Sidelights on Chinese Life Part 18

The primary process goes on for about five years, during which time he has read through most of his school-books. With one's notions that one has got from English school life it is impossible at first to realize the stupendous work that is involved in this dreary way of being educated. The boy comes to school at early dawn, and he is kept at his desk, with the exception of his meal hours, till night is throwing its shadows over the earth. There is no intermission and no racing about the playground at certain intervals to break in upon the eternal monotony of grinding study.

The playground is a Western inst.i.tution that has never found its way into the East. The lads have no time for such inventions that would interfere with work. Life out here is serious and life is earnest, for the school-boy at least, and no frivolous methods must be allowed to stay the studies of this gigantic language.

The whole day, therefore, is spent in acquiring the sounds and the look of each particular word, without having the remotest idea what they mean. He comes the next day and the same grinding goes on. The spring pa.s.ses into summer and summer into autumn, and one day is like another in its weary monotony, and the sounds in growing numbers clang and ring within his brain, and the weird little pictures are hung up in the picture gallery of his mind, but they tell him no story, neither do they suggest the poetry and romance that often lie hidden within so many of them.

This fearful kind of treadmill education goes on for four or five years with boys of ordinary intelligence, but for three or four with lads of exceptional abilities and fine memories, who have the faculty of remembering both the sounds and the faces of the thousands of characters that they meet with in their school-books. During all those precious years when the intellects of the lads are just in that stage when they are open to development and expansion, they are bound and contracted by a miserable system that has kept this nation from advancing in thought and from claiming the position amongst the nations of the world that it would have been ent.i.tled to had a wider liberty been given it in the training of its youth.

The cruel thing about it is that though of extreme age, having been started in the famous Han Dynasty (B.C. 296-A.D. 23), it is in no sense an outcome of the teaching of the sages. There is ample evidence from Chinese doc.u.ments to show that the common schools were conducted in the time, say, of Confucius (B.C. 550) more as they are carried on in Western lands, and that even girls were instructed in the _Book of Odes_, one of the stiffest of the sacred cla.s.sics, and that books were read not simply in the mechanical way that they have been for two thousand years, but because of the interest of the subjects that were discussed in them.

The years have gone slowly by and nature in successive seasons has poured out of the bounties of an untrammelled heart the riches that have filled men's hearts with gladness, but the school-house has continued to be the prison-house where thought was never allowed to blossom, and where the possibilities of the human heart were crushed and cramped beneath an iron system that made the spirit of romance and fairy tale and adventure die out of the youthful manhood of the nation.

At last the morning came to our scholar when the teacher began to explain the meaning of the strange old-world pictures that stood in columns down the pages of his books. Their names were all known and their faces were very familiar, for with many a sigh, and sometimes almost with breaking heart they had been read and reread, until every lineament in their wizened faces had been printed on the pupil's hearts. And what a revelation was the rendering made by the stern master who had simply been the corrector of wrong sounds, the cold, severe tyrant of the school who had never seemed to feel one touch of sympathy for the young hearts under his control.

Many of the dry and colourless pictures under the touch of this stern and apparently cold-blooded teacher became instinct with life, and human faces peered through them, and the voices of men that lived ages ago could be heard speaking in the language of to-day, exhorting the scholars to a n.o.ble and a virtuous ambition. Others, again, exhaled the fragrance of the fields and the perfume of flowers, whilst one could hear the rustling of the corn as the breeze swept over it, and could see in imagination the mountains with their sun-crowned summits and the shadows chasing each other like school-boys along their rugged sides.

The whole of Chinese history that had lain within the cold and lifeless grasp of these square little puzzles which he had looked upon with unutterable loathing for five years, now under the magic touch of the teacher's hand began to tell the story of the past. He now heard for the first time of the great revolutions that had changed the destinies of proud dynasties, and listened to the clang of battle, and the mighty heroes who had figured in the nation's life centuries ago now seemed to march by, and he appeared to be able to catch a glimpse of their faces and to compare the pictures of them that he had imagined in his mind with the reality now before him.

One very unhappy result of compelling the boys to spend four or five years in merely learning the sounds of the words, and in familiarizing them with their look without at the same time acquiring a knowledge of their meaning, is to greatly reduce the number of those who can read any book that is put before them as is the case in the West. Fully sixty per cent.

of the lads that enter the common schools leave before they reach the second stage. There are many reasons for this, but the chief one is a financial one. The parents are poor, and so when a boy reaches a certain age his services may be required to help in the support of the family, or a good situation is offered that does not demand much education, and the lad is glad of any excuse that will take him away from the heartbreaking drudgery of simply learning sounds; and so he jumps for joy when his books are thrown aside, and as he realizes that he is never more required to enter the school-room again.

All these boys have acquired a certain smattering of knowledge, which, however, is absolutely useless to them for the purpose of enabling them to read. One constantly meets with men that can read a page of a book who have not the remotest idea of what the meaning of the pa.s.sage is. This is because they left school before the second stage in their education was reached, and therefore for all practical purposes they are no better off than those who have never received any instruction when they were lads.

The mandarins are accustomed to put out proclamations about anything they wish to order or to instruct the people under their charge. These are posted up in prominent places throughout the town, and knots of men gather round them who seem to be able to read fluently the strange mysterious-looking symbols that compose them. You ask a man who is reading one of these to explain to you what the mandarin wishes to be done. He says he really cannot tell you, for when he was at school he never got further than the initial stage of learning to recognize the characters with the names that belong to them, and therefore he is unable to explain to you what the mandarin is forbidding or what regulations he is issuing for the conduct of the people.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A SCHOLAR IN OFFICIAL DRESS.

_To face p. 258._]

The consequence of this utterly insane plan of education is that for a civilized country such as China claims to be, the people are grossly ignorant and uneducated. Taking the population at four hundred millions, and say half of these are women who may safely be said to have never been to any school when they were girls, that leaves two hundred millions of men to be considered. Sinologues who have been well qualified to deal with the subject, after serious calculations have come to the conclusion that not more than fifteen millions of readers exist throughout the length and breadth of the land. These include men who have a mere smattering of education, but who know enough to be book-keepers and accountants, and doctors who can write their own prescriptions, and shopkeepers who can make out their bills, but in such misshapen and uncouth hieroglyphics that they would make Confucius shudder with disgust were he allowed to visit the earth, and see what caricatures these men have made of the marvellous inventions of the darkest ages of China.

Fifteen millions is to my mind a most liberal estimate of the readers of this country. Why writers on China should have persistently represented the people of this land as being highly educated is a mystery to those who profess to be only moderately acquainted with the subject. The country is illiterate, grossly illiterate, and as a result is festering with pride and with contempt for every other nation outside of the Middle Kingdom.

There is just now going on throughout the country, however, a tremendous awakening, and the rush after education on Western lines is one in which all cla.s.ses of society are united. The old obsolete system is doomed, and the youth of the future will be no more subject to the pain and the weariness and the heartbreaking that countless generations of the young manhood of the country have had to endure in the past.

We now come to the school-books of the nation, for though there never has been an Educational Board in China, and none of the dynasties that have successively sat on the Dragon Throne of this Empire have ever legislated with regard to the teaching of the youth of the land, there has always existed but one set of books that are the text books in every school throughout the country, and which have been used in every scholastic inst.i.tution that has ever existed in the long ages of the past. The Chinaman is thoroughgoing in his conservatism. He has never weakened on that subject. Even in his smells he is the rankest Tory that ever lived.

The odours that reek through the streets, and send their aroma down the alleyways, and gently mingle in the atmosphere of the homes, have nothing modern in them, but are the lineal descendants of a long line of ancestors that vanish from sight in the mist and obscurity of a remote past.

As a result of this national instinct, no teacher has ever had the hardihood to propose that there should be any alteration in the books that should be used in the instruction either of the young or of the more advanced pupils who may be planning for literary honours. This is all the more remarkable considering the wide extent of territory of the Chinese Empire, and of the varieties of languages that are used by the people.

The Chinese are generally spoken of as one race, and so they are in the great outstanding features that const.i.tute them one distinct nation, and yet they are divided off from one another in many large regions by dialects so different from each other, that the people occupying them cannot understand the languages that are spoken in those outside of their own.

It would have seemed that such radical differences as those produced by what is practically a foreign language would have led to different methods and different ideals as to the management of their schools, but they have not. You pa.s.s along the great plains where the fertility of the soil has given prosperity to the people, and you examine the schools and you find one set of text books in every one. You travel over mountain ranges where the people are having a severe struggle for existence and where a language is spoken that needs an interpreter before you can enter into conversation with them. You enter into their village schools and you find the same familiar books, but the names given to the strange weird-looking little pictures are so different from those they call them on the other side of the mountains that you cannot recognize them. You pa.s.s up the great Yang-tze, the "Son of the Ocean," and you step out of your boats a few hundred miles apart from the last place you rested at, and you discover that every locality has its own dialect. You make your way to the nearest school, and still the same books meet your eye, with just the same dog-eared, uninviting appearance that they present in any lat.i.tude or longitude of the Empire in which you may meet them. You listen to see if you can catch the tones in which the lads scream out at the top of their voices the uncouth metallic tones in which they call out the names of the pictures that fill the pages of their books, but they change in every place you visit, and your mind is filled with a kind of wonder at the immense variety of tones and dialects in which the students of this vast country ring the changes on the books that for countless ages have been the only ones from which they have had to study.

With regard to these school-books it has to be stated that there has never been any attempt made to render them attractive to the children that use them. In England the very reverse of this is the case. They are printed as a rule on clean white paper, and in a type that is so distinct that the pupils have never to strain their eyes to make out the letterpress. In addition to this, most of the books are ill.u.s.trated with beautiful pictures that give a fascination to the pages, whilst they help the scholars to grasp the meaning of the subjects that they have to study.

Now in China there is nothing done to ease the sorrows of the lads in their grappling with this huge language of cryptic pictures that refuse to have their meanings explored excepting after years of most painful study.

The books are printed upon the very poorest paper in order to lessen the cost. The words, too, are often blurred and indistinct, for the wooden blocks from which they are printed are generally so worn by years of use, that the delicate strokes and minute touches with the pen, and the involved and complicated interweaving of straight and waving lines that go to the making up of the old-world-looking pictures, get frayed and broken in the printing, so that it requires a practised eye to distinguish some of them from others that have a natural likeness.

The pages of these books present a most dreary and uninviting appearance.

They are never lightened by any pictures, and no artist has ever attempted to vary the dreariness of school life by any sketches from nature or any scene from human life. It is no wonder that the artistic faculty in the Chinaman has been developed in a grotesque and unrealistic fas.h.i.+on, or that nature seems to be made to be conformed to the stiff and formal characters upon which the eyes of the youth of China have to look during the early years when the artistic element is waiting to be moulded into those finer shapes that will produce the great pictures that are seen in the West. Art in China has never had any room in which to play her part in the development of the mind, or in training the fancies and the imagination of men. The artist in this land is a man that draws his scenes by rule and compa.s.s, and he would lose caste were he to violate certain canons that must be observed in the drawing of a landscape or in the pose or att.i.tude of the human figure. He never dreams of going out into the fields or of sitting on a hillside and of trying to reproduce the scene that lies stretched before him. There is no freedom and no losing of oneself in the inspiration of the moment, when forgetful of rules and mastered by the subtle forces that have touched his dreams into action, he shall produce something that no man has ever done before him. The chill of the years is upon him, when he was compelled, at the very time when his soul was in the process of formation, to keep his gaze upon those square unartistic hieroglyphics, and crus.h.i.+ng down all the poetry and all the romance that lay dormant in his nature, to take these as the highest ideals for all his conceptions of art in the future.

The first book that is put into the hands of the young scholar is called the _Three Word Cla.s.sic_, because it is written in stanzas of three words each. It would naturally be supposed that this book was of the simplest and most elementary character, and suited for the immature minds and brains of the lads who are called upon to study it. In the West this would certainly have been the case, but the East, with its metaphysical trend of thought and tendency to mysticism, refuses to consider that it has to come down to the level of the young who are just beginning their studies, and whose minds can grasp only the commonest and the most everyday thoughts.

The result is there is not to-day a single child's book in China, and no fairy stories for children, and no household rhymes that can be bought at the booksellers, and put into the hands of the little ones in the nursery.

The books in this land are for grown-up men, and demand thought and study and ponderous commentaries in order to be understood; and yet it is these very same that are put into the hands of a youth of tender years when he begins to grapple with this gigantic system of mystic pictures that contain the thoughts and pa.s.sions and feelings of the Chinese race.

The _Three Word Cla.s.sic_ is a very admirable instance of the beau ideal kind of book that the educationist of this land puts into the hands of a boy, say, of eight or nine years of age. It begins by saying--

"Man at birth, His Nature's virtuous, All natures alike, Vary by experience.

Formerly Mencius' mother Chose her locality, Son refused study She severed web," etc.

The meaning of this pa.s.sage when put into a little more diffuse language is that when a child is born his heart is naturally good and inclined to virtue. All children in fact come into the world with natures very much like each other, and that it is only as they grow up and come under the influence of surrounding circ.u.mstances that they do not all turn out good.

It is not men's natures that are corrupt, but it is the influence of evil companions and bad training that lead so many astray, and prevent men from following the bent that is in every man's mind towards virtue.

To ill.u.s.trate this, the case of the great philosopher Mencius is described with some minuteness. It appears that he had a mother who was a woman of great force of character. She was determined that her son should grow up to be a great man, but in order to secure this it was essential that his surroundings should be such as would be helpful to the carrying out of this ambition of the mother's heart. Three times did she remove from the localities she had chosen for her home, because the neighbours were not up to the moral standard that would qualify them to be proper examples for her son.

At length having found the home that satisfied her, she discovered to her sorrow that Mencius was not inclined to work up to her ideal. He was a high-spirited lad and full of animal spirits, and preferred to be flying kites or spinning tops, or tossing the shuttlec.o.c.k from one to another with the side of his shoe, to serious study with his books. She was a brave woman was this mother of the future philosopher. She was quite alone in the world, for her husband was dead and her relatives lived far away, and her only source of livelihood was the loom on which she wove the webs that she disposed of in the nearest market town.

At length the crisis came. One day she had been begging and entreating her son to be a good boy and give his heart to his studies. He did not seem moved, however, by her pa.s.sionate appeals, and in her agony of spirit, and feeling that life had no charm for her, she grasped a knife that lay by and began to cut and mangle the web she was weaving. Mencius was so horrified at this proceeding of his mother, and so cut to the heart that his conduct should have driven her to such an act of despair, that with tears in his eyes he promised that he would never trouble her again with any misconduct of his. From that day he was completely changed. With heart and soul he entered into his studies. He became a distinguished scholar, and finally produced works that have moulded and influenced the thinkers of this nation from his own times (B.C. 372-289) down to the present.

Other examples are given in this famous school-book of men who, desiring to conform to the high principles that lie embedded in the soul of every child at birth, have fought manfully against external circ.u.mstances and have come out successful in the end. It is told of one man who subsequently became very distinguished, that when he was a young man he was so poor that he had no money to buy oil with which to study after dark. So determined, however, was he that his evenings should not be wasted, that he hit upon the ingenious plan of catching a number of fireflies, and from the light they threw out he kept up his reading as late into the night as he desired. Another man equally poor used to take his book out on a winter's night, and by the lights of the snow that fell on it pursue his studies after all the rest of the family were buried in slumber.

The next book that follows hard upon the _Three Word Cla.s.sic_ is the _Cla.s.sic on Filial Piety_, a book that was written by the great sage Confucius, and is a voluminous disquisition upon the duties and virtues of honouring one's parents. There is no doubt but that the profound respect that the Chinese have for the doctrine of filial piety has been fostered in the nation by this work having been for so many centuries the school-book of the children in all the schools throughout the length and breadth of the land.

Although in practical life one looks often in vain for a large and general carrying out of the principles laid down by Confucius, there is no doubt that there is such a universal acceptance of this divinely commanded virtue that the effect on the nation has been extremely beneficial. The ideal is in the air and permeates human life at every point, and though men through the infirmities of their fallen nature often transgress the teachings of the sages on this point, there is still a vast amount of restraint that is put upon the pa.s.sions of men's hearts in their treatment of their parents.

Before the _Cla.s.sic on Filial Piety_ has been read through, the youthful pupils are introduced to the study of the masterpieces of the great writers and thinkers of the nation. There are no gradual and easy stages that are to land them finally into the abstruse style and profound thinking of the books that have really shaped the life and thought of the Chinese race. In England there are innumerable stepping-stones between the story of Jack and Jill and Macaulay's _History of England_, and boys of ten or eleven would never be called upon to attempt the study of the latter. The lads of China, however, are not treated with the same indulgence, for they are put to the study of books that test the thinking powers of the wisest and the most distinguished scholars in the land. A brief statement of the teaching of these will show what is the kind of studies that the youth in China has for a long course of centuries been compelled to submit to.

The first in order of the "Four Books" that is put into the hands of the pupils is _The Great Learning_. The leading thoughts that are discussed in it are how men are to control themselves so that they may become useful members of society; how they are to manage their families so that peace may be preserved in the home and the sons and daughters turn out well; and lastly, the best methods of governing a state so that the highest happiness may be secured to all its inhabitants. These three points that affect the whole of society in some form or other, may well be considered the greatest kind of learning that any man might desire to master.

The next is _The Doctrine of the Mean_, a book that is insufferably dull and monotonous, but is filled with arguments to show that men should not rush into extremes, but should pursue the middle path in every undertaking in which they may engage. It is one of the most difficult of the "Four Books" to understand, but its main drift is that which has been indicated above. Following on this confessedly difficult work are the writings of Mencius, to whom reference has been made in the previous pages. This philosopher was a most practical and a most genial kind of writer. To him belongs the honour of defining what he calls the five virtues that are eternal in their character, viz. love, righteousness, courtesy, a wise appreciation of life, and sincerity. He dwells, however, more fully on the two first, and shows how in the management of a state they are most important factors, without which it must eventually come to destruction.

The fourth book is called the _a.n.a.lects_, or it might be termed the Table Talk of Confucius, for it is largely made up of brief and pithy utterances of the great sage whilst conversing with the various characters that appear in its pages. Like Mencius, he has had the distinction of marking out a fivefold relations.h.i.+p that has been accepted by succeeding ages as a very masterpiece of thought and genius. These are the relation between sovereign and people, between parents and children, between husband and wife, between elder and younger brothers, and between friend and friend. These are discussed very fully, and it is shown that the divisions that Confucius made, if properly recognized and carried out, would secure happiness and prosperity to all the people of any country or state.

There are two figures, however, in this interesting work that are of surpa.s.sing interest, and that have had a profound effect on the character and thought of the nation ever since. These are what Confucius calls "The Son of a King," and "The Small Man." The former of these is the conception in the mind of the great sage of what he deemed to be the ideal man. It is not, however, one born in a palace and heir to a throne. He might first have seen the light of day in a cottage, and have spent all his life there. The conception was of a man of princely mind, who acted as though he were really the son of a king and was destined one day to rule an Empire. His thoughts were all n.o.ble, and no shadow of anything mean or despicable ever fell upon his soul. "The Small Man" was the very reverse of this. He was common and mean in all that he did. No lofty thought ever crossed his mind, and no ambition to excel in the finer qualities that make up the beautiful life ever lifted him up for a moment from the low level in which he constantly lived. If Confucius had never written another word, but had been simply content to have flashed this inspiration of genius in the pictures he has drawn of these two characters upon the coming centuries, he would have done incalculable service to his race.

Following on the "Four Books" there come in quick succession the "Five Cla.s.sics," which are given to the boys to read. The first of these is the _Book of Poetry_, which contains the national songs that were sung by the fathers of the race, as well as those used on royal and solemn occasions, such as when some great function was being performed in the presence of the sovereign, or when in the ancestral halls the members of the clans were a.s.sembled to offer sacrifices to the spirits of their ancestors. From a Western standpoint they are insufferably dull as a whole, for they are wanting in pa.s.sion and intensity, and never seem to be able to stir men into enthusiasm or to set the blood on fire.

The next in order of study is the _Book of History_, which contains the brief record of some of the leading events that took place in the first five dynasties that ruled over the Chinese race from B.C. 2357, down to the year B.C. 627.[3] Then comes the _Record of Ceremonies_, which contains minute directions how to act with ceremonious politeness to the members of one's own family, to strangers, to those in authority, and to any one that one may meet in society under every and any conditions whatsoever.

It is most amusing to read of the minute directions that are given in this manual of etiquette with regard to the way in which parents should be treated by their children. "Boys and girls who are still under age ought to rise from their beds at dawn and wash their hands and rinse their mouths, and carefully comb their hair. They should then hasten to the bedroom of their parents and inquire if they are in need of any refreshment. If they are, they must at once proceed to the kitchen and provide something savoury for them to partake of, and they must stand by with heads slightly lowered in token of profound respect whilst they are eating the food they have prepared for them."

Rules even are laid down as to how the children should act when a father, for example, has been doing something that needs reproof. "When he has been in error the son must point this out in an exceedingly humble manner, in a gentle tone and a countenance on which there must not be the shadow of a frown. If the father refuses to listen, the son must become still more dutiful than he has ever been, until finding that any unpleasant feeling has pa.s.sed away he must again with great respect point out what he considers ought to be rectified in his conduct, and try and show him the injury he is doing to the department, district, village or neighbourhood in which he lives. Should the father be so enraged at this as to beat his son till the blood flows down, he must not dare to harbour the least resentment against him, but must serve him with increased respect and reverence."

The fourth of the "Five Cla.s.sics" is called the _Record of the Spring and Autumn_, and was composed by Confucius. His object in writing it was to give a narrative of events in continuation of the history contained in the _Book of History_ mentioned above. He desired also to give the nation a lasting monument of himself, for he seemed to be haunted with an idea that if he did not leave some record of himself, his name and his memory would perish from the face of the earth.

His narrative of events extends from B.C. 722-480, but the whole thing has been done in the most inartistic fas.h.i.+on. The sentences are brief and matter of fact, and whether it be an atrocious murder or a deed of heroism that is recorded, the author is careful to conceal what his own views are with regard to them. No details are given and no opinion expressed, the facts are simply recorded, and that is all; and yet Confucius declared that it would be by the _Records of the Spring and Autumn_ that succeeding ages would either honour or condemn him, a prediction that was bound never to be fulfilled.

The last of the "Five Cla.s.sics" is the _Book of Changes_, the most mysterious and the most unfathomable of all the books in the Chinese language. It consists of sixty-four short essays, and is founded upon the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and some are divided. From these figures are evolved all kinds of theories on moral, social, and spiritualistic questions. It is the happy hunting-ground of fortune-tellers, who can predict from the peculiar way in which the lines happen to be placed in relation to each other whether prosperity is to come into a man's life, or whether misery and sorrow are to close it in disaster.

In the above I have given a very rough and general summary of the school-books that the youth of China have had to study from the earliest days down to the present. The common subjects that are taught in the schools at home, such as arithmetic, geography, grammar, and such like, have no place in the schools of this country. The result is that the whole nation is grossly ignorant of every other country outside of their own, and this has engendered conceit and contempt and an arrogant spirit for countries that stand in the van of civilization in the West.