Life and sport in China Part 16

Of their artistic qualities there are many favourable critics, though personally I consider them to be extremely poor. Their music, both vocal and instrumental, is worse than rubbish; in sketching and painting they are without sense of perspective; their architecture is clumsy and coa.r.s.e; their much-vaunted pottery is full of flaws and blemishes, for which reason a perfect specimen is almost priceless and over which connoisseurs hypnotise themselves; dancing, except by flower-girls, is unknown; while in literature they are safe from adequate criticism, owing to the impossibilities of their language.

Embroidery, bronzes, carving, and dyeing in both pottery and silks are, in my opinion, their best artistic productions, although it is said that the famous colouring of chinaware is now a lost art, as those clans which held the secrets were almost extirpated during the Taiping rebellion. Many articles of vertu are undoubtedly valuable, but is it not rather owing to their antiquity, to their rarity, or to the fact that they are good specimens of a certain workmans.h.i.+p, however bad, rather than to any inherent artistic merits?

Quaint they indeed are from a European standpoint, but on more intimate knowledge this quaintness resolves itself into a slavish adaptability to the smallest circ.u.mstances in their daily struggle for existence. To a man who has been some years in the country, and who has tried to understand local conditions, the Chinese live on a dead level with matters of fact.

To say that they are effeminate would be incorrect. In some things, from our point of view, they undoubtedly are; in others they are extremely virile.

The captain of a British man-of-war told me that he considered them to be the poorest fighters in existence. That they habitually make a feeble show in battle cannot be gainsaid, but then they are a most matter-of-fact people, without any craving for military glory, and knowing beforehand that there is no possible chance of success, take time by the forelock and run away to escape a useless death.

Select one of our very best regiments and stop their pay for several months, deprive them of officers, take away all doctors and medical comforts, half starve them, arm them with flags, pikes and muzzle-loaders, and then march them against a crack European regiment.

You may be sure the Chinese example would be quickly followed. I do not say the Chinese are brave, but I do believe that, given a good training, just treatment and a fair chance of success, they would prove no mean antagonists.

Possessing great natural apt.i.tude, if it is made worth their while they will quickly become good riders, good shots, good at billiards and tennis, good sailors, etc., giving their whole attention to each matter, though without enthusiasm. It is this dull concentration on particular callings which has deprived their character of that vital force, initiative, which, while the greatest of safeguards to rival nations, has removed from the Chinese mind the power to comprehend and carry out large and complicated undertakings involving the handling and direction of modern systems and appliances. The Chinaman is at present content to supply labour, but whether in time he will be capable of also supplying the versatile, directing brain is a moot question. Anyhow, it will not be for long years and until he has lived under a modernised Government for several generations.

Extreme consideration for infancy and old age, the growing of long finger-nails, the supposed debilitation arising from opium-smoking, the universal usage of fans, the wearing of flowing garments and braided hair, and the discharging of domestic duties which in other countries fall to the lot of women, are probably largely accountable for the charges of effeminacy.

As to their uncanniness there is no doubt. We do not, and never shall, fathom the depth of a Chinaman's brain. After mutually looking at the same object from widely-different points of view _we_ express our ideas, talk them over and invite criticism, while _he_--is silent. He listens to us and agrees, but keeps his own views to himself. We want to explain everything; he does not, but takes things on faith.

In our inmost hearts we generally do not feel sure whether we believe or do not believe in spiritualism, in good spirits, bad spirits, ghosts, dreams, devils and manifestations. He believes in them all without a suspicion of doubt, but, knowing our wonted thoughtless scepticism, will frequently say he does not, as the easiest way of avoiding a useless discussion and condemnation of established facts.

In dealing with educated Chinese many foreigners a.s.sume a forced, artificial manner, as though addressing themselves to an autocrat or a murderer, and are ever on the lookout for something to find fault with. My own idea is to maintain a naturally polite bearing and treat them precisely as you would your own countrymen of whatever rank in life. They strike me as being extremely responsive, and oftentimes even grateful for being taken simply as men and not as extraordinary specimens of another humanity.

The dominating factor of their lives is "face." Whatever happens, so long as a man can save his face he has always the chance of righting himself. We continually hear of their commercial integrity, which is undoubtedly very great, though not springing from any innate principles of fair-dealing but from a desire to save face. I have very little doubt but that a Chinese merchant would immediately "do" you if he could be perfectly sure of not being found out, and so losing face, and that too without in any way violating his own feelings. "Face," or otherwise "appearances," is a Chinaman's pa.s.sport to respectability, and therefore of great commercial value, but has nothing whatever to do with the hidden principles of honour and morality. That honesty pays better than dishonesty is a fact well known and firmly adhered to by merchants in a large way of business. To those in a small way of business, honesty does not pay, and consequently does not exist, but instead ability in squeezing is accepted as the gauge of capacity.

The first essential in dealing with Chinese is control of temper. I do not mean that one should not possess a temper, on the contrary, it is a distinct advantage to have one, only it must be kept well in hand. A man of irritable, rasping temperament quickly loses respect and weakens control, while he who can keep calm under any circ.u.mstances, and only very rarely gives rein to a fierce outburst at the psychological moment, invariably compels admiration and obedience, for, it is reasoned, if a man who has command of his temper gets angry it is because he has just cause, and the fault must necessarily lie with those who call his anger forth.

Under no circ.u.mstances, except in actual self-defence, strike a Chinaman. The pain or insult it may cause him is as nothing in comparison with the lowering effect it will have on your own status in native eyes. From being well-considered you will at once become an object of contemptuous dislike.

The empire of China is considerably larger than the whole of Europe, contains limitless natural resources, and is inhabited by a hardy race of some four hundred million souls who are bound together by ties of blood, language, tradition and religion. This race, which until quite modern times existed as a world apart and was sufficient unto itself in all things, is highly developed both mentally and physically, though its government, as judged by Western ideas, is hopelessly obsolete.

If left to themselves I see no reason why the Chinese should not slumber on as they now are till the crack of doom, but, the world having become so reduced in size through the agencies of steam and electricity, they never will again be left undisturbed, but more and more subjected to the pressure of other nationalities in the feverish struggle for domination and wealth. To this pressure they will surely yield in one way or another. Will they forestall the inevitable by reforming themselves, or will they for a time fall beneath the foreign yoke until they have learnt their lesson, and then rea.s.sert their solidarity and independence?

In whatever light we may view these people or animadvert on their numberless contradictory qualities and failings, it is as certain as day and night that they are here to stay, if only by force of numbers, and that no political convulsions will wipe them out. They may be battered and even sundered for a time, but each successive shock will only serve to resuscitate their vitality.

Already possessing an equipment of wealth, numbers, thrift, good physique and high mental power, they only await good government to start them along the rails of progress. Whatever nations may rise or fall, the future is big with promise for the children of Han.

[Sidenote: LANGUAGE.]

The Chinese language is like China itself: colossal!

Roughly, the mandarin or official language is spoken by all officials throughout the empire and by all cla.s.ses in those provinces which lie north of the Yangtse, while south of this line Cantonese is the princ.i.p.al dialect, although the number of others is legion, and so p.r.o.nounced are the differences between them that countrymen dwelling but a few miles apart are frequently at a loss to understand each other.

On one occasion, when making "a little trip to j.a.pan," I took my Pekingese boy with me. Having missed the fortnightly mail-boat I made the pa.s.sage from Chefoo in a small German collier, and on arrival at Nagasaki took rickshas to the hotel. In the streets were a goodly number of Chinese, members of a considerable colony of small traders, and the sight of compatriots in a foreign land greatly delighted the boy, who, on my departure after tiffin to make a tour of the town, asked if he meanwhile might go out to drink tea with his countrymen. I gave permission, but on returning some hours later to the hotel found him in a very disappointed frame of mind, which was accounted for by his explanation that the Chinese residents in Nagasaki were all Cantonese, and that not being able to understand a word of mandarin they had perforce been obliged to converse with each other as best they could in pidgin English. He said, "Looksee b'long all same Chinaman, no savez talkee."

The Pekingese are very discriminative and frequently condescendingly refer to all other Chinese as "outside men" or "foreigners."

Pidgin English is a queer jargon composed of a verbatim translation of Chinese sentences together with a slight admixture of Portuguese and French, the frequent wrongful subst.i.tution of similar sounding words and a lavish use of the terminals _ee_ and _o_.

"S'pose you wantchee catchee olo chinaware, compradore savez talkee my," represents, "If you want to get some old chinaware your Chinese agent will let me know," while I have heard "two times twicee" for "twice two," and "last day to-night" for "last evening."

The word _pidgin_ means _work_ of any kind, as in "plenty pidgin" or "no got pidgin," and _pidgin English_ simply means a workable knowledge of colloquial English as picked up by tradesmen, servants and coolies, in contradistinction to English as taught in the schools.

On the northern frontiers there is also pidgin Russian.

The written language is the same everywhere, each character, of which the Chinese say there are between eighty and a hundred thousand, representing a complete word, so that before being able to read, and more especially write, a single sentence, each individual character in it must be closely studied and committed to memory, as we commit to memory the letters of the alphabet, but with the difference that whereas the alphabet consists of but twenty-six simple letters, Chinese caligraphy contains almost a hundred thousand characters of extreme complexity.

From earliest boyhood to the grave Chinese students never cease, yet never complete, committing these characters to memory and welding them into those graceful verses and essays which are the pride of Chinese literature.

Handwriting is accounted a fine art, and for many hours each day, year in and year out, characters are laboriously copied by means of a little brush filled with ink, which in the form of a cake or stick similar to Indian ink is moistened and ground on to a stone slab or "ink-stone," until the penmans.h.i.+p is frequently of a firmness and beauty surpa.s.sing that of copper-plate. In such veneration is the written character held that it is accounted wrong to debase in any way paper on which writing may be inscribed, wherefore conscientious _literati_ sometimes pa.s.s along the streets gathering into baskets stray pieces of paper bearing written characters, to burn them reverently in miniature paG.o.das or towers erected on public ground for that especial purpose.

The career of a student is considered to be the most honourable of all, but though chiefly restricted to handwriting, knowledge of characters, composition and national history, the Chinese admit that no man has ever yet thoroughly mastered his own language or even learnt all the characters.

How then about foreigners' knowledge of the language? It is like the nibblings of a mouse at a mountain.

In the course of two or three years a European by means of hard work, good memory and facile ear, may succeed in speaking one of the dialects so as generally to make himself understood, but to the end of his days his speech, for more than a few sentences, would never be mistaken in the dark by one Chinaman for that of another Chinaman.

As for the written character, I do not believe it possible for any European to acquire more than a superficial general, or a mature one-sided, knowledge of it. Some missionaries, notably Jesuits, have given their lives to the work and have undoubtedly attained to considerable erudition in the cla.s.sics and in subjects pertaining to religious doctrines, but in place give them some business papers or other doc.u.ments in current use and they would be at once hopelessly nonplussed.

A man may have mastered eight or ten thousand characters and may be able to read or dictate letters on any subject, but he probably would not be able to read a single line from most of the cla.s.sics.

I have heard, as a phenomenal thing, of a foreigner being able to write a letter himself, but the fact of its being phenomenal shows how unusual it was, and does not prove the absence of either crudities or errors.

All Europeans, even the most competent, are _always_ a.s.sisted by educated Chinamen when engaged on serious Chinese work. Unaided, they might read much correctly, but they might altogether miss the sense, and most probably would meet with characters they did not know.

As for writing, it is impossible. Even if unaided one did manage to compose anything, it would be the work of a tyro and would never pa.s.s muster with literary Chinese, while the penmans.h.i.+p would be laboured and coa.r.s.e, for the manner of holding the pen or brush is quite different from our own, and if not acquired almost from infancy the knack comes with difficulty when bones and sinews are more firmly set.

With regard to mastering what is called the running character, which, by way of ill.u.s.tration, may be said to correspond to our shorthand, the thing is not to be thought of.

To apply a general test, no European would ever have the slightest chance of pa.s.sing even the lowest of the literary examinations.

One may well ask what is the reason of this inability to reach the attainments of even a moderately well-educated Chinaman.

No European can give his whole time from earliest childhood to the undivided study of Chinese, and even if he could, I very much question if the unattractive nature of native literature would satisfy his more versatile brain, while the absence of social intercourse between the two races removes the greatest of all incentives to perseverance.

On the other hand, the Chinese are saturated with a hereditary instinct for their own language and literature, which instinct, besides a.s.siduous cultivation for thousands of years, is fostered from infancy by their surroundings, and is so exactly suited to their patient, phlegmatic temperament that it comes to them as naturally as the air they breathe, and even if unable to read but a few characters in a phrase, they will arrive at the meaning as surely as a well-bred hound will follow a trail.

And so it follows that although Europeans of most brilliant intellect may devote long years and infinite labour to the study of Chinese, lacking this native instinct, they can never attain to that ripened and fluent knowledge which is a heritage of the Mongol race alone.

[Sidenote: MISSIONARIES.]

What to say anent missionaries?

In England alone the proselytising spirit is strong, and every parish subscribes liberally to missionary funds in order that labourers in the vineyard may not be wanting, and that the ends of the earth may know the tidings of joy.

Most European residents in China are adverse to missionaries and express their opinions with such vehemence as to generally obscure criticisms of a more temperate nature. According to this majority the missionaries do nothing but harm. Frequently of poor education, and lacking altogether in tact and discretion, they thrust themselves in where they are not wanted, they interfere in local matters, ignore local customs, offend local susceptibilities, and by allowing young unmarried ladies without experience and frequently without suitable escort to wander about the country, to outrage all sense of decency, thus generating ill-will which not infrequently leads to riots, bloodshed and diplomatic trouble, while the good they do is microscopic and the number of converts or "rice-Christians" coincides with the amount of alms distributed, and who, when nothing further is to be acquired, revert to the faith, or indifference, of their forefathers. Building fine residences with the funds provided by gullible folks at home, and constructing diminutive churches with the few remaining bricks, drawing fat salaries which increase _pari pa.s.su_ with the number of their children, and taking long summer holidays in j.a.pan or in the mountains when business men must be hard at work, nothing but condemnation is heard for the whole system which, they say, should be forcibly suppressed by the various Governments concerned.