The Awakening of China Part 1

The Awakening of China.

by W.A.P. Martin.

PREFACE

China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place on the face of the globe. In comparison with it, the agitation in Russia shrinks to insignificance; for it is not political, but social. Its object is not a changed dynasty, nor a revolution in the form of government; but, with higher aim and deeper motive, it promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest, most populous, and most conservative of empires. Is there a people in either hemisphere that can afford to look on with indifference?

When, some thirty years ago, j.a.pan adopted the outward forms of Western civilisation, her action was regarded by many as a stage trick--a sort of travesty employed for a temporary purpose. But what do they think now, when they see cabinets and chambers of commerce compelled to reckon with the British of the North Pacific?

The awakening of j.a.pan's huge neighbour promises to yield results equally startling and on a vastly extended scale.

Political agitation, whether periodic like the tides or unforeseen like the hurricane, is in general superficial and temporary; but the social movement in China has its origin in subterranean forces such as raise continents from the bosom of the deep. To explain those forces is the object of the present work.

It is the fascination of this grand spectacle that has [Page vi]

brought me back to China, after a short visit to my native land--and to this capital, after a sojourn of some years in the central provinces.

Had the people continued to be as inert and immobile as they appeared to be half a century ago, I might have been tempted to despair of their future. But when I see them, as they are to-day, united in a firm resolve to break with the past, and to seek new life by adopting the essentials of Western civilisation, I feel that my hopes as to their future are more than half realised; and I rejoice to help their cause with voice and pen.

Their patriotism may indeed be tinged with hostility to foreigners; but will it not gain in breadth with growing intelligence, and will they not come to perceive that their interests are inseparable from those of the great family into which they are seeking admission?

Every day adds its testimony to the depth and genuineness of the movement in the direction of reform. Yesterday the autumn manoeuvres of the grand army came to a close. They have shown that by the aid of her railways China is able to a.s.semble a body of trained troops numbering 100,000 men. Not content with this formidable land force, the Government has ordered the construction of the nucleus of a navy, to consist of eight armoured cruisers and two battles.h.i.+ps. Five of these and three naval stations are to be equipped with the wireless telegraph.

Not less significant than this rehabilitation of army and navy is the fact that a few days ago a number of students, who had completed their studies at foreign universities, were admitted to the third degree (or [Page vii]

D. C. L.) in the scale of literary honours, which means appointment to some important post in the active mandarinate. If the booming of cannon at the grand review proclaimed that the age of bows and arrows is past, does not this other fact announce that, in the field of education, rhyming and caligraphy have given place to science and languages? Henceforth thousands of ambitious youth will flock to the universities of j.a.pan, and growing mult.i.tudes will seek knowledge at its fountain-head beyond the seas.

Still more surprising are the steps taken toward the intellectual emanc.i.p.ation of woman in China. One of the leading ministers of education a.s.sured me the other day that he was pus.h.i.+ng the establishment of schools for girls. The shaded hemisphere of Chinese life will thus be brought into the suns.h.i.+ne, and in years to come the education of Chinese youth will begin at the mother's knee.

The daily deliberations of the Council of State prove that the reform proposals of the High Commission are not to be consigned to the limbo of abortions. Tuan Fang, one of the leaders, has just been appointed to the viceroyalty of Nanking, with _carte blanche_ to carry out his progressive ideas; and the metropolitan viceroy, Yuan, on taking leave of the Empress Dowager before proceeding to the manoeuvres, besought her not to listen to reactionary counsels such as those which had produced the disasters of 1900.

In view of these facts, what wonder that Chinese newspapers are discussing the question of a national religion? The fires of the old altars are well-nigh extinct; and, among those who have come forward to [Page vii]

advocate the adoption of Christianity as the only faith that meets the wants of an enlightened people, one of the most prominent is a priest of Buddha.

May we not look forward with confidence to a time when China shall be found in the brotherhood of Christian nations?

W. A. P. M.

_Peking, October 30, 1906._

INTRODUCTION

How varied are the geological formations of different countries, and what countless ages do they represent! Scarcely less diversified are the human beings that occupy the surface of the globe, and not much shorter the period of their evolution. To trace the stages of their growth and decay, to explain the vicissitudes through which they have pa.s.sed, is the office of a philosophic historian.

If the life history of a silkworm, whose threefold existence is rounded off in a few months, is replete with interest, how much more interesting is that of societies of men emerging from barbarism and expanding through thousands of years. Next in interest to the history of our own branch of the human family is that of the yellow race confronting us on the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Pacific; even more fascinating, it may be, owing to the strangeness of manners and environment, as well as from the contrast or coincidence of experience and sentiment. So different from ours (the author writes as an American) are many phases of their social life that one is tempted to suspect that the same law, which placed their feet opposite to ours, of necessity turned their heads the other way.

To pursue this study is not to delve in a necropolis like Nineveh or Babylon; for China is not, like western Asia, the grave of dead empires, but the home of a people [Page x]

endowed with inexhaustible vitality. Her present greatness and her future prospects alike challenge admiration.

If the inhabitants of other worlds could look down on us, as we look up at the moon, there are only five empires on the globe of sufficient extent to make a figure on their map: one of these is China. With more than three times the population of Russia, and an almost equal area, in natural advantages she is without a rival, if one excepts the United States. Imagination revels in picturing her future, when she shall have adopted Christian civilisation, and when steam and electricity shall have knit together all the members of her gigantic frame.

It was by the absorption of small states that the Chinese people grew to greatness. The present work will trace their history as they emerge, like a rivulet, from the highlands of central Asia and, increasing in volume, flow, like a stately river, toward the eastern ocean. Revolutions many and startling are to be recorded: some, like that in the epoch of the Great Wall, which stamped the impress of unity upon the entire people; others, like the Manchu conquest of 1644, by which, in whole or in part, they were brought under the sway of a foreign dynasty. Finally, contemporary history will be treated at some length, as its importance demands; and the transformation now going on in the Empire will be faithfully depicted in its relations to Western influences in the fields of religion, commerce and arms.

As no people can be understood or properly studied apart from their environment, a bird's-eye view of the country is given.

PART I

THE EMPIRE IN OUTLINE

CHAPTER I

CHINA PROPER

_Five Grand Divisions--Climate--Area and Population--The Eighteen Provinces_

The empire consists of five grand divisions: China Proper, Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. In treating of this huge conglomerate it will be most convenient to begin with the portion that gives name and character to the whole.

Of China Proper it may be affirmed that the sun s.h.i.+nes nowhere on an equal area which combines so many of the conditions requisite for the support of an opulent and prosperous people. Lying between 18 and 49 north lat.i.tude, her climate is alike exempt from the fierce heat of the torrid zone and the killing cold of the frigid regions. There is not one of her provinces in which wheat, rice, and cotton, the three staples of food and clothing, may not be cultivated with more or less success; but in the southern half wheat gives place to rice, while in the north cotton yields to silk and hemp. In the south cotton is king and rice is queen of the fields.

Traversed in every direction by mountain ranges of moderate elevation whose sides are cultivated in [Page 4]

terraces to such a height as to present the appearance of hanging gardens, China possesses fertile valleys in fair proportion, together with vast plains that compare in extent with those of our American prairie states. Furrowed by great rivers whose innumerable affluents supply means of irrigation and transport, her barren tracts are few and small.

A coast-line of three thousand miles indented with gulfs, bays, and inlets affords countless harbours for s.h.i.+pping, so that few countries can compare with her in facilities for ocean commerce.

As to her boundaries, on the east six of her eighteen provinces bathe their feet in the waters of the Pacific; on the south she clasps hands with Indo-China and with British Burma; and on the west the foothills of the Himalayas form a bulwark more secure than the wall that marks her boundary on the north. Greatest of the works of man, the Great Wall serves at present no other purpose than that of a mere geographical expression. Built to protect the fertile fields of the "Flowery Land" from the incursions of northern nomads, it may have been useful for some generations; but it can hardly be p.r.o.nounced an unqualified success, since China in whole or in part has pa.s.sed more than half of the twenty-two subsequent centuries under the domination of Tartars.

With an area of about 1,500,000 square miles, or one-half that of Europe, China has a busy population of about four hundred millions; yet, so far from being exhausted, there can be no doubt that with improved methods in agriculture, manufactures, mining, and transportation, she might very [Page 5]

easily sustain double the present number of her thrifty children.

Within this favoured domain the products of nature and of human industry vie with each other in extent and variety. A bare enumeration would read like a page of a gazetteer and possibly make no more impression than a column of figures. To form an estimate of the marvellous fecundity of the country and to realise its picturesqueness, one ought to visit the provinces in succession and spend a year in the exploration of each. If one is precluded from such leisurely observation, undoubtedly the next best thing is to see them through the eyes of those who have travelled in and have made a special study of those regions.

To more than half of the provinces I can offer myself as a guide.

I spent ten years at Ningpo, and one year at Shanghai, both on the southern seacoast. At the northern capital I spent forty years; and I have recently pa.s.sed three years at Wuchang on the banks of the Yang-tse Kiang, a special coign of vantage for the study of central China. While residing in the above-mentioned foci it was my privilege to visit six other provinces (some of them more than once), thus gaining a personal acquaintance with ten out of the eighteen and being enabled to gather valuable information at first hand.

A glance at the subjoined table (from the report of the China Inland Mission for 1905) will exhibit the magnitude of the field of investigation before us. The average province corresponds in extent to the average state of the American Union; and the whole exceeds [Page 6]

that portion of the United States which lies east of the Mississippi.

CHINA PROPER

--------------------------------------------- PROVINCES | AREA | POPULATION | SQ. MILES | -------------------|-----------|------------- Kw.a.n.gtung (Canton) | 99,970 | 31,865,000 Kw.a.n.gsi | 77,200 | 5,142,000 f.u.kien | 46,320 | 22,876,000 Chehkiang | 36,670 | 11,580,000 Kiangsu | 38,600 | 13,980,000 Shantung | 55,970 | 38,248,000 Chihli | 115,800 | 20,937,000 Shansi | 81,830 | 12,200,000 Shensi | 75,270 | 8,450,000 Kansuh | 125,450 | 10,385,000 Honan | 67,940 | 35,316,000 Hupeh | 71,410 | 35,280,000 Hunan | 83,380 | 22,170,000 Nganhwei(Anhwei) | 54,810 | 23,670,000 Yunnan | 146,680 | 12,325,000 Szechuen | 218,480 | 68,725,000 Kiangsi | 69,480 | 26,532,000 Kweichau | 67,160 | 7,650,000 -------------------|-----------|------------- Totals | 1,532,420 | 407,331,000

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CHAPTER II