Letters from China and Japan Part 6

NANKING, Monday, May 26.

The trouble among the students is daily getting worse, and even the most sympathetic among the faculties are getting more and more anxious. The governor of this province, capital here, is thought most liberal, and he has promised to support these advanced measures in education. Last Friday the a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a bill cutting down the educational appropriation and raising their own salaries. Therefore the students here are now all stirred up and the faculties are afraid they cannot be kept in control until they are well enough organized to make a strike effective. At the same time our friends are kept busy running up to the a.s.sembly and the governor. The latter has promised to veto the bill when it is sent to him from the senate. But the students are getting anxious to go to the senate themselves. Our friends say it costs so much for these men to get elected that they have to get it all back after they get into office. A missionary says: "Let's go out and shoot them all, they are just as bad as Peking, and if they had the same chance they would sell out the whole country to j.a.pan or to anyone else." Certainly China needs education all along the line, but they never will get it as long as they try in little bits. So maybe they will have to be pushed to the very bottom before they will be ready to go the whole hog or none.

Yesterday a Chinese lady had a tea for me and asked the Taitai, as the wives of the officials are called, corresponding to the court ladies of previous times. As a function this was interesting, for every woman brought her servant and most of her children. Some appeared to have two servants, one big-footed maid for herself and one bound-footed as a nurse for the children. Her own servant hands her the cup of tea. All the children are fed at the same time as the grown-ups, and after their superiors the servants get something in the kitchen. I don't know yet what that something is, but probably an inferior tea. The tea we drank is that famous jasmine tea from Hangchow. It costs something like fifteen dollars a pound here. It is very good, with a peculiar spicy flavor, almost musky and smoky, from the jasmine combined with the tea flavor, which is strong. It is a delicious brown tea, but I do not like to drink it so well as I like the best green tea.

Well, I wish you could see the Taitai. The wife of the governor is about twenty-five, or may be a little more. She is a substantial young person, with full-grown feet, a pale blue dress of skirt and coat scalloped on the edges and bound with black satin, her nice hair parted to one side on the right and pinned above her left ear with a white artificial rose.

Her maid had black coat and trousers. She had some bracelets on, but her jewels were less beautiful than those of the other women. One very pretty woman had b.u.t.tons on her coat of emeralds surrounded with pearls, and on her arm a lovely bracelet of pearls. After tea, the great ladies went into an inner room, with the exception of two. One of these two had a very sad face. I watched her and finally had a chance to ask her how many children she had. She said she had none, but she would like to have a daughter. I was told after that her husband was a Christian pastor and she was trying to be Christian. The other one who stayed was the pretty one with the emerald b.u.t.tons. I finally decided the ladies had left us to play their cards and asked if I might go and see them. They were not playing cards, but had just gone off to gossip among themselves, probably about the foreigners. One of the ladies said she would take me some day to see their card games. It is said they play in the morning and in the afternoon and all the night till the next morning when they go to bed. It is commonly said this is all they do, and the losses are very disastrous sometimes.

But they were not playing then and came back, some of them with their children, and sat in the rows of chairs, sixteen of them, and some amahs around the room, while I talked to them. I told stories about what the American women did in the war and they stared with amazement. I had to explain what a gas mask is, but they knew what killing is and what high cla.s.s is. Their giggles were quite encouraging to intercourse. A nice young lady from the college interpreted, and when I stopped I asked them to tell me something about their lives. So the governor's wife was at last persuaded to give an account of how she brought up her children.

They are all free from self-consciousness, and though they have little manners in our sense of the word, they have a self-possession and gentleness combined which gives a very graceful appearance. The governor's wife says she has two little boys, the eldest six years of age. In the morning he has a Chinese tutor. After dinner, she teaches him music, of which she is very fond. After that he plays till five-thirty, has supper, plays again a little while before going to bed, and then bed. At thirteen the boy will be sent away to school. I asked her what about girls, and she said that her little niece was the first one in her family to be sent to school, but this ten-year-old one is in Tientsin at a boarding school.

PEKING, Sunday, June 1.

We met a young man here from an interior province who is trying to get money for teachers who haven't received their pay for a long time.

Meantime over sixty per cent of the entire national expenses is going to the military, and the army is worse than useless. In many provinces it is composed of brigands and everywhere is practically under the control of the tuchuns or military governors, who are corrupt and use the pay roll to increase their graft and the army to increase their power of local oppression, while the head military man is openly pro-j.a.panese.

There is a lull in our affairs just now. We agreed yesterday that never in our lives had we begun to learn as much as in the last four months.

And the last month particularly, there has been almost too much food to be digestible. Talk about the secretive and wily East. Compared, say, with Europe, they hand information out to you here on a platter (though it must be admitted the labels are sometimes mixed) and sandbag you with it.

Yesterday we went to the Western Hills where are the things you see in the pictures, including the stone boat, the base of which is really marble and as fine as the pictures. But all the rest of it is just theatrical fake, more or less peeling off at that. However, it is as wonderful as it is cracked up to be, and in some ways more systematic than Versailles, which is what you naturally compare it to. The finest thing architecturally is a Buddhist temple with big tiles, each of which has a Buddha on--for further details see movie or something. We walked somewhat higher than Russian Hill, including a journey through the caves in an artificial mountain such as the Chinese delight in, clear up to this temple. The Manchu family seems to own the thing yet, and charge a big sum, or rather several sums, a la Niagara Falls, to get about--another evidence that China needs another revolution, or rather _a_ revolution, the first one having got rid of a dynasty and left, as per my previous letters, a lot of corrupt governors in charge of chaos.

The only thing that I can see that keeps things together at all is that while a lot of these generals and governors would like to grab more for their individual selves, they are all afraid the whole thing would come down round their ears if anyone made a definite move. Status quo is China's middle name, mostly status and a little quo. I have one more national motto to add to "You Never Can Tell" and "Let George Do It." It is, "That is very bad." Instead of concealing things, they expose all their weak and bad points very freely, and after setting them forth most calmly and objectively, say "That is very bad." I don't know whether it is possible for a people to be too reasonable, but it is certainly too possible to take it out in being reasonable--and that's them. However, it makes them wonderful companions. You can hardly blame the j.a.panese for wanting to run them and supply the necessary pep when they decline to run themselves. You certainly see the other side of the famous one-track mind of j.a.pan over here, as well as of other things. If you keep doing something all the time, I don't know whether you need even a single track mind. All you have to do is to keep going where you started for, while others keep wobbling or never get started.

Well, this morning we went to the famous museum, and there is one thing where China is still ahead. It is housed in some of the old palaces and audience halls of the inner, or purple, forbidden City. With the yellow porcelain roofs, and the blue and green and gold, and the red walls, it is really the barbaric splendor you read about, and about the first thing that comes up to the conventional idea of what is Oriental. The Hindoo influence is much stronger here than anywhere else we have been, or else really Thibetan, I suppose, and many things remind one of the Moorish. The city of Peking was a thousand years building, and was laid out on a plan when the capitals of Europe were purely haphazard, so there is no doubt they have organizing power all right if they care to use it. The museum is literally one of treasures, porcelains, bronzes, jade, etc., not an historic or antiquated museum. It costs ten cents to get into the park here and much more into the museum, a dollar or more, I guess, and we got the impression that it was fear of the crowd and the populace rather than the money which controls; the rate is too high for revenue purposes.

PEKING, June 1.

We have just seen a few hundred girls march away from the American Board Mission school to go to see the President to ask him to release the boy students who are in prison for making speeches on the street. To say that life in China is exciting is to put it fairly. We are witnessing the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard. I may as well begin at the right end and tell you what has happened while things have been moving so fast I could not get time to write. Yesterday we went to see the temples of Western Hills, conducted by one of the members of the Ministry of Education. As we were running along the big street that pa.s.ses the city wall we saw students speaking to groups of people. This was the first time the students had appeared for several days. We asked the official if they would not be arrested, and he said, "No, not if they keep within the law and do not make any trouble among the people."

This morning when we got the paper it was full of nothing else. The worst thing is that the University has been turned into a prison with military tents all around it and a notice on the outside that this is a prison for students who disturb the peace by making speeches. As this is all illegal, it amounts to a military seizure of the University and therefore all the faculty will have to resign. They are to have a meeting this afternoon to discuss the matter. After that is over, we will probably know what has happened again. The other thing we heard was that in addition to the two hundred students locked up in the Law Building, two students were taken to the Police rooms and flogged on the back. Those two students were making a speech and were arrested and taken before the officers of the gendarmerie. Instead of shutting up as they were expected to do, the boys asked some questions of these officers that were embarra.s.sing to answer. The officers then had them flogged on the back. Thus far no one has been able to see any of the officers. If the officers denied the accusation then the reporters would ask to see the two prisoners on the principle that the officers could have no reason for refusing that request unless the story were true. We saw students making speeches this morning about eleven, when we started to look for houses, and heard later that they had been arrested, that they carried tooth brushes and towels in their pockets. Some stories say that not two hundred but a thousand have been arrested. There are about ten thousand striking in Peking alone. The marching out of those girls was evidently a shock to their teachers and many mothers were there to see them off. The girls were going to walk to the palace of the President, which is some long distance from the school. If he does not see them, they will remain standing outside all night and they will stay there till he does see them. I fancy people will take them food. We heard the imprisoned students got bedding at four this morning but no food till after that time. There is water in the building and there is room for them to lie on the floor. They are cleaner than they would be in jail, and of course much happier for being together.

PEKING, June 2.

Maybe you would like to know a little about how we look this morning and how we are living. In the first place, this is a big hotel with a bath in each room. On a big street opposite to us is the wall of the legation quarter, which has trees in it and big roofs which represent all that China ought to have and has not. The weather is like our hot July, except that it is drier than the August drought on Long Island. The streets of Peking are the widest in the world, I guess, and ours leads by the red walls of the Chinese city with the wonderful gates of which you see pictures. It is macadamized in the middle, but on each side of it run wider roads, which are used for the traffic. Thank your stars there are good horses in Peking; men do not pull all the heavy loads.

The two side roads are worn down in deep ruts and these ruts are filled with dust like finest ashes, and all thrown up into the air whenever a man steps on it or a cart moves through. Our room faces the south on this road. All day long the sun pours through the bamboo shades and the hot air brings in that gray dust, and everything you touch, including your own skin, is gritty and has a queer dry feeling that makes you think you ought to run for water. I am learning to shut the windows and inner blinds afternoons. Isn't it strange that in the lat.i.tude of New York this drought should be expected every spring? In spite of all this the fields have crops growing, thinly, to be sure, on the hard gray fields. There are very few trees, and they are not of the biggest. The grain is already about fit to cut, and the onions are ripe. After a while it will rain and rain much and then new crops will be put in. The flowers are almost gone and I am sorry that we did not see the famous peonies. You will be interested to know that they keep the peonies small; even the tree kind are cut down till they are the size of those little ones of mine. The tuber peonies are transplanted each year or in some way kept small and the blossoms are lovely and little. I have seen white rose peonies and at first thought they were roses. The buds look almost like the buds of our big white roses and they are very fragrant.

The peony beds are laid out in terraces held in place by brick walls, usually oblong or oval, something like a huge pudding mold on a table.

Other times they are planted on the flat and surrounded by bamboo fences of fancy design and geometrical pattern, usually with a square form to include each division. The inner city has many peony beds of that sort, both the tree and tuber kind, but they have only leaves to show now.

Yesterday we went to the summer palace and to-day we are going to the museum. That is really inside the Forbidden City, so at last we shall set foot on the sacred ground. The summer palace is really wonderful, but sad now, like all things made on too ambitious a scale to fit into the uses of life. There is a mile of loggia ornamented with the green and blue and red paintings which you see imitated. Through a window we had a peek at the famous portrait of old Tsu Hsu and she looks just as she did when I saw it exhibited in New York. The strange thing about it is that it is still owned by the Hsu family. Huge rolls of costly rugs and curtains lie in piles round the room and everything is covered with this fine dust so thick that it is not possible to tell the color of a table top. Cloissonne vases, or rather images of the famous blue ware stand under the old lady's portrait, and everything is going to rack and ruin. Meantime we wandered around, planning how it could be made over into use when the revolution comes. Get rid of the idea that China has had a revolution and is a republic; that point is just where we have been deceived in the United States. China is at present the rotten crumbling remnant of the old bureaucracy that surrounded the corruption of the Manchus and that made them possible. The little Emperor is living here in his palace surrounded by his eunuchs and his tutors and his two mothers. He is fourteen and it is really funny to think that they have just left him Emperor, but as he has not money except what the republic votes him from year to year, n.o.body worries about him, unless it is the j.a.panese, who want the imperial government restored until they get ready to take it themselves. It looks as if they might be ready now except for the nudge which has just been given to the peace conference. You had better read a book about this situation, for it is the most surprising affair in a lifetime.

Yesterday we went to see a friend's house. It is interesting and I should like to live in one like it. There is no water except what the water man brings every day. This little house has eighteen rooms around a court. It means four separate roofs and going outdoors to get from one to another. When the mercury is at twenty below zero it would mean that just the same. All the ground floors have stone floors. We did not see all the rooms; there are paper windows in some and gla.s.s windows in some. In summer they put on a temporary roof of mats over the court. It is higher than the roofs and so allows ventilation and gives good shade.

June 5.

This is Thursday morning, and last night we heard that about one thousand students were arrested the day before. Yesterday afternoon a friend got a pa.s.s which permitted him to enter the building where the students were confined. They have filled up the building of Law, and have begun on the Science building, in consequence of which the faculty have to go to the Missionary buildings to-day to hold their faculty meeting. At four yesterday afternoon, the prisoners who had been put in that day at ten had had no food. One of our friends went out and got the University to appropriate some money and they ordered a carload of bread sent in. This bread means some little biscuit sometimes called raised biscuit at home. I think carload means one of the carts in which they are delivered. At any rate, the boys had some food, though not at the expense of the police. On the whole, the checkmate of the police seems surely impending. They will soon have the buildings full, as the students are getting more and more in earnest, and the most incredible part of it is that the police are surprised. They really thought the arrests would frighten the others from going on. So everybody is getting an education. This morning one of our friends here is going to take us up to the University to see the military encampment, and I hope he will take us inside also, though I hardly think he will do the latter.

As near as I can find out, the Chinese have reached that interesting stage of development when they must do something for women and do as little as they can, but in case they must have a girls' school they find that a convenient place to unload an antiquated official who really can't be endured any longer by real folks.

No one can tell to-day what the students' strike will bring next; it may bring a revolution, it may do anything surprising to the police, who seem to be as lacking in imagination as police are famous for being.

Everyone here is getting ready to flee for the summer, which is very hot during July. On the whole, the heat is perhaps less hard to endure than the heat of New York, as it is so dry. But the dryness has its own effect and when those hard winds blow up the dust storms it gets on the nerves. Dust heaps up inside the house, and cuts the skin both inside and outside of the body. This is a lucky day, being cloudy and a little damp as if it might rain.

The Western Hill was an experience to remember. Stepping from a Ford limousine to a chair carried by four men and an outwalker alongside, we were thus taken by fifteen men to the temples, your father, an officer from the Department of Education, and I. The men walked over the paths in the dust and on stones which no one thinks of picking up. It was so astounding to call it a pleasure resort that we could only stare and remain dumb. We saw three temples and one royal garden. Five hundred Buddhas in one building, and all the buildings tumble-down and dirty. On top of one hill is a huge building which cost a million or more to build about four hundred years ago by someone for his tomb. Then he did something wrong, probably stole from the wrong person, and was not allowed to be buried there. Round the temple places the trees remain and give a refreshing oasis, and there are some beautiful springs. All the time we kept saying, "Trees ought to be planted." "Yes, but they take so long to grow," or, "Yes, but they will not grow, it is so dry," etc.

Sometimes they would say, "Yes, we must plant some trees," or more likely, "Yes, I think we may plant some trees sometime, but we have an Arbor Day and the people cut down the trees or else they did." We would show that the trees would grow because they were there round the temples, and besides gra.s.s was growing and trees would grow where gra.s.s would grow in such dry weather, and they would say the same things over.

It made the little forestry station in Nanking seem like a monumental advance, while that fearful sun was beating up the dust under the stones as the men gave us the Swedish ma.s.sage in the motion of the chairs.

Fifty men and more stood around as we got in and out of the car and five men apiece stood and waited for us as we walked round the temple and ate our lunch and spent the time sipping tea, and yet they cannot plant trees, and that is China.

The whole country is covered every inch with stones. Nature has supplied them, and falling walls are everywhere. We saw one great thing, however.

They are building a new school house and orphanage for the children of that village. Many of the children are naked everywhere hereabouts and they stand with sunburned heads, their backs covered only with coats of dirt, eating their bean food in the street. Everywhere the food is laid out on tables by the roadside ready to eat. In one temple, a certain official here has promised to rebuild a small shrine which houses the laughing Buddha, who is made of bronze and was once covered with lacquer, which is now mostly split off. At present the only shade the G.o.d has is a roof of mats which they have braced up on the pile of ruins that once made a roof. The President of the Republic has built a lovely big gate like the old ones, because it is propitious and would bring him good fortune. But he has decided it was not propitious, something went wrong with the G.o.ds, I did not learn what it was; anyway, he is now tearing down one of the big b.u.t.tresses on one side of it to see if fate will treat him more kindly then. Just what he wants of fate I did not learn either, but perhaps it is that fate should make him Emperor, as that seems to be their idea of curing poverty and political evils. I forgot to say that they never remove ruins; everything is left to lie as it falls or is falling, so one gets a good idea of how G.o.ds are constructed. Most of them were of clay, a sort of concrete built up on a wood frame, and badly as they need wood I have never seen a sign of piling up the fallen beams of a temple. Instead of that, you risk your life by walking under these falling roofs unless you have the sense to look after your own safety. In most of these Peking temples they do sweep the floors and even some of the statues look as if they had some time been dusted, though this last I am not certain about.

PEKING, June 5.

As has been remarked before, you never can tell. The students were stirred up by orders dissolving their a.s.sociations, and by the "mandates" criticising the j.a.panese boycott and telling what valuable services the two men whose dismissal was demanded had rendered the country. So they got busy--the students. They were also angered because the industrial departments of two schools were ordered closed by the police. In these departments the students had set about seeing what things of j.a.panese importation could be replaced by hand labor without waiting for capital. After they worked it out in the school they went out to the shops and taught the people how to make them, and then peddled them about, making speeches at the same time. Well, yesterday when we went about we noticed that the students were speaking more than usual, and while the streets were full of soldiers the students were not interfered with; in the afternoon a procession of about a thousand students was even escorted by the police. Then in the evening a telephone came from the University that the tents around the University buildings where the students were imprisoned had been struck and the soldiers were all leaving. Then the students inside held a meeting and pa.s.sed a resolution asking the government whether they were guaranteed freedom of speech, because if they were not, they would not leave the building merely to be arrested again, as they planned to go on speaking.

So they embarra.s.sed the government by remaining in "jail" all night. We haven't heard to-day what has happened, but the streets are free of soldiers, and there were no students talking anywhere we went, so I fancy a truce has been arranged while they try and fix things up. The government's ignominious surrender was partly due to the fact that the places of detention were getting full and about twice as many students spoke yesterday as the day before, when they arrested a thousand, and the government for the first time realized that they couldn't bulldoze the students; it was also partly due to the fact that the merchants in Shanghai struck the day before yesterday, and there is talk that the Peking merchants are organizing for the same purpose. This is, once more, a strange country; the so-called republic is a joke; all it has meant so far is that instead of the Emperor having a steady job, the job of ruling and looting is pa.s.sed around to the clique that grabs power.

One of the leading militarist party generals invited his dearest enemy to breakfast a while ago--within the last few months--in Peking, and then lined his guest against the wall and had him shot. Did this affect his status? He is still doing business at the old stand. But in some ways there is more democracy than we have; leaving out the women, there is complete social equality, and while the legislature is a perfect farce, public opinion, when it does express itself, as at the present time, has remarkable influence. Some think the worst officials will now resign and get out, others that the militarists will attempt a coup d'etat and seize still more power rather than back down. Fortunately, the latter seem to be divided at the present time. But all of the student (and teacher) crowd are much afraid that even if the present gang is thrown out, it will be only to replace them by another set just as bad, so they are refraining from appealing to the army for help.

Later.--The students have now asked that the chief of police come personally to escort them out and make an apology. In many ways, it seems like an opera bouffe, but there is no doubt that up to date they have shown more shrewdness and policy than the government, and are getting the latter where it is a laughing stock, which is fatal in China. But the government isn't inactive; they have appointed a new Minister of Education and a new Chancellor of the University, both respectable men, with no records and colorless characters. It is likely the Faculty will decline to receive the new Chancellor unless he makes a satisfactory declaration--which he obviously can't, and thus the row will begin all over again, with the Faculty involved. If the government dared, it would dissolve the University, but the scholar has a sacred reputation in China.

June 7.

The whole story of the students is funny and not the least funny part is that last Friday the students were speaking and parading with banners and cheers and the police standing near them like guardian angels, no one being arrested or molested. We heard that one student pouring out hot eloquence was respectfully requested to move his audience along a little for the reason that they were so numerous in statu quo as to impede traffic, and the policeman would not like to be held responsible for interfering with the traffic. Meantime, Sat.u.r.day the government sent an apology to the students who were still in prison of their own free will waiting for the government to apologize and to give them the a.s.surance of free speech, etc. The students are said to have left the building yesterday morning, though we have no accurate information. The Faculty of the University met and refused to recognize or accept the new Chancellor. They sent a committee to the government to tell them that, and one to the Chancellor to tell him also and to ask him to resign. It seems the newly-appointed Chancellor used to be at the head of the engineering school of the University, but he was kicked out in the political struggle. He is an official of the Yuan Shi Kai school and has become a rich rubber merchant in Malay, and anyway they do not want a mere rubber merchant as President of the University, and they think they may so explain that to the new Chancellor that he will not look upon the office as so attractive as he thought it was.

There is complete segregation in this city in all public gatherings, the women at the theaters are put off in one of those real galleries such as we think used to be and are not now. The place for the women in the hall of the Board of Education is good enough and on one side facing the hall so that all the men can look at them freely and so protect that famous modesty which I have heard more of in China than for many years previously.