The Real Chinaman. ... With ... illustrations

Front matter

THE REAL CHINAMAN BY CHESTER HOLCOMBE For many years Interpreter, Secretary of Legation, and Acting Minister of the United States at Peking WITH SEVENTY-SEVEN ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON B. F. Stevens 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE {All rights reserved) PRINTED AT THE BURR PRINTING HOUSE New York, U. S. A. THIS volume is bound in a shade of color known in China as "Imperial Yellow." It is set apart for the exclusive use of the Emperor, and severe penalties attach to its use for any purpose by a Chinese subject. The decoration in the upper left hand corner of the cover represents the five-clawed dragon rising from the sea, surrounded by clouds, and grasping the sun. It is thus the symbol of uni versal dominion, and forms the crest of the Emperor. The figure used is an exact reproduction, reduced in size, of that worn upon the breast and back of all Chinese officials of high civil rank in uniform or court dress.

In the design and at the top is an archaic form of the character which means "happiness." Underneath the decoration is the Chinese title of the book. It was kindly written for the author by His Excellency, the Chinese Minister at Washington, who, however, is responsible for no part of the contents of the volume. It is written in a peculiar style of penmanship exclusively used for book titles. Upon the back of the volume is tile author's name, reproduced from a visiting card, in the "oftfinary style of writing.

Preface

. The average of mankind resembles too closely that pleasant old lady who lived alone, miles from a neighbor, in one of the more remote nooks of the Green Moun tains. A stranger stopped at her gate one summer day for a glass of water. Upon being told, in answer to her question, that he lived in Boston, she exclaimed : " Dear me ! How lone some you must be away off there !" Boston was a lonely spot in her conception ; but the very centre of the universe was framed within the weather beaten walls of her cottage. Like her, we are inclined to measure all people by a yardstick of our own construction, the model for which is found in ourselves. Others are right or wrong, wise or unwise, according as they copy or depart from the fashion which we have arbitra rily set up, the ideal formed within the essentially narrow limits of our personal surroundings.

We smile at and perhaps ridicule the unthinking, automatic regularity with which millions of Chi nese drop their winter garb for that of summer, or the reverse, upon a day fixed by the will of one man. Yet how does this act differ in wisdom from that other procedure under which millions of the most cultivated and refined ladies of America and PREFA CE. Europe copy blindly monstrosities in dress or cos tume at the freaky dictation of an impersonality called Eashion ? And if there is a difference in the two rules of conduct, upon which side does the greater wisdom lie ? Look at the grotesque out lines and shapes of deformity which have supplant ed the graceful contour of the natural woman, and then decide which is wiser, or, if you please, less unwise, for a nation to accept the dictum of one man upon the time when the climate requires a change of garb, or for half the population of two conti nents, in defiance of their individual taste and good sense, to adopt a whim in dress which may have originated in the slums of Paris or London ?

There is need of more genuine knowledge and less narrow-minded judgment. It would, doubtless, be well if we could see ourselves as others see us. But it would be much better if we could see both others and ourselves from a higher and hence more accurate plane of sight, if we could measure men not by ourselves, but by an ideal, a standard man. A greater breadth of vision would serve a more valuable purpose than to increase the accuracy and intelligence of our conceptions. It would make charity more common, patience easier, and belief in the essential unity and nobility of humankind the rule rather than, what it now is, the exception. It is far easier to criticise the Chinese than to understand them. The points of contact are too few and too recent. Our information is based largely upon fancy instead of fact, and misinter pretation of them and their ways is the easy and inevitable result.

Yet they are emphatically a race PREFA CE. IX worthy of serious study. As real life is far more fascinating than any work of fiction, so is the genu ine Son of Han, with his fixed and crystallized peculiarities, immensely more interesting to the honest student than the caricatured Chinaman, with whom alone the average public is familiar. This volume is neither a defence, apology, criticism, nor panegyric. It is rather an explanation. It attempts to give a few of the results of many years of residence among the Chinese, in the course of which the author was brought into close and familiar relations with all classes of the people in nearly every section of the empire. In it an effort is made to describe and explain some of the more prominent factors in the national life, and to show why some of their ways, so odd to us, are natural to them.

Facts are dealt with rather than opin ions. The book represents an effort to outline with a few broad sweeps of the pen the Chinaman as he is. The numerous incidents scattered through the volume are inserted with a view to make the picture more lifelike, interesting, and intelligible. Each one represents an actual occurrence, free of coloring or exaggeration. Were it necessary, the place and date of each, with the names of the persons concerned in it, could be given. In the same way, the illustrations are sun pictures, owing noth ing to art save the skill and fidelity with which they have been transferred, unchanged even in minute details, to these pages. Intertwisted with the faults and foibles of the Chinese are many sterling virtues and admirable X PREFA CE. traits of character. They combine the fixedness of age with the persistence of youth.

They change slowly. Yet it seems impossible that any one should come to know them well without reaching the conviction that there is a great future before the nation, and that China has yet an important part to play in the history of the world. Chester Holcombe New York, January i, 1895. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE A High Chinese Official in Evening Dress Frontispiece Imperial Dragon v Buddhist Devil v Pagoda at Pa Li Chuang vii Ornamental Street Archway in Peking x Stone Gateway xi Dragons Supporting the Globe xiii Ornamental Fan Design xx Dragon Design I A Gate of Peking 13 Mounted Chinese Official 20 Li Hung Chang 25 Bronze Open Work 28 Chinese Flag 2g Entrance to the Palace 32 View of Peking 37 Chinese River Scene 44 Post Marking Land Boundary 49 A Lock on the Grand Canal 51 Souvenir Fan 58 Toad Catching Flies (from Chinese Painting) 66 Bridge in Summer Palace LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PACE Buddhist Female Idol 73 Group of Children .... 75 Street Scene in Peking 81 Wall About Peking 89 Entrance Hall to Imperial Tombs 92 Jinricksha 93 Carriage of Chinese Official 95 Front of Official Residence 101 Chinese Dragon (Moulded in Porcelain) ill Sedan Chair 115 Incense Urn 116 Oven for Burning Paper, Confucian Temple, Peking 122 Buddhist Priest Trampling Satan Under Foot 133 Goddess of Mercy 137 Chinese Wedding Chair 143 Chinese Head of Pillar 144 Tomb of the Emperor Yung Lo, Died a.d. 1425 147 Pagoda at Yfi Chuan Shan 155 Chinese Catafalque 163 Dragons 170 Head of Buddhist Devotee 171 Peddling Fruit 172 Group of Children 175 Chinese Barber 179 Bit of Great Wall 191 Flag Standards • jgo Entrance to Imperial Cemetery 194 Approach to Ming Tombs ig5 Bridge on the Grand Canal igg Street Barrier 213 Ornament Pillar 214 The Great Wall 217 Chinese Beggar 226 Mongol Winter Encampment 231 Top of Pagoda 237 Village on Grand Canal near Peking 241 A Chinese Student 252 Chinese Pony and Groom LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

XIII Gateway 260 Bronze Lion 261 Chinese Passenger Boat 265 The Donkey 2-- Chinese Mule Litter 281 Dragons Reaching for the Sun 285 Archway 286 Chinese Jinricksha = 28g Chinese Servants 3C,3 Junk 30g Dragon 3lo Group of Chinese Workmen qj^ Mender of Tubs 32i Chinese Passenger Cart 325 Dragon 330 Antique Chinese Cash 337 Peking-Bank Notes 545 "No Thoroughfare"

Chapter I

Introductory. 1-28 Recent acquaintance of China with Western nations, 1. Date of first treaty, 2. Contrast between the Oriental and Occidental world, 2. Chinese seclusion, 3. Ignorance regarding foreigners, 4. The Chinese Empire and surrounding kingdoms, 5. Position of Japan, 6. The so-called suzerainty of China, 8. Exact nature of relationship, 9. The opium war, 10. Mutual misunderstanding inevitable, 14. Conrrast between China and Japan, 17. Discrimination against China and its results, 18. Students at Annapolis and West Point, 19. Prince Kung, 22. Li Hung Chang, 24. No real opposition to the reigning family among Chinese, 28.

Chapter II

The Government of China 2g-48 Peculiarities of the governmental system, 3.1. Its antiquity, 31. Satisfies the people, 32. It is pure paternalism, 33. Filial obedience and parental responsibility enforced by law, 34. The family the unit of government, 36. The Emperor, 36. Laws are comparatively mild and humane, 40. Rewards and penalties, 4T. Two theories regarding the system, 42. Filial piety, 43. Influence of Confucius, 45. Officials chosen from among the people, 45. Similarity between Chinese form of choosing officers and that followed in the United States, 47.

Chapter III

The Language 49_72 Its antiquity, 4g. Immense but uncertain number of characters, 50. Mode of writing and printing, 51. Characters were originally outlines of objects which they represented, 54. Modes of combination illustrated, 55. Idiomatic constructions, 56. Grammar of Chinese, 57. Chinese efforts to learn English, 58. Words lacking in the language, 60. Difficulties of pronunciation, 62. Sounds cannot be represented by any alphabet, 63. Aspirated and unaspirated consonants, 64. Tone has equal part with sound in determining the meaning, 65. Four tones recognized in standard Chinese, 67. Amusing blunders, 6g. Local dialects, 70. Pidgin English, 71.

Chapter IV

Chinese Home Life 73-92 Does not begin with marriage, 73. Lot of young married women, 74. Motherhood a badge of honor, 75. Polygamy allowed, but monogamy the rule, 77. Influence of women, 78. Ties of locality, 80. Chinese not natural colonists, 83. Ancestral worship, 86. Filial obedience, 89. Coffins presented to parents, go.

Chapter V

Chinese Social Life g3-n5 Little time given to recreation, 93. An overworked Chinese statesman, g3. Peculiar model of Oriental society, g7. Husband and wife may not ride in the same vehicle, 99. Chinese students in America, 100. Social amusements of Chinese ladies, 102. Women of the poorer classes, 103. Oriental ideas of dignity, t04. Etiquette interferes with social life, 105. Chinese fond of argument, 107. Legend of the fox, 108. Chinese recepdon-rooms, 109. Dinner-giving between Occidentals and Orientals, 110. The servant of the Corean minister, 113.

Chapter VI

Chinese Religions 116-143 Confucius not the founder of a religion, 116. He was a sage, not a devotee, 117. Materialism is the basis of Confucianism, 118. Temple of Heaven, 119. Respect for education and literature, 121. Worship of ancestors, 123. What is the practical idea involved, 123. Chinese belief in a future state, 124. Ancestral tablet, 125. All Chinese are Confucianists, 126. Taoism, 126. Its theory and practice, 127. Buddhism, 128. Method of worship, 130. Thibetan archbishop, 131. Living Buddhas, 131. Ideas borrowed from Christianity, 132. Mendicant priests, 135. A pilgrimage to Wu Tai Shan, 139. Chinese Government tolerant, 142. Mohammedans and Jews in China, 143.

Chapter VII

Chinese Superstitions 144-170 Saturated with superstitious notions, 144. They are separate from religious belief, 145. Feng Shui, 145. Interfered with burial of an emperor, 149. Chinese astrologers, 152. Methods of placating local spirits, 154. The use of pagodas, 156. Lucky and unlucky days, 157. Prayer at the hole of a fox, 158. Prayers for rain, I5g. Ling Shih Hsien, 160. Old trees, 161. Inhumanity as a fruit of superstition, 165. Infanticide, 166. Treatment of young children when ill, 167. Two cases, 168.

Chapter VIII

Chinese Queues 171-191 Peculiarities of Oriental hair, 171. Admiration of the Occidental beard, 172. Symbol of Chinese manhood, 174. How the queue was introduced into China, 174. It is a badge of respectability, 178. Etiquette of the queue, 178. " Tail-cutting," 181. Chinese belief in magic, 182. Official proclamations giving preventives for " tail-cutting, " 183. One genuine case, 184. ANALYSLS OF CONTENTS. XVIII

Chapter IX

Chinese Courts of Law 192-213 Primitive hall of justice, 192. Antiquity of the judicial system, 193. The Censorate, ig3. The Chinese Code. 195. Cases are decided by precedents, ig7. Dangerous latitude allowed to magistrates, igS. Efforts to secure confession, 201. Antiquated processes, 202. Scene in a Chinese court, 203. Chinese prisons, 205. Modes of punishment, 206. Forms of death p2nalty, 207. The white silken cord, 208. Etiquette of a Chinese court, 2og. A fearful case of cruelty, 210.

Chapter X

Officials and People 214-236 The Chinaman a philosopher, 214. Official salaries, 216. Illegal and extra-legal fines, 2ig. Guards against injustice and extortion, 223. Civil-service regulations, 224. Sale of titles and official honors, 225. Power of public opinion, 227. The literati, 227. Dangerous exercise of their power, 22g. The Tientsin massacre, 230. Mandarin boots, 233. Interesting case of resistance to oppression, 234.

Chapter XI

Education and Literature 237-260 Object of study, 237. Chinese ambition, 237. High moral tone of educational works, 238. Narrow limits of system, 243. Description of course of study, 244. Schools and their arrangements, 246. Method of study, 247. High intellectual ability of the Chinese, 248. The Chinese srudenrs in America, 248. Illiteracy in China, 249. System of government examinations originated 1900 years ago, 250. Proscribed classes, 250. Degrees conferred, 253. Regulations for the examinations, 254.

Chapter XII

Etiquette and Ceremony 261-2S5 Politeness universal, 261. Etiquette complicated and tedious, 262. Pompous and bombastic titles, 263. Foreign relations vexed by questions of etiquette, 264. The audience question, 267. The etiquette of a cup of tea, 26g. Im portance of familiarity with Oriental forms, 270. A Mexi can saddle and sombrero in China, 271. Tedious formalities evaded, 273. Lies of courtesy, 274. Chinese habit of repression, 277. Quaint custom among Pekingese, 27g.

Chapter XIII

Merchants and Tricks of Trade 2S6-3og Grades of Chinese society, 286. Standing of Chinese merchants, 287. Merchants study their customers, 2gi. Va rious prices for various customers, 2g4. The dicker, 2g5. No standard of weight or measure, 2g8. Exact book-keeping impossible, 300. Co-operative system, 301. The Chinese "squeeze," 301. Chinese servants, 305.

Chapter XIV

The Poor in China 310-329 Intense poverty of the Chinese masses, 310. Average prices paid for labor, 311. Food of common people, 312. Ex periences at Chinese inns, 313. Clothing, 316. The house, 319. The labor problem in China, 320. Economy of the Chinese, 322. Government allows begging, 323. The queen of the beggars of Peking, 327. Incidents, 328. XX ANALYSIS OF CONTENTS.

Chapter XV

Chinese Financial System 330-350 The Chinese money unit, 330. Spanish and Mexican dollars, 331. Varying and various ounce weights, 332. Form of silver bullion used, 334. Tests of fineness, 334. Chinese cash, 336. Attempts to tamper with the currency, 33g. Doubling cash, 34t. Chinese banks, 343. Taxation, 346. Uncertainty regarding total revenue, 347. Taxes payable in kind, 347. Modes of remittance, 348. Needs of reform, 349-

Chapter I

introductory. The commencement of any mutual acquaintance between China and the Western world dates back only a little more than thirty years. The first treaties by which China acknowledged the existence of the nations of America and Europe were signed about fifty years ago. Those treaties, how ever, only served as a preliminary introduction, and lacked such provisions as would enable either of the parties consenting to them to prosecute any friendly intimacy with the other. So long as not more than three or four points upon the Chinese seaboard were thrown open to foreign residence and commerce, while travel in the interior of the empire was prohibited, Peking remained inaccessi ble to all diplomatic representatives, and our legations were kept on board men-of-war cruising up and down the Chinese coast — so long as such a condition of affairs existed, we of the Western world could learn little about the Chinese, and they could gain no knowledge of us.

Such was the situation from the date on which the first treaty between China and any foreign power was signed — the British treaty, signed at Nanking, August 29th, 1842 — up to the time when, by the treaties of Tientsin, signed in 1861, diplomatic representatives were accorded the right of residence at the capital, and foreigners of all classes were permitted to travel freely throughout the empire. Then first in the history of humankind two great antipodal worlds of men stood face to face and gazed into each other's eyes. The progressive and aggressive Occidental, quick, eager, and alert, met in the Oriental the very incarnation of con servatism, the embodiment of dignity and repose. Action met inertia. The age of steam, steel, and electricity stood over against the age of Confucius. Let the reader imagine a modern pushing man of business introduced to the Chinese sage, and the two left to become acquainted, and each to gather his impressions of the other, then add to the picture the essential fact that the sage had a positive unwillingness to meet the business man, and he will have a sufficiently accurate idea of the situation.

There was absolutely no common point of meeting, no standing ground of a mutual advantage mutually recognized. True, we wished to trade with the Chinese. He had shown how much or how little he desired commerce with us by so carefully hedging about and restricting our interchanges with him at Canton — the single point where they INTRODUCTORY. 3 had been permitted to go on at all — that it was as though we received his bales of silk and chests of tea lowered to us from the battlements of an im pregnable wall, and delivered our Mexican dollars and British opium to him by the returning rope. Recognition of this extremely attenuated line of commercial intercourse, so far as it existed, was in the form of restrictive rather than encouraging regulations. It was not that China had any peculiar objection to political and trade relations with America and Europe.

She desired no enlargement of her ac quaintance in any direction. An imperial decree made any Chinese subject forfeit his head to the executioner, as a punishment for having wandered into foreign parts, if he was so indiscreet as to come within reach of that gentleman by a return to his native land. That law still stands unre pealed, though for many years it has never been enforced. The government order, forbidding the construction of any junks or vessels of a greater length than sixty feet, made all other than short coasting voyages both unprofitable and dangerous. With her ports closed to foreign craft, regardless of nationality, and no domestic vessels fit for even moderately long ocean voyages, it is easy to estimate the extent of China's desire to either receive or return visits from strangers.

The sole excep tion to this exclusion was in favor of a limited number of Siamese merchant-vessels, duly regis tered and furnished with permits to trade between Bangkok and certain Chinese ports. These made their leisure way northward with the summer or southeastern monsoon, and were blown home again by the northwestern winds of winter, thus making one round voyage each year. It is unnecessary to the purpose of this volume that the causes which led China to prefer such ab solute seclusion should be inquired into and their validity either recognized or denied. That she was totally ignorant of the character and position of Western nations, and necessarily so, is self-evident. It is related that when what is now the Ger man Empire sent commissioners to China to nego tiate a treaty, they were refused.

On the kindly interference of the British minister, this refusal was withdrawn, the Chinese Government naively re marking that it was informed by the British repre sentative that the Germans were really a respectable people, and that their king was a relative of the Queen of Great Britain. For this reason they decided to negotiate a treaty. In 1870 one of the most prominent officials in Peking, being dis patched to Europe upon a special mission, gave directions that some one hundred and fifty pounds of salt should be packed with his other baggage, as he was accustomed to use it in his food, and he had reason to fear difficulty in obtaining it in the regions to which he was bound. A member of the Imperial Cabinet was once overheard, so recently as 1884, inquiring of an associate whether foreign ers had any form of marriage contract, or whether the two sexes lived promiscuously together.

Coupled with this unqualified ignorance were certain absurd and amusing notions concerning the habits and personal appearance of the unfortunate IN TROD UC TOR Y. 5 creatures who lived beyond the reach of the civiliz ing influences of the Chinese Empire. The inter ested student in ethnology may find in the book stores of Peking and other Chinese cities to-day volumes containing descriptive accounts of some of these outside barbarians, with carefully executed representations of them done in water-colors. One type has ears reaching to the earth, another has no legs worthy of mention. The representation of one tribe forces the student to the conclusion that the Chinese must have heard, and with some ac curacy, of the gorilla. One race is pictured as having its face as a sort of boss in low relief upon the breast, while another carries its head con veniently located under the left arm.

Small won der that China desired no close acquaintance with people concerning whom she knew so little and imagined so much. Prior to this disturbance of her seclusion, China had, for many centuries, been the single central figure in a world largely of her own creation and in which she was the final dominant force. She had been the planet, the powerful civilized, cultivated empire, surrounded by its circle of admiring satel lite kingdoms. Corea, upon the northeast, the Mongol families on the north, Kashgar and Sam arcand upon the west, Thibet in its Himalayan clouds and snows at the southwest, Burmah and Siam at the south, Annam and Cochin China trail ing off from her southeastern border, and the little kingdom of Liu Chiu lying like a fringe in the China Sea — these formed a system, a world, of which the Chinese Empire was the centre.

They flattered her by that most delicate and subtle of all forms of flattery, imitation. They copied her forms of civilization, to a considerable extent mod eled their governmental systems after hers, borrowed her religions, several of them adopted her written language, gained their knowledge of the arts and literature from her, and all of them de ferred and appealed to her as final authority and sovereign mistress of the Oriental world. She was arbiter of their disputes, whether domestic or inter national. She aided them at times to quell insur rection by force of arms. She held herself and was held as the patron and the superior of all. In this planetary system — to pursue the figure already used — Japan was the erratic and dangerous comet. Probably no other Oriental nation gained such large and practical advantages from China as did Japan.

Her knowledge of art, her written language, much of her literature, at least one of her religious systems, were all borrowed from her great continental neighbor. The very names Japan has given to her two great staple products, tea and silk, show that they were introduced from China. Yet she was always the troublesome neighbor, the one disturbing force in the calm of China's recognized supremacy. Those who imagine that recent troubles between these two nations are exceptional are mistaken. They are but a modern repetition of the history of the past ten centuries. Between the nations named, excepting Japan and China, a definite and well-understood relationship and intercourse was established. Annual embas sies came from the smaller States, at each new year INTRODUCTORY. 7 to Peking, bringing presents and the felicitations of the season to the Emperor.

They were enter tained by him, and on their return home were the bearers of return gifts to the heads of their own nations, which gifts were always as much more valu able than those they brought as the Emperor was greater in power and wealth than their lord. It is only within a very few years that the King of Siam has ceased sending white elephants to the Emperor of China. Some of those sent are still living and kept in the " Elephant Stables" at Peking. And the winter of 1894-95 bids fair to be the first in many decades, if not centuries, in which the King of Corea has failed to dispatch his annual mission to the Chinese capital. Much of the traffic be tween the two nations was carried on by means of these embassies, a large number of merchants being allowed to accompany them, and the goods they sold and bought being, as a matter of privilege, exempt from duties or imposts of any sort.

Whenever the question of succession to the throne became practical in any of these outlying kingdoms, the will of the Emperor of China was taken in case of strife between several claimants. And in some of the States named it had come to be a custom, though never more than a matter of form, for the new incumbent to dispatch a special em bassy to Peking to announce his accession and re quest the gracious recognition of the Emperor. This was peculiarly true of the kings of Corea and Annam. As might oe expected, much confusion and mis understanding has grown up in the exact and intensely practical Western mind regarding this loose-jointed and essentially Oriental relationship. There is no word in any European tongue which will describe the position which China claims to hold vis-a-vis the smaller States named, because the idea is wholly foreign to our notions of international connections.

It has therefore, for lack, partly, of a better term, and partly of accurate knowledge of what the relationship was, been spoken of as a suzerainty. Whatever it is, it is not that. The vital point of the connection of suzerain and vassal is that the latter must pay regular sums of tribute and furnish specified military forces to the former. Neither of these has ever been exacted in a single instance. China has repeatedly sent armed bodies of men to assist her weaker neighbors to suppress internal rebellion, but she has never either asked or received aid of that sort from them. And aside from the inter change of New Year gifts, in which China invariably gives more than she receives, there is no such thing as tribute paid by king to emperor. Vague and indefinite as is this relationship to our minds, it is simple and clear to the Oriental, since it is exactly in the line of his ideas.

He de scribes it as the connection between the elder and the younger brother ; and when the Chinese Gov ernment has had occasion to mention her position — toward Corea, for example — the same word has been used as is employed to express the relative position in the family of two brothers. Keeping in view the fact that, under the patriarchal system, which is not only in vogue in China, but forms the IN TROD UCTOR Y. 9 basis of her entire form of government, the elder brother has a certain authority over and responsibility for the younger, it ceases to be difficult to understand the tie which connects China with her surrounding and less powerful neighbors. It im plies a sort of moral authority or right of control, which is entirely foreign to our ideas, and particu larly objectionable, since it can be exercised or re pudiated at will.

And perhaps in the fact that it can be enforced or evaded, as discretion may indi cate, is to be found the feature of the system which is most pleasing to the Oriental mind. It cannot be a matter of surprise to a thoughtful mind that long centuries of unquestioned suprem acy, of admiration and flattery from her weaker and less civilized neighbors, had developed an in tense national conceit in the Chinese mind, and that she should regard with feelings closely aliied to contempt all remote nations which had not been favored with her example, and hence had not formed themselves upon her model. She had her coterie of humble admirers, and desired no ques tionable additions to the circle. And it must not be forgotten that she had more or less communica tion with India, and had a substantially correct idea of what European intercourse had meant, from an Oriental standpoint, to that great empire of Southern Asia.

Such being the attitude of China upon the general question of establishing friendly relations with the nations of Europe and America, and such her position of calm, yet absurd, superiority, it was peculiarly unfortunate that acquaintance and association with us was forced upon her in what her government and people could with justice regard as a bad cause. This is not the place for a discussion of the ques tion whether any nation has the right to insist, by force of arms, if necessary, that any other nation shall establish and maintain commercial and friendly intercourse with it. That question may be left to recognized authorities on international law. Nor is it intended to express an opinion regarding the right or wrong of the so-called opium war. The attempt is here made not to record opinions, but to portray, with some degree of faithfulness and accuracy, a situation.