Eighteen capitals of China

Introduction

By W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D.

Ex-President of the Chinese Imperial University

“Now when nations are competing for the honour of planting their flags on the poles of our planet, is there not some danger that heroic travellers who have penetrated savage regions, and brought to light the hidden things of darkness, may fail of due recognition ?

“ Livingstone and Stanley did more for science and civilisation than a dozen polar expeditions. A noted explorer who deserves to share their laurels, if only for what he achieved on the same arena, is the author of this volume.

“Dr. Geil’s researches have taken a wider range than theirs, extending to three zones, and he has shown me a tattered flag which he bore on voyages by land and sea sufficient to put a tenfold girdle round this globe.

“ After piercing the Heart of Africa and confirming the Homeric legend of pigmies at war with snakes, if not with cranes, he passed at a single bound from Guinea to New Guinea, where he found materials for many a blood curdling picture of life among the head-hunters and cannibals of the Southern Seas.

“Eight years ago Dr. Geil turned his attention to China, ascended her Great River to the frontiers of ‘Tibet and gave the world his experiences in a fascinating book entitled “‘A Yankee on the Yangtze.” Had the sister stream been navigable he might have attempted to eclipse the exploit of a fabled hero, who, seeking the source of the Yellow River, found himself looking down from the Milky Way.

“ That being out of the question, the greatest thing remaining open to his restless enterprise was to follow

vii viii INTRODUCTION the winding of The Great Wall from end to end. This he accomplished two years ago and has given us a unique panorama of that hugest of the works of man— a structure so vast as to rival the mountain barriers built by the hand of nature.

“Undaunted by hardships, in the Spring of last year he undertook, if possible, a more herculean task. This was nothing less than the making of a visit to each of the several Capitals of the Eighteen Provinces ; mapping out their sites, and collecting on the spot their topographical treasures, a mass of literature destined to form the basis of a Chinese library.

“ He generally found himself preceded by missionaries, and he bears generous testimony to their self-sacrificing devotion. Without their aid his difficulties might have proved insuperable. Like the blind Huber of Geneva, who made himself an authority on bees, Dr. Geil knows how to use the eyes of others; and it must be admitted that he has made excellent use of his own eyes in studying the habits of this enormous human beehive.

“ Having helped to put his materals in shape on this as on his former campaign, I have much pleasure in commending his book to the attention of the reading public.

SUN (ieee ee

“Pearl Grotto, Western Hills, Peking, China.”

Chung Hwa, translated “Central Glory,” is the Chinese name for China.

Foreword

Tuer Appetite Grows with Feeding. On one previous journey we ascended the Yangtze, crossed the water-shed, and came out in Burma; on another we traversed the Great Wall from end to end. These two trips, unique in this generation, inspired us to a third, when we should systematically visit each of the Highteen Capitals, and get a first-hand glimpse at every part of this “‘ Central Glory.” Others know well and closely one province or two or even three; no one else has set himself to glance at all.

For many moons yet it is unlikely that others will tread the same track, so we have not written a guidebook. But we have attempted to give an impressionist sketch of present conditions, noting the flux at this critical time. And we have sought so to do this that the book may have permanent value as recording the conditions at one year in a decade of unexampled change, and so being worthy to take its place alongside our other studies of China, in the great libraries of the world.

In two respects, besides the mere extent of the journey, we put out special claims to attention,— politics and literature.

To read the minds of Chinese statesmen we have no pretension; the wisest of European diplomats often finds himself baffled by the imperturbable mask. But facts speak, and we have seen many facts, new facts, portentious facts. China has for ages studied the arts of peace, and has looked down on mere fighters. Whatever her opinon of them intrinsically may be, she has bowed to Western opinion, and has created fighters wholesale. The new educational system includes many military academies, West Points and Sandhursts. Barix

BS FOREWORD racks have risen at every great city; soldiers fill them as fast as they rise. No more bows and arrows, no more somersaults and yells, but systematic Kuropean drill with Kuropean weapons of precision. No white man may cross the threshold of these barracks; soldiers are not encouraged to frequent white society; there is an armed neutrality. Arsenals are in evidence at every great centre; cannons and all other munitions of war are being made within the empire. This is not the case at one town merely or at two, but at every capital,— and we deal here only with capitals, where the pulse of the nation is easily felt. The whole empire seems to be — arming, not in extraordinary haste, but with thoroughness, with doggedness; and with resources wherewith no one Kuropean nation can compare. The fact stands; let who will interpret it.

Then as to literature. When Constantinople’s scholars fled west and took with them their Greek learning, after a few years the time-honoured Latin text-books at the universities were thrown out as waste paper. That hour is now striking in China. The classics on which the intellect of the nation has been trained for two thousand years, together with the ephemeral novels and magical dream-books read by the masses, are alike doomed. Western learning for the one, and Western rubbish for the other, are alike displacing the older books. In a few years these will hardly be obtainable, for official destruction has begun. With the aid of viceroys, governors, Hanlin scholars, librarians, booksellers, we have gathered a large collection, out of which selections by leading scholars have been translated, and a few specimens are given, to let the reader see the old style of book. Local proverbs in themselves have never been brought together on our scale; and to choose from a mass of new material which would fill three volumes has been a difficult task.

FOREWORD xi

Mere travel chapters have not been written. No arbitrary length has been adopted; if one place presented specially interesting features and another seemed more ordinary, the chapters reflect that in their size. Twelve hundred photographs have enabled a careful choice to be made, and the illustrations are left to speak for themselves, without a superfluous descripton in the text. To style we do not make pretension, but we do confidently offer these pictures, this selection of a vanishing literature, this description of the eighteen vital points in the new China, to those who would get an instantaneous view of her as she is poised between the past and the future.

DoyLESTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA, Unirep States or AMERICA, August 1, a, p. 1911.

Contents

PAGE

Inrropuction. By W. A. P. Martin, D.D.,.L.L.D............. Vii

THE SOUTHERN CAPITALS

Part Ii.—if Confucius Came To Hang

Pondering over this contrast, I fell to thinking what the venerable sage Confucius would say could he see the state of things twenty-four centuries after his death. In my musings it seemed to me that my curiosity was gratified, and that I was privileged to escort him around the city of Hangchow, far from the scene of his former activity. He had lived a life of little or no pretension; his university was for a while the shade of a tree, and amongst his scholars the majority could be said to be neither bright nor prepossessing. But at least he himself consistently throughout life put character as the foundation of all learning, and mere intellectual requirements were to him among the lesser things to be attained. His was one of the mightiest human struggles to bring a

16 IF CONFUCIUS CAME TO HANG higher ethical ideal to a human race; and his resuscitation from the dead was an attempt on his part to discover to what extent his race had profited or failed to profit from his teaching.

He remarked to me that he had heard there were certain ethical societies of mushroom growth in “ The States ” and in Europe, societies whose teaching not only failed to surpass his own, but whose experiments in an ethical propaganda were insufficient to give him data to form final conclusions with regard to the all-sufficiency of ethical culture in the West. Hence, though free to travel within any of the ten thousand kingdoms of the earth, he had concluded that the land of his birth would render the best evidence as to the efficacy of mere ethical teaching in the moral and intellectual emancipation of a people.

When first asked for his impressions of Hangchow, he, with the habitual courtesy of the Chinese scholar, began with a few complimentary remarks. He admired the energy and the altruism of the first king of Hangchow, who, with his minister, constructed the great bank at the mouth of the bay, thus reclaiming thousands of acres of land not only for cultivation but for permanent habitation by human beings in city life. He admired the beauty of the lake with its ever-changing shades of colour; he admired the imagination and genius that could turn a huge desert beach into a land teeming with millions of population.

'The first thing that he remarked was the existence of many so-called “modern” schools, built by the government and gentry. He was surprised to learn that in many of these not only are food and clothing given free as well as books, but that money prizes are offered every month to the boys who moderately excel. “Not thus was it in my days,” said the teacher, “ when men came to me under the shade of a tree, and in their

BH BEM, Bis & ED 17

RICHES LEAD TO VICE. AND POVERTY TO THEFT poverty furnished their own necessities.’ He had hoped that long since the multitude of objects in clay, hideous in every feature and more ugly than anything to be found in nature in her wildest moods, would be neither an object nor a medium for prostituting men’s conceptions of the spiritual beings beyond. He said with a sigh, “I had never denied the existence of the spirit world, but I had plainly insisted upon our ignorance of such things, and that the best we could do was to speak with respect of such things. But these Buddhist priests have exceeded the highest flights of a wicked imagination; they have not only given us a world of spirits, but have imaged them in these temples in such a way as to make man more brutish and depraved with than without them. The other day I saw a little child suddenly ushered into the Lin Yin Monastery; in the presence of those long rows of gilded lumps of clay the child looked about in terror, fell over on the ground in fear, and had to be carried out screaming in his mother’s arms. 'The masses of this race have no more capacity than the heart of that child. ‘The initial impression produced upon him was indicative of the abiding impression produced upon my race. There is almost none of reverence, absolutely nothing of love, and almost all of fear stamped upon the deluded throng, that come either to propitiate for calamities or to purchase some material good.

“The ery of that child,” he continued, “ remains in my ears, and is but an echo of the cry of millions about me as they beseech or protest with the spirits that infest them everywhere—spirits potent for evil or for good— without reference to the rule of one Omniscient ‘All-loving Power. To make it worse, these ignorant, immoral priests, living openly with their mistresses and yet claima

18 IF CONFUCIUS CAME TO HANG ing to live lives of self-denial, using every opportunity to extort money for securing bribes for the gods and yet claiming to live in poverty, presuming on the pockets and the morality of their pilgrim guests and yet claiming the loss of all earthly desire as their bull’seye, these priests are leading the people to still grosser conceptions than if left alone.”

Confucius noticed what is called a Taoist temple. I told him it was the religion of his old contemporary, Lao Chiin, whom he once met,’ and with whom he talked on high metaphysical doctrines. ‘‘ Then has it come to this? What are these hideous creatures TI see at the door? No such ugliness was ever wrought by nature.” “These are the gods of the spiritual world,” I told him. “ Taoism ® says the spiritual world is modelled after the government of the city and the nation.” Said Confucius, “I have just come from the spirit world and saw no such hideous creatures. Lao Chiin knows nothing of this.” I told him that they say these gods rule all the spirit world. When a person has disease or calamity of any kind, people think it is an evil spirit; they send for a Taoist priest, who comes and recites prayers, makes incantations, spreads a feast on the outside of the house, and prays the spirit to go away and let the man alone. When the telegraph poles were first erected, the Taoist priests gave little children small bags to wear at the lapels of their suits to keep off the evil spirits the telegraph poles attracted. Confucius decided to enter the temple and there saw the horrible representations of hell—men being pestled in mortars, others sawn asunder by slow workmen, still others being pitched into boiling cauldrons, others trying to escape

*Some scholars think the meeting is an invention of later times. Lao Tzi was born more than fifty years before Confucius.

* Modern Taoism, with which Lao Tzii has about as much to do as Mohammed.

Fe yL BA bb as Bh Be aR 19

WANT TO SEE BLACK-HEARTED PEOPLE?

LOOK AT THOSE WHO PRAY TO BUDDHA over a bridge where they meet deadly poisonous snakes, others trying to climb up and escape, only to have thunderbolts hurled at them by the monstrous god of thunder. Confucius said, “ It was not so in my day.” And then he was silent and thought, and the longer he thought the greater grew his anger, until in a tempestuous rage he cursed the men who had dared to mutilate the teachings of old Lao Chiin and turn them into such ghastly practices.

As we strolled along Great Street together, hoiding sad discourse, we came to the front of the Mohammedan mosque. “ What strange inscriptions do I see, that were never seen in my day—those snaky characters? Let us enter and ask their meaning.” At the door a keeper met us, and in answer to our request translated the words above us, saying with quiet earnestness, “ God is one God and Mohammed is his prophet.” Said Confucius, “ This is somewhat of an advance upon my age. ‘Though I never dogmatised concerning the spirits of the air, I believed in one Omnipotent Ruler above, who spoke to the hearts of men and moved in my heart when I felt most truly the highest moral claims of life. I see no idols here.”

At last, about 4 a.m., we came to a large building erected to the memory of Confucius. A smile played over the face of the sage, for it gratified him to think that throughout twenty-four centuries his name and teachings had been remembered so far from his home. When I told him that in every other large city of China a similar monument stood to his memory, tears of joy came to his eyes, and he said, “ There is at least some salt in this earth.”

Alas that he should identify reverence for himself with reverence for his teaching! For when he entered

20 IF CONFUCIUS CAME TO HANG the Hall, he saw a large group of officials in their robes of state calling him great and holy and exalted above all, placed even on an equal rank with Heaven itself. He heard prayers offered to him, thanks rendered to him, and at one side he saw a dressed cow and sheep slain and offered to him. With a face deathly pale he turned and said to me, “ Is this place a mere monument to my memory, or are these prayers and sacrifices offered to me in worship?” JI told him that though blessings were not sought from him as from God himself, yet these sacrifices were offered to him as to one who heard and answered, as to one who was high and holy, the ultimate realisation of human and spiritual excellence. With these words the last smile faded from his face. He pushed through the encircling crowd, threw up his hands, and cried, “ It must not be!” A look of unutterable pain came over him, and he fell forward in a dead faint over the prostrate form of the governor, who was then master of ceremonies and was leading in prayer. Before one of these lofty Celestials could identify the actual features and form of Confucius, I had borne his wasted frame in my strong arms to the only place in Hangchow where there was skill sufficient to resuscitate a spirit that had lain dormant for twenty-four centuries.

The lantern above the gate was burning out its last drop of oil when I knocked at the hospital entrance. I demanded instant admittance, and the keeper within, with a lazy drone, told me the hour was too unseasonable. “For Confucius’ sake let me get in!” Whereupon he fumbled at the bolts and lock, wondering what apparition might appear; when he saw Confucius in my arms, he too fell back in mortal fear. A good, red-haired Irishman came hurriedly out. I rushed into the open court-yard and called aloud for help. Presently

JE HG TOR AB m

A BULLY DOES NoT OWE DEBTS!

two foreign doctors in their long night-robes, with anesthetics and medicine-cases, and a crowd of twenty Chinese students at their heels, all came to my relief and’ assistance. When they learned that Confucius had come, one of the doctors took him to the best bedroom of the hospital. He and a few pupils worked his chest, gave him stimulants, and after hours of work the lids opened the second time in twenty-four centuries. Confucius remained long in this state, and was occasionally allowed to sit up in his chair and to walk through the buildings and grounds. He heard a message that was preached to the poor; he saw opening of the eyes of the blind. He saw the lame walk and lepers cared for. In an asylum he saw the motherless sheltered; and he saw young men taught the hope of China, taught medicine and surgery in order to spread this healing to others. He saw women who came to the women’s ward to give birth to infants under the only conditions in that great city that made childbirth for the poor safe, with surroundings of comfort and loving service. He saw men who had taken opium in order to escape the sorrows of this life walked up and down a greensward until certain remedies took effect, and then not only was their appetite for opium broken, but they were given a new appetite stronger than the old for the same kind of things for which the sage had yearned. He saw men daily, with foreign doctors in charge, assemble for prayer to the Supreme Spirit, one who was God and Father of all living.

And after many days he said within himself: “TI once said that within the four seas all are brethren, but its realisation I have for the first time seen: East and West, rich and poor, scholar and farmer, coolie and merchant, working together in the service of healing

22 IF CONFUCIUS CAME TO HANG and in the rectification of men’s hearts and lives. I have found out that the great motive force that produces all these marvellous results is a life rather than a teaching, is a person who works and lives to-day rather than an ideal, is something concrete, both human and divine, rather than an ethical conception, is a living present force rather than a historical idea.

“The One whose love commands this service must be one of whom Mencius spoke when he discoursed with me in the spiritual world. He told me that when on earth he had a vision of one whom God was yet to use, and he recorded his definition of such a man in writing and gave it to his race. ‘ Heaven will bring a great honour upon this man. But he will first bring bitterness to his heart, will bring labour to his bone and sinew, will bring hunger to his frame, will bring want to his body, will bring confusion to what he does; and thus will move his heart, will make enduring his nature, and increase and prosper that which he himself is unable to do.’ I stood in my home or in the shade of that tree with scholars at my feet, discoursing on the idea of the Princely Man; I kept aloof from the masses, and tried to rule them from above; while He of whom Mencius seems to have spoken went out into the by-ways and hedges to compel men to come. He had not where to lay His head, and mingled not only with rulers but mingled to such an extent with the outcasts that He himself was nicknamed the gluttonous man and winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. I came to call the righteous, but He, sinners, to repentance; I came with my healing to those who had no need of a physician, but He to those who were sick; and hence the needs of humanity I failed to meet, whereas He has succeeded.”

a -

PLAY MUSIC IN FRONT OF A COW

PART IIIl—HANG: THE CITY

For the Hang of to-day, there are, as for Cesar’s Gaul, three parts; the City, the Governor, the People.

The City of Hang is two and three-quarters miles from south to north, one and one-half miles wide at the north, and a mile at the south. Canals intersect the city, and the famous artificial lake washes the centre third of the western wall. Government offices and schools are dotted all about, but most of the lake frontage is taken up by the Manchu Camp, which reaches half a mile back into the main city.

The water-ways are prominent. Five of the gates refer to them: Crystal Wave, Waiting for the Tide, River View, Ch‘ien’s Dyke, Bubbling Gold. The canals are used for traffic as freely as in Holland, but, instead of draining the land as in that remarkable country, they supply water for irrigation. Nor are they used as sewers, as the farmers have far too high a sense of the value of manure, and are glad to keep the canals dredged to obtain fertilisers for their fields. Bathing is not much practised, but rice for dinner and clothes for wear are being constantly washed in the water. Of course this enriches the water, and the natives appreciate the quantity of solid matter quite as much as on the Mississippi, where a pint provides both drink and food. The Chinese much prefer this to rain-water, but are divided in opinion as to the superiority of the canal or the lake, which latter is supplied with the ashes of incense from the numerous temples. The canals furnish also abundant fish, and the nuts that float down the surface provide afternoon tea. Locks are not known, and when it is needful to transfer from one level to another, mud-slides are used. In the country water-buffaloes are seen grinding the mills—

24 HANG: THE CITY strange, sad animals. In the city many beautiful stone bridges span the waters; strange superstitions cluster round them, no women being allowed to cross when a boat is beneath, and no one being allowed to speak when passing under certain Dumb Bridges.

If we think that the water-ways are the great sight of the city, the citizens think they have seven showpieces: fans, foreigners, face-powder, scissors, silk, medicine, and children. Undoubtedly the children are much in evidence; we will gratify the Chinese taste by attending to them. There is no race-suicide here; even a laddie of six replied to the query, “ What do you most want to do when you are grown up?” by the ready answer, “ Marry a wife and have a son.” Religion supports this, as in India, for ancestor-worship is deeply ingrained, and if you have no children who will worship you? A child may rejoice in four names at various stages of his life, his pet name at home, his school name, his business style, his official title; much as an English lad is Tommy in the nursery, Jones at school, Messrs. Jones & Co. in the directory, Baron de Jonghs in *Who’s Who.” |

While the Chinese Tommy is still in his nurse’s arms, he has a pinch of mug-wort put on his head and fired, so that a bald spot is produced; this is not hygienic, like vaccination, but superstitious. In a month his little pate is shaven, and a feast is held; presently a little cap is put on, probably decked with idols, and a locket is hung round his neck for luck. As Tommy learns to talk he learns baby rhymes; when put into his little sedan, answering to our perambulator or go-cart, they sing to him:

“ First you laugh and then you cry; Three little yellow dogs come to carry your chair.”

@ PE wk HA Ve a

CHANGE YOUR OLD NATURE OR YOU'LL BE UP A TREE

In the nursery they tell him of the old woman in the moon,’ or teach him baby games: two forefingers put together represent two birdies kissing; they knock their bills, they fly, the big birdies fly while the little birdies keep the house, fly to the high hills to eat white rice—and the last clause is drawled out as the arms widen and widen.

Tommy goes to school and becomes Jones. He is taught how to worship, bowing to the idols; at school he is told how the fox, that emblem of cunning, is his tutelary deity, to help him learn and especially to help him pass his examinations. In real life he has probably seen many shocking sights, and though the publication of indecent native pictures is prevented, obscene foreign pictures are now corrupting his mind. But as he learns to read he is able to turn to the cheap book-stalls all about the city, and unfortunately these teem with demoralising books. So at ten years of age he is separated from his girl playmates, to see no female face till he is engaged, at the age of fifteen, a plan which preserves outward chastity though it cannot eradicate the inward evil. However, in the school-boy stage his animal passions find more innocent gratification in unlimited green plums, peanuts, and rich cakes.

How about the girls? Until lately no one cared very much about them,® but things are now marvellously changing. There was a lady interested in the Tatar girls, who founded a school here to instruct them in virtue and learning, but her efforts were not adequately seconded, and she sought to excite interest by com-

™Ch‘ang O, the wife of Hou I, is said to have stolen from her husband the drug of immortality and to have fled with it to the moon, where she was changed into a toad. This toad is believed to swallow the moon during the eclipse.

8 Girls are by no means despised in China to the extent that foreigners believe. One has only to read an ordinary Chinese novel to see this.

26 HANG: THE CITY mitting suicide and leaving a public appeal. After two attempts to poison herself with opium she succeeded, and her dying will, signed with her blood, had a wide circulation, resulting in funds being raised to build two commodious houses. It ran thus:

“‘ All my pupils take notice:

“In my humble efforts to found this school there was no little difficulty. Knowing that I had no strength or ability in myself, my first idea was to stir up people who did have ability, such as Lady San, Lady Féng, and two old ladies named Po and Tso, thinking that they would warmly advocate my project. To my surprise and chagrin, they despised my project, and said that I was too fond of looking after things that did not concern me. °

“ Alas! this was not in my mind at all, but in reality because I recognise the present time as one of change and reform. You all see how the Chinese are reviving in educational matters; in a few years everything will be different. You do not believe it; I do believe it. Five or six years ago it was thus, and now it is the same way. Now I am going to use my death to obtain the means for carrying on this school, so that you may always have a place to study. May you always cherish and practise the four virtues, fidelity, filial piety, chastity, and uprightness; then will you be of use in the world! ‘Although I am going to take my life, it will not be cutting it short. It is only the old-time custom handed to posterity of offering one’s self as a sacrifice, in order to bring about and make sure of this reform. For instance, when we are sick we pray to the gods for protection. After our disease is cured we buy incense and candles to pay our vows. Now this school will be like a