Chapter C: W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first (1)

locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston. The British engineers who have established China’s great railway development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans, Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the Australian at Peking who represents the London _Times_, has long held the world bound to his prompt despatches regarding Chinese politics, of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, _An Australian in China_, speaks for itself.

The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language. Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc. His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and among others his book, _Things Chinese_, is an encyclopedic authority. The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong, where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai, too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote _China in Law and Commerce_, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon Moule wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority, the _North China News and Herald_. Mr. Little was succeeded by the eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The _National Review_, a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous _Far Eastern Review_, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University, a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong, married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church, does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, _Three Years in Western China_; _Manchuria, Its People and Resources_. Chester Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, _The Real Chinese Question_. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.

Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M. Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of _Lion and Dragon in North China_, who was one of our Hongkong cadets, Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy, their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai, the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture, building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of progress and government.

Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern (Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials of Middle China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese, teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H. Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination. Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St. John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants, travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East, and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo arch, before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least 4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.

No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming political events and massacres as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, who recently died. This was partially owing to his remarkable judgment, and partially owing to his wide sources of information, as Catholic converts are four times as numerous as Protestant converts. Monsieur Favier, ahead of events, was the best informed foreigner in China regarding the “Boxer” movement of 1900, and if his advice had been followed by the legations, the foreigners would have left Peking for the coast before the siege was instituted. He did not intend to leave himself, as he felt it to be his duty to die if necessary with his converts. Every one has admired his successful defense of the Pei Tang cathedral.

The following prominent American educationalists in China visited America in November, 1912, and spoke for China at the World’s Oriental Congress at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts: Vice-president Williams, of Nanking University; President Edmunds, of Canton Christian College; President Goucher, of the University of Chingtu, and Professor C. W. Young, of Union Medical College, Peking. It was regretted that President Sheffield and Doctor Arthur H. Smith, the eminent author, of the American Congregational College of North China, were not present.

Late advices state that the Chinese government at the close of 1912 has taken into its employ in the administration of the salt gabelle, J. F. Oiesen, a Dane of Tientsin; and as legal adviser, Monsieur Recouse, a prominent Belgian. Wherever Belgians are used, it is generally for the purpose of hiding the hands of France, and sometimes of Russia.

XVI

THE MANCHU

When the republicans rebelled against the dynasty, the following was the indictment issued to the world’s press, and signed by Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang and Assistant Foreign Secretary Wen Tsung Yao, at Shanghai. Wu, all the world knows as the Jefferson of the new republican China. Wen is a very able modern lawyer, who made his name as a resourceful amban at Lhasa.

1. Incapacity.

2. Reactionary.

3. Benighted and barbaric.

4. Opposes modern knowledge, science and industry.

5. Favors a closed door; stultified national service.

6. Opposes government by the people; favors Manchus who are
only one in about one hundred of the population.

7. Pensions a vast horde of non-working Manchus.

8. Barbaric against life and property, when opposed.

9. Constitutional promise insincere.

10. Manchus hold back world-progress.

11. Gave away Chinese territory.

12. Despised the Chinese and prohibited intermarriage.

13. Taxation without representation.

14. Haughtily refused to adopt Chinese system of three names,
thus maintaining a separate society.

15. The Manchu has no literature, and, therefore, is a
barbarian.

This Chinese Declaration of Independence first appeared at length in the _North China Daily News_, of Shanghai, on November 15, 1911. Similar complaints had been brought against the Manchu when the Taiping rebellion opened in 1850. The Manchus were a hunting tribe whose preserves lay along the wooded foothills of the Long White Mountain (Chang Pai Shan) northeast of Mukden. The region is well described by James in his _Long White Mountain_ (1888). The chieftain who whipped the Manchus into shape for conquest was Nurha-Chu. He drilled their cavalrymen from 1559 to 1626. From scattered tribes, dwelling in felt michung-tents, he organized them as a Manchu horde with an ambition. The Great Wall was not erected against the Manchus, but against the ancient ancestors of Tartar cousins of theirs. The Manchus themselves erected a palisade-barricade against their cousins, the Khitans, on the west. It ran from Shan Hai Kwan, on the Pechili Gulf, where the Great Wall meets the sea, northward five hundred miles until it reached the Sungari River and encircled Kirin. I think it is difficult now to find any part of the stockade, but I believe that James and Younghusband found evidences of it in their exploration of Manchuria about 1886. The North China Railway embankment west of Mukden absorbed part of the historic mounds. The Manchus had no script. Nurha-Chu gave them one based upon the Mongolian, which in turn was copied from the vertical Syriac. This showed that Nurha-Chu talked with traveling priests who had come down the Tarim valley. You will note the character on the back of any Chinese cash coin, which has a square hole in the middle. Obtain one of these coins, for they will be minted no more, and they are historic; in fact, the oldest coin known. They are the oldest as far as the Chinese face is concerned; the Manchu merely put the name of the reign in Manchu on one side of the Chinese coin, ten of which exchange for one American cent.

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

A splendid view of the Great Wall, at its most picturesque angle.
Note tree-denuded mountains, the cause of the awful floods and
consequent famines. To pierce the wall was formerly a religious
sacrilege and a political folly.
]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Mule carts of North China: note serrated wheels, which are a commentary on the muddy or sandy roads.]

Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Pailoo memorial arch, a splendid type of the Chinese roof and screen carving.]

The Manchus had learned that the host of Chinese people, one hundred to his one, had no transport service (ponies); that they, therefore, were not cohesive or mobile; that their capital could be held by any bold clan which would at the beginning not exact too heavy a tribute, and which would allow the people practically to rule themselves by the classical examination and democratic civil service. The Manchus informed this civil service that they could hold their places if they adopted the Manchu style of hair-dressing, which was done, and in time Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue became the official dress of honor. The Chinese women were unconquerable. They never adopted the Manchu style of dressing the hair over the ears, or of not compressing the feet. The Manchus refused to adopt the Chinese system of using family names first, making a three-named system, as Li Hung-Chang. The Manchus used merely their double names, as Na-Tung, but their family names were entered on the roster of one of the eight military banners. Gradually the Manchu garrisons bullied the Chinese out of their walled cities, and the Chinese had to build a second wall around the suburbs. The events and dates of Manchu history, as it affects their own Ta Ching (Great Pure) and foreign (Fung Kwei) civilizations, are told shortly, as follows:

The Manchu Tien-Tsung overthrows the Ming King
Hwai Tsung and occupies Peking 1643

Tea brought to Europe in English ships from Canton 1660

Kang-Hi, greatest and most artistic Manchu Emperor,
ascends throne, Christianity almost established 1661

Galdan, Prince of Jungaria, conquers Kashgaria and
becomes supreme in Central Asia 1678

First treaty with European power (Russia) 1689

Commerce with East India Company begins at Canton 1680

Yung-Ching ascends throne; anti-Christian 1722

Jesuits expelled 1724

English send first man-of-war, _Centurion_, to China,
English being active at Canton, Ningpo, etc. 1742

First American vessel, _Empress of China_, from New
York, Captain Green, reaches Canton, China 1784

First American Consul, Major Shaw, at Macao,
China 1786

Philadelphia opens China trade with ship _Alliance_ 1788

Boston opens China trade with ship _Massachusetts_ 1789

Earl Macartney’s mission arrives at Peking, throwing
light on the Empire, which appeared to contain
4,402 walled cities, population 333,000,000,
the Tartar and Manchu army being 1,000,000 infantry
and 800,000 cavalry. Government absolute 1793

Macartney ordered to depart, the Chinese deciding to
seal the country against foreigners October 7, 1793

Sir G. L. Staunton, at London, in three volumes reveals
the heart of China and the capital to the
world, fixing the nations in their determination to
open China to modernity 1798

First English Protestant missionary, Robert Morrison,
arrives, and in American factory of Milner &
Bull at Canton translates Bible and compiles Chinese-English
dictionary 1808

Edict against Christianity 1812

Lord Amherst’s embassy, which failed because he
would not make “kotow” to Emperor as a
bearer of tribute from an inferior nation 1816

Exclusive rights of East India Company cease 1834

Lord Napier arrives at Macao to superintend British
commerce 1834

Opium dispute begins; the trade prohibited by
Emperor November, 1834

Opium burned at Canton by famous Chinese Commissioner
Lin February, 1835

Captain Elliot and British merchants leave Canton May, 1839

British and American seamen fight Chinese at Canton July 7, 1839

Hongkong taken by British August 23, 1839

British retire from Macao August 26, 1839

American frigate _Powhatan_ and British sloop _Rattler_
fight Chinese pirates in Kowloon Bay, opposite
Hongkong September 4, 1839

British trade with China ceases by edict of
Emperor December 6, 1839

Opium war between England and China, in which
old China received the soundest thrashing she ever
received from any foreign nation; many engagements;
many ports taken 1840

Treaty of peace signed before Nanking on board
ship _Cornwallis_, Sir Henry Pottinger for England
and Ki-Ying and Neu-Kien for China, China
paying indemnity of $21,000,000, throwing
open as treaty ports Canton, Amoy, Fuchau,
Ningpo and Shanghai, and ceding Hongkong
Island to Britain August 29, 1842

American Commissioner Cushing, Daniel Webster’s
son Fletcher, etc., arrive at Canton 1844

Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue adopted as
official color 1855

Famous Empress Dowager Tse Hsi and Viceroy Li
Hung Chang arise to power 1856

Non-fulfilment of Nanking treaty with Britain causes
war again 1856

Coolie slave trade for Peru, Cuba, California, etc.,
opens at Macao 1860

Britain and France war with China 1860

Taiping rebellion, beginning at Canton, sweeps to
Nanking; opposed by the American, Ward;
Chinese Gordon, etc., on behalf of Manchus 1863

Yung Wing brings first Chinese students to America
(Hartford) 1872

Terrific Mohammedan rebellion in Shensi, Kansu,
Yunnan provinces and Turkestan, suppressed by
ferocious General Tso Tsung-tang, Mohammedan
leader, Yakub Beg, being assassinated in Turkestan May, 1877

Sir Robert Hart establishes Chinese national customs,
first guarantee for foreign loans 1886

China-Japan war over Korea; Formosa lost; indemnity
also paid 1894

Emperor Kwang Hsu’s reform edicts, influenced by
Kang Yu Wei 1898

Siege of Peking by allies 1900

Russia-Japan war over Manchuria 1904

America, Britain and China at Shanghai agree to end
opium curse 1909

Death of Emperor Kwang Hsu and Empress Dowager
Tse Hsi together 1909

Republican rebellion, led by Generals Li and Hsu,
and planned by Sun Yat Sen 1911

Abdication of Manchus 1912

One serious charge against the Manchu is that he has been continually signing away China: Formosa and Korea to Japan, Manchuria to Russia, Kwangchou Bay and Tonquin to France, Kiaochou to Germany, and Wei-Hai-Wei to Britain. The Manchus themselves are to blame for the lack of respect shown the throne and dynasty in the last fifty years. Prince Chun might have taken the throne himself, but in fear of the cabal of jealous princes he named his child Pu Yi. This system of a long regency had several times been put in force by the Manchu intriguer, especially by the Dowager Tse Hsi with Kwang Hsu. When the latter grew up and asserted himself, he was destroyed, and another child, this Pu Yi, named as his successor. The same murderous and unstable system has been followed in putting up a new child Dalai Lama at Lhasa every few years, the old Dalai being informed that “it is time for him to pass his soul on to a new incarnation”. He can commit hara-kiri or be murdered. The Chinese people felt that there was no emperor to worship and obey, but rather a cabal in usurpation at Peking, and an irreligious cabal at that. From the time of the Chou founders, 1200 B. C., to make light of the sacrifices by letting a child do a man’s duties, was a cardinal sin.

Moreover, the Manchu in his long rule at Peking debased the idea of government by women and eunuch favorites. No one concerned will ever forget the power of the notorious eunuch Li Lien Ying at Peking in the years which led to the coup d’état of 1898, when reformers and emperor were crushed to the ground. This notorious “grafter” really shared the throne power with the Dowager Tse Hsi, and the Emperor Kwang Hsu was in continual disgrace. The Manchus knew that it was unconstitutional to honor eunuchs. During the minority of Kang-Hi, the greatest emperor of the Manchus, the regents degraded the eunuchs and had the law engraved on iron plates of one thousand pounds each. Why did not Tse Hsi observe this law during her long regency? Did she think the people would not remember and that her successor, Prince Chun, and the dynasty would not suffer? Because of her hospitality when at the close of her life she permitted her portrait to be painted for the St. Louis Exposition by a talented American woman, and when she entertained several of the charming legation ladies at Peking, books have been written by her guests, in their womanly kindness of heart, and one book by a talented editor friend of mine at Hongkong, palliating her offenses as a tyrant, a reactionary and a murderess. The long cold history of British and American diplomacy; the domestic history of China during her period, the Boxer siege, the written testimony of the Emperor Kwang Hsu, her “dummy” policy, the experiences of the great reformers, including Yuan; her persecution over the whole world of Kang Yu Wei and Sun Yat Sen by her spy system; the national newspapers, the publications of Ching-Shan, her household controller; the statements of the American secretaries of her chief viceroy, Li Hung Chang; the republican revolution and Declaration of Independence of 1911, are all insistent that egotism and reaction sat closest to the heart of this powerful woman; that she belonged to the class of Catherine and not to the class of Elizabeth or Victoria. If this was the character for seventy years of the leader of the Manchus, what was the character of the followers!

Owing to the Manchu’s lack of an art sense, he has neglected the beautiful bridges and broad roads left by the Sung dynasty; the artistic towers left by the Tang dynasty; the gorgeous pagodas left by the artistically incomparable Ming dynasty; and the fine canals left by the Mongols. There should, perhaps, be less surprise over the difference in the intellectual powers of the Manchu and the Chinese. Three hundred and fifty years ago the Manchu was only a hunter, a warrior and fisherman, like his cousins, the Buriats and Tungus up in Siberia to-day; whereas for immemorial centuries the Chinese has been a merchant, a scientific agriculturalist, and a scholar, and has always earned his own living without benefit of government subsidy or class privilege in any way, which have enervated the Manchus of to-day and yesterday. The reaction of the patient Chinese in the October, 1911, rebellion against the Manchu conqueror was natural. The surprise is that it was withheld for three centuries. The Manchus have never mingled with the Chinese. All the large cities, even to distant Canton and Yunnan, 1,200 and 1,400 miles away from the center of power, have separate walled Manchu cities, or Tartar cities as they are generally called, which were taken from the original Chinese. In an effort to appease the complaints of insurgents, the Regent Prince Chun in 1909 recalled the edict which until that late year prohibited Manchus from marrying Chinese.

Like all minorities that try to intrench their privileges, the Manchu is much of a “snob”. It is not uncommon to hear this sneer at Peking regarding the Chinese women of the south: “Oh, she’s a woman from the southern provinces; you can’t expect manners from her.” The fact is that the Chinese women of Nanking, Hangchow, Soochow, Canton and other southern cities have more refined manners than the rough-riding Manchus, the daughters of raiders. The wearing of the queue and the skull cap is a Manchu custom, imposed in the seventeenth century upon the conquered Chinese. One of the first things the Han republicans did in the October, 1911, revolution was to cut off the queue which they declared was a sign of servitude to the dynasty which they were trying to displace. The head-dress of the Manchu women shows the bunching of the hair over each ear instead of behind the head and on the neck, as is the Chinese custom. The Manchus do not deform the feet, nor paint, both of which have been Chinese customs. The gown of the Manchu women is longer than that of the Chinese women, the latter showing the divided skirt, or rather wide trousers. Other distinctive Manchu styles are the jewel-buttons, denoting rank, worn on the peak of the conical official hat; the peacock’s feather worn at the back of the hat; the peacock design in embroidery; the yellow riding jacket.

Manchus drink kaoliang spirits in place of rice samshu. Their battle flags have been triangular instead of oblong. The peculiar daylight audiences given by the throne to the grand councilors and viceroys showed the fear of publicity, and a recognition of estrangement from the people. They seemed to think that a throne that was surrounded with a good deal of mystery, exclusiveness, smoke of incense and darkness was stronger than a throne that was clearly outlined in the love of the people. A curious worship of the Manchu leaders, who are more superstitious than religious, is that of the fox. The great Fox Temple at Mukden, the ancestral temple of the dynasty, is famous. The Chinese leaders have never been as crude as this in their grossest superstition. The Chinese, especially the hard-working southerners who pay most of the taxes, have objected to the pensions accorded to a million Manchus gathered under the eight banners, and quartered, with the privilege to bear arms, in walled cities, barracks and arsenals throughout the land. In the fall of the Manchus, intrenched so long behind a spy system, control of taxation, trade routes and judicial appointees, all oppressive systems and tyrants should take notice that however intrenched they may seem to be against the people, the people will in the end become supreme, with a long, long memory of the wrongs that they have endured against their will, and the theme of “Restitution” on their tongues. To quote the words of Wu Ting Fang, the Jefferson of China, well known to Americans and Britons: “The hand of the people is now at the plough, and they must of necessity push on to the uttermost end of the furrow.”

The books written on Manchuria include James’ _Long White Mountain_; Sir Francis Younghusband’s _Narrative of Travels in Manchuria_, 1896; Hosie’s _Manchuria, Its People, Etc._; Howarth’s _Origin of the Manchus_; Doctor J. Ross’ _Manchus or the Reigning Dynasty_; E. H. Parker’s _Manchus in China_. Doctor A. Wylie translated the Manchu grammar and the _Tsing Wen Keung_. These are all British writers. Professor I. Zacharoff compiled a Russian-Manchu dictionary and wrote on the Manchus in 1875, and Von Mollendorff composed a Manchu grammar. It is possible that in exile from the throne the Manchus may revive the little literature and language that they possess; or, champion intriguers that they and their race are, Prince Tuan, Prince Su, the Tsai Princes, General Yin Tchang and others may continue to plot from Jehol, Kalgan, Urga, Mukden, Dalny and other places of exile. Manchu literature consists of only two hundred and fifty works, nearly all of which are translations of the Chinese classics.

What greater proof was ever given of the irreconcilable differences between the Manchus and Chinese, than the ominous silence of the Chinese members of the momentous meeting of the Grand Council called by the Empress Dowager Tse Hsi at Peking on June 16, 1900, to decide on the final attitude toward the “Boxers”. When the Manchus showed an insane determination to destroy their dynasty, the Chinese members by silence assented, and the republican rebellion of 1911 was only the outward manifestation of the spirit of the silence of 1900.

XVII

CHINA’S ARMY AND NAVY

The revolution of 1911 made known to the world the Chinese generals on the northern and southern sides, who were really able to command a modern army in action as well as in field maneuvers. Generals Li, Ling, Ho, Hwang, Hsu, etc., were the leading southerners. Generals Feng, Chang, Chao and Sheng were among the leading northerners in active service. All of these are Chinese. The much-heralded Manchu generals proved a failure, and few of the old-style Tartar generals, like Chiang and Chen of Pechili province; Na Yen, of Kalgan; Tuan, of the Red Banner Corps; Prince Su, of the Peking Gendarmerie, etc., were called upon to serve in the field. The latter decidedly had the ferocious temperament, but they lacked the knowledge of modern tactics. General Chao Ehr Feng, conqueror of the Tibet mutiny and the Dalai Lama in 1910, an effective old-style general, was cooped up in Chingtu City at the opening of the rebellion in September, 1911. General Yin Tchang, the Manchu general-in-chief; Brigadiers-General Ha and Liang, who visited America in 1910; Major General Ho; Prince Tsai Tao, the Manchu minister of war; Prince Yu Lang, of the dapper gray Imperial Guards, etc., never got much nearer the war than the point of mobilization, and their private car on the Hankau-Peking railway, with the engine pointed northward! The military princes of the royal blood, Tsai Pu, Tsai Jin, Duke Ling, Prince Pu, etc., all kept their dress uniforms innocent of the dust of field and the grime of powder. Prince Tsai Hsu, royal admiral of the navy, kept aboard his luxurious steam yacht which the Kiangnan Dock Company of Shanghai built for him, and sulked away from Admiral Sah’s service fleet, which was making a last dash to cut the rebel’s left flank between Wuchang and Hankau.

The modern Chinese army dates back to 1894 and the defeat in the China-Japan War over Korea. Viceroys Li Hung Chang and Yuan Shih Kai were bent on drilling an effective service. Chiefly German and Japanese instructors were hired, though there were a few other foreigners also. General Upton (U. S. A.), of Civil War fame, once made a trip to China and planned with Viceroy Li Hung Chang the establishment of a Chinese West Point in the north, which has been begun in the Pei Yang Military College at Tientsin. Emperor William personally instructed General Yin Tchang in Germany. An army of Imperial Guards and ten divisions, mostly territorial for facility in recruiting and mobilizing, was whipped into shape chiefly in the northern provinces, and twenty other divisions were partly formed as provided for by the famous Army Edict of April 16, 1906. Modern arsenals, headquarters offices, field maneuvers, Red Cross, foreign instructors, the Pei Yang Military College, etc., were all provided for. The old-style provincial turbaned troops allotted to each viceroy, and the pensioned soldiers of the eight Manchu banners were not all disbanded. They were quartered among the 4,000 walled cities. No conscription was necessary, as the men seemed anxious to serve for the wage, or the promise of six dollars a month. The plan was to keep the men three years with the colors, three years with the reserve, and thereafter for ten years with a landwehr on the German plan. By 1900 the new army was not cohesive, or the reactionary empress dowager, Prince Tuan, General Tung Fu of Kansu, and Yu Hsien, of Shangtung, would have wiped out the foreigners in the legations and Admiral Seymour’s international relief expedition at Tientsin. When the 1911 rebellion opened, the Eighth Division joined the republicans at Wuchang, and earned immortal glory. Their brothers of the Third Division opposed them at Hankau. The Ninth Division of Shangtung and Kiangsu territorials held Nanking for the imperialists, but the Kiangsu Brigade of that division later deserted. The Twentieth Division of Manchurian territorials at Lanchow Camp near Peking earned immortal glory by sending up to the National Assembly and the throne nineteen constitutional articles which they said had to be signed before they would war for the throne. This was _lèse majesté_ with a vengeance! The Guards Division was at Peking, where it stayed, watching the hoards of bullion and sycee more than constitutional articles! The Sixth Division was in Shansi province. The First Division of Manchu troops, and the Second and Fourth Divisions at times shuttlecocked along the railway between Hankau and Peking. The Fifth Division was at Tsinan, capital of Shangtung province.

Had China’s army not been territorial, the rebellion might never have got into swing, because it would have been impossible to have intrigued with a mixed Eighth Division. Again, had China’s army not been territorial, President Yuan could have used the Third, Fourth, Sixth and Twentieth Divisions at Peking in March, 1912, to suppress the mutiny, whereas these divisions remained in sympathy with the First Manchu Division and the Imperial Guards Division, and refused to obey the constitutional head of the government at a climacteric time. A mixed army is not easily mobilized, but when mobilized it is more amenable to discipline, and the ignoring of local feeling in view of the larger aims of statesmanship. England’s, Germany’s and France’s armies are territorial. Italy’s and America’s regular armies are not. America’s vast militia army, however, on which she mainly depends, is, of course, territorial.

General Yin Tchang, who had much to do with organizing the effective ten divisions of the northern army, is a graduate of Peking University. He served five years in the Austrian infantry, and as minister to Germany, at Emperor William’s request, he enjoyed that unusually able and enthusiastic monarch’s private instruction in army matters. In 1900 General Yin Tchang came in contact with the allied forces at Tientsin, and held his retreat together well enough to elicit much admiration. General Yin and the regent, Prince Chun, both visited Hongkong in 1901 and there gained sympathy from us all for the great promise which they showed in guiding the New China. Yin Tchang’s excellent idea was to take the provincial armies away from the viceroys, and make the new divisions answerable to the Board of War (Ping Pu) at Peking. Prince Tsai Tse’s, the finance minister’s plan, was to inform each governor what amount he was to send to Peking as the province’s share in maintaining a central army. There was considerable conflict over this issue, many southern governors saying that they paid for two armies, one modern army which was held in the north, of which they never received their allotted division or brigade, and the old-style provincial troops which they had to maintain to preserve order. General Ha Han-Chang, a Chinese by blood, came next to Yin in drilling the new army. He is also a Pei Yang graduate, and trained with the Japanese army. General Liang-Pi, a Manchu, had an experience similar to that of General Ha, before accepting command of the First Brigade. None of these men is like Tieh-Liang and the other well-known old-style generals, strong in classics but weak in tactics. They reversed the order. General Li Chin Hsi at remote Yunnan City raised and drilled an excellent division. The division at Canton went all to pieces before the republican troops of General Wu Sum, but the Shansi divisions were effectually held together by General Sheng Yun, a Mongol, who later captured the Tongkwan pass, which commands the road from the west to Peking. Many soldiers of the southern divisions, in the first few weeks of the revolution, fired from the hip, as they were not used to the recoil on the shoulder. They, of course, soon did better. One of the best and most popular marksmen of the Singapore Rifle Team which competed at Bisley in 1910 was Sergeant Tan Chow Kim, a Cantonese Chinese.

The name of Frederick T. Ward should be linked with “Chinese” Gordon’s in connection with Chinese military records. General Ward, born at Salem, Massachusetts, lost his life in the service of China. He organized and led the only great army that China ever had before 1906. His name stands linked with Gordon’s as the maker of the “Ever Victorious Army,” the conqueror of the Taiping horde.

A modern rage for dull-colored new uniforms has struck gorgeously gowned old China. I shall recite an amusing instance. In the fall of 1911 a band of rebels organized in Sining, in far-western Kansu province. They chose a boy of fifteen as their prophet leader because he bore peculiar birthmarks. He was given the fanciful name of Savior of the Land (Chu Shih Waang). The generals reported that the new force should wear modern uniforms of cotton. The stores were swamped with orders, and every bolt of foreign cotton was immediately bought up, no matter what its design. The Imperial Guards wear gray, and the other divisions wear blue and khaki.

Aviation was introduced in China (really Indo-China) at Saigon on December 1, 1910, by the Holland-Frenchman, Vanderborn. He was followed later in the year at Shanghai by the American, “Bud” Mars. The first Chinese aviator was Fug-Yu, who was trained in America, and who experimented at the Lanchow (east of Peking) camp in 1911. During the revolution a number of Chinese students took lessons in aviation in America and left for the rebel front. Had the war continued it was the intention to destroy Peking by dynamite dropped from air-ships. Both Sun and Yuan are to be congratulated that this necessity was obviated by diplomacy.

China’s antiquity, vast population and warlikeness have been brought in question by some writers. That she had a vast population as far back as the third century before the Christian era is proved by the army records. The Ts’in clan, operating under their celebrated General Peh Ki, slew and beheaded in 293 B. C. 240,000 Hans; in 275 B. C. 40,000 Ngwheis; in 264 B. C. 50,000 Hans; in 260 B. C. 400,000 Chows, and in 256 B. C. 90,000 more Chows, thus exterminating the imperial ancestral clan which instituted the sacrifices and held the sacred tripods. Szma Tsien, the historian, writing at 100 B. C., says the allies lost a million men in fighting this Ts’in clan. After the Christian era the Chinese took fewer plural wives and fought fewer wars. Twenty years ago, an emperor who raised the despised military class to the equal of scholars, farmers and merchants, would have been decapitated. Compare one of the military edicts of the regent, Prince Chun, dated Peking, April, 1911: “We are of the opinion that militarism is the first thing necessary to the upbuilding and preservation of a nation.”

Some of the military proverbs of the old Chinese are:

“The best general thinks of wise strategy before blind courage.”

“A mob does not make a regiment, for a trained man is as effective as a score untrained, and much easier to save in a retreat.”

“A good general can’t blame defeat on bad soldiers, for a good general has no poor regiments.”

“The pike only grabs the duck’s lame leg that can’t kick.”

“The battle may not be for a cycle of years, but the soldier must awake for it every day.”

“A dog that bites the hardest shows his teeth the least.”

“A whisper can bring on a war.”

“Keep your good cannon masked, and your bad guns on brave parade.”

“If the enemy doesn’t know your weakness, you are not weak.”

“It’s the man behind the gun more than the gun, and the man inside the fort more than the wall.”

Chinese literature is not without its stirring war songs, which breathe not only the pathos of the suffering of those at home, but the sacrificing patriotism of the ranks. The following is quoted from Confucius’ Odes, B. C. 551:

THE SOLDIER

I climbed the barren mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the red-lit eaves of my father’s home,
And I fancied that he sighed.

I climbed the grass-clad mountain,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the rosy light of a little room,
Where I thought my mother sighed.

I climbed the topmost summit,
And my gaze swept far and wide
For the garden roof where my brother stood,
And I fancied that he sighed.

My brother serves as a soldier
With his comrades night and day,
But my brother is filial and may return,
Though the dead lie far away.

The following far older poem was written in 800 B. C. by Li Hua to commemorate a battle between the ancient Chinese tribe of Wei and the Northern Mongols:

THE BATTLEFIELD

Many men with but one heart;
Many lives to sell as one.

Foes and Nature interlock;
Sands arise; hills join the shock.

Rivers, death fills like a flood;
Red, Wei’s Great Wall too with blood.

Slaves ye shall be if ye yield;
Dead men if ye fight the field!

Fled no warrior; name on name,
Ghosts approach me, starred with fame.

With such Spartan poetry the early Chinese were able to fire the race with militarism. The ideograph is virile and laconic in the highest degree, just as the Anglo-Saxon of “Beowulf” is more condensed than our later Latinized speech.

Confucius believed in revenge upon a murderous enemy of one’s family. He replied to a question of a pupil on this matter: “Have only your weapons for a pillow.”

Two of the promising colonels in the southern republican army are graduates (1909 class) of the American West Point Academy. They were admitted on the personal recommendations of President Roosevelt. One is Colonel Wen Ying Hsing, a nephew of Wen Tsung Yao, who is assistant minister of foreign affairs of the Nanking Republican Assembly. Colonel Wen has seen hard service as military adviser of the Canton Provincial Assembly. The other “West Pointer” is Colonel Chen Ting, brother of Doctor Chen Shin Tao, minister of finance of the Nanking Republican Assembly.

On one of my rambles through the narrow streets of Canton I dropped into an artist’s shop on Yuck Tsze Street and selected some treasured, delightful opal-colored paintings, full of spirit, of the old picturesque three-masted Manchu war-junks which in the early days one saw sometimes beating into the reaches and broads of the flooded waters of Kwangtung province. The yellow shields, emblazoned with ideographs, hang over the midship bulwarks of the ship. The latticed red rudder is high above the water so that it may drag the unwieldy keelless boat around. The great blue sweeps, with yellow eyes, stretch from the galley-ports. The ship itself has eyes on the bow. The overhanging cabin in the high stern is crowded with men, stores and bronze cannon. The low red prow cuts the olive green sea into white foam. The red triangular flags flaunt challenge from all the masts. The great square brown matting sails spread like clouds above the blue-gowned leadsman in the bow. Dipping under the horizon are the fleeing black banners of the enemy, and the sea-gulls scatter in terror. Only the serrated blue hills are brave along the iron shores.

The first important names in connection with the building and drilling of China’s modern navy are Captain Lang, R. N. (British), and Captain Siebelin (U. S. N. and H. S. M.). These men prepared the fleet for the war with Japan in 1894, which developed Admiral Ting and Captain Teng as China’s sole naval heroes, who, however, could do little with an inefficient war board (Ping Pu) behind them. The captured battleships _Chen Yuen_ and _Ting Yuen_ are in Japan’s retired list. They were very fine ships for their day, and resisted heavy punishment in the battles of the Yalu and Wei Hai Wei. The navy training schools are at Tientsin, Chifu, Nanking, Fuchau, Shanghai, Amoy, and there will be another at Nimrod Bay, south of Ningpo. Admiral Beresford, on his visit to China in 1898, advised with the Chinese officials, especially Li Hung Chang, regarding navy matters, and some cruisers were built in England, though the two best battleships were built in Germany. Captain Bradley Osbon, an American, served for years in developing the Chinese navy.

The Chinese cruiser _Hai Chi_, painted the regulation gray, and spreading the gorgeous yellow dragon flag, took part in King George the Fifth’s coronation festivities at Spithead in July, 1911, and in September, 1911, she came to New York and anchored beneath Grant’s tomb. Conspicuous friendliness on both occasions was shown to the officers and crew as a mark of the new interest in China which has arisen in Britain and America especially. Similar cruisers, the _Hai Chow_ and the _Hai Yung_; gunboats of the _Po Pik_ class; and torpedo boats of the _Wu Pang_ class, were in constant use in China in the ante-republican days. One day they were watching that Portugal did not encroach at Macao; a week later shelling rebels around the great cities which line the Yangtze River or making a dash to the Gulf of Pechili to be ready to take on board the infant emperor. The cruiser _Fei Hung_, the first Chinese warship built in America, was launched at Camden, New Jersey, on April 24, 1912. Larger cruisers are building in England, and when Chinese politics and finances are more settled, it is proposed to order battleships from both Britain and America, and form three fleets, the Northern, Yangtze Central and Southern fleets. Shanghai can dock the smaller vessels, but British Hongkong alone has up to this time been able to dock battleships in Chinese waters. China has as yet no submarines. The British navy maintains several submarine torpedo boats at Hongkong, and in that land-locked harbor, of all others in the world, the moral effect upon an enemy would be terrifying.

In recent years the naval policy of China has been developed by Prince Tsai Hsu. Admiral Sah Chen Ping, who commanded the Yangtze fleet which operated against the republicans in October, 1911, and against the pirates who attacked Yale College, at Changsha, in 1910, has visited America, and entertained the American round-the-world fleet at Amoy in 1908. He has a son in a western American college. General Li Yuen Heng, one of the two greatest republican generals, was really trained for the navy at Pei Yang and Chifu Colleges, and in Japan. Admirals Jiu Cheng, Li Chun, of the Canton riots of April, 1911; Tan; Ching, who entertained the American fleet at Amoy; Commander Hsu Chen Pang, who was educated at Hartford, America; Admirals Liu and Hai Chun; Admiral Chin Yao Huan and Commander Wu Chung Lin, both of whom visited New York on the cruiser _Hai Chi_, are all well known. Commanders Chen, Yang and Wong represented China when the cruiser _Fei Hung_ was built at Camden, New Jersey, in 1912. When the republican troops took the Shanghai arsenal it discouraged the navy, which could not secure ammunition in time for effective work. The fleet then went over to the red, white and blue sun flag, and later landed a republican army in Shangtung province at Chifu to flank the imperial left wing operating at Tsinan. The fleet also made a demonstration against Chin Wang Tao on the gulf of Pechili, thus forcing the imperialists to hold several divisions in the north to protect Peking. This enabled the republicans to follow up the Nanking victory, drive General Chang out of Nganhwei province, and made the Whei River instead of the Yangtze River the republican front. If America undertakes with a Pacific fleet to back up for all time the “non-partition of China” policy, the writer is not a believer in a Chinese navy at present, outside of possibly one dreadnought a year when the finances are revised. Of course a strong revenue and police fleet for the rivers should be provided. Attention should rather be given to China’s army, so that she may be able to do her own police work as far as Russian or other intruders are concerned. Having no oversea colonies, she really has no use for a navy at present, excepting that one dreadnought a year would, if necessary, lend a little more than moral support to America’s altruistic and non-land-grabbing policy in the Far East.

The Chinese are splendid sailors, and as is well known, they invented the water-tight compartment in their junks, sanpans and wupans forgotten centuries ago. I have had much intercourse with the watermen of the southern provinces and can speak well of their seamanship. They compose the crews of the mercantile fleets which cross the Pacific, and have brought their ships through those awful circular typhoons which rage for days. They have also developed modern yacht designers like Ah King at Hongkong, and they are quick at the tiller and boom. I have, in writing of the Chinese, given perhaps a hundred instances of things which they do oppositely to the Occidental manner. Here is the one hundred and first: Holding their nostrils, they dive feet foremost, like the pearl fishermen of the Manaar Gulf of Ceylon! When our launch screws would get tangled with the many ropes of Blake Wharf, Hongkong, I have often seen half of the crew merrily jump overboard with knives in their teeth, and work under water for an extraordinary length of time; and though some writers call the Chinese stolid and humorless, I have always seen them highly appreciative of applause and good-natured laughter over the unexpected incidents that arise in an Oriental day’s work. On one occasion the writer, who was exhausted with the tide, was saved from drowning at Junk Bay, Hongkong, by the quick-witted efforts of a native laota (coxswain) who deftly swung his launch within reach, and whose ready arms reached out to “chiu ming” (save life).