Whether she has children or not, the princ.i.p.al wife--the only wife, in fact--never loses her supremacy as the head of the household. The late Empress Dowager was originally a concubine; by virtue of motherhood she was raised to the rank of Western Empress, but never legitimately took precedence of the wife, whose superiority was indicated by her t.i.tle of Eastern Empress, the east being more honourable than the west. The emperor always sits with his face towards the south.
The story of Sung Hung, a statesman who flourished about the time of the Christian era, pleasantly ill.u.s.trates a chivalrous side of the Chinese character. This man raised himself from a humble station in life to be a minister of state, and was subsequently enn.o.bled as marquis. The emperor then wished him to put away his wife, who was a woman of the people, and marry a princess; to which he n.o.bly replied: "Sire, the partner of my porridge days shall never go down from my hall."
Of the miseries of exile from the ancestral home, lurid pictures have been drawn by many poets and others. One man, ordered from some soft southern climate to a post in the colder north, will complain that the spring with its flowers is too late in arriving; another "cannot stand the water and earth," by which is meant that the climate does not agree with him; a third is satisfied with his surroundings, but is still a constant sufferer from home-sickness. Such a one was the poet who wrote the following lines:--
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 cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.s in. Wine is brought in full bottles, and I pour out in br.i.m.m.i.n.g 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s, 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 p.r.o.nounced 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.
CHAPTER X--MINGS AND CH"INGS, 1368-1911
The first half of the fourteenth century, which witnessed the gradual decline of Mongol influence and power, was further marked by the birth of a humble individual destined to achieve a new departure in the history of the empire. At the age of seventeen, Chu Yuan-chang lost both his parents and an elder brother. It was a year of famine, and they died from want of food. He had no money to buy coffins, and was forced to bury them in straw. He then, as a last resource, decided to enter the Buddhist priesthood, and accordingly enrolled himself as a novice; but together with the other novices, he was soon dismissed, the priests being unable to provide even for their own wants. After this he wandered about, and finally joined a party of rebels commanded by one of his own uncles. Rapidly rising to the highest military rank, he gradually found himself at the head of a huge army, and by 1368 was master of so many provinces that he proclaimed himself first emperor of the Great Ming dynasty, under the t.i.tle of Hung (_Hoong_) Wu, and fixed his capital at Nanking. In addition to his military genius, he showed almost equal skill in the administration of the empire, and also became a liberal patron of literature and education. He organized the present system of examinations, now in a transition state; restored the native Chinese style of dress as worn under the T"ang dynasty, which is still the costume seen on the stage; published a Penal Code of mitigated severity; drew up a kind of Domesday Book under which taxation was regulated; and fixed the coinage upon a proper basis, government notes and copper _cash_ being equally current. Eunuchs were prohibited from holding official posts, and Buddhism and Taoism were both made state religions.
This truly great monarch died in 1398, and was succeeded by a grandson, whose very receding forehead had been a source of much annoyance to his grandfather, though the boy grew up clever and could make good verses.
The first act of this new emperor was to dispossess his uncles of various important posts held by them; but this was not tolerated by one of them, who had already made himself conspicuous by his talents, and he promptly threw off his allegiance. In the war which ensued, victory attended his arms throughout, and at length he entered Nanking, the capital, in triumph. And now begins one of those romantic episodes which from time to time lend an unusual interest to the dry bones of Chinese history. In the confusion which followed upon the entry of troops into his palace, the young and defeated emperor vanished, and was never seen again; although in after years pretenders started up on more than one occasion, and obtained the support of many in their efforts to recover the throne. It is supposed that the fugitive made his way to the distant province of Yunnan in the garb of a Buddhist priest, left to him, so the story runs, by his grandfather. After nearly forty years of wandering, he is said to have gone to Peking and to have lived in seclusion in the palace there until his death. He was recognized by a eunuch from a mole on his left foot, but the eunuch was afraid to reveal his ident.i.ty.
The victorious uncle mounted the throne in the year 1403, under the now famous t.i.tle of Yung Lo (_Yoong Law_), and soon showed that he could govern as well as he could fight. He brought immigrants from populous provinces to repeople the districts which had been laid waste by war.
Peking was built, and in 1421 the seat of government was transferred thither, where it has remained ever since. A new Penal Code was drawn up. Various military expeditions were despatched against the Tartars, and missions under the charge of eunuchs were sent to Java, Sumatra, Siam, and even reached Ceylon and the Red Sea. The day of doubt in regard to the general accuracy of Chinese annals has gone by; were it otherwise, a recent (1911) discovery in Ceylon would tend to dispel suspicion on one point. A tablet has just been unearthed at Galle, bearing an inscription in Arabic, Chinese and Tamil. The Arabic is beyond decipherment, but enough is left of the Chinese to show that the tablet was erected in 1409 to commemorate a visit by the eunuch Cheng Ho, who pa.s.sed several times backwards and forwards over that route. In 1411 the same eunuch was sent as envoy to j.a.pan, and narrowly escaped with his life.
The emperor was a warm patron of literature, and succeeded in bringing about the achievement of the most gigantic literary task that the world has ever seen. He employed a huge staff of scholars to compile an encyclopaedia which should contain within the compa.s.s of a single work all that had ever been written in the four departments of (1) the Confucian Canon, (2) history, (3) philosophy, and (4) general literature, including astronomy, geography, cosmogony, medicine, divination, Buddhism, Taoism, handicrafts and arts. The completed work, over which a small army of scholars--more than two thousand in all--had spent five years, ran to no fewer than 22,877 sections, to which must be added an index occupying 60 sections. The whole was bound up (Chinese style) in 11,000 volumes, averaging over half-an-inch in thickness, and measuring one foot eight inches in length by one foot in breadth. Thus, if all these were laid flat one upon another, the column so formed would rise considerably higher than the very top of St. Paul"s. Further, each section contains about twenty leaves, making a total of 917,480 pages for the whole work, with a grand total of 366,000,000 words. Taking 100 Chinese words as the equivalent of 130 English, due to the greater condensation of Chinese literary style, it will be found that even the mighty river of the _Encyclopedia Britannica_ "shrinks to a rill" when compared with this overwhelming specimen of Chinese industry.
It was never printed; even a Chinese emperor, and enthusiastic patron of literature to boot, recoiled before the enormous cost of cutting such a work on blocks. It was however transcribed for printing, and there appear to have been at one time three copies in existence. Two of these perished at Nanking with the downfall of the dynasty in 1644, and the third was in great part destroyed in Peking during the siege of the Legations in 1900. Odd volumes have been preserved, and bear ample witness to the extraordinary character of the achievement.
This emperor was an ardent Buddhist, and the priests of that religion were raised to high positions and exerted considerable influence at court. In times of famine there were loud complaints that some ten thousand priests were living comfortably at Peking, while the people of several provinces were reduced to eating bark and gra.s.s.
The porcelain of the Ming dynasty is famous all over the world. Early in the sixteenth century a great impetus was given to the art, owing to the extravagant patronage of the court, which was not allowed to pa.s.s without openly expressed remonstrance. The practice of the pictorial art was very widely extended, and the list of Ming painters is endless, containing as it does over twelve hundred names, some few of which stand for a high level of success.
Towards the close of the sixteenth century the Portuguese appeared upon the scene, and settled themselves at Macao, the ownership of which has been a bone of contention between China and Portugal ever since. It is a delightful spot, with an excellent climate, not very far from Canton, and was for some time the residence of the renowned poet Camoens. Not far from Macao lies the island of Sancian, where St. Francois Xavier died. He was the first Roman Catholic missionary of more modern times to China, but he never set foot on the mainland. Native maps mark the existence of "Saint"s Grave" upon the island, though he was actually buried at Goa. There had previously been a Roman Catholic bishop in Peking so far back as the thirteenth century, from which date it seems likely that Catholic converts have had a continuous footing in the empire.
In 1583, Matteo Ricci, the most famous of all missionaries who have ever reached China, came upon the scene at Canton, and finally, in 1601, after years of strenuous effort succeeded in installing himself at Peking, with the warm support of the emperor himself, dying there in 1610. Besides reforming the calendar and teaching geography and science in general, he made a fierce attack upon Buddhism, at the same time wisely leaving Confucianism alone. He was the first to become aware of the presence in China of a Jewish colony, which had been founded in 1163. It was from his writings that truer notions of Chinese civilization than had hitherto prevailed, began to spread in the West.
"Mat. Riccius the Jesuite," says Burton in his _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1651), "and some others, relate of the industry of the Chinaes most populous countreys, not a beggar, or an idle person to be seen, and how by that means they prosper and flourish."
In 1625 an important find was made. A large tablet, with a long inscription in Chinese and a shorter one in Syraic, was discovered in central China. The inscription, in an excellent state of preservation, showed that the tablet had been set up in A.D. 781 by Nestorian missionaries, and gave a general idea of the object and scope of the Christian religion. The genuineness of this tablet was for many years in dispute--Voltaire, Renan, and others of lesser fame, regarding it as a pious fraud--but has now been established beyond any possibility of doubt; its value indeed is so great that an attempt was made quite recently to carry it off to America. Nestorian Christianity is mentioned by Marco Polo, but disappears altogether after the thirteenth century, without leaving any trace in Chinese literature of its once flourishing condition.
The last emperor of the Ming dynasty meant well, but succ.u.mbed to the stress of circ.u.mstances. Eunuchs and over-taxation brought about the stereotyped consequence--rebellion; rebellion, too, headed by an able commander, whose successive victories soon enabled him to a.s.sume the Imperial t.i.tle. In the capital all was confusion. The treasury was empty; the garrison were too few to man the walls; and the ministers were anxious to secure each his own safety. On April 9, 1644, Peking fell. During the previous night the emperor, who had refused to flee, slew the eldest princess, commanded the empress to commit suicide, and sent his three sons into hiding. At dawn the bell was struck for the court to a.s.semble; but no one came. His Majesty then ascended the Coal Hill in the palace grounds, and wrote a last decree on the lapel of his robe: "WE, poor in virtue and of contemptible personality, have incurred the wrath of G.o.d on high. My ministers have deceived me. I am ashamed to meet my ancestors; and therefore I myself take off my crown, and with my hair covering my face await dismemberment at the hands of the rebels. Do not hurt a single one of my people." He then hanged himself, as also did one faithful eunuch; and his body, together with that of the empress, was reverently encoffined by the rebels.
So ended the Ming dynasty, of glorious memory, but not in favour of the rebel commander, who was driven out of Peking by the Manchus and was ultimately slain by local militia in a distant province.
The subjugation of the empire by the victors, who had the disadvantage of being an alien race, was effected with comparative ease and rapidity.
It was carried out by a military occupation of the country, which has survived the original necessity, and is part of the system of government at the present day. Garrisons of Tartar troops were stationed at various important centres of population, each under the command of an officer of the highest military grade, whose duty it was to co-operate with, and at the same time watch and act as a check upon, the high authorities employed in the civil administration. Those Tartar garrisons still occupy the same positions; and the descendants of the first battalions, with occasional reinforcements from Peking, live side by side and in perfect harmony with the strictly Chinese populations, though the two races do not intermarry except in very rare cases. These Bannermen, as they are called, in reference to eight banners or corps under which they are marshalled, may be known by their square heavy faces, which contrast strongly with the sharper and more astute-looking physiognomies of the Chinese. They speak the dialect of Peking, now regarded as the official or "mandarin" language, just as the dialect of Nanking was, so long as that city remained the capital of the empire.
In many respects the conquering Tartars have been themselves conquered by the people over whom they set themselves to rule. They have adopted the language, written and colloquial, of China; and they are fully as proud as the purest-blooded Chinese of the vast literature and glorious traditions of those past dynasties of which they have made themselves joint heirs. Manchu, the language of the conquerors, is still kept alive at Peking. By a fiction, it is supposed to be the language of the sovereign; but the emperors of China have now in their youth to make a study of Manchu, and so do the official interpreters and others whose duty it is to translate from Chinese into Manchu all doc.u.ments submitted to what is called the "sacred glance" of His Majesty. In a similar sense, until quite a recent date, skill in archery was required of every Bannerman; and it was undoubtedly a great wrench when the once fatally effective weapon was consigned to an unmerited oblivion. But though Bannermen can no longer shoot with the bow and arrow, they still continue to draw monthly allowances from state funds, as an hereditary right obtained by conquest.
Of the nine emperors of the Manchu, or Great Ch"ing dynasty, who have already occupied the dragon throne and have become "guests on high," two are deserving of special mention as fit to be ranked among the wisest and best rulers the world has ever known. The Emperor K"ang Hsi (_Khahng Shee_) began his reign in 1662 and continued it for sixty-one years, a division of time which has been in vogue for many centuries past. He treated the Jesuit Fathers with kindness and distinction, and availed himself in many ways of their scientific knowledge. He was an extraordinarily generous and successful patron of literature. His name is inseparably connected with the standard dictionary of the Chinese language, which was produced under his immediate supervision. It contains over forty thousand words, not a great number as compared with European languages which have coined innumerable scientific terms, but even so, far more than are necessary either for daily life or for literary purposes. These words are accompanied in each case by appropriate quotations from the works of every age and of every style, arranged chronologically, thus antic.i.p.ating to some extent the "historical principles" in the still more wonderful English dictionary by Sir James Murray and others, now going through the press. But the greatest of all the literary achievements planned by this emperor was a general encyclopaedia, not indeed on quite such a colossal scale as that one produced under the Ming dynasty and already described, though still of respectable dimensions, running as it does in a small-sized edition to 1,628 octavo volumes of about 200 pages to each. The term encyclopaedia must not be understood in precisely the same sense as in Western countries. A Chinese encyclopaedia deals with a given subject not by providing an up-to-date article written by some living authority, but by exhibiting extracts from authors of all ages, arranged chronologically, in which the subject in question is discussed. The range of topics, however, is such that the above does not always apply--as, for instance, in the biographical section, which consists merely of lives of eminent men taken from various sources. In the great encyclopaedia under consideration, in addition to an enormous number of lives of men, covering a period of three thousand years, there are also lives of over twenty-four thousand eminent women, or nearly as many as all the lives in our own _National Dictionary of Biography_. An original copy of this marvellous production, which by the way is fully ill.u.s.trated, may be seen at the British Museum; a small-sized edition, more suitable for practical purposes and printed from movable type, was issued about twenty years ago.
Skipping an emperor under whose reign was initiated that violent persecution of Roman Catholics which has continued more or less openly down to the present day, we come to the second of the two monarchs before mentioned, whose long and beneficent reigns are among the real glories of the present dynasty.
The Emperor Ch"ien Lung (_Loong_) ascended the throne in 1735, when twenty-five years of age; and though less than two hundred years ago, legend has been busy with his person. According to some native accounts, his hands are said to have reached below his knees; his ears touched his shoulders; and his eyes could see round behind his head. This sort of stuff, is should be understood, is not taken from reliable authorities.
It cannot be taken from the dynastic history for the simple reason that the official history of a dynasty is not published until the dynasty has come to an end. There is, indeed, a faithful record kept of all the actions of each reigning emperor in turn; good and evil are set down alike, without fear or favour, for no emperor is ever allowed to get a glimpse of the doc.u.ment by which posterity will judge him. Ch"ien Lung had no cause for anxiety on this score; whatever record might leap to light, he never could be shamed. An able ruler, with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and an indefatigable administrator, he rivals his grandfather"s fame as a sovereign and a patron of letters. His one amiable weakness was a fondness for poetry; unfortunately, for his own.
His output was enormous so far as number of pieces go; these were always short, and proportionately trivial. No one ever better ill.u.s.trated one half of the cynical Chinese saying: "We love our own compositions, but other men"s wives." He disliked missionaries, and forbade the propagation of the Christian religion.
After ten years of internal reorganization, his reign became a succession of wars, almost all of which were brought to a successful conclusion. His generals led a large army into Nepaul and conquered the Goorkhas, reaching a point only some sixty miles distant from British territory. Burma was forced to pay tribute; Chinese supremacy was established in Tibet; Kuldja and Kashgaria were added to the empire; and rebellions in Formosa and elsewhere were suppressed. In fifty years the population was nearly doubled, and the empire on the whole enjoyed peace and prosperity. In 1750 a Portuguese emba.s.sy reached Peking; and was followed by Lord Macartney"s famous mission and a Dutch mission in 1793.
Two years after the venerable emperor had completed a reign of sixty years, the full Chinese cycle; whereupon he abdicated in favour of his son, and died in 1799.
CHAPTER XI--CHINESE AND FOREIGNERS
A virtue which the Chinese possess in an eminent degree is the rather rare one of grat.i.tude. A Chinaman never forgets a kind act; and what is still more important, he never loses the sense of obligation to his benefactor. Witness to this striking fact has been borne times without number by European writers, and especially by doctors, who have naturally enjoyed the best opportunities for conferring favours likely to make a deep impression. It is unusual for a native to benefit by a cure at the hands of a foreign doctor, and then to go away and make no effort to express his grat.i.tude, either by a subscription to a hospital, a present of silk or tea, or perhaps an elaborate banner with a golden inscription, in which his benefactor"s skill is likened to that of the great Chinese doctors of antiquity. With all this, the patient will still think of the doctor, and even speak of him, not always irreverently, as a foreign devil. A Chinaman once appeared at a British Consulate, with a present of some kind, which he had brought from his home a hundred miles away, in obedience to the command of his dying father, who had formerly been cured of ophthalmia by a foreign doctor, and who had told him, on his deathbed, "never to forget the English."
Yet this present was addressed in Chinese: "To His Excellency the Great English Devil, Consul X."
The Chinaman may love you, but you are a devil all the same. It is most natural that he should think so. For generation upon generation China was almost completely isolated from the rest of the world. The people of her vast empire grew up under influences unchanged by contact with other peoples. Their ideals became stereotyped from want of other ideals to compare with, and possibly modify, their own. Dignity of deportment and impa.s.sivity of demeanour were especially cultivated by the ruling cla.s.ses. Then the foreign devil burst upon the scene--a being as antagonistic to themselves in every way as it is possible to conceive.
We can easily see, from pictures, not intended to be caricatures, what were the chief features of the foreigner as viewed by the Chinaman. Red hair and blue eyes, almost without exception; short and extremely tight clothes; a quick walk and a mobility of body, involving ungraceful positions either sitting or standing; and with an additional feature which the artist could not portray--an unintelligible language resembling the twittering of birds. Small wonder that little children are terrified at these strange beings, and rush shrieking into their cottages as the foreigner pa.s.ses by. It is perhaps not quite so easy to understand why the Mongolian pony has such a dread of the foreigner and usually takes time to get accustomed to the presence of a barbarian; some ponies, indeed, will never allow themselves to be mounted unless blindfolded. Then there are the dogs, who rush out and bark, apparently without rhyme or reason, at every pa.s.sing foreigner. The Chinese have a saying that one dog barks at nothing and the rest bark at him; but that will hardly explain the unfailing attack so familiar to every one who has rambled through country villages. The solution of this puzzle was extracted with difficulty from an amiable Chinaman who explained that what the animals, and indeed his fellow-countrymen as well, could not help noticing, was the frowzy and very objectionable smell of all foreigners, which, strangely enough, is the very accusation which foreigners unanimously bring against the Chinese themselves.
Compare these characteristics with the universal black hair and black eyes of men and women throughout China, exclusive of a rare occasional albino; with the long, flowing, loose robes of officials and of the well-to-do; with their slow and stately walk and their rigid formality of position, either sitting or standing. To the Chinese, their own language seems to be the language of the G.o.ds; they know they have possessed it for several thousand years, and they know nothing at all of the barbarian. Where does he come from? Where can he come from except from the small islands which fringe the Middle Kingdom, the world, in fact, bounded by the Four Seas? The books tell us that "Heaven is round, Earth is square;" and it is impossible to believe that those books, upon the wisdom of which the Middle Kingdom was founded, can possibly be wrong. Such was a very natural view for the Chinaman to take when first brought really face to face with the West; and such is the view that in spite of modern educational progress is still very widely held. The people of a country do not unlearn in a day the long lessons of the past. He was quite a friendly mandarin, taking a practical view of national dress, who said in conversation: "I can"t think why you foreigners wear your clothes so tight; it must be very difficult to catch the fleas."
As an offset against the virtue of grat.i.tude must be placed the deep-seated spirit of revenge which animates all cla.s.ses. Though not enumerated among their own list of the Seven pa.s.sions--joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred and desire--it is perhaps the most over-mastering pa.s.sion to which the Chinese mind is subject. It is revenge which prompts the unhappy daughter-in-law to throw herself down a well, consoled by the thought of the trouble, if not ruin, she is bringing on her persecutors. Revenge, too, leads a man to commit suicide on the doorstep of some one who has done him an injury, for he well knows what it means to be entangled in the net which the law throws over any one on whose premises a dead body may thus be found. There was once an absurd case of a Chinese woman, who deliberately walked into a pond until the water reached up to her knees, and remained there, alternately putting her lips below the surface, and threatening in a loud voice to drown herself on the spot, as life had been made unbearable by the presence of foreign barbarians. In this instance, had the suicide been carried out, vengeance would have been wreaked in some way on the foreigner by the injured ghost of the dead woman.
The germ of this spirit of revenge, this desire to get on level terms with an enemy, as when a life is extracted for a life, can be traced, strangely enough, to the practice of filial piety and fraternal love, the very cornerstone of good government and national prosperity. In the Book of Rites, which forms a part of the Confucian Canon, and contains rules not only for the performance of ceremonies but also for the guidance of individual conduct, the following pa.s.sage occurs: "With the slayer of his father, a man may not live under the same sky; against the slayer of his brother, a man must never have to go home to fetch a weapon; with the slayer of his friend, a man may not live in the same state." Being now duly admitted among the works which const.i.tute the Confucian Canon, the above-mentioned Book of Rites enjoys an authority to which it can hardly lay claim on the ground of antiquity. It is a compilation made during the first century B.C., and is based, no doubt, on older existing doc.u.ments; but as it never pa.s.sed under the editorship of either Confucius or Mencius, it would be unfair to jump to the conclusion that either of these two sages is in any way responsible for, or would even acquiesce in, a system of revenge, the only result of which would be an endless chain of bloodshed and murder. The Chinese are certainly as constant in their hates as in their friendships. To use a phrase from their own language, if they love a man, they love him to the life; if they hate a man they hate him to the death. As we have already noted, the Old Philosopher urged men to requite evil with good; but Confucius, who was only a mortal himself, and knew the limitations of mortality, subst.i.tuted for an ideal doctrine the more practical injunction to requite evil with justice. It is to be feared that the Chinese people fall short in practice even of this lower standard. "Be just to your enemy" is a common enough maxim; but one for which only a moderate application can be claimed.
It has often been urged against the Chinese that they have very little idea of time. A friendly Chinaman will call, and stay on so persistently that he often outstays his welcome. This infliction is recognized and felt by the Chinese themselves, who have certain set forms of words by which they politely escape from a tiresome visitor; among their vast stores of proverbs they have also provided one which is much to the point: "Long visits bring short compliments." Also, in contradiction of the view that time is no value to the Chinaman, there are many familiar maxims which say, "Make every inch of time your own!" "Half-an-hour is worth a thousand ounces of silver," etc. An "inch of time" refers to the sundial, which was known to the Chinese in the earliest ages, and was the only means they had for measuring time until the invention or introduction--it is not certain which--of the more serviceable _clepsydra_, or water-clock, already mentioned.
This consists of several large jars of water, with a tube at the bottom of each, placed one above another on steps, so that the tube of an upper jar overhangs the top of a lower jar. The water from the top jar is made to drip through its tube into the second jar, and so into a vessel at the bottom, which contains either the floating figure of a man, or some other kind of index to mark the rise of the water on a scale divided into periods of two hours each. The day and night were originally divided by the Chinese into twelve such periods; but now-a-days watches and clocks are in universal use, and the European division into twenty-four hours prevails everywhere. Formerly, too, sticks of incense, to burn for a certain number of hours, as well as graduated candles, made with the a.s.sistance of the water-clock, were in great demand; these have now quite disappeared as time-recorders.
The Chinese year is a lunar year. When the moon has travelled twelve times round the earth, the year is completed. This makes it about ten days short of our solar year; and to bring things right again, an extra month, that is a thirteenth month, is inserted in every three years.
When foreigners first began to employ servants extensively, the latter objected to being paid their wages according to the European system, for they complained that they were thus cheated out of a month"s wages in every third year. An elaborate official almanack is published annually in Peking, and circulated all over the empire; and in addition to such information as would naturally be looked for in a work of the kind, the public are informed what days are lucky, and what days are unlucky, the right and the wrong days for doing or abstaining from doing this, that, or the other. The anniversaries of the death-days of the sovereigns of the ruling dynasty are carefully noted; for on such days all the government offices are supposed to be shut. Any foreign official who wishes to see a mandarin for urgent business will find it possible to do so, but the visitor can only be admitted through a side-door; the large entrance-gate cannot possibly be opened under any circ.u.mstances whatever.
No notice of the Chinese people, however slight or general in character, could very well attain its object unless accompanied by some more detailed account of their etiquette than is to be gathered from the few references scattered over the preceding pages. Correct behaviour, whether at court, in the market-place, or in the seclusion of private life, is regarded as of such extreme importance--and breaches of propriety in this sense are always so severely frowned upon--that it behoves the foreigner who would live comfortably and at peace with his Chinese neighbours, to pick up at least a casual knowledge of an etiquette which in outward form is so different from his own, and yet in spirit is so identically the same. A little judicious attention to these matters will prevent much unnecessary friction, leading often to a row, and sometimes to a catastrophe. Chinese philosophers have fully recognized in their writings that ceremonies and salutations and bowings and sc.r.a.pings and rules of precedence and rules of the road are not of any real value when considered apart from the conditions with which they are usually a.s.sociated; at the same time they argue that without such conventional restraints, nothing but confusion would result.
Consequently, a regular code of etiquette has been produced; but as this deals largely with court and official ceremonial, and a great part of the remainder has long since been quietly ignored, it is more to the point to turn to the unwritten code which governs the ma.s.ses in their everyday life.
For the foreigner who would mix easily with the Chinese people, it is above all necessary to understand not only that the street regulations of Europe do not apply in China; but also that he will there find a set of regulations which are tacitly agreed upon by the natives, and which, if examined without prejudice, can only be regarded as based on common sense. An ordinary foot-pa.s.senger, meeting perhaps a coolie with two buckets of water suspended one at each end of a bamboo pole, or carrying a bag of rice, weighing one, two, or even three hundredweight, is bound to move out of the burden-carrier"s path, leaving to him whatever advantages the road may offer. This same coolie, meeting a sedan chair borne by two or more coolies like himself, must at once make a similar concession, which is in turn repeated by the chair-bearers in favour of any one riding a horse. On similar grounds, an empty sedan-chair must give way to one in which there is a pa.s.senger; and though not exactly on such rational grounds, it is understood that horse, chair, coolie and foot-pa.s.senger all clear the road for a wedding or other procession, as well as for the retinue of a mandarin. A servant, too, should stand at the side of the road to let his master pa.s.s. As an exception to the general rule of common sense which is so very noticeable in all Chinese inst.i.tutions, if only one takes the trouble to look for it, it seems to be an understood thing that a man may not only stand still wherever he pleases in a Chinese thoroughfare, but may even place his burden or barrow, as the fancy seizes him, sometimes right in the fairway, from which point he will coolly look on at the streams of foot-pa.s.sengers coming and going, who have to make the best of their way round such obstructions. It is partly perhaps on this account that friends who go for a stroll together never walk abreast but always in single file, shouting out their conversation for all the world to hear; this, too, even in the country, where a more convenient formation would often, but not always, be possible. Shopkeepers may occupy the path with tables exposing their wares, and itinerant stall-keepers do not hesitate to appropriate a "pitch" wherever trade seems likely to be brisk. The famous saying that to have freedom we must have order has not entered deeply into Chinese calculations. Freedom is indeed a marked feature of Chinese social life; some small sacrifices in the cause of order would probably enhance rather than diminish the great privileges now enjoyed.
A few points are of importance in the social etiquette of indoor life, and should not be lightly ignored by the foreigner, who, on the other hand, would be wise not to attempt to subst.i.tute altogether Chinese forms and ceremonies for his own. Thus, no Chinaman, and, it may be added, no European who knows how to behave, fails to rise from his chair on the entrance of a visitor; and it is further the duty of a host to see that his visitor is actually seated before he sits down himself.
It is extremely impolite to precede a visitor, as in pa.s.sing through a door; and on parting, it is usual to escort him to the front entrance.
He must be placed on the left of the host, this having been the post of honour for several centuries, previous to which it was the seat to the right of the host, as with us, to which the visitor was a.s.signed. At such interviews it would not be correct to allude to wives, who are no more to be mentioned than were the queen of Spain"s legs.
One singular custom in connection with visits, official and otherwise, ignorance of which has led on many occasions to an awkward moment, is the service of what is called "guest-tea." At his reception by the host every visitor is at once supplied with a cup of tea. The servant brings two cups, one in each hand, and so manages that the cup in his left hand is set down before the guest, who faces him on his right hand, while that for his master is carried across and set down in an exactly opposite sense. The tea-cups are so handed, as it were with crossed hands, even when the host, as an extra mark of politeness, receives that intended for his visitor, and himself places it on the table, in this case being careful to use _both_ hands, it being considered extremely impolite to offer anything with one hand only employed. Now comes the point of the "guest-tea," which, as will be seen, it is quite worth while to remember. Shortly after the beginning of the interview, an unwary foreigner, as indeed has often been the case, perhaps because he is thirsty, or because he may think it polite to take a sip of the fragrant drink which has been so kindly provided for him, will raise the cup to his lips. Almost instantaneously he will hear a loud shout outside, and become aware that the scene is changing rapidly for no very evident reason--only too evident, however, to the surrounding Chinese servants, who know it to be their own custom that so soon as a visitor tastes his "guest-tea," it is a signal that he wishes to leave, and that the interview is at an end. The noise is simply a bawling summons to get ready his sedan-chair, and the scurrying of his coolies to be in their places when wanted. There is another side to this quaint custom, which is often of inestimable advantage to a busy man. A host, who feels that everything necessary has been said, and wishes to free himself from further attendance, may grasp his own cup and invite his guest to drink.
The same results follow, and the guest has no alternative but to rise and take his leave. In ancient days visitors left their shoes outside the front door, a custom which is still practised by the j.a.panese, the whole of whose civilization--this cannot be too strongly emphasized--was borrowed originally from China.