Far Off Part 7

What is a mandarin? He is a ruler over a town, and is counted a great man. The most learned of the mandarins are made the emperor's counsellors. There are only three of them, and they are the greatest men in all China, next to the emperor.

There are many poor men who study hard in hopes to be one of these three.

This is the greatest honor a Chinaman can obtain. But a Christian can obtain a far greater, even the honor of a crown and a throne in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ at his coming.

The mandarins are all of the religion of Confucius, and despise the poor who worship Buddha.

ANIMALS AND TREES.--Once there were lions in China, but they have all been killed; there are still bears and tigers in the mountains and forests on the borders of the land.

There are small wild-cats, which are caught and fastened in cages, and then killed and cooked. There are tame cats, too, with soft hair and hanging ears, which are kept by ladies as pets.

There are dogs to guard the house, and they too are eaten; but as they are fed on rice only, their flesh is better than the flesh of our dogs.

The dogs are so sensible that they know when the butcher is carrying away a dog that he is going to kill him, and the poor creatures come round him howling, as if begging for their brother's life.

The pig is the Chinaman's chief dish; for it can be fed on all the refuse food, and there is very little food to spare in China.

There are not many birds in China, because there is no room for trees.

Only one bird sings, and she builds her nest on the ground; it is a bird often heard singing in England floating in the air,--I mean the lark.

In most parts of China men carry all the burdens, and not horses and a.s.ses.

A gentleman is carried in a chair by two men: and a mandarin by four. Yet the emperor rides on horseback.

THE THREE GREAT CITIES

Pekin on the north.

Nankin in the middle.

Canton on the south.

Pekin is the grandest.

Nankin is the most learned.

Canton is the richest.

At Pekin is the emperor's palace. The gardens are exceedingly large, and contain hills, and lakes, and groves within the walls, besides houses for the emperor's relations.

At Nankin is the China tower. It is made of China bricks, and contains nine rooms one over the other. It is two hundred feet high, a wonderful height.

Of what use is it? Of none--of worse than none. It is a temple for Buddha, and is full of his images.

At Canton there are so many people that there is not room for all in the land; so thousands live on the water in bouts. Many have never slept a single night on the sh.o.r.e. The children often fall overboard, but as a hollow gourd is tied round each child's neck, they float, and are soon picked up.

For a long while the Chinese would not allow foreigners to come into their cities. A great many foreign ships came to Canton to buy tea and silk; but the traders were forbidden to enter the town, and they lived in a little island near, and built a town there called Macao.

But lately the Chinese emperor has agreed to permit strangers to come to five ports, called Shang-hae, Ning-po, Foo-choo, Amoy, and Hong-Kong.

This last port, Hong-Kong, is an island near Canton, and the English have built a city there and called it Victoria.

THE TWO RIVERS.--There is one called Yeang-te-sang, or "the Son of the Ocean." It is the largest in Asia.

The other is the Yellow River, for the soft clay mixed with the water gives it a yellow color.

LAKES.--There are immense lakes, covered with boats and fishermen.

But the best fishers are the tame cormorants, who catch fish for their masters.

THE TWO GREAT WONDERS.--The great Ca.n.a.l is wonder. It joins the two rivers; so that a Chinese can go by water from Canton to Pekin.

The great WALL is a greater wonder, but not nearly as useful as the ca.n.a.l.

This wall was built at the north of China to keep the Tartars out. It is one thousand five hundred miles long, twenty feet high, and twenty-five broad. But there were not soldiers enough in China to keep the enemies out, and the Tartars came over the wall.

The Emperor of China is a Tartar.

The Empress does not have small feet, like the Chinese.

It is the Tartars who forced the Chinese to shave their heads, for they used to tie up their hair in a knot at the top of their heads. Many of the Chinese preferred losing their heads to their hair. Was it not cruel to cut off their heads, merely because they would not shave them? But the Tartars were very cruel to the Chinese.

KNOWLEDGE AND INVENTIONS.--We must allow that the Chinese are very clever. They found out how to print, and they found out how to make gunpowder, and they found out the use of the loadstone. What is that? A piece of steel rubbed against the loadstone will always point to the north. The Chinese found out these three things, printing, gunpowder, and the use of the loadstone, before we in Europe found them out. But they did not teach them to us; we found them out ourselves.

But there are two arts that the Chinese did teach us: how to make silk, and how to make china or porcelain. And yet I should not say they taught us; for they tried to prevent our learning their arts; but we saw their silk and their porcelain, and by degrees we learned to make them ourselves. A sly monk brought some silk-worm's eggs from China hidden in a hollow walking-stick.

LANGUAGE.--There is no other language at all like the Chinese. Instead of having letters to spell words, they have a picture for each word. I call it a picture, but it is more like a figure than a picture. The Chinese use brushes for writing instead of pens; and they rub cakes of ink on a little marble dish, first dipping them in a little water, as we dip cakes of paint. There is a hollow place in the marble dish, to hold the water.

What do you think the Chinese mean by "the four precious things?" They mean the ink, the brush, the marble dish, and the water. They call them precious because they are so fond of writing. Schoolmasters are held in great honor in China, as indeed they ought to be everywhere. Yet schools in China are much like those in Turkey, more fit for parrots than children; only Chinese boys sit in chairs with desks before them, instead of sitting cross-legged on the ground, as in Turkey. They learn first to paint the words, and next to repeat lessons by heart. This they do in a loud scream; always turning their backs to their masters while they are saying their lessons to him.

The first book which children read is full of stories, with a picture on each page. Would you like to hear one of these stories?

"There was a boy of eight years old, named Um-wen. His parents were so poor that they could not afford to buy a gauze curtain for their bed, to keep off the flies in summer. This boy could not bear that his parents should be bitten by the flies; so he stood by their bedside, and uncovered his little bosom and his back that the flies might bite him, instead of his parents. 'For,' said he, 'if they fill themselves with my blood, they will let my parents rest.'"

Would it be right for a little boy to behave in this way? Certainly not; for it would grieve kind parents that their little boys should be bitten.

Poor little Chinese boys! They do not know about Him who was bitten by the old serpent that we might not be devoured and destroyed.

PUNISHMENT.--The Chinese are very quiet and orderly; and no wonder, because they are afraid of the great bamboo stick.

The mandarins (or rulers of towns) often sentence offenders to lie upon the ground, and to have thirty strokes of the bamboo. But the wooden collar is worse than the bamboo stick. It is a great piece of wood with a hole for a man to put his head through. The men in wooden collars are brought out of their prisons every morning, and chained to a wall, where everybody pa.s.sing by can see them. They cannot feed themselves in their wooden collars, because they cannot bring their hands to their mouths; but sometimes a son may be seen feeding his father, as he stands chained to the wall. There are men also whose business it is to feed the prisoners. For great crimes men are strangled or beheaded.

CHARACTER.--A Chinaman's character cannot be known at first. You might suppose from his way of speaking that a Chinaman was very humble; because he calls himself "the worthless fellow," or "the stupid one," and he calls his son "the son of a dog;" but if you were to tell him he had an evil heart, he would be very much offended; for he only gives himself these names Thai he may _seem_ humble. He calls his acquaintance "venerable uncle," "honorable brother." This he does to please them. The Chinese are very proud of their country, and think there is none like it.

They have given it the name of the "Heavenly or Celestial Empire." They look upon foreigners as monkeys and devils. Often a woman may he heard in the streets saying to her little child, "There is a foreign devil (or a Fan Quei"). The Chinese think the English very ugly, and called them the "red-haired nation."

It must be owned that the Chinese are industrious: indeed, if they were not, they would be starved. A poor man often has to work all day up to the knees in water in the rice-field, and yet gets nothing for supper but a little rice and a few potatoes.

The ladies who can live without working are very idle, and in the winter rise very late in the morning.

Men, too, play, as children do here; flying kites is a favorite game.

Dancing, however, is quite unknown.

The Chinese are very selfish and unfeeling. Beggars may be seen in the middle of the town dying, and no one caring for them, but people gambling close by.

The Chinese have an idea that after a man is dead the house must be cleansed from ghosts; so to save themselves this trouble, poor people often cast their dying relations out of their hovels into the street to die!