Changing China Part 5

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If the English commercial world is incredulous to the danger of opium to the Chinaman, not so the Chinese world. People will tell you that Orientals love to agree with you in whatever you say, but I heard a British Vice-consul flatly contradicted by a Chinese official when the Vice-consul expressed a doubt as to the danger of the vice, and I must say the Chinese disputant supported his contradiction with an argument which seemed to me perfectly unanswerable. He said: "Look at the j.a.panese; they are impartial spectators of the vice of alcoholism and opium-smoking; they are conversant with the worst forms of alcoholism that white men can show them. It is well known that white sailors are great offenders in this respect. Every port in j.a.pan knows what it is to see a drunken sailor finding his way to his ship. They are equally conversant with the vice of opium-smoking. They have intimate contact with the Chinese; they know both the recent origin of this vice and its terrible ravages; and what do they do? Do they forbid both vices equally? No; they are so convinced that opium is so much more dangerous than alcohol, that they will not allow it to be introduced into their country for smoking purposes, and the smuggler is liable to five years' penal servitude. But the vice of alcoholism they treat as something which, though harmful, can never threaten their national existence."

Perhaps we who have suffered much more from the vice of alcoholism than of opium-smoking may be {116} inclined to think that while the j.a.panese are right in the opium question, they are acting imprudently in allowing alcoholism to gain such a hold on their people; but whether they are right or wrong, there can be no doubt that the Chinese official had justice on his side when he pointed out that to the j.a.panese mind the evils that opium-smoking had done to China were of a most serious character.

His Excellency Tang-K'ai-Sun spoke the Chinese mind when, in an eloquent speech at the Shanghai Conference, he told of the awful desolation that opium was bringing to his land. But it is unnecessary to quote the opinion of individual Chinamen; they are practically unanimous on this subject. One has only got to point to what China has done to show two things. First, that the curse of opium-smoking was far greater and more horrible than anything that we have experienced on this side of the globe; next, that there is latent in the Chinese character a vigour and an energy which, when it is called into action, despises all obstacles and acts so efficiently as to leave the world lost in astonishment. Realise what China has done. China is addicted to a vice which has a far greater hold upon her than alcoholism has upon us; she determines that within ten years that vice is to cease.

The production of the poppy is to be diminished till none is produced; opium-smokers are to be held up to public scorn; opium dens--which are really the equivalent of our public-houses--are to be closed; all officials who take {117} opium are to be turned out of Government employ; the only exception that is made is for old men, and that exception was quite unavoidable. So vigorous was the action of the Government that men who have for forty or fifty years of their lives taken opium, tried to give it up; the result was in several cases that they were unable to support the physical strain; a great illness, even death, ensued; and so the edict was relaxed; men over sixty were allowed to continue smoking. When all this was published, every one smiled. They argued that China was trying to do the impossible. A vice like opium-smoking may be extirpated, but only after years of struggle. A generation must come and a generation must go before opium or any similar vice shows appreciable diminution.

We ourselves have not been unsuccessful in struggling against the vice of alcoholism; but consider the number of years since Father Mathew first spoke against drink. England may be growing sober, but it is by slow if steady degrees. But China hopes to accomplish in ten years what has taken England so many patient years of toil to effect partially. The idea that China could do this was regarded by most Westerns as almost laughable. In 1907, when the edict was first put forth, all those we met in China held this view; even missionaries, while they gave every credit to the Government for what it intended, shook their heads and foretold disappointment. We noticed as we pa.s.sed along that {118} wonderful line that links Hankow to Peking and Peking to Harbin in 1907 that the country was beautiful with the white and pink crops of poppy, till at times one might imagine that the transformation scene of a London theatre was before us rather than the land of China, and remembering what we had been told, we also confidently expected failure to the edict which requires the destruction of so many miles of this pernicious if beautiful crop.

In 1909, when we again traversed the same country, we could not see a single poppy flower; not only so, but we made every effort to see if we could find a field. We went for a twenty mile walk at Ichang through the country, where no one could have expected a foreigner to come, and we only found one tiny patch of poppy, and one in which the ruthless hand of the law had rooted up the growing crop. As we went up the Gorges of the Yangtsze we scanned with a strong gla.s.s the hillside, and never once on those glorious mountains did we see any sign of opium cultivation. We asked about the officials; not only was the Government enforcing the law that officials must give up opium-smoking, but they were taking a more effectual action; they were requiring all those who were going to be officials to spend some time under supervision, to ensure that they should not be opium-smokers. Could any Western power hope to accomplish such a feat? Would the most extreme temperance reformer suggest that all public-houses should be closed, that the amount of barley {119} should be diminished every year till within ten years none should be grown, and that all the Government officials, from the Prime Minister downwards, should become total abstainers within that period? The reason of this vigorous action of China and its present success is to be attributed to two things: first, to the terrible and very real national fear that this vice will destroy the nation, as it has destroyed countless families and individuals; secondly, to the vast store of energy which enables China to accept new ideas and act vigorously on them.

The great revolution of thought that is going on has called forth this vigour. The China of yesterday was _faineant_ and unprogressive. The China that is emerging out of this revolution of thought is energetic, though possibly unpractical. The old traditions of Government are not lost, and they wait but for the man and the hour to enable China to act as vigorously as she has done in time past. Her action in this opium question may be ill-considered in some details; it may even fail; but it has shown the world that China is in earnest, and that she can act with a vigour which will cause wonder and envy on this side of the world. Every missionary reports that even high officials are coming asking to be cured of the opium habit. The missionaries have founded refuges where they receive and cure those who are ready to submit to the terrible ordeal, for their suffering is intense. Many quack cures are advertised. Some are definitely pernicious; for instance, the {120} morphia syringe has become a common article for sale in some parts of China. Some few may be beneficial. There is no doubt that the movement against opium is a great national movement, and is not the result of the action of any small or fanatical party. What China has done proves that this is so.

Let me close the chapter by a quotation from the ablest of the foreign representatives at Peking, Sir John Jordan. Writing to Sir Edward Grey, he says: "It is true that the Chinese Government have in recent years effected some far-reaching changes, of which the abolition of the old examination system is perhaps the most striking instance; but to sweep away in a decade habits which have been the growth of at least a century, and which have gained a firm hold upon 8,000,000 of the adult population of the empire, is a task which has, I imagine, been rarely attempted with success in the course of history; and the attempt, it must be remembered, is to be made at a time when the Central Government has largely lost the power to impose its will upon the provinces. The authors of the movement are, however, confident of success, and China will deserve and doubtless receive much sympathy in any serious effort she may make to stamp out the evil."

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CHAPTER X

THE WOMEN'S QUESTION

The desire for radical change is never so much to be dreaded as when it attacks the home life of a nation. That quiet life so often hidden away because of its very sacredness by the Eastern races is like everything else in China disturbed by the introduction of Western civilisation, and in no other part of human life will its two different sides be more apparent. Western civilisation without Christianity will destroy the home life as it destroys most Eastern things it touches, and will do little to construct a new life to take the place of the one it destroys. The j.a.panese complain that Western civilisation has destroyed both the modesty and the religion of their women, and Christianity has not yet been able to any great extent to reconstruct on the basis of true religion new ideals of feminine life. Therefore the Chinese, with all their enthusiasm for Western culture, are looking a little nervously at what they see has happened in j.a.pan. They say that their home life is not now unbeautiful; even those who are disposed to admit that the life of the Western woman is founded on higher ideals than their own will not allow that their national home life deserves unmixed {122} condemnation. Everybody agrees that the wanton destruction of the laws which govern women's life in China may have a terrible result when Western civilisation is unwisely introduced, especially if it is made to appear to be a civilisation without religion. The missionaries see in this crisis the necessity for vigorous action; while thankful for the movement, they realise the responsibility it puts upon Christians to see that that movement is wisely directed. In the memorial from the Centenary Conference at Shanghai in 1907 to the Home Churches, they say:--

"The changed att.i.tude of China towards female education and the place of woman, lays upon us great responsibilities. The uplifting of woman is a first need in the moral regeneration of a people, and one of the things in which Christianity has a totally different ideal from that which the religions of China have encouraged. The present change of national sentiment on the subject is one of the indirect but none the less striking changes that the slow but steady dissemination of Christian ideas in China during the past century has led to. Let it be remembered, however, that it requires the Christian motive power to make it successful and fruitful."

It is somewhat difficult to obtain information from the Chinese themselves as to the position of women. They are very averse to discussing the subject; in fact, it is not even regarded as good manners for a man to ask after the health of his most intimate friend's wife; and all the information that we could {123} get had for the most part to be obtained by Lady Florence Cecil through feminine sources.

We may generally state, however, that the position of women in China is neither so low as that which they occupy in India or among the Mohammedans, neither is it in any degree so high as the position of women in Western lands. The woman is completely subject to the man; till she marries she is subject to her father, when she is married she is subject to her husband, and if her husband dies she is then subject to her son, and rarely re-marries. These are called the three obediences. She is not educated as a rule, because both public opinion and Chinese philosophy regard her as mentally far inferior to the man.

We shall explain later on how in Chinese thought everything is divided into a good and an evil principle--a Yang and a Yin. The woman is distinctly Yin. She is therefore necessary to man, but at the same time inferior.

Again, with regard to the question of polygamy, her position is an intermediate one between the avowed polygamy of Moslem countries and the ill-maintained monogamy of many a Latin country. In Hong-Kong the position was explained by a Chinaman to me thus: that when a woman grew old it was regarded as her duty to provide a secondary wife for her husband's pleasure and as a companion for herself--a companion with a sense of servitude in it. If this was done in an orderly manner, it was absolutely approved by Chinese public opinion. If, {124} on the other hand, the husband, ignoring the wife's rights, should choose a secondary wife for himself and set her up in another house, his att.i.tude would be regarded as distinctly doubtful by the respectable Chinese. In the same way if an official were appointed to a distant post he would probably not think of imposing upon his wife with her deformed feet the pain and discomfort of a long journey; he would most likely take a natural-footed woman, who will be for that reason a slave; in fact, one gentleman went so far as to say that he thought that the squeezed feet had a great deal to do with this inst.i.tution of a secondary wife, because he noted that the secondary wives of all the officials when they were travelling were natural-footed women.

The secondary wife would be rarely a woman of good cla.s.s; it is allowed to be an inferior position. On the other hand, if she bears her husband a son, and that son is recognised, all that son's relations, and therefore all his mother's relations, become relations of the father.

The curious tangle which such a position begets when brought into contact with the Christian idea is exemplified in this story. A rich Chinaman had three wives. By his lawful wife he had nine children; by the other two he had none; but his second wife was a woman of very strong character, and she was brought in touch with the missionaries by the Chinese wife of a European. She apparently ruled the house with a kindly rule to which all the others {125} bowed. She did everything in an energetic and vigorous way, and she studied Christianity till she was convinced of its truth, and then she demanded baptism. There was a great difficulty; she must leave her husband before she could be baptized. After considerable delay she accepted the condition, but resistance came, not alone from the man, but from the other two wives.

They could not possibly get on without her; they were like sisters; and she must be allowed to return to the house. She refused, though the pressure was extreme. The man said that he had promised his ancestors that none of his children should be Christians, and that his own mother would not forgive him; but the woman held firm, and at last she was baptized. Her face was beautiful to behold while she was accepting Christianity and renouncing all that made life sweet to her. The husband was so moved by her fort.i.tude that he signed a paper promising not to molest her, and yet to support her apart, so that she should not be in any need.

At the Shanghai Conference there were, curious to relate, many women who wished the Christian body to recognise existing polygamy among the Chinese. A sentence of the resolution proposed was that "secondary wives may be admitted to membership if obviously true Christians." Mr.

Arnold Foster resisted the inclusion of these words, and they were lost. No doubt the Conference was wise in taking this line. It is most essential to maintain the purity {126} of the home life, and the difficulty that arises from secondary wives desiring to join the Christian Church can never be a very important one, as the vast majority of Chinese are monogamous.

A serious evil this custom creates is that of female slavery. Both in j.a.pan and China one of the awful penalties of poverty is that a man is sometimes forced to sell his female children. These little girls are bought by prudent Chinamen, first to be servants to their own wives and then to act as secondary wives to their sons to prevent them going elsewhere. Sometimes they are kidnapped by men who make a regular business of this cruel traffic. Stories are told of boat-loads of these children being brought down the Yangtsze, concealed below the deck and terrorised to keep them quiet by one of their number being killed before their eyes. On one occasion a missionary suddenly saw a hand thrust through the planks of the deck, and on investigation he discovered a dozen children hidden below, and as it turned out they had been kidnapped, not bought, he was able to get them released. These slaves are the absolute property of their owners, and many are the tales told of the cruel and neglectful treatment to which they are subjected. In Shanghai the Chinese police will report such cases, and in consequence the ladies of the settlement have founded an admirable inst.i.tution to which they can be brought. The Slave Refuge deserves all support. There the little girls are taught and cared for, and helped to {127} forget the terrible experiences some of them have gone through. Sad to relate, many of them have to be taken first to the hospital to be cured from the effects of the ill-treatment they have received. One poor little thing went into convulsions when a fire was lit in the ward; it was difficult to understand the reason, but when it happened again and the poor child uttered incoherent appeals for mercy, it was discovered that she thought the fire was lit to heat opium needles with which to torture her. Her system was too shattered for recovery, but many others get quite well and form a pleasing sight at work and play in the bright cheerful Refuge, with the happy elasticity of youth forgetting the injuries which in some cases have left on them permanent scars. But I fear the system of slavery continues very commonly all over China, and such a philanthropic effort as the Shanghai Slave Refuge can touch but a very small proportion of them.

Probably when the little slaves are destined to be wives to their mistresses' sons they are treated less cruelly, and though employed as household drudges, do not live actively unhappy lives.

Without stating that women as a whole are miserable, I think it would be no exaggeration to say that they are infinitely less happy than their Western sisters. Many of the national customs militate against their happiness. The custom of child betrothal, for instance, condemns a woman to live completely subject to a man for whom she perhaps {128} has the greatest natural antipathy. Stories are told of brides committing suicide rather than leave their father's house to be married to men for whom they feel no affection; yet as a whole they accept their position, and a Chinese woman has neither the will nor the power to be untrue to her husband.

Again, the rule of the husband's mother is very often extremely harsh; the child-wife is little better than her drudge. On the other hand, when a woman grows older, her position is one of considerable strength.

I was a.s.sured that they take a keen interest in the management of their husbands' properties, and often show themselves excellent business women. The position which the late Empress of China acquired shows that women's position is the very reverse of inferior when dignified by age.

And now before all this woman's world glitters Western civilisation; the greater dignity which is accorded therein to women is envied and the laws which restrain her are misunderstood. The Chinese women hear stories of Western life. At first such strange perversions are believed as that in the West women rule. One missionary explained that this absurd figment came from the rule of the late Queen; another attributed it to the custom men have when travelling in China of walking while their wives remained in the carrying chair. To the Chinaman such a course admits of but one explanation: the {129} woman must be greater than the man because she is carried while he walks.

Again, in Western China they learnt through their local press that girls and boys received a similar education in England, and they concluded that the dress must be also similar, and the missionaries were more amused than scandalised at seeing a Government girls' school turned out in boys' clothes. It was explained to us that this was far from being an uncommon custom in China; slave-girls who have been brought up with natural feet are habitually dressed as boys, and it is common now for fathers of small daughters with unbound feet to avoid the unpleasant taunts of the ignorant by allowing their daughters while they are children to wear boys' clothes.

Still on the whole the desire for imitation of the West has been very beneficial to the women of China, especially in this matter of foot-binding. This disgusting custom is going out of fashion among the enlightened and educated cla.s.ses; two or three Chinese gentlemen a.s.sured us that this was so; and in a place like Shanghai, where the Western movement is very strong, the number of women with unbound feet is quite remarkable; the greater number of them naturally have had their feet bound, and as feet bound from infancy never become quite normal, they still have something of the tottering walk which used to be the admiration of every Chinaman; in fact, this tottering walk is preserved as a piece of {130} affectation. A lady told us that even her Christian girls' school was not above such a feminine weakness. As they walked to Church they would step out with the swinging stride that regular gymnastic exercises and a most comfortable dress have encouraged; suddenly the lady would see the whole of her school struck with a sort of paralysis which made them exchange their easy gait for the "tottering-lily" walk of the Chinese small-footed women. The cause is that the boys' school has just come into sight. I fear it must be admitted that foot-binding continues to be practised in the interior amongst the poorer women, who cling to the custom for fear of ridicule.

The most beneficial effect of the admiration of the West is the earnest desire that it has given to Chinese women for education. So keen is this desire that even married women will become children again and take their position in the cla.s.s. Husbands who have received Western education are most anxious that their wives should share somewhat in their interests.

Lady Florence could see over girls' schools where a man's visit would not have been acceptable, so she visited many of all varieties, including two at Peking of a rather unusual description. One of them was carried on by a Manchu lady of high position, connected with a great Manchu prince. Her att.i.tude generally towards the forward women's movement offends her family, as she lectures publicly on topics of the time. {131} Her school is small, and, alas, not very efficient, she having fallen into the usual fallacy amongst the Chinese of believing that a j.a.panese instructress must of necessity be efficient.

Still her desire to give education to the children of the poor is worthy of nothing but commendation. She looked most impressive, being a fine big handsome woman, attired in the Manchu long robe with the ornate Manchu head-dress. The second school my wife saw was managed by another Manchu lady, and it seemed more orderly and more successful than the other. These two schools testified to a desire to improve the status of women. My wife visited many other schools, some belonging to missions of various denominations, which attracted the daughters and even the wives of upper-cla.s.s men, who mixed quite happily with girls of lower degree, being all united in a fervent desire for education, the ruling desire now in China among women of all cla.s.ses.

This desire for education is a great opportunity for the missionaries, and they appeal most eloquently in the message from which we have already quoted for help from their sisters in England. "We need more schools for girls and more consecrated and highly trained women competent to conduct such schools and gradually to give higher and higher instruction in them. We need more training schools, also, for Chinese women, to fit them to work among their sisters, and we need educated Christian ladies from our homelands for Zenana work in the houses of the {132} well-to-do. Such work would have been impossible a few years ago; now the visits of such workers would in many cases be cordially welcomed by Chinese ladies, and frequently they would be returned, for the seclusion of women in China is not at all as strict as it is in India. This, so far, has been a comparatively unworked sphere of usefulness in China, but it is one full of promise and of gracious opportunity in the present."

The difficulty of education is in one way increased and in another way decreased by the ignorance which many women have of reading the Chinese characters. A new system has been invented by which Chinese can be written in our letters as p.r.o.nounced. This is called by the rather uncouth name of "Romanised." At the Shanghai Conference we were told wonderful stories of the incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time in which women learnt to read by this system. A woman of sixty-seven learnt in two months; while one lady a.s.serted that she had taught a boy to read between Friday and Wednesday, I may add inclusive. This extraordinary achievement is not quite so impossible as it would be with our more complicated languages. The Chinese have extremely few sounds, and their language is monosyllabic in formation. However, we do not ask our readers to accept this as the normal rate of education; still the thing is worth mentioning, because it is possibly the beginning of a great movement which may alter the whole of education in the Far East.

The extreme ease with {133} which Chinese can be written in our letters may induce some daring spirit to advocate it as a system fitted for the education of the poor, though this is at present quite improbable.

A far darker side to the introduction of Western ways is the gradual naturalisation of the social evils of the West. Lady Florence had the privilege of seeing some of the rescue work undertaken by devoted missionary ladies in Shanghai. Being an open port, this town, in common, I believe, with the other semi-Westernised ports in China, bears a very bad character as regards purity of morals. The advent of the foreigner has done nothing but harm in this respect. Wonderful and horrible though it may seem, the vice-mart exists in the ports mainly in connection with the foreigners, who appear to have shown the way to the Chinese. There is a street in Shanghai, the Foochow Road, where terrible scandals occur almost openly; signs whose intention is veiled to the outsider by his ignorance of Chinese characters, boldly advertise the merits of various houses and their inmates. Formerly these wretched girls were even paraded in open chairs, but this has been stopped, though they are still carried about in closed chairs.

The scenes in this street as night falls are a sad witness to the ill effect of Western ideas without Christianity. It must never be forgotten that the victims of this condition of things are literally victims. They have no choice in the matter. They are sold by their parents, even by their husbands, {134} into their terrible position; and though some may live a life of luxury, most of them are cruelly treated, beaten, tortured to prevent flight, and, as is proved by their subsequent conduct, they regard the life with absolute loathing.

Inspired by profound pity for these poor creatures, these excellent ladies started a Refuge for them with a receiving-house in the very midst of this locality of ill-fame. To this haven the poor things often flee even in the middle of the night, facing the unknown, undeterred by rumours of the evil intentions of the foreigners put about by their owners, rather than endure longer the life of degradation and misery to which they have been condemned. The missionaries receive them and pa.s.s them on to the "Door of Hope," the appropriately named Refuge, which restores them to hope and peace and happiness. There were to be seen some eighty young women living a hard-working simple life, contented and merry, and apparently never regretting for one moment the fine clothes and lazy luxury which many of them had renounced. The ladies teach them useful arts, instruct them in Christianity, and fit them for wives to Chinese Christians who will be good to them, and, understanding well that their former life was involuntary, are glad to have wives with a modic.u.m of education.

The ladies will allow non-Christians to mate with non-Christians, if of good character; but they will not permit any of their rescued flock to become secondary wives. {135} Two things are remarkable in this work of almost divine compa.s.sion--a relapse is practically unknown; and it is the Chinese who are most helpful in encouraging it--more so than foreigners; the Chinese often themselves suggest the "Door of Hope" to these girls, and help in police cases to save them from their brutal owners.

The risk that China runs at this moment in the home-life is the same as the risk that she is running in every other department of her national existence. If the materialist side of Western civilisation is the one that is the most apparent, it is scarcely possible that it will fail to do great damage to her home-life. A thoughtful Chinaman, talking about the whole question, argued in favour of a complete acceptance of Western ideas. He was afraid of a half measure. He said that there was no question that women in the West are restrained by a ma.s.s of conventions of whose value they are perhaps unconscious, but which are very apparent to those who have been brought up in a different civilisation. It is the existence of these conventions that makes their liberty possible. If the Chinese are to accept Western civilisation for their women, and he regarded this as inevitable, they must learn the conventions; and therefore his solution to the problem was that Chinese girls should be brought to England and brought up as English girls.

But many missionaries plead for the opposite policy. They say: "Let us preserve what is good in the Chinese home-life, let Christianity permeate {136} that life and make it beautiful, but do not destroy it.

The Chinese home-life fits the Chinese race. The Westernised Chinawoman will combine the errors of both civilisations and the virtues of neither."

Without giving an opinion on this very vexed question, we may express a hope that a policy of prudence and moderation will govern the action of those who are concerned with women's education, for the degree of alteration which may be necessary in women's life to make them fitted to receive Western civilisation will be a matter rather of experiment than of theory. At any rate let Christianity precede any large alterations, for Christianity alone can make the life of a Western woman intelligible and consistent to her Eastern sister.

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CHAPTER XI

CHINESE ARCHITECTURE

Among the many ways a nation has of expressing its thoughts and of showing its individuality, none is more valuable to mankind in general than its art.

Perhaps it can be said that every civilised nation has contributed to the common stock of art, and certainly China has done her share. The porcelain which is called after her name testifies to her pre-eminence in ceramic art, and should make Westerns cautious in expressing their contempt for a race which is generally acknowledged to be the originator of this industry. I will not attempt to express an opinion about the mysteries of this art, except to regret that the name of the country should be so attached to this product of her skill as constantly to cause confusion. When my friend Archdeacon Moule published his interesting book on "New China and Old," a lady wrote to him to say that she did not care for new china, but as she was a collector of old china, she would much like to read his book.

China has contributed to other forms of art as well. Her embroideries and her lacquer work are well known; her ivory carving and silver work have found a place in every collection. Her art, as we {138} might expect from a race which has been under artificial conditions of civilisation for many years, is distinctly artificial. In it you can see the spirit of a race who for many centuries have been taught to control themselves and to avoid the natural expression of their feelings. If it is artificial in form, it is pleasing in colour and superb in workmanship. There are few who will not agree that every effort should be made to preserve these arts from being injured by a false admiration of Western models. The only possible exception being modern embroideries, which might be considerably improved if more harmonious colours were blended together.

China excels in another art, though her excellence is not admitted either by the foreign resident or even by the native student. In certain forms of architecture she is unequalled. Yet when the Westerner comes to China he glories in bringing with him Western architecture, indifferent as to whether it is suited to the climatic conditions or is in itself beautiful. Take, for instance, the English churches of China. Could any form of architecture be less suited to a country like China, where the sun is frequently oppressively hot, than Gothic architecture? The large windows, the pointed arch, and the weak, open, high-pitched roof may be suitable in a country like ours which has little sunlight, and where a wet drifting snow will often force an entrance into the best-designed roof; but in a country like China, where the sun is the chief difficulty, some construction {139} should be preferred which renders a heavy and heat-proof roof possible.

If antipathy to the Chinese necessitated a Western type of building, Italian or even Romanesque architecture might be selected, and a building with a ma.s.sive roof supported on solid arches might resist the rays of the sun. But why not accept the Chinese architecture as eminently fitted for the climate?