The attaché at Peking

Preface

These letters were written many years ago, but in China, and especially at Peking, the old order changes slowly, and they are at any rate a faithful record of the life which was led by those whose duties lay, as the Chinese say, " within the walls." They profess no more than that. Those who wish to learn more about China and Chinese manners must go to that monumental work of the late Dr. Wells Williams, TAe Middle Kingdom, to Sir John Davies's fascinating book. The Chinese, or to Professor Douglas's book on Chinese society.

It will occur to many people to ask how it comes that we should have lived for so many years peacefully, travelling through the country unarmed, in the midst of a people capable of vi THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

the atrocities which have recently taken place. China is of all countries the land of contradiction and of paradox. But I think that those who read these letters will see that though, for obvious reasons, they were written in a spirit of optimism, there was an undercurrent of feeling that at any moment things might become very different. For instance, if the insurrection in Shantung had not been quelled, and the rebels had marched upon Peking, which was undoubtedly part of their programme, the tragedy of 1900 might, and probably would, have been anticipated in 1865. Moreover, although we were riding at anchor in smooth water, there were from time to time uncomfortable signs of disturbance below. I remember how on more than one occasion we were warned that on such and such a day there would be a massacre of Europeans for the old reason, the murder of babies whose eyes were used for purposes of photography. These stories were put about by intriguing mandarins, who succeeded in deceiving even some of the more ignorant of

PREFACE vii

their own class. The famous General Tseng Kwo Fan (father of the Marquis Tseng, who was afterwards minister in London) was talking one day with an English doctor on the subject of this babies'-eyes fraud, when suddenly he said, '* It is no use your attempting to deny it, for I have here some of the dried specimens," and he pulled out a packet of those gelatine capsules which are used for covering castor oil and other nauseous drugs ! We paid little heed to these warnings, though, as recent events have proved, there was perhaps more in them than we supposed. We were sitting on a volcano, for experience has often shown how swiftly this seemingly mild and almost childlike people can be lashed into a fury like that of the flaming legions of hell. One thing we knew for certain. If a rising should take place, we were in a death-trap from which there could be no escape. Those grim and frowning gates once shut, rescue was impossible, for what could a mere handful of men — in those days there were but some seventy or eighty Europeans, all told, in Peking — avail viii THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

against the seething mob of enraged devils ? When years afterwards, in 1879, there came the horror of Sir Louis Cavagnari's murder, with all his company, at Cabul, I could but think how much the position of the Legations at Peking resembled his.

It is the fashion to belaud Japan for the spirit of progress which she has shown, at the expense of China, which remains wedded to old ways and worn-out customs. Much as ' we may admire the marvellous headway which Japan has made, this is hardly quite fair. It must be remembered that Japan has never originated anything. All that she knew, up "to the time of her first real intercourse with foreigners forty years ago, she owed to China. Buddhism, which replaced and in some sort throve hand- in- hand with the old ancestor worship, the Shinto, reading and writing, every art and accomplishment, from music and dancing down to the game of football, all filtered through Corea from China to Japan, and the dates of their advent are solemnly recorded as important facts in the O Dai Ichi Ran.

PREFACE IX

''A Glance at the Generation of the Kings," the native history. Borrowers from the beginning of time, it mattered little to the Japanese whether they borrowed once more or once less, and so when they saw that if they wished to hold a place among the nations their only chance was to get rid of ancient Chinese forms and adopt the civilisation of the West, they did not hesitate — they took a leap into the light and left the thirteenth for the nineteenth century. To hear some enthusiasts talk one would almost be led to believe that the Japanese invented the nineteenth century. They found it ready made to their hand. It was impossible to go through the intermediate centuries. They had to skip, and they did it with a will. The transformation scene was as sudden as it was complete. But it cost the Japanese no sacrifice of national pride. What they gave up was none of their own invention.

The Chinese, on the other hand, have an autochthon civilisation of which they are justly proud. Five hundred years before Christ

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came into the world — when the inhabitants of these islands were hopeless savages clad in skins, or stained with woad according to the seasons, if the old stories be true — Confucius was teaching respect for customs which were already ancient. Since his day there have been thirteen changes of capital and no fewer than thirty dynasties, but even when Tartar^ emperors have sat upon the Dragon Throne they have been compelled to follow the rules of the Chinese, and civilisation has remained what it was ** under the shadow" of the great Teacher. No wonder that the son of Han thinks a good many times before he will scatter his past to the four winds of heaven, as the Japanese did without a sigh !

In one sense the mandarins have been wiser in their generation than the men who made the Japanese revolution of 1868. These were the daimios, such men as Satsuma, Tosa, Choshiu,

1 There have been five Tartar dynasties — the Liao, A.D. 907-1125 ; the Western Liao, a.d. 1125-1168 ; the Chin, which came to an end in A.D. 1234 ; the Ylian, ending a.d. 1341, and the Ching, or present dynasty, which began in a.d. 1627. (I have not taken into account some overlappings of reigns which would need long explanation. )

PREFACE xi

and their karos (elders or councillors), who thinking to overthrow the Tycoon and his rule, were blind to the fact that in so doing they were working their own downfall as well as his. For they, no less than he, were the embodiment of the feudal system. Where are they now ? Ou sont les neiges d'antan? They have vanished, and their places are filled by a mushroom growth of dukes, marquises, counts, viscounts, and barons. For Japan has stopped short at nothing ; not content with adopting the cocked hat, which as we all know is the very marrow of all good government, giving the entrde to the comity of nations, she has actually invented a full and complete peerage. Far more astute is the mandarin. Such wily anachronisms as Li Hung Chang and his compeers know full well that under the sun of Western civilisation they must melt away, and it is no matter for surprise that they die hard. All the myriads of officials, from the highest to the lowest, swarming like ants over that vast empire, are alive to the fact that their very existence depends on keeping up a constant animosity against the Hung Kwei

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Tzu, the red devils. That has always appeared to me as the keynote of the situation.

Various causes are commonly assigned for the fanaticism against foreigners, which has from time to time broken out with fatal consequences in different parts of China. Some blame missionary enterprise ; some commerce in general ; others the opium trade in particular. My belief is that it is due to neither of these in itself, but to the dread of reform which haunts the official mind, and which in the end must win its way.

The Chinese are not by nature a people of strong religious convictions, nor have they any strong religious antipathies. If it were otherwise, how is it that a colony of Jews ^ has dwelt among them unmolested for two thousand years, and still remains, dwindling in numbers, it is

^ They are supposed by Mr. Finn *' to have belonged to the restoration from Chaldea, as they had portions of Malachi and Zechariah, adopted the era of Seleucus, and had many rabbinical customs." They were found, by two native Christians sent by Bishop Smith to inquire into their present condition, to be in abject poverty, ignorance, and dejection. They knew no Hebrew, but had been instructed in copying the letters of Holy Writ. — Wells Williams, Middle Kingdom^ ii. 272.

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true, at Kai Feng in the province of Ho Nan? How is it that the Mohammedans have flourished exceedingly in certain provinces, even to becoming a danger to the empire ? On the walls of the Imperial palace at Peking there is a pavilion richly decorated with Arabic inscriptions from the Koran in honour of a Mohammedan lady who was a wife, or favourite, of one of the emperors. This does not look like persecution for religion's sake. And, more than these, Buddhism? Ever since the Emperor Ming Ti dreamt a dream, nearly nineteen centuries ago, and sent for Buddhist books and images to China, Buddhism has been the popular religion, as Confucianism is the popular school of moral philosophy. Tao-ism, the native religion of Lao Tsu, cannot hold its own with it. Troublous days, indeed, it has gone through at various times, but it has outlived them, and now, to quote Dr. Morrison, '' Buddhism in China is decried by the learned, laughed at by the profligate, yet followed by all." (See further Wells Williams, zi^ supra.)

Why, then, this tolerance in certain cases.

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side by side with the cruellest intolerance where Christianity is concerned ? If it is not religious conviction, it must be political antipathy. And there is the rub. The bitter hatred of Christianity is not inborn in the people, who have in many instances, indeed, shown a sort of limp willingness, not altogether unconnected with better wages, to embrace its tenets ; but the hostility is bred, fostered, and fomented by the mandarins to whom it means the end of their rule. Under a Christian dispensation the whole tottering fabric of their power must inevitably fall to the ground. The poor Jews were to them a negligible quantity. The Mohammedan creed, the sacred book of which may not be translated, presents for that reason but small terrors to the lettered class, though we hear of an old prophecy to the effect that there will be a great Mohammedan revolution, and that a Hui-Hui (Mohammedan) dynasty shall rule over China. Buddhism, on the other hand, except in Tibet, aims at no temporal power, and even there the Chinese Emperor is the Suzerain. But Christianity is a very real terror, to be put

PREFACE

XV down at any cost, however bloody. And yet, strange to say, there was a time when it seemed as if it were destined to conquer everything and to become the state reHgion. Internal dissensions and ambitions amongst its sects alone stopped its course.

The history of the early missions to China is full of interest ; it is not possible, however, to do more than glance at it here. Putting on one side the dim legend that St. Thomas, the doubting apostle, was the first to preach the Gospel to the Chinese, there is no doubt that missionaries did visit them in very remote ages. It was two Nestorian monks who carried the first Eastern silkworms' eggs to Justinian in the sixth century (see my Ba7nboo Garden, pp. 31-33). It is strange at the present time to read how at the end of the thirteenth century John of Monte Corvino was sent by Pope Nicholas the Fourth to the court of Kublai Khan at Kambaluk (the ancient name of Peking) ; how he was kindly entreated there, building a church "which had a steeple and belfry, with three bells that were rung every hour to summon the new converts xvi THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

to prayer" ; how he baptized nearly six thousand persons during that time, "and bought one hundred and fifty children, whom he instructed in Greek and Latin, composing for them several devotional books." Clement the Fifth made him an archbishop, and sent him seven suffragan bishops. He died full of years in 1328, " having converted more than thirty thousand infidels." All Kambaluk is said to have mourned for him, Christians and heathen rending their garments at his funeral, and his tomb became the resort of pious pilgrims. This account, which will be found given at length in the third volume of the Chinese Repository, is probably not a little exaggerated ; but even discounting it largely, it is very striking as an evidence of devotion on the one side and toleration on the other. " It is now twelve years," he wrote, ''since I have heard any news of the west. I am become old and gray - headed, but it is rather through labours and tribulations than through age, for I am only fifty-eight years old. I have learned the Tartar language and literature, into which I have translated the whole New Testament

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and the Psalms of David, and have caused them to be transcribed with the utmost care. I write and read and preach openly and freely the testimony of the law of God." Until the year 1368, when the Yuan or Tartar dynasty was driven out by the Chinese, and the Ming Emperors ruled first at Nanking and afterwards at Peking, Dr. Williams says " there is no reasonable doubt that the greater part of Central Asia and Northern China was the scene of many flourishing Christian communities." From that time forth, during upwards of two hundred years, they dwindled away so that nothing more was heard of them.

It was at the end of the sixteenth century that the Jesuits first began to exercise an influence which was very nearly overwhelming all rivalry in China. Saint Francois Xavier, the gospeller of India and Japan, had marked China as the special field of his future labours, but he died of fever at the island of Shang Chuen, near Macao, being only forty-six years old at the time of his death — a wonderful man, truly ! But his work was destined to fall into xviii THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

hands no less competent for the task than his own.

Matteo Ricci, the famous Jesuit father, was born at Macerata, in the Papal States, in 1552. At the age of nineteen he was sent to Rome to study law, which career he quickly abandoned, to his father's great displeasure, to enter the Society of Jesus. Here he came under the orders of Father Valignani, the Inspector- General of Eastern Missions, with whom, before he had even finished his noviciate, he went to India, continuing his studies at Goa, where he became professor of philosophy. In 1580 he followed Father Ruggiero to Macao, where the two priests gave themselves up to the study of the Chinese language. They availed themselves of the trading privileges of the Portuguese to visit Canton, and some two years later, not without encountering some difficulties and disappointments, they obtained the permission of the Viceroy of Kwang Tung to build a house at Shao Ching Fu, and a church. Ricci soon saw that a reputation for learning was then, as now, the only pass-

PREFACE xix

port to high consideration among the lettered classes. He published a map of China and a catechism, in which he set forth the moral teaching of Christianity, excluding carefully all that pertains to the doctrines of revealed religion. He had his reward, for many learned men came to consult him, and his fame spread far and wide. For some years the Jesuit fathers adopted the garments of Buddhist priests, but finding that these were treated with anything but respect, they, upon the advice of Father Valignani, dropped the yellow robes and assumed the garb of the men of letters, whom above all it was their wise endeavour to conciliate. Ricci paid three visits to Nanking, but on the second occasion he was expelled, and forced to go to Nanchang, where he established a school and published two treatises, the Art of Memory and a Dialogue on Friendship. This last work was a marvellous success, for it became famous not only '' for the loftiness of its thoughts, but even for the purity of its style," a feat perhaps unique in a country where literary style is so much thought of, and so

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difficult to attain, even by native scholars. In the year 1600 he achieved his ambition of going to Peking charged with presents for the Emperor Wan Li from the Portuguese at Macao. But the mission was not accomplished without difficulty. A eunuch of the court had offered himself as his escort, and with him Ricci set out in a native junk. But the presents of which he was the bearer had aroused the cupidity of the eunuch, who contrived to imprison Ricci and his companion Pantoja at Tientsing for six months. Happily the affair came to the ears of the Emperor, who ordered him to be released and brought to Peking, where he was kindly received by Wan Li, who assigned him a house and salary. Ricci soon made many friends and converts, of whom one named Su helped him in the translation of Euclid. His secret of success was being all things to all men, and he contrived so to edit Christianity as to make it fit in with existing manners and customs, and to give offence to none. Among other things he allowed the rites of ancestral worship to be continued.

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affectinor to consider them as beinof of a civil and not of a religious character. In short, he followed the Buddhist system of incorporating, not condemning, those articles of native faith to have fought against v^hich v^ould have been fatal to his schemes. Father Ricci died in 1610, being fifty -eight years of age. If, on account of the laxity of his theological concessions, he cannot be called a great Christian missionary, he was at any rate a great conciliator, and it was no fault of his that the seed which he successfully sowed did not bring forth good fruit. He was possessed of rare talents, his learning was conspicuous in many branches, and his winning charm of manner commended him to the favour of high and low. He was perhaps the only European who ever acquired the Chinese literary style to such a degree as to call forth the admiration of native critics. To such an extent was this recognised, that about 150 years after his death his treatise on The True Doctrine of God, revised by a minister of state named Sin, was included in the collection of the best Chinese works xxii THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

made by the order of the Emperor Chien Lung.

To follow a man so various and so plastic as Ricci was no easy task ; but the Society of Jesus has never been wanting in men possessed at any rate of the latter quality, and Father Longobardi proved an efficient successor, though he did not make history. But there were troubles in store for the missionaries. Their successes aroused the jealousies of courtiers and officials, whose intrigues led to the publication of an edict banishing the Christian teachers. This decree, however, was never carried into effect. They had made many converts who protected them, and foremost among these were Sii (Ricci's special friend) and his daughter, christened under the name of Candida. These two Chinese converts were so famous for their virtues and so beloved for their charity, that they are actually worshipped to this day by the people at Shanghai, and the Roman Catholic Mission at Sii Chia Wei, near that city, occupies the property once held by the Christian Sii. Can-

PREFACE xxiii

dida was indeed a saintly woman. She built no fewer than thirty-nine churches ; she published upwards of one hundred books ; she established a foundling hospital for babies whom, then as now, their unnatural parents were in the habit of abandoning ; and she employed the blind improvisatori of the streets to substitute Gospel stories for their obscenities and inanities. The Emperor himself conferred upon her the title of " The Virtuous Woman," and sent her a robe and headgear embroidered with pearls, which she stripped off to further her religious works with their price.

The beginning of the seventeenth century was a time of internal trouble and revolution in China. The old Chinese dynasty of the Mings was about to be replaced by the present Tartar dynasty, the Ching. That the Jesuits had become a real power in the land is proved by the fact that the claimant to the Ming throne was supported by the missionaries, his troops being led by two native Christian generals, Kiu who was called Thomas, and Chin who was baptized Luke. His mother.

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wife, and son were christened as Helena, Maria, and Constantine, and Helena went so far as to write to Pope Alexander VH. '* expressing her attachment to the cause of Christianity, and wishing to put the country, through him, under the protection of God " ! (Wells Williams).

The Jesuits held a high position in the early days of the Tartar rule. This was due to the pre-eminent abilities of their leader, Johann Adam Schall, a man of good family, native of Cologne. This great priest was born in a.d. 1 59 1, and entered the Society of Jesus at Rome in 1611. There he became a student of theology and mathematics, and left for China in 1622. His great learning won for him such renown that he was sent for by the Emperor in 1631, installed at Peking as court astronomer, and charged with the revision of the Chinese calendar. Needless to say this position was not won without exciting great jealousy among the native men of science, who attacked him fiercely, both openly and in secret. But his correct calculation of an eclipse, as to

PREFACE XXV

which they were hopelessly wrong, defeated all their intriorues, and he was more than ever in favour with the Emperor Chung Ch eng (the last of the Mings), who, in dread of the Tartars, caused him, much against his will, to start a cannon foundry, rewarding him with a pompous autograph inscription in praise of his science and virtue. When at last the Tartars became masters of Peking, Schall, though in continual danger himself, was able to give effectual protection to the Christian converts. It cannot fail to strike us with amazement that, like the Vicar of Bray, when matters settled down, Schall should have enjoyed even more favour under the Tartar Emperor Shun Chih than he had done under his Ming predecessor ; and when, at that sovereign's death in 1662, he actually was holding the post of tutor to the young Emperor Kang Hsi, who became one of the most famous monarchs that ever ruled in China, it seemed as if nothing could arrest the progress of Jesuit influence.

But the supreme power was for a time in the hands of four regents who were opposed to xxvi THE ATTACHE AT PEKING

the Christians, and a memorial was presented to court denouncing the new sect as dangerous to the state. The Dominicans and Franciscans, of whom I shall speak presently, had, during a quarter of a century and more, been working in opposition to the Jesuits, and the internal dissensions of the sects gave their enemies an opportunity of which they were not slow to avail themselves. The memorial, a remarkable document, calls attention to the strife between the orders as to the worship of Tien (Heaven) and Shang Ti (God), which dissensions as to the principle of doctrine show the true aspirations of the rival sects to be political ; and in this connection the memorialists call attention to the schisms and civil war to which Christianity gave rise in Japan, evils which could not fail to occur sooner or later in China if the missionaries were allowed to remain there. The regents, nothing loth, yielded to the wishes of the memorialists, and in 1665 the Christian teachers were proscribed as seducers of the people, leading them into a false path. Father Schall died miserably at

PREFACE xxvu the age of seventy-eight, after having been for thirty -seven years the trusted and favoured servant of five emperors. His converts were degraded, and his colleagues imprisoned or banished.

Among those who were held in chains, beaten, and subjected to every indignity, was Father Verbiest, a native of Flanders, partly educated at Seville, the third of the great triad of priests who, by their talents, their learning, and their personal charm, so nearly succeeded in turning the current of Chinese history. For six long years who shall say what he suffered ? Six years of the horrors of a Chinese prison ! At last, however, the minority of the Emperor King Hsi came to an end. He had not forgotten the good teaching of Father Schall, and one of his earliest acts, on assuming the power in 1 67 1, was to release the priests, with Father Verbiest at their head. Kang Hsi was not a Christian ; but though he forbade his subjects to follow the new teaching, he was sufficiently liberal to put an end to persecution, and to recognise the value of Western learning.

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There is a myth to the effect that an earthquake was the immediate cause of the release, but the truth is that the Emperor wanted Verbiest's astronomical science to set straight the crooked inventions of the native professors. The father was appointed court astronomer and chief mathematician. He was also ordered, as Schall had been, to cast cannon, which, with much pomp and ceremony, robed as for mass, he blessed, in the presence of the court, sprinkling them with holy water, and giving to each the name of a female saint which he had himself drawn on the breech. This brought him a letter from Pope Innocent XL, praising him for having so wisely brought the profane sciences into play for the salvation of Chinese souls. To Father Verbiest are due the wonderful mathematical instruments of bronze, beautiful as works of art, which are still one of the sights of Peking. They are in the Observatory at the southern corner of the Tartar city, where they remain as the last witnesses of the Jesuit greatness. Verbiest died in 1688, and the Emperor himself composed

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the funeral oration, which was read with great pomp before his coffin. No three men ever succeeded in obtaining the favour of the Chinese court so signally as the three Jesuit fathers, Ricci, Schall, and Verbiest. When Father Verbiest died there was no man with a sufficiently commanding intellect to fill his place and continue his work.

It is conceivable that if they had not been thwarted by the Dominicans and the Franciscans, the Jesuits might have succeeded in their ambition even to the extent of Christianising China. But those two sects effectually put a stop to the process of conversion. The great bone of contention was the so-called worship of ancestors and of Confucius. Another point was the translation of the name of God by Tien, literally Heaven, and Shang Ti, for which there is indeed no other rendering. This last controversy, which has in it much that is childish, and mere splitting of hairs, is not worth discussing. The great point was to render the Sacred Name by some term that should be intelligible to the Chinese mind. Both seemed

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to fulfil that condition. As regards the former question, we have seen how Father Ricci dealt with it. He saw the wisdom of not repelling the Chinese by at once condemning a custom to which they were so wedded that any attempt to do away with it would evidently alienate them altogether, so he, a true Jesuit, effected a clever compromise, treating the rites in honour of ancestors and of Confucius as civil and not as religious ceremonies. It always has seemed to me that he acted wisely, for in no other way could he have hoped to obtain any hearing. By degrees the Christianised Chinese might have been weaned from their old practices, and Christianity in all its purity have been made a dominant religion. This, however, is mere speculation.

When the Dominicans and Franciscans became aware of the successes of the Jesuits, they too resolved to have their share in the work, and they promptly sent out missions to China on their own account. But their school lacked the liberality and plastic nature of the Jesuits. They resolutely refused any com-

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promise. They accused the Jesuits of countenancing idolatry and heathen practices, and one Morales, a Spanish Dominican, sent home a report to the Propaganda to that effect. This produced a decree from Pope Innocent the Tenth, in which the conduct of the Jesuits was censured and their doctrine condemned in 1645. It took the Jesuits eleven years to procure from Pope Alexander VII. another Bull, not indeed contradicting that of Pope Innocent, but one which might be so read as to give them a free hand. But the battle was not over, for in 1693 Bishop Maigrot, Vicar Apostolic in China, declared in the face of the Inquisition and the Pope that Tien meant the material heaven, and not God, and that the worship of ancestors was idolatrous. In this difficulty it is not a little strange to find that the Jesuits appealed to the Emperor King Hsi to show them the way out. They addressed him in a memorial which is quoted at length by Wells Williams from the Life of St. Martin, and which is so curious that I am tempted to transcribe it, the more so as it xxxli THE ATTACHE AT PEKING