The Civilization Of China

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THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA

by Herbert A. Giles


Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge,

And sometime H.B.M. Consul at Ningpo




PREFACE

The aim of this work is to suggest a rough outline of Chinese
civilization from the earliest times down to the present period of rapid
and startling transition.

It has been written, primarily, for readers who know little or nothing
of China, in the hope that it may succeed in alluring them to a wider
and more methodical survey.

H.A.G.

Cambridge, May 12, 1911.




THE CIVILIZATION OF CHINA



CHAPTER I--THE FEUDAL AGE

It is a very common thing now-a-days to meet people who are going to
"China," which can be reached by the Siberian railway in fourteen or
fifteen days. This brings us at once to the question--What is meant by
the term China?

Taken in its widest sense, the term includes Mongolia, Manchuria,
Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, and the Eighteen Provinces, the whole being
equivalent to an area of some five million square miles, that is,
considerably more than twice the size of the United States of America.
But for a study of manners and customs and modes of thought of the
Chinese people, we must confine ourselves to that portion of the whole
which is known to the Chinese as the "Eighteen Provinces," and to us as
China Proper. This portion of the empire occupies not quite two-fifths
of the whole, covering an area of somewhat more than a million and a
half square miles. Its chief landmarks may be roughly stated as Peking,
the capital, in the north; Canton, the great commercial centre, in the
south; Shanghai, on the east; and the Tibetan frontier on the west.

Any one who will take the trouble to look up these four points on a
map, representing as they do central points on the four sides of a rough
square, will soon realize the absurdity of asking a returning traveller
the very much asked question, How do you like China? Fancy asking a
Chinaman, who had spent a year or two in England, how he liked Europe!
Peking, for instance, stands on the same parallel of latitude as Madrid;
whereas Canton coincides similarly with Calcutta. Within the square
indicated by the four points enumerated above will be found variations
of climate, flowers, fruit, vegetables and animals--not to mention human
beings--distributed in very much the same way as in Europe. The climate
of Peking is exceedingly dry and bracing; no rain, and hardly any snow,
falling between October and April. The really hot weather lasts only for
six or eight weeks, about July and August--and even then the nights are
always cool; while for six or eight weeks between December and February
there may be a couple of feet of ice on the river. Canton, on the other
hand, has a tropical climate, with a long damp enervating summer and a
short bleak winter. The old story runs that snow has only been seen
once in Canton, and then it was thought by the people to be falling
cotton-wool.

The northern provinces are remarkable for vast level plains, dotted
with villages, the houses of which are built of mud. In the southern
provinces will be found long stretches of mountain scenery, vying in
loveliness with anything to be seen elsewhere. Monasteries are built
high up on the hills, often on almost inaccessible crags; and there
the well-to-do Chinaman is wont to escape from the fierce heat of the
southern summer. On one particular mountain near Canton, there are
said to be no fewer than one hundred of such monasteries, all of which
reserve apartments for guests, and are glad to be able to add to their
funds by so doing.

In the north of China, Mongolian ponies, splendid mules, and donkeys are
seen in large quantities; also the two-humped camel, which carries heavy
loads across the plains of Mongolia. In the south, until the advent of
the railway, travellers had to choose between the sedan-chair carried
on the shoulders of stalwart coolies, or the slower but more comfortable
house-boat. Before steamers began to ply on the coast, a candidate for
the doctor's degree at the great triennial examination would take three
months to travel from Canton to Peking. Urgent dispatches, however, were
often forwarded by relays of riders at the rate of two hundred miles a
day.

The market in Peking is supplied, among other things, with excellent
mutton from a fat-tailed breed of sheep, chiefly for the largely
Mohammedan population; but the sheep will not live in southern China,
where the goat takes its place. The pig is found everywhere, and
represents beef in our market, the latter being extremely unpalatable to
the ordinary Chinaman, partly perhaps because Confucius forbade men to
slaughter the animal which draws the plough and contributes so much to
the welfare of mankind. The staple food, the "bread" of the people in
the Chinese Empire, is nominally rice; but this is too costly for the
peasant of northern China to import, and he falls back on millet as its
substitute. Apples, pears, grapes, melons, and walnuts grow abundantly
in the north; the southern fruits are the banana, the orange, the
pineapple, the mango, the pomelo, the lichee, and similar fruits of a
more tropical character.

Cold storage has been practised by the Chinese for centuries. Blocks of
ice are cut from the river for that purpose; and on a hot summer's day a
Peking coolie can obtain an iced drink at an almost infinitesimal cost.
Grapes are preserved from autumn until the following May and June by
the simple process of sticking the stalk of the bunch into a large hard
pear, and putting it away carefully in the ice-house. Even at Ningpo,
close to our central point on the eastern coast of China, thin layers
of ice are collected from pools and ditches, and successfully stored for
use in the following summer.

The inhabitants of the coast provinces are distinguished from the
dwellers in the north and in the far interior by a marked alertness of
mind and general temperament. The Chinese themselves declare that virtue
is associated with mountains, wisdom with water, cynically implying that
no one is both virtuous and wise. Between the inhabitants of the
various provinces there is little love lost. Northerners fear and
hate southerners, and the latter hold the former in infinite scorn and
contempt. Thus, when in 1860 the Franco-British force made for Peking,
it was easy enough to secure the services of any number of Cantonese,
who remained as faithful as though the attack had been directed against
some third nationality.

The population of China has never been exactly ascertained. It has been
variously estimated by foreign travellers, Sacharoff, in 1842, placing
the figure at over four hundred millions. The latest census, taken in
1902, is said to yield a total of four hundred and ten millions. Perhaps
three hundred millions would be a juster estimate; even that would
absorb no less than one-fifth of the human race. From this total it is
easy to calculate that if the Chinese people were to walk past a given
point in single file, the procession would never end; long before the
last of the three hundred millions had passed by, a new generation would
have sprung up to continue the neverending line. The census, however, is
a very old institution with the Chinese; and we learn that in A.D. 156
the total population of the China of those days was returned as a little
over fifty millions. In more modern times, the process of taking the
census consists in serving out house-tickets to the head of every
household, who is responsible for a proper return of all the inmates;
but as there is no fixed day for which these tickets are returnable, the
results are approximate rather than exact.

Again, it is not uncommon to hear people talking of the Chinese language
as if it were a single tongue spoken all over China after a more or less
uniform standard. But the fact is that the colloquial is broken up into
at least eight dialects, each so strongly marked as to constitute eight
languages as different to the ear, one from another, as English, Dutch
and German, or French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. A Shanghai man,
for instance, is unintelligible to a Cantonese, and so on. All officials
are obliged, and all of the better educated merchants and others
endeavour, if only for business purposes, to learn something of the
dialect spoken at the court of Peking; and this is what is popularly
known as "Mandarin." The written language remains the same for the whole
empire; which merely means that ideas set down on paper after a uniform
system are spoken with different sounds, just as the Arabic numerals are
written uniformly in England, France and Germany, but are pronounced in
a totally different manner.

The only difficulty of the spoken language, of no matter what dialect,
lies in the "tones," which simply means the different intonations which
may be given to one and the same sound, thus producing so many entirely
different meanings. But for these tones, the colloquial of China would
be absurdly easy, inasmuch as there is no such thing as grammar, in the
sense of gender, number, case, mood, tense, or any of the variations we
understand by that term. Many amusing examples are current of blunders
committed by faulty speakers, such as that of the student who told his
servant to bring him a goose, when what he really wanted was some salt,
both goose and salt having the same sound, _yen_, but quite different
intonations. The following specimen has the advantage of being true.
A British official reported to the Foreign Office that the people of
Tientsin were in the habit of shouting after foreigners, "Mao-tsu,
mao-tsu" (pronounced _mowdza_, _ow_ as in _how_), from which he gathered
that they were much struck by the head-gear of the barbarian. Now, it is
a fact that _mao-tsu_, uttered with a certain intonation, means a hat;
but with another intonation, it means "hairy one," and the latter,
referring to the big beards of foreigners, was the meaning intended to
be conveyed. This epithet is still to be heard, and is often preceded by
the adjective "red."

The written characters, known to have been in use for the past three
thousand years, were originally rude pictures, as of men, birds, horses,
dogs, houses, the numerals (one, two, three, four), etc., etc., and
it is still possible to trace in the modified modern forms of these
characters more or less striking resemblances to the objects intended.
The next step was to put two or more characters together, to express by
their combination an abstract idea, as, for instance, a _hand_ holding
a _rod_ = father; but of course this simple process did not carry the
Chinese very far, and they soon managed to hit on a joint picture and
phonetic system, which enabled them to multiply characters indefinitely,
new compounds being formed for use as required. It is thus that new
characters can still be produced, if necessary, to express novel objects
or ideas. The usual plan, however, is to combine existing terms in
such a way as to suggest what is wanted. For instance, in preference
to inventing a separate character for the piece of ordnance known as
a "mortar," the Chinese, with an eye to its peculiar pose, gave it the
appropriate name of a "frog gun."

Again, just as the natives and the dialects of the various parts of
China differ one from another, although fundamentally the same people
and the same language, so do the manners and customs differ to such an
extent that habits of life and ceremonial regulations which prevail in
one part of the empire do not necessarily prevail in another. Yet once
more it will be found that the differences which appear irreconcilable
at first, do not affect what is essential, but apply rather to matters
of detail. Many travellers and others have described as customs of the
Chinese customs which, as presented, refer to a part of China only, and
not to the whole. For instance, the ornamental ceremonies connected with
marriage vary in different provinces; but there is a certain ceremony,
equivalent in one sense to signing the register, which is almost
essential to every marriage contract. Bride and bridegroom must kneel
down and call God to witness; they also pledge each other in wine from
two cups joined together by a red string. Red is the colour for joy,
as white is the colour for mourning. Chinese note-paper is always ruled
with red lines or stamped with a red picture. One Chinese official who
gave a dinner-party in foreign style, even went so far as to paste a
piece of red paper on to each dinner-napkin, in order to counteract the
unpropitious influence of white.

Reference has been made above to journeys performed by boat. In addition
to the Yangtsze and the Yellow River or Hoang ho (pronounced _Hwong
haw_), two of the most important rivers in the world, China is covered
with a network of minor streams, which in southern China form the chief
lines of transport. The Yangtsze is nothing more than a huge navigable
river, crossing China Proper from west to east. The Yellow River, which,
with the exception of a great loop to the north, runs on nearly parallel
lines of latitude, has long been known as "China's Sorrow," and has been
responsible for enormous loss of life and property. Its current is so
swift that ordinary navigation is impossible, and to cross it in boats
is an undertaking of considerable difficulty and danger. It is so called
from the yellowness of its water, caused by the vast quantity of mud
which is swept down by its rapid current to the sea; hence, the common
saying, "When the Yellow River runs clear," as an equivalent of the
Greek Kalends. The huge embankments, built to confine it to a given
course, are continually being forced by any unusual press of extra
water, with enormous damage to property and great loss of life, and from
time to time this river has been known to change its route altogether,
suddenly diverging, almost at a right angle. Up to the year 1851 the
mouth of the river was to the south of the Shantung promontory, about
lat. 34 N.; then, with hardly any warning, it began to flow to the
north-east, finding an outlet to the north of the Shantung promontory,
about lat. 38 N.

A certain number of connecting links have been formed between the chief
lines of water communication, in the shape of artificial cuttings; but
there is nothing worthy the name of canal except the rightly named Grand
Canal, called by the Chinese the "river of locks," or alternatively the
"transport river," because once used to convey rice from the south to
Peking. This gigantic work, designed and executed in the thirteenth
century by the Emperor Kublai Khan, extended to about six hundred
and fifty miles in length, and completed an almost unbroken water
communication between Peking and Canton. As a wonderful engineering feat
it is indeed more than matched by the famous Great Wall, which dates
back to a couple of hundred years before Christ, and which has been
glorified as the last trace of man's handiwork on the globe to fade from
the view of an imaginary person receding into space. Recent exploration
shows that this wall is about eighteen hundred miles in length,
stretching from a point on the seashore somewhat east of Peking, to the
northern frontier of Tibet. Roughly speaking, it is twenty-two feet in
height by twenty feet in breadth; at intervals of a hundred yards are
towers forty feet high, the whole being built originally of brick, of
which in some parts but mere traces now remain. Nor is this the only
great wall; ruins of other walls on a considerable scale have lately
been brought to light, the object of all being one and the same--to keep
back the marauding Tartars.

Over the length and breadth of their boundless empire, with all its
varying climates and inhabitants, the Chinese people are free to travel,
for business or pleasure, at their own sweet will, and to take up their
abode at any spot without let or hindrance. No passports are required;
neither is any ordinary citizen obliged to possess other papers of
identification. Chinese inns are not exposed to the annoyance of
domicilary visits with reference to their clients for the time being;
and so long as the latter pay their way, and refrain from molesting
others, they will usually be free from molestation themselves. The
Chinese, however, are not fond of travelling; they love their homes too
well, and they further dread the inconveniences and dangers attached
to travel in many other parts of the world. Boatmen, carters, and
innkeepers have all of them bad reputations for extortionate charges;
and the traveller may sometimes happen upon a "black inn," which is
another name for a den of thieves. Still there have been many who
travelled for the sake of beautiful scenery, or in order to visit famous
spots of historical interest; not to mention the large body of officials
who are constantly on the move, passing from post to post.

Among those who believe that every nation must have reached its present
quarters from some other distant parts of the world, must be reckoned a
few students of the ancient history of China. Coincidences in language
and in manners and customs, mostly of a shadowy character, have led some
to suggest Babylonia as the region from which the Chinese migrated to
the land where they are now found. The Chinese possess authentic records
of an indisputably early past, but throughout these records there is
absolutely no mention, not even a hint, of any migration of the kind.

Tradition places the Golden Age of China so far back as three thousand
years before Christ; for a sober survey of China's early civilization,
it is not necessary to push further back than the tenth century B.C. We
shall find evidence of such an advanced state of civilization at that
later date as to leave no doubt of a very remote antiquity.

The China of those days, known even then as the Middle Kingdom, was
a mere patch on the empire of to-day. It lay, almost lozenge-shaped,
between the 34th and 40th parallels of latitude north, with the upper
point of the lozenge resting on the modern Peking, and the lower on
Si-an Fu in Shensi, whither the late Empress Dowager fled for safety
during the Boxer rising in 1900. The ancient autocratic Imperial system
had recently been disestablished, and a feudal system had taken its
place. The country was divided up into a number of vassal states of
varying size and importance, ruled each by its own baron, who swore
allegiance to the sovereign of the Royal State. The relations, however,
which came to subsist, as time went on, between these states, sovereign
and vassal alike, as described in contemporary annals, often remind the
reader of the relations which prevailed between the various political
divisions of ancient Greece. The rivalries of Athens and Sparta, whose
capitals were only one hundred and fifty miles apart--though a
perusal of Thucydides makes one feel that at least half the world was
involved--find their exact equivalent in the jealousies and animosities
which stirred the feudal states of ancient China, and in the disastrous
campaigns and bloody battles which the states fought with one another.
We read of chariots and horsemanship; of feats of arms and deeds of
individual heroism; of forced marches, and of night attacks in which the
Chinese soldier was gagged with a kind of wooden bit, to prevent talking
in the ranks; of territory annexed and reconquered, and of the violent
deaths of rival rulers by poison or the dagger of the assassin.

When the armies of these states went into battle they formed a line,
with the bowmen on the left and the spearmen on the right flank. The
centre was occupied by chariots, each drawn by either three or four
horses harnessed abreast. Swords, daggers, shields, iron-headed clubs
some five to six feet in length and weighing from twelve to fifteen
pounds, huge iron hooks, drums, cymbals, gongs, horns, banners
and streamers innumerable, were also among the equipment of war.
Beacon-fires of wolves' dung were lighted to announce the approach of
an enemy and summon the inhabitants to arms. Quarter was rarely if
ever given, and it was customary to cut the ears from the bodies of
the slain. Parleys were conducted and terms of peace arranged under the
shelter of a banner of truce, upon which two words were inscribed--"Stop
fighting."

The beacon-fires above mentioned, very useful for summoning the feudal
barons to the rescue in case of need, cost one sovereign his throne. He
had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected
the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never
being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to
gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king
offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh;
whereupon his chief minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be
lighted to summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the
royal house were in danger. The trick succeeded; for in the hurry-skurry
that ensued the impassive girl positively laughed outright. Later on,
when a real attack was made upon the capital by barbarian hordes, and
the beacon-fires were again lighted, this time in stern reality, there
was no response from the insulted nobles. The king was killed, and his
concubine strangled herself.

Meanwhile, a high state of civilization was enjoyed by these feudal
peoples, when not engaged in cutting each other's throats. They lived
in thatched houses constructed of rammed earth and plaster, with beaten
floors on which dry grass was strewn as carpet. Originally accustomed
to sit on mats, they introduced chairs and tables at an early date; they
drank an ardent spirit with their carefully cooked food, and wore robes
of silk. Ballads were sung, and dances were performed, on ceremonial and
festive occasions; hunting and fishing and agriculture were occupations
for the men, while the women employed themselves in spinning and
weaving. There were casters of bronze vessels, and workers in gold,
silver, and iron; jade and other stones were cut and polished for
ornaments. The written language was already highly developed, being much
the same as we now find it. Indeed, the chief difference lies in the
form of the characters, just as an old English text differs in form from
a text of the present day. What we may call the syntax of the language
has remained very much the same; and phrases from the old ballads of
three thousand years ago, which have passed into the colloquial, are
still readily understood, though of course pronounced according to the
requirements of modern speech. We can no more say how Confucius (551-479
B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek
when addressing his soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.).
The "books" which were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips
of wood or bamboo, on which the characters were written by means of a
pencil of wood or bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up
a coloured liquid and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until
recently, it was thought that the Chinese scratched their words on
tablets of bamboo with a knife, but now we know that the knife was only
used for scratching out, when a character was wrongly written.

The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their pre-historic
times, but the earliest efforts of a methodical character, of which
we have any written record, belong to the period with which we are now
dealing. There is indeed a work, entitled "Plain Questions," which is
attributed to a legendary emperor of the Golden Age, who interrogates
one of his ministers on the cause and cure of all kinds of diseases;
as might be expected, it is not of any real value, nor can its date be
carried back beyond a few centuries B.C.

Physicians of the feudal age classified diseases under the four seasons
of the year: headaches and neuralgic affections under _spring_, skin
diseases of all kinds under _summer_, fevers and agues under _autumn_,
and bronchial and pulmonary complaints under _winter_. They treated the
various complaints that fell under these headings by suitable doses of
one or more ingredients taken from the five classes of drugs, derived
from herbs, trees, living creatures, minerals, and grains, each of which
class contained medicines of five flavours, with special properties:
_sour_ for nourishing the bones, _acid_ for nourishing the muscles,
_salt_ for nourishing the blood-vessels, _bitter_ for nourishing general
vitality, and _sweet_ for nourishing the flesh. The pulse has always
been very much to the front in the treatment of disease; there are at
least twenty-four varieties of pulse with which every doctor is supposed
to be familiar, and some eminent doctors have claimed to distinguish
no fewer than seventy-two. In the "Plain Questions" there is a sentence
which points towards the circulation of the blood,--"All the blood is
under the jurisdiction of the heart," a point beyond which the Chinese
never seem to have pushed their investigations; but of this curious
feature in their civilization, later on.