degrees of longitude to the gorges, it is 
 receiving' all the way the rainfall of 
 Tihet through its afBuents, and in fact 
 drains the Tibetan provinces of Katshi, 
 Kham, and Minyak. Szechuan became 
 an empire in the third century after 
 Christ, and the first capital city built near 
 the Yangtze river was Chtogtu. But 
 after forty years it was again absorbed 
 by the empire of North China. The 
 river in arriving at Siichow at its most 
 southern point receives the River of 
 Golden Sand and the Yiinnan traffic, 
 and the union of the trade of two 
 provinces greatly increases the number 
 of sailing boats on the river. It turns 
 to the north-east to proceed to Chung- 
 king, where the Pao river enters it, 
 bringing with it the produce 6f northern 
 Szechuan and rendering this prefectural 
 city the greatest centre of trade in the 
 province. The gorges occupy a hundred 
 miles in extent. They have made the 
 Yangtze celebrated as a poetic river, 
 for the poetg of China have been much 
 stirred by them ; and those who disbe- 
 lieve in the existence of imagination 
 amongst the Chinese should visit the 
 gorges before they decide whether it is 
 possible for a literary nation to avoid 
 becoming endowed with poetic creative- 
 ness, when nature herself compels them 
 to this by her grandeur and solemnity. 
 Issuing from its narrow channel the river 
 flows now a mighty stream through five 
 hundre4 miles of the province of Hupeh 
 to Hankow, a country all under the 
 control of the Wuchang viceroy. Its 
 course is south-east while it bathes the 
 walls of cities which were once the 
 successive capitals of ancient kingdoms. 
 The rainfall of Hunan province reaches 
 the Tungting lake and 'contributes to 
 feed tha river. No scholarly native 
 passes the mouth of the lake without 
 thinking of the great poet who two 
 
 thousand years ago committed suicide 
 here because he had fallen on evil times 
 and was not allowed by his sovereigu 
 and cousin to conduct the government 
 of the country in times of peculiar 
 danger. After this the river trends to 
 the north-east till it reaches Wuchang 
 and Hankow, where the Han river 
 enters it. It is at this point that the 
 floods are highest and are an annual 
 danger, 'i'he rise of water at Hankow is 
 often fifty feet. The greatest danger is 
 when rain has extended at one time 
 over Hupeh represented by the Han river, 
 Hunan, represented by the Tungting 
 lake, and Szechuan and Tibet, repre- 
 sented, by the Yangtze, 'i'he natural 
 relief for floods is found in the Tung- 
 ting lake, which affords a broad sur- 
 face, and in the scouring power of the 
 river which adds depth. At Hankow 
 more lake surface is needed. It is an 
 annual duty of the Viceroy _to inspect 
 the banks both of the Yangtze and 
 of the Han. Hankow is the centre of 
 China, and the river here presents to 
 the eye a scene of wonderful activity.' 
 Higher up in Szechuan, it is said to 
 bear on its waters five thousand boats' 
 in a year of a size varying from four' 
 and five to ninety tons each. The 
 quantity of traffic at Hankow is many 
 times greater. The merchants of eight 
 provinces bring their wares here either 
 by the Han or the Yangtze. Five' 
 hundred steamer visits are made here 
 in a year and a thousand visits of sailing 
 vessels, and they represent a trade 
 whose value is between nine tad ten 
 million pounds sterling. 
 
 The course of the Yangtze in its' 
 remaining six hundred miles'is first to 
 the south-east to Kiukiang, where it 
 has left Hupeh and has entered Kiangsi' 
 province, the rainfall of which it re- 
 ceives through the Poyang lake. It is 
 a happy thing for the people that the 
 lake here to a large extent prevents 
 such flooding in seasons of heavy rain 
 as takes place at Hankow. Every July 
 the river is at the highest, and at that 
 time the flood at Ha-nkow is 'several 
 feet higher than at any other part of 
 
34- 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 the river. This seems to show the 
 need at that port of artificial ' reservoirs 
 into which a portion of the flood waters 
 c6uld be drawn off. At Kiukiang the 
 scenery and historical recollections of 
 the Lushan impart a special charm to 
 this portion of the river. -Kiukiang is 
 the hottest among all the cities where 
 Europeans reside in China. We next 
 pass Wuhu, the centre of an immense 
 rice trade, in the province of Arihui. The 
 river at Anching and Wuhu has become 
 bent to the north-east and the atmos- 
 phere is slightly cooler. Entering the 
 province of Kiangsu the river reaches 
 Nanking, the capital of several dynasties. 
 Sun Chi-nan was the first who selected 
 it, and he removed to this spot from 
 Wuchang. It remained the capital of 
 South China for about four centuries, 
 with, the occasional intermission of a 
 few years. After its long wanderings 
 the river reaches Chinkiang where the 
 Grand Canal, constructed to convey 
 the grain of the south to the capital, 
 meets it. Here, too, the full force 
 of the tide is felt, and the river soon 
 becomes many miles wide. This en- 
 larged breadth and the tide together 
 render the mighty stream so much the 
 more efficient in forming new land. It 
 has more sea room and it spreads its 
 burden of mud and sand more widely 
 and evenly. Islands form quickly in 
 the embovichure. Tsungming was not 
 known before the Ming dynasty, and 
 new islands are now in course of rapid 
 formation. The tide carries every day 
 a new supply of deposit up every creek, 
 which contributes to raise the land on 
 which the farmer labours. To this is 
 added all the decaying vegetable matter 
 which giVes to the soil beneath the 
 whole of those constituent parts which 
 it does not breathe back into the 
 atmosphere. Its work of land making 
 done, the river returns at last to the 
 sea, from which it originally came. 
 * 
 
 FENG-SHUI. 
 The term FSng-shui is applied to what 
 is called the Wind and Water super- 
 stition of- the Chinese. In selecting 
 
 sites for graves and houses the professors 
 of this false science describe the locality 
 in their fashion and are allowed to give 
 what advice they pleaseWd are paid as 
 we pay a surveying engineer. The 
 system came into China wit.h Buddhism 
 and still exists in India ni a modified 
 fortn. It is there prevalent among the 
 native doctors, who teach that diseases 
 are caused by wind and water. The 
 Chinese have adopted the name, while 
 they have changed its nature and made 
 it specially referable to the selection of 
 sites for ancestral worship and for graves. 
 It is a modern fancy of the Chinese and is 
 frequently discussed in natiye periodi- 
 cals. It was elaborated early in the 
 fourth century* by Kwo-p'u, a learned 
 man of Nanking,, to which city he came 
 from Shansi. He , published a treatise 
 in 20 sections called the Book of Burial. 
 The modern Fgng-shui is here found in 
 its elements, and eight of the twelve 
 sections are still used by the professors 
 of F^ng-shui as the basis of their theory. 
 He was much influenced by the idea of 
 lucky portents, which the new Buddhism 
 had done everything to encourage. In 
 his time the Chin EmperoVs came to 
 live at Nanking, and Kwo-p'u was able 
 to find a reason in its natural situation 
 for the good fortune of the city. He 
 believed he could foretell the destiny 
 of any, one by portents. He was be- 
 headed before he was fifty, because he 
 professed to be able to read the' decrees 
 of heaven on the destiny of individuals 
 and refused to withhold his opinions. 
 The high authorities of his day asked 
 him, " To what age will you live? " " Till . 
 twelve o'clock this day," he answered, 
 " when the life allotted to me will end." 
 The angry personage he, had offended 
 issued the order that it should be as he 
 had said. When led out to execution 
 he made predictions saying that a cer- 
 tain tree would be found at the place 
 of execution. At that tree a nest of a 
 certain bird would be found. These 
 statements are eaid to have been veri- 
 fied. He was a most learned man, a 
 fine scholar, "poet and critic. But such 
 was the effect on him of the half 
 
FENG-SHUI. 
 
 35 
 
 Babylonian, half Hindoo vieviipf destiny, 
 portents, and the influence of the stars 
 then current, that he thought he could 
 tell exactly what would happen to the 
 descendants of anyone who was buried in 
 a j^articular spot ; and it was through his 
 strong faith in his theory and in himself 
 that he became the founder of FSng- 
 shui. After Kwo-pu's time the F&ng- 
 shui of Fukieh gradually became cele- 
 brated. It was very much directed to 
 the construction and the selection of the 
 locality of the ancestral temple. ■ This 
 system has had a considerable influence 
 through its popularity with certain 
 classes in Fukien and the neighbouring 
 province of Chgkiang. The hght and dark 
 aspects observable in localities must not 
 be mutually opposed. The influence of 
 the five planets and of the Pakwa dia- 
 grams must be in harmony in order to 
 secure life and victory. This system 
 has of late lost ground. It is less 
 influential than, the Kiangsi system 
 initiated by Yang Chiiin-sung and three 
 other F^ng-shui authors. Their talk 
 is to a large extent of what they call 
 the Dragon Hollow, the sand water and 
 such things. This trifling with words 
 without meaning is in vogue at present, 
 although it is rated at its true value 
 by every intelligent Chinese, whose dis- 
 belief unfortunately does not preyent its 
 being extensively practised. Indeed, it is 
 universally regarded as essential when a 
 house is to be built or agraveto be opened. 
 It is particularly prevalent in South 
 China, and dates from the Sung dynasty. 
 Unfortunately Ghu Hi and Tsai Yuen- 
 ting, a Prime Minister of the 12th 
 century, gave the influence of their 
 great names to support its' credit among 
 the people. The worship of ancestors 
 was modified to suit the ideas of the 
 Sung dynasty literati, of whom the two 
 mentioned were among the most influ-' 
 ential. The Government, even till a 
 few yeaTs ago, supported the F^ng-shui 
 theory although each individual member 
 of the Government disbelieves it. In 
 1871 the Government prepared eight 
 regulations for the management of mat- 
 ters connected with Christian Missions 
 
 in China. These regulations were, not 
 accepted by the foreign Ministers in 
 Peking and consequently were laid aside 
 like a loSt bill in Parliament. In the 
 eighth regulation it was proposed in all 
 seriousness to refuse any site for a 
 church if the magistrate thought the 
 erection would be detrimental to the 
 Ftog-shui, or good luck, of the neigh- 
 bourhood. Thus it is shown tha,t this 
 superstition may creep into state papers 
 and influence important government 
 policy unless a watch is kept against it. 
 Yet belief in it is denied by any one of 
 position. 
 
 The present opponents of F^ng-shui 
 say of it that it is an attempt to rob 
 the spiritual beings in the universe of 
 their knowledge, and to turn back the 
 heavenly decree. By this they mean 
 that the good and ill fortune of man- 
 kind are really controlled by Divine 
 Providence, or by Heaven as they pre- 
 fer to say, and that the selectors of sites 
 for graves aim wrongfully to control 
 the decrees of heavenly destiny. They 
 aim to make a man's prosperity greater 
 than it ought to be and his adversity 
 less. But this is not their only objec- 
 tion to it. They say it causes great 
 social inconvenience and injustice. If 
 there is exceptional sickness in any 
 locality just after a rich man has built 
 a tomb or a house, the neighbours 
 say it is his fault, and he must restore 
 the good luck of the neighbourhood, 
 or pay heavy damages as a compensation. 
 The neighbours have the advantage of 
 numbers in the trouble that ensues, 
 which takes the form of a law suit or of 
 a boycotting. This last consists of an 
 intolerable warfare of words. The 
 mulct on a rich family at the present 
 time when unfortunately drawn into 
 this position amounts to several hundred 
 taelsi In such neighbourhoods no one 
 ventures to charge the professors of 
 FSng-shui with deception,, nor the loud 
 promoters of the popular delusion (who 
 share among them the rich man's money) 
 with pretending to believe in F6ng-shui 
 for the sake of gain. But it is fortunate 
 that the Chinese newspapers speak the 
 
36 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 trutli on this point and that their 
 ridicule of FIng-shui does not injure 
 their circulation. No intelligent Chi- 
 nese really believes in it, and this 
 secret unbelief is working out good 
 results slowly. ,The influence of western 
 science is making itself more and more 
 felt every year, and missionary efforts 
 are directed to the overthrow of this and 
 kindred delusions, not without a good 
 deal of useful effect. Every step taken 
 by any Viceroy or Governor to found 
 a foreign school or promote the circula- 
 tion of scientific books and journals is 
 driving a ' nail into the coffin of the 
 FSng-shui superstition. The sooner it 
 is buried out of sight the better for 
 China, for it is a mighty enemy to civi- 
 lised progress and the true good of the 
 people of this country. 
 
 IRRIGATION. 
 Fifty years ago, before the great 
 destruction of opium by Lin Tse-hsii at 
 Canton, this statesman had his mind 
 very much bent towards the subject of 
 irrigation. He was anxious to see 
 the methods of rice cultivation now 
 employed on the lower Yangtze extended 
 to Chihli. In this. he followed a policy 
 which had from time to time been a 
 favourite with preceding statesmen ever 
 since the thirteenth century. In a 
 memorial Lin states that this mode of 
 cultivation had been very much in use 
 in ancient times. In the first century 
 of our era he mentions that close to 
 Peking, under the mountains which bring 
 down rivers from the plateau of Mon- 
 golia, there were 8,000 ching of land set 
 apart for growing rice. If we estimate 
 this area by the small measure of those 
 times, which was about eight inches to 
 the foot,, it would amount to 60,000 
 acres or 100 square miles. Over this large 
 extent of landa good official of those times 
 persuaded the people to employ irrigation 
 and grow rice. He told them this would 
 make them rich. He did not add that 
 this industry would also rapidly increase 
 the population in that neighbourhood. 
 The Chinese economists have always 
 aimed at producing wealth, but they 
 have persistently forgotten that it is 
 
 equally important to provide for the 
 safety and well-being of the new mouths 
 which increased grain production brings. 
 In the third ceiitury a still larger area 
 is spoken of in the same locality as the 
 scene of active rice cultivation. Even 
 a million mow of land are in one passage 
 stated to have been under this cultiva- 
 tion. These citations occur in the 
 valuable histories known as the Hou 
 Ilan-shu and the WeUshu, and in the 
 famous work on Chinese rivers known as 
 the Shui Ching Ghu of the sixth century. 
 These books are the principal historical 
 authorities for that locality in that age. 
 Coming down to the Sui dynasty the 
 harvest of rice and millet is stated to 
 have amounted in the same region to 
 thousands of thousands of piculs, thus 
 showing that the method of irrigation 
 was then extensively praptised there. 
 At the same time a new effort was made 
 to increase the productiveness of the re- 
 gion by adding 1,000 ching, which would 
 probably be 10,000 acres. The Chinese 
 estimate that an acre (six mow) will 
 keep six persons in comfort if they sell 
 part of the rice to buy clothing and 
 tools and keep their houses in repair. 
 If the 10,000 acres all belonged to poor 
 people this would imply a population 
 of 60,000 persons, but in fact muph of 
 the rice is turned into money, and 
 added to the stores of the rich, while 
 the rice sold is eaten at a distance. It 
 may therefore be several years before 
 the pressure from too great a population 
 is felt. In the Yang dynasty we are 
 told in history that 3,000 ching in a 
 locality near Peking were under rice 
 cultivation. 
 
 In the closing years of the tenth 
 century the Sung dynasty made good' 
 its possession of the imperial authority. 
 The Kietan Taf tars at that time were 
 
 . in the habit of constantly invading 
 Chihli, and the plan adopted to keep 
 them in check was to make rice fields 
 all the way for upwards of fifty 
 
 . miles, east and west of Peking at the 
 foot of the mountains. They were to 
 be cultivated by soldiers, who were thus 
 to support themselves by agricultural 
 employment. An account of this system 
 of frontier defence is given in the Suug 
 
tURlGATION. 
 
 37 
 
 History. Tlie tract of laud^as north 
 and south about twenty miles wide; and 
 east and west more than a hundred 
 miles long. Banks were made to retain ' 
 the water necessary for irrigation, and 
 the soldiers who kept them in repair 
 were always in readiness for the moun- 
 ted Tartar horsemen when they came 
 on robbing excursions down the passes 
 on to the cultivated lands of China. 
 JVIany objections were raised, but the 
 promoter of the scheme quoted the old 
 histories, and won the emperor's appro- 
 val. He was himself appointed to be in 
 charge of the undertaking. Beyond the 
 rice lands on the west were troops , 
 placed to guard the passes on the old 
 system. 
 
 The real rice land of China is on the 
 banks of the Yangtze in Anhui and 
 Kiangsu. Irrigation is here easy and 
 labour cheap. The cheapest rice to be 
 found is that of Anhui. Over large 
 portions of the rice producing country 
 women share in the work of cultivation 
 in planting out the young rice plants 
 and in working the chain of buckets 
 which pumps wa.ter into the fields. The 
 competency of the women in this in- 
 dustry materially helps to lower the 
 price of labour. As a reward they are 
 not obliged to bind their feet. The 
 annual product is very large and 
 Wuhu is now able to help both the 
 northern and southern provinces when 
 in need. When lately the summer 
 floods of Chihli became so overwhelming 
 as to render many thousands home- 
 less and destitute, leading to a decree 
 that southern merchants should be in- 
 cited to ship rice to Tientsin free of 
 duty, the Canton and Fukien merchants 
 resident in Wuhu telegraphed at once (so 
 the native newspapers say) for steamers 
 to Shanghai and the south, so that they 
 might be able to respond to this demand. 
 The Yangtze river is thus seen to be of 
 immense value by the aid it gives, in 
 the irrigation of the rice fields, in 
 saving the lives of the people in distant 
 provinces. The usual tiine of floods is 
 July, and during this month and August 
 -the rice fields act as lakes to draw off part 
 of the overflow. Thus rice cultivation 
 helps also as a direct agent in lowering 
 
 the level of the summer flood waters in 
 the rivers and in protecting the embank- 
 ments from being broken through. 
 
 THE FLOODS IN THE NORTH. 
 
 The summer rains in North-China 
 have been specially abundant* and have 
 brought on calamitous floods at very 
 many points. The homes of the people 
 over an immense region have been 
 destroyed. The breaches in the Peiho, 
 the Yellow River, the Grand Canal, and 
 other rivers in Chihli and Shantung are 
 so numerous that the officers in charge , 
 must be in despair. The whole country 
 is a vast alluvial flat intersected by 
 rivers and spotted by lake hollows of all 
 dimensions. If the observer take his 
 stand at Tientsin and look north-west 
 towards the^capital there are several 
 breaches in the Peiho ?ill the way to 
 Pukou, fifteen, miles distant. The water 
 of the flooded plain on the right bank 
 may be seen at one point falling as a 
 cascade into the river with a drop of 
 two feet. Then crossing the river it 
 rushes into the fields beyond through 
 the left bank. A.11 around crops are 
 overwhelmed, houses overthrown, and 
 the population scattered. The rivers 
 meeting at Tientsin from the north-west 
 and south have caused this. Human 
 labour has elevated the city out of the 
 reach of floods, and the embankments 
 and raised roads afford a refuge to fugi- 
 tives. Otherwise all that is seen is one 
 vast sea. It was so a generation ago in 
 a former year of heavy rain and it will 
 ,be so after a generation again. But it 
 is not an evil which science cannot 
 mitigate, and great is the responsibility 
 of the high officers who, having the 
 administrative control of the inundated 
 regions, refuse to change old traditions 
 and to invite help from those who know. 
 On the south of the city for thirty miles 
 no dry land is seen. In other directions 
 the same is true for a hundred miles. 
 In many parts the water on the plain 
 finds no outlet and will remain to be 
 slowly evaporated. Only after about 
 three years, it is supposed, will all this 
 
 * Written in September, 1890. 
 
38 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 country be dry laud again. If we remove 
 our point of observation beyond Paotiug- 
 fu, 150 miles west of Tientsin, there is 
 a large in undated tract towards Hwailu 
 where the mountains are. crossed into 
 Shansi. Proceeding to the south-west 
 tiie Grand Canal coming from the south 
 is identical with the old Wei river for 
 about 150 miles, entering that river at 
 Linching. The Wei, above its conflu- 
 ence with the Grand Canal, flows from 
 the mountains at the south end of Sh'au- 
 si for another 150 miles, and it is the 
 rainfall of northern Honan and of the 
 mountains of southern Shansi that has 
 just now swelled this river and the Grand 
 Canal. There is a closed lock at the 
 confiueuce at Linching which is opened 
 occasionally to allow tlie grain junks to 
 pass on their way to Tientsin from the 
 south. This year the water of the Wei 
 was high enough at one time to flow 
 over the lock into the Shantung or 
 southern portion of the Caiial. Not far 
 below this point at Wuchang the bank 
 has been forced in several places, and 
 the country inundated. In consequence 
 the crops are ruined and the people 
 must starve. In all there are said to 
 be twenty tyo breaks" in the embank- 
 ment of the Canal between Linching 
 and Tientsin. There has been, it ife said, 
 no such inundation in this part of Shan- 
 tung since 1822. The Wei River has 
 risen eight feet and this is the chief cause 
 of the flood which has now swept away 
 whole villages by a sudden rush, not 
 allowing a large part of the inhabitants 
 time to escape. An immense number 
 are believed to have been drowned. 
 
 The cry of distress is now heard 
 not only from Tientsin and the ports 
 bordering on the canal. The Yellow 
 River in Shantung nearer the sea on 
 the 7th and 8th of July burst its banks 
 a little to the north-west of Chinan, 
 the provincial capital,' in a violent storm 
 of wind and rain. It is stated that the 
 strength, of the blast raised the waters 
 so high that they overcame all obstacles 
 and caused the removal of 300 feet of 
 embankment On the north side of the 
 river. The sea is distant about 120 
 miles from this point. An immense 
 body of water was thus thrown on the 
 
 plain belonging to Wutingfu, the most 
 northern prefecture of Shantung near 
 the sea. Many districts which during 
 the last few years have not been reached 
 by the floods are now covered with 
 water in this part, and the crops on 
 them hopelessly destroyed. In this 
 case the evil was want of strength in 
 the embankment, . which needs to be 
 made proof against the July freshet 
 joined with heavy rain such as char- 
 acterised this year, armed with the 
 force of a violent storm. At the end of 
 last year the river showed its power by 
 forcing a new way for itself by a fresh 
 route to the sea near its mouth.. At 
 that time it made a ddtour to the north, 
 deserting the channel assigned it by 
 the officials in charge, at a point about 
 20 miles from the sea. This new chan- 
 nel was accepted by' the officials, and 
 their action was approved by the em- 
 peror. At the new outbreak, a hundred 
 miles further up the stream, it will be 
 more difficult to bring the river under 
 control, becau.se it l^as becorne, with its 
 one outlet to the ocean recently made, 
 more winding than before. The Missis- 
 sippi engineering is based on the prin- 
 ciple that the outlet should be straight 
 and short. The Chinese have allowed 
 the unconscious stream to choose its 
 own path just as the height of the 
 freshet, the local level, and the winds 
 and storms of the hour compelled it. 
 All ought to be set right by the en- 
 gineers of the West applying the most 
 approved principles in modern engineer- 
 ing. It certainly seems reasonable that, 
 considering the vast extent of level 
 country in that part of China, as many 
 as possible straight outlets to the sea 
 should be provided, each of them well 
 banked. . Then when the July freshet, 
 the peach blossom freshet in April, and 
 the autumn freshet in August come in 
 force, the rising swell of water will be 
 carried quickly past before it can do 
 harm, to the sea, its natural home. 
 Whatever can be done to lower the 
 swell in the time of freshets must 
 be done. Up the stream there must 
 be irrigation reservoirs; near the mouth 
 there should be straight channels 
 to the sea., Labour is cheap and 
 
THE CHINESE TREATMENT OF CHOLERA. 
 
 39 
 
 abundant in China, but it n^s skilled 
 superintendence. China must consent 
 to use foreign experts. Such men 
 as the English engineers who bank- 
 ed the mouths of the Danube, the 
 Americans Tipho did the same for the 
 Mississippi, or the Dutch who keep the 
 Rhine under control, would be likely if' 
 employed to save an immense .future 
 outlay to the government by bringing 
 under a safe system the rivers of Cliihli 
 and Shantung. 
 
 THE CHINESE TREATMENT OP 
 
 CHOLERA. 
 Mahy Chinese doctors well remember 
 the cholera Qf 1860 and 1862. They 
 keep account of both these years as 
 times when this fell disease was most 
 destructive of liuman life in their coun- 
 try. A leading article in one of the 
 ■Shanghai daily newspapers in Chinese, 
 written by a well-informed native phy- 
 sician, gives the views of his class on the 
 treatment that should be regarded as 
 most suitable. He starts with saying 
 that most men who die from cholera 
 owe their death not so much to the 
 disease itself as to the incompetency 
 of the native doctors in attendance. 
 They do not attend to the real nature 
 of the disease, and they treat only its 
 outer manifestation. Then, he " says, 
 in persons attacked there is a lack 
 of healthy strength and a pliability 
 to fatigue. They get hot by day by 
 exposure, and sleep in dra.ughts by 
 night unprotected. Such persons if 
 they take food at irregular intervals 
 and sometimes go with empty stomachs, 
 are predisposed f6r cholera, which may 
 enter with the breath through the 
 lungs and the stomach, thus passing 
 into the intestines. The >vay he puts, 
 it is peculiar. The lungs control the 
 skin and hair. The violent perspiration 
 shows that the -lungs are affected, as 
 the vomitinsc shows that the stomach 
 is disordered. The spasms indiqate 
 that the liver is affected, because the 
 muscles are under the control of 
 that organ. If a good doctor is not 
 called soon the liver will be reached 
 and spasms will begin. Should wise 
 
 treatment still be delayed the heart and 
 spleen will be affected and then the 
 tongue will curl up and death will 
 ensue. Sometimes the process is quicker 
 and death occurs after from two to four 
 hours. This is because the evil influence 
 entering from without strikes directly 
 into the seat of the " cold principle " in 
 the lower intestines. 
 
 This physician then proceeds to 
 describe his own, as he says, very suc- 
 cessful mode of treating cholera. He 
 notices seven symptoms — vomiting, 
 diarrhoea, low pulse, cold limbs, perspira- 
 tion, spasms, and exhaustion. He at 
 once orders from the druggist a pre- 
 pared dose to_be heated at the patient's 
 house and taken warm to the extent of 
 a good sized tea-cupful. In this dose the 
 main things are such drugs as ginger, 
 ginseng, Chinese cardamoms and a sort 
 of carraway seed. After this the patient 
 receives atractylodes alba, called peshu 
 by the apothecaries, a medicine of which 
 the Chinese think a great deal as an 
 aromatic tonic and stimulant. They use 
 it in cases of profuse sweating and apo- 
 plexy, chronic dysentery, and rheumatism. 
 It belongs to the cynaraceoe among the 
 spepies of which are found many 
 plants known in Europe as furnish- 
 ing useful stomachic and febrifuge 
 medicines. If the disease progresses 
 still into the spasmodic i state with 
 numbness of the limbs this physician 
 would use poBonia alhiflora, the pecho- 
 of the native apothecaries, with boymia 
 rutaecarpa, and a pepperwort whicb 
 they call wuchuyu., Our druggists knovs^ 
 it by the name xanthoxylum piperitum. 
 It is one of the commoner aromatic 
 stimulants in Clnna and in Japan. To. 
 this he adds cinnamon bark. 
 
 lu 1861-18^)1 he remarks, when the- 
 cholera reached Shanghai-, it was a time 
 when the people were crowded indis- 
 criminately in an insufficient number 
 of dwellings. Refugees had arrived in' 
 thousands, escaped from the daily scenes 
 of burning, and fighting which were 
 witnessed over all the adjoining coun- 
 try at that time. He notices that tlie 
 sanitary conditions were such that the 
 people were specially liable , to be at- 
 tacked by cholera. It was then that 
 
Jfi 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 this physician tried liis methods and 
 experience. As he does not mention 
 any preparation of opium or of mer- 
 cury he is probably a cautious doctor 
 and would avoid strong remedies. 
 We should expect opium to be ap- 
 plied to soothe the extraordinary de- 
 rangement of the system when under 
 the dominion of cholera. Instead of 
 this he gives pig's liver mixed with 
 brick dust from the inside of a furnace, 
 a mixture honoured with the title Fu- 
 lung-kan, " liver of the hiding dragon."* 
 To this are added one or two ounces of 
 ginger. This remedy of his has had 
 great popularity with many persons and 
 been very successful. He has had, he 
 tells us, a large practice during the 
 summer of this year and the effect on 
 patients of his remedies has been such 
 as to give him great satisfaction. He 
 could not secure this popularity without 
 favouring the popular beliefs. 
 
 He then tells wh?,t other doctors 
 say about the treatment and origin of 
 cholera. Its not being mentioned) tliat 
 is, under the name sha, in early books 
 has excited much remark. It first occurs 
 in a book which recommends in treat- 
 ing it the use of paper from which silk- 
 worms have retired, ts'an t'ui chih. This 
 book is probably of -the Ming dynasty, 
 for he proceeds to say that the cholera 
 catoe in the middle of the 17th century 
 with the dynasty from Manchuria spread- 
 ing from the north southward. He 
 notices the use of the name "Manchurian 
 sickness" and of " the foreign cholera." 
 If this is so it is a curious fact in the 
 history of the disease, and the " Man- 
 churian sickness" nepds to be inquired 
 into. It seems more likely that Europe 
 is right in supposing that cholera ori- 
 ginated in the hbt jungles of southern 
 Asia, and at a more recent date than 
 this account states. The same word 
 sha is applied to diphtheria and scarlet 
 fever, which became epidemic in China 
 in the severest form in 1733, and belong 
 to the winter and spring. The word 
 sha is applied to some five or six 
 
 * Hot remedies must be used. The fire 
 god of whom the " Sliding dragon " is one 
 of the titles, is supposed to have put his 
 influence into the furnace brickwork. 
 
 diseases, in part summer and autumn 
 epidemics, like cholera, and in part 
 prevailing in the winter and spring. 
 All have appeared in China in the 
 17th, 18tli, or 19th centuries for the 
 first time. The term ho loan, also 
 applied to different kinds of cholera; is 
 an ancient name, descriptive of it in 
 the old times "when it was not yet 
 epidemic. The reader will judge for him- 
 self as to the drugs the names of which 
 have been mentioned above. 1'hey 
 are really not very different from what 
 are found in western practice. Chinese 
 doctors appear from what is here said 
 to be fond of using mild remedies, while 
 they avoid those which are very power- 
 ful in their operation ; as to the 
 nature of the medicines, they are on the 
 whole much the same as our own. 
 
 THE CLIMATE OP CHINA, 
 The clouds which bring rain to China 
 come from the sea and receive their 
 burden of moisture by evaporation over 
 the Pacific Ocean. Winds frbm the north 
 and west are usually rainless because of 
 the small amount of watery surface on 
 which the heat of the sun can operate, 
 The climate of China has high maxima 
 and low minima of heat and cold. In 
 Peking the greatest cold is four and a 
 half degrees above zero, according to 
 Fritsche, our best authority on climate, 
 and the greatest heat ninety-seven. At 
 Shanghai the greatest cold is about 
 seventeen degrees and the greatest heat a 
 hundred and two. At Canton the cold 
 increases till it is a degree above freezing 
 point in winter and there ceases. The 
 greatest heat in that latitude is ninety- 
 three. At Foochow in the winter the 
 thermometer indicates two degrees above 
 freezing point when at its lowest. At 
 the sfime place the maximum heat in 
 summer is ninety-seven. The greatest 
 difference between summer heat and 
 winter cold is at Peking, where it 
 amounts to nearly ninety-three degrees. 
 The inhabitants of Shanghai experience 
 a difference of eighty-five degrees during 
 the year. At Foochow the difference 
 is sixty-three degrees and at Canton 
 sixty. The people need to be better 
 
THE CLIMATE OF CHINA. 
 
 il 
 
 armed against winter cold 'y^ the north 
 than elsewhere. The great comfort of 
 the poor in the north is a sheep skin to 
 wrap round them in winter. It is pro- 
 cured from Mongolia, and if they have 
 not this they have wadded cotton. It 
 is distance from, the sea which causes 
 the difference between summer and 
 winter to be so great as it is in North 
 China. So also it is proximity to the 
 sea joined with the mountainous char- 
 acter of the adjacent country which 
 tends to equalise tlje climate at Canton 
 and Foochow. The sea warms the air 
 in winter and the mountains cool it in 
 summer. lu the north, on the contrary 
 the level plains are very little cooled 
 by the few mountains which exist, and 
 there is no sea to warm the air in winter. 
 One of the chief official duties of the 
 Chinese Emperor is to pray for rain and 
 snow in certain temples. The absence 
 of moisture over the wide extent of 
 Mongolia limits the supply of moisture, 
 because, for instance, in the winter the 
 prevailing wind is fro/tn the north and 
 that wind is dry. Snow isneeded for the 
 wheat crop which is sown in the autumn, 
 and rain in spring and summer for the 
 various kinds of millet. A year seldom 
 passes in which the Emperor does not 
 proceed- more than once to the temples 
 to pray either for snow or for rain. The 
 unceriainty of the rainfall is one of the 
 great misfortunes of North China, and it 
 is attended by another almost equally 
 destructive, the danger from floods. 
 "Whenever there is heavy rain in North 
 China ther'e may be also a superabundant 
 rainfall in Mongolia and Tibet. This 
 the northern provinces of China receive 
 through their rivers. The rivers by 
 carrying along with them stones, sand, 
 and silt are always raising the plains 
 higher. On this account they cannot 
 keep the same course but mu^t occupy 
 in succession all parts of the plains 
 which they traverse and to the height of 
 which they are constantly adding a little. 
 The summer monsoon causes the winds 
 to blow from the"" south-east, and this is 
 so in the north and iu the south of 
 China. The rain clouds of China are 
 brought by the south-east winds, chang- 
 ing occasionally to south and south- 
 
 west ; and from the same south-east 
 quarter come the typhoons which are 
 an annual terror to Chinese navigation. 
 From the same part of the ocean, 
 nearthe Philippine Islands on the north- 
 east, which originates the typhoons, 
 and in part the monsoon, flows the warm 
 water current which bathes the shores 
 of Japan, and is called by the Japanese 
 the Kurosiwo. This is a part of the 
 northern equatorial current of geogra- 
 phers which comes across the Pacific 
 ocean from America in a westerly direc- 
 tion, and is diverted northward by 
 the Philippine Islands. But for the 
 Philippine Islands and Formosa, which 
 cause this current to take a sharp angle 
 to the north, China would have a 
 warmer climat^. As' it is the. Kurosiwo 
 makes the Philippines and Formosa 
 more tropical, and then moves in the 
 direction of Japan and Corea. Its effect 
 on Japan is to render the climate mild 
 enough for the silk and tea industries 
 to flourish there. The same isothermal 
 line which passes through the silk and 
 tea districts south of the Yangtze 
 river in China crosses the ocean to 
 Nagasaki, which is about five degrees 
 north of these districts, and then 
 proceeds, still with an incline to the 
 north, towards Osaka and Tokio. The 
 south coast of Japan has thus the same 
 temperature as Foochow and Hangchow, 
 because Japan is in the midst of the 
 sea and is bathed on both sides by the 
 Kurosiwo current. Corea also on its 
 western coast is warmed somewhat by 
 the same current, which sends a branch 
 in that direction. The sea coast of 
 Chinese Tartary is bathed by a cold 
 water current flowing from Kamschatka 
 in the far north and continuing to Corea, 
 which it cools on the east coast. Corres- 
 ponding to this cold current is another 
 which flows out of the Gulf of Pechili and 
 proceeds alongside of the China coast as 
 far as to the Formosa Channel. The 
 temperature of this current "is. given by 
 Fritsche as fifty-nine in February and 
 seventy-nine in September a little 
 to the north of Formosa. A few 
 degrees further to the east the water 
 of the ocean is seventy degrees in 
 February and in July eighty-'eighli. 
 
MODERN CHINA. 
 
 Between Corea and Japan the tempera- 
 ture of the water of the sea is eighty- 
 two degrees Fahrenheit in August and 
 sixty-one in June. This mildness of 
 the temperature is caused by the warm 
 water current, in the benefit of which 
 China does not share. Japan has mois- 
 ture and verdant beauty. China has 
 continental regularity of temperature 
 and freedom from abrupt changes. The 
 annual progress from heat to cold and 
 from cold to heat, gradual as it is, 
 probably favours the physical develop- 
 ment of the Chinese and helps to render 
 them industrious, steady and not given 
 to change. 
 
 CHINESE EDUCATIONAL 
 COLLEGES. 
 The new collegiate institutions founded 
 by the Customs Taotais of Shanghai are 
 an index to the present state of education 
 among the Chinese. The gift of 20,000 
 taels by ■ Yin Taotai, twenty - four 
 years ago, gave origin to the Lung- 
 m&n-shu-yuen. It has 36 pupils or 
 beneficiaries and they include Masters 
 of Arts, Bachelors of Arts and some of 
 the rank of Kung shmg, intervening 
 between these degrees. The subject 
 of study is philosophy. This is not, 
 however, the philosophy of mind as we 
 understand it, nor is it anything so 
 charming as Plato or Cicero would have 
 called philosophy. It is the philosophy 
 of the Sung dynasty known as the 8ing- 
 li, founded by the great writers of that 
 time, the 11th and 12th centuries. It 
 is a moral philosophy combining into 
 a system the teaching of the Chinese 
 sages on ethical subjects, on the origin 
 of heaven and earth, and on man's 
 ^lace in nature. These philosophers 
 had read Buddhist and Taoist books, 
 and the traces of this reading and of 
 their historical and literary culture are 
 seen in the system of philosophy elab- 
 orated by them and still in vogue. The 
 Emperor Hien-feng favoured it and 
 probably this is tibe reason that Yin 
 Taotai thought it would ber^a good 
 thing for the interests of learning at 
 Shanghai to promote its study among 
 the graduates. There is an annual in- 
 
 come of 480 ounces of silver to main- 
 tain the students at the College, where 
 they have rooms for residence. 
 
 There is also an examining college 
 called the Ghiu-chih-shu-yuen, founded 
 sixteen years ago at the beginning of 
 the reign of Kuang-hsii by Fgng Taotai. 
 A sum of 600 ounces of silver from the 
 interest of the capital is devoted 
 to the payment of four examiners. 
 They issue questions and subjects for 
 essays every quarter, examine the papers 
 sent in by competitors and assign prizes. 
 The first examiner propounds questions 
 in classical study and poetry and lite- 
 rature generally. The second examines 
 in history and subjects connected with 
 the administration of public affairs both 
 local and national, the third examines is 
 mathematics and the fourth in geogra- 
 phy. No recognition of the importance 
 of the English language is found in the 
 programme of subjects. Only the Chinese 
 language is used, the object being to 
 promote high studies with the use of 
 Chinese text books. Two months and 
 a half are allowed for answering the 
 questions or discussing the subjects 
 proposed. The best writer receives a 
 prize of five taels, the second best has 
 four taels. The writer standing third 
 receives 3|^ taels, the fourth has three 
 taels, the fifth two and the sixth one. 
 Smaller sums are given to the inferior , 
 essayists. The scope of the questions 
 embraces modern learning. While the 
 Lung-men college favours Sung dynasty 
 studies, this college favours the study 
 of books by more modern authors and 
 the subjects included are rather critical 
 and historical than philosophical. FSng 
 Taotai thought that the philosophy of 
 the Sung dynasty was less important 
 than to have the graduates versed in 
 history and in all practical matters 
 connected with local and general gov- 
 ernment. This system promotes the read- 
 ing of modern books. Able men arm 
 themselves with the necessary know- 
 ledge from various new publications 
 read expressly. They cannot discuss 
 the subjects propounded in so satisfac- 
 tory a way as to gain a prize unless 
 they read contemporary documents and 
 authors. The stimulus of prizes has in 
 
CHINESE EDUCATIONAL COLLEGES. 
 
 P 
 
 the west long been used4|jn schools 
 to excite the activity of the mental 
 faculties of boys and girls^ Now 
 the same system is being applied to 
 promote self-education in after life. 
 The system is only beginning in the 
 west and in China. It is a move- 
 ment full of promise. Self-education by 
 reading in the unoccupied hours of the" 
 day is assisted by every offer of prizes 
 open to general competition, because the 
 stimulus leads to mental work in con- 
 nection with the subject of the books 
 read. The professors in our universities 
 at home are now becoming guides in 
 study to groups of readers beyond the 
 circle of their college classes. This is 
 effected by the establishment of reading 
 circles. JSvery one has heard of the 
 Chautauqua system in America where 
 the self-education of readers of' mature 
 age, members of reading circles, is aided 
 by summer camp meetings for lectures 
 and examinations. This is what the 
 Anglo-Saxon race is doing at home. It 
 is a matter of great interest to see in 
 China an effort like this of voluntary 
 examinations with prizes by which rea- 
 ders are stimulated to study a great 
 variety of modern books, and actually 
 to take part themselves ■ in the thinking 
 of the age by' composing essays on 
 subjects which familiarise them with the 
 modern currents of opinion. Stimulus 
 is needed. Readers take refuge in 
 novels from the want of interest attach- 
 ing to more useful books. If they write 
 an essay or a poem on a given subject 
 and an examiner or a committee are to 
 read that essay and award a prize to it 
 if it is deserved, then books of solid 
 information will be preferred to some 
 unhealthy romance. Fiction tires the 
 mental faculties by straining them too 
 much. It is too exciting. This is true 
 for the Anglo-Saxon and for the Chinese. 
 Sober i useful reading' is better ; and in 
 order to encourage, the habit of reading 
 ' useful books, the composition of essays 
 in their subjects should also be encour- 
 aged. 
 
 The Taotai who spent thirty thou- 
 sand taels (£7,000) on the formation of 
 an examining college probably did 
 better than h|s predecessor who spent 
 
 £5,000 on the foundation of a college 
 providing free board and lodging, for 
 thirty-six_select students. Tet the bene^t 
 arising from this last institution is not 
 small : men from all the neighbouring 
 cities are chosen after examination and 
 reside together in free quarters with the 
 advantage of a large and well chosen 
 library. They can improve their know- 
 ledge and compete for prizes in the 
 other college or for the Viceroy's prizes 
 if they wish; by reading modern works 
 their horizon is widened, and they learn 
 to think and write with more culture 
 and force. The country thus ' obtains 
 an increase in its staff of able writers. 
 Almost all the able men now in the 
 higher posts in various parts of China 
 appear to be aware of the great need 
 for promoting the higher* education. 
 Li Hung-ehang and Chang Chih-tung 
 are pushing, their influence in this di- 
 rection. Among the Taotai posts in 
 connection with foreign trade, Ningpo 
 has an examining college the program-, 
 me of which is very much like that at 
 Shanghai. At the latter place there are 
 usually about a hundred competitors. In 
 mathematics there are only five or six. 
 Twenty or thirty or it may be forty 
 write for the prizes in classical criticism 
 and poetry. As many more write upon 
 history and on administrative questions. 
 In geography, including cities, rivers, 
 and local products, as' well as map-mak- 
 ing, there are not so many. 
 
 THE MARINER'S COMPASS A 
 CHINESE INVENTION. 
 There have been some new indications 
 in Europe of a desire to know the facts 
 regarding the claim of the Chinese to 
 have invented the mariner's compass. 
 A professor in Vienna is now making 
 inquiries on this matter. Dr. Chalmers, 
 of Hongkong, has gone over the older 
 passages in the literature and in the 
 China Review and shown that in ancient 
 times the Chinese had not yet begun 
 to use the mariner's compass. Mr. 
 Mayers drew attention to the same sub- 
 ject and noticed that there is no refer- 
 ence to it in the early voyages of which 
 we have any account. The Chinese 
 
■W 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 used the needle in land carriages but 
 did not think of applying it to naviga- 
 tion. As to one thing there can be no 
 doubt ; the Chinese did not learn the 
 properties of a magnetised needle from 
 any other country. They found it out 
 for themselves, though it is impossible 
 to point to the man by name who first 
 observed that a magnetised needle points 
 north and south. Doubtless it came 
 about in this way. The Chinese as we 
 know have in their country boundless 
 'tracts of ironstone, and among these 
 no small portion is magnetic. Every 
 woman needs a needle, and iron early 
 took the place of the old stone needles 
 and were commonly used before the time 
 of Ch'in Shih-huang, that is, more than 
 21 centuries ago. Whenever a needle 
 happened to be made of magnetic iron 
 it might reveal its south-pointing qua- 
 lity by falling into a cup of water, 
 when it happened to be attached to a 
 splinter of wood, for example. It came 
 in some -such way to be known com- 
 monly that certain- needles had this 
 quality. The great producing centre 
 for magnetip iron isT'szchou, in southern 
 Chihli. This city was very early called 
 the City of Mercy, and the magnetic 
 stone produced there came to be known 
 as the stone of T'szchou, and, so t'sz 
 shih betame the ordinary name for a . 
 magnet. Later the Chinese began to 
 speak of the city as the " City of the 
 Magnet " instead of calling it the " City 
 of Mercy." The polarity of the magne- 
 tic needle would become known to the 
 Chinese of that city and its neighbour- 
 hood first. The first who noticed the 
 polarity would be some intelligent 
 person who communicated the fact 
 as an inaccountable peculiarity in an 
 age when omens and portents were 
 diligently sought for in every natural 
 object and •phenomenon. Kwei Ku-tsz, 
 the earliest author who mentions 
 the south-pointing needle, lived in the 
 4th century before Christ. There can 
 be no reasonable doubt that the polarity 
 of the needle was known at that time. 
 Whatever myth regarding the' needle 
 was invented would be based on the 
 knowledge of the physical fact, and the 
 discovery of the fact must have preceded 
 
 the invention of any myth embracing it. 
 As to the discovery, there is no reason 
 to suppose it was in any way foi'eign, 
 because the Chinese use an enormous 
 number of needles and have an inex- 
 haustible supply of ironstone. There is 
 no need to say a word in favour of 
 India because that country has no iron 
 to speak of. But though the polarity 
 was known, we do, not find' that it was 
 turned to a practical use till the Tsin 
 dynasty, when landscapes began to be 
 studied by the professors of fengshui. 
 There was at that time a general be- 
 lief in the magical -powers of natural 
 objects. This was a Buddhist doc- 
 trine and it took firm hold on the 
 Chinese mind of that age. Just as 
 Buddhists believe that indications of 
 the influence of Buddha are present 
 everywhere in the natural world, so the 
 Chinese philosophers of those times 
 taught that indications of good and ill 
 luck are to be seen all through nature. 
 The polarity of the needle would take 
 its place in this category of thought. 
 Though it is not distinctly mentioned 
 by Ko Hung or by Kwo Pu in the 
 fourth century, yet to the disciples of 
 Kwo Pu it became an essential part of 
 the landscape compass which the pro- 
 fessors oi fingshui all use. Kwo Pu, 
 the founder of this system, died A.D« 
 324, and it was not till four centuries 
 later that the fengshui compass began 
 to assume its present form. Though 
 Kwo Pu's fame is great as a believer 
 in the doctrine' that portents of future 
 kings are to be found in the locahties 
 where they will subsequently be born, 
 he left much to be done by others, and 
 the compass used by the fingshui pro- 
 fessors for marking landscape iifdica- 
 tions was really first made about the 
 eighth century by Chiu Yen-han. The 
 compass was of hard wood, about a foot 
 wide, and it had in the centre a small 
 well in which a magnetised needle floated 
 on water. On the compass were inscribed 
 several concentric circles as on the 
 wooden horizon of our globes. They em- 
 brace the twelve double hours, the ten 
 denary sytnbols, the eight diagrams of 
 Fuhi and .(vther marks. This compass 
 was Used in preparing a, fengshui report 
 
THE MABINEE8 COM I^ ASS A, CHINESE INVENTION. ^ 
 
 of any spot where a house or tomb 
 was to be constructed, so th?t the con- 
 struction might not be upon an unlucky 
 site or planned in an unlucky manner. 
 At the same time there was living a- 
 Chinese who had studied Hindoo^ astro- 
 nomy. This was Yi-hing, who was 
 the imperial astronomer and also a 
 Buddhist priest. He noticed that the 
 needle did not point exactly north and 
 that there was a variatien of 2° 95'. 
 This variation went on increasing till a 
 century later, that if?, till the ninth 
 century. A ' professor of fengshui 
 named Yang-yi then added a new circle 
 to the cotnpass. On this , improved 
 compass the first -of the twelve hours 
 begins on the new circle at 7|° east, of 
 north. The compass it will be observed 
 grew out of the old astrological report 
 or nativity paper calculated from the 
 position of stars,' and prepared in 
 the Han dynasty by astrologers as a 
 regular' part of social life,' especially 
 when marriages were about , to be 
 solemniseci; .Some of th« old astrono- 
 mical circles are preserved in the new 
 fe'ngshui chart. This was the com- 
 pass used when Shen-kwa wrote on 
 the south-pointing needle in the 11th 
 century. This author mentions that 
 any iron needle acquires polarity by 
 rubbing it on a piece of load-stone. He 
 alludes to the variation as a fact which 
 he himself ha,d observed and speaks of 
 the south-pointing needie as an imple- 
 ment used by the professors of feng- 
 shui. By tliem it was employed in the 
 form pf a float upon water. After this, in 
 A.D. 1122, Sii-king, the ambassador to 
 Corea, describes the use of the floating 
 needle on board ship, while he made the 
 voyage. This is the first instance, the 
 ' earliest by more than a century,' of the 
 use, of the mariner's compass on board 
 ship found as yet in any book native or 
 foreign. The book is called SMh-kao-li- 
 Tu, " Narrative of a Mission to Corea." 
 The existence of this book settles the 
 question of the first use of the mariner's 
 compass at Sea, in favour of the Chjnese. 
 At that time the needle floated on 
 water supported by a piece of wood, 
 
 but in the- Ming dynasty s6me. 
 Japanese junks engaged in piracy were 
 
 . captured by the Chinese, and the com- 
 pass in use on board was found to have 
 the needle dry and raised on a pivot,, 
 while still pointing , southward. The 
 Japanese had .learned from Portuguese 
 navigators to make a compass of this 
 kind, and probably the needles they used 
 were brought from Europe. From this 
 time the Chinese adopted the principle 
 of a pivot, and made their compasses 
 without, a well of watjer in the middle 
 to float the needle in. Charts were pro- 
 bably used of a very rough kind, but 
 
 , how far is not knoVn. What we know is 
 that the junkmaster was aware of the 
 direction on his compass towards which 
 he must steer to reach the port 
 to which he was going. In the 
 Sung dynasty, embracing part of the 
 10th as well as the 11th, 12th and 
 part of 13th centuries, Chinese junks 
 went to Persia and, India. The- Arabs 
 trading to China directly woulSl learn 
 at that time the use of the compass and 
 would apply it on board their dhows. 
 From them the Europeans learned this 
 useful .invention,. The credit of the 
 
 'discovery both of the polarity of a- 
 
 . magnetised needle and its suitability 
 for use by mariners at sea must be 
 given to China. It was China also that 
 has the credit oT having first noticed 
 that any iron needle liiay be polarised 
 
 ,b.y rubbing it with a magnet. In the 
 13th century the Arabs used a floating 
 compass on their dhows.x The needle 
 was made to float on the water by 
 attaching it crosswise to a cornstalk 
 or splinter of wood. A magnet applied 
 
 . to it drew it into . a north and south 
 direction. They would use western 
 notation to mark the quarters anc|, 
 intermediate points on the horizon. 
 When therefore the mariner's compass 
 was adopted from them, the Chinese 
 24 points were not communicated. In 
 the European compass the notation of 
 32 points is western, and rests on thfe 
 winds arid the sun. In the Chinese 
 primitive mariner's compass the nota- 
 tion is that of the professors oifmg- 
 
46 
 
 MODERl^ CHINA. 
 
 shut and rests on the old astrologica.! 
 division of the horizon into twelve 
 double hours, , From the Arab account 
 we learn, what the Chinese accounts do 
 not tell us, that the Chinese floated the 
 needle by inserting ii in a splinter of 
 i?(rood. 
 
 THE USE OF COTTON YARN. 
 One main cause of the rapid growth of 
 Chinese population is' found in the ma- 
 nufacturing industries of the country. 
 Large towns are formed by the addition 
 of manual labour of various kinds car- 
 . ried on in buildings other than those 
 devoted to the sale of produce. The 
 basis of the social fabric is in agricul- 
 ture. Where great rivers by silt form 
 wide reaches of fertile land more grain 
 is grown than the growers can them- 
 selves use. A market town springs up 
 where the superfluity of food is sold 
 for articles -which merchants bring. A 
 shopkeeping class is then required. 
 Some of the sons of agriculturists 
 nieet this need by establishing them- 
 selves at the market. Clothing and 
 other ^articles are brought for a time 
 from a distance^ But at last some one 
 who has capital introduces spinning 
 wheels and looms. The agricultural 
 population furnishes another contingent 
 of spinners and weavers ; dyers and 
 threadmakers follow ; bricklayers and 
 carpenters, butchers -and bakers, the 
 fowler ai^d the fisherman multiply. 
 Ironmongery is regularly supplied arrd 
 ren4ers blacksmiths a necessity. All the 
 other trades foUow-'byalawof inevita,ble 
 increase to supply all the ever-growing 
 wants of an expanding population. Thus 
 the I'arg? cities of the great Soo'chow 
 plain are accounted for. As occupations 
 multiply marriages follow and new fami- 
 lies are added to the community with 
 great rapidity. 
 
 The Chinese began to wear cotton 
 clothing from six to seven hundred years 
 ago. 'J'hey had looms before for silk, satin 
 and gras«i cloth. They were able to 
 adapt the silk loom to cotton weaying, 
 and it was carried on as a new industry 
 
 in parts of the country where the cotton 
 plant grows. This new art found occu- 
 pation for persons in regions not favour- 
 ing the cultivation of the mulberry, of 
 hemp, and of the dolichos, of which last 
 the fabric known as gvA&a cloth is made. 
 This is the same that by the Chinese is 
 > called from its coolness " summer cloth." 
 The spread of the cotton plant has been 
 very rapid because it grows in the 
 northern provinces where the winters 
 are cold as well as in the south where 
 the air is mild at the close of the year. 
 The number of wieavers increased with 
 this new industry and of spinners also. 
 Silk would be woven probably in less 
 quantity and of better quality than 
 before. It became the clothing of the 
 rich; while cotton cloth became the 
 clothing lof the poor, because it could be 
 more cheaply ' made. Just now this 
 love of the, people for new indus- ' 
 tries is gratified by the iutroductibiv of 
 Indian yarn sent to China from the 
 new spinning mills of Bombay. It 
 comes at a time when . througk the 
 great increase of population the 'people 
 are becoming less able to buy dear 
 clothing. Tlie Indian yarn is suited to • 
 ntiake coarse fabrics which are strong 
 and wear well. It is now imported for 
 weavers; for exh.mp'les, in the eastern 
 part of Canton province where there has 
 not been much weaving before. It is 
 also purchased for Kiangsi througli Kiu- 
 kiang, and much of the yarn imported 
 through Swatow reaches the same pro- 
 vince. It is uotfine enoughfo'r theShang- • 
 bai weavers but it is prized at Chefoo and • 
 iu Chihli. It will doubtless spread more 
 widely because of tlie demand iu certain 
 provinces for cheap and coarse cloth. 
 In future the demand for the finer 
 native nankeens at a fair price will he 
 met by home-grown cotton. But where 
 the people throrigh wages being too low 
 are anxious to clothe their families with 
 a strong coarse m.aterial, the new manu- 
 facture from Indian yarn will exact- 
 ly suit the market, the more so 
 because in ■ China looms are a ■ piece 
 of cottage furniture and can be' used 
 when .the weather prevents out-door 
 
the; use of COTTON: YARN. 
 
 47 
 
 occupations. Money can be earned at 
 home, by the jijdustnous'Hiid this is 
 felt to be an inestimable advantage by 
 those who working for low wages' are 
 anxious never to be idle. Near Siiang- 
 hai the cotton weavers are women in 
 alm9st all cases. There is no pattern 
 needing to be woven iu. The person 
 who throws the shuttle does all the 
 work of the loom. Women begin to 
 throw the shuttle and to practise the 
 other manipidations at fourteen yiears 
 of age. The cotton weaving industry 
 is therefore in China eminently a female 
 industry. This is not the case with 
 silk and sati;i. In these men are the 
 "Workers, two are alvirays required, and 
 the loom is very complex. - ' The spread 
 therefore of the use of Indian yarn 
 in all parts- of China is a testimony to 
 the industry of the women. 
 
 The desire felt for a cheap, cloth 
 woven by the people at their own homes, 
 if we embrace in our view the whole 
 country, is greatest at CaiitoU and its 
 neighbourhood. For in Lappa in 1889' 
 ' 100,000 piculs of Indian yarn were im- 
 ported,, while 70,000 were imported at 
 Ganto^. Pakhoi imported 93,000 picUls 
 and Swatow 80,000. The value of the 
 yarn bought by that proyince was five 
 million taels. A large part of the im- 
 port was forwarded to Yiinnan and 
 Kiangsi. In Yiinnan many of the 
 aborigines are purchasers and they 
 weave with the material a cloth yrhich 
 they prefer for their own wear. In the 
 far north Indian yaiii i^ also becoming 
 a great favourite. During'the year 1889' 
 Chihli, Shantung and Moukden bought 
 three million taels' worth or 150,000 
 piculs. The desire felt for it in Central 
 China is much weaker ; all the ports on 
 the Yangtze including Shanghai >pur- 
 chase only as much as Tientsin alone. 
 New njanufactures are thus seen to be 
 spreading in the north and south while 
 the centre is somewhat at a standstill. 
 Altogether China purchased in 1889 
 about £3,000,000' worth of Indian 
 yarn, thus shewing that she will 
 weave if others will spin. The value 
 last year of the cotton yarn imported 
 
 at Pakhoi, a small port, was' more 
 than half of all the imports taken 
 together. The value of the yarn im- 
 ported into Canton, a large port, stood 
 next to that of opium among the im- 
 ports. It was so at Swatow also. At 
 some other southern ports cotton yarn 
 stood after rice, opium and kerosene oil. 
 China greatly values cheapness,and if she 
 can procure these she will supply, her 
 own coarse textile fabrics for the time 
 by the cottage loom system and suit' 
 her own taste in strength and quality. 
 The trade with China carried' on by 
 foreign countries is thus shown to be 
 elastic, She can produce silk to sup- ' 
 ply European looms and she- is pre- 
 pared to buy cotton yarn from spin- 
 ners at Bombay to meet the demand of 
 her own population/ for coarse nankeens. 
 For man.y years it seemed as if India 
 could furnish only one article which 
 China desired.. Another article has now 
 been found thus showing that'in due time 
 there will be little difficulty in sub- 
 stituting for opium, goods for which- 
 China will be grateful. It will 
 be well too if , China should learn 
 that her best policy is to cultivate 
 solidarity of interests with outside 
 nations. Her aim should not be to 
 become indepfendent of foreign raw 
 materials and foreign manufactures. 
 It should rather be to buy what suits 
 her from other nations and to sell 
 to other nations what suits them. 
 China's true intei-est will be found in 
 the cultivation of universal brptherhood 
 with the rest of mankind. 
 
 CHINESE AND FOREIGN 
 ■ , MEDICINE. . 
 
 The appearance of a -preface by. the 
 i-enowned Viceroy Li Hung-chpg tp ja 
 work on 'ITierapeutics translated 'by Dr. 
 Hunter of Chiningchow, may be taken as 
 a sign of the times. The most influential 
 nlan in China gives. the prestige of his 
 name to medical mission work in China 
 and to the introduction into his .country 
 of foreign medical treatises. There is 
 every reason to hope that the art of 
 
4S 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 healing in China will now make some 
 progress and take a higher standing. 
 The medical literature of Chinese 
 physicians will require to vindergo 
 some change to adapt itself to the 
 new conditions. Native medicine will 
 need to change its front somewh^it, 
 ■ becaus,S China is beginning to review 
 her time-honoured theories, and if ne- 
 cessary replace them by new ones. The 
 prompt settlerdentofthe Audience Ques- 
 tion at about the, same time when this 
 preface was written is not -without its 
 lessbn. The writer of the preface was a 
 party to the policy which determined 
 that the Emperor might without any 
 difficulty receive the foreign envoys 
 annually at the New Year. The writer 
 ' of this preface is also conscious of 
 defects in native medicine and wishes 
 to see foreign methods of healing, and 
 discoveries in the anatomy and physio- 
 logy of the human frame, introduced into 
 the 'practice of the native physicians. 
 Viceroy Li commences with an extract 
 from Pan-koo. This author in his 
 History of the early Han 'dynasty has 
 a chapter on bopks, containing i tlie 
 oldest book catalogue "possessed by 
 China. The medical section of this 
 catalogue like all |the other sections 
 gives the names of a considerable nlim- . 
 ber of books since lost. Though the 
 books are now no longer aocessible,>we 
 can judge by their titles what they 
 were. We Jearn from them that the 
 Divine Husbandman, the Yellow Em- 
 peror, and the physician Yu-fu, were 
 ' the first teachers of medicine in the 
 opinion of China in A.D. 100.. The 
 names of thirty-nine treatises are given. 
 There were books on fever, on diet, 
 on modes of cure, on surgery, on 
 massage, on the stone knife, on -P«««- 
 tsio and the pulse, on paralysis, and 
 apoplely, beside seven more general 
 works op the "healing art Of these 
 only two are now in existence. Pan-koo 
 writing 1,800 years ago knew of these 
 thirty-nine works. Their titles show 
 the nature of medical practice in the 
 hands of the ancient physicians. They 
 cauterised, they felt the pulse, they 
 
 used the stone lancet. Strangely enough, 
 they gave up the lancet after a few 
 centuries, but kept to pulse-feeling 
 and cauterisation still. They had fewer 
 drugs then than now and they were 
 
 ■ simples taken in the form of warm 
 decpctions. The bodily structure of man 
 was described in the same way then as 
 it is now. Two of Pan-koo's books are 
 still read and they contain the old 
 medicaj theory. What Palii-koo read, 
 our Viceroy has read, and both read' 
 believingly. The Viceroy has quoted in 
 the preface the p^xact "words of" both of 
 these books as he has also quoted the 
 exact words of Pan-koo ip speakingof 
 them. China of the present will not 
 willingly let go the ideas of the Cliina 
 of^he past. These two books, the Soo- 
 wen and Ling-.choo, are the Hippocrates 
 and Galen^ of Chinese' medicine. . All 
 well-informed Cliinese readers are ac- 
 
 ' quainted with them. The' Viceroy has 
 read them ^with admiration, biit he 
 is surrouilded and pressed upon by 
 the influences of the modern period. 
 He has seen and helped in the work 
 of the medical missionaries in Tien- 
 tsin. He has read 'trb.nslated^ works 
 on chemistry, physiology, physics, bot- 
 any and various other subjects, and 
 he ha.s no idea of doubting foreign 
 science. He accepts it, but he will not 
 throw aside the old native books. ' In 
 this preface he does not say whether he 
 still believes in the Yin and Yang priii-' 
 ciples or not. But he probably does. 
 It would be -very difficult for any 
 Chinese to think of fever and not 
 regard it as an undue prevalence of 
 fire, or of dropsy without picturing it 
 to himself as an instance of the water 
 element becoming too powerful. The 
 physician is a man who by the use of 
 judicious "methods can restore equili- 
 brinm aniong the five elemental powers 
 which exist together, in the, body of a 
 sick man, and have becorne disturbed in 
 their action. We dp. not wonder there- 
 fore if in this preface the ^vriter says 
 that he has read Jacob Rho's " work on 
 anatomy with particular pleasure. That 
 book was written more than two 
 
CHINESE & FOREIGN MEDICINE.— THE CHINEBE QUEUE. W 
 
 centuries ago. The doctrin^f the four 
 elements still existed then in European 
 science, and this would naturally render 
 a book on anatomy in that age easier 
 of acceptance to a Chinese reader, be- 
 cause the theory would be more like 
 his own. The Viceroy mentions in 
 closing that the book now translated is 
 strictly on the art of healing. He 
 advises readers not to reject it as 
 strange, but to look on it as a work 
 valuable enough to be treasured like a 
 treatise of Ko-hung or Sun Sze-miao, 
 and carefully studied for practical use. 
 He concludes by saying that if the 
 medical student will join Chinese and 
 foreign teaching in one, it will be found 
 that the new addition made to his 
 powers- as a healer will be by no means 
 small. From the near he will be able 
 to reach the distant. The world will, 
 be the better for it. Men will live 
 longer and the advantage gained will 
 be in truth incalculable. Such is the 
 view of foreign medicine held by 
 Viceroy Li at the present time. 
 He thinks he finds the western doctrine 
 of the nerves in the old medical trea- 
 tises of his country. Statements on 
 anatomy made by modern Europeans 
 he fancies agree with the Han com- 
 mentator Chang's views in his notes to 
 the Chow-li. As to the description of 
 the system of blood-vessels connected 
 with the heart and liver and other 
 parts, it may be viewed as an addition 
 of positive utility to the native descrip- 
 tion of the same. The theory is as 
 beautiful as it is new and it takes the 
 learner into fields of knowledge which 
 the Emperors Shun and Yii never tra- 
 versed in the days of yore. He notices 
 that Buddhism and Taoism have both 
 had influence on Chinese medicine, and 
 there can be no question that alchemy 
 has had full liberty in developing it. 
 As to Indian influence, the anatomical 
 statue in copper five feet high brought 
 many centuries ago from Nepaul, and 
 marked for teaching anatomy, is an 
 indisputable witness, for it is kept at 
 the hall of the Imperial Board of 
 Physicians. 
 
 THE CHINESE QUEUE. 
 A Buddhist work of twelve hundred 
 years ago by a Chinese author says that 
 in Djambudwipa, that is in Asia, the 
 clothing of the inhabitants varies to a 
 large extent, and the custom of shaving 
 off the hair and beard exists in some 
 regions, while elsewhere hair is worn 
 divided into two pendent queues, 'J'here 
 are also countries where all the hair is 
 shaved off except that at the crown, 
 which is tied into one queue. This 
 author also mentions that sbme nations 
 pluck out the hair entirely, while others 
 cut it short. Some people, he says, let the 
 hair flow loose down on the shoulders 
 while others prefer to plait it. In some 
 instances the front hair is plaited and 
 the back hair left loose. A thousand 
 years passed away and the Tartar cus- 
 tom, which this author described as an 
 outlandish novelty, became the custom 
 of all China. The crown was left but 
 all the rest of the hair was shaven. This 
 became the national custom at the 
 Manchu conquest about A.D. 1644. It 
 did not become the rule in China to 
 shave off the hair all round the crown 
 from any religious motive but simply by 
 military compulsion. You have to obey 
 orders, said the conquerors, sword in 
 hand. If you refuse to shave according 
 to the Tartar custom you must die, for 
 refusal will constitute you a rebel. So 
 the change was made from the north- 
 east province as the conquest proceeded, 
 till the whole nation had their heads 
 shaved except the crown. The Mongols 
 when they conquered China did not act 
 in this way in the 13th century, but 
 allowed the Chinese to dress their hair 
 with a comb in the national way, while 
 they themselves wore a central queue 
 and shaved round the crown, like the 
 Manchus of to-day. • 
 
 If it be asked why did the Tartars 
 shave, tlie reply will probably be correct 
 that the custom began in religion and 
 was continuedfor cleanliness,forfashion's 
 sake and lor the comfort of the skin. 
 That religion was the originating cause 
 is likely, because in India with the 
 spread of Buddhism the shaving of the 
 
50 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 entire head became very common. This 
 was iu pursuance of a vow to forsake 
 the world. The monastic vow of the Bud- 
 dhists requires abandonment of worldly 
 enjoyments, and luxuries. To drink wine 
 and eat flesh are both forbidden. People 
 prided themselves on their hair and 
 therefore that must go also. The monk 
 and nun must truly forsake the world. 
 The entire loss of the hair is requisite for 
 every one who gives himself in cordial 
 devotion to Buddha, the law, and the 
 priesthood. In the case of every Bud- 
 dhist the shaving of the entire head is the 
 frnit of a religious vow, professedly made 
 with the most serious and desired act 
 of will to forsake the world. It is only 
 dispensed with when he takes a greater 
 vow, that of the long-haired ascetic. 
 Buddhism opens the way to a succession 
 of stages in the religious life, and he 
 who wears his hair unshorn has reached 
 a higher grade than the shaven crowd 
 of monks who chant their prayers to- 
 gether in praise of Buddha in the sacred 
 hall of their temple. Such a man lives 
 alone and gives himself to high medita- 
 tion. His wearing his hair unshorn is 
 a sign that he is too absorbed in thought 
 to attend to the adornment of the body. 
 This and other customs of the Buddhists 
 have, it may be said, been silent wit- 
 nesses to the rest of the Chinese of the 
 importance of the Buddhist spiritual 
 teaching. The complete shaving of head 
 and beard of the common Buddhist, and 
 unshaven hair of the hermits who are 
 bound by the higher vows, have been 
 symbols from which Buddhism desired 
 that all neophytes should learn the 
 importance of the spiritual and the 
 eternal, and the inferiority of the 
 material and the evanescent. 
 
 But the tonsure did not begin with 
 the Buddhists. It began in south-west- 
 ern Asia, that wonderful centre of the 
 world's great movements of thought, or 
 in Egypt, early distinguished for its 
 civilisation. The Egyptian priests were 
 completely shorn and from them the 
 habit of shaving off hair and beard 
 extended to the laity. Only the women 
 always wore their own hair, and they 
 
 were not shaved even in mourning or 
 after death. Shaving was universal 
 among the men, but the hair and beard 
 were allowed to grow in times of mourn- 
 ing. They wore wigs instead of their 
 natural hair, and they had a wig for the 
 chin which could be put on and taken 
 off at pleasure like the wig they wore 
 on the head. Shaving began with reli- 
 gion and ended with its being adopted 
 as necessary to cleanliness and civilisa- 
 tion. The ancient Greeks visited Egypt 
 and adopted Egyptian customs and we 
 see the result in the way in which 
 they treated the hair. They combined 
 the religious idea with that of civilisa- 
 tion and cleanliness, and they added, 
 as they would be likely to do, the 
 notion that part of the hair should 
 be retained for ornamental purposes. 
 Each youngman of respectable parentage 
 when he became sixteen or seventeen 
 cut off his hair as an offering to the 
 gods. The commonness of this custom 
 in ancient Greece and Rome is certain 
 evidence that a religious motive in- 
 fluenced the ordinary population in 
 removing the natural hair by cutting 
 or shaving. They carried away the hair 
 to dedicate it to some river god or to 
 the temple of some divinity locally 
 worshipped. At Rome the Vestal Virgins 
 cut their hair short on taking their 
 vows. At the present time in the Papal 
 Church nuns do so too on taking the 
 veil. Our own cutting of the hair 
 originated with that of the Greeks and 
 Romans, that is to say it began in 
 certain religious considerations and then 
 passed under certain civilising and 
 artistic conditions. The religious sig- 
 nificance is lost entirely now. It would 
 naturally be the Greeks who would first 
 study into what graceful forms the 
 human hair may be' dreseed, and we can 
 judge of their success by the sculptured 
 heads of gods and goddesses in the 
 museums and sculpture galleries of 
 Europe. The hair has a conventional 
 form in the case of every god' and god- 
 dess. Hercules is distinguished by 
 short curling locks thickly growing 
 over every part of the head and beard. 
 
THE CHINESE QUEUE.— TAB9ARS AS SOVEREIGNS. 61 
 
 The Greeks saw a peculiar smtability in 
 this sort of hair for a demigod with 
 strength of muscle in the arms and 
 vigour of expression in the face. Jupiter 
 is very different. He had the lion's 
 hair and majestic attitude and expres- 
 sion. Neptune's locks hung dripping 
 down perpendicularly, on each side of 
 his face. Each goddess had a coiffure 
 of her own and the sculptor always con- 
 formed his work to the conventional 
 shaping which the characteristics of the 
 goddess required. He developed his 
 individual genius always within the 
 conventional lines. 
 
 In Far Asia there has not been much 
 development sesthetically in the same 
 way. But as to the satisfaction felt by 
 the immense Chinese race in losing this 
 natural ornament by the shaving pro- 
 cess three times a month or oftener, 
 there seems little doubt. They do not 
 show a desite to return to their ancient 
 fashion. In British and Dutch colonies 
 and all foreign countries the Chinese 
 still shave as a rule, nor do they desire 
 a change. Yet Doolittle tells us that 
 at Foochow at the time of the Manchu 
 conquest, small presents were given to 
 Chinese who shaved,; The system of 
 pecuniary rewards was adopted to aid 
 in the carrying out of the law. Many 
 were most unwilling to adopt the Man- 
 chu fashion. At last the hew law 
 prevailed, and the whole population in 
 that city fell in with the new arrange- 
 ment. Only the Taoist priests and the 
 women are now allowed to wear their 
 hair in the old fashion. 
 
 TARTARS AS SOVEREIGNS. 
 The Emperor of China is a Tartar and 
 speaks his native language and Cliinese. 
 The King of Corea and the Emperor of 
 Japan are really of Tartar descent, as is 
 shown by the languages of those coun- 
 tries. The Shah of Persia is a Tartar 
 by descent and so was the Great Mogul 
 whom England dispossessed of his throne 
 in Delhi. Proceeding farther west, the 
 sovereign of the Turkish empire and the 
 Khedive of Egypt are of Tartar descent 
 
 and speak a Tartar tongue. The num- 
 ber of Tartar sovereigns does not cease 
 till we arrive at Morocco on the shores 
 of the Atlantic. All through these 
 countries not only are the sovereigns 
 Tartar, but a large proportion of the 
 civil service and the holders of govern- 
 ment posts, the judges and the magis- 
 trates, are also of Tartar descent, and 
 each of such Tartar governors, pashas, 
 premiers, or magistrates impresses his 
 personal characteristics on the admini- 
 stration during his tenure of office in 
 the sphere he occupies as the case may 
 be. The Daimios of old Japan are the 
 remaining representatives of an effete 
 feudalism and they correspond to Mon- 
 gol and Turkish chiefs of clans in Tar- 
 tary. Now if we were to sum up the in- 
 tellectual and civilised force of all the 
 Tartar sovereigns over the immense extent 
 of country that has been just indicated 
 with that of all chiefs of tribes and all 
 magistrates high and low, with those 
 belonging to the civil and military ser- 
 vices of the countries embraced in this 
 enumeration, we should have fi measure 
 of the influence now being exerted on 
 the civilised world by the Tartar mind. 
 That mind was trained and developed 
 in the steppes of Russia and Siberia 
 and on the plains of Tartary, on the 
 shores of the Oxus and Jaxartes near 
 the Caspian Sea, or upon, the banks of 
 the Obi and Jenissei flowing into the 
 Polar Ocean. The ancestors of the 
 many Tartar reigning families of to-day 
 used to tend their cattle and sheep in 
 the grassy glades of the Altai mountains 
 or on the boundless green plains north 
 of China's Great Wall or in the fertile 
 valleys wjiich lead from the great central 
 plateau eastward to the coast of tlie 
 Pacific Ocean or on the shores of the 
 Blue Sea in Tibet. 
 
 Intellectually the Tartar races have 
 not been creative. Their literature has 
 had no signal development, their histo- 
 rians have limited their scope, their 
 poets have been chiefly alliterative, 
 like those of Mongolia, or simply lyrical 
 like those of Japan. The Tartars 
 in China have undoubted capacity and 
 
5% 
 
 MODERN CHINA. 
 
 intellectual respectability, suiting them 
 for taking part in the administration and 
 giving important aid to the ruling 
 family in guiding the vessel of the state. 
 The same thing is noticeable in Japan. 
 The competency of the native statesmen 
 in that country is beyond question. 
 The prudence they have shown when 
 there was any crisis has been conspi- 
 cuous. Their friendliness in nego- 
 tiation with foreign States has accorded 
 with the best teachings of modern 
 political wisdom. Their encouragement 
 of native and foreign trade, their 
 introduction of railways and their 
 adoption of other foreign improvements 
 are proof of real enlightenment. So also 
 their avoidance of a struggle with 
 Christianity and their uniformly declin- 
 ing to defend one religion at the expense 
 of another remind us of the emperor 
 Akbar's liberality of disposition in 
 governing India. But neither Turks, 
 Japanese, Mongols nor Manchus have 
 been creative in literature and where 
 they have made progress they have 
 derived inspiration from foreign sources. 
 What Chinese training has done for 
 Japanese authorship, Persian and Arab 
 training has done for Turkish and 
 Mongolian authorship. Neither the 
 Buddhist classics nor the Koran have 
 so elevated the Tartar races as to lead 
 to the growth among them of a vigorous 
 jiative literature. The Mongols are 
 fond of Buddhist stories, and the Turks 
 of Arabian stories. They delight to 
 while away the hours of the long evenings 
 with the recital of religious romances. 
 But they are not creatively great and 
 do not covet a thorough training of the 
 mental faculties. 
 
 The question why the Tartar races 
 should have been, as proved by history, 
 able to control men and to make con- 
 quests in a way extraordinarily success- 
 ful is to be answered by giving attention 
 to their mode of life. They live in the 
 saddle, they are accustomed to swift 
 locomotion. They are all divided into 
 tribes and the tribesmen are accus- 
 tonred to obey the chief's orders. The 
 chiefs easily learn the art of command 
 
 becuase they frequently see before them 
 squadrons of cavalry arranged in troops 
 and companies under their own control. 
 They are accustomed from their youth 
 to direct the evolutions of cavalry, 
 and when they fight they expect to' 
 conquer by irresistible movements of 
 armed horsemen. Agriculturists and 
 foot-soldiers are for want of training 
 unable to cope with them, and are easily 
 thrown into disorder. It is the nomad 
 life and the habit of watching and con- 
 trolling equestrian movements on a 
 plain which may be supposed to have 
 imparted to the Tartars the power 
 to conquer bodies of foot-soldiers in 
 battle. Such a gift is partly heredi- 
 tary and iPartly acquired. The ex- 
 traordinary activity of the Khirgiz 
 when engaged in breaking in wild 
 horses is well known. They are com- 
 pletely successful in a very short time 
 in taming the wildest animals. The 
 exercise of this wonderful faculty 
 which they possess is described in a very 
 interesting way in the Rev. J. G. Wood's 
 " Dominion of Man over Animals." 
 It is clear from the facts collected by 
 Russian observers that the Khirgizhorse^ 
 tamer has his eyesight and muscular 
 power improved by heredity as well as 
 by acquired dexterity. All this ad- 
 ditional energy which the Tartar gains 
 by the tribal descent and the teaching 
 he derives from the environment of his 
 daily life was utilised by Turkish and 
 Mongol conquerors who overwhelmed 
 so many empires from the time of 
 Gengis Khan onwards to the establish- 
 ment of the Mongol empire in India. 
 
 We know what the Tartars have been 
 in ancient and modern times by Chi- 
 nese and European history and by th 
 narratives of travellers. They have 
 conquered nations more civilised than 
 themselves in many successive instances. 
 The Huns won Hungary A.D. 311, two 
 centuries afterthatrich country had been 
 in part settled by Roman colonies under 
 the Emperor Trajan. Hordes of Tartars 
 conquered North China at the end, of 
 the fourth century and retained it for 
 200 years. In the thirteenth century 
 
TABTABS AS SOVEREIGNS.— LOCAL DISTURBANCES. 53 
 
 the Mongols conquered Perfsip, and they 
 were preceded and followed oy Turkish 
 dynasties. There has never been a 
 purely native Persian dynasty since. 
 The Turks afterwards conquered India, 
 Syria, the Greek Empire and all North 
 Africa. The lotig period during which 
 they have reigned over these countries 
 shows that they have very considerable 
 governing ability or they would have 
 been early displaced by other races. 
 The 'J'urks have improved their mental 
 energy by inter-marriages with superior 
 races. In this way they have appro- 
 priated the intellectual power of Euro- 
 peans. It is also the habit of Tartar 
 monarchs to select the ablest of their 
 many sons to receive the sovereignty 
 in succession on the death of the parent. 
 The father's will determines who shall 
 be heir, and it is not necessarily the 
 eldest who ascends the vacant throne. 
 This mode of controlling the succession 
 secures more capable monarchs. The 
 modern spirit is now producing a libe- 
 rality unknown in the past in the 
 institutions of Japan. It is the first 
 instance of parliamentary institutions 
 having been adopted by a people of 
 Tartar race. They have never before 
 in any country had any but a despotic 
 
 monarchy. 
 
 • 
 
 LOCAL DISTURBANCES. 
 The Kolao Hui will never emerge into 
 any great importance because its ante- 
 cedents are not encouraging. In the 
 year 1875, says a memorial of the 
 Viceroy Shen Pao-cliSng, there was an 
 edicts directed expressly against this 
 secret society. This was in consequence 
 of a memorial by Li Han-chang, the, 
 present Viceroy of Canton, who had 
 drawn tlie Emperor's attention to the 
 operations of the society. The Emperor 
 said there was no need of special rules 
 on the subject. The governors and 
 viceroys only required to order the local 
 magistrates to employ either their thief- 
 catdiers or the military in apprehending 
 ofFfenders. It was decided at that time 
 that it. would not be advisable to punish 
 cyeiry inember of the society with death. 
 
 This would be to occasion too much 
 bloodshed. Only the chief ofFender.s 
 should be proceeded against, while their 
 followers should be scattered and separ- 
 ated. At the same time every care must 
 be used to sift the charges brought 
 against the incriminated. Great pains 
 must be taken not to allow chief offen- 
 ders to escape or punishment to fall 
 upon the wrong persons. It was felt at 
 that time that if this society were let. 
 alone for fear of trouble the small 
 cockatrice might become a terrible ser- 
 pent. This seems to have been realised 
 during the present year. Along with the 
 Kolao Hui at the time was mentioned 
 the Auching Tao, an Anhui society, 
 which also gave much anxiety to the 
 authorities during several centuries and 
 again at the beginning of the present 
 reign and may still do so. The course 
 to be followed was, it was then decided, 
 the same vyith both. The existing 
 machinery of the law was to be used, 
 and no other introduced. ShSn, the 
 Viceroy of those days, agreed in opinion 
 with TsSng Kuo-fan, his predecessor, 
 that the secret society men must in each 
 case be proceeded against as ordinary 
 criminals of the rebel or robber class. 
 
 Here we may notice that both these 
 eminent Viceroys were agreed in think- 
 ing that the Kolao Hui people must be 
 prosecuted without favour and by the 
 ordinary legal methods. They had' no ■ 
 special prestige or privilege, and ther6 
 is no thought of their being secretly 
 seconded hy officials high in office, all 
 of whom know the existence of this 
 edict. This seems to shut out any 
 prospect of wide support to these secret 
 societies in influential quarters at the 
 present time. If offenders of secret 
 societies are not vigorously prosecuted, 
 it is not because sympathy is felt for 
 their aims and plans by officials, but for 
 other reasons. Amiuig these other 
 reasons in the case of city magistrates 
 comes in the consideration of expense 
 attendant on any sort of interference in 
 local disturbances great or small. The 
 city magistrates of China have thief- 
 catchers at their disposal, but usually 
 
6i 
 
 MOi)ERN CHINA. 
 
 ■these men are not in receipt of j-egular 
 pay. If there is a robbery or disturbance 
 the magistrate sends them to make search 
 and must supply money for their tem- 
 porary support, and so with local spies 
 who may have special information on 
 the whereabouts of robbers. They must 
 be. paid for their knowledge and- guid- 
 ance. When the local disturbance is 
 of a larger kind and beyond the power 
 of the magistrate's thief-catchers to 
 manage, soldiers must be asked for. 
 The soldiers have to be paid for their 
 assistance whether they belong to the 
 class of regulars or are trained braves. 
 It is therefore an inducement to the 
 magistrate to do without soldiers if he 
 can, and as long as he can, because the 
 necessary outlay is larger for the help 
 of soldiers than for that of local thief- 
 catchers. When the local trouble yields 
 to inquiry and the disturbers are dis- 
 covered, it is quite possible that the 
 Viceroy or the Governor may by law 
 order the accused to be sent to his tri- 
 bunal, and the expense of sending them 
 falls on the magistrate, if the accused 
 changes his confession into a plea of 
 not guilty. To be a magistrate near 
 the provincial capital is much desired 
 by the qualified candidates. A case of 
 robbery may occur, for instance in the 
 province of Kiangsu, at some city north 
 of the Yangtze. This involves much 
 extra expense and responsibility to the 
 magistrate, and such a post is very un- 
 popular among the candidates. In such 
 a position the temptation is strong not 
 to mention the robbery in reports to 
 superiors and in certain cases to release 
 the perpetrators. " This is the only 
 thing I could do," says the magistrate, 
 or " it was only kind to let the poor men 
 go after the fright they had undergone, 
 and heaven will reward me for it." 
 Another thing the Viceroy mentions is 
 that magistrates are changed too often. 
 It may not be after five days, as used 
 to happen, it is said, in the Sung 
 dynasty, but a change may be made 
 very frequently.., 'Magistrates hold a 
 post too often for a year and- -tlien go. 
 The Viceroy says this is very unwise; 
 
 Good men should be chosen and they 
 should hold the post for three years. 
 This would be better for the morale of 
 the service, and the people would respect 
 the magistrates more. They would then 
 be more able to search to the bottom 
 of the troubles caused by the secret 
 societies and, the root of the Kolao Hui 
 might not hold its place with such 
 tenacity. If the place where the robbery 
 has occurred is at a distance from the 
 t/amen of the Viceroy or Gqvernor, 
 these high authorities should be em- 
 powered to order the conveyance of 
 criminals to the cities where the prefects 
 and superintendents reside. Let them 
 judge the case and if necessary pass a 
 sentence of decapitation. Viceroy Shf ii 
 would simplify the legal process by 
 deciding it in this way. He was an 
 able and very polite ulan, and it appears 
 from what he then said in memoriaifisino- 
 the throne, that he would urge increased 
 care in selecting city magistrates, and 
 vflTen a good man is found give him his 
 post for three years successively. He 
 would also allow increased power to 
 Prefects andTaotais, so that cases of 
 criminals convicted of robbery (and 
 these include all riots as the Chinese 
 law shows) should be decided summarily 
 by them to save delay and expense. 
 He does not see in the Kolao Hui any 
 more patriotism than in any other secret 
 society, but merely a disturbing force 
 which has to be put down by law. 
 Unfortunately he does not take note of 
 the evil resulting from the want of a 
 paid constabulary force, attached to 
 every yamin. He does not remark on 
 the impossibility of e3fpecting prompt 
 interference with desorder when it can- 
 not be done except with the help of 
 voluntary police, whose energy is made 
 conditional on the amount of temporary 
 rewards given to them or promised. 
 These voluntary thief-catchers are suc- 
 cessful often, as the name implies, in 
 catching thieves, but with robberies on 
 a large scale they are unable to cope. 
 They are good aS'detectives but cannot 
 suppress a riot. This-, however, is from 
 want of drill and the power, (p act in 
 
LOGAL DISTUBBANGES. 
 
 65 
 
 concert and with presence ^f mind. If 
 China should ever adopt the idea of a 
 paid constabulary, a large number of 
 these irregular detectives would probably 
 join such a force, allured by the prospect 
 of monthly pay, and their efficiency 
 would be greatly improved by drill and 
 regular habits, if they could in any way 
 be freed from opium smoking. It would 
 be an immense advantage to the 
 country if the police force could be so 
 strengthened as to check the great 
 tendency to live by plunder existing in 
 many provinces. It would then be 
 
 possible to ameliorate the criminal 
 law. Executions would be less common 
 and life regarded as more secred. With 
 a drilled constabulary and a civilised 
 system of jail confinement, the Viceroys 
 would not be asking for power to decapi- 
 tate being granted to Prefects and 
 Taotais. They could ask only for ex- 
 tension of the system of a drilled 
 constabiilary, for the protection of each 
 neighbourhood from all forms of piracy 
 and robbery, to be maintained by local 
 rates. There is nothing impracticable 
 in an improvement of this nature.