The Chinese people; a handbook on China ..

Front matter

tVie f'lwologwa/

PRINCETON, N. J.

Purchased by the Hamill Missionary Fund.

Preface

This Handbook is intended to furnish students — particularly students of Foreign Missions — with a repertory of information on things Chinese, and to form an introduction to wider study. The bibliographical lists appended to the volume will provide guidance to those readers who wish to extend further their researches into any of the subjects here discussed.

The materials supplied in the following chapters have been collected and arranged from various sources, supplemented by the writer’s own information and reflections, which are based on the knowledge and experience gained during his residence in Mid-China, as a missionary of the Church Missionary Society, since

And here the writer wishes to record his sense of the great advantage which would have accrued had he been able, in compiling this Handbook, to avail himself of the wide and deep scholarship and the yet longer experience of his brother, the late Bishop G. E. Moule, of Mid-China, his exemplar and leader for half a century, to whose memory he dedicates the book. Yet he has not been wholly deprived of that source of information, for he has received invaluable help from the Bishop’s youngest son, the Rev. A. C. Moule, who possesses the advantages not only of his birth in China and of a childhood spent

VI

PREFACE in a Chinese home (conveying a sense of the very atmosphere and genius of the land), but also of some years residence in North China as a missionary of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Mr. Moule has contributed to the writer’s resources digests of the writings of some eminent modern Chinese scholars, and has supplied notes embodying the results of his own studies and observations.

Special thanks are due to Monsieur A. Vissidre, Professor in L’Pcole sp^ciale des langues orientales vivantes at Paris, who has very kindly revised the bibliography and added a note on Chinese reading, to which his wide experience as a student and teacher of Chinese must give exceptional value. It is not the intention of the bibliography to include the names of untranslated Chinese books, although, of course, for those who can read them, Chinese books are incomparably the best authorities for many of the subjects dealt with in the following chapters, or to name books for use in the study of the Chinese language. There are, however (if this little book should fall into the hands of any who are learning Chinese), many books which will be found of more or less assistance in learning the spoken language, and some which deal with reading and writing, such as those by Bailer, Bullock, Hillier, Hirth, Mateer, Morgan, Pr^mare, Vissiere, Wade, Zottoli, and several others. Dr. Legge once said that he had been learning to read Chinese for fifty-seven years, and was learning still. But while that must continue to be the experience of all who persevere so long, it is hoped that the note which

PREFACE vii

M. Vissidre has written will lead many beginners to find Chinese reading, as Dr. Legge assuredly found it, a possible and delightful task in far less time than fifty-seven months.

Thanks are due also to the writer’s sons for very great help in copying his manuscript and revising the proofs ; to his sister-in-law, Mrs. H. J. Moule, for the loan of the original of Plate IV. ; to the Trustees of the British Museum for permission to reproduce paintings, etc., in their collections for Plates I., VI., VII., IX., X., XIV. and XVI. ; and to Mr. Laurence Binyon for advice in connection with the same ; to M. Ed. Chavannes for leave to produce Plate II. ; and, lastly, to Mr. L. C. Hopkins for his great courtesy in having the photograph for Plate VIII. specially taken from a specimen in his famous collection of ancient inscribed bones.

It only remains to add that Chinese names and words are spelt throughout the book in what is known as Wade’s system, excepting only names of places which have acquired a well-established English form in some other system, such as Pekin, Tientsin, Hankow, Soochow, Foochow, Canton, Hongkong, and Fukien, Kiangsi, Chekiang, etc., which the reader might fail to recognise if they appeared as Pei-ching, T’ien-ching, Han-k’ou, Su-chou, Fu-chou, Kuang-chou, Hsiangchiang, and Fu-chien, Chiang-hsi, Che-chiang, etc The latter spellings, however, are used in the maps recently published by the Ordnance Survey Department in London and in the map which is inserted at the end of this volume.

A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE PRONUNCIATION OF CHINESE WORDS AND NAMES.

a as a in father.

e as e in men (or as a in man), i as e in her (slightly shorter before n). ei as ei in feign, i as i in marine.

ih hke the first vowel in sugar, shghtly prolonged ; or French eu.

0 as o in for.

ou as ou in though.

M as M in lute (shorter before ng).

uei \ .

}• as wet in weight.

ai as a-i above. ao as a-u above.

ch as ch in change (before i, something between ch and ts). f, h, as in English.

/ as guttural r. h as in English, unemphatic.

I, m, n, as in Enghsh. p as in Enghsh, unemphatic. s as in Enghsh, t as in Enghsh, unemphatic. w, y, as in Enghsh.

ch', k’, p’, t’, as above, but with strong aspirate and emphasis. hs does not always differ greatly from sh.

vih

Contents

PAG£

Preface v

List of Illustrations - - - - xi

CHAPTER I Physical Features and Means of Communication

China lies to the east of the great mountains of Central Asia, and from these her physical features, mountains and rivers, are derived. Speaking generally, quite three-quarters of the country lies at 1,500 feet or more above the sea. The only parts which are below this level are the great north-eastern plain and the lower portions of the large river basins. Mountains, of which some peaks reach a height of nearly 20,000 feet, occupy the whole of the extreme west, but further east they are di\dded by the river system of middle China, the larger division running from south-west to north-east across the north-western provinces, with branches running in a south-easterly direction between the Chiang and the river Han, and between the rivers Han and Wei, and reaching the sea at Shan-hai-kuan ; while the lower ranges of the other division are evenly distributed over the southern half of the country. Outside this great connected system are a range of hills along the coast of Fukien and southern Chekiang, and the mountains of Shantung.

The mountains are as yet not perfectly surveyed or explored, but there is no doubt that they not only are i6 of extreme interest to naturalists, but also are rich in minerals. Gold and silver have not been found in great quantities, but copper appears to be plentiful in the south-west, and has been used from the earliest ages. Iron is widely distributed, and coal-fields of such enormous extent exist that it is said that a very small part of them would supply the world’s utmost imaginable need for many centuries to come. The Chinese have known the use of coal for 2,000 years or more,* but have worked it for the most part only where it crops up on the surface. There is said, however, to be an old mine near Po-shan, in Shantung, with a gallery of seven or eight miles in length. Coal-mining with western machinery and methods has been carried on since the end of last century, with the special licence of the Government, in various parts of northern China, especially in the provinces of Chihli and Shansi.

After this verj' brief glance at the general disposition of the physical features of the country, we propose to devote the greater part of this chapter to the rivers of China, and other means of communication ; and such a special and preponderating notice may be justified by the estimate which the Chinese themselves form of their great inner waters. You must know, they say, that if our rivers are our woe they are also our wealth and gain.

The source of the Ho, or Yellow River, was for centuries as great a mystery for the East as the source

*The first licence to dig coal was granted to Newcastle, wo believe, in the year 1268 or 1269, and coal was evidently quite unknown at home to Marco Polo, who left Italy for China about that time.

r.

THE SOURCE OF THE HO of the Nile was for the West. In the Yii-kung it is made to rise in Mount Chi-shih, in Kansu. In books of the Ch’in d)masty it was said to rise in Kun-lun, but the real position of this mountain was quite unknown. After the embassy of Chang Ch’ien to the West, in b.c. 128, we find the theory that the Tarim, or River of Khotan, which fell then into Lop-nor, ran underground from that point to reappear at the Chi-shih Pass as the Ho, and the mountains in which that river rises were consequently named Kun-lun. It is said that in the higher parts of Kansu the stream, which is already 200 yards wide, is sometimes actually lost to view beneath the boulders which fill its bed. We find no more certain information until a.d. 635, when Hou Chiin-chi " reached the shores of the Po-hai (Djaring-nor) and saw in the distance Mount Bayan-khara and the sources of the Ho.” The discovery of the actual source is, however, generally attributed to Liu Yiian-ting, in A.D. 822 ; and, even so, the course of the river as it nms north in a double curve from Djaring-nor, 120 miles east of the source, to the point where it enters Kansu south-east of Kuku-nor, was not accurately known until the end of the thirteenth century.

As the river enters Kansu it is about 8,000 feet above sea-level, and drops 5,000 feet in its north-easterly passage across the province. Though it is here scarcely navigable, two of the very few important cities on its banks are in this province, namely Lan-chou and Ning-hsia ; the latter, on the north-east frontier of the province, where regular navigation begins, exports a

B considerable quantity of liquorice down the river. From Kansu the Ho runs north to the high land of Mongolia, where its course is changed to almost due east. For ages this reach formed the boundary between China and the barbarous tribes of the north ; but in the eighth centmry the Chinese established four military posts in the enemy’s territory on the north bank of the river. Later, on the other hand, the whole course of the Ho was outside the dominion of the Chinese emperors for many years. At Ho-k’ou, south-west of Kuei-huach’eng, the river turns sharply to the south and pursues a direction a little west of south for about 480 miles, until it is joined, near T’ung-kuan, by the River Wei and turns even more sharply to the east. This part of the river was hardly known to Emropeans until 1906, when it was surveyed by Major McAndrew, who thus describes it :

" The scenery down the Yellow River from Ho-k’ou to Yii-men-k’ou, and again below T’ung-kuan-t’ing, is very fine in places, but also monotonous. The hills are all bare, of uniform height, and topped with a smooth cap of loess. The cliffs that line the river are all about the same height, and of the same reddish-grey sandstone. There are, however, a few spots that are well worth a visit. One of these is the Lung-wang waterfall [at Hu-k’ou, 250 miles south of Pao-te]. Above the fall the river is about 200 yards wide, and the channel is broken up by rocky ledges. The bulk of the water, a tumbling mass of a tawny orange colour, flecked with foam, plunges into a narrow crack in its bed near the

1,

THE LUNG-WANG FALLS

Shensi shore. The depth of the fall is about 40 feet, but the bottom is a seething cauldron which cannot properly be seen owing to the clouds of spray that rise from it. The remainder of the water falls into the same fissure at right angles to the main fall in a series of cascades 500 yards long. This is a region of wonders and paradoxes. There is a spot some distance below the fall where, standing on the roadway by the riverbank and looking up-stream, one sees a cloud of blue smoke rising from the middle of the water without apparent cause, while at one’s feet the whole volume of a great river rushes for three miles down a narrow fissure in places not more than 15 yards, and nowhere more than 40 yards, wide. One can, I say, stand and see, but one cannot in June (the time of our visit) conveniently sit on the rocks by the side of the roadway, because they have been baked burning hot by the rays of a powerful sun, and one cannot sit on the roadway itself, because it is a mass of ice 12 feet thick. The presence of this ice in midsummer so far south comes on one as a great surprise. The sun heat in this gorge is intense, and the water of the Yellow River itself 71° Fahr. Yet there are great banks of ice on the rocky ledges at the side of the water. One of these on June 20, was 100 yards long, 5 yards wide, and 12 feet thick. This ice, I believe, generally melts away by the end of July. . . .

" A day’s journey below the falls is the famous Lung-men gorge, ending in the straits of Yii-men-k’ou. This gorge is about 10 miles long. The river is a deep, still stream 150 yards wide, and races between precipices of reddish-grey sandstone 800 feet high. Above the precipices the cone-shaped tops of the hills covered with green scrub rise for another 800 feet. At Yii-men-k’ou the banks contract to 60 yards, and upon each side of the strait there is a fine temple. Coming down-stream, when one’s boat rushes through this strait there is a regular transformation scene, the river suddenly leaving the hills and spreading out over a sandy flat to a breadth of mile.”’*'

At the mouth of the gorge there is a little island wholly occupied by the Shen Yii temple, which contains a monument of great antiquarian interest.

The principal tributary of the Ho is the Wei (or Yii), which joins it just above T’ung-kuan. Rising in Kansu, it flows south-east to Shensi, and crosses that province in a straight line from west to east. The well-watered valley was the birthplace of Chinese civilisation and is fuU of relics of the past. It has also the reputation of being the most fertile land in China. About nine miles from the river on its right bank, and half-way across the province, stands the great city of Hsi-an.

At the T’ung-kuan bend the Ho is still 1,300 feet above sea-level. At the San-men rapids, which no boat can ascend, it again enters the hills, to leave them finally at Meng-ching, a place above Meng-hsien, in Honan, about 200 miles from T’ung-kuan. Here the great river, running at a pace of from four to six miles an hour, finds itself on the level plain, with still 400

*The Geographical Journal, 1907, pp. 194, 195.

I.

LOWER COURSE OF THE HO miles to cross before it can reach the sea ; and, though alterations in the higher reaches are recorded, it is naturally in this last level part that those disastrous floods and changes of course have occurred which have won for the river its evil reputation. If there are cities along its banks it is because the river has come to them against their will ; and a story is told by Ssu-maCh’ien of a great lord who had property near the river. One year the river was good enough to take another course, and this man, finding the value of his land greatly enhanced in consequence, presented a memorial to the Emperor explaining that such catastrophes were undoubtedly the work of heaven, and those who attempted to repair the damage ran a great risk of fighting against heaven. And so his property was left in peace for twenty-three years, until the Emperor went in person to visit the lands along the new course of the river, where the landlords no doubt had a different theory to propound.

The Chinese have in all ages shown great industry and no small ability in dealing with their unruly rivers and with the ravages of the tide along their coasts. Some of their earliest traditions are of the engineering feats of Yii, who worked, as his successors have worked ever since, to lessen the chance of flood, not only by strengthening the banks of the rivers, but by drawing off the surplus water and using it for irrigation. From dealing with huge breaches of the Ho, or with the violence of the Hangchow Bore, down to giving a little town like T’ai-an a constant supply of fresh water, nothing has been too great or too small for China’s engineers. It is well known that the Yellow River, like other rivers in the great plain, flows high above the level of the surrounding land. The late G. J. Morrison, of Shanghai, once took levels across the dry bed of the river in North Kiangsu, and found the lowest point of the bed four or five feet above the plain. When the high banks run, as they sometimes do, across the mouth of a valley, they cause floods by preventing the local water from running away after the summer rains.

When we first hear of the Ho (b.c. 8oo, or earlier) it left its present course just east of Huai-ch’ing and passed northward west of Ta-ming into the swamps of Ta-lu ; thence it divided into the “ nine rivers,” which met together again, as a network of streams do to-day, near Tientsin, and flowed eastward to the sea. In 602 B.c. a change took place in the arrangement of the nine rivers, the main channel moving from the west to what is now the Grand Canal on the east. In 132 B.c. the river burst its right bank in what is now the extreme south of Chihli and flowed into the valley of the Huai, a great river which now runs through the Hung-tse and Kao-yu Lakes into the Grand Canal in Kiangsu. This breach was repaired in B.c. 109. In a.d. ii the main stream moved still further east, and occupied the bed of the Chi, running, as it does now, through north-west Shantung. This was still its course in the eleventh century. In the fourteenth century it seems to have been flowing into the Huai, and the Yiian Shih gives an account of the means taken to repair a great breach

THE CHIANG which was made in the left bank in 1344. In the sixteenth century its bed lay through north Kiangsu, between the Huai and the Grand Canal, which last it crossed north of Huai-an. In 1851 the left bank burst to the north-east of K’ai-feng, and after three years of indecision and destruction the stream returned to the valley of the Chi. In 1888 it again tried to flow southward, causing most disastrous floods, but, after European engineers had been appealed to in vain, native methods prevailed, and the breach was securely closed. An examination of the dry bed in Kiangsu shows in the western part nothing but loose sand, while nearer the sea there is a firm and very fertile alluvial deposit. It is this firm silting-up of the mouth that is thought by some to be the chief cause of the constant more or less serious bursting of the banks.

The above are only a very few of the changes of bed and of the great floods which are recorded in history ; and it has been possible to give only a very meagre idea of the canals and other works which have been carried out. either to use the water for irrigation, or to lessen the strain on the banks, or to avoid the danger of navigating the rapids.

The Chiang, that is, the River, is one of the largest and best known rivers in the world. It is called also the Great River, or the Long River, and, for the most part by Europeans, the Blue River, or the Yang-tse (Yang-tzu). It rises, as we have it on the authority of Confucius, in the Min mountains in the extreme north-west comer of Ssuch’uan, and flows south-east past

Ch’eng-tu until it is joined at Hsii-chou by the Chin-shachiang, a tributary so much larger than the Min stream that it is often regarded as the main stream by Europeans. The Chin-sha rises some distance north-west of the source of the Ho, and flows southwards through Tibet into Yunnan. On the borders of Yunnan and Ssuch’uan it receives a large tributary, the Ya-lung, from the north, and then flows north-east to meet the Min. Between this point and I-ch’ang are the rapids and gorges so famous for their magnificent scenery and for the difficulty and danger of their navigation. From I-ch’ang to the sea, a distance of a thousand miles, the river is navigable by small steamers, and sea-going vessels come up 600 miles to Hankow. It must be enough to name here a very few of the many large cities which have grown up on the river banks, such as Wu-ch’ang (which, with Han-yang and the foreign settlement of Hankow on the opposite bank, forms the centre, in several respects, of China) and Nankin, the seat until lately of one of the most powerful viceroys, and many centuries ago the capital for a time of the empire, and Chinkiang, at the busy junction with the Grand Canal. The river flows through the famous silk district of Ching-chou and the porcelain manufactories of Kiangsi ; and the traffic, both of native boats and of steamers, is in all parts very great. The chief of the many tributaries are the Han — ^which flows in from the north-west opposite Wu-ch’ang, dividing Han-yang from Hankow — and the important streams which enter through the Tung-t’ing and P’o-yang lakes. The

I. OLD COURSE OF THE CHI AN G 25

water is muddy, though less so than that of the Ho, and when seen in the distance on a sunny day is of a most unusual and beautiful rose-colour ; and the shores are lined for miles with grey reed-beds of almost inconceivable extent. The river is generally deep, some places near Nankin being marked “No bottom ” on the earlier British charts ; but there is a bar near the mouth which is a considerable hindrance to navigation. The level of the water, too, varies greatly, rising nearly fifty feet in the summer at Hankow, and as much as a hundred feet in the gorges in an exceptional year. Any unusual addition to this enormous rise naturally floods vast tracts of country on either side of the river, but, for many centuries at any rate, the Chiang has not been liable to those sudden changes of course which make the Ho so dangerous. Yet it seems to be certain that the present stream was, eighteen centuries ago, only one, and not the largest, of three channels through which the waters of the Chiang reached the sea. The conclusion of Yiian Yiian, the learned antiquary of the early nineteenth century, on this subject is as follows :

" The Chiang rises in the Min mountain. The three rivers of the Yii-kung are the Pei-chiang (N. river), the Chung-chiang (middle river) and the Nan-chiang (S. river). The Pei-chiang is the River Min proceeding north of Nankin, Chinkiang, Tan-t’u, and Ch’ang-chou to the sea, and is the same as the modern Chiang. The Chung-chiang is the River Min proceeding by Kaoch’un and Wu-pa to I-hsing, where it entered the sea.

The Nan-chiang is the Min proceeding from Ch’ih-chou {i.e., probably near Wu-hu) by Ning-kuo to the T’ai-hu. Thence it passed Wu-chiang and T’ang-hsi in a southwesterly direction to (the site of) Hangchow, where it bent to the eastward towards Yii-yao, and there met the sea.”*

The stream which now flows into the Hangchow Bay had a course ten miles south of its present one in the thirteenth century, and the Che, as the south branch of the Chiang seems to have been called, may well have run yet further to the south again.

Just south of the mouth of the Chiang is the Hangchow Bay, into which flows a river which, though it is of great beauty and considerable size, and has on its banks many important towns besides Hangchow, would perhaps hardly deserve more than mention here if it were not for the bore with which the tides come not only into the estuary but far up the river itself. The river was anciently called Chien, and was perhaps a tributary of the southern and principal branch of the Chiang which until comparatively recent days entered the sea in or near the Hangchow Bay, as has been explained above. It was also called Che and the Ch’ien-t’ang River ; and Ch’ien-t’ang, the name of a district past which it flows, is now practically the name of the river for natives as well as for Europeans.

The bore is one of the most striking of the world’s unusual natural phenomena. Twice a day it fills the country with its voice as it passes like some living thing

Cf, Che-chiang t’u-k'ao.

I.

THE CH’IEN-T’ANG BORE majestically upward against the stream. The exact reason why there should be a bore in this river and not in others, or why it should be regular here and persistent through great changes of the course and volume of the stream, and only occasional elsewhere,* seems to have eluded the most learned investigation ; but it must be due to some special application of the laws that the pace at which a wave travels in shallow water varies with the depth of the water, and that the front slope of a wave grows steeper as it passes from deeper to more shallow water. Captain Moore, R.N., who examined the whole question very carefully, suggests the following causes ; (i) The funnel or delta shape of the Hangchow Bay, which is open to the eastward directly in front of the tidal wave from the Pacific Ocean. It is fifty or sixty mUes wide at the mouth, about ten miles at the narrower part where navigation ends, and the general depth is much greater across the mouth than it is on the western part. (2) The large area of sand-flats at the head of the bay. {3) The out-going stream from the river. It will be seen that the front of the tide wave must suddenly grow steeper and is nearly stopped as it reaches the shallow water on the sand-flats, while the parts further back are travelling at only slightly diminished speed, and the water is thus suddenly piled up and advances with an ever steeper and at last nearly perpendicular front — ” a bank of water and precipice of snow.” The bore is not a wave, but the front of

*A small bore may sometimes be seen as the tide enters the narrow mouth of Chefoo harbour and elsewhere. The eagre, or bore, on the Severn is only occasionally to be seen.

a mass of water which is poured, as it were, into the river from the pent-up tidal wave in the bay outside. The stream is running out with a roar that may be heard half-a-mile away, and the water is at its lowest level when the bore arrives. The delay in the arrival of the tide here as compared with other places is noticed in the Lin-an Chih, a topography of Hangchow published about A.D. 1274, where also the sand-flats and the sudden narrowing of the estuary are mentioned as causes of the bore. The same book gives tables of the time when the bore comes on each day of the year, and careful information about the relation of the tides to the movements of the sun and moon.

The origin of the bore is connected in legend with the death of Wu Tzu-hsii, in B.c. 484. This man was ordered by the king, Fu-ch’ai, to commit suicide, and before doing so foretold the ruin of his country, and gave directions that his eyes should be hung over the east gate of Wu (perhaps Soochow) that he might see the invaders come. The king was so much incensed on hearing this that he had Wu’s corpse put into a leather sack and thrown into the Chiang. The story of Wu’s death is told with more or less detail in the Tso Chuan and in the Shih Chi (b.c. 90), but is first connected with the bore a century or more later. By the tenth century we read :

" From that time the tide-head at Tide-gate Hill’*' came hurtling up several hundred feet high, over-leaping

* Probably the hills K’an and ChS, often called the Sea-gate, between which the stream once flowed, though it has now left them far to the south.

-THE BORE ON THE CH’IEN-T’ANG RIVER

*

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✓ >fc I

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I.

THE CH’IEN-T’ANG BORE the sea-wall and passing Yii-p’u ; after which it gradually subsided. Whenever it came again at dawn and dusk it had a wrathful sound and the swift rush of thunder and lightning, and could be heard more than 30 miles off. Then might be seen in the midst of the tide-head Tzu-hsii sitting in a funeral car drawn by white horses.”