Chapter VII: Part I: The Village, Its Institutions, Usages and Public Characters (4)

Every pupil is naturally anxious to get into the class of scholars, and this he does as soon as he gives all his time to study; for whether he is a real scholar or not, he plainly belongs to neither of the other classes. We are told in the Confucian Analects that the master said, "The accomplished scholar is not a utensil." The commentators tell us that this means that whereas a utensil can only be put to one use, the accomplished scholar can be used in all varieties of ways, _ad omnia paratus_, as Dr. Legge paraphrases it. This expression is sometimes quoted in banter, as if in excuse for the general incapacity of the Chinese literary man--_he_ is not a utensil. The scholar, even the village scholar, not only does not plow and reap, but he does not in any way assist those who perform these necessary acts. He does not harness an animal, nor feed him, nor drive a cart, nor light a fire, nor bring water--in short, so far as physical exertion goes, he does as nearly as possible nothing at all. "The scholar is not a utensil," he seems to be thinking all day long, and every day of his life, until one wishes that at times he would be a utensil, that he might sometimes be of use. He will not even move a bench, nor make any motion that looks like labour. Almost the only exception to this general incapacity, is an exception for which we should hardly be prepared; it is a knowledge, in many cases of the art of cooking, in so far as it is necessary for the practice of the scholar, who often teaches in a village other than his home, where he generally lives by himself in the schoolhouse.

We have already alluded to the great oversupply of teachers of schools. Many of them, owing to their lack of adaptation to their environment, are chronically on the verge of starvation. It is a venerable maxim that poverty and pride go side by side, and nowhere does this saying find more forcible exemplification than in the case of a poor Chinese scholar. He has nothing, he can do nothing, and in most cases he is unwilling to do anything. In short, viewed from the standpoint of political economy, he is good for nothing.

One specimen of this class the writer once saw, who had been set at work by a benevolent foreigner molding coal balls, an employment which doubtless appeared to him and to the spectators as the substantial equivalent of the chain-gang, and yet, to the surprise of his employer, he accepted it rather than starve. A certain scholar of this description was so poor that he was obliged to send his family back to her mother's house, to save them from starvation. The wife, being a skillful needle-woman, was employed at good wages in a foreign family, but when her husband heard of it he was very angry, not because he was unwilling to have her associate with foreigners, who he was kind enough to say were very respectable, but because it was very unsuitable that she, the wife of a scholar, should work for hire! The wife had the sense and spirit to reply that, if these were his views, it might be well for him to provide his family with something to eat, to which he replied with the characteristic and ultimate argument for refractory wives, namely, a sound beating!

When one of these helpless and impecunious scholars calls upon a foreigner whom he has met only once, or perhaps never even seen, he will not improbably begin by quoting a wilderness of classical learning to display his great--albeit unrecognized--abilities. He tells you that among the five relations of prince and minister, husband and wife, father and son, brother to brother, and friend to friend, his relationship to you is of the latter type. That it would do violence to his conception of the duties of this relation, if he did not let you know of his exigencies. He shows you his thin trousers and other garments concealed under his scholar's long gown, and frankly volunteers that _any_ contribution, large or small, prompted by such friendship as ours to him will be most acceptable.

While the conditions of the life of the village scholar are thus unfavourable for his success in earning a living, they are not more favourable to his own intellectual development. The chief, if not the exclusive sources of his mental alimentation have been the Chinese Classics. These are in many respects remarkable products of the human mind. Their negative excellencies, in the absence of anything calculated to corrupt the morals, are great. To the lofty standard of morality which they fix, may be ascribed in great measure their unbounded and perennial influence, an influence which has no doubt powerfully tended to the preservation of the empire. Apart from the incalculable influence which they have exerted on the countless millions of China for many ages, there are many passages which in and of themselves are remarkable.

But taken as a whole, the most friendly critic finds it impossible to avoid the conviction, which forces itself upon him at every page, that regarded as the sole text-books for a great nation they are fatally defective. They are too desultory, and too limited in their range. Epigrammatic moral maxims, scraps of biography, nodules of a sort of political economy, bits of history, rules of etiquette, and a great variety of other subjects, are commingled without plan, symmetry, or progress of thought. The chief defects, as already suggested, are the triviality of many of the subjects, the limitation in range, and the inadequacy of treatment. When the Confucian Analects are compared, for example, with the Memorabilia of Xenephon, when the Doctrine of the Mean is placed by the side of the writings of Aristotle and Plato, and the bald notation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by the side of the history of Thucydides, when the Book of Odes is contrasted with the Iliad, the Odyssey, or even the Aneid, it is impossible not to marvel at the measure of success which has attended the use of such materials in China.

Considering what, in spite of their defects, the Classics have done for China, it is not surprising that they have come to be regarded with a bibliolatry to which the history of mankind affords few parallels. It is extremely difficult for us to comprehend the effect of a narrow range of studies on the mind, because our experience furnishes no instance to which the case of the Chinese can be compared. Let us for a moment imagine a Western scholar, who had enjoyed a profound mathematical education, and no other education whatever. Every one would consider such a mind ill-balanced. Yet much of the ill effect of such a narrow education would be counteracted. Mathematical certainty is infallible certainty; mathematics leads up to astronomy, and a thorough acquaintance with astronomy is of itself a liberal education. Besides this, no man in Western lands can fail to come into vital contact with other minds. And there is what Goethe called the Zeit-geist, or Spirit of the Age, which exerts a powerful influence upon him. But in China, a man who is educated in a narrow line, is likely, though by no means certain, to remain narrow, and there is no Chinese Zeit-geist, or if there is, like other ghosts, it seldom interposes in human affairs.

The average Chinese scholar is at a great disadvantage in the lack of the apparatus for study. In a Western land, any man with the slightest claim to be called a scholar, would be able to answer in a short time, a vast range of questions, with intelligent accuracy. This he would do, not so much by means of his own miscellaneous information, as by his books of reference. The various theories as to the location of the Garden of Eden, the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, the probable authorship of the Junius Letters, the highest latitude reached in polar exploration, the names of the generals who conducted the fourth Peloponnesian war--all these, and thousands of similar matters, could be at once elucidated by means of a dictionary of antiquities, a manual of ancient or modern history, a biographical dictionary, and an encyclopedia. To the ordinary Chinese scholar, such helps as these are entirely wanting. He owns very few books; for in the country where printing was invented, books are the luxury of the rich.

The standard dictionary of Chinese, is that compiled two centuries ago in the K'ang Hsi period, and is alleged to contain 44,449 characters, but of these an immense number are obsolete and synonomous, and only serve the purpose of bewildering the student. Within the past two generations the Chinese language has undergone a remarkable development, owing to the contact of China with her neighbours. All the modern sciences have obtruded themselves, but there is no interest in the coA¶rdination of these new increments to their language on the part of Chinese scholars, to whom K'ang Hsi's lexicon is amply sufficient.

In order to attain success in Chinese composition, it is necessary to be acquainted with the force of every character, as a means to which, access to this standard dictionary, would seem to be indispensable. Yet, though invaluable, it is not in the possession of one scholar in fifty. Its place is generally taken by a small compendium, analogous to what we should call a pocket-manual, in which the characters are arranged according to the sound, and not according to the radicals, as in K'ang Hsi.

Pupils are seldom taught the 214 radicals, and many persons who have spent years at school have no idea how to use K'ang Hsi's dictionary, when it is put into their hands. Within a circle of eight or ten villages, there may be only a single copy, and if it is necessary to obtain more accurate information than is to be had in the pocket-dictionary, the inquirer must go to the village where there is a copy of K'ang Hsi, and "borrow light" there.

But such an extreme measure is seldom considered necessary. The incessant study of the Classics has made all the characters in them familiar. Those who write essays can compose them with the aid of these characters only, and as for miscellaneous characters--that is, those not found in the Classics--why should one care for _them_? A good edition of K'ang Hsi, with clear type and no false characters, might cost, if new, as much as the village schoolmaster would receive for his whole year's work.

At examinations below that for the second degree, a knowledge of history is said to be as superfluous as an acquaintance with the dictionary. Nine out of ten candidates at the lower examinations know little of the history of China, except what they have learned from the Trimetrical Classic, or picked up from the classics. The perusal of compendiums of history, even if such are available, is the employment of leisure, and the composition of essays as a business once entered upon, there is no leisure.

One occasionally meets a teacher who has made a specialty of history, but these men are rare. Historical allusions often lie afloat in the minds of Chinese scholars, like snatches of poetry, the origin and connection of which are unknown. Many scholars who have the knack of picking up and appropriating such spiculA| of knowledge, acquire the art of dextrously weaving them into examination essays and owe their success to this circumstance alone, whereas if they were examined upon the historical connection of the incidents which they have thus cited, they would be unable to reply. But as long as the use of such allusions in essays is felicitous, no questions are asked, and the desired end is attained. "The Cat that catches the Rat is a good Cat," says the adage, and it is no matter if the Cat is blind, and the Rat is a dead one!

The _Peking Gazette_ occasionally contains memorials from officers asking that certain sums be set apart for the maintenance of a library in some central city, to aid poor students in the prosecution of their studies. If there were libraries on a large scale in every district city, they would be valuable and much-needed helps. But so far as appears, for all practical purposes, they scarcely exist at all.

The Chinese method of writing history, is what Sydney Smith called the antediluvian, that, namely, in which the writer proceeds upon the hypothesis that the life of the reader is to be as long as that of Methuselah. Projected upon this tremendous plan, the standard histories are not only libraries in size, but are enormously expensive in price. In a certain District (or County) it is a well-known fact that there is only one such history, which belongs to a wealthy family, and which one could no more "borrow," than he could borrow the family graveyard, and which even if it could be borrowed would prove to be a wilderness of learning. It is indeed a proverb, that "He that would know things ancient and modern, must peruse five cartloads of books."

But even after this labour, his range of learning, gauged by Occidental standards, would be found singularly inadequate. According to Chinese ideas, the history of the reigning dynasty is not a proper object of knowledge, and histories generally end at the close of the Ming Dynasty, about 250 years ago. If any one has a curiosity to learn of what has happened since that time, he can be gratified by waiting a few decades or centuries, when the dynasty shall have changed, and the records of the Great Pure Dynasty can be impartially written. Imagine a History of England which should call a halt at the House of Hanover!

The result of the various causes here indicated, combined with the grave defects in the system of education, is that multitudes of Chinese scholars know next to nothing about matters directly in the line of their studies, and in regard to which we should consider ignorance positively disgraceful. A venerable teacher remarked to the writer with a charming naA-vetA(C) that he had never understood the allusions in the Trimetrical Classic (which stands at the very threshold of Chinese study), until at the age of sixty he had an opportunity to read a Universal History, prepared by a missionary, in which for the first time Chinese history was made accessible to him.

The encyclopedias and works of reference, which the Chinese have compiled in overwhelming abundance, are as useless to the common scholar as the hieroglyphics of Egypt. He never saw these works, and he has never heard of them. The information condensed into a small volume like Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, could not be drawn from a whole platoon of ordinary scholars. Knowledge of this sort the scholar must pick up as he goes along, remembering everything that he reads or hears; and much of it will be derived from cheap little books, badly printed, and full of false characters, prepared on no assignable plan, and covering no definite ground.

The cost of Chinese books being practically prohibitory to teachers who are poor, they are sometimes driven to copy them, as was the habit of the monks in the middle ages. The writer is well acquainted with a schoolmaster who spent the spare time of several years in copying a work in eight octavo volumes, involving the notation of somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 characters, to the great injury of his health and of his eyesight.

The whole plan of Chinese study has been aptly called intellectual infanticide. The outcome of it is that it is quite possible that the village scholar who has the entire Classics at his tongue's end, who has been examined before the Literary Chancellor more times than he can remember, may not know fact from fiction, nor history from mythology. He is, perhaps, not certain whether a particular historical character lived in the Han Dynasty or in the Ming Dynasty, though the discrepancy involves a matter of 1,000 or 1,200 years. He does not profess to be positive whether a given name represents a real person, or whether it may not perhaps have been merely one of the dramatis personA| of a theatrical play.

He cannot name the governors or governors-general of three out of the eighteen provinces, nor does he know the capitals of a third of those provinces. It is enough for him that any particular place in China, the location of which he is ignorant of, is "south-side." He never studied any geography ancient or modern, he never saw an ancient atlas nor a modern map of China--never in fact heard of one.

An acquaintance of the writer's, who was a pupil in a mission school, sent to a reading man of his village a copy of a Universal Geography in the Mandarin Colloquial, the explanations of which would seem to render mistake as to its purport almost impossible. Yet the recipient of the work, after protracted study of it, could make nothing whatever of the volume, and called to his aid two friends, one of whom was a literary graduate, and all three of them puzzled over the maps and text for three days, at the end of which time they all gave the matter up as an insoluble riddle, and determined in despair to await the return of the donor of the book, to explain what it was about!

This trait of intellectual obtuseness, is far enough from being exceptional in Chinese scholars. With a certain class of them, a class easily recognized, it is the rule, and it is a natural outcome of the mode and process of their education. Although the education of a Chinese scholar is almost exclusively devoted to acquiring facility of composition, it is composition of one variety only, the examination essay. Outside of examination halls, however, the examination essay, even in China, plays a comparatively small part, and a person whose sole forte is the production of such essays often shows to very little advantage in any other line of business. He cannot write a letter without allowing the "seven empty particles" to tyrannize over his pen. He employs a variety of set forms, such as that he has received your epistle and respectfully bathed himself before he ventured to open it (a very exaggerated instance of hyperbole), but he very likely neglects to inform you from what place he is writing and if he is reporting, for example, a lawsuit, he probably omits altogether several items of vital importance to a correct comprehension of the case. In a majority of instances he is miserably poor, often has no employment whatever, and no prospect of obtaining any. If he becomes acquainted with a foreigner, you are aware, before he has made three calls, that he is in quest of a situation. You inquire what he can do, and with a pathetic simplicity he assures you that he _can_ do some things, and is really not a useless person. He can indeed, write from a copy, or from dictation if an eye be constantly kept upon him to prevent the notation of wrong characters. But it will not be surprising if his employer finds that at whatever task he is set, he either does it ill, or cannot do it at all.

There are several criticisms which the average Occidental is sure to make on the average Chinese schoolmaster. He always lacks initiative and will seldom do anything without explicit directions. He is also painfully deficient in finality, especially in the statement of his own affairs, often consuming an hour wheeling in concentric circles about a point to which he should have come in three minutes--that is, had he been constructed intellectually as most Westerners are. Yet he has undoubted intellectual abilities, not frequently surprising one by the keenness and justice of his criticisms and comments. But his mind has been trained for one line of work, and often for that alone. Every one knows that the minds of the Chinese are not by nature analytic; neither are they synthetic. They may suppose themselves to have the clearest perception of the way in which a statement ought to be made, but a whole platoon of teachers will not seldom spend several days in working over and over an epitome of some matter of business which happens to be somewhat complicated, and after all with results unsatisfactory to themselves, and still more so to the Occidental who fails to understand why it could not have been finished in two hours. The same phenomenon is often witnessed in their efforts to assimilate unfamiliar works which are _not_ geographical. If a reading man is invited to peruse one and make an abstract of it, he generally declines, remarking that he does not know how, a proposition which he can speedily prove with a certainty equal to any demonstration in Euclid.

The inborn conservatism of the Chinese race is exhibited in the average literary man, whatever the degree of his attainments. To change his accustomed way of doing anything is to give his intellectual faculties a wrench akin to physical dislocation of a hip-bone. Chinese writing is in perpendicular columns, and if horizontal reads from right to left--the reverse of English. A fossilized Chinese whom the writer set to noting down sentences in a ruled foreign blank-book could not be induced to follow the lines as directed, but wished to make columns to which he was used. When the foreign way was insisted upon, he simply turned the book partly around and wrote on the lines perpendicularly as before! He would not be a party to violent rearrangement of the ancient symbols of thought. Such a man's mind resembles an obsolete high bicycle--very good if one but knows how to work it, but not quite safe for any others. There is another similarity likewise in the circumstance that many Chinese who have some degree of scholarship are not expecting to employ their intellectual faculties except when they happen to be called for. One is often told by Chinese who have gone from home for some considerable time, that he cannot read something which has been offered to him, as he has left his glasses at home, not supposing that he should have any use for them. A greater intellectual contrast between the East and the West it might not be easy to name.

To almost all Chinese the _form_ of a written character appears to be of indefinitely greater importance than its meaning. Those who are learning to read, or who can read only imperfectly, are generally so completely absorbed in the mere enunciation of a character, that they will not and probably cannot pay the smallest attention to any explanation as to its purport, the consideration of which appears to be regarded as of no consequence whatever, if not an interruption. But the scholar and the new beginner have this admirable talent in common, that they are almost always able completely to abstract themselves from their surroundings, disregarding all distractions. This valuable faculty, as already remarked and a phenomenally developed verbal memory are perhaps the most enviable results of the educational process which we are describing. As an excellent example, however, of the degree to which verbal memory extinguishes the judgment, may be mentioned a country schoolmaster (a literary graduate) whom the writer interviewed in a dispensary waiting-room as to the respective deserts of Chou, the tyrant whose crimes put an end to the Ancient Shang Dynasty, and Pi Kan, a relative whom Chou ordered disemboweled in mere wantonness in order to see if a Sage really has seven openings in his heart. The teacher recollected the incident perfectly, and cited a passage from the Classics referring to it, but declined to express any judgment on the merits of these men as he had forgotten what "the small characters" (the commentary) said about them!

We have already adverted to some of the principal defects in the routine of Chinese schools, but there is another which should not be omitted. There is scarcely a man, woman or child in China, who will not spend a considerable fraction of life in handling brass cash, in larger or smaller quantities. It is a matter of great importance to each individual, to be able to reckon, if not rapidly, at least correctly, so as to save trouble, and what is to them of far more importance, money. It seems almost incredible that for instruction in this most necessary of arts, there is no provision whatever. To add, to subtract, to divide, to multiply, to know what to do with decimal fractions, these are daily necessities of every one in China, and yet these are things that no one teaches. Such processes, like the art of bookkeeping in Western lands fifty years ago, must be learned by practical experience in shops and places of business. The village schoolmaster not only does not teach the use of the abacus, or reckoning board, but it is by no means certain that he understands it himself. Imagine a place in England or in the United States where the schoolboy is taught nothing of the rules of arithmetic at school, and where he is obliged, if he desires such knowledge, to learn the simple rules of addition, etc., from one person, those for compound numbers from another person, not improbably in a distant village, the measurement of land from yet a third individual, no one of them being able to give him all the help he requires.

The Chinese reckoning board is no doubt a very ingenious contrivance for facilitating computation, but it is nevertheless a very clumsy one. It has the fatal defect of leaving no trace of the processes through which the results have been reached, so that if any mistake occurs, it is necessary to repeat them all, on the reiterative principle of the House that Jack Built, until the answer is, or is supposed to be correct. That all the complicated accounts of a great commercial people like the Chinese, should be settled only through such a medium, seems indeed singular. An expert arrives at his conclusions with surprising celerity, but even those who are familiar with ordinary reckoning, become puzzled the moment that a problem is presented to them beyond the scope of the ordinary rules. If one adult receives a pound of grain every ten days, and a child half as much, what amount should be allotted to 227 adults and 143 children, for a month and a half? Over a problem as simple as this, we have seen a group of Chinese, some of whom had pretensions to classical scholarship, wrestle for half an hour, and after all no two of them reached the same conclusion. Indeed the greater their learning, the less fitted do the Chinese seem to be, in a mathematical way, to struggle with their environment.

The object of the teacher is to compel his pupils, first to Remember, secondly, to Remember, thirdly and evermore to Remember. For every scholar, as we have seen, is theoretically a candidate for the district examinations, where he must write upon themes selected from any one of a great variety of books. He must, therefore, be prepared to recall at a moment's notice, not only the passage itself, but also its connections, and the explanations of the commentary, as a prerequisite for even attempting an essay.

Under the conditions of the civil service examinations, as they have been conducted for many hundred years, a system of school instruction like the one here described, or which shall at least produce the same results, is an imperative necessity in China. A reform cannot begin anywhere until a reform begins everywhere. The excellence of the present system is often assumed and in proof, the great number of distinguished scholars which it produces, is adduced. But, on the other hand, it is absolutely necessary to take into account the innumerable multitudes who derive little or no benefit from their schooling. Nothing is more common than to meet men who, although they have spent from one to ten years at school, when asked if they can read, reply with literal truth that their knowledge of characters has been "laid aside"--in other words they have forgotten almost everything that they once knew, and are now become "staring blind men," an expression which is a synonym for one who cannot read.

It is a most significant fact that the Chinese themselves recognize the truth that their school system tends to benumb the mental faculties, turning the teachers into machines, and the pupils into parrots. On the supposition that all the scholars were to continue their studies, and were eventually to be examined for a degree, it might be difficult to suggest any system which would take the place of the one now in use, in which a most capacious memory is a principal condition of success.

In the Village School, however, it is within bounds to estimate that not one in twenty of the scholars--and more probably, not three in a hundred--have any reasonable prospect of carrying their studies to anything like this point. The practical result, therefore, is to compel at least ninety-seven scholars to pursue a certain routine, simply because it is the only known method by which three other scholars can compete for a degree. In other words, nineteen pupils are compelled to wear a heavy cast-iron yoke, in order to keep company with a twentieth, who is trying to get used to it as a step towards obtaining a future name! If this inconvenient inequality is pointed out to teachers or to patrons, and if they are asked whether it would not be better to adopt, for the nineteen who will never go to the examinations, a system which involves less memorizing, and a wider range of learning in the brief time which is all that most of the pupils can spend at school, they reply, with perfect truth, that so far as they are aware there is no other system; that even if the patrons desired to make the experiment (which would never be the case), they could find no teacher to conduct it; and that even if a teacher should wish to institute such a reform (which would never happen), he would find no one to employ him.

The extreme difficulty which men of some education often find in keeping from starvation, gives rise to a class of persons known as Strolling Scholars, (_yu hsiao_), who travel about the country vending paper, pictures, lithographs of tablets, pens and ink. These individuals are not to be confounded with travelling pedlars, who, though they deal in the same articles, make no pretension to learning, and generally convey their goods on a wheelbarrow, whereas the Strolling Scholar cannot manage anything larger than a pack.

When a Strolling Scholar reaches a schoolhouse, he enters, lowers his bundle, and makes a profound bow to the teacher, who (though much displeased at his appearance) must return the courtesy. If there are large pupils, the stranger bows to them and addresses them as his Younger Brothers. The teacher then makes some inquiries as to his name, etc. If he turns out to be a mere pretender, without real scholarship, the teacher drops the conversation, and very likely leaves the schoolroom. This is a tacit signal to the larger scholars to get rid of the visitor. They place a few cash on the table, perhaps not more than five, or even three, which the Strolling Scholar picks up, and with a bow departs. If he sells anything, his profits are of the most moderate description--perhaps three cash on each pen, and two cash on each cake of ink. With a view to this class of demands, a small fund is sometimes kept on hand by the larger scholars, who compel the younger ones to contribute to it.

If, however, the Strolling Scholar is a scholar in fact, as well as in name, so that his attainments become apparent, the teacher is obliged to treat him with much greater civility. Some of these roving pundits make a specialty of historical anecdotes, and miscellaneous knowledge, and in a general conversation with the teacher, the latter, who has not improbably confined himself to the beaten routine of classical study, is at a disadvantage. In this case, other scholars of the village are perhaps invited in to talk with the stranger, who may be requested to write a pair of scrolls, and asked to take a meal with the teacher, a small present in money being made to him on his departure.

It is related that a Strolling Scholar of this sort, being present when a teacher was explaining the Classics, deliberately took off his shoes and stockings in presence of the whole school. Being reproved by the teacher for this breach of propriety, he replied that his dirty stockings had as good an "odour" as the teacher's classical explanations. To this the teacher naturally replied by a challenge to the stranger to explain the Classics himself, that they might learn from him. The Strolling Scholar, who was a person of considerable ability, had been waiting for just such an opportunity, and taking up the explanation, went on with it in such an elegant style, "every sentence being like an examination essay," that the teacher was amazed and ashamed, and entertained him handsomely. If a teacher were to treat with disrespect one whose scholarship was obviously superior to his own, he would expose himself to disrespect in turn, and might be disgraced before his own pupils, an occurrence which he is very anxious to avoid.

In China the relation between teacher and pupil is far more intimate than in Western lands. One is supposed to be under a great weight of obligation to the master who has enlightened his darkness, and if this master should be at any time in need of assistance, it is thought to be no more than the duty of the pupil to afford it. This view of the case is obviously one which it is for the interest of teachers to perpetuate, and the result of the theory and of the attendant practice is that there are many decayed teachers roving about, living on the precarious generosity of their former pupils.

X

CHINESE HIGHER EDUCATION--THE VILLAGE HIGH SCHOOL--EXAMINATIONS--RECENT EDUCATIONAL EDICTS

When it is definitely decided that a pupil is to study for the examinations, he enters a high school, which differs in many respects from the ones which he has hitherto attended. The teacher must be a man of more than average attainments, or he can neither gain nor hold such a place. His salary is much greater than that given by the ordinary school. The pupils are much harder worked, being compelled to spend almost all their waking hours in the study of model examination essays. These are to be committed to memory by the score and even by the hundred, as a result of which process the mind of the student gradually becomes so saturated with the materials of which they are composed, that he will always be able to take advantage of the accumulations of his patient memorizing in weaving his own compositions in the examination hall.

During the preceding years of study he has already committed to memory the most important parts of the literature of his native land. He is now intimately familiar with the orthodox explanations of the same. He has been gradually but thoroughly inducted into the mystery of tones and rhymes, the art of constructing poetry, and the weaving of antithetical couplets, beginning with the announcement that the heaven is high, balanced by the proposition that the earth is thick, and proceeding to the intricate and well-nigh inscrutable laws by which relation and correlation, thesis and antithesis are governed. He has now to learn by carefully graded stages the art of employing all his preceding learning in the production of the essay, which will hereafter constitute the warp and the woof of his intellectual fabric. In future he will eat, drink, write, talk, and sleep essays, essays, essays.

Measured by Chinese standards, the construction of a perfect essay is one of the noblest achievements of which the human mind is capable. The man who knows all that has been preserved of the wisdom of the ancients, and who can at a moment's notice dash off essays of a symmetrical construction, lofty in sentiment, elevated in style, and displaying a wide acquaintance not only with the theme, but also with cognate subjects, such a man is fit not only to stand before kings, but before the very Son of Heaven himself.

A high official called a provincial Literary Chancellor, (_Hsiao YA1/4an_), is despatched from Peking to the provinces, to hold periodical examinations once in three or twice in five years. Upon the occasion of an emperor's ascending the throne, his marriage, the birth of an heir, etc., there are extra examinations bestowed as a favour (_AȘn k'o_). When the village scholar is able to produce an essay, and to write a poem that will pass the scrutiny of this formidable Literary Chancellor, he may hope to become a hsiu-ts'ai or graduate. In order to fit him for this ordeal, which is regarded by outsiders with awe, and is anticipated by the young candidate himself with mingled hope and terror, it is necessary that he should run the gauntlet of a long series of preliminary test examinations.

Some months before the visit of the Chancellor is to take place, of which notice is communicated to the Governor of the Province, and from him to the District Magistrates, preparations are made by the latter officer for the first examination, which is held before him, and in the District city. It is part of the duty of some of the numerous staff of this official to disseminate the notice of such an impending examination. In any Western country, this would be accomplished by the insertion of a brief advertisement in the official newspaper of the District, or County. In China, where there are no newspapers, the message must be orally delivered. The high schools in which pupils are trained with special reference to such examinations, are visited, and the day of the examination notified. Literary graduates within the district, who must be examined with reference to passing a higher grade, are also informed of the date. A small sum, the equivalent of fifteen or twenty cents, is expected by the yamAȘn messengers as a solace for the "bitterness" which they have suffered in distributing the notices. Notwithstanding this clumsy method of circulating the notifications, it is rare that any one concerned fails to receive the message.

Those who intend to be examined, make their way to the city, a day or two in advance of the time fixed, that they may rent quarters for the half month which they will be obliged to spend there. If the student chance to have friends in the city, he may avoid the expense of renting a place, and if his home should be near the city, he may be able to return thither at intervals, and thus lessen the expenditure; for all these trifles are important to the poor scholar, who has abundant need of money. As many scholars combine to rent one room or one house, the cost to each is not great, perhaps the equivalent of one or two dollars. Each candidate must furnish himself with provisions for half a month. In some district cities there are special examination buildings, capable by crowding, of seating 600 or 800 persons. In other cities, where these buildings have either never been built, or have been allowed to go to ruin, the examination is conducted in the Confucian temple, or at the yamAȘn of the District Magistrate.

On the first day of the examination, two themes are given out at daylight, by which time every candidate must be in the place assigned him, and from there he must not stir. The themes are each taken from the Four Books, and the essay is not expected to exceed 600 characters. By nine or ten o'clock the stamp of the examiner is affixed to the last character written in the essay, preventing further additions if it should not be finished, and the essays are gathered up. About eleven o'clock, the third theme is given out. This is an exercise in poetry, the subject of which may be taken from the Book of Odes, or from some standard poet. The poem is to be composed of not more than sixty characters, five in each line. A rapid writer and composer, may be able to hand in his paper by three or four in the afternoon, and many others will require much longer. The limit of time may be fixed at midnight, or possibly at daylight the next morning. The physical condition of a scholar who has been pinned to his seat for four and twenty hours, struggling to produce an essay and poem which shall be regarded by the severest critic as ideal, can be but faintly imagined by the Occidental reader.

The next two days being devoted to the inspection of the wilderness of essays and poems, the product of this first trial, the unhappy competitors have leisure for much needed rest and sleep. On the morning of the fourth day, the "boards are hung," that is, the list of those whose essays have passed, is exposed. If the whole number of candidates should be 500--an extremely moderate estimate for a reasonably populous district--the proportion of those whose hopes are at once wrecked may be half. Only those whose names are posted after the first trial can enter the succeeding one. If the subordinates of the magistrate perceive that a great many names are thrown out, they may come kneeling before the magistrate, knocking their heads, and begging that he will kindly allow a few more names to pass. If he happens to be in good humour at the moment, he may grant their request, which is not in the smallest degree prompted by any interest in the affairs of the disappointed candidates, but on the important principle, that the fewer the sheep, the smaller will be the crop of wool.

The only fee required for the examination is that paid for registration, which amounts to about twenty cents. Not the name of the candidate only, but those of his father and grandfather are to be recorded, to make it sure that no one legally disqualified is admitted. The paper upon which the examination essays and poems are written is of a special kind, sold only at the yamAȘn, and at a cost for each examination equivalent to about ten cents, or fifty cents for the whole five examinations, but the candidate must pay three-fifths of this amount for the first supply, whether he is admitted to a further examination or not. If he is, he becomes entitled to a rebate of this amount on his subsequent purchases.

On the fifth or sixth day, those who have been selected from the whole number examined, again file into the examination hall, and are seated according to their newly-acquired rank for the second test. Three themes are again propounded, the first from the Four Books, the second from one of the Five Classics, the third a poetical one, in a manner similar to the first examination. A day or two is allowed for the inspection of these essays, when the boards are again hung, and the result is to drop out perhaps one-half of the competitors.

At the third examination the themes, which are given out somewhat later than in the previous trials, are two in number, one from the Four Books, the other poetical. About noon of this day, the magistrate has a meal of vermicelli, rice, etc., sent to the candidates. By four in the afternoon the hall is empty. After the interval of another day the boards are again hung, indicating that all but perhaps fifty are excluded from further competition.

The fourth examination begins at a later hour than the third, and while the number of the themes may be larger than before--all of them from the Four Books--time is not allowed for the completion of any of them. In addition to the classical themes, a philosophical one may be given. Besides this, there are poetical themes, to be treated in a way different from those in the preceding examinations, and much more difficult, as the lines of poetry are subject also to the rules governing the composition of antithetical couplets.

The metre, whether five characters to a line, or seven, (the only varieties to choose from), is left to the option of the candidate, who, if he be a fine scholar and a rapid penman, may treat the same theme in both ways. A meal is served as at the preceding trial, and by five or six o'clock, the hall is empty. After the interval of another day, the fourth board is hung, and the number who have survived this examination is found to be a small one--perhaps twenty or thirty.

A day later the final examination occurs. The theme is from the Four Books, and may be treated fully or partially according to the examiner's orders at the moment. A poem is required in the five-character metre, and also a transcript of some section of the "Sacred Edicts" of the Emperor Yung ChAȘng. The design of the latter is to furnish a specimen of the candidate's handwriting, in case it should be afterward needed for comparison. A meal is furnished as before, and by the middle of the afternoon the hall is cleared. The next day the board is again hung, announcing the names who have finally passed. The number is a fixed one, and it is relatively lowest where the population is most dense. In two contiguous districts, for example, which furnish on an average 500 or 600 candidates, the number of those who can pass is limited, in the one case to twenty and in the other to seventeen. In another district where there are often 2,000 candidates, _only_ thirty can pass. It thus appears that the chances of success for the average candidate, are extremely tenuous.

Every candidate for a degree, is required to have a "surety." These are selected from graduates of former years, who have advanced one step beyond that of hsiu-ts'ai, to that of ling-shAȘng hsiu-ts'ai. The total number of sureties is not necessarily large, perhaps four from each district, and many of them may be totally unacquainted with the persons for whom they become thus responsible. The nature of this responsibility is twofold, first to guarantee that the persons who enter under a particular name, really bear that name, and second that during the examination they will not violate any of the established rules. If a false name is shown to have been entered, or if a violation of the rules occurs, the ling-shAȘng would be held responsible, and would be likely to lose his own rank as a graduate. Each candidate is required to furnish not only a surety, but also an alternate surety, and in consideration of a present of from ten cents to five or six dollars, the ling-shAȘngs are quite willing to guarantee as many candidates as apply. They must be paid in advance, or they will prevent the candidate from entering the examination hall.

The preliminary examinations in the District city, having been thus completed, are followed about a month later by similar ones in the Prefectural city, before the Prefect, (chih-fu). Here are gathered candidates from all the districts within the jurisdiction of the Fu city, districts ranging in number according to density of population, from two or three, to twelve or more. Those who have failed to pass the District examinations are not on that account disqualified from appearing at the Prefectural examinations, which, like the former, are intended to act as a process of sifting, in preparation for the final and decisive trial before the Literary Chancellor. The details of the Prefectural examinations are similar to those already described, and the time required is about the same. The number of candidates in a thickly-settled Prefecture, will often amount to more than 10,000. As no ordinary examination building will accommodate so many at once, they are examined in relays. The examinations are conducted by the Prefect, but it by no means follows that those who have been first in the District examinations will be so now. The order changes, indeed, from day to day, but those who are constantly toward the head of the list, are regarded as certain to pass the Chancellor's examination.

The writer is acquainted with a man who at his examination for the first degree, stood last in a list of seventeen, at the trial next before the final one. But in that test he was dropped one number, missing his degree by this narrow margin. His grief and rage were so excessive as to unbalance his mind, and for the greater part of his life he has been a heavy burden on his wife, doing absolutely nothing either for her support or for his own.

Those who have already attained the degree of hsiu-ts'ai, are examined by themselves for promotion. The expense of obtaining sureties is confined to the last two sets of examinations. The final trial before the Literary Chancellor is conducted with far greater care and caution than the preliminary ones before the local officials. The candidates having been duly guaranteed and entered, are assigned to seats, distinguished by the characters in the Millenary Classic, which as already mentioned, affords a convenient system of notation, being familiar, and having no repeated characters. The students are closely packed together, fifteen or twenty at each table. The first table is termed "Heaven" after the first character in the Millenary Classic, and its occupants are denoted as "heaven one," "heaven two," etc. Each candidate notes his designation; for in the final lists of those who have passed, no names are used, but only the description of the seat as above described. Every student is carefully searched as he enters the hall, to ascertain whether he has about him any books or papers which might aid him in his task. The examination begins at an extremely early hour, the theme being given out by sunrise. This theme is written on a large wooden tablet, and is carried about to all parts of the room, that each candidate may see it distinctly. It is also read out, in a loud voice. By nine or ten o'clock another subject is announced from the Four Books and a poetical theme in five-metre rhythm. A rapid writer and composer might finish his work by one or two o'clock in the afternoon. As in other examinations, those who have completed their tasks are allowed to leave the hall at fixed times, and in detachments. By five or six P. M. the time is up, and the fatal stamp is affixed to the last character, whatever the stage of the composition. During the whole of this examination, no one is allowed on any pretext whatever to move from his position. If one should be taken deathly sick, he reports to the superintendent of his section, and requests permission to be taken out, but in this case he cannot return. A student who should merely rise in his seat and look around, would be beaten a hundred blows on his hand, like a schoolboy (as indeed he is supposed to be), would be compelled to kneel during the whole of the examination, and at the close would be ejected in disgrace, losing the opportunity for examination until another year.

Some years ago the examination hall of the city of Chi-nan Fu, the capital of Shan-tung, was in a very bad condition. The Chancellor held the summer examinations at that city, because the situation is near to hills, and to water, and thus was supposed to be a little cooler than others. At one of these examinations, a violent rain came on, and the roof of the building leaked like a sieve. Many of the poor candidates were wet to the skin, their essays and poems being likewise in soak, yet there they were obliged to remain, riveted to their seats. The unhealthy season caused much sickness, and many of the candidates suffered severely, seven or eight dying of cholera while the examinations were in progress. That this is not an exceptional state of things, is evident from the fact that it has since been repeated. In the autumn examinations for 1888, at this same place, it was reported that over one hundred persons died in the quarters, either of cholera or of some epidemic closely resembling it. Of these, some were servants, some copyists, some students, and a few officials. On the same occasion one of the main examination buildings fell in, as a result of which several persons were said to have been killed. The utterly demoralizing effect of such occurrences is obvious.