Chapter III: Part V: consists of biographies of the most eminent men who came to the (1)

front during the whole period covered.

These biographies are by no means confined to virtuous statesmen or heroic generals, as we might very reasonably have expected. The Chinese historian took a much broader view of his responsibilities to future ages, and along with the above virtuous statesmen and heroic generals he included lives of famous assassins, of tyrannical officials, of courtiers, of flatterers, of men with nothing beyond the gift of the gab, of politicians, of fortune-tellers, and the like.

This principle seems now to be widely recognised in the compilation of biographical collections. It was initiated by a Chinese historian one hundred years B.C.

His great work has come down to us as near as possible intact. To the Chinese it is, and always has been, a priceless treasure; so much so that every succeeding Dynastic History has been modelled pretty much upon the same lines.

The custom has always been for the incoming dynasty to issue the history of the dynasty it has overthrown, based upon materials which have been gathered daily during the latter's lease of power. At this moment the Historiographer's Department in Peking should be noting down current events for the use of posterity, in the established belief that all dynasties, even the most powerful, come to an end some day.

In addition to the Dynastic History proper, a custom has grown up of compiling what is called the "Veritable Record" of the life of the reigning Emperor. This is supposed to be written up every day, and with an absolute fidelity which it is unnecessary to suspect, since the Emperors are never allowed under any circumstances to cast an eye over their own records.

When the Hanlin College was burnt down, in 1900, some said that the "Veritable Records" of the present dynasty were destroyed. Others alleged that they had been carted away several days previously. However this may be, the "Veritable Records" of the great Ming dynasty, which came to a close in 1644, after three hundred years of power, are safe in Division B of the Cambridge Library, filling eighty-four large volumes of manuscript.

The next historical epoch is that of Ssu-ma Kuang, a leading statesman and scholar of the eleventh century A.D., who, after nineteen years of continuous labour, produced a general history of China, in the form of a chronological narrative, beginning with the fourth century B.C. and ending with the middle of the tenth century A.D. This work, which is popularly known as _The Mirror of History_, and is quite independent of the dynastic histories, fills thirty-three of our large bound-up volumes.

There is a quaint passage in the old man's Preface, dated 1084, and addressed to the Emperor:--

"Your servant's physical strength is now relaxed; his eyes are short-sighted and dim; of his teeth but a few remain. His memory is so impaired that the events of the moment are forgotten as he turns away from them, his energies having been wholly exhausted in the production of this book. He therefore hopes that your Majesty will pardon his vain attempt for the sake of his loyal intention, and in moments of leisure will deign to cast the Sacred Glance over this work, so as to learn from the rise and fall of former dynasties the secret of the successes and failures of the present hour. Then, if such knowledge shall be applied for the advantage of the Empire, even though your servant may lay his bones in the Yellow Springs, the aim and ambition of his life will be fulfilled."

Biography, as we have already seen, is to some extent provided for under the dynastic histories. Its scope, however, has been limited in later times, so far as the Historiographer's Department is concerned, to such officials as have been named by Imperial edict for inclusion in the national records. Consequently, there has always been a vast output of private biographical literature, dealing with the lives of poets, painters, priests, hermits, villains, and others, whose good and evil deeds would have been long since forgotten, like those of the heroes before Agamemnon, but for the care of some enthusiastic biographer.

Among our eight or ten collections of this kind, there is one which deserves a special notice. This work is entitled _Biographies of Eminent Women_, and it fills four extra-large volumes, containing 310 lives in all. The idea of thus immortalising the most deserving of his countrywomen first occurred to a writer named Liu Hsiang, who flourished just before the Christian era. I am not aware that his original work is still procurable; the present work was based upon one by another writer, of the third century A.D., and is brought down to modern times, being published in 1779. Each biography is accompanied by a full-page illustration of some scene in which the lady distinguished herself,--all from the pencil of a well-known artist.

Three good-sized encyclopaedias, uniformly bound up in ninety-eight large volumes, may fairly claim a moment's notice, not only as evidencing the persistent literary industry of the Chinese, but because they are all three perfect mines of information on subjects of interest to the foreign student.

The first dates from the very beginning of the ninth century, and deals chiefly with the Administration of Government, Political Economy, and National Defences, besides Rites, Music, and subordinate questions.

The second dates from the twelfth century, and deals with the same subjects, having additional sections on History and Chronology, Writing, Pronunciation, Astronomy, Bibliography, Prodigies, Fauna and Flora, Foreign Nations, etc.

The third, and best known to foreign scholars, is the encyclopaedia of Ma Tuan-lin of the fourteenth century. It is on much the same lines as the other two, being actually based upon the first, but has of course the advantage of being some centuries later.

The above three works are in a uniform edition, published in the middle of the eighteenth century under orders from the Emperor Ch'ien Lung.

There are also several other encyclopaedias of information on general topics, extending to a good many volumes in each case.

One of these contains interesting extracts on all manner of subjects taken from the lighter literature of China, such as Dreams, Palmistry, Reminiscences of a Previous State of Existence, and even Resurrection after Death. It was cut on blocks for printing in A.D. 981, only fifty years after the first edition of the Confucian Canon was printed. The Cambridge copy cannot claim to date from 981, but it does date from 1566.

Another work of the same kind was the _San Ts'ai T'u Hui_, issued in 1609, which is bound up in seventeen thick volumes. It is especially interesting for the variety of topics on which information is given, and also because it is profusely illustrated with full-page woodcuts. It has chapters on Geography, with maps; on Ethnology, Language, the Arts and Sciences, and even on various forms of Athletics, including the feats of rope-dancers and acrobats, sword-play, boxing, wrestling, and foot-ball.

Under Tricks and Magic we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and drinking from cups arranged upon the ground.

The chapters on Drawing are exceptionally good; they contain some specimen landscapes of almost faultless perspective, and also clever examples of free-hand drawing. Portrait-painting is dealt with, and ten illustrations are given of the ten angles at which a face may be drawn. The first shows one-tenth of the face from the right side, the second two-tenths, and so on, waxing to full-face five-tenths; then waning sets in on the left side, four, three, and two-tenths, until ten-tenths shows nothing more than the back of the sitter's head.

There is a well-known Chinese story which tells how a very stingy man took a paltry sum of money to an artist--payment is always exacted in advance--and asked him to paint his portrait. The artist at once complied with his request, but in an hour or so, when the portrait was finished, nothing was visible save the back of the sitter's head. "What does this mean?" cried the latter, indignantly. "Oh," replied the artist, "I thought a man who paid so little as you wouldn't care to show his face!"

* * * * *

Perhaps some one may wonder how it is possible to arrange an encyclopaedia for reference when the language in which it is written happens to possess no alphabet.

Arrangement under Categories is the favourite method, and it is employed in the following way:--

A number of such words as Heaven, Earth, Time, Man, Plants, Beasts, Birds, Fishes, Minerals, and others are chosen, and the subjects are grouped under these headings. Thus, Eclipses would come under Heaven, Geomancy under Earth, the Passions under Man, though all classification is not quite so simple as these specimens, and search is often prolonged by failing to hit upon the right Category. Even when the Category is the right one, many pages of Index have frequently to be turned over; but once fix the reference in the Index, and the rest is easy, the catch-word in each case being printed on the margin of each page, just where the finger comes when turning the pages rapidly over.

The Chinese are very fond of collections of reprints, published in uniform editions and often extending to several hundred volumes. My earliest acquaintance with literature is associated with such a collection in English. It was called _The Family Library_, and ran to over a hundred volumes, if I recollect rightly, and included the works of Washington Irving and the immortal story of _Rip Van Winkle_. There is also a Chinese Rip Van Winkle, a tale of a man who, wandering one day in the mountains, came upon two boys playing checkers; and after watching them for some time, and eating some dates they gave him, he discovered that the handle of an axe he was carrying had mouldered into dust. Returning home, he found, as the Chinese poet puts it,

"City and suburb as of old,
But hearts that loved him long since cold."

Seven generations had passed away in the interim.

The Cambridge Library possesses several of these collections of reprints. One of them is perhaps extra valuable because the wooden blocks from which it was printed were destroyed during the T'ai-p'ing Rebellion, some forty years ago.

I may mention here, though not properly belonging to this section, that we possess a good collection of the curious pamphlets issued by the T'ai-p'ing rebels.

Other interesting works to be found in Division B are the Statutes of the present dynasty, which began in 1644, and even those of the previous dynasty, the latter being an edition of 1576.

Then there is the Penal Code of this dynasty, in several editions; various collections of precedents; handbooks for magistrates, with recorded decisions and illustrative cases.

A magistrate or judge in China is not expected to know anything about law.

Attached to the office of every official who may be called upon to try criminal cases is a law expert, to whom the judge or magistrate may refer, when he has any doubt, in private, just as our unpaid justices of the peace in England refer for guidance to the qualified official attached to the court.

Before passing on to the next section, one last volume, taken at haphazard, bears the weird title, _A Record in Dark Blood_. This work contains notices of eminent statesmen and others, who met violent deaths, each accompanied by a telling illustration of the tragic scene. Some of the incidents go far to dispose of the belief that patriotism is quite unknown to the Chinese.

* * * * *

Division C is devoted to Geography and to Topography. Here stands the Imperial Geography of the Empire, in twenty-four large volumes, with maps, in the edition of 1745. Here, too, stand many of the Topographies for which China is justly celebrated. Every Prefecture and every District, or Department,--and the latter number about fifteen hundred,--has its Topography, a kind of local history, with all the noticeable features of the District, its bridges, temples, and like buildings, duly described, together with biographies of all natives of the District who have risen to distinction in any way. Each Topography would occupy about two feet of shelf; consequently a complete collection of all the Topographies of China, piled one upon the other, would form a vertical column as high as the Eiffel Tower. Yet Topography is only an outlying branch of Chinese literature.

Division C further contains the oldest printed book in the Cambridge University Library, and a very interesting one to boot. It is entitled _An Account of Strange Nations_, and was published between 1368 and 1398. Its contents consist of short notices of about 150 nationalities known more or less to the Chinese, and the value of these is much enhanced by the woodcuts which accompany each notice.

Among the rest we find Koreans, Japanese, Hsiung-nu (the forefathers of the Huns), Kitan Tartars, tribes of Central Asia, Arabs, Persians, and even Portuguese, Jean de Montecorvino, who had been appointed archbishop of Peking in 1308, having died there in 1330. Of course there are a few pictures of legendary peoples, such as the Long-armed Nation, the One-eyed Nation, the Dog-headed Nation, the Anthropophagi,

"and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders."

There is also an account of Fusang, the country where grew the famous plant which some have tried to identify with the Mexican aloe, thus securing the discovery of America for the Chinese.

The existence of many of these nations is duly recorded by Pliny in his _Natural History_, in words curiously identical with those we find in the Chinese records.

Some strange birds and animals are given at the end of this book, the most interesting of all being an accurate picture of the zebra, here called the _Fu-lu_, which means "Deer of Happiness," but which is undoubtedly a rough attempt at _fara_, an old Arabic term for the wild ass. Now, the zebra being quite unknown in Asia, the puzzle is, how the Chinese came to be so well acquainted with it at that early date.

The condition of the book is as good as could be expected, after six hundred years of wear and tear. Each leaf, here and there defective, is carefully mounted on sheets of stiff paper, and all together very few characters are really illegible, though sometimes the paper has slipped upon the printing-block, and has thus given, in several cases, a double outline.

Alongside of this stands the modern work of the kind, published in 1761, with an introductory poem from the pen of the Emperor Ch'ien Lung. It contains a much longer list of nations, including the British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Swedes, and others, and the illustrations--a man and woman of each country--are perfect triumphs of the block-cutter's art, the lines being inconceivably fine.

* * * * *

Division D contains Poetry, Novels, and Plays. Under Poetry, in addition to collections of the works of this or that writer, there are numerous anthologies, to which the Chinese are very partial. The mass of Chinese poetry is so vast, that it is hopeless for the general reader to do much more than familiarise himself with the best specimens of the greatest poets. It is interesting to note that all the more extensive anthologies include a considerable number of poems by women, some of quite a high order.

Two years ago, an eminent scientist at Cambridge said to me, "Have the Chinese anything in the nature of poetry in their language?" In reply to this, I told him of a question once put to me by a friendly Mandarin in China: "Have you foreigners got books in your honourable country?" We are apt to smile at Chinese ignorance of Western institutions; but if we were Chinamen, the smile perhaps would sometimes be the other way about.

Such novels as we have in our library belong entirely to what may be called the classical school, and may from many points of view be regarded as genuine works of art. Besides these, there is in the market a huge quantity of fiction which appeals to the less highly educated classes, and even to those who are absolutely unable to read. For the latter, there are professional readers and story-tellers, who may often be seen at some convenient point in a Chinese town, delighting large audiences of coolies with tales of love, and war, and heroism, and self-sacrifice. These readers do not read the actual words of the book, which no coolie would understand, but transpose the book-language into the colloquial as they go along.

_A propos_ of novels, I should like just to mention one, a romantic novel of war and adventure, based upon the _History of the Three Kingdoms_, third century A.D., an epoch when China was split up under three separate sovereigns, who fought one another very much after the style of the Wars of the Roses in English history. This novel, a very long one, occupies perhaps the warmest corner in the hearts of the Chinese people. They never tire of listening to its stirring episodes, its hair-breadth escapes, its successful ruses, and its appalling combats.

Some twelve years ago, a friend of mine undertook to translate it into English. After writing out a complete translation,--a gigantic task,--he rewrote the whole from beginning to end, revising every page thoroughly. In the spring of 1900, after ten years of toil, it was ready for the press; three months later it had been reduced to ashes by the Boxers at Peking.

"Sunt lacrymae rerum ..."

Chinese plays in the acting editions may be bought singly at street-stalls for less than a cent apiece. For the library, many good collections have been made, and published in handsome editions.

This class of literature, however, does not stand upon a high level, but corresponds with the low social status of the actor; and it is a curious fact--true also of novels--that many of the best efforts are anonymous.

Plays by women are also to be found; but I have never yet come across, either on the stage or in literature, any of those remarkable dramas which are supposed to run on month after month, even into years.

* * * * *

Division E is a very important one for students of the Chinese language. Here we find a number of works of reference, most of which may be characterised as indispensable, and the great majority of which are easily procurable at the present day.

Beginning with dictionaries, we have the famous work of Hsue Shen, who died about A.D. 120. There was at that date no such thing as a Chinese dictionary, although the language had already been for some centuries ripe for such a production, and accordingly Hsue Shen set to work to fill the void. He collected 9353 written characters,--presumably all that were in existence at the time,--to which he added 1163 duplicates, _i.e._ various forms of writing the same character, and then arranged them in groups under those parts which, as we have already seen in the preceding Lecture, are indicators of the direction in which the sense of a character is to be looked for. Thus, all characters containing the element [CJK:72AD] "dog" were brought together; all those containing [CJK:8279] "vegetation," [chuang] "disease," etc.

So far as we know, this system originated with him; and we are therefore not surprised to find that in his hands it was on a clumsier scale than that in vogue to-day. Hsue Shen uses no fewer than 540 of these indicators, and even when the indicator to a character is satisfactorily ascertained, it still remains to search through all the characters under that particular group. Printing from movable types would have been impossible under such a system.

In the modern standard dictionary, published in 1716, under the direction of the Emperor K'ang Hsi, there are only 214 indicators employed, and there is a further sub-arrangement of these groups according to the number of strokes in the other, the phonetic portion of the character. Thus, the indicators "hand," "wood," "fire," "water," or whatever it may be, settle the group in which a given character will be found, and the number of strokes in the remaining portion will refer it to a comparatively small sub-group, from which it can be readily picked out. For instance, [song] "a fir tree" will be found under the indicator [mu] "tree," sub-group No. 4, because the remaining portion [gong] consists of four strokes in writing.

Good copies of this dictionary are not too easily obtained nowadays. The "Palace" edition, as it is called, is on beautifully white paper, and is a splendid specimen of typography.

A most wonderful literary feat was achieved under the direction of the before-mentioned Emperor K'ang Hsi, when a general Concordance to the phraseology of all literature was compiled and published for general use. Word-concordances to the Bible and to Shakespeare are generally looked upon as no small undertakings, but what about a phrase-concordance to all literature? Well, in 1711 this was successfully carried out, and remains to-day as a monument of the literary enterprise of the great Manchu-Tartar monarch with whose name it is inseparably associated.

The term "literature" here means serious literature, the classics, histories, poetry, and the works of philosophers, of recognised authorities, and of brilliant writers generally.

It was not possible, for obvious reasons, to arrange this collection of phrases according to the 214 indicators, as in a dictionary of words. It is arranged according to the Tones and Rhymes.

Let me try to express all this in terms of English literature. Reading a famous poem, I come across the lines

"And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale."

Now suppose that I do not know the meaning of "tells his tale." [I recollect perfectly that as a boy I thought it meant "whispered the old story into the ear of a shepherdess."] I determine to hunt it up in the Concordance. First of all, I find out from the Dictionary, if I do not know, to what Tone _tale_, always the last word of the phrase, belongs. Under that tone will be found various groups of words, each with a key-word which is called the Rhyme, that is to say, a key-word with which all the words in this group rhyme. There are only 106 of these key-words all together distributed over the Tones, and every word in the Chinese language must rhyme with one of them.

The question of rhyme in Chinese is a curious one, and before going any farther it may be as well to try to clear it up a little. All Chinese poetry is in rhyme; there is no such thing as blank verse. The _Odes_, collected and edited by Confucius, provide the standard of rhyme. Any words which are found to rhyme there may be used as rhymes anywhere else, and no others. The result is, that the number of rhyme-groups is restricted to 106; and not only that, but of course words which rhymed to the ear five hundred years B.C. do so no longer in 1902. Yet such are the only authorised rhymes to be used in poetry, and any attempt to ignore the rule would insure disastrous failure at the public examinations.

This point may to some extent be illustrated in English. The first two lines of the _Canterbury Tales_, which I will take to represent the _Odes_, run thus in modern speech:--

"When that Aprilis with his showers sweet,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root."

No one nowadays rhymes _sweet_ with _root_. Neither did Chaucer; the two words, _sote_ and _rote_, were in his days perfect rhymes. But if we were Chinese, we should now rhyme _sweet_ with _root_, because, so to speak, Chaucer did so.

When the Tone of a word is known, it is also known in which quarter of the whole work to look; and when the Rhyme is known, it is also known in which part of that quarter the key-word, or rhyme, will be found. Suppose the key-word to be _gale_, it might be necessary to turn over a good many pages before finding, neatly printed in the margin, the required word, _tale_. Under _tale_ I should first of all find phrases of two words, _e.g._ "traveller's tale," "fairy-tale"; and I should have to look on until I came to groups of three characters, _e.g._ "old wife's tale," "tells his tale," and so forth. Finally, under "tells his tale" I should still not find, what all students would like so much, a plain explanation of what the phrase means, but only a collection of the chief passages in literature in which "tells his tale" occurs. In one of these there would probably be some allusion to sheep, and in another to counting, and so it would become pretty plain that when a shepherd "tells his tale," he does not whisper soft nothings into the ear of a shepherdess, but is much more prosaically engaged in counting the number of his sheep.

Our Cambridge copy of the Concordance is bound up in 44 thick volumes. Each volume contains on an average 840 pages, and each page about 400 characters. This gives a sum total of about 37,000 pages, and about 15,000,000 characters. Translated into English, this work would be one-third as large again, 100 pages of Chinese text being equal to about 130 of English.

In the year 1772 the enlightened Emperor Ch'ien Lung, who then sat upon the throne, gave orders that a descriptive Catalogue should be prepared of the books in the Imperial Library. And in order to enhance its literary value, his Majesty issued invitations to the leading provincial officials to take part in the enterprise by securing and forwarding to Peking any rare books they might be able to come across.

The scheme proved in every way successful. Many old works were rescued from oblivion and ultimate destruction, and in 1795 a very wonderful Catalogue was laid before the world in print. It fills twenty-six octavo volumes of about five hundred pages to each, the works enumerated being divided into four classes,--the Confucian Canon, History, Philosophy, and General Literature. Under each work we have first of all an historical sketch of its origin, with date of publication, etc., when known; and secondly, a careful critique dealing with its merits and defects. All together, some eight thousand to ten thousand works are entered and examined as above, and the names of those officials who responded to the Imperial call are always scrupulously recorded in connection with the books they supplied.

Among many illustrated books, there is a curious volume in the Library published about twenty-five years ago, which contains short notices of all the Senior Classics of the Ming dynasty, A.D. 1368-1644. They number only seventy-six in all, because the triennial examination had not then come into force; whereas during the present dynasty, between 1644 and twenty-five years ago, a shorter period, there have been no fewer than one hundred Senior Classics, whose names are all duly recorded in a Supplement.

The pictures which accompany the letterpress are sometimes of quite pathetic interest.

In one instance, the candidate, after his journey to Peking, where the examination is held, has gone home to await the result, and is sitting at dinner with his friends, when suddenly the much-longed-for messenger bursts in with the astounding news. In the old days this news was carried to all parts of the country by trained runners; nowadays the telegraph wires do the business at a great saving of time and muscle, with the usual sacrifice of romance.

Another student has gone home, and settled down to work again, not daring even to hope for success; but overcome with fatigue and anxiety, he falls asleep over his books. In the accompanying picture we see his dream,--a thin curl, as it were of vapour, coming forth from the top of his head and broadening out as it goes, until wide enough to contain the representation of a man, in feature like himself, surrounded by an admiring crowd, who acclaim him Senior Classic. With a start the illusion is dispelled, and the dreamer awakes to find himself famous.

To those who have followed me so far, it must, I hope, be clear that, whatever else the Chinese may be, they are above all a literary people. They have cultivated literature as no other people ever has done, and they cultivate it still.

Literary merit leads to an official career, the only career worth anything in the eyes of the Chinese nation.

From his earliest school days the Chinese boy is taught that men without education are but horses or cows in coats and trousers, and that success at the public examinations is the greatest prize this world has to offer.

To be among the fortunate three hundred out of about twelve thousand candidates, who contend once every three years for the highest degree, is to be enrolled among the Immortals for ever; while the Senior Classic at a final competition before the Emperor not only covers himself, but even his remote ancestors, his native village, his district, his prefecture, and even his province, with a glory almost of celestial splendour.

LECTURE III

DEMOCRATIC CHINA

DEMOCRATIC CHINA

Theoretically speaking, the Empire of China is ruled by an autocratic monarch, responsible only to God, whose representative he is on earth.

Once every year the Emperor prays at the Temple of Heaven, and sacrifices in solemn state upon its altar. He puts himself, as it were, into communication with the Supreme Being, and reports upon the fidelity with which he has carried out his Imperial trust.

If the Emperor rules wisely and well, with only the happiness of his people at heart, there will be no sign from above, beyond peace and plenty in the Empire, and now and then a double ear of corn in the fields--a phenomenon which will be duly recorded in the _Peking Gazette_. But should there be anything like laxness or incapacity, or still worse, degradation and vice, then a comet may perhaps appear, a pestilence may rage, or a famine, to warn the erring ruler to give up his evil ways.

And just as the Emperor is responsible to Heaven, so are the viceroys and governors of the eighteen provinces--to speak only of China proper--nominally responsible to him, in reality to the six departments of state at Peking, which constitute the central government, and to which a seventh has recently been added--a department for foreign affairs.

So long as all goes well--and in ordinary times that "all" is confined to a regular and sufficient supply of revenue paid into the Imperial Treasury--viceroys and governors of provinces are, as nearly as can be, independent rulers, each in his own domain.

For purposes of government, in the ordinary sense of the term, the 18 provinces are subdivided into 80 areas known as "circuits," and over each of these is set a high official, who is called an intendant of circuit, or in Chinese a _Tao-t'ai_. His circuit consists of 2 or more prefectures, of which there are in all 282 distributed among the 80 circuits, or about an average of 3 prefectures to each.

Every prefecture is in turn subdivided into several magistracies, of which there are 1477 in all, distributed among the 282 prefectures, or about an average of 5 magistracies to each.

Immediately below the magistrates may be said to come the people; though naturally an official who rules over an area as big as an average English county can scarcely be brought into personal touch with all those under his jurisdiction. This difficulty is bridged over by the appointment of a number of head men, or headboroughs, who are furnished with wooden seals, and who are held responsible for the peace and good order of the wards or boroughs over which they are set. The post is considered an honourable one, involving as it does a quasi-official status. It is also more or less lucrative, as it is necessary that all petitions to the magistrate, all conveyances of land, and other legal instruments, should bear the seal of the head man, as a guarantee of good faith, a small fee being payable on each notarial act.

On the other hand, the post is occasionally burdensome and trying in the extreme. For instance, if a head man fails to produce any criminals or accused persons, either belonging to, or known to be, in his district, he is liable to be bambooed or otherwise severely punished.

In ordinary life the head man is not distinguishable from the masses of his fellow-countrymen. He may often be seen working like the rest, and even walking about with bare legs and bare feet.

Thus in a descending scale we have the Emperor, the viceroys and governors of the 18 provinces, the intendants, or _Tao-t'ais_, of the 80 circuits, the prefects of the 282 prefectures, the magistrates of the 1477 magistracies, the myriad headboroughs, and the people.

The district magistrates, so far as officials are concerned, are the real rulers of China, and in conjunction with the prefects are popularly called "father-and-mother" officials, as though they stood _in loco parentium_ to the people, whom, by the way, they in turn often speak of, even in official documents, as "the babies."

The ranks of these magistrates are replenished by drafts of those _literati_ who have succeeded in taking the third, or highest, degree. Thus, the first step on the ladder is open to all who can win their way by successful competition at certain literary examinations, so long as each candidate can show that none of his ancestors for three generations have been either actors, barbers and chiropodists, priests, executioners, or official servants.

Want of means may be said to offer no obstacle in China to ambition and desire for advancement. The slightest aptitude in a boy for learning would be carefully noted, and if found to be the genuine article, would be still more carefully fostered. Not only are there plenty of free schools in China, but there are plenty of persons ready to help in so good a cause. Many a high official has risen from the furrowed fields, his educational expenses as a student, and his travelling expenses as a candidate, being paid by subscription in his native place. Once successful, he can easily find a professional money-lender who will provide the comparatively large sums required for his outfit and journey to his post, whither this worthy actually accompanies him, to remain until he is repaid in full, with interest.

A successful candidate, however, is not usually sent straight from the examination-hall to occupy the important position of district magistrate. He is attached to some magistracy as an expectant official, and from time to time his capacity is tested by a case, more or less important, which is entrusted to his management as deputy.

The duties of a district magistrate are so numerous and so varied that one man could not possibly cope with them all. At the same time he is fully responsible. In addition to presiding over a court of first instance for all criminal trials in his district, he has to act as coroner (without a jury) at all inquests, collect and remit the land-tax, register all conveyances of land and house-property, act as preliminary examiner of candidates for literary degrees, and perform a host of miscellaneous offices, even to praying for rain or fine weather in cases of drought or inundation. He is up, if anything, before the lark; and at night, often late at night, he is listening to the protestations of prisoners or bambooing recalcitrant witnesses.

But inasmuch as the district may often be a large one, and two inquests may be going on in two different directions on the same day, or there may be other conflicting claims upon his time, he has constantly to depute his duties to a subordinate, whose usual duties, if he has any, have to be taken by some one else, and so on. Thus it is that the expectant official every now and then gets his chance.

This scheme leaves out of consideration a number of provincial officials, who preside over departments which branch, as it were, from the main trunk, and of whom a few words only need now be said.

There are several "commissioners," as they are sometimes called; for instance, the commissioner of finance, otherwise known as the provincial treasurer, who is charged with the fiscal administration of his particular province, and who controls the nomination of nearly all the minor appointments in the civil service, subject to the approval of the governor.

Then there is the commissioner of justice, or provincial judge, responsible for the due administration of justice in his province.

There is also the salt commissioner, who collects the revenue derived from the government monopoly of the salt trade; and the grain commissioner, who looks after the grain-tax, and sees that the tribute rice is annually forwarded to Peking, for the use of the Imperial Court.

There are also military officials, belonging to two separate and distinct army organisations.

The Manchus, when they conquered the Empire, placed garrisons of their own troops, under the command of Manchu generals, at various important strategic points; and the Tartar generals, as they are called, still remain, ranking nominally just above the viceroy of the province, over whose actions they are supposed to keep a careful watch.

Then there is a provincial army, with a provincial commander-in-chief, etc.

Now let us return to the main trunk, working upward by way of recapitulation.

We have reached the people and their head men, or headboroughs, over whom is set the magistrate, with a nominal salary which would be quite insufficient for his needs, even if he were ever to draw it. For he has a large staff to keep up; some few of whom, no doubt, keep themselves by fees and _douceurs_ of various kinds obtained from litigants and others who have business to transact.

The income on which the magistrate lives, and from which, after a life of incessant toil, he saves a moderate competence for the requirements of his family, is deducted from the gross revenues of his magistracy, leaving a net amount to be forwarded to the Imperial Treasury. So long as his superiors are satisfied with what he remits, no questions are asked as to original totals. It is recognised that he must live, and the value of every magistracy is known within a few hundred ounces of silver one way or the other.

Above the magistrate, and in control of several magistracies, comes the prefect, who has to satisfy his superiors in the same way. He has the general supervision of all civil business in his prefecture, and to him must be referred every appeal case from the magistracies under his jurisdiction, before it can be filed in a higher court.

Above him comes the intendant of circuit, or _Tao-t'ai_, in control of several prefectures, to whom the same rule applies as to satisfying demands of superiors; and above him come the governor and viceroy, who must also satisfy the demands of the state departments in Peking.

It would now appear, from what has been already stated, that all a viceroy or governor has to do is to exact sufficient revenue from immediate subordinates, and leave them to exact the amounts necessary from _their_ subordinates, and so on down the scale until we reach the people. The whole question therefore resolves itself into this, What can the people be made to pay?

The answer to that question will be somewhat of a staggerer to those who from distance, or from want of close observation, regard the Chinese as a down-trodden people, on a level with the Fellahin of Egypt in past times. For the answer, so far as my own experience goes, is that only so much can be got out of the Chinese people as the people themselves are ready and willing to pay. In other words, with all their show of an autocratic ruler and a paternal government, the people of China tax themselves.

I am now about to do more than state this opinion; I am going to try to prove it.

The philosopher Mencius, who flourished about one hundred years after Confucius, and who is mainly responsible for the final triumph of the Confucian doctrine, was himself not so much a teacher of ethics as a teacher of political science. He spent a great part of his life wandering from feudal state to feudal state, advising the various vassal nobles how to order their dominions with the maximum of peace and prosperity and the minimum of misery and bloodshed.

One of these nobles, Duke Wen, asked Mencius concerning the proper way to govern a state.

"The affairs of the people," replied the philosopher, "must not be neglected. For the way of the people is thus: If they have a fixed livelihood, their hearts will also be fixed; but if they have not a fixed livelihood, neither will their hearts be fixed. And if they have not fixed hearts, there is nothing in the way of crime which they will not commit. Then, when they have involved themselves in guilt, to follow up and punish them,--this is but to ensnare them."

In another passage Mencius says: "The tyrants of the last two dynasties, Chieh and Chou, lost the Empire because they lost the people, by which I mean that they lost the hearts of the people. There is a way to get the Empire;--get the people, and you have the Empire. There is a way to get the people;--get their hearts, and you have them. There is a way to get their hearts;--do for them what they wish, and avoid doing what they do not wish."

Those are strong words, especially when we consider that they come from one of China's most sacred books, regarded by the Chinese with as much veneration as the Bible by us,--a portion of that Confucian Canon, the principles of which it is the object of every student to master, and should be the object of every Chinese official to carry into practice.

But those words are mild compared with another utterance by Mencius in the same direction.

"The people are the most important element in a nation; the gods come next; the sovereign is the least important of all."

We have here, in Chinese dress, wherein indeed much of Western wisdom will be found, if students will only look for it, very much the same sentiment as in the familiar lines by Oliver Goldsmith:--

"Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,--
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride
When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

The question now arises, Are all these solemn sayings of Mencius to be regarded as nothing more than mere literary rodomontade, wherewith to beguile an enslaved people? Do the mandarins keep the word of promise to the ear and break it to the hope? Or do the Chinese people enjoy in real life the recognition which should be accorded to them by the terms of the Confucian Canon?

Every one who has lived in China, and has kept his eyes open, must have noticed what a large measure of personal freedom is enjoyed by even the meanest subject of the Son of Heaven. Any Chinaman may travel all over China without asking any one's leave to start, and without having to report himself, or be reported by his innkeeper, at any place at which he may choose to stop. He requires no passport. He may set up any legitimate business at any place. He is not even obliged to be educated, or to follow any particular calling. He is not obliged to serve as a soldier or sailor. There are no sumptuary laws, nor even any municipal laws. Outside the penal code, which has been pronounced by competent Western lawyers to be a very ably constructed instrument of government, there is nothing at all in the way of law, civil law being altogether absent as a state institution. Even the penal code is not too rigidly enforced. So long as a man keeps clear of secret societies and remains a decent and respectable member of his family and of his clan, he has very little to fear from the officials. The old ballad of the husbandman, which has come down to us from a very early date indeed, already hints at some such satisfactory state of things. It runs thus:--

"Work, work,--from the rising sun
Till sunset comes and the day is done
I plough the sod,
And harrow the clod,
And meat and drink both come to me,--
Ah, what care I for the powers that be?"

Many petty offences which are often dealt with very harshly in England, pass in China almost unnoticed. No shopkeeper or farmer would be fool enough to charge a hungry man with stealing food, for the simple reason that no magistrate would convict. It is the shopkeeper's or farmer's business to see that such petty thefts cannot occur. Various other points might be noticed; but we must get back to taxation, which is really the _crux_ of the whole position.

All together the Chinese people may be said to be lightly taxed. There is the land-tax, in money and in kind; a tax on salt; and various _octroi_ and customs-duties, all of which are more or less fixed quantities, so that the approximate amount which each province should contribute to the central government is well known at Peking, just as it is well known in each province what amounts, approximately speaking, should be handed up by the various grades of territorial officials.

I have already stated that municipal government is unknown; consequently there are no municipal rates to be paid, no water-rate, no poor-rate, and not a cent for either sanitation or education. And so long as the Imperial taxes are such as the people have grown accustomed to, they are paid cheerfully, even if sometimes with difficulty, and nothing is said.

A curious instance of this conservative spirit in the Chinese people, even when operating against their own interests, may be found in the tax known as _likin_, against which foreign governments have struggled so long in vain. This tax, originally one-tenth per cent on all sales, was voluntarily imposed upon themselves by the people, among whom it was at first very popular, with a view of making up the deficiency in the land-tax of China caused by the T'ai-p'ing Rebellion and subsequent troubles. It was to be set apart for military purposes only,--hence its common name "war-tax,"--and was alleged by the Tsung-li Yamen to be adopted merely as a temporary measure. Yet, though forty years have elapsed, it still continues to be collected as if it were one of the fundamental taxes of the Empire, and the objections to it are raised, not by the people of China, but by foreign merchants with whose trade it interferes.

Here we have already one instance of voluntary self-taxation on the part of the people; what I have yet to show is that all taxation, even though not initiated as in this case by the people, must still receive the stamp of popular approval before being put into force. On this point I took a good many notes during a fairly long residence in China, leading to conclusions which seem to me irresistible.

Let us suppose that the high authorities of a province have determined, for pressing reasons, to make certain changes in the incidence of taxation, or have called upon their subordinates to devise means for causing larger sums to find their way into the provincial treasury. The invariable usage, previous to the imposition of a new tax, or change in the old, is for the magistrate concerned to send for the leading merchants whose interests may be involved, or for the headboroughs and village elders, according to the circumstances in each case, and to discuss the proposition in private. Over an informal entertainment, over tea and pipes, the magistrate pleads the necessities of the case, and the peremptory orders of his superiors; the merchants or village elders, feeling that, as in the case of _likin_ above mentioned, when taxes come they come to stay, resist on principle the new departure by every argument at their control. The negotiation ends, in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, in a compromise. In the hundredth instance the people may think it right to give way, or the mandarin may give way, in which case things remain _in statu quo_, and nothing further is heard of the matter.

There occur cases, however, happily rare, in which neither will give way--at first. Then comes the tug of war. A proclamation is issued, describing the tax, or the change, or whatever it may be, and the people, if their interests are sufficiently involved, prepare to resist.

Combination has been raised in China to the level of a fine art. Nowhere on earth can be found such perfect cohesion of units against forces which would crush each unit, taken individually, beyond recognition. Every trade, every calling, even the meanest, has its guild, or association, the members of which are ever ready to protect one another with perfect unanimity, and often great self-sacrifice. And combination is the weapon with which the people resist, and successfully resist, any attempt on the part of the governing classes to lay upon them loads greater than they can or will bear. The Chinese are withal an exceptionally law-abiding people, and entertain a deep-seated respect for authority. But their obedience and their deference have pecuniary limits.

I will now pass from the abstract to the concrete, and draw upon my note-book for illustrations of this theory that the Chinese are a self-taxing and self-governing people.

Under date October 10, 1880, from Chung-king in the province of Ssuch'uan, the following story will be found in the _North China Herald_, told by a correspondent:--

"Yesterday the Pah-shien magistrate issued a proclamation, saying that he was going to raise a tax of 200 _cash_ on each pig killed by the pork-butchers of this city, and the butchers were to reimburse themselves by adding 2 _cash_ per _pound_ to the price of pork. The butchers, who had already refused to pay 100 _cash_ per hog, under the late magistrate, were not likely to submit to the payment of 200 under this one, and so resolved not to kill pigs until the grievance was removed; and this morning a party of them went about the town and seized all the pork they saw exposed for sale. Then the whole of the butchers, over five hundred at least, shut themselves up in their guild, where the magistrate tried to force an entry with two hundred or three hundred of his runners. The butchers, however, refused to open the door, and the magistrate had to retire very much excited, threatening to bring them to terms. People are inclined to think the magistrate acted wrongly in taking a large force with him, saying he ought to have gone alone."

Three days later, October 13:--

"There is great excitement throughout the city, and I am told that the troops are under arms. I have heard several volleys of small arms being fired off, as if in platoon exercise. All the shops are shut, people being afraid that the authorities may deal severely with the butchers, and that bad characters will profit by the excitement to rob and plunder the shops."

Two days later, October 15:--

"The pork-butchers are still holding out in their guild-house, and refuse to recommence business until the officials have promised that the tax on pigs will not be enforced now or hereafter. The prefect has been going the rounds of the city calling on the good people of his prefecture to open their shops and transact business as usual, saying that the tax on pigs did not concern other people, but only the butchers."

One day later, October 16:--

"The Pah-shien magistrate has issued a proclamation apologising to the people generally, and to the butchers particularly, for his share of the work in trying to increase the obnoxious tax on pigs. So the officials have all miserably failed in squeezing a _cash_ out of the 'sovereign people' of Ssuch'uan."

I have a similar story from Hangchow, in Chehkiang, under date April 10, 1889, which begins as follows:--

"The great city of Hangchow is extremely dry. There are probably seven hundred thousand people here, but not a drop of tea can be bought in any of the public tea-houses. There is a strike in tea. The tea-houses are all closed by common agreement, to resist a tax, imposed in the beginning of the year, to raise money for the sufferers by famine."

In the next communication from this correspondent, we read, "The strike of the keepers of tea-shops ended very quietly a few days after it began, by the officials agreeing to accept the sum of fifteen hundred dollars once for all, and release tea from taxation."

This is what happened recently in Pakhoi, in the province of Kuangtung:--