The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Civilization Of China, by Herbert A. Giles This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: The Civilization Of China Author: Herbert A. Giles Release Date: March 25, 2006 [EBook #2076] Last Updated: December 10, 2012 Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA *** Produced by John Bickers; Dagny and David Widger
CHAPTER III—RELIGION AND SUPERSTITION CHAPTER VI—LITERATURE AND EDUCATION CHAPTER VII—PHILOSOPHY AND SPORT CHAPTER IX—THE MONGOLS, 1260-1368 CHAPTER X—MINGS AND CH'INGS, 1368-1911 |
O thou pure Faith, had I but known thy scope, The Golden God had long since been my hope!Taoism is a term often met with in books about China. We are told that the three religions of the people are Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, this being the order of precedence assigned to them in A.D. 568. Confucianism is of course not a religion at all, dealing as it does with duty towards one's neighbour and the affairs of this life only; and it will be seen that Taoism, in its true sense, has scarcely a stronger claim. At a very remote day, some say a thousand, and others six hundred, years before the Christian era, there flourished a wise man named Lao Tzu, which may be approximately pronounced as Loudza (ou as in loud), and understood to mean the Old Philosopher. He was a very original thinker, and a number of his sayings have been preserved to us by ancient authors, whom they had reached by tradition; that is to say, the Old Philosopher never put his doctrines into book form. There is indeed in existence a work which passes under his name, but it is now known to be a forgery, and is generally discarded by scholars. The great flaw in the teaching of the Old Philosopher was its extremely impractical character, its unsuitability to the needs of men and women engaged in the ordinary avocations of life. In one sense he was an Anarchist, for he held that the empire would fare better if there were no government at all, the fact being that violence and disorder had always been conspicuous even under the best rulers. Similarly, he argued that we should get along more profitably with less learning, because then there would be fewer thieves, successful thieving being the result of mental training. It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared, everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody to find out for himself. Among his quaint sayings will be found several maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction,﹃Requite evil with kindness,﹄and "Mighty is he who conquers himself." Of the latter, the following illustration is given by a commentator. Two men meeting in the street, one said to the other, "How fat you have grown!" "Yes," replied his friend, "I have lately won a battle." "What do you mean?" inquired the former. "Why, you see," said the latter, "so long as I was at home, reading about ancient kings, I admired nothing but virtue; then, when I went out of doors, I was attracted by the charms of wealth and power. These two feelings fought inside me, and I began to lose flesh; but now love of virtue has conquered, and I am fat." The teachings of the Old Philosopher were summed up in the word Tao, pronounced as tou(t), which originally meant a road, a way; and as applied to doctrines means simply the right way or path of moral conduct, in which mankind should tread so as to lead correct and virtuous lives. Later on, when Buddhism was introduced, this Taoism, with all its paradoxes and subtleties, to which alchemy and the concoction of an elixir of life had been added, gradually began to lose its hold upon the people; and in order to stem the tide of opposition, temples and monasteries were built, a priesthood was established in imitation of the Buddhists, and all kinds of ceremonies and observances were taken from Buddhism, until, at the present day, only those who know can tell one from the other. Although alchemy, which was introduced from Greece, via Bactria, in the second century B.C., has long ceased to interest the Chinese public, who have found out that gold is more easily made from the sweat of the brow than from copper or lead; and although only a few silly people now believe that any mixture of drugs will produce an elixir of life, able to confer immortality upon those who drink it; nevertheless, Taoism still professes to teach the art of extending life, if not indefinitely, at any rate to a considerable length. This art would probably go some way towards extending life under any circumstances, for it consists chiefly in deep and regular breathing, preferably of morning air, in swallowing the saliva three times in every two hours, in adopting certain positions for the body and limbs, which are also strengthened by gymnastic exercises, and finally, as borrowed from the Buddhists, in remaining motionless for some hours a day, the eyes shut, and the mind abstracted as much as possible from all surrounding influences. The upshot of these and other practices is the development of "the pure man," on which Chuang Tzu (Chwongdza), a Taoist philosopher of the third and fourth centuries B.C., to be mentioned again, writes as follows: "But what is a pure man? The pure men of old acted without calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret; succeeding, no cause for congratulation. And thus they could scale heights without fear; enter water without becoming wet, and fire without feeling hot. The pure men of old slept without dreams, and waked without anxiety. They ate without discrimination, breathing deep breaths. For pure men draw breath from their heels; the vulgar only from their throats." Coupled with what may be called intellectual Taoism, as opposed to the grosser form under which this faith appeals to the people at large, is a curious theory that human life reaches the earth from some extraordinarily dazzling centre away in the depths of space,﹃beyond the range of conceptions.﹄This centre appears to be the home of eternal principles, the abode of a First Cause, where perfectly spotless and pure beings "drink of the spiritual and feed on force," and where likeness exists without form. To get back to that state should be the object of all men, and this is only to be attained by a process of mental and physical purification prolonged through all conditions of existence. Then, when body and soul are fitted for the change, there comes what ordinary mortals call death; and the pure being closes his eyes, to awake forthwith in his original glory from the sleep which mortals call life. For many centuries Buddhism and Taoism were in bitter antagonism. Sometimes the court was Buddhist, sometimes Taoist; first one faith was suppressed altogether, then the other; in A.D. 574 both were abolished in deference to Confucianism, which, however, no emperor has ever dared to interfere with seriously. At present, all the "three religions" flourish happily side by side. The Chinese believe firmly in the existence of spirits, which they classify simply as good and evil. They do not trouble their heads much about the former, but they are terribly afraid of the latter. Hideous devils infest dark corners, and lie in wait to injure unfortunate passers-by, often for no cause whatever. The spirits of persons who have been wronged are especially dreaded by those who have done the wrong. A man who has been defrauded of money will commit suicide, usually by poison, at the door of the wrongdoer, who will thereby first fall into the hands of the authorities, and if he escapes in that quarter, will still have to count with the injured ghost of his victim. A daughter-in-law will drown or hang herself to get free from, and also to avenge, the tyranny or cruelty of her husband's mother. These acts lead at once to family feuds, which sometimes end in bloodshed; more often in money compensation; and the known risk of such contingencies operates as a wholesome check upon aggressive treatment of the weak by the strong. Divination and fortune-telling have always played a conspicuous part in ordinary Chinese life. Wise men, of the magician type, sit at stalls in street and market-place, ready for a small fee to advise those who consult them on any enterprise to be undertaken, even of the most trivial kind. The omens can be taken in various ways, as by calculation based upon books, of which there is quite a literature, or by drawing lots inscribed with mystic signs, to be interpreted by the fortune-teller. Even at Buddhist temples may be found two kidney-shaped pieces of wood, flat on one side and round on the other, which are thrown into the air before an altar, the results—two flats, two rounds, or one of each—being interpreted as unfavourable, medium, and very favourable, respectively. Of all Chinese superstitions, the one that has been most persistent, and has exerted the greatest influence upon national life, is the famous Wind-and-Water system (feng shui) of geomancy. According to the principles which govern this system, and of which quite a special literature exists, the good or evil fortunes of individuals and the communities are determined by the various physical aspects and conditions which surround their everyday life. The shapes of hills, the presence or absence of water, the position of trees, the height of buildings, and so forth, are all matters of deep consideration to the professors of the geomantic art, who thrive on the ignorance of superstitious clients. They are called in to select propitious sites for houses and graves; and it often happens that if the fortunes of a family are failing, a geomancer will be invited to modify in some way the arrangement of the ancestral graveyard. Houses in a Chinese street are never built up so as to form a line of uniform height; every now and again one house must be a little higher or a little lower than its neighbour, or calamity will certainly ensue. It is impossible to walk straight into an ordinary middle-class dwelling-house. Just inside the front door there will be a fixed screen, which forces the visitor to turn to the right or to the left; the avowed object being to exclude evil spirits, which can only move in straight lines. Mention of the ancestral graveyard brings to mind the universal worship of ancestors, which has been from time immemorial such a marked feature of Chinese religious life. At death, the spirit of a man or woman is believed to remain watching over the material interests of the family to which the deceased had belonged. Offerings of various kinds, including meat and drink, are from time to time made to such a spirit, supposed to be particularly resident in an ancestral hall—or cupboard, as the case may be. These offerings are made for the special purpose of conciliating the spirit, and of obtaining in return a liberal share of the blessings and good things of this life. This is the essential feature of the rite, and this it is which makes the rite an act of worship pure and simple; so that only superficial observers could make the mistake of classifying ancestral worship, as practised in China, with such acts as laying wreaths upon the tombs of deceased friends and relatives. With reference to the spirit or soul, the Chinese have held for centuries past that the soul of every man is twofold; in a popular acceptation it is sometimes regarded as threefold. One portion is that which expresses the visible personality, and is permanently attached to the body; the other has the power of leaving the body, carrying with it an appearance of physical form, which accounts for a person being seen in two different places at once. Cases of catalepsy or trance are explained by the Chinese as the absence from the body of this portion of the soul, which is also believed to be expelled from the body by any violent shock or fright. There is a story of a man who was so terrified at the prospect of immediate execution that his separable soul left his body, and he found himself sitting on the eaves of a house, from which point he could see a man bound, and waiting for the executioner's sword. Just then, a reprieve arrived, and in a moment he was back again in his body. Mr. Edmund Gosse, who can hardly have been acquainted with the Chinese view, told a similar story in his Father and Son: "During morning and evening prayers, which were extremely lengthy and fatiguing, I fancied that one of my two selves could flit up, and sit clinging to the cornice, and look down on my other self and the rest of us." In some parts of China, planchette is frequently resorted to as a means of reading the future, and adapting one's actions accordingly. It is a purely professional performance, being carried through publicly before some altar in a temple, and payment made for the response. The question is written down on a piece of paper, which is burnt at the altar apparently before any one could gather knowledge of its contents; and the answer from the god is forthwith traced on a tray of sand, word by word, each word being obliterated to make room for the next, by two men, supposed to be ignorant of the question, who hold the ends of a V-shaped instrument from the point of which a little wooden pencil projects at right angles. Another method of extracting information from the spirits of the unseen world is nothing more or less than hypnotism, which has long been known to the Chinese, and is mentioned in literature so far back as the middle of the seventeenth century. With all the paraphernalia of altar, candles, incense, etc., a medium is thrown into a hypnotic condition, during which his body is supposed to be possessed by a spirit, and every word he may utter to be divinely inspired. An amusing instance is recorded of a medium who, while under hypnotic influence, not only blurted out the pecuniary defalcations of certain men who had been collecting in aid of temple restoration, but went so far as to admit that he had had some of the money himself. This same influence is also used in cases of serious illness, but always secretly, for such practices, as well as dark seances for communicating with spirits, are strictly forbidden by the Chinese authorities, who regard the employment of occult means as more likely to be subversive of morality than to do any good whatever to a sick person, or to any one else. All secret societies of any sort or kind are equally under the ban of the law, the assumption—a very justifiable one—being that the aim of these societies is to upset the existing order of political and social life. The Heaven-and-Earth Society is among the most famous, and the most dreaded, partly perhaps because it has never been entirely suppressed. The lodges of this fraternity, the oath of fidelity, and the ceremonial of admission, remind one forcibly of Masonry in the West; but the points of conduct are merely coincidences, and there does not appear to be any real connexion. Among the most curious of all these institutions is the Golden Orchid Society, the girl-members of which swear never to marry, and not only threaten, but positively commit suicide upon any attempt at coercion. At one time this society became such a serious menace that the authorities were compelled to adopt severe measures of repression. Another old-established society is that of the Vegetarians, who eat no meat and neither smoke nor drink. From their seemingly harmless ranks it is said that the Boxers of 1900 were largely recruited. For nearly twenty-five centuries the Chinese have looked to Confucius for their morals. Various religions have appealed to the spiritual side of the Chinese mind, and Buddhism has obtained an ascendancy which will not be easily displaced; but through all this long lapse of time the morality of China has been under the guidance of their great teacher, Confucius (551-479 B.C.), affectionately known to them as the "uncrowned king," and recently raised to the rank of a god. His doctrines, in the form sometimes of maxims, sometimes of answers to eager inquirers, were brought together after his death—we do not know exactly how soon—and have influenced first and last an enormous proportion of the human race. Confucius taught man's duty to his neighbour; he taught virtue for virtue's sake, and not for the hope of reward or fear of punishment; he taught loyalty to the sovereign as the foundation stone of national prosperity, and filial piety as the basis of all happiness in the life of the people. As a simple human moralist he saw clearly the limitations of humanity, and refused to teach his disciples to return good for evil, as suggested by the Old Philosopher, declaring without hesitation that evil should be met by justice. The first systematic writer of Chinese history, who died about 80 B.C., expressed himself on the position and influence of Confucius in terms which have been accepted as accurate for twenty centuries past: "Countless are the princes and prophets that the world has seen in its time—glorious in life, forgotten in death. But Confucius, though only a humble member of the cotton-clothed masses, remains with us after numerous generations. He is the model for such as would be wise. By all, from the Son of Heaven down to the meanest student, the supremacy of his principles is freely and fully admitted. He may indeed be pronounced the divinest of men." The Son of Heaven is of course the Emperor, who is supposed to be God's chosen representative on earth, and responsible for the right conduct and well-being of all committed to his care. Once every year he proceeds in state to the Temple of Heaven at Peking; and after the due performance of sacrificial worship he enters alone the central raised building with circular blue-tiled roof, and there places himself in communication with the Supreme Being, submitting for approval or otherwise his stewardship during the preceding twelve months. Chinese records go so far as to mention letters received from God. There is a legend of the sixth century A.D., which claims that God revealed Himself to a hermit in a retired valley, and bestowed on him a tablet of jade with a mysterious inscription. But there is a much more circumstantial account of a written communication which in A.D. 1008 descended from heaven upon mount T'ai, the famous mountain in Shantung, where a temple has been built to mark the very spot. The emperor and his courtiers regarded this letter with profound reverence and awe, which roused the ire of a learned statesman of the day. The latter pointed out that Confucius, when asked to speak, so that his disciples might have something to record, had bluntly replied: ﹃Does God speak? The four seasons pursue their courses and all things are produced; but does God say anything?﹄Therefore, he argued, if God does not speak to us, still less will He write a letter. The fact that the receipt of such a letter is mentioned in the dynastic history of the period must not be allowed to discredit in any way the general truth and accuracy of Chinese annals, which, as research progresses, are daily found to be far more trustworthy than was ever expected to be the case. We ourselves do not wholly reject the old contemporary chronicles of Hoveden and Roger of Wendover because they mention a letter from Christ on the neglect of the Sabbath. In Chinese life, social and political alike, filial piety may be regarded as the keystone of the arch. Take that away, and the superstructure of centuries crumbles to the ground. When Confucius was asked by one of his disciples to explain what constituted filial piety, he replied that it was a difficult obligation to define; while to another disciple he was able to say without hesitation that the mere support of parents would be insufficient, inasmuch as food is what is supplied even to horses and dogs. According to the story-books for children, the obligation has been interpreted by the people at large in many different ways. The twenty-four standard examples of filial children include a son who allowed mosquitoes to feed upon him, and did not drive them away lest they should go and annoy his parents; another son who wept so passionately because he could procure no bamboo shoots for his mother that the gods were touched, and up out of the ground came some shoots which he gathered and carried home; another who when carrying buckets of water would slip and fall on purpose, in order to make his parents laugh; and so on. No wonder that Confucius found filial piety beyond his powers of definition. Now for a genuine example. There is a very wonderful novel in which a very affecting love-story is worked out to a terribly tragic conclusion. The heroine, a beautiful and fascinating girl, finally dies of consumption, and the hero, a wayward but none the less fascinating youth, enters the Buddhist priesthood. A lady, the mother of a clever young official, was so distressed by the pathos of the tale that she became quite ill, and doctors prescribed medicines in vain. At length, when things were becoming serious, the son set to work and composed a sequel to this novel, in which he resuscitated the heroine and made the lovers happy by marriage; and in a short time he had the intense satisfaction of seeing his mother restored to health. Other forms of filial piety, which bear no relation whatever to the fanciful fables given above, are commonly practised by all classes. In consequence of the serious or prolonged illness of parents, it is very usual for sons and daughters to repair to the municipal temple and pray that a certain number of years may be cut off their own span of life and added to that of the sick parents in question. Let us now pause to take stock of some of the results which have accrued from the operation and influence of Confucianism during such a long period, and over such swarming myriads of the human race. It is a commonplace in the present day to assert that the Chinese are hardworking, thrifty, and sober—the last-mentioned, by the way, in a land where drunkenness is not regarded as a crime. Shallow observers of the globe-trotter type, who have had their pockets picked by professional thieves in Hong-Kong, and even resident observers who have not much cultivated their powers of observation and comparison, will assert that honesty is a virtue denied to the Chinese; but those who have lived long in China and have more seriously devoted themselves to discover the truth, may one and all be said to be arrayed upon the other side. The amount of solid honesty to be met with in every class, except the professionally criminal class, is simply astonishing. That the word of the Chinese merchant is as good as his bond has long since become a household word, and so it is in other walks of life. With servants from respectable families, the householder need have no fear for his goods. "Be loyal," says the native maxim, "to the master whose rice you eat;" and this maxim is usually fulfilled to the letter. Hence, it is that many foreigners who have been successful in their business careers, take care to see, on their final departure from the East, that the old and faithful servant, often of twenty to thirty years' standing, shall have some provision for himself and his family. In large establishments, especially banks, in which great interests are at stake, it is customary for the Chinese staff to be guaranteed by some wealthy man (or firm), who deposits securities for a considerable amount, thus placing the employer in a very favourable position. The properly chosen Chinese servant who enters the household of a foreigner, is a being to whom, as suggested above, his master often becomes deeply attached, and whom he parts with, often after many years of service, to his everlasting regret. Such a servant has many virtues. He is noiseless over his work, which he performs efficiently. He can stay up late, and yet rise early. He lives on the establishment, but in an out-building. He provides his own food. He rarely wants to absent himself, and even then will always provide a reliable locum tenens. He studies his master's ways, and learns to anticipate his slightest wishes. In return for these and other services he expects to get his wages punctually paid, and to be allowed to charge, without any notice being taken of the same, a commission on all purchases. This is the Chinese system, and even a servant absolutely honest in any other way cannot emancipate himself from its grip. But if treated fairly, he will not abuse his chance. One curious feature of the system is that if one master is in a relatively higher position than another, the former will be charged by his servants slightly more than the latter by his servants for precisely the same article. Many attempts have been made by foreigners to break through this "old custom," especially by offering higher wages; but signal failure has always been the result, and those masters have invariably succeeded best who have fallen in with the existing institution, and have tried to make the best of it. There is one more, and in many ways the most important, side of a Chinese servant's character. He will recognize frankly, and without a pang, the superior position and the rights of his master; but at the same time, if worth keeping, he will exact from his master the proper respect due from man to man. It is wholly beside the mark to say that he will not put up for a moment with the cuffs and kicks so freely administered to his Indian colleague. A respectable Chinese servant will often refuse to remain with a master who uses abusive or violent language, or shows signs of uncontrollable temper. A lucrative place is as nothing compared with the "loss of face" which he would suffer in the eyes of his friends; in other words, with his loss of dignity as a man. If a servant will put up with a blow, the best course is to dismiss him at once, as worthless and unreliable, if not actually dangerous. Confucius said:﹃If you mistrust a man, do not employ him; if you employ a man, do not mistrust him;﹄and this will still be found to be an excellent working rule in dealings with Chinese servants.
Her features are fixed and calm, though myriad tears fall, Wetting a spray of pear-bloom, as it were with the raindrops of spring. Subduing her emotions, restraining her grief, she tenders thanks to His Majesty. Saying how since their parting she had missed his form and voice; And how, although their love on earth had so soon come to an end, The days and months among the Blest were still of long duration. And now she turns and gazes towards the above of mortals, But cannot discern the Imperial city, lost in the dust and haze. Then she takes out the old keepsake, tokens of undying love, A gold hairpin, an enamel brooch, and bids the magician carry these back. One half of the hairpin she keeps, and one half of the enamel brooch, Breaking with her hands the yellow gold, and dividing the enamel in two. "Tell him," she said, "to be firm of heart, as this gold and enamel, And then in heaven or on earth below we two may meet once more."The magnificent House of T'ang was succeeded by five insignificant dynasties, the duration of all of which was crowded into about half a century. Then, in A.D. 960, began the rule of the Sungs (pronounced Soongs), to last for three hundred years and rival in national peace and prosperity any other period in the history of China. The nation had already in a great measure settled down to that state of material civilization and mental culture in which it has remained to the present time. To the appliances of ordinary Chinese life it is probable that but few additions have been made since a very early date. The dress of the people has indeed undergone several variations, but the ploughs and hoes, the water-wheels and well-sweeps, the tools of the artisans, mud huts, carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks, etc., which we still see in China, are probably very much those of two thousand years ago. Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that written characters had the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth, all over the empire; and to this day an unaltering uniformity is one of the chief characteristics of the Chinese people in every department of life. In spite, however, of the peaceful aspirations of the House of Sung, the Kitan Tartars were for ever encroaching upon Chinese territory, and finally overran and occupied a large part of northern China, with their capital where Peking now stands. This resulted in an amicable arrangement to divide the empire, the Kitans retaining their conquests in the north, from which, after about two hundred years, they were in turn expelled by the Golden Tartars, who had previously been subject to them. Many volumes, rather than pages, would be required to do justice to the statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, poets, historians, art critics, and other famous men of this dynasty. It has already been stated that the interpretation of the Confucian Canon, accepted at the present day, dates from this period; and it may now be of interest to give a brief account of another remarkable movement connected with the dynasty, though in quite a different line. Wang An-shih (asshiinshirk), popularly known as the Reformer, was born in 1021. In his youth a keen student, his pen seemed to fly over the paper. He rose to high office; and by the time he was forty-eight he found himself installed as confidential adviser to the emperor. He then entered upon a series of startling political reforms, said to be based upon new and more correct interpretations of portions of the Confucian Canon, which still remained, so far as explanation was concerned, just as it had been left by the scholars of the Han dynasty. This appeal to authority was, of course, a mere blind, cleverly introduced to satisfy the bulk of the population, who were always unwilling to move in any direction where no precedent is forthcoming. One of his schemes, the express object of which was to decrease taxation and at the same time to increase the revenue, was to secure a sure and certain market for all products, as follows. From the produce of a given district, enough was to be set aside (1) for the payment of taxes, and (2) to supply the wants of the district; (3) the balance was then to be taken over by the state at a low rate, and held for a rise or forwarded to some centre where there happened to be a demand. There would be thus a certainty of market for the farmer, and an equal certainty for the state to make profits as a middleman. Another part of this scheme consisted in obligatory advances by the state to cultivators of land, whether these farmers required the money or not, the security for the loans being in each case the growing crops. There was also a system of tithing for military purposes, under which every family having more than two males was bound to supply one to serve as a soldier; and in order to keep up a breed of cavalry horses, every family was compelled to take charge of one, which was provided, together with its food, by the government. There was a system under which money payments were substituted for the old-fashioned and vexatious method of carrying on public works by drafts of forced labourers; and again another under which warehouses for bartering and hypothecating goods were established all over the empire. Of all his innovations the most interesting was that all land was to be remeasured and an attempt made to secure a more equitable incidence of taxation. The plan was to divide up the land into equal squares, and to levy taxes in proportion to the fertility of each. This scheme proved for various reasons to be unworkable; and the bitter opposition with which, like all his other measures of reform, it was received by his opponents, did not conduce to success. Finally, he abolished all restrictions upon the export of copper, the result being that even the current copper "cash" were melted down and made into articles for sale and exportation. A panic ensued, which Wang met by the simple expedient of doubling the value of each cash. He attempted to reform the examination system, requiring from the candidate not so much graces of style as a wide acquaintance with practical subjects. "Accordingly," says one Chinese author, "even the pupils at the village schools threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to study primers of history, geography, and political economy"—a striking anticipation of the movement in vogue to-day.﹃I have myself been,﹄he tells us,﹃an omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even, for example, of ancient medical and botanical works. I have, moreover, dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I have found very profitable in aiding me to seize the great scheme of the Canon itself.﹄But like many other great men, he was in advance of his age. He fell into disfavour at court, and was dismissed to a provincial post; and although he was soon recalled, he retired into private life, shortly afterwards to die, but not before he had seen the whole of his policy reversed. His career stands out in marked contrast with that of the great statesman and philosopher, Chu Hsi (pronounced Choo Shee), who flourished A.D. 1130-1200. His literary output was enormous and his official career successful; but his chief title to fame rests upon his merits as a commentator on the Confucian Canon. As has been already stated, he introduced interpretations either wholly or partly at variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the Han dynasty, and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a certain extent the prevailing standard of political and social morality. His guiding principle was merely one of consistency. He refused to interpret words in a given passage in one sense, and the same words occurring elsewhere in another sense. The effect of this apparently obvious method was magical; and from that date the teachings of Confucius have been universally understood in the way in which Chu Hsi said they ought to be understood. To his influence also must be traced the spirit of materialism which is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man. This view was entirely set aside by Chu Hsi, who declared in the plainest terms that the Chinese word for God meant nothing more than "abstract right;" in other words, God was a principle. It is impossible to admit such a proposition, which was based on sentiment and not on sound reasoning. Chu Hsi was emphatically not a man of religious temperament, and belief in the supernatural was distasteful to him; he was for a short time under the spell of Buddhism, but threw that religion over for the orthodoxy of Confucianism. He was, therefore, anxious to exclude the supernatural altogether from the revised scheme of moral conduct which he was deducing from the Confucian Canon, and his interpretation of the word "God" has been blindly accepted ever since. When Chu Hsi died, his coffin is said to have taken up a position, suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a brilliant exponent in life—and the coffin descended gently to the ground.
Think, when we talk of horses that you see them Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth; For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings.Here, then, is good authority for the quaint system that still prevails in China. Hundreds of Chinese pilgrims annually went their weary way to the top of Mount Omi in the province of Ssuch'uan, and gaze downward from a sheer and lofty precipice to view a huge circular belt of light, which is called the Glory of Buddha. Some see it, some do not; the Chinese say that the whole thing is a question of faith. In a somewhat similar sense, the dramatic enthusiast sees before him such beings of the mind as the genuine actor is able to call up. The Philistine cannot reach this pitch; but he is sharp enough to see other things which to the eye of the sympathetic spectator are absolutely non-existent. Some of the latter will be enumerated below. The Chinese stage has no curtain; and the orchestra is on the stage itself, behind the actors. There is no prompter and no call-boy. Stage footmen wait at the sides to carry in screens, small tables, and an odd chair or two, to represent houses, city walls, and so on, or hand cups of tea to the actors when their throats become dry from vociferous singing, which is always in falsetto. All this in the face of the audience. Dead people get up and walk off the stage; or while lying dead, contrive to alter their facial expression, and then get up and carry themselves off. There is no interval between one play and the next following, which probably gives rise to the erroneous belief that Chinese plays are long, the fact being that they are very short. According to the Penal Code, there may be no impersonation of emperors and empresses of past ages, but this clause is now held to refer solely to the present dynasty. For the man in the street and his children, there are to be seen everywhere in China where a sufficient number of people gather together, Punch-and-Judy shows of quite a high class in point of skill and general attractiveness. These shows are variously traced back to the eighth and second centuries B.C., and to the seventh century A.D., even the latest of which periods would considerably antedate the appearance of performing marionettes in this country or on the Continent. Associated with the second century B.C., the story runs that the Emperor of the day was closely besieged by a terrible Hun chieftain, who was accompanied by his wife. It occurred to one of his Majesty's staff to exhibit on the walls of the town, in full view of the enemy, a number of manikins, dressed up to a deceptive resemblance to beautiful girls. The wife of the Hun chieftain then persuaded her husband to draw off his forces, and the Emperor escaped. By the Chinese marionettes, little plays on familiar subjects are performed; many are of a more serious turn than the loves of Mr. Punch, while others again are of the knock-about style so dear to the ordinary boy and girl. Besides such entertainments as these, the streets of a Chinese city offer other shows to those who desire to be amused. An acrobat, a rope-dancer or a conjurer will take up a pitch right in the middle of the roadway, and the traffic has to get on as best it can. A theatrical stage will sometimes completely block a street, and even foot-passengers will have to find their way round. There is also the public story-reader, who for his own sake will choose a convenient spot near to some busy thoroughfare; and there, to an assembled crowd, he will read out, not in the difficult book-language, but in the colloquial dialect of the place, stories of war and heroism, soldiers led to night-attacks with wooden bits in their mouths to prevent them from talking in the ranks, the victory of the loyal and the rout and slaughter of the rebel. Or it may be a tale of giants, goblins and wizards; the bewitching of promising young men by lovely maidens who turn out to be really foxes in disguise, ending as usual in the triumph of virtue and the discomfiture of vice. The fixed eyes and open mouths of the crowd, listening with rapt attention, is a sight which, once seen, is not easily forgotten. For the ordinary man, China is simply peopled with bogies and devils, the spirits of the wicked or of those unfortunate enough not to secure decent burial with all its accompanying worship and rites. These creatures, whose bodies cast no shadow, lurk in dark corners, ready to pounce on some unwary passer-by and possibly tear out his heart. Many a Confucianist, sturdy in his faith that﹃devils only exist for those who believe in them,﹄will hesitate to visit by night a lonely spot, or even to enter a disused tumbledown building by day. Some of the stories told are certainly well fitted to make a deep impression upon young and highly-strung nerves. For instance, one man who was too fond of the bottle placed some liquor alongside his bed, to be drunk during the night. On stretching out his hand to reach the flask, he was seized by a demon, and dragged gradually into the earth. In response to his shrieks, his relatives and neighbours only arrived in time to see the ground close over his head, just as though he had fallen into water. From this story it will be rightly gathered that the Chinese mostly sleep on the ground floor. In Peking, houses of more than one storey are absolutely barred; the reason being that each house is built round a courtyard, which usually has trees in it, and in which the ladies of the establishment delight to sit and sew, and take the air and all the exercise they can manage to get. Another blood-curdling story is that of four travellers who arrived by night at an inn, but could obtain no other accommodation than a room in which was lying the corpse of the landlord's daughter-in-law. Three of the four were soon snoring; the fourth, however, remained awake, and very soon heard a creaking of the trestles on which was the dead body dressed out in paper robes, ready for burial. To his horror he saw the girl get up, and go and breathe on his companions; so by the time she came to him he had his head tucked well under the bedclothes. After a little while he kicked one of the others; but finding that his friend did not move, he suddenly grabbed his own trousers and made a bolt for the door. In a moment the corpse was up and after him, following him down the street, and gaining gradually on him, no one coming to the rescue in spite of his loud shrieks as he ran. So he slipped behind a tree, and dodged right and left, the infuriated corpse also dodging right and left, and making violent efforts to get him. At length, the girl made a rush forward with one arm on each side, in the hope of thus grabbing her victim. The traveller, however, fell backwards and escaped her clutch, while she remained rigidly embracing the tree. By and by he was found senseless on the ground; and the corpse was removed from the tree, but with great difficulty, as the fingers were buried in the bark so deep that the nails were not even visible. The other three travellers were found dead in their beds. Periodical feasting may be regarded as another form of amusement by which the Chinese seek to relieve the monotony of life. They have never reserved one day in seven for absolute rest, though of late years Chinese merchants connected with foreign trade have to some extent fallen in with the observance of Sunday. Quite a number of days during the year are set apart as public holidays, but no one is obliged to keep them as such, unless he likes, with one important exception. The festival of the New Year cannot be ignored by any one. For about ten days before this date, and twenty days after it, the public offices are closed and no business is transacted, the seal of each official is handed over for safe keeping to the official's wife, a fact which helps to dispose of the libel that women in China are the down-trodden creatures they are often represented to be. All debts have to be paid and accounts squared by midnight on the last day of the old year. A few nights previously, offerings of an excessively sticky sweetmeat are made to the Spirit of the Hearth, one of whose functions is that of an accusing angel. The Spirit is then on the point of starting for his annual visit to heaven, and lest any of the disclosures he might make should entail unpleasant consequences, it is adjudged best that he shall be rendered incapable of making any disclosures at all. The unwary god finds his lips tightly glued together, and is unable to utter a single word. Meanwhile, fire-crackers are being everywhere let off on a colossal scale, the object being to frighten away the evil spirits which have collected during the past twelve months, and to begin the year afresh. The day itself is devoted to calling, in one's best clothes, on relatives, friends and official superiors, for all of whom it is customary to leave a present. The relatives and friends receive "wet" gifts, such as fruit or cakes; officials also receive wet gifts, but underneath the top layer will be found something "dry," in the shape of silver or bank-notes. Everybody salutes everybody with the conventional saying,﹃New joy, new joy; get rich, get rich!﹄Yet here again, as in all things Chinese, we find a striking exception to this good-natured rule. No one says﹃Get rich, get rich!﹄to the undertaker. A high authority (on other matters) has recently stated that the Chinese calendar "begins just when the Emperor chooses to say it shall. He is like the captain of a ship, who says of the hour, 'Make it so,' and it is so." The truth is that New Year's Day is determined by the Astronomical Board, according to fixed rules, just as Easter is determined; and it may fall on any day between the 21st of January and the 20th of February, but neither before the former date nor after the latter date, in spite even of the most threatening orders from the Palace. This book will indeed have been written in vain if the reader lays it down without having realized that no such wanton interference on the part of their rulers would be tolerated by the Chinese people. But we are wandering away from merry-making and festivity. In their daily life the Chinese are extremely moderate eaters and mostly tea-drinkers, even the wealthy confining themselves to few and simple dishes of pork, fowl, or fish, with the ever-present accompaniment of rice. The puppy-dog, on which the people are popularly believed to live, as the French on frogs, is a stall-fed animal, and has always been, and still is, an article of food; but the consumption of dog-flesh is really very restricted, and many thousands of Chinamen have never tasted dog in their lives. According to the popular classification of foods, those who live on vegetables get strong, those who live on meat become brave, those who live on grain acquire wisdom, and those who live on air become divine. At banquets the scene changes, and course after course of curiously compounded and highly spiced dishes, cooked as only Chinese cooks know how, are placed before the guests. The wine, too, goes merrily round; bumpers are drunk at short intervals, and the wine-cups are held upside down, to show that there are no heel-taps. Forfeits are exacted over the game of "guess-fingers," for failure to cap a verse, or for any other equally sufficient (or insufficient) reason; and the penalty is an extra bumper for the loser. This lively picture requires, perhaps, a little further explanation. Chinese "wine" is an ardent spirit distilled from rice, and is modified in various ways so as to produce certain brands, some of which are of quite moderate strength, and really may be classed as wine. It is always drunk hot, the heat being supplied by vessels of boiling water, in which the pewter wine-flasks are kept standing. The wine-cups are small, and it is possible to drink a good many of them without feeling in the least overcome. Even so, many diners now refuse to touch wine at all, the excuse always being that it flushes the face uncomfortably. Perhaps they fear an undeserved imputation of drunkenness, remembering their own cynical saying:﹃A bottle-nosed man may be a tee-totaller, but no one will believe it.﹄To judge from their histories and their poetry, the Chinese seem once upon a time to have been a fairly tipsy nation: now-a-days, the truth lies the other way. An official who died A.D. 639, and was the originator of epitaphs in China, wrote his own, as follows:—
Fu I loved the green hills and white clouds . . . Alas! he died of drink!There are exceptions, no doubt, as to every rule in every country; but such sights as drunken men tumbling about the streets, or lying senseless by the roadside, are not to be seen in China. "It is not wine," says the proverb, "which makes a man drunk; it is the man himself." Even at banquets, which are often very rich and costly, unnecessary expense is by no means encouraged. Dishes of fruit, of a kind which no one would wish to eat, and which are placed on the table for show or ornament, are simply clever imitations in painted wood, and pass from banquet to banquet as part of the ordinary paraphernalia of a feast; no one is deceived. The same form of open and above-board deception appears in many other ways. There are societies organized for visiting in a comfortable style of pilgrimage some famous mountain of historic interest. Names are put down, and money is collected; and then the party starts off by boat or in sedan-chairs, as the case may be. On arriving at the mountain, there is a grand feast, and after the picnic, for such it is, every one goes home again. That is the real thing; now for the imitation. Names are put down, and money is collected, as before; but the funds are spent over a feast at home, alongside of a paper mountain. Another of these deceptions, which deceive nobody, is one which might be usefully adapted to life in other countries. A Chinaman meeting in the street a friend, and having no leisure to stop and talk, or perhaps meeting some one with whom he may be unwilling to talk, will promptly put up his open fan to screen his face, and pass on. The suggestion is that, wishing to pass without notice, he fails to see the person in question, and it would be a serious breach of decorum on the part of the latter to ignore the hint thus conveyed. Japan, who may be said to have borrowed the civilization of China, lock, stock and barrel—her literature, her moral code, her arts, her sciences, her manners and customs, her ceremonial, and even her national dress—invented the folding fan, which in the early part of the fifteenth century formed part of the tribute sent from Korea to Peking, and even later was looked upon by the Chinese as quite a curiosity. In the early ages, fans were made of feathers, as still at the present day; but the more modern fan of native origin is a light frame of bamboo, wood or ivory, round or otherwise, over which silk is stretched, offering a convenient medium for the inscription of poems, or for paintings, as exchanged between friend and friend. The same innocent form of deception, which deceives nobody, is carried out when two officials, seated in sedan-chairs, have to pass one another. If they are of about equal rank, etiquette demands that they should alight from their chairs, and perform mutual salutations. To obviate the extreme inconvenience of this rule, large wooden fans are carried in all processions of the kind, and these are hastily thrust between the passing officials, so that neither becomes aware of the other's existence on the scene. The case is different when one of the two is of higher rank. The official of inferior grade is bound to stop and get out of his chair while his superior passes by, though even now he has a chance of escape; he hears the gong beaten to clear the way for the great man, whose rank he can tell from the number of consecutive blows given; and hurriedly turns off down a side street. An historical instance of substituting the shadow for the reality is that of the great general Ts'ao Ts'ao, third century A.D., who for some breach of the law sentenced himself to death, but satisfied his sense of justice by cutting off his hair. An emperor of the sixth century, who was a devout Buddhist, and therefore unable to countenance any destruction of life, had all the sacrificial animals made of dough. The opium question, which will claim a few words later on, has been exhaustively threshed out; and in view of the contradictory statements for and against the habit of opium smoking, it is recognized that any conclusion, satisfactory to both parties, is a very remote possibility. The Chinese themselves, who are chiefly interested in the argument, have lately come to a very definite conclusion, which is that opium has to go; and it seems that in spite of almost invincible obstacles, the sincerity and patriotism which are being infused into the movement will certainly, sooner or later, achieve the desired end. It is perhaps worth noting that in the Decree of 1906, which ordered the abolition of opium smoking, the old Empress Dowager, who was herself over sixty and a moderate smoker, inserted a clause excusing from the operation of the new law all persons already more than sixty years of age.
Away to the east lie fair forests of trees, From the flowers on the west comes a scent-laden breeze, Yet my eyes daily turn to my far-away home, Beyond the broad river, its waves and its foam.And such, too, is the note of innumerable songs in exile, written for the most part by officials stationed in distant parts of the empire; sometimes by exiles in a harsher sense, namely, those persons who have been banished to the frontier for disaffection, maladministration of government, and like offences. A bright particular gem in Chinese literature, referring to love of home, was the work of a young poet who received an appointment as magistrate, but threw it up after a tenure of only eighty-three days, declaring that he could not﹃crook the hinges of his back for five pecks of rice a day,﹄that being the regulation pay of his office. It was written to celebrate his own return, and runs as follows:— "Homewards I bend my steps. My fields, my gardens, are choked with weeds: should I not go? My soul has led a bondsman's life: why should I remain to pine? But I will waste no grief upon the past: I will devote my energies to the future. I have not wandered far astray. I feel that I am on the right track once again. "Lightly, lightly, speeds my boat along, my garments fluttering to the gentle breeze. I inquire my route as I go. I grudge the slowness of the dawning day. From afar I descry by old home, and joyfully press onwards in my haste. The servants rush forth to meet me: my children cluster at the gate. The place is a wilderness; but there is the old pine-tree and my chrysanthemums. I take the little ones by the hand, and pass in. Wine is brought in full bottles, and I pour out in brimming cups. I gaze out at my favourite branches. I loll against the window in my new-found freedom. I look at the sweet children on my knee. "And now I take my pleasure in my garden. There is a gate, but it is rarely opened. I lean on my staff as I wander about or sit down to rest. I raise my head and contemplate the lovely scene. Clouds rise, unwilling, from the bottom of the hills: the weary bird seeks its nest again. Shadows vanish, but still I linger round my lonely pine. Home once more! I'll have no friendships to distract me hence. The times are out of joint for me; and what have I to seek from men? In the pure enjoyment of the family circle I will pass my days, cheering my idle hours with lute and book. My husbandmen will tell me when spring-time is nigh, and when there will be work in the furrowed fields. Thither I shall repair by cart or by boat, through the deep gorge, over the dizzy cliff, trees bursting merrily into leaf, the streamlet swelling from its tiny source. Glad is this renewal of life in due season: but for me, I rejoice that my journey is over. Ah, how short a time it is that we are here! Why, then, not set our hearts at rest, ceasing to trouble whether we remain or go? What boots it to wear out the soul with anxious thoughts? I want not wealth: I want not power: heaven is beyond my hopes. Then let me stroll through the bright hours, as they pass, in my garden among my flowers; or I will mount the hill and sing my song, or weave my verse beside the limpid brook. Thus will I work out my allotted span, content with the appointments of Fate, my spirit free from care." Besides contributing a large amount of beautiful poetry, this author provided his own funeral oration, the earliest which has come down to us, written just before his death in A.D. 427. Funeral orations are not only pronounced by some friend at the grave, but are further solemnly consumed by fire, in the belief that they will thus reach the world of spirits, and be a joy and an honour to the deceased, in the same sense that paper houses, horses, sedan-chairs, and similar articles, are burnt for the use of the dead.
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