AUTHORITATIVE WORKS OF ARTHUR H. SMITH

With 20 full-page Illustrations and Index, and characteristic decorations for each chapter. 8vo, cloth,

"'Village Life' and 'Chinese Characteristics' are not only two of the very best books on China, but two of the very best books which have ever been published by any author on any country at any time."-Dr. Talcolt Williams.

Village Life in China

A Study in Sociology. 8vo, fully illustrated,

"Arthur H. Smith has added a second to those extraordinary studies of China life, of which he is so easily master. No book like; this has been written on China except one, and that is Dr. Smith's 'Chinese Characteristics.' The two books together may fairly be said to give a clearer Idea of China as it is than any or all of the 5,000 or 6,000 works published on the Empire during the last century. "-Philadelphia Press.

China in Convulsion

The Origin, the Climax, the Outbreak, the Aftermath. Large 8vo, cloth, 2 vols., boxed. Superbly illustrated. Maps and Charts.

"There is to-day no more firmly established western authority upon Chinese affairs than Dr. Arthur H. Smith. Studying the people, mastering their language, and entering intimately into their native life, he contrived to obtain an accurate view of the real China."-Washington Star.

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

Chinese Characteristics

By Arthur ET Smith, D. D.

Author of Lilt; in Ulna" "China in China v1:1H:in," etc.

Enlarged and revised Edition with Marginal New .111wrtrations.

NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO

Fleming H. Revell Company

LONDON AND EDINUURGTI

CONTENTS.

Mime mimes .

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7

INTRODUCTION 9

I. FACE 16

II. ECONOMY 19

III. INDUSTRY 27

IV. POLITENESS 35

V. THE DISREGARD OF TIME 41

VI. THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY 48

VII. THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING 58

VIII. THE TALENT FOR INDIRECTION 65

IX. FLEXIBLE INFLEXIBILITY 74

X. INTELLECTUAL TURBIDITY 82

XI. THE ABSENCE OF NERVES 90

XII. CONTEMPT FOR FOREIGNERS 98

XIII. THE ABSENCE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT 107

XIV. CONSERVATISM I15

XV. INDIFFERENCE TO COMFORT AND CONVENIENCE 125

XVI. PHYSICAL VITALITY 144

XVII. PATIENCE AND PERSEVERANCE 152

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTEE

XVIII. CONTENT AND CHEERFULNESS 162

XI X. FILIAL PIETY 171

XX. BENEVOLENCE 186

XXI. THE ABSENCE OF SYMPATHY 194

XXII. SOCIAL TYPHOONS 217

XXIII. MUTUAL RESPONSIBILITY AND RESPECT FOR LAW 226

XXIV. MUTUAL SUSPICION 242

XXV. THE ABSENCE OF SINCERITY 266

XXVI. POLYTHEISM, PANTHEISM, ATHEISM 287

XXVII. THE REAL CONDITION OF CHINA AND HER PRESENT 31.1

NEEDS

GLOSSARY 1 331

INDEX 333

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.*

TUNG-CHOU PAGODA, NEAR PEKING

A. MEMORIAL ARCH

NATIVE CHILDREN IN COURTYARD

TURTLE MONUMENT

PACING PAGE A CHINESE KITCHEN, SHOWING METHOD OF PREPARING FOOD 19

PASSENGER BOAT ON THE PEI Ho, NORTH CHINA 30

CARPENTERS SAWING LARGE TIMBER 44

CHINESE PERFORMERS IN STAGE DRESS 54

A PEKING CART 60

CHINESE CARD-PLAYERS 70

THE EMPRESS DOWAGER OF CHINA 98

A CHINESE BARBER 2IS

ENGINE WORKS AND YARD AT HANYANG I22

A MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY IN WINTER DRESS 127

INTERIOR OF A MOHAMMEDAN MOSQUE 171

NATIVE WOMEN SEWING AND WEAVING LACE 200

FOUR GENERATIONS 217

A PORTION OF THE GREAT CHINESE WALL 242

A CHINESE BOYS' SCHOOL (CHRISTIAN) 251

THE TEMPLE OF HEAVEN, PEKING 287

A CHINESE IDOL 300

CAMEL'S-BACK BRIDGE, ON THE GROUNDS OF THE EMPEROR'S

SUMMER PALACE 318

For the use of original photographs, from which engravings have been made and here published for the first time, the author and publishers desire to acknowledge their indebtedness to Miss J. G. Evans of Tung Chou, for frontispiece and illustrations facing pages 30, 44, rx8, 571, 217, 242 and 300; and to the Rev. G. S. Hays of Cbefoo, for illustrations facing pages rg, 70, 200, and as.

CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS

INTRODUCTION.

WITNESS when put upon the stand is expected to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Many witnesses concerning the Chinese have told the truth, but perhaps few of them have succeeded in telling nothing but the truth, and no one of them has ever told the whole truth. No single individual, whatever the extent of his knowledge, could by any possibility know the whole truth about the Chinese. The present volume of essays is therefore open to objection from three different points of view.

First, it may be said that the attempt to convey to others an idea of the real characteristics of the Chinese is vain. Mr. George Wingrove Cooke, the China correspondent of the London Times in 1857-58, enjoyed as good an opportunity, of seeing the Chinese under varied circumstances, and through the eyes of those well qualified to help him to a just under-standing of the people, as any writer on China up to that time. In the preface to his published letters, Mr. Cooke apologises as follows for his failure to describe the Chinese character: "I have, in these letters, introduced no elaborate essay upon Chinese character. It is a great omission. No theme could be more tempting, no subject could afford wider scope for ingenious hypothesis, profound generalisation, and triumphant dogmatism. Every small critic will probably utterly despise me for not having made something out of such opportunities. The truth is, that I have written several very fine characters for the whole Chinese race, but having the misfortune to have the people under my eye at the same time with my essay, they were always saying something or doing something which rubbed so rudely against my hypothesis, that in the interest of truth I burnt several successive letters. I may add that I have often talked over this matter with the most eminent and candid sinologues, and have always found them ready to agree with me as to the impossibility of a conception of Chinese character as a whole. These difficulties, however, occur only to those who know the Chinese practically; a smart writer, entirely ignorant of the subject, might readily strike off a brilliant and antithetical analysis, which should leave nothing to be desired but truth. Some day, perhaps, we may acquire the necessary knowledge to give to each of the glaring inconsistencies of a Chinaman's mind its proper weight and influence in the general mass. At present, I, at least, must be content to avoid strict definitions, and to describe a Chinaman by his most prominent qualities."

Within the past thirty years, the Chinese has made himself a factor in the affairs of many lands. He is seen to be irrepressible; is felt to be incomprehensible. He cannot, indeed, be rightly understood in any country but China, yet the impression still prevails that he is a bundle of contradictions who cannot be understood at all. But after all there is no apparent reason, now that several hundred years of our acquaintance with China have elapsed, why what is actually known of its people should not be co-ordinated, as well as any other combination of complex phenomena.

A more serious objection to this particular volume is that the author has no adequate qualifications for writing it. The circumstance that a person has lived for twenty-two years in China is no more a guarantee that he is competent to write of the characteristics of the Chinese, than the fact that another man has for twenty-two years been buried in a silver mine is a proof that he is a fit person to compose a treatise on metallurgy, or on bimetallism. China is a vast whole, and one who has never even visited more than half its provinces, and who has lived in but two of them, is certainly not entitled to generalise for the whole Empire. These papers were originally prepared for the North-China Daily News of Shanghai, with no reference to any wider circulation. Some of the topics treated excited, however, so much interest, not only in China, but also in Great Britain, in the United States, and in Canada, that the author was asked to reproduce the articles in a permanent form.*

A third objection, which will be offered by some, is that parts of the views here presented, especially those which deal with the moral character of the Chinese, are misleading and unjust.

It should be remembered, however, that impressions are not like statistics which may be corrected to a fraction. They rather resemble photographic negatives, no two of which may be alike, yet each of them may present truthfully something not observable in any of the rest. The plates on which the photographs are taken differ; so do the lenses, and the developers, and the resulting views differ too.

Many old residents of China, whose knowledge of the country is very much greater than that of the writer, have ex-pressed themselves as in substantial agreement with his opinions, while others, whose judgment is entitled to equal respect, think that a somewhat lighter colouring in certain parts would increase the fidelity of the too "monochromatic" picture. With this undoubtedly just criticism in mind, the work has been revised and amended throughout. While the exigencies of republication at this time have rendered convenient the omission of one-third of the characteristics originally discussed, those that remain contain nevertheless the most important portions of the whole, and the chapter on Content and Cheerfulness is altogether new.

There can be no valid excuse for withholding commendation from the Chinese for any one of the many good qualities which they possess and exhibit. At the same time, there is a danger of yielding to a priori considerations, and giving the Chinese credit for a higher practical morality than they can justly claim an evil not less serious than indiscriminate condemnation. It is related of Thackeray, that he was once asked how it happened that the good people in his novels were always stupid, and the bad people clever. To this the great satirist replied that he had no brains above his eyes. There is a wood-cut representing an oak tree, in the outlines of which the observer is invited to detect a profile of Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, standing with bowed head and folded arms. Protracted contemplation frequently fails to discover any such profile, and it would seem that there must be some mistake, but when once it is clearly pointed out, it is impossible to look at the picture and not see the Napoleon too. In like manner, many things are to be seen in China which do not at first appear, and many of them once seen are never forgotten.

While it has been impossible to introduce a qualifying clause into every sentence which is general in its form, the reader is expressly warned that these papers are not intended to be generalisations for a whole Empire, nor yet comprehensive abstracts of what foreigners have observed and experienced. What they are intended to be is merely a notation of the impression which has been made upon one observer, by a few out of many "Chinese Characteristics" They are not meant as a portrait of the Chinese people, but rather as mere outline sketches in charcoal of some features of the Chinese people, as they have been seen by that one observer. Taken together, they constitute only a single ray, of which an indefinite number are required to form a complete beam of white light. They may also be considered as studies in induction, in which many particulars taken from the experience not of the writer only, but of various other individuals at various times, are grouped. It is for this reason that the subject has been so largely treated by exemplification.

Mr. Meadows, the most philosophical of the many writers on China and the Chinese, expressed the opinion that the best way to convey to the mind of another person a correct idea of the genius of a foreign people would be to hand him for perusal a collection of notes, formed by carefully recording great numbers of incidents which had attracted one's attention, particularly those that seemed at all extraordinary, together with the explanation of the extraordinary parts as given by natives of the country.

From a sufficient number of such incidents a general principle is inferred. The inferences may be doubted or denied, but such particulars as are cited cannot, for that reason alone, be set aside, being so far as they go truthful, and they must ultimately be reckoned with in any theory of the Chinese character.

The difficulty of comparing Chinese with Anglo-Saxons will be most strongly felt by those who have attempted it. To such it will soon become evident that many things which seem "characteristic" of the Chinese are merely Oriental traits; but to what extent this is true, each reader in the light of his own experience must judge for himself.

It has been said that in the present stage of our intercourse with Chinese there are three ways in which we can come to some knowledge of their social life by the study of their novels, their ballads, and their plays. Each of these sources of information doubtless has its worth, but there is likewise a fourth, more valuable than all of them combined, a source not open to every one who writes on China and the Chinese. It is the study of the family life of the Chinese in their own homes. As the topography of a district can be much better understood in the country than in the city, so it is with the characteristics of the people. A foreigner may live in a Chinese city for a decade, and not gain as much knowledge of the interior life of the people as he can acquire by living twelve months in a Chinese village. Next to the Family we must regard the Village as the unit of Chinese social life, and it is therefore from the standpoint of a Chinese village that these papers have been written. They are of purpose not intended to represent the point of view of a missionary, but that of an observer not consciously prejudiced, who simply reports what he sees. For this reason no reference is made to any characteristics of the Chinese as they may be modified by Christianity. It is not assumed that the Chinese need Christianity at all, but if it appears that there are grave defects in their character, it is a fair question how those defects may be remedied.

The "Chinese question," as already remarked, is now far more than a national one. It is international. There is reason to think that in the twentieth century it will be an even more pressing question than at present. The problem of the means by which so vast a part of the human race may be improved cannot be without interest to any one who wishes well to mankind. If the conclusions to which we may find ourselves led are correct, they will be supported by a line of argument heretofore, too much neglected. If these conclusions are wrong, they will, however supported, fall of themselves.

It is many years since Lord Elgin's reply to an address from the merchants of Shanghai, but his words are true and pertinent today. "When the barriers which prevent free access to the interior of the country shall have been removed, Christian civilisation of the West will find itself face to face not with barbarism, but with an ancient civilisation in many respects effete and imperfect, but in others not without claims to our sympathy and respect. In the rivalry which will then ensue, Christian civilisation will have to win its way among a sceptical and ingenious people, by making it manifest that a faith which reaches to heaven furnishes better guarantees for public and private morality than one which does not rise above the earth."

CHAPTER I.

FACE.

AT first sight nothing can be more irrational than to call that which is shared with the whole human race a "characteristic" of the Chinese. But the word "face" does not in China signify simply the front part of the head, but is literally a compound noun of multitude, with more meanings than we shall be able to describe, or perhaps to comprehend.

In order to understand, however imperfectly, what is meant by "face," we must take account of the fact that as a race the Chinese have a strongly dramatic instinct. The theatre may almost be said to be the only national amusement, and the Chinese have for theatricals a passion like that of the English-man for athletics, or the Spaniard for bull-fights. Upon very slight provocation, any Chinese regards himself in the light of an actor in a drama. He throws himself into theatrical attitudes, performs the salaam, falls upon his knees, prostrates him-self and strikes his head upon the earth, under circumstances which to an Occidental seem to make such actions superfluous, not to say ridiculous. A Chinese thinks in theatrical terms. When roused in self defence he addresses two or three persons as if they were a multitude. He exclaims: "I say this in the presence of You, and You, and You, who are all here present." If his troubles are adjusted he speaks of him-self as having "got off the stage" with credit, and if they are not adjusted he finds no way to "retire from the stage." All this, be it clearly understood, has nothing to do with realities. The question is never of facts, but always of form. If a fine speech has been delivered at the proper time and in the proper way, the requirement of the play is met. We are not to go behind the scenes, for that would spoil all the plays in the world. Properly to execute acts like these in all the complex relations of life, is to have "face." To fail of them, to ignore them, to be thwarted in the performance of them, this is to "lose face." Once rightly apprehended, "face" will be found to be in itself a key to the combination lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese.

It should be added that the principles which regulate "face" and its attainment are often wholly beyond the intellectual apprehension of the Occidental, who is constantly forgetting the theatrical element, and wandering off into the irrelevant regions of fact. To him it often seems that Chinese "face" is not unlike the South Sea Island taboo, a force of undeniable potency, but capricious, and not reducible to rule, deserving only to be abolished and replaced by common sense. At this point Chinese and Occidentals must agree to disagree, for they can never be brought to view the same things in the same light. In the adjustment of the incessant quarrels which distract every hamlet, it is necessary for the "peace-talkers" to take as careful account of the balance of "face" as European statesmen once did of the balance of power. The object in such cases is not the execution of even handed justice, which, even if theoretically desirable, seldom occurs to an Oriental as a possibility, but such an arrangement as will distribute to all concerned "face" in due proportions. The same principle often obtains in the settlement of lawsuits, a very large percentage of which end in what may be called a drawn game.

To offer a person a handsome present is to "give him face." But if the gift be from an individual it should be accepted only in part, but should seldom or never be altogether refused. A few examples of the thirst for keeping face will suffice for illustration. To be accused of a fault is to "lose face," and the fact must be denied, no matter what the evidence, in order to save face. A tennisball is missed, and it is more than suspected that a coolie picked it up. He indignantly denies it, but goes to the spot where the ball disappeared, and soon finds it lying there (dropped out of his sleeve), remarking, "Here is your 'lost' ball." The waiting woman who secreted the penknife of a guest in her master's house afterwards discovers it under the table cloth, and ostentatiously produces it. In each case "face" is saved. The servant who has carelessly lost an article which he knows he must replace or forfeit an equivalent from his wages, remarks loftily, as he takes his dismissal, "The money for that silver spoon I do not want," and thus his "face" is intact. A man has a debt owing to him which he knows that he shall not collect; but going to the debtor, he raises a terrible disturbance, by which means he shows that he knows what ought to be done. He does not get the money, but he saves his "face," and thus secures himself from imposition in the future. A servant neglects or refuses to perform some duty. Ascertaining that his master intends to turn him off, he repeats his former offence, dismisses himself, and saves his "face."

To save one's face and lose one's life would not seem to us very attractive, but we have heard of a Chinese District Magistrate who, as a special favour, was allowed to be be-headed in his robes of office in order to save his facet.

CHAPTER II.

ECONOMY.

THE word "economy" signifies the rule by which the house should be ordered, especially with reference to the relation between expenditure and income. Economy, as we understand the term, may be displayed in three several ways: by limiting the number of wants, by preventing waste, and by the adjustment of forces in such a manner as to make a little represent a great deal. In each of these ways the Chinese are pre-eminently economical.

One of the first things which impress the traveller in China is the extremely simple diet of the people. The vast bulk of the population seems to depend upon a few articles, such as rice, beans in various preparations, millet, garden vegetables, and fish. These, with a few other things, form the staple of countless millions, supplemented it may be on the feast-days, or other special occasions, with a bit of meat.

Now that so much attention is given in Western lands to the contrivance of ways in which to furnish nourishing food to the very poor, at a minimum cost, it is not without interest to learn the undoubted fact that, in ordinary years, it is in China quite possible to furnish wholesome food in abundant quantity at a cost for each adult of not more than two cents a day. Even in famine times, thousands of persons have been kept alive for months on an allowance of not more than a cent and a half a day. This implies the general existence in China of a high degree of skill in the preparation of food. Poor and coarse as their food often is, insipid and even repulsive as it not infrequently seems to the foreigner, it is impossible not to recognise the fact that, in the cooking and serving of what they have, the Chinese are past masters of the culinary art. In this particular, Mr. Wingrove Cooke ranked them below the French, and above the English (and he might have added the Americans). Whether they are really below any one of these nationalities we are by no means so certain as Mr. Cooke may have been, but their superiority to some of them is beyond dispute. In the few simple articles which we have mentioned, it is evident that even from the point of view of the scientific physiologist, the Chinese have made a wise choice of their staple foods. The thoroughness of their mode of preparing food, and the great variety in which these few constituents are constantly presented, are known to all who have paid the least attention to Chinese cookery.

Another fact of extreme significance does not force itself upon our notice, but can easily be verified. There is very little waste in the preparation of Chinese food, and everything is made to do as much duty as possible. What there is left after an ordinary Chinese family have finished one of their meals would represent but a fraction of the net cost of the food. In illustration of this general fact, it is only necessary to glance at the physical condition of the Chinese dog or cat. On the leavings of human beings it is the unhappy function of these animals to "live," and their lives are uniformly protracted at "a poor dying rate." The populations of new countries are proverbially wasteful, and we have not the least doubt that it would be possible to support sixty millions of Asiatics in comparative luxury with the materials daily wasted in a land like the United States, where a living is easily to be had. But we should like to see how many human beings could be fattened from what there is left after as many Chinese have "eaten to repletion" and the servants or children have all had their turn at the remains! Even the tea left in the cups is poured back into the teapot to be heated again.

It is a fact which cannot fail to force itself upon our notice at every turn, that the Chinese are not as a race gifted with that extreme fastidiousness in regard to food which is frequently developed in Western lands. All is fish that comes to their net, and there is very little which does not come there first or last. In the northern parts of China the horse, the mule, the ox, and the donkey are in universal use, and in large districts the camel is made to do full duty. Doubtless it will appear to some of our readers that economy is carried too far, when we mention that it is the general practice to eat all of these animals as soon as they expire, no matter whether the cause of death be an accident, old age, or disease. This is done as a matter of course, and occasions no remark whatever, nor is the habit given up because the animal may chance to have died of some epidemic malady, such as the pleuropneumonia in cattle. Such meat is not considered so wholesome as that of animals which have died of other diseases, and this truth is recognised in the lower scale of prices asked for it, but it is all sold, and is all eaten. Certain disturbances of the human organisations into which such diseased meat has entered are well recognised by the people, but it is doubtless considered more economical to eat the meat at the reduced rates, and run the risk of the consequences, which, it should be said, are by no means constant. Dead dogs and cats are subject to the same processes of absorption as dead horses, mules, and donkeys. We have been personally cognisant of several cases in which villagers cooked and ate dogs which had been purposely poisoned by strychnine to get rid of them. On one of these occasions some one was thoughtful enough to consult a foreign physician as to the probable results, but as the animal was "already in the pot," the survivors could not make up their minds to forego the luxury of a feast, and no harm appeared to come of their indulgence!

Another example of Chinese economy in relation to the preparation of food is found in the nice adjustment of the material of the cooking-kettles to the exigencies of the requisite fuel. The latter is scarce and dear, and consists generally of nothing but the leaves, stalks, and roots of the crops, making a rapid blaze which quickly disappears. To meet the needs of the case the bottoms of the boilers are made as thin as possible, and require very careful handling. The whole business of collecting this indispensable fuel is an additional example of economy in an extreme form. Every smallest child, who can do nothing else, can at least gather fuel. The vast army of fuel-gatherers, which in the autumn and winter overspread all the land, leave not a weed behind the hungry teeth of their bamboo rakes. Boys are sent into the trees to beat off with clubs the autumnal leaves, as if they were chest-nuts, and even straws are scarcely allowed leisure to show which way the wind blows, before some enterprising collector has "seized" them.

Every Chinese housewife knows how to make the most of her materials. Her dress is not in its pattern or its construction wasteful like those of her sisters in Occidental countries, but all is planned to save time, strength, and material. The tiniest scrap of foreign stuff is always welcome to a Chinese woman, who will make it reappear in forms of utility if not of beauty, of which a whole parliament of authoresses of "Domestic Economies" would never have dreamed. What cannot be employed in one place is sure to be just the thing for another, and a mere trifle of bias stuff is sufficient for the binding of a shoe. The benevolent person in London or New York who gives away the clothing for which he has no further use entertains a wild hope that it may not be the means of making the recipients paupers, and so do more harm than good. But whoever bestows similar articles upon the Chinese, though the stuffs which they use and the style of wear are so radically different from ours, has a well-grounded confidence that the usefulness of those particular articles has now at last begun, and will not be exhausted till there is nothing left of them for a base with which other materials can unite.

The Chinese often present their friends with complimentary inscriptions written on paper loosely basted upon a silk back-ground. Basting is adopted instead of pasting, in order that the recipient may, if he chooses, eventually remove the inscription, when he will have a very serviceable piece of silk!

Chinese economy is exhibited in the transactions of retail merchants, to whom nothing is too small for attention. A dealer in odds and ends, for example, is able to give the precise number of matches in a box of each of the different kinds, and he knows to a fraction the profit on each box.

Every scrap of a Chinese account-book is liable to be utilised in pasting up windows, or in the covering of paper lanterns.

The Chinese constantly carry their economy to the point of depriving themselves of food of which they are really in need. They see nothing irrational in this, but do it as a matter of course. A good example is given in Dr. B. C. Henry's "The Cross and the Dragon." He was carried by three coolies for five hours a distance of twenty three miles, his bearers then returning to Canton to get the breakfast which was furnished them. Forty-six miles before breakfast, with a heavy load half the way, to save five cents!

In another case two chair coolies had gone with a chair thirty-five miles, and were returning by boat, having had nothing to eat since 6 A.M., rather than pay three cents for two large bowls of rice. The boat ran aground, and did not reach Canton till 2 P.M. next day. Yet these men, having gone twenty-seven hours without food, carrying a load thirty-five miles, offered to take Dr. Henry fifteen miles more to Canton, and but for his baggage would have done so!

Many of the fruits of Chinese economy are not at all pleasing to the Westerners, but we cannot help admitting the genuine nature of the claim which may be built on them. In parts of the Empire, especially (strange to say) in the north, the children of both sexes roam around in the costume of the Garden of Eden, for many months of the year. This comes to be considered more comfortable for them, but the primary motive is economy. The stridulous squeak of the vast army of Chinese wheelbarrows is due to the absence of the few drops of oil which might stop it, but which never do stop it, because to those who are gifted with "an absence of nerves" the squeak is cheaper than the oil.

If a Japanese emigrates, it is specified in his contract that he is to be furnished daily with so many gallons of hot water, in which he may, according to custom, parboil himself. The Chinese have their bathing-houses too, but the greater part of the Chinese people never go near them, nor indeed ever saw one. "Do you wash your child every day?" said an inquisitive foreign lady to a Chinese mother, who was seen throwing shovelfuls of dust over her progeny, and then wiping it off with an old broom. "Wash him every day!" was the indignant response; "he was never washed since he was born!" To the Chinese generally, the motto could never be made even intelligible which was put in his window by a dealer in soap, "Cheaper than dirt."

The Chinese doubtless regard the average foreigner as it is said the Italians do the English, whom they term "soap-wasters." Washing of clothes in China by and for the Chinese there certainly is, but it is on a very subdued scale, and in comparison with what we call cleanliness it might almost be left out of account. Economy of material has much to do with this, as we cannot help thinking, for many Chinese appreciate clean things as much as we do, and some of them are models of neatness, albeit under heavy disadvantages.

It is due to the instinct of economy that it is generally impossible to buy any tool ready-made. You get the parts in a "raw" shape, and adjust the handles, etc., yourselves. It is generally cheaper to do this for one's self than to have it done, and as every one takes this view of it, nothing is to be had ready-made.

We have spoken of economical adjustments of material, such as that found in ordinary houses, where a dim light, which costs next to nothing, is made to diffuse its darkness over two apartments by being placed in a hole in the dividing wall. The best examples of such adjustments are to be found in Chinese manufactures, such as the weaving of all kinds of fabrics, working in pottery, metal, ivory, etc. Industries of this sort do not seem to us to exemplify ingenuity so much as they illustrate Chinese economy. Many better ways can be devised of doing Chinese work than the ways which they adopt, but none which make insignificant materials go further than they do with the Chinese. They seem to be able to do almost everything by means of almost nothing, and this is a characteristic generally of their productions, whether simple or complex. It applies as well to their iron-foundries, on a minute scale of completeness in a small yard, as to a cooking range of strong and perfect draft, made in an hour out of a pile of mud bricks, lasting indefinitely, operating perfectly, and costing nothing.

No better and more characteristic example of economy of materials in accomplishing great tasks could be found, even in China, than the arrangements, or rather the entire lack of arrangements, for the handling of the enormous amount of grain which is sent as tribute to Peking. This comes up the Peiho from Tientsin, and is discharged at Tung-chow. It would surprise a "Corn Exchange" merchant to find that all the machinery needed for unloading, measuring, and removing this mountain of rice and millet is simply an army of coolies, a supply of boxes made like a truncated cone, which are the "bushel" measures, and an indefinite number of reed mats. Only this and nothing more. The mats are spread on the ground, the grain is emptied, remeasured, sacked, and sent off, and the mats being taken up, the Emperor's Corn Exchange is once more a mere mud-bank!

On an American tobacco plantation one of the heaviest expenses is the building of the long and carefully constructed sheds for drying. In Chinese tobacco farms there is for this object no expense at all. The sheds are made of thatch, and when they are worn out the old material is just as good for fuel as the new. When the tobacco is picked, the stout, stiff stalks are left standing. Straw ropes are stretched along these stalks, and upon the ropes are hung the tobacco leaves, which are taken in at night with the ropes attached, like clothes hung to a line. For simplicity and effectiveness this device could hardly be excelled.

Every observant resident in China would be able to add to these illustrations of a Chinese social fact, but perhaps no more characteristic instance could be cited than the case of an old Chinese woman, who was found hobbling along in a painfully slow way, and on inquiry of whom it was ascertained that she was going to the home of a relative, so as to die in a place convenient to the family graveyard, and thus avoid the expense of coffin-bearers for so long a distance!

CHAPTER III.

INDUSTRY.

INDUSTRY is defined as habitual diligence in any employment and steady attention to business. In this age of the world industry it is one of the most highly prized among the virtues, and it is one which invariably commands respect.

The industry of a people, speaking roughly, may be said to unite the three dimensions of length, breadth, and thickness; or, to use a different expression, it may be said to have two qualities of extension, and one of intension. By the quality of length, we mean the amount of time during which the industry is exercised. By the quality of breadth, we mean the number of persons to whom the predicate of industrious may be fairly applied. By intension, we mean the amount of energy which is displayed in the "habitual diligence," and in "steady attention to business." The aggregate result will be the product of these three factors. It is by no means always the case that the impressions of the casual traveller and those of the old residents are the same, but there can be little doubt that casual travellers, and residents of the longest standing, will agree in a profound conviction of the diligence of the Chinese people. The very first glance which a new comer gets of the Chinese, induces him to think that this people is carrying out in social affairs the maxim which John Wesley named as the rule for a successful church-"All at it, and always at it." Idleness in China is not conspicuous. Every one seems to be doing something. There are of course plenty of wealthy persons, albeit a mere microscopic fraction of the whole community, who can abundantly live without doing any work, but their life is not ordinarily of a kind which is externally visible to the foreigner. Wealthy people in China do not commonly retire from business, but devote themselves to it with the same kind and degree of attention as when they were poor.

The Chinese classify themselves as Scholars, Farmers, Work-men, and Merchants. Let us glance at each of these subdivisions of society, and see what they have to say for the industry of the people.

It is exceedingly difficult for Occidentals to enter sympathetically into such a scheme of education as that of the Chinese. Its gross defects are not likely to be overlooked, but one feature of it is adapted to thrust itself on the attention at all times-it has no real rewards, except for diligence. The many back doors which are always open to those who have the money to purchase degrees would seem well calculated to dampen the ardour of any student, but such is not the main effect of the sale of office. The complaint is made in all the provinces that there are far more eligible candidates for every position than there are positions to be filled. All the examination halls, from the lowest to the highest, seem to be perpetually crowded, and the number of students who compete in any single prefecture often rises to above ten thousand. When we consider the amount of mental toil which the mere entrance to any one of these examinations involves, we get a vivid conception of the intellectual industry of the Chinese. The traditional diligence of the standard heroes mentioned in the Trimetrical Classic, who studied by the light of a glow worm, or who tied their books to the horns of the ox with which they were ploughing, is imitated at the present day, with various degrees of approximation, by thousands in all parts of China. In many cases this industry begins to disappear with the initial success of the first degree, but the Chinese do not consider such a one a scholar at all, but reserve this title of honour for those who keep on in the narrow and thorny path, until at length their perseverance is crowned with success. In what land but China would it be possible to find examples of a grandfather, son, and grandson all competing in the same examination for the same degree, age and indomitable perseverance being rewarded at the age of eighty years by the long-coveted honour?

In the spring of 1889 various memorials appeared in the Peking Gazette relating to aged candidates at the provincial examinations. The Governor General reported that at the autumnal examination in Foochow nine candidates over eighty years of age, and two over ninety, went through the prescribed tests and sent in essays of which the composition was good and the handwriting firm and distinct. Aged candidates, he says, who have passed through an interval of sixty years from attaining their bachelor's degree, and who have attended the three last examinations for the higher, are, if unsuccessful the fourth time, entitled to an honorary degree. The Governor of Honan in like manner reported thirteen candidates over eighty years of age, and one over ninety, who all "went through the whole nine days' ordeal, and wrote essays which were perfectly accurate in diction and showed no signs of failing years." But even this astonishing record was surpassed in the province of Anhui, where thirty-five of the competitors were over eighty years of age, and eighteen over ninety! Could any other country afford a spectacle like this?

If the life of the scholar in China is one of unremitting diligence, that of the farmer is not less so. His work, like that of a housekeeper, is never done. With the exception of a comparatively brief period in the middle of the winter, throughout the northern provinces there never appears to be a time when there is not only something to do, but a great deal of it. Doubtless this is more or less true of farming everywhere, but the Chinese farmer is industrious with an industry which it would be difficult to surpass.

That which is true of the farmer class, is true with still greater emphasis of the mere labourer, who is driven by the constant and chronic reappearance of the wolf at his door to spend his life in an everlasting grind. As the farmer bestows the most painstaking thought and care upon every separate stalk of cabbage, picking off carefully each minute insect, thus at last tiring out the ceaseless swarms by his own greater perseverance, so does the labourer watch for the most insignificant job, that he may have something for his stomach and for his back, and for other stomachs and backs that are wholly dependent upon him. Those who have occasion to travel where cart-roads exist, will often be obliged to rise soon after midnight and pursue their journey, for such, they are told, is the custom. But no matter at what hour one is on the way, there are small bodies of peasants patrolling the roads, with fork in hand and basket on their back, watching for opportunities to collect a little manure. When there is no other work pressing, this is an invariable and an inexhaustible resource.

It is by no means uncommon to see those who are hard pressed to find the means of support, following two different lines of occupation which dovetail into each other. Thus the boatmen of Tientsin, whose business is spoiled by the closing of the rivers, take to the swift ice-sled, by which means it is possible to be transported rapidly at a minimum cost. In the same way, most of the rural population of some districts spend all the time which can be spared from the exigencies of farm work in making hats or in plaiting the braid, now so large an article of export. Chinese women are not often seen without a shoe sole in their hands on which they are perpetually taking stitches, even while talking gossip at the entrance of their alleys; or perhaps it is a reel of cotton which they are spinning. But idle they are not.

The indefatigable activity of the classes which have been named is well matched by that of the merchants and their employes. The life of a merchant's clerk, even in Western lands, is not that of one who holds a sinecure, but as compared with that of a Chinese clerk it is comparative idleness. For to the work of the latter there is no end. His holidays are few and his tasks heavy, though they may be interspersed with periods of comparative torpor.

Chinese shops are always opened early, and they close late. The system of bookkeeping by a species of double entry appears to be so minute that the accountants are often kept busy till a very late hour recording the sales and balancing the entries. When nothing else remains to be done, clerks can be set to sorting over the brass cash taken in, in quest of rare coins which may be sold at a profit.

It is a matter of surprise that the most hard-worked class of the Chinese race is that class which is most envied, and into which every ambitious Chinese strives to raise himself to wit, the official. The number and variety of transactions with which a Chinese official of. any rank must occupy himself, and for the success of which he is not only theoretically but very practically responsible, is likewise surprising. How would our Labour Unions, who are so strenuous about the coming Eight Hours a Day, relish a programme of a day's work such as the following, which is taken from a statement made to an interpreter in one of the Foreign Legations in Peking by an eminent Chinese statesman? "I once asked a member of the Chinese cabinet, who was complaining of fatigue and over-work, for an account of his daily routine. He replied that he left home every morning at two o'clock, as he was on duty at the Palace from three to six. As a member of the Privy Council, he was engaged in that body from six until nine.

From nine until eleven he was at the War Department, of which he was President. Being a member of the Board of punishment, he was in attendance at the office of that body daily from twelve until two, and, as one of the senior Ministers of the Foreign Office, he spent every day, from two till five or six in the afternoon, there. These were his regular daily duties. In addition to them he was frequently appointed to serve on special boards or commissions, and these he sandwiched in between the others as he could. He seldom reached home before seven or eight o'clock in the evening." It is not strange to be told that this officer died six months after this conversation, from overwork and exhaustion, nor is it at all unlikely that the same state of things may put an end to many careers in China the continuance of which would have been valuable to the interests of the government.

The quality of extension, of which we have spoken, applies to the number of those who are industrious, but it also applies to the extent of time covered by that industry, which, as we have seen, is very great. The Chinese day begins at a dim period, often not at a great remove from midnight. The Emperor holds his daily audiences at an hour when every Court of Europe is wrapped in the embrace of Morpheus. To an Occidental this seems simply inexplicable, but to a Chinese it doubtless appears the most natural thing in the world. And the conduct of the Son of Heaven is imitated more or less closely by the subjects of the Son of Heaven, in all parts of his Empire. The copper workers of Canton, the tinfoil workers of Foochow, the wood-carvers of Ningpo, the rice mill workers of Shanghai, the cotton-cleaners and workers in the treadmill for bolting flour in the northern provinces, may all be heard late at night, and at a preposterous hour in the morning. Long before daylight the traveller comes upon a countryman who has already reached a distance of many miles from his home, where he is posted in the darkness waiting for the corning of daylight, when he will begin the sale of his cabbages!

By the time an Occidental has had his breakfast, a Chinese market is nearly over. There are few more significant contrasts than are suggested by a stroll along the principal street in Shanghai, at the hour of half-past five on a summer's morning. The lordly European, who built those palaces which line the water-front, and who does his business therein, is conspicuous by his total absence, but the Asiatic is on hand in full force, and has been on hand for a long time. It will be hours before the Occidentals begin to jostle the Chinese from the sidewalks, and to enter with luxurious ease on their round of work, and by that time the native will have finished half his day's labour.

¡¡

Sir John Davis was quite right in his comments on the cheerful labour of the Chinese, as a sign that their government has succeeded in securing them great content with their condition. This quality of their labour is one of its most striking characteristics, and to be comprehended must be long observed and well weighed.

It remains to say a word of the quality of intension in Chinese industry. The Chinese are Asiatics, and they work as such. It is in vain to attempt to make over this virile race on the model of our own. To us they certainly appear lacking in the heartiness which we esteem so highly. The Anglo-Saxon needs no scriptural hint to enable him to see the importance of doing with his might what his hand finds to do, but the Chinese cannot be made to change his pace, though the combined religions and philosophy of the ages were brought to bear upon him. He has profited by the accumulated experience of millenniums, and, like the gods of Homer, he is never in a hurry.

One cannot help forecasting a time when the white and the yellow races will come into a keener competition than any yet known. When that inevitable day shall have arrived, which of them will have to go to the wall?

Surely if Solomon was right in his economic maxim that the hand of the diligent maketh rich, the Chinese ought to be among the most prosperous of the peoples of the earth. And so they doubtless would be, if there were with them a balance of virtues, instead of a conspicuous absence of some of those fundamental qualities which, however they may be enumerated as "constant virtues," are chiefly "constant" in their absence. When, by whatever means, these qualities of honesty and sincerity shall have been restored to their theoretical place in the Chinese moral consciousness, then (and not sooner) will the Chinese reap the full reward of their unmatched Industry.

CHAPTER IV.

POLITENESS.

THERE are two quite different aspects in which the politeness of the Chinese, and of Oriental peoples generally, may be viewed: the one of appreciation, the other of criticism. The Anglo-Saxon, as we are fond of reminding ourselves, has, no doubt, many virtues, and among them is to be found a very large percentage of fortiter in re, but a very small percentage of suaviter in modo. When, therefore, we come to the Orient, and find the vast populations of the immense Asiatic continent so greatly our superiors in the art of lubricating the friction which is sure to arise in the intercourse of man with man, we are filled with that admiration which is the tribute of those who cannot do a thing to those who can do it easily and well. The most bigoted critic of the Chinese is forced to admit that they have brought the practice of politeness to a pitch of perfection which is not only unknown in Western lands, but, previous to experience, is unthought of and almost unimaginable.

The rules of ceremony, we are reminded in the Classics, are three hundred, and the rules of behaviour three thousand. Under such a load as this, it would seem unreasonable to hope for the continuance of a race of human beings, but we very soon discover that the Chinese have contrived to make their ceremonies, as they have made their education, an instinct rather than an acquirement. The genius of this people has made the punctilio, which in Occidental lands is relegated to the use of courts and to the intercourse of diplomatic life, a part of the routine of daily contact with others. We do not mean that in their everyday life the Chinese are bound by such an intricate and complex mass of rules as we have mentioned, but that the code, like a set of holiday clothes, is always to be put on when the occasion for it arises, which happens at certain junctures the occurrence of which the Chinese recognise by an unerring instinct. On such occasions, not to know what to do would be for a Chinese as ridiculous as for an educated man in a Western land not to be able to tell, on occasion, how many nine times nine are.

The difficulty of Occidental appreciation of Chinese politeness is that we have in mind such ideas as are embodied in the definition which affirms that "politeness is real kindness kindly expressed." So it may be in the view of a civilisation which has learned to regard the welfare of one as (theoretically) the welfare of all, but in China politeness is nothing of this sort. It is a ritual of technicalities which, like all technicalities, are important, not as the indices of a state of mind or of heart, but as individual parts of a complex whole. The entire theory and practice of the use of honorific terms, so bewildering, not to say maddening, to the Occidental, is simply that these expressions help to keep in view those fixed relations of graduated superiority which are regarded as essential to the conservation of society. They also serve as lubricating fluids to smooth human intercourse. Each antecedent has its consequent, and each consequent its antecedent, and when both antecedent and consequent are in the proper place, everything goes on well. It is like a game of chess in which the first player observes, "I move my insignificant King's pawn two squares." To which his companion responds, "I move my humble King's pawn in the same manner." His antagonist then announces, "I attack your honourable King's pawn with my contemptible King's knight, to his King's bishop's mean third," and so on through the game. The game is not affected by the employment of the adjectives, but just as the chess-player who should be unable to announce his next move would make himself ridiculous by attempting what he does not understand, so the Chinese who should be ignorant of the proper ceremonial reply to any given move is the laughing-stock of every one, because in the case of the Chinese the adjectives are the game itself, and not to know them is to know nothing.

At the same time, the rigidity of Chinese etiquette varies directly as the distance from the centres at which it is most essential, and when one gets among rustics, though there is the same appreciation of its necessity, there is by no means the familiarity with the detailed requirements which is found in an urban population.

But it must at the same time be admitted that there are very few Chinese who do not know the proper thing to be done at a given time, incomparably better than the most cultivated foreigner, who, as compared with them, is a mere infant in arms; generally, unless he has had a long preliminary experience, filled with secret terror lest he should make a wrong move, and thus betray the superficial nature of his knowledge. It is this evident and self-confessed incapacity to comply with the very alphabet of Chinese ceremonial politeness which makes the educated classes of China look with such undisguised (and not unnatural) contempt on the "Barbarians," who do not understand "the round and the square," and who, even when they have been made acquainted with the beauties of the usages of polite life, manifest such disdainful indifference, as well as such invincible ignorance.

Politeness has been likened to an aircushion. There is nothing in it, but it eases the jolts wonderfully. At the same time it is only fair to add that the politeness which the Chinese exercises to the foreigner (as well as much of that which he displays to his own people) is oftener prompted by a desire to show that he really understands the proper moves to be made, than by a wish to do that which will be agreeable to his guest. He insists on making a fire which you do not want, in order to steep for you a cup of tea which you detest, and in so doing fills your eyes with smoke, and your throat with a sensation of having swallowed a decoction of marshmallows; but the host has at least established the proposition that he knows how a guest ought to be treated, and if the guest is not pleased, so much the worse for the guest. In the same manner the rural host, who thinks it is his duty to have the humble apartment in which you are to be lodged, swept and (figuratively) garnished, postpones this process until you have already arrived, and despite your entreaties to desist he will not, though he put your eyes out by raising the dust of ages. The Book of Rites teaches, perhaps, that a room shall be swept, and swept it shall be, whatever the agonies of the traveller in the process. The same rule holds at feasts, those terrors of the uninitiated (and not seldom of the too initiated), where the zealous host is particular to pile on your plate the things that it is good for you to like, regardless of the fact that you do not want them and cannot swallow a morsel of them. So much the worse for you, he seems to say, but of one thing he is sure, he will not be lacking in his part. No one shall be able to accuse him of not having made the proper moves at the proper times. If the foreigner does not know the game, that is his own affair, not that of the host.

It was upon this principle that a Chinese bride, whose duty it had become to call upon a foreign lady, deliberately turned her back upon the latter, and made her obeisance towards a totally different quarter, to the amazement and annoyance of her hostess. Upon subsequent inquiry it turned out that the bride had performed her prostration to the north because that is the direction of the abode of the Emperor, no attention being paid to the circumstance that the person to whom the bride was supposed to be paying her respects was on the south side of the room. If the foreign lady did not know enough to take her place on the proper side of the room, the bride did not consider that any concern of hers; she, at least, would show that she knew in what direction to knock her head!

Chinese politeness often assumes the shape of a gift. This, as already remarked, gives the recipient "face." There are certain stereotyped forms which such offerings take. One who has much to do with the Chinese will be always liable to deposits of packages, neatly tied up in red paper, containing a mass of greasy cakes which he cannot possibly eat, but which the giver will not take back, even though he is informed by the unwilling recipient (driven to extremities) that he shall be obliged to give them all to some other Chinese.

Chinese politeness by no means forbids one to "look a gift horse in the mouth." One is often asked how much a present cost him, and guests in taking leave of a host or hostess constantly use the formula: "I have made you much trouble; I have forced you to spend a great deal of money!"

A foreigner who had been invited to a wedding, at which bread-cakes are provided in abundance, observed that when the feast was well advanced a tray was produced containing only two or three bread-cakes, which were ostentatiously offered as being hot (if any preferred them so). They were first passed to the foreigner as the guest of honour, who merely declined them with thanks. For some unexplained reason, this seemed to throw a kind of gloom over the proceedings, and the tray was withdrawn without being passed to any one else. It is the custom for each guest at a wedding to con-tribute a fixed sum towards the expenses of the occasion. It was the usage of this locality to collect these contributions while the guests were still at the table, but as it would not conform to Chinese ideas of propriety to ask a guest for ins offering, it was done under the guise of passing him hot biscuit. Every one understood this polite fiction except the ill informed foreigner, whose refusal rendered it improper for any one else to make his contribution at that time. At a subsequent wedding to which he was invited in the same family, this foreigner was interested in hearing the master of ceremonies, taught by dear experience, remark to the guests with more than Occidental directness, "This is the place for those who have accounts to come in and settle them!"

After all abatements have been made for the tediously minute and often irksome detail of trifles of which Chinese politeness takes account, for all of which it prescribes regulations, it still remains true that we have much to learn from the Chinese in the item of social intercourse. It is quite possible to retain our sincerity without retaining all our brusqueness, and the sturdy independence of the Occident would be all the better for the admixture of a certain amount of Oriental suavity.

There are, however, many Occidentals who could never be brought to look at the matter in this light. An acquaintance of the writer's resided for so many years in Paris that he had unconsciously adopted the manners of that capital. When at length he returned to London, he was in the habit of removing his hat, and making a courteous bow to every friend whom he met. Upon one occasion, one of the latter returned his salutations with the somewhat unsympathetic observation, "See here, old fellow, none of your French monkey tricks here!" Happy the man who is able to combine all that is best in the East and in the West, and who can walk securely along the narrow and often thorny path of the Golden Mean.

CHAPTER V

THE DISREGARD OF TIME

IT is a maxim of the developed civilisation of our day that "time is money." The complicated arrangements of modern life are such that a business man in business hours is able to do an amount and variety of business which, in the past century, would have required the expenditure of time in-definitely greater. Steam and electricity have accomplished this change, and it is a change for which the Anglo-Saxon race was prepared beforehand by its constitutional tendencies. Whatever may have been the habits of our ancestors when they had little or nothing to do but to eat, drink, and fight, we find it difficult to imagine a period when our race was not characterised by that impetuous energy which ever drives the individuals of it onward to do something else, as soon as another something is finished.

There is a significant difference in the salutations of the Chinese and of the Anglo-Saxon. The former says to his comrade whom he casually meets, "Have you eaten rice?" The latter asks, "How do you do?" Doing is the normal condition of the one, as eating is the normal condition of the other. From that feeling which to us has become a second nature, that time is money, and under ordinary circumstances is to be improved to its final second, the Chinese, like most Orientals, are singularly free. There are only twelve hours in the Chinese day, and the names of these hours do not designate simply the point where one of them gives place to another, but denote as well all the time covered by the twelfth part of a day which each of them connotes. In this way the term "noon," which would seem as definite as any, is employed of the entire period from eleven to one o'clock. "What time is it," a Chinese inquired in our hearing, "when it is noon by the moon?" Phrased in less ambiguous language, the question which he intended to propound was this: "What is the time of night when the moon is at the meridian?"

Similar uncertainties pervade almost all the notes of time which occur in the language of everyday life. "Sunrise" and "sunset" are as exact as anything in Chinese can be expected to be, though used with much latitude (and much longitude as well), but "midnight," like "noon," means nothing in particular, and the ordinary division of the night by "watches" is equally vague, with the exception of the last one, which is often associated with the appearance of daylight. Even in the cities the "watches" are of more or less uncertain duration. Of the portable time-pieces which we designate by this name, the Chinese as a people know nothing, and few of those who really own watches govern their movements by them, even if they have the watches cleaned once every few years and ordinarily keep them running, which is not often the case. The common people are quite content to tell their time by the altitude of the sun, which is variously described as one, two, or more "flagstaffs," or if the day is cloudy a general result can be arrived at by observing the contraction and dilatation of the pupil of a cat's eye, and such a result is quite accurate enough for all ordinary purposes.

The Chinese use of time corresponds to the exactness of their measures of its flight. According to the distinction described by Sydney Smith, the world is divided into two classes of persons, the antediluvians and the post-diluvians. Among the latter the discovery has been made that the age of man no longer runs into the centuries which verge on a millennium, and accordingly they study compression, and adaptation to their environment. The antediluvians, on the contrary, cannot be made to realise that the days of Methusaleh have gone by, and they continue to act as if life were still laid out on the patriarchal plan.

Among these "antediluvians" the Chinese are to be reckoned. A good Chinese story-teller, such as are employed in the tea-shops to attract and retain customers, reminds one of Tennyson's "Brook." Men may come and men may go, but he goes on "forever ever." The same is true of theatrical exhibitions, which sometimes last for days, though they fade into insignificance in comparison with those of Siam, where we are assured by those who claim to have survived one of them that they are known to hold for two months together! The feats of Chinese jugglers when well done are exceedingly clever and very amusing, but they have one fatal defect-they are so long drawn out by the prolix and inane conversation of the participants, that long before the jugglers finish, the foreign spectator will have regretted that he ever weakly consented to patronise them. Not less formidable, but rather far, more so, are the interminable Chinese feasts, with their almost incredible number and variety of courses, the terror and despair of all foreigners who have experienced them, although to the Chinese these entertainments seem but too short. One of their most pensive sayings observes that "there is no feast in the world which must not break up at last," though to the unhappy barbarian lured into one of these traps this hopeful generality is often lost in despair of the particular.

From his earliest years, the Chinese is thoroughly accustomed to doing everything on the antediluvian plan. When he goes to school, he generally goes for the day, extending to all the period from sunrise to dark, with one or two inter-missions for food. Of any other system, neither pupils nor master have ever heard. The examinations for degrees are protracted through several days and nights, with all grades of severity, and while most of the candidates experience much inconvenience from such an irrational course, it would be difficult to convince any of them of its inherent absurdity as a test of intellectual attainments.

The products of the minds of those thus educated are redolent of the processes through which they have passed. The Chinese language itself is essentially antediluvian, and to over-take it requires the lifetime of a Methusaleh. It is as just to say of the ancient Chinese as of the ancient Romans, that if they had been obliged to learn their own language they would never have said or written anything worth setting down! Chinese histories are antediluvian, not merely in their attempts to go back to the ragged edge of zero for a point of departure, but in the interminable length of the sluggish and turbid current which bears on its bosom not only the mighty vegetation of past ages, but wood, hay, and stubble past all reckoning. None but a relatively timeless race could either compose or read such histories; none but the Chinese memory could store them away in its capacious "abdomen."

Chinese disregard of time is manifested in their industry, the quality of intension in which we have already remarked to be very different from that in the work of Anglo-Saxons.

How many of those who have had the pleasure of building a house in China, with Chinese contractors and workmen, thirst to do it again? The men come late and go early. They are perpetually stopping to drink tea. They make long journeys to a distant lime-pit carrying a few quarts of liquid mud in a cloth bag, when by using a wheelbarrow one man could do the work of three; but this result is by no means the one aimed at. If there is a slight rain all work is suspended. There is generally abundant motion with but little progress, so that it is often difficult to perceive what it is which represents the day's "labour" of a gang of men. We have known

a foreigner, dissatisfied with the slow progress of his carpenters in lathing, accomplish while they were eating their dinner as much work as all four of them had done in half a day.

The mere task of keeping their tools in repair is for Chinese workmen a serious matter in expenditure of time. If the tools belong to the foreigner, however, there is no embarrassment on this score. They are broken mysteriously, and yet no one has touched them. Non est inventus is the appropriate motto for them all. Poles and small rafters are pitched over the wall, and all the neighbourhood loins appear to be girded with the rope which was purchased for supporting the staging. During the entire progress of the work, each day is a crisis. All previous experience goes for nothing. The sand, the lime, the earth of this place will not do for any of the uses for which sand, lime, and earth are in general supposed to be adapted. The foreigner is helpless. He is aptly represented by Gulliver held down by threads, which, taken together, are too much for him. Permanently have we enshrined in our memory a Cantonese contractor, whose promises, like his money, vanished in smoke, for he was unfortunately a victim of the opium pipe. At last, forbearance having ceased to be a virtue, he was confronted with a formidable bill of particulars of the things wherein he had come short. "You were told the size of the glass. You measured the windows there several times. Every one of those you have made is wrong, and they are useless. Not one of your doors is properly put together. There is not an ounce of glue about them. The flooring boards are short in length, short in number, full of knot-holes, and wholly unseasoned." After the speaker had proceeded in this way for some time, the mild-mannered Cantonese gazed at him sadly, and when he brought himself to speak he remarked, in a tone of gentle remonstrance: "Don't say dat! Don't say dat! No gentleman talk like dat!"

To the Chinese the chronic impatience of the Anglo-Saxon is not only unaccountable, but quite unreasonable. It has been wisely suggested that they consider this trait in our character as objectionable as we do their lack of sincerity.

In any case, appreciation of the importance of celerity and promptness is difficult to cultivate in a Chinese. We have known a bag full of foreign mail detained for some days between two cities twelve miles apart, because the carrier's donkey was ailing and needed rest! The administration of the Chinese telegraph system is frequently a mere travesty of what it might be and ought to be.

But in no circumstances is Chinese indifference to the lapse of time more annoying to a foreigner than when the occasion is a mere social call. Such calls in Western lands are recognised as having certain limits, beyond which they must not be protracted. In China, however, there are no limits. As long as the host does not offer his guest accommodations for the night, the guest must keep on talking, though he be expiring with fatigue. In calling on foreigners the Chinese can by no possibility realise that there is an element of time, which is precious. They will sit by the hour together, offering few or no observations of their own, and by no means offering to depart. The excellent pastor who had for his motto the saying, "The man who wants to see me is the man I want to see," would have modified this dictum materially had he lived for any length of time in China. After a certain experience of this sort, he would not improbably have followed the ex-ample of another busy clergyman, who hung conspicuously in his study the scriptural motto, "The Lord bless thy goings out." The mere enunciation of his business often seems to cost a Chinese a mental wrench of a violent character. For a long time he says nothing, and he can endure this for a period of time sufficient to wear out the patience of ten Europeans. Then, when he begins to speak, he realises the truth of the adage which declares that "it is easy to go on the mountains to fight tigers, but to open your mouth and out with a thing-this is hard!" Happy is the foreigner situated like the late lamented Dr. Mackenzie, who, finding that his incessant relays of Chinese guests, the friends "who come but never go," were squandering the time which belonged to his hospital work, was wont to say to them, "Sit down and make yourselves at home; I have urgent business, and must be excused." And yet more happy would he be if he were able to imitate the naive terseness of a student of Chinese who, having learned a few phrases, desired to experiment with them on the teacher, and who accordingly filled him with stupefaction by remarking at the end of a lesson, "Open the door! Go!"

CHAPTER VL

THE DISREGARD OF ACCURACY.

THE first impression which a stranger receives of the Chinese is that of uniformity. Their physiognomy appears to be all of one type, they all seem to be clad in one perpetual blue, the "hinges" of the national eye do not look as if they were "put on straight," and the resemblance between one Chinese and another is the likeness between a pair of peas from the same pod. But in a very brief experience the most unobservant traveller fears that, whatever else may be predicated of the Chinese, a dead level of uniformity cannot be safely assumed. The speech of any two districts, no matter how contiguous, varies in some interesting and perhaps unaccountable ways. Divergences of this sort accumulate until they are held to be tantamount to a new "dialect," and there are not wanting those who will gravely assure us that in China there are a great number of different "languages" spoken, albeit the written character is the same. The same variations, as we are often reminded, obtain in regard to customs, which, according to a saying current among the Chinese, do not run uniform for ten li together, a fact of which it is impossible not to witness singular instances at every turn. A like diversity is found to prevail in those standards of quantity upon the absolute invariability of which so much of the comfort of life in Western lands is found to depend.

The existence of a double standard of any kind, which is often so keen an annoyance to an Occidental, is an equally keen joy to the Chinese. Two kinds of cash, two kinds of weights, two kinds of measures, these seem to him natural and normal, and by no means open to objection. A man who made meat dumplings for sale was asked how many of these dumplings were made in a day; to which he replied that they used about "one hundred [Chinese] pounds of flour," the unknown relation between this amount of flour and the number of resultant dumplings being judiciously left to the inquirer to conjecture for himself. In like manner, a farmer who is asked the weight of one of his oxen gives a figure which seems much too low, until he explains that he has omitted to estimate the bones! A servant who was asked his height mentioned a measure which was ridiculously inadequate to cover his length, and upon being questioned admitted that he had left out of account all above his shoulders! He had once been a soldier. where the height of the men's clavicle is important in assigning the carrying of burdens. And since a Chinese soldier is to all practical purposes complete without his head, this was omitted. Of a different sort was the measurement of a rustic who affirmed that he lived "ninety li from the city," but upon cross-examination he consented to an abatement, as this was reckoning both to the city and back, the real distance being, as he admitted, only "forty-five li one way."

The most conspicuous instance of this variability in China is seen in the method of reckoning the brass cash, which constitute the only currency of the Empire. The system is every-where a decimal one, which is the easiest of all systems to be reckoned, but no one is ever sure, until he has made particular inquiries, what number of pieces of brass cash are expected in any particular place to pass for a hundred. He will not need to extend his travels over a very large part of the eighteen provinces to find that this number varies, and varies with a lawlessness that nothing can explain, from the full hundred which is the theoretical "string," to 99, 98, 96, 83 (as in the capital of Shansi), down to 33, as in the eastern part of the province of China, and possibly to a still lower number else-where. The same is true, but in a more aggravated degree, of the weight by which silver is sold. No two places have the same "ounce," unless by accident, and each place has a great variety of different ounces, to the extreme bewilderment of the stranger, the certain loss of all except those who deal in silver, and the endless vexation of all honest persons, of whom there are many, even in China. The motive for the perpetuation of this monetary chaos is obvious, but we are at present concerned only with the fact of its existence.

The same holds true universally of measures of all sorts. The bushel of one place is not the same as that of any other, and the advantage which is constantly taken of this fact in the exactions connected with the grain tax would easily cause political disturbances among a less peaceable people than the Chinese. So far is it from being true that "a pint is a pound the world around," in China a "pint" is not a pint, nor is a "pound" a pound. Not only does the theoretical basis of each vary, but it is a very common practice (as in the salt monopoly, for example) to fix some purely arbitrary standard, such as twelve ounces, and call that a pound (catty). The purchaser pays for sixteen ounces and receives but twelve, but then it is openly done and is done by all dealers within the same range, so that there is no fraud, and if the people think of it at all, it is only as an "old-time custom" of the salt trade. A similar uncertainty prevails in the measurement of land. In some districts the "acre" is half as large again as in others, and those who happen to live on the boundary are obliged to keep a double set of measuring apparatus, one for each kind of "acre."

It is never safe to repeat any statement (as travellers in China are constantly led to do) in regard to the price of each "catty" of grain or cotton, until one has first informed him-self what kind of "catty" they have at that point. The same holds as to the amount of any crop yielded per "acre," statistics of which are not infrequently presented in ignorance of the vital fact that "acre" is not a fixed term. That a like state of things prevails as to the terms employed to measure distance, every traveller in China is ready to testify. It is always necessary in land travel to ascertain, when the distance is given in "miles" (li), whether the "miles" are "large" of not! That there is some basis for estimates of distances we do not deny, but what we do deny is that these estimates or measurements are either accurate or uniform. It is, so far as we know, a universal experience that the moment one leaves a great imperial highway the "miles" become "long." If 120 li constitute a fair day's journey on the main road, then on country roads it will take fully as long to go 100 li, and in the mountains the whole day will be spent in getting over 80 1i. Besides this, the method of reckoning is frequently based, not on absolute distance, even in a Chinese sense, but on the relative difficulty of getting over the ground. Thus it will be "ninety li" to the top of a mountain the summit of which would not actually measure half that distance from the base, and this number will be stoutly to, on the ground that it is as much trouble to go this "ninety li" as it would be to do that distance on level ground. Another somewhat peculiar fact emerges in regard to linear measurements, namely, that the distance from A to B is not necessarily the same as the distance from B to A! It is vain to cite Euclidian postulates that "quantities which are equal to the same quantity are equal to each other." In China this statement requires to be modified by the insertion of a negative. We could name a section of one of the most important highways in China, which from north to south is I83 li in length, while from south to north it is 190 li, and singularly enough, this holds true no matter how often you travel it or how carefully the tally is kept!"

Akin to this is another intellectual phenomenon, to wit, that in China it is not true that the "whole is equal to the sum of all its parts." This is especially the case in river travel. On inquiry you ascertain that it is "forty li" to a point ahead. Upon more careful analysis, this "forty" turns out to be composed of two "eighteens," and you are struck dumb with the statement that "four nines are forty, are they not?" In the

*Since this was written, we have met in Mr. Baber's "Travels in Western China" with a confirmation of the view here taken. "We heard, for instance, with incredulous ears, that the distance between two places depended upon which end one started from; and all the informants, separately questioned, would give the same differential estimate. Thus from A to B would be unanimously called one mile, while from B to A mould, with equal unanimity, be set down as three. An explanation of this offered by an intelligent native was this: Carriage is paid on a basis of so many cash per mile, it is evident that a coolie ought to be paid at a higher rate if the road is uphill. Now it would be very troublesome to adjust a scale of wages rising with the gradients of the road. It is much more convenient for all parties to assume that the road in difficult or precipitous places is longer. This is what has been done, and these conventional distances are now all that the traveller will succeed in ascertaining. 'But,' I protested, 'on the same principle, wet weather must elongate the road, and it must be farther by night than by day.' 'Very true, but a little extra payment adjusts that.' This system may be convenient for the natives, but the traveller finds it a continual annoyance. The scale of distances is something like this: On level ground, one statute mile is called two li; on ordinary hill roads, not very steep, one mile is called five li; on very steep roads, one mile is called fifteen li. The natives of Yunnan, being good mountaineers, have a tendency to underrate the distance on level ground, but there is so little of it in their country, that the future traveller need scarcely trouble himself with the consideration. It will be sufficient to assume five local li, except in very steep places, as being one mile."

In Mr. Little's "Through the Yang-tse Gorges," he mentions a stage which down the river was called ninety ii, while up-stream it was 120 Ii. He. estimates 3.62 li to a statute mile, or 250 to a degree of, latitude.

same manner, "three eighteens" make "sixty," and so on generally. We have heard of a case in which an imperial courier failed to make a certain distance in the limits of time allowed by rule, and it was set up in his defence that the "sixty li" were "large." As this was a fair plea, the magis-trate ordered the distance measured, when it was found that it was in reality "eighty-three li," and it has continued to be so reckoned ever since.

Several villages scattered about at distances from a city varying from one li to six, may each be called "The Three-Li Village." One often notices that a distance which would otherwise be reckoned as about a li, if there are houses on each side of the road, is called five li, and every person in that hamlet will gravely assure us that such is the real length of the street.

Under these circumstances, it cannot be a matter of surprise to find that the regulation of standards is a thing which each individual undertakes for himself. The steel-yard maker perambulates the street, and puts in the little dots (called "stars") according to the preferences of each customer, who will have not less than two sets of balances, one for buying and one for selling. A ready-made balance, unless it might be an old one, is not to be had, for the whole scale of standards is in a fluid condition, to be solidified only by each successive purchaser.

The same general truth is illustrated by the statements in regard to age, particularity in which is a national trait of the Chinese. While it is easy to ascertain one's age with exact-ness, by the animal governing the year in which he was born, and to which he therefore "belongs," nothing is more common than to hear the wildest approximation to exactness. An old man is "seventy or eighty years of age," when you know to a certainty that he was seventy only a year ago. The fact is, that in China a person becomes "eighty" the moment he stops being seventy, and this "general average" must be allowed for, if precision is desired. Even when a Chinese in-tends to be exact, it will often be found that he gives his age as it will be after the next New-Year's day-the national birth-day in China. The habit of reckoning by "tens" is deep-seated, and leads to much vagueness. A few people are "ten or twenty," a " few tens," or perhaps " ever so many tens," and a strictly accurate enumeration is one of the rarest of experiences in China. The same vagueness extends upwards to "hundreds," "thousands," and "myriads," the practical limit of Chinese counting. For greater accuracy than these ' general expressions denote, the Chinese do not care.

An acquaintance told the writer that two men had spent "200 strings of cash" on a theatrical exhibition, adding a moment later, "It was 173 strings, but that is the same as 200 is it not?"

Upon their departure for the home land, a gentleman and his wife who had lived for several years in China, were presented by their Chinese friends with two handsome scrolls, intended not for themselves but for their aged mothers the only surviving parents-who happened to be of exactly the same age. One of the inscriptions referred to "Happiness, great as the sea," and to "Old age, green as the perpetual pines," with an allusion in smaller characters at the side to the fact that the recipient had attained "seven decades of felicity." The other scroll contained flowery language of a similar character, but the small characters by the side complimented the lady on having enjoyed "six decades of glory." After duly admiring the scrolls, one of the persons whose mother was thus honoured, ventured to inquire of the principal actor in the presentation, why, considering the known parity of ages of the two mothers, one was assigned seventy years, and the other only sixty. The thoroughly characteristic reply was given, that to indite upon each of two such scrolls the identical legend, "seven decades," would look as if the writers were entirely destitute of originality!

Chinese social solidarity is often fatal to what we mean by accuracy. A man who wished advice in a lawsuit told the writer that he himself "lived" in a particular village, though it was obvious from his narrative that his abode was in the suburbs of a city. Upon inquiry, he admitted that he did not now live in the village, and further investigation revealed the fact that the removal took place nineteen generations ago I "But do you not almost consider yourself a resident of the city now?" he was asked. "Yes," he replied simply, "we do live there now, but the old root is in that village!"

Another individual called the writer's attention to an ancient temple in his own native village, and remarked proudly, "I built that temple." Upon pursuing the subject, it appeared that the edifice dated from a reign in the Ming Dynasty, more than three hundred years ago, when "I" only existed in the potential mood.

One of the initial stumbling-blocks of the student of Chinese is to find a satisfactory expression for identity, as distinguished from resemblance. The whole Chinese system of thinking is based on a line of assumptions different from those to which we are accustomed, and they can ill comprehend the mania which seems to possess the Occidental to ascertain everything with unerring exactness. The Chinese does not know how many families there are in his native village, and he does not wish to know. What any human being can want to know this number for is to him an insoluble riddle. It is "a few hundreds," "several hundreds," or Lot a few," but a fixed and definite number it never was and never will be.

The same lack of precision which characterises the Chinese use of numbers, is equally conspicuous in their employment of written and even of printed characters. It is not easy to pro-cure a cheap copy of any Chinese book which does not abound in false characters. Sometimes the character which is employed is more complex than the one which should have been used, showing that the error was not due to a wish to economise work, but it is rather to be credited to the fact that ordinarily accuracy is considered as of no importance. A like carelessness of notation is met with in far greater abundance in common letters, a character being often represented by another of the same sound, the mistake being due as much to illiteracy as to carelessness.

Indifference to precision is nowhere more flagrantly manifested than in the superscription of epistles. An ordinary Chinese letter is addressed in bold characters, to "My Father Great Man," "Compassionate Mother Great Man," "Ancestral Uncle Great Man," "Virtuous Younger Brother Great Man," etc., etc., generally with no hint as to the name of the "Great Man" addressed.

It certainly appears singular that an eminently practical people like the Chinese should be so inexact in regard to their own personal names as observation indicates them to be. It is very common to find these names written now with one character and again with another, and either one, we are in-formed, will answer. But this is not so confusing as the fact that the same man often has several different names, his family name, his "style," and, strange to say, a wholly different one, used only on registering for admission to literary examinations. It is for this reason not uncommon for a foreigner to mistake one Chinese for two or three. The names of villages are not less uncertain, sometimes appearing in two or even three entirely different forms, and no one of them is admitted to be more "right" than another. If one should be an acknowledged corruption of another, they may be employed interchangeably, or the correct name may be used in official papers and the other in ordinary speech, or yet again, the corruption may be used as an adjective, forming with the original appellation a compound title.

The Chinese are unfortunately deficient in the education which comes from a more or less intimate aquaintance with chemical formulae, where the minutest precision is fatally necessary. The first generation of Chinese chemists will probably lose many of its number as a result of the process of mixing a "few tens of grains" of something with "several tens of grains" of something else, the consequence being an unanticipated earthquake. The Chinese are as capable of learning minute accuracy in all things as any nation ever was-nay, more so, for they are endowed with infinite patience-but what we have to remark of this people is that, as at present constituted, they are free from the quality of accuracy and that they do not understand what it is. If this is a true statement, two inferences would seem to be legitimate. First, much allowance must be made for this trait in our examination of Chinese historical records. We can readily deceive ourselves by taking Chinese statements of numbers and of quantities to be what they were never intended to be exact. Secondly, a wide margin must be left for all varieties of what is dignified with the title of a Chinese "census." The whole is not greater than its parts, Chinese enumeration to the contrary notwithstanding. When we have well considered all the bearings of a Chinese "census," we shall be quite ready to say of it, as was remarked of the United States Supreme Court by a canny Scotchman who had a strong realisation of the "glorious uncertainty of the law," that it has "the last guess at the case!"

CHAPTER VII.

THE TALENT FOR MISUNDERSTANDING.

THIS remarkable gift of the Chinese people is first observed when the foreigner knows enough of the language to employ it as a vehicle of thought. To his pained surprise, he finds that he is not understood. He therefore returns to his studies with augmented diligence, and at the end of a series of years is able to venture with confidence to accost the general public, or any individual thereof, on miscellaneous topics. If the person addressed is a total stranger, especially if he has never before met a foreigner, the speaker will have opportunity for the same pained surprise as when he made his maiden speech in this tongue. The auditor evidently does not under-stand. He as evidently does not expect to understand. He visibly pays no attention to what is said, makes no effort whatever to follow it, but simply interrupts you to observe, "When you speak, we do not understand." He has a smile of superiority, as of one contemplating the struggles of a deaf-mute to utter articulate speech, and as if he would say, "Who supposed that you could be understood? It may be your misfortune and not your fault that you were not born with a Chinese tongue, but you should bear your disabilities, and not worry us with them, for when you speak we do not under-stand you." It is impossible to retain at all times an unruffled serenity in situations like this, and it is natural to turn fiercely on your adversary, and inquire, "Do you understand what I am saying at this moment?" "No," he replies, "I do not understand you!"

Another stage in the experience of Chinese powers of misunderstanding is reached when, although the words are distinctly enough apprehended, through a disregard of details the thought is obscured even if not wholly lost. The "Foreigner in Far Cathay" needs to lay in a copious stock of phrases which snail mean, "on this condition," "conditionally," "with this understanding," etc., etc. It is true that there do not appear to be any such phrases, nor any occasion for them felt by the Chinese, but with the foreigner it is different. The same is true in regard to the notation of tenses. The Chinese do not care for them, but the foreigner is compelled to care for them.

Of all subjects of human interest in China, the one which most needs to be guarded against misunderstanding is money. If the foreigner is paying out this commodity (which often appears to be the principal function of the foreigner as seen from the Chinese standpoint) a future-perfect tense is "a military necessity." "When you shall have done your work, you will receive your money." But there is no future-perfect tense in Chinese, or tense of any description. A Chinese simply says, "Do work, get money," the last being the principal idea which dwells in his mind, the "time relation" being absent. Hence when he is to do anything for a foreigner he wishes his money at once, in order that he may "eat," the presumption being that if he had not stumbled on the job of this foreigner he would never have eaten any more! Eternal vigilance, we must repeat, is the price at which immunity from misunderstandings about money is to be purchased in China. Who is and who is not to receive it, at what times, in what amounts, whether in silver ingots or brass cash, what quality and weight of the former, what number of the latter shall pass as a "string"-these and other like points are those in regard to which it is morally impossible to have a too definite and fixed understanding. If the matter be a contract in which a builder, a compradore, or a boatman is to do on his part certain things and furnish certain articles, no amount of preliminary precision and exactness in explanations will come amiss.

To "cut off one's nose to spite one's face" is in China a proceeding too common to attract the least attention. A boatman or a carter who is engaged to go wherever the foreigner who hires his boat may direct, sometimes positively refuses to fulfill his contract. The inflexible obstinacy of a Chinese carter on such occasions is aptly illustrated by the behaviour of one of his mules, which, on coming to a particularly dusty place in the road, lies down with great deliberation to its dust-bath. The carter meantime lashes the mule with his whip to the utmost limit of his strength, but in vain. The mule is as indifferent as if a fly were tickling it. In considering the phenomena to which this is analogous, we have been frequently reminded of the caustic comments of De Quincey, in which, with a far too sweeping generalisation, he affirms that the Chinese race is endued with "an obstinacy like that of mules." The Chinese are not obstinate like mules, for the mule does not change his mood, while the same obstreperous carter who defies his employer in the middle of his journey, though expressly warned that his "wine-money" will be wholly withheld should he persist, is at the end of the journey ready to spend half a day in pleading and in prostrations for the favour which at a distance he treated with contemptuous scorn. That a traveller should have a written agreement with his carters, boatmen, etc., is a matter of ordinary prudence. No loophole for a possible misconstruction must be left open.

"Plain at first, afterwards no dispute" is the prudent aphorism of the Chinese. Yet the chances are that, after exhausting one's ingenuity in preliminary agreements, some occasion for misunderstanding will arise. And whatever be his care on this point, money will probably make the foreigner in China more trouble than any other single cause. Whether the Chinese concerned happen to be educated scholars or ignorant coolies, makes little difference. All Chinese are gifted with an instinct for taking advantage of misunderstandings. They find them as a January north wind finds a crack in a door, as the water finds a leak in a ship, instantly and without apparent effort. The Anglo-Saxon race is in some respects singularly adapted to develop this Chinese gift. As the ancient Persians were taught principally the two arts of drawing the long bow and speaking the truth, so the Anglo-Saxon is soon perceived by the Chinese to have a talent for veracity and doing justice as well towards enemies as towards friends. To the Chinese these qualities seem as singular as the Jewish habit of suspending all military operations every seventh day, no matter how hard-pressed they might be must have appeared to the Ro-mans under Titus, and the one eccentricity proves as useful to the Chinese as the other did to the Romans.

Foreign intercourse with China for the century preceding 1860 was one long illustration of the Chinese talent for misunderstanding, and the succeeding years have by no means exhausted that talent. The history of foreign diplomacy with China is largely a history of attempted explanations of matters which have been deliberately misunderstood. But in these or in other cases, the initial conviction that a foreigner will do as he has promised is deeply rooted in the Chinese mind, and flourishes in spite of whatever isolated exceptions to the rule are forced upon observation. The confidence, too, that a foreigner will act justly (also in spite of some private and many national examples to the contrary) is equally firm. But given these two fixed points, the Chinese have a fulcrum from which they may hope to move the most obstinate foreigner. "You said thus and thus." "No, I did not say so." "But I understood you to say so. We all understood you to say so.

please excuse our stupidity, and please pay the money, as you said you would." Such is the substance of thousands of arguments between Chinese and foreigners, and in ninety-seven cases out of a hundred the foreigner pays the money, just as the Chinese knew he would, in order to seem strictly truthful as well as strictly just. In the remaining three cases some other means must be devised to accomplish the result, and of these three two will succeed.

Examples of the everyday misunderstanding on all subjects will suggest themselves in shoals to the experienced reader, for their name is legion. The coolie is told to pull up the weeds in your yard, but to spare the precious tufts of grass just beginning to sprout, and in which you see visions of a longed-for turf. The careless buffalo takes a hoe and chops lip every green thing he meets, making a wilderness and calling it peace. He did not "understand" you. The cook was sent a long distance to the only available market, with instructions to buy a carp and a young fowl. He returns with no fish, and three tough geese, which were what he thought you ordered. He did not "understand" you. The messenger that was sent just before the closing of the mail with an important packet of letters to the French Consulate returns with the information that the letters could not be received. He has taken them to the Belgian Consulate, and the mail has closed. He did not "understand" you.

How easy it is for the poor foreigner both to misunderstand and to be misunderstood is well illustrated in the experience of a friend of the writer, who visited a Chinese bank with the proprietors of which he was on good terms, and in the neighbourhood of which there had recently been a destructive conflagration. The foreigner congratulated the banker that the fire had not come any nearer to his establishment. On this the person addressed grew at once embarrassed and then angry, exclaiming: "What sort of talk is this? This is not a proper kind of talk!" It was not till some time afterwards that the discovery was made that the point of the offence against good manners lay in the implied hint that if the fire had come too near it might have burned the cash-shop, which would have been most unlucky, and the very contemplation of which, albeit in congratulatory language, was therefore taboo! A foreigner who was spending a short time in the capital met a drove of camels, among which was a baby camel. Turning to the driver of the cart, who had been for many years in the employ of foreigners, he said: "When you come back to the house, tell my little boy to come out and look at this little camel, as he has never seen one, and it will amuse him very much." After a considerable lapse of time, during which, as in the last case, the idea was undergoing slow fermentation, the carter replied thoughtfully: "If you should buy the camel, you could not raise it-it would be sure to die!"

The writer was once present at a service in Chinese, when the speaker treated the subject of the cure of Naaman. He pictured the scene as the great Syrian general arrived at the door of Elisha's house, and represented the attendants striving to gain admittance for their master. Struggling to make this as pictorial as possible, the speaker cried out dramatically, on behalf of the Syrian servants, " Gatekeeper, open the door; the Syrian general has come!" To the speaker's surprise a roan in the rear seat disappeared at this point as if he had been shot out, and it subsequently appeared that this person had laboured under a misunderstanding. He was the gate-keeper of the premises, and oblivious of what had gone before, on hearing himself suddenly accosted he had rushed out with commendable promptness to let in Naaman!

Not less erroneous were the impressions of another auditor of a missionary in one of the central provinces, who wished to produce a profound impression upon his audience by showing with the stereopticon a highly magnified representation of a very common parasite. As the gigantic body of this reptile, much resembling an Egyptian crocodile, was thrown athwart the canvas, one of the spectators present was heard to announce in an awed whisper the newly gained idea, "See, this is the great Foreign Louse!"

CHAPTER VIII

THE TALENT FOR INDIRECTION

ONE of the intellectual habits upon which we Anglo-Saxons pride ourselves most is that of going directly to the marrow of a subject, and when we have reached it saying exactly what we mean. Considerable abatements must no doubt be made in any claim set up for such a habit, when we consider the usages of polite society and those of diplomacy, yet it still remains substantially true that the instinct of rectilinearly is the governing one, albeit considerably modified by special circumstances. No very long acquaintance is required with any Asiatic race, however, to satisfy us that their instincts and ours are by no means the same-in fact, that they are at opposite poles. We shall lay no stress upon the redundancy of. honorific terms in all Asiatic languages, some of which in this respect are indefinitely more elaborate than the Chinese. Neither do we emphasise the use of circumlocutions, periphrases, and what may be termed aliases, to express ideas which are perfectly simple, but which no one wishes to express with simplicity. Thus a great variety of terms may be used in Chinese to indicate that a person has died, and not one of the expressions is guilty of the brutality of saying so; nor does the periphrasis depend for its use upon the question whether the person to whom reference is made is an emperor or a coolie, however widely the terms employed may differ it the two cases. Nor are we at present concerned, except in a very general way, with the quality of veracity of language. When every one agrees to use words in "a Pickwickian sense," and every one understands that every one else is doing so, the questions resulting are not those of veracity but of method.

No extended experience of the Chinese is required to en-able a foreigner to arrive at the conclusion that it is impossible, from merely hearing what a Chinese says, to tell what he means. This continues to be true, no matter how proficient one may have become in the colloquial-so that he perhaps understands every phrase, and might possibly, if worst came p worst, write down every character which he has heard in a given sentence; and yet he might be unable to decide exactly what the speaker had in mind. The reason of this must of course be that the speaker did not express what he had in mind, but something else more or less cognate to it, from which he wished his meaning or a part of it to be inferred.

Next to a competent knowledge of the Chinese language, large powers of inference are essential to any one who is to deal successfully with the Chinese, and whatever his powers in this direction may be, in many instances he will still go astray, because these powers were not equal to what was required of them. In illustration of this all-pervading phenomenon of Chinese life, let us take as an illustration a case often occur-ring among those who are the earliest, and often by no means the least important, representatives to us of the whole nation -our servants. One morning the "Boy" puts in an appearance with his usual expressionless visage, merely to mention that one of his "aunts" is ailing, and that he shall be obliged to forego tie privilege of doing our work for a few days while he is absent prosecuting his inquiries as to her condition. Now it does not with certainty follow from such a request as this that the "Boy" has no aunt, that she is not sick, and that he has not some more or less remote idea of going to see about her, but it is, to put it mildly, much more probable that the "Boy" and the cook have had some misunderstanding, and that as the prestige of the latter happened in this case to be the greater of the two, his rival takes this oblique method of intimating that he recognises the facts of the case, and retires to give place to another.

The individual who has done you a favour, for which it was impossible to arrange at the time a money payment, politely but firmly declines the gratuity which you think it right to send him in token of your obligation. What he says is that it would violate all the Five Constant Virtues for him to accept anything of you for such an insignificant service, and that you wrong him by offering it, and would disgrace him by insisting on his acceptance of it. What does this mean? It means that his hopes of what you would give him were blighted by the smallness of the amount, and that, like Oliver Twist, he "wants more." And yet it may not mean this after all, but may be an intimation that you do now, or will at some future time, have it in your power to give him something which will be even more desirable, to the acquisition of which the present payment would be a bar, so that he prefers to leave it an open question till such time as his own best move is obvious.

If the Chinese are thus guarded when they speak of their own interests, it follows from the universal dread of giving offence that they will be more cautious about speaking of others, when there is a possibility of trouble arising in consequence. Fond as they are of gossip and all kinds of small-talk, the Chinese distinguish with a ready intuition cases in which it will not do to be too communicative, and under these circumstances, especially where foreigners are concerned, they are the grave of whatever they happen to know. In multitudes of instances the stolid-looking people by whom we are surrounded could give us "points," the possession of which would cause a considerable change in our conduct towards others. But unless they clearly see in what way they are to be benefited by the result, and protected against the risks, the instinct of reticence will prevail, and our friends will maintain an agnostic silence.

Nothing is more amusing than to watch the demeanour of a Chinese who has made up his mind that it is best for him to give an intimation of something unfavourable to some one else. Things must have gone very far indeed when, even under these conditions, the communication is made in plain and unmistakable terms. What is far more likely to occur is the indirect suggestion, by oblique and devious routes, of a something which cannot, which must not be told. Our informant glances uneasily about as though he feared a spy in ambush. He lowers his voice to a mysterious whisper. He holds up three fingers of one hand, to shadow dimly forth the notion that the person about whom he is not speaking, but gesturing, ins the third in the family. He makes vague intro-ductory remarks, leading up to a revelation of apparent importance, and just as he gets to the climax of the case he suddenly stops short, suppresses the predicate upon which every-thing depends, nods significantly, as much as to say, "Now you see it, do you not?" when all the while the poor unenlightened foreigner has seen nothing, except that there is nothing whatever to see. Nor will it be strange if, after working things up to this pitch, your "informant" (falsely so called) leaves you as much in the dark as he found you, intimating that at some other time you will perceive that he is right!

It is a trait which the Chinese share with the rest of the race, to wish to keep back bad news as long as possible, and to communicate it in a disguised shape. But "good form " among Chinese requires this deception to be carried to an extent which certainly seems to us at once surprising and futile. We have known a fond grandmother, having come unexpectedly upon the whispered consultation of two friends, who had arrived expressly to break to her the news of the sad death of a grandchild away from home, to be assured with the emphasis of iteration that they were only discussing a bit of gossip, though within half an hour the whole truth came out. We have known a son, returning to his home after an absence of several months, advised by a friend in the last village at which he called before reaching his home not to stay and see a theatrical exhibition, from which he inferred, and rightly, that his mother was dead! We once had a Chinese letter entrusted to us for transmission to a person at a great distance from home, the contents of the missive being to the effect that during his absence the man's wife had died suddenly, and that the neighbours, finding that no one was at hand to prevent it, had helped themselves to every article in the house, which was literally left unto him desolate. Yet on the exterior of this epistle were inscribed in huge characters the not too accurate words, "A peaceful family letter"!

The Chinese talent for indirection is often exhibited in refraining from the use of numerals where they might reason-ably be expected. Thus the five volumes of a book will be labelled Benevolence, Justice, Propriety, Wisdom, Confidence, because this is the invariable order in which the Five Constant Virtues are named. The two score or more volumes of K'ang Hsi's Dictionary are often distinguished, not, as we should anticipate, by the radicals which indicate their contents, but by the twelve "time-cycle characters." At examinations students occupy cells designated by the thousand successive characters of the millenary classic, which has no duplicates.

Another illustration of this subject is found in the oblique terms in which references are made, both by members of her-family and others, to married women. Such a woman liter. ally has no name, but only two surnames, her husband's and that of her mother's family. She is spoken of as "the mother of so and so." Thus a Chinese with whom you are acquainted, talks of the illness of "the Little Black One his mother., Perhaps you never heard in any way that he had a "Little sometimes holds up the fingers of one hand and remarks, "He absorbed them all," meaning that some one was guilty in all these ways.

It is an example of the Chinese talent for indirection, that owing to their complex ceremonial code one is able to show great disrespect for another by methods which to us seem preposterously oblique. The manner of folding a letter, for example, may embody a studied affront. The omission to raise a Chinese character above the line of other characters may be a greater indignity than it would be in English to spell the name of a person without capital letters. In social intercourse rudeness may be offered without the utterance of a word to which exception could be taken, as by not meeting an entering guest at the proper point, or by neglecting to escort him the distance suited to his condition. The omission of any one of a multitude of simple acts may convey a thinly disguised insult, instantly recognised as such by a Chinese, though the poor untutored foreigner has been thus victimised times without number, and never even knew that he had not been treated with distinguished respect! All Chinese revile one another when angry, but those whose literary talents are adequate to the task delight to convey an abusive meaning by such delicate innuendo that the real meaning may for the time quite escape observation, requiring to be digested like the nauseous core of a sugar-coated pill. Thus, the phrase tune-hsi-literally "east-west"-means a thing, and to call a per-son "a thing" is abusive. But the same idea is conveyed by indirection, by saying that one is no! "north-south," which implies that he is "east-west," that is, "a thing"!

Every one must have been struck by the wonderful fertility of even the most illiterate Chinese in the impromptu invention of plausible excuses, each one of which is in warp and woof fictitious. No one but a foreigner ever thinks of taking them seriously, or as any other than suitable devices by which to keep one's "face." And even the too critical foreigner requires no common ability to pursue, now in air, now in water, and now in the mud, those to whom most rigid economy of the truth has become a fixed habit. And when driven to close quarters, the most ignorant Chinese has one firm and sure defence which never fails, he can fall back on his ignorance in full assurance of escape. He "did not know," he "did not understand," twin propositions, which, like charity, cover a multitude of sins.

No more fruitful illustration of our theme could be found than that exhibited in the daily issues of the Peking Gazette. Nowhere is the habit of what, in classical language, is styled "pointing at a deer and calling it a horse" carried to a higher pitch, and conducted on a more generous scale. Nowhere is it more true, even in China, that "things are not what they seem," than in this marvellous lens, which, semi-opaque though it be, lets in more light on the real nature of the Chinese government than all other windows combined. If it is a general truth that a Chinese would be more likely than not to give some other than the real reason for anything, and that nothing requires more skill than to guess what is meant by what is said, this nowhere finds more perfect exemplification than in Chinese official life, where formality and artificiality are at their maximum. When a whole column of the "leading journal" of China is taken up with a description of the various aches and pains of some aged mandarin who hungers and thirsts to retire from His Majesty's service, what does it all mean? When his urgent prayer to be relieved is refused, and he is told to go back to his post at once, what does that mean? What do the long memorials reporting as to matters of fact really connote? When a high official accused of some flagrant crime is ascertained-as per memorial printed-to be innocent, but guilty of something else three shades less blame-worthy, does it mean that the writer of the memorial was not influenced to a sufficient extent, or has the official in question really done those particular things? Who can decide?

Firmly are we persuaded that the individual who can peruse a copy of the Peking Gazette and, while reading each document, can form an approximately correct notion as to what is really behind it, knows more of China than can be learned from all the works on this Empire that ever were written. But is there not reason to fear that by the time any outside barbarian shall have reached such a pitch of comprehension of China as this implies, we shall be as much at a loss to know what he meant by what he said, as if he wer