China's story in myth, legend, art and annals /

Front matter

Divisioa D S 1 3 S' Section • 8

^tUtam 0. Griffis, 3D. 3D.

CHINA’S STORY, IN MYTH, LEGEND, ART AND AN- NALS. Illustrated. i2mo, $1.25, net. Postage extra.

Preface

Herewith I send forth a little book on China, which I trust may help Asian and American people to understand each other better. History shows that the human nature of the Chinese and of ourselves is the same. I have gone below the surface, letting the Chinese speak for themselves, chiefly through their myths, folk-lore, art, literature, institutions, and annals.

My initial interest in China came through traditions of my grandfather, one of the first, as a merchant navigator, to carry the American flag to Canton, thence bringing home pretty curiosities, which, with my father’s stories of his many voyages, provoked a desire to know more of the mighty hermit nation. I visited many times the great Chinese Museum in my native city, Philadelphia, formed by Nathan Dunn, an American merchant long in China. There were life-sized groups of human figures, male and female, picturing all classes, from emperor and mandarins to cobblers and beggars, representations of shops and crafts, and a varied collection of genuine objects of use and beauty, intelligently selected and brought from the Middle Kingdom. Two Chinese gentlemen, in silk and nankeen dress and bamviii

PREFACE boo hats, explained things. Even then I longed to know more of what the Chinese thought and felt, than of what they made, ate, bought, or sold. Happily, besides browsing in my father’s library and hearing him tell of his experiences in Pacific seas, I had the pleasure, later, of living, as pioneer educator, four years in the Far East. I saw the Chinese also in Japan and California, met and talked with scores, possibly hundreds, of men and women long resident in or coming from nearly every part of China, and with scholars who had spent their lives in original research.

The witness of a single person, or book, concerning so vast and varied a land as China is worth but little. Yet complex as is its hoary civilization, the few leading principles holding its millions together are very simple. Sympathy is the key to interpretation. Every age has had its ruling ideas. China, to the critical student, does not present that picture of monotonous inflexibility which Occidentals — too often proud of their dense ignorance of this great country and civilization — conjure up and apparently delight to dwell on.

Though in the course of years digesting the standard and ephemeral works on China and making some acquaintance with its texts, I have relied mostly for help upon scholars whom I have known personally, at home or in the Orient, such as Messrs. Legge, Williams, Allen, Macgowan, McCartee, Williamson, Martin, Yung Wing,

PREFACE ix

Hart, Mayers, Dennys, Ross, Holcombe, Wilson, Hirth, Pott, Schlegel, de Groot, Cordier, Terrien de la Couperie, and others, or as correspondents, — too many to name, — besides Chinese, Japanese, and Korean native men of learning, who have kindly answered many questions. The limits of this little book permit only an outline of reference, description, and philosophy of the subject. My ambition is to lead my readers to the study of more serious works on China.

The West has as much to learn as to teach, to receive as to give, from the Orient. May this nation with an unexampled past and the United States of America ever abide in peace and friendship.

W. E. G.

Ithaca, N. Y.

Contents

I. Primeval China 1

II. Oriental and Occidental Civilization 11

III. Who and Whence? 22

Chapter I

China is the oldest living nation in the world. Of all in the human family, her people have the longest story. To-day China is like an elderly gentleman, hale and hearty, despite his years, not liking to change and yet ready for new things. The danger is now that he may go too fast.

A wrinkled old man does not look like the rosy infant he once was. Yet “ the child is father of the man.” In going back four thousand years, we must not expect to find anything like the Chinese Empire of to-day. In size, population, manner of life, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, the China of youth will not resemble the mighty nation of the twentieth century. There have been changes in food, dress, style of houses, government, and in religion, philosophy, belief, and opinions. China is neither inscrutable nor in a state of arrested development.

We shall study each age during the many dynasties, so as to distinguish the features of a society based always on land and labor, but ever developing with new inventions. Its great men and women, the novelties and characteristics of the times, the amusements and tastes of each era will be noted. We shall see that those things which we have always associated in our minds with China did not come all at once. The oldest of them were at one time new. Their introduction brought delightful surprise to those who liked and disgust to those who disliked them. In China, as in Europe, new things were always opposed by those who thought them harmful, and were welcomed by those who voted them good.

Chinese civilization, which seems to-day so fixed, and which our people imagine has always been very much the same as it is now, is in reality an affair of long and slow evolution. Not more different in their appearance to-day from their humble beginnings ages ago are the luscious peach, the splendid rose, the race-horse, the latest triumphs of science — yes, even our men and women — than are the Chinese gentleman and lady from their savage originals. The world of experience and the outlook of fortieth-century China are vastly other than those of her cradle days. In the far-off beginning of things Chinese there were no rice, wheat, oats, silk, cotton, tea, paper, porcelain, pagodas, priests, temples, idols, letters, writing, books, jade, ivory, kites, falconry, cormorant fishing, fire-crackers, or coins with a square hole in the middle. Then the men did not wear queues, nor did the women bind their feet to make them small. There was then no Buddhism, and verylittle folk-lore or legend. There was even a time, farther back, when the people knew nothing of fire, woven clothing, houses, medicine, domestic animals, musical instruments, the institution of marriage, or the measurement of time. The natives were savages as wild as were our own far-off ancestors in the caves of the geological ages. Then, instead of being full of tilled fields, teagardens, towns, and villages, China was one vast forest, with swamps tenanted by ferocious wild beasts.

The originals of the fantastic creatures now known only in mythology or fairyland then lived on the earth with the men who were the distant fathers of the Chinese people. Making allowance for what myth-makers and artists have done to change or embellish the reality, some of the so-called “ mythical monsters ” were once as real as are elephants and gorillas. Chinese wonder-tales contain little more of exaggeration than do those of our own forbears. Nor are the beliefs of the common people, in Canton and Mukden, one whit more absurd than those of our own forefathers.

Science and the sure witness of writing, art, architecture, customs, and traditions, when critically studied, show that the Chinese have followed the course of nature. The great has developed out of the little, according to the divine formula of seed, blade, and ear. Nevertheless, most Chinese writers still follow the fashions of an earlier world of thought and ways of reasoning. They tell us that the golden age was in the unmeasured aeons of the past. They place the best time of the world millions of years back, in the interval between the beginnings of heaven and earth and the coming of Fu Hi, whom they honor as their own great civilizer. To them the past is more honorable than the modern age. In it lived holy and semi-divine beings.

Entering Chinese temples, we discern both the first heavenly beings and the initial human makers of society, and are at once struck with the peculiarities of native art. Naturally these first men are Chinese, to all appearances. Their expression, style of hair and headdress, their jewels and ornaments, the fashion of their clothes and boots are not what we should give to our ancestors.

Yet we are like the Chinese. Although we do not dress our Adam and Eve in anything but fig leaves, we make them in their faces look like people we meet on Broadway. The first man and woman would be represented with different color of skin, according as an American, an Indian, or a Mongol should picture them. So in Chinese art there are “ Jewel Lords,” the “ Three Pure Ones,” and Panku, the first man, besides the “ god ” of tides, of war, of agriculture, etc., who have faces, dress, and posture according to Chinese taste and propriety.

In a word, the Chinese do no more than do we with our far-off ancestors, heroes, saints, and mighty folk, whom we idealize as if they lived in London, Boston, or Chicago. When we understand the artist’s method of representing faces, dress, drapery, clouds, trees, mountains, water, bridges, and whatever goes into the making of a picture, whether Chinese or European, we soon learn what ideas he would convey. We make a difference between what is real, or supposed to be real, and what is imaginary. We soon note what the painter or sculptor has added for effect, or to heighten interest, to give local color, or to make what he thinks will suit the taste of his patrons and give us something pretty or popular. Myths and fairy tales usually keep in what is pleasant and leave out what is disagreeable. This is art — the praise of life.

The Chinese have, therefore, little trouble in comprehending their own pictures, nor need we have, when we know the mind and method of the artists in Nanking or Amoy. By patiently studying Oriental art we learn much and enjoy a great deal, beside getting truth and understanding history much more clearly. Such a method, with text, picture, inscription, architecture, games, plays, and customs, is more satisfactory than reading newspapers or accepting what foreigners have guessed at. Such a plan we try to follow in this little book.

In telling the story of the oldest nation, it is not at all necessary to use many Chinese names or words. These sound uncouth to us, because in our minds they have no meaning or association of ideas. Only by turning Kung Fu Tse — that is, the learned Professor Kung — and the name of his pupil Meng Tse into Latin, sdo “ Confucius ” and “Mencius ” sound familiar to our ears. We can tell the story of China better in simple English than by appearing learned in the use of odd terms and many dates.

The Chinese are just as human as we are. They are moved by the same feelings and stirred by the same passions. It is not his curious dress, long queue, shaven forehead, or heelless velvet shoes that make a Chinaman. Nor do bound feet, wobbly slippers with the toes turned up, and loose clothes, that are purposely made so as to hide the marks of sex, make a Chinese woman. Neither will mills and machine-shops, telephones, railways, aeroplanes, automobiles, or steel battleships make any difference in the deviltry or sainthood of China. A native would be still Chinese even if he adopted all our customs, fashions, manners, inventions, and varieties of religion. The real man and woman in the Middle Kingdom can be fully described in English.

In the past these people taught us a great many things, some of them so long ago that we have forgotten how they came to us. The Chinese have probably invented and originated more than any other people with whose history we are acquainted. The civilization of China is her own, while ours is only a new edition, revised and corrected, of former civilizations.

The names of this long-lived empire and grandmother of many nations, historically the oldest State in the world, are numerous and suggestive. Her own people do not know or use the term China, or Chinese, yet this name occurs in the ancient books of India. Isaiah knew of “ the land of Sinim.” Of native names the most common, perhaps, means the Middle Kingdom, or the Central Empire, or the Central Flowery Land — that is, the civilized country surrounded by pupil and vassal nations. All other countries lie on the edge of the map, while China fills the page. Distant nations look like microbes, or parasites. “ All under Heaven ” means the Chinese Empire. It is often seen on bank-notes.

This method of atlas-making is not so very different from our own. We often give a page to one State, or even a county, and then in a similar space we represent all the Chinas. The empire holding one fourth of the human race is squeezed into a space that one could cover with a teacup, while Japan looks like a caterpillar.

Among the names which the natives themselves do not use, but are known in Europe, several forms of this word being found in the Bible, is Seres, meaning silk. Sinae means “ the Chinas,” having the idea of plurality, or of many countries. In Russia, Khitai or Khata became “Cathay,” with which we are all familiar. Tennyson has said, “ Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” By this he meant a long, indefinite period without change.

Another name is Heavenly Dynasty, which some foreigners have translated Celestial Empire, but the odd term “ Celestials ” is not a native idea. The official name, used in Japan, as in China, means the Country Ruled by a Line of Rulers of Heavenly Origin. This notion is not exclusively Chinese. Europeans long believed that czars, emperors, and other rulers enjoy the special grace of the Deity, because of their form of government, teaching this as religious truth. As the Tang Dynasty (a. d. 618-905) was one of the most celebrated in history, and very brilliant, a common name for China is the Hills (or the country) of Tang.

No one can understand China unless he knows the variation, in features and limbs, ideas and speech, mind and body, between the northern and the southern Chinese. They are quite as different as are English and Scotch. Only the southern Chinamen have thus far gone abroad in large numbers. In the south the people call themselves the Men of Tang, while in the north their favorite title is the Men of Han, after the famous dynasty B. c. 206-220 a. D. The people also speak of themselves as the Black-haired Race, or the Sons of Han. Their beloved home, in contrast with the outlying lands, is the Central Flowery Land. For the Country of the Hundred Families they get very homesick when abroad. When in a mood like that suggested by our “ Hail Columbia,” or Fourth of July, the Chinaman talks of the glorious Hia, an ancient dynasty. With loyal spirit, in order to compliment the present or Tsin (Pure) dynasty in Peking, they call their country the Great Pure Kingdom.

There are pious ways of speaking of China from a religious or exalted point of view. The Buddhists, who came from India, call it by the Hindoo name the Land of Dawn. The Mahometans, who entered from the West, speak of the Land of the East. When we want a Latin adjective meaning Chinese, we call the mixed writing common in Japan, Sinico- Japanese, and the peoples which have received Chinese culture the Sinitic nations. A man who is familiar with the Lingua Sinica, or Chinese language, is a sinologue, because learned in the wonderful script that the average American sees only on tea-boxes or in “ Chinatown ” of New York or San Francisco.

Nevertheless, Chinese characters, which speak to the eye, can be just as well used to write English or German as to express native thought. China has no alphabet based on sound, nor a syllabary like the Japanese or Ethiopic. Her writing consists of ideographs, which were once pictures of the objects represented, to which a sound was attached, so that the characters represent things or stand for words in themselves. Speaking to the eye, the Chinese written language is the richest in the world. It means even more in sight than in sound. There are no ideas in science, philosophy, or invention that cannot be expressed in Chinese script.

Let us, then, study China, allowing the Chinese as far as possible to speak for theftiselves.

Chapter II Oriental And Occidental Civilization

In the evolution of Eastern and Western civilization there is a notable difference. Chinese society is like a mighty boulder. From its unknown rock-bed, after separation and movement in rolling down the stream of ages of experience, it took long ago the shape which it still retains.

In contrast, the younger European civilization is more like a piece of conglomerate rock, in which many diverse elements have been fused, or forced by pressure into something like unity. The Chinese have had many forms of government and vast social, industrial, religious, and political experience. China is the old man among nations, and we younger ones may well apply our own proverb concerning fools, and about what young men think and old men know.

China’s longevity explains why the average Chinaman is not interested in novelties. He is not curious to know about other kinds of men and countries. He refuses to accept or be excited by what he hears. His many and long trials of things good and bad make him cautious. He does not argue concerning cause and effect in quite the way we do. He does not enjoy answering the kind of queries that we put to him. They seem to him to be jokes or conundrums. To the ordinary native, most questions are settled. What he prefers or follows to-day is according to the wisdom of ages. His etiquette represents the sum total of all past history. It does not seem wise to him to change the old methods, or to introduce new fashions.

Our Chinese friend, while right in his reasoning, is likely to lose much, if, living in the present age of the world, he does not become more social and avail himself of the resources and advantages possessed by his fellows of other nations.

In mental culture, he has heretofore thought that Confucius was the one perfect man, teaching and living flawless truth, and that therefore it was waste time, if not impiety, to look into the literature of other nations. Since also the rules for the conduct of life and the precedents followed to-day were ordained ages ago by men faultlessly wise, it seems absurd even to talk about improvement or reform. This also to him savors of impiety.

On the other hand, this excessive reverence for the past is largely the cause of so much superstition among the common people. It explains their settled belief in such absurdities as witchcraft and gods, imps and demons of all sorts, dragons, and foxes that become pretty women. There is a vast menagerie of mythical animals that have no existence out of Chinese noddles. That mass of superstitious nonsense, both silly and dangerous, called

Feng Shuey, which means “ wind and water,” is a sort of rude popular science. For a long time it hindered the introduction of railways and telegraphs, besides being opposed to reality and pure religion.

This state of mind also accounts for the fact that the government has never really tolerated any doctrines that seem to be contrary to the ancient customs, which in themselves mean morals. Any new teaching that would change the ways of the people is branded as sacrilege. The Chinese religion is probably the only one in the world spontaneously developed on the soil of the people who now hold the land on which it originated. It is the only purely native religion among the great ones of earth.

Yet many religions have entered the Central Empire, — Shamanism or spiritism from the North ; Buddhism from India ; Islam from Arabia ; Hebraism from Babylon, and Christianity from the West. Ancient and medieval missionaries from Palestine, Egypt, and Persia, good priests from Rome in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, earnest men and women from Protestant countries since A. d. 1800, and from Russia in recent years, have come to China. Thus the three modern forms of the teachings of Jesus — Greek, Roman, and Reformed — have begun to influence Chinese thought. The government never persecuted, however, until it seemed that the social system of China was in danger, and the morals, that is, the ritual and national habits of the people, were being altered.

So long as even the wisest of the Chinese lived within their own boundaries, dwelling in one world of fixed ide^,s, it was not possible for them even to conceive of another state of society as good as their own. They could not understand the merits of foreign men and things, even when these were brought to them. Such outlandish novelties were as strange to them as Chinese chopsticks and “ joss ” houses are to us, — even though joss is but our own misspelled Latin word Deus, or God.

To the Chinese such things as telescopes, microscopes, steam engines, and the various machines of war and peace, which require the forces of gunpowder, modern chemicals, steam, or electricity to operate them, seemed only oddities or toys for amusement. No practical good could be discerned in these importations of “the outside barbarians.” The men of the West were considered good blacksmiths or cunning mechanics, but not necessarily refined persons, with politeness, culture, religion, or morals. It was necessary that Chinese gentlemen should go abroad and see humanity, in all its phases, before even the surface of thought could be ruffled or even a suggestion of change be made. It was still more important that young people, more susceptible and sensitive, should learn about the new kind of world and man outside of China. After numbers of them had absorbed W estern culture, it was possible that an interior movement looking to reform should take place.

At last it seems that this time has come. The seed planted by American and European teachers long ago, the persistent work of missionaries on the soil, and the education of Chinese lads and girls beyond sea have borne fruit. The introduction of new ideas by means of trade and commerce and the distribution of printed matter, the wonders of science, the commercial assault, the invasion of the steam engine, the startling events of war, and the near presence of J apan, “ a neighbor-disturbing nation,” now the most eager pupil of the Anglo- Saxon peoples, have roused China to new life. Now the rate of movement seems almost dangerously rapid.

There is hope for the Central Empire, because it is based on the family. The unit of Chinese society is not the individual, but the household, the result of forty centuries of harmony. The civilization of the Orient is communal, that of the Occident is individual. Filial piety is the cornerstone of the nation, and the promise attached to the commandment, “ Honor thy father and thy mother,” is as valid for the Chinese people who still own their native soil as for landless Israel.

The Japanese have already reversed the general opinion of the W estern world concerning the capabilities of dark-skinned peoples. The battle on the Yalu with the Russians, in 1904, sounded the note of Rope to all Asia. Their victory made obsolete hundreds of books written in disparagement of Asiatics.

China seems destined to do a slower but vastly greater work even than Japan. Mother of all civilization east of the Ganges, the world’s debt to her, already incalculable, is to be manifold greater. China will conquer every conqueror that attempts her conquest. The Chinese love liberty, equality, and fraternity. If treated honorably and with righteousness, they will enrich the world with their gifts, graces, and inheritances. The Middle Kingdom has for ages been the source of blessings to surrounding nations. A reformed China will be a blessing to the whole race.

There are great, deep currents of sympathy and unity between the Orient and the Occident, beneath the apparent and even sometimes stormy differences on the surface. Chinese human nature in its depths is exactly like human nature everywhere, — including our own variety. Mythology, poetry, literature, and all the old and pre-ancient products of mind show this, as well as do the responses of the Chinese mind to new visions and messages containing truth, which knows no climate, time, or space, and outgrows all names and labels. All this argues favorably for a reformed China.

Apart from the various religions which the Chinese have accepted, let us take an illustration from popular art.

China is the Land of the Dragon and bears this symbol of power on her yellow flag. Yet all over the earth, among primitive peoples, the dragon has been the supreme symbol of living, concrete force. The Chinese dragon in all its varieties is well worthy of study. On sculpture, painting, dress, flag, it is almost omnipresent, being chief of the four supernatural animals. It is so much like the geological creatures of a world that has passed away, that we are forced to believe that it is but the development, in fancy, of an actual organism once upon the earth. There are nine or ten varieties of this imaginary creature that carries in his structure a cyclopedia of all the forces of life, with their powers of motion and of destruction. Of one, for example, it is written : “ When earth is piled up in mountains, wind and rain arise, but when water comes together into streams, the Kiao dragon comes into being.”

Chief of all scaly reptiles, the dragon wields the power of transformation. It can render itself visible and invisible at pleasure. It lives partly in the waters of the earth and partly in the waters above the earth, in the spring ascending to the clouds, in the autumn burying itself in the watery depths. At will it reduces itself to the size of a silkworm, or it is swollen until it fills the space of heaven and earth. It can rise into the clouds or sink into the ocean deeps. The watery principle of the atmosphere, mist, cloud, dew, rain, etc., is particularly associated with one dragon, but another of different nature controls the earth’s surface.

In art it is not usual to represent the dragon as completely visible, but to hide parts of his body or limbs in cloud or mist, to suggest rather than fully to portray.

The dragon can climb, fly, crawl, and run. It has tooth, claw, wing, tail, and every equipment belonging to beast, bird, fish, or reptile. Of the four sorts of principal dragons, the celestial variety guards the mansions of the gods and supports them so that they do not fall. The spiritual dragon causes winds to blow and produces rain for the benefit of mankind. The dragon of earth marks out the courses of rivers and streams. There is a bob-tailed dragon that sports in the whirlwind and is credited with special power in destroying houses and cities.

The dragon is associated with the East, with springtime, and with the eastern quarter of the heavens. In the popular belief, there are four dragon kings, each having dominion over one of the four seas which form the border of the habitable earth. The palaces in which these kings live have striking names. There is also a dragon which does not mount up to heaven, and another without horns. The name of the Riu Kiu (Loo Choo) Islands, Sleeping Dragon, suggests one that has not yet risen to the skies. Most honorable of all is the yellow dragon. That which has five claws can be used only by the emperor or on imperial property.

It is not wonderful that such a divinely endowed creature, which holds within himself all the powers known to life of any sort, should occupy a great place in Chinese art and story. The dragon is the symbol not only of power, but of guardianship. It is often seen in carving, sculpture, and painting, on gateways, posts, and temple ornaments. At wells, fountains, eaves, conduits, in gardens and other places where water spouts, flows, or is stored up, we may expect to meet with the stone, bronze, or iron dragon represented in various forms, while from paper, porcelain, and in pictorial art he greets us continually.

In philosophy the dragon is the emblem of power manifesting itself. In popular notion the dragon is held responsible for a great deal that we should express by other symbols or in different forms of speech. In the earlier world of thought, in the infancy of the race, before there were scales, measures, laboratories, written figures, or mathematics, all great manifestations of power and strange events, as well as human heroes, were described in fairy tales and mythology. Only in this way was explanation possible. Thus a rude sort of science, outside of the books, grows up. Little children who cannot know anything about the invisible laws of the universe, or understand machinery or its motive power, have things wonderful explained to them by means of things living, that is, of animals who talk, and of men and women who can change themselves, or their friends or enemies, into something else, and one thing into another. In the myths the heroes and heroines can overcome all obstacles by magic. Now to people who have never seen and cannot know anything about such wonders as locomotives, telegraphs, steam engines, photographs, and a thousand other strange inventions of an age of science, explanations must be made in the language and forms of thought with which they are acquainted.