The Awakening of China Part 19

Sir Robert Hart, from whom I had this statement, is the father of China's postal system. Overcoming opposition with patience and prudence, he has given the post office a thorough organisation and has secured for it the confidence of princes and people. Already does the Government look to it as a prospective source of revenue.

To the maritime customs service, Sir Robert has been a foster-father.

Provided for by treaty, it was in operation before he took charge, in 1863; but to him belongs the honour of having nursed the infant up to vigorous maturity by the unwearied exertions of nearly half a century. While the post office is a new development, the maritime customs have long been looked upon as the most reliable branch of the revenue service. China's debts to foreign countries, whether for loans or indemnities, are invariably paid from the customs revenue. The Government, though disinclined to have such large concerns administered by foreign agents, is reconciled to the arrangement in the case of the customs by finding it a source of growing income. The receipts for 1905 amounted to 35,111,000 taels = 5,281,000. In volume of trade this shows a gain of 11-1/2 per cent. on 1904; but, owing to a favouring gale from the happy isles of high finance, in sterling value the gain is actually 17 per cent.

[Page 207]

To a thoughtful mind, native or foreign, the maritime customs are not to be estimated by a money standard. They rank high among the agencies working for the renovation of China. They furnish an object-lesson in official integrity, showing how men brought up under the influence of Christian morals can collect large sums and pay them over without a particle sticking to their fingers. While the local commissioners have carried liberal ideas into mandarin circles all along the seacoast and up the great rivers into the interior, the Inspector-General (the "I. G." as Sir Robert is usually called) has been the zealous advocate of every step in the way of reform at headquarters.

Another man in his position might have been contented to be a mere fiscal agent, but Sir Robert Hart's fertile brain has been unceasingly active for nearly half a century in devising schemes for the good of China. All the honours and wealth that China has heaped on her trusted adviser are far from being sufficient to cancel her obligations.

It was he who prompted a timid, groping government to take the first steps in the way of diplomatic intercourse. It was he who led them to raise their school of interpreters to the rank of a diplomatic college. He it was who made peace in the war with France; and in 1900, after the flight of the Court, he it was who acted as intermediary between the foreign powers and Prince Ching. To some of these notable services I shall refer elsewhere. I speak of them here for the purpose of emphasising my disapproval of an intrigue designed to oust Sir Robert and to overturn [Page 208]

the lofty structure which he has made into a light-house for China.

In May, 1906, two ministers were appointed by the Throne to take charge of the entire customs service, with plenary powers to reform or modify _ad libitum_. Sir Robert was not consulted, nor was he mentioned in the decree. He was not dismissed, but was virtually superseded. Britain, America, and other powers took alarm for the safety of interests involved, and united in a protest. The Government explained that it was merely subst.i.tuting one tribunal for another, creating a dual headship for the customs service instead of leaving it under the Board of Foreign Affairs, a body already overburdened with responsibilities. They gave a solemn promise that while Sir Robert Hart remained there should be no change in his status or powers; and so the matter stands. The protest saved the situation for the present. Explanation and promise were accepted; but the Government (or rather the two men who got themselves appointed to a fat office) remain under the reproach of discourtesy and ingrat.i.tude. The two men are Tieliang, a Manchu, and Tang Shao-yi, a Chinese. The latter, I am told on good authority, is to have 30,000 per annum. The other will not have less. This enormous salary is paid to secure honesty.

In China every official has his salary paid in two parts: one called the "regular stipend," the other, a "solatium to encourage honesty."

The former is counted by hundreds of taels; the latter, by thousands, especially where there is a temptation to peculate. What a rottenness at the core is here betrayed!

[Page 209]

A new development worthy of all praise is the opening, by imperial command, of a school for the training of officials for the customs service. It is a measure which Sir Robert Hart with all his public spirit, never ventured to recommend, because it implies the speedy replacement of the foreign staff by trained natives.

Filling the sky with a glow of hope not unlike the approach of sunshine after an arctic winter, the reform in the field of education throws all others into the shade. By all parties is recognised its supremacy. Its beginning was feeble and unwelcome, implying on the part of China nothing but a few drops of oil to relieve the friction at a few points of contact with the outside world.

The new treaties found China unprovided with interpreters capable of translating doc.u.ments in foreign languages. Foreign nations agreed to accompany their despatches with a Chinese version, until a competent staff of interpreters should be provided. With a view to meeting this initial want, a school was opened in 1862, in connection with the Foreign Office, and placed under the direction of the Inspector-General of Maritime Customs, by whom I was recommended for the presidency. Professors of English, French, and Russian were engaged; and later on German took a place alongside of the three leading languages of the Western world.

At first no science was taught or expected, but gradually we succeeded in obtaining the consent of the Chinese ministers to enlarge our faculty so as to include chairs of astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, and physics. International law was taught by the [Page 210]

president; and by him also the Chinese were supplied with their first text-books on the law of nations. What use had they for books on that subject, so long as they held no intercourse on equal terms with foreign countries? The students trained in that school of diplomacy had to shiver in the cold for many a year before the Government recognised their merits and rewarded them with official appointments. The minister recently returned from London, the ministers now in Germany and j.a.pan, and a minister formerly in France, not to speak of secretaries of legation and consuls, were all graduates of our earlier cla.s.ses.

In 1898 the young Emperor, taught by defeat at the hands of the j.a.panese, resolved on a thorough reform in the system of national education. It would never do to confine the knowledge of Western science to a handful of interpreters and attaches. The highest scholars of the Empire must be allowed access to the fountain of national strength. A university was created with a capital of five million taels, and the writer was made president by an imperial decree which conferred on him the highest but one of the nine grades of the mandarinate.

Two or three hundred students were enrolled, among whom were bachelors, masters, and doctors of the civil service examinations. It was launched with a favouring breeze; but the wind changed with the _coup d'etat_ of the Empress Dowager, and two years later the university went down in the Boxer cyclone. A professor, a tutor, and a student lost their lives. How the cause of educational reform rose stronger after the storm, I relate in a special [Page 211]

chapter. It is a far cry from a university for the _elite_ to that elaborate system of national education which is destined to plant its schools in every town and hamlet in the Empire. The new education was in fact still regarded with suspicion by the honour men of the old system. They looked on it, as they did on the railway, as a source of danger, a perilous experiment.

As yet the intercourse was one-sided: envoys came; but none were sent. Emba.s.sies were no novelty; but they had always moved on an inclined plane, either coming up laden with tribute, or going down bearing commands. Where there was no tribute and no command, why send them? Why send to the very people who had robbed China of her supremacy! It was a bitter pill, and she long refused to swallow it. Hart gilded the dose and she took it. Obtaining leave to go home to get married, he proposed that he should be accompanied by his teacher, Pinchun, a learned Manchu, as unofficial envoy--with the agreeable duty to see and report. It was a travelling commission, not like that of 1905-06, to seek light, but to ascertain whether the representative of a power so humbled and insulted would be treated with common decency.

The old pundit was a poet. All Chinese pundits are poets; but Pinchun had real gifts, and the flow of champagne kindled his inspiration.

Everywhere wined and dined, though accredited to no court, he was in raptures at the magnificence of the nations of the West. He lauded their wealth, culture, and scenery in faultless verse; and if he indulged in satire, [Page 212]

it was not for the public eye. He was attended by several of our students, to whom the travelling commission was an education. They were destined, after long waiting as I have said, to revisit the Western world, clothed with higher powers.

The impression made on both sides was favourable, and the way was prepared for a genuine emba.s.sy. The United States minister, Anson Burlingame, a man of keen penetration and broad sympathies, had made himself exceedingly acceptable to the Foreign Office at Peking. When he was taking leave to return home, in 1867, the Chinese ministers begged his good offices with the United States Government and with other governments as occasion might offer--"In short, you will be our amba.s.sador," they said, with hearty good-will.

Burlingame, who grasped the possibilities of the situation, called at the Customs on his way to the Legation. Hart seized the psychological moment, and, hastening to the _Yamen_, induced the ministers to turn a pleasantry into a reality. The Dowagers (for there were two) a.s.sented to the proposal of Prince Kung, to invest Burlingame with a roving commission to all the Treaty powers, and to a.s.sociate with him a Manchu and a Chinese with the rank of minister. An "oec.u.menical emba.s.sy" was the result. Some of our students were again attached to the suite; reciprocal intercourse had begun; and Burlingame has the glory of initiating it".

In the work of reform three viceroys stand pre-eminent, viz., Li Hung Chang, Yuen Shi Kai and Chang Chitung. Li, besides organising an army and [Page 213]

a navy (both demolished by the j.a.panese in 1895), founded a university at Tienstin, and placed Dr. Tenney at the head of it. Yuen, coming to the same viceroyalty with the lesson of the Boxer War before his eyes, has made the army and education objects of special care.

In the latter field he had had the able a.s.sistance of Dr. Tenney, and succeeded in making the schools of the province of Chihli an example for the Empire.

Viceroy Chang has the distinction of being the first man (with the exception of Kang Yuwei) to start the emperor on the path of reform. Holding that, to be rich, China must have the industrial arts of the West, and to be strong she must have the sciences of the West, he has taken the lead in advocating and introducing both.

Having been called, after the suspension of the Imperial University, to a.s.sist this enlightened satrap in his great enterprise, I cannot better ill.u.s.trate the progress of reform than by devoting a separate chapter to him and to my observations during three years in Central China.

Tests of scholarship and qualifications for office have undergone a complete change. The regulation essay, for centuries supreme in the examinations for the civil service, is abolished; and more solid acquirements have taken its place. It takes time to adjust such an ancient system to new conditions. That this will be accomplished is sufficiently indicated by the fact that in May, 1906, degrees answering to A. M. and Ph. D. were conferred on quite a number of students who had completed their studies at universities in foreign countries. As a result there is certain [Page 214]

to be a rush of students to Europe and America, the fountain-heads of science. Forty young men selected by Viceroy Yuen from the advanced cla.s.ses of his schools were in 1906 despatched under the superintendence of Dr. Tenney to pursue professional studies in the United States.

That promising mission was partly due to the relaxation of the rigour of the exclusion laws.

The Chinese a.s.sessor of the Mixed Court in Shanghai was dismissed the same year because he had condemned criminals to be beaten with rods--a favourite punishment, in which there is a way to alleviate the blows. Slicing, branding, and other horrible punishments with torture to extort confessions have been forbidden by imperial decree.

Conscious of the contempt excited by such barbarities, and desirous of removing an obstacle to admission to the comity of nations, the Government has undertaken to revise its penal code. Wu-ting-fang, so well known as minister at Washington, has borne a chief part in this honourable task. The code is not yet published; but magistrates are required to act on its general principles. When completed it will no doubt provide for a jury, a thing hitherto unknown in China.

The commissioners on legal reform have already sent up a memorial, explaining the functions of a jury; and, to render its adoption palatable, they declare that it is an ancient inst.i.tution, having been in use in China three thousand years ago. They leave the Throne to infer that Westerners borrowed it from China.

The fact is that each magistrate is a petty tyrant, embodying in his person the functions of local governor, [Page 215]

judge, and jury, though there are limits to his discretion and room for appeal or complaint. It is to be hoped that lawyers and legal education will find a place in the administration of justice.

Formerly clinging to a foreign flagstaff, the editor of a Chinese journal cautiously hinted the need for some kinds of reform. Within this _l.u.s.trum mirabile_ the daily press has taken the Empire by storm. Some twenty or more journals have sprung up under the shadow of the throne, and they are not gagged. They go to the length of their tether in discussing affairs of state--notwithstanding cautionary hints. Refraining from open attack, they indulge in covert criticism of the Government and its agents.

Social reforms open to ambitious editors a wide field and make amends for exclusion from the political arena. One of the most influential recently deplored the want of vitality in the old religions of the country, and, regarding their reformation as hopeless, openly advocated the adoption of Christianity. To be independent of the foreigner it must, he said, be made a state church, with one of the princes for a figurehead, if not for pilot.

Another deals with the subject of marriage. Many improvements, he says, are to be made in the legal status of woman. The total abolition of polygamy might be premature; but that is to be kept in view. In another issue he expresses a regret that the Western usage of personal courtship cannot safely be introduced. Those who are to be companions for life cannot as yet be allowed to see each other, as disorders might result from excess of freedom. Such liberty [Page 216]

in social relations is impracticable "except in a highly refined and well-ordered state of society." The same or another writer proposes, by way of enlarging woman's world, that she shall not be confined to the house, but be allowed to circulate as freely as Western women but she must hide her charms behind a veil.

Reporting an altercation between a policeman and the driver of one of Prince Ching's carts, who insisted on driving on tracks forbidden to common people, an editor suggests with mild sarcasm that a notice be posted in such cases stating that only "n.o.blemen's carts are allowed to pa.s.s." Do not these specimens show a laudable attempt to simulate a free press? Free it is by sufferance, though not by law.

Reading-rooms are a new inst.i.tution full of promise. They are not libraries, but places for reading and expounding newspapers for the benefit of those who are unable to read for themselves. Numerous rooms may be seen at the street corners, where men are reciting the contents of a paper to an eager crowd. They have the air of wayside chapels; and this mode of enlightening the ignorant was confessedly borrowed from the missionary. How urgent the need, where among the men only one in twenty can read; and among women not one in a hundred!

Reform in writing is a genuine novelty, Chinese writing being a development of hieroglyphics, in which the sound is no index to the sense, and in which each pictorial form must be separately made familiar to the eye. Dr. Medhurst wittily calls it "an occulage, not a language." Without the introduction of alphabetic [Page 217]

writing, the art of reading can never become general. To meet this want a new alphabet of fifty letters has been invented, and a society organised to push the system, so that the common people, also women, may soon be able to read the papers for themselves. The author of the system is w.a.n.g Chao, mentioned above as having given occasion for the _coup d'etat_ by which the Dowager Empress was restored to power in 1898.

I close this formidable list of reforms with a few words on a society for the abolition of a usage which makes Chinese women the laughing-stock of the world, namely, the binding of their feet.

With the minds of her daughters cramped by ignorance, and their feet crippled by the tyranny of an absurd fashion, China suffers an immense loss, social and economic. Happily there are now indications that the proposed enfranchis.e.m.e.nt will meet with general favour.

Lately I heard mandarins of high rank advocate this cause in the hearing of a large concourse at Shanghai. They have given a pledge that there shall be no more foot-binding in their families; and the Dowager Empress came to the support of the cause with a hortatory edict. As in this matter she dared not prohibit, she was limited to persuasion and example. Tartar women have their powers of locomotion unimpaired. Viceroy Chang denounced the fashion as tending to sap the vigour of China's mothers; and he is reported to have suggested a tax on small feet--in inverse proportion to their size, of course.

The leader in this movement, which bids fair to become national, is Mrs. Archibald Little.

[Page 218]

The streets are patrolled by a well-dressed and well-armed police force, in strong contrast with the ragged, negligent watchmen of yore. The Chinese, it seems, are in earnest about mending their ways. Their streets, in Peking and other cities, are undergoing thorough repair--so that broughams and rickshaws are beginning to take the place of carts and palanquins. A foreign style of building is winning favour; and the adoption of foreign dress is talked of.

When these changes come, what will be left of this queer antique?

[Page 219]

CHAPTER x.x.x

VICEROY CHANG-A LEADER OF REFORM

_His Origin--Course as a Student--In the Censorate--He Floors a Magnate--The First to Wake Up--As a Leader of Reform--The Awakening of the Giant_

If I were writing of Chang, the Chinese giant, who overtopped the tallest of his fellow-men by head and shoulders, I should be sure of readers. Physical phenomena attract attention more than mental or moral grandeur. Is it not because greatness in these higher realms requires patient thought for due appreciation?

Chang, the viceroy of Hukw.a.n.g, a giant in intellect and a hero in achievement, is not a commonplace character. If my readers will follow me, while I trace his rise and progress, not only will they discover that he stands head and shoulders above most officials of his rank, but they will gain important side-lights on great events in recent history.

During my forty years' residence in the capital I had become well acquainted with Chang's brilliant career; but it is only within the last three or four years that I have had an opportunity to study him in personal intercourse, having been called to preside over his university and to aid him in other educational enterprises.

[Page 220]