The Awakening of China by W.A.P. Martin

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The Awakening of China

By W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D

Formerly President of the Chinese Imperial University

Author of "A Cycle of Cathay," "The Siege
in Peking," "The Lore of Cathay," etc.

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PREFACE

China is the theatre of the greatest movement now taking place
on the face of the globe. In comparison with it, the agitation
in Russia shrinks to insignificance; for it is not political, but
social. Its object is not a changed dynasty, nor a revolution in
the form of government; but, with higher aim and deeper motive, it
promises nothing short of the complete renovation of the oldest,
most populous, and most conservative of empires. Is there a people
in either hemisphere that can afford to look on with indifference?

When, some thirty years ago, Japan adopted the outward forms of
Western civilisation, her action was regarded by many as a stage
trick--a sort of travesty employed for a temporary purpose. But
what do they think now, when they see cabinets and chambers of
commerce compelled to reckon with the British of the North Pacific?
The awakening of Japan's huge neighbour promises to yield results
equally startling and on a vastly extended scale.

Political agitation, whether periodic like the tides or unforeseen
like the hurricane, is in general superficial and temporary; but
the social movement in China has its origin in subterranean forces
such as raise continents from the bosom of the deep. To explain
those forces is the object of the present work.

It is the fascination of this grand spectacle that has
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brought me back to China, after a short visit to my native land--and
to this capital, after a sojourn of some years in the central provinces.
Had the people continued to be as inert and immobile as they appeared
to be half a century ago, I might have been tempted to despair
of their future. But when I see them, as they are to-day, united
in a firm resolve to break with the past, and to seek new life
by adopting the essentials of Western civilisation, I feel that
my hopes as to their future are more than half realised; and I
rejoice to help their cause with voice and pen.

Their patriotism may indeed be tinged with hostility to foreigners;
but will it not gain in breadth with growing intelligence, and will
they not come to perceive that their interests are inseparable from
those of the great family into which they are seeking admission?

Every day adds its testimony to the depth and genuineness of the
movement in the direction of reform. Yesterday the autumn
manoeuvres of the grand army came to a close. They have shown
that by the aid of her railways China is able to assemble a body
of trained troops numbering 100,000 men. Not content with this
formidable land force, the Government has ordered the construction
of the nucleus of a navy, to consist of eight armoured cruisers
and two battleships. Five of these and three naval stations are
to be equipped with the wireless telegraph.

Not less significant than this rehabilitation of army and navy is
the fact that a few days ago a number of students, who had completed
their studies at foreign universities, were admitted to the third
degree (or
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D. C. L.) in the scale of literary honours, which means appointment
to some important post in the active mandarinate. If the booming
of cannon at the grand review proclaimed that the age of bows and
arrows is past, does not this other fact announce that, in the
field of education, rhyming and caligraphy have given place to
science and languages? Henceforth thousands of ambitious youth
will flock to the universities of Japan, and growing multitudes
will seek knowledge at its fountain-head beyond the seas.

Still more surprising are the steps taken toward the intellectual
emancipation of woman in China. One of the leading ministers of
education assured me the other day that he was pushing the establishment
of schools for girls. The shaded hemisphere of Chinese life will thus
be brought into the sunshine, and in years to come the education
of Chinese youth will begin at the mother's knee.

The daily deliberations of the Council of State prove that the
reform proposals of the High Commission are not to be consigned to
the limbo of abortions. Tuan Fang, one of the leaders, has just been
appointed to the viceroyalty of Nanking, with _carte blanche_
to carry out his progressive ideas; and the metropolitan viceroy,
Yuan, on taking leave of the Empress Dowager before proceeding to
the manoeuvres, besought her not to listen to reactionary counsels
such as those which had produced the disasters of 1900.

In view of these facts, what wonder that Chinese newspapers are
discussing the question of a national religion? The fires of the
old altars are well-nigh extinct; and, among those who have come
forward to
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advocate the adoption of Christianity as the only faith that meets
the wants of an enlightened people, one of the most prominent is
a priest of Buddha.

May we not look forward with confidence to a time when China shall
be found in the brotherhood of Christian nations?

W. A. P. M.

_Peking, October 30, 1906._

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INTRODUCTION

How varied are the geological formations of different countries,
and what countless ages do they represent! Scarcely less diversified
are the human beings that occupy the surface of the globe, and not
much shorter the period of their evolution. To trace the stages
of their growth and decay, to explain the vicissitudes through
which they have passed, is the office of a philosophic historian.

If the life history of a silkworm, whose threefold existence is
rounded off in a few months, is replete with interest, how much
more interesting is that of societies of men emerging from barbarism
and expanding through thousands of years. Next in interest to the
history of our own branch of the human family is that of the yellow
race confronting us on the opposite shore of the Pacific; even
more fascinating, it may be, owing to the strangeness of manners
and environment, as well as from the contrast or coincidence of
experience and sentiment. So different from ours (the author writes
as an American) are many phases of their social life that one is
tempted to suspect that the same law, which placed their feet opposite
to ours, of necessity turned their heads the other way.

To pursue this study is not to delve in a necropolis like Nineveh
or Babylon; for China is not, like western Asia, the grave of dead
empires, but the home of a people
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endowed with inexhaustible vitality. Her present greatness and her
future prospects alike challenge admiration.

If the inhabitants of other worlds could look down on us, as we
look up at the moon, there are only five empires on the globe of
sufficient extent to make a figure on their map: one of these is
China. With more than three times the population of Russia, and an
almost equal area, in natural advantages she is without a rival,
if one excepts the United States. Imagination revels in picturing
her future, when she shall have adopted Christian civilisation,
and when steam and electricity shall have knit together all the
members of her gigantic frame.

It was by the absorption of small states that the Chinese people
grew to greatness. The present work will trace their history as
they emerge, like a rivulet, from the highlands of central Asia
and, increasing in volume, flow, like a stately river, toward the
eastern ocean. Revolutions many and startling are to be recorded:
some, like that in the epoch of the Great Wall, which stamped the
impress of unity upon the entire people; others, like the Manchu
conquest of 1644, by which, in whole or in part, they were brought
under the sway of a foreign dynasty. Finally, contemporary history
will be treated at some length, as its importance demands; and
the transformation now going on in the Empire will be faithfully
depicted in its relations to Western influences in the fields of
religion, commerce and arms.

As no people can be understood or properly studied apart from their
environment, a bird's-eye view of the country is given.

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CONTENTS

PREFACE
INTRODUCTION

PART I

THE EMPIRE IN OUTLINE

I. China Proper
II. A Journey Through the Provinces--Kwangtung and Kwangsi
III. Fukien
IV. Chehkiang
V. Kiangsu
VI. Shantung
VII. Chihli
VIII. Honan
IX. The River Provinces--Hupeh, Hunan, Anhwei, Kiangsi
X. Provinces of the Upper Yang-tse--Szechuen, Kweichau, Yunnan
XI. Northwestern Provinces--Shansi, Shensi, Kansuh
XII. Outlying Territories--Manchuria, Mongolia, Turkestan, Tibet

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PART II

HISTORY IN OUTLINE, FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES TO THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

XIII. Origin of the Chinese
XIV. The Mythical Period
XV. The Three Dynasties
XVI. House of Chou
XVII. The Sages of China
XVIII. The Warring States
XIX. House of Ts'in
XX. House of Han
XXI. The Three Kingdoms
XXII. The Tang Dynasty
XXIII. The Sung Dynasty
XXIV. The Yuen Dynasty
XXV. The Ming Dynasty
XXVI. The Ta-Ts'ing Dynasty

PART III

CHINA IN TRANSFORMATION

XXVII. The Opening of China, a Drama in Five Acts--God in
History--Prologue
ACT 1--The Opium War
(Note on the Tai-ping Rebellion)
ACT 2--The "Arrow" War
ACT 3--War with France
ACT 4--War with Japan
ACT 5--The Boxer War
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XXVIII. The Russo-Japanese War
XXIX. Reform in China
XXX. Viceroy Chang
XXXI. Anti-foreign Agitation
XXII. The Manchus, the Normans of China

APPENDIX

I. The Agency of Missionaries in the Diffusion of Secular
Knowledge in China
II. Unmentioned Reforms
III. A New Opium War

INDEX

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PART I

THE EMPIRE IN OUTLINE

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THE AWAKENING OF CHINA

CHAPTER I

CHINA PROPER

_Five Grand Divisions--Climate--Area and Population--The Eighteen
Provinces_

The empire consists of five grand divisions: China Proper, Manchuria,
Mongolia, Turkestan, and Tibet. In treating of this huge conglomerate
it will be most convenient to begin with the portion that gives
name and character to the whole.

Of China Proper it may be affirmed that the sun shines nowhere on
an equal area which combines so many of the conditions requisite
for the support of an opulent and prosperous people. Lying between
18 deg. and 49 deg. north latitude, her climate is alike exempt from the
fierce heat of the torrid zone and the killing cold of the frigid
regions. There is not one of her provinces in which wheat, rice,
and cotton, the three staples of food and clothing, may not be
cultivated with more or less success; but in the southern half
wheat gives place to rice, while in the north cotton yields to
silk and hemp. In the south cotton is king and rice is queen of
the fields.

Traversed in every direction by mountain ranges of moderate elevation
whose sides are cultivated in
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terraces to such a height as to present the appearance of hanging
gardens, China possesses fertile valleys in fair proportion, together
with vast plains that compare in extent with those of our American
prairie states. Furrowed by great rivers whose innumerable affluents
supply means of irrigation and transport, her barren tracts are
few and small.

A coast-line of three thousand miles indented with gulfs, bays,
and inlets affords countless harbours for shipping, so that few
countries can compare with her in facilities for ocean commerce.

As to her boundaries, on the east six of her eighteen provinces
bathe their feet in the waters of the Pacific; on the south she
clasps hands with Indo-China and with British Burma; and on the
west the foothills of the Himalayas form a bulwark more secure
than the wall that marks her boundary on the north. Greatest of
the works of man, the Great Wall serves at present no other purpose
than that of a mere geographical expression. Built to protect the
fertile fields of the "Flowery Land" from the incursions of northern
nomads, it may have been useful for some generations; but it can
hardly be pronounced an unqualified success, since China in whole
or in part has passed more than half of the twenty-two subsequent
centuries under the domination of Tartars.

With an area of about 1,500,000 square miles, or one-half that of
Europe, China has a busy population of about four hundred millions;
yet, so far from being exhausted, there can be no doubt that with
improved methods in agriculture, manufactures, mining, and
transportation, she might very
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easily sustain double the present number of her thrifty children.

Within this favoured domain the products of nature and of human industry
vie with each other in extent and variety. A bare enumeration would
read like a page of a gazetteer and possibly make no more impression
than a column of figures. To form an estimate of the marvellous
fecundity of the country and to realise its picturesqueness, one
ought to visit the provinces in succession and spend a year in
the exploration of each. If one is precluded from such leisurely
observation, undoubtedly the next best thing is to see them through
the eyes of those who have travelled in and have made a special
study of those regions.

To more than half of the provinces I can offer myself as a guide.
I spent ten years at Ningpo, and one year at Shanghai, both on the
southern seacoast. At the northern capital I spent forty years;
and I have recently passed three years at Wuchang on the banks
of the Yang-tse Kiang, a special coign of vantage for the study
of central China. While residing in the above-mentioned foci it
was my privilege to visit six other provinces (some of them more
than once), thus gaining a personal acquaintance with ten out of
the eighteen and being enabled to gather valuable information at
first hand.

A glance at the subjoined table (from the report of the China Inland
Mission for 1905) will exhibit the magnitude of the field of
investigation before us. The average province corresponds in extent
to the average state of the American Union; and the whole exceeds
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that portion of the United States which lies east of the Mississippi.

CHINA PROPER

---------------------------------------------
PROVINCES | AREA | POPULATION
| SQ. MILES |
-------------------|-----------|-------------
Kwangtung (Canton) | 99,970 | 31,865,000
Kwangsi | 77,200 | 5,142,000
Fukien | 46,320 | 22,876,000
Chehkiang | 36,670 | 11,580,000
Kiangsu | 38,600 | 13,980,000
Shantung | 55,970 | 38,248,000
Chihli | 115,800 | 20,937,000
Shansi | 81,830 | 12,200,000
Shensi | 75,270 | 8,450,000
Kansuh | 125,450 | 10,385,000
Honan | 67,940 | 35,316,000
Hupeh | 71,410 | 35,280,000
Hunan | 83,380 | 22,170,000
Nganhwei(Anhwei) | 54,810 | 23,670,000
Yuennan | 146,680 | 12,325,000
Szechuen | 218,480 | 68,725,000
Kiangsi | 69,480 | 26,532,000
Kweichau | 67,160 | 7,650,000
-------------------|-----------|-------------
Totals | 1,532,420 | 407,331,000

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CHAPTER II

A JOURNEY THROUGH THE PROVINCES--KWANGTUNG AND KWANGSI

_Hong Kong--A Trip to Canton--Macao--Scenes on Pearl River--Canton
Christian College--Passion for Gambling--A Typical City--A Chief
Source of Emigration_

Let us take an imaginary journey through the provinces and begin
at Hong Kong, where, in 1850, I began my actual experience of life
in China.

From the deck of the good ship _Lantao_, which had brought me
from Boston around the Cape in one hundred and thirty-four days,
I gazed with admiration on the Gibraltar of the Orient. Before me
was a land-locked harbour in which all the navies of the world
might ride in safety. Around me rose a noble chain of hills, their
slopes adorned with fine residences, their valleys a chessboard
of busy streets, with here and there a British battery perched
on a commanding rock.

Under Chinese rule Hong Kong had been an insignificant fishing
village, in fact a nest of pirates. In 1841 the island was ceded
by China to Great Britain, and the cession was confirmed by the
treaty of Nanking in August, 1842. The transformation effected in
less than a decade had been magical; yet that was only the bloom
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of babyhood, compared with the rich maturity of the, present day.

A daily steamer then sufficed for its trade with Canton; a weekly
packet connected it with Shanghai; and the bulk of its merchandise
was still carried in sailing ships or Chinese junks. How astounding
the progress that has marked the last half-century! The streets that
meandered, as it were, among the valleys, or fringed the water's
edge, now girdle the hills like rows of seats in a huge amphitheatre;
a railway lifts the passenger to the mountain top; and other railways
whirl him from hill to hill along the dizzy height. I Trade, too,
has multiplied twenty fold. In a commercial report for the year
ending June, 1905, it is stated that in amount of tonnage Hong
Kong has become the banner port of the world.

Though politically Hong Kong is not China, more than 212,000 of its
busy population (about 221,000) are Chinese; and it is preeminently
the gate of China. By a wise and liberal policy the British Government
has made it the chief emporium of the Eastern seas.

We now take a trip to Canton and cross a bay studded with islands.
These are clothed with copious verdure, but, like all others on the
China coast, lack the crowning beauty of trees. In passing we get
a glimpse of Macao, a pretty town under the flag of the Portuguese,
the pioneers of Eastern trade. The oldest foreign settlement in China,
it dates from 1544--not quite a half-century after the discovery
of the route to India, an achievement whose fourth centenary was
celebrated in 1898. If it could be ascertained on what
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day some adventurous argonaut pushed the quest of the Golden Fleece
to Farther India, as China was then designated, that exploit might
with equal appropriateness be commemorated also.

The city of Macao stands a monument of Lusitanian enterprise.
Beautifully situated on a projecting spur of an island, it is a
favourite summer resort of foreign residents in the metropolis.
It has a population of about 70,000, mostly Chinese, and contains
two tombs that make it sacred in my eyes; namely, that of Camoeens,
author of "The Lusiad" and poet of Gama's voyage, and that of Robert
Morrison, the pioneer of Protestant missions, the centennial of
whose arrival had in 1907 a brilliant celebration.

Entering the Pearl River, a fine stream 500 miles in length, whose
affluents spread like a fan over two provinces, we come to the
viceregal capital, as Canton deserves to be called, though the
viceroy actually resides in another city. The river is alive with
steamboats, large and small, mostly under the British flag; but
native craft of the old style have not yet been put to flight.
Propelled by sail or oar, the latter creep along the shore; and at
Pagoda Anchorage near the city they form a floating town in which
families are born and die without ever having a home on _terra
firma_.

Big-footed women are seen earning an honest living by plying the
oar, or swinging on the scull-beam with babies strapped on their
backs. One may notice also the so-called "flower-boats," embellished
like the palaces of water fairies. Moored in one locality, they
are a well-known resort of the vicious. In the fields are
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the tillers of the soil wading barefoot and bareheaded in mud and
water, holding plough or harrow drawn by an amphibious creature
called a carabao or water-buffalo, burying by hand in the mire
the roots of young rice plants, or applying as a fertiliser the
ordure and garbage of the city. Such unpoetic toils never could
have inspired the georgic muse of Vergil or Thomson.

The most picturesque structure that strikes the eye as one approaches
the city is a Christian college--showing how times have changed.
In 1850 the foreign quarter was in a suburb near one of the gates.
There I dined with Sir John Bowring at the British Consulate, having
a letter of introduction from his American cousin, Miss Maylin, a
gifted lady of Philadelphia. There, too, I lodged with Dr. Happer,
who by the tireless exertions of many years succeeded in laying
the foundations of that same Christian college. For him it is a
monument more lasting than brass; for China it is only one of many
lighthouses now rising at commanding points on the seacoast and
in the interior.

In passing the Fati, a recreation-ground near the city, a view
is obtained of the amusements of the rich and the profligate. We
see a multitude seated around a cockpit intent on a cock-fight; but
the cocks are quails, not barnyard fowls. Here, too, is a smaller
and more exclusive circle stooping over a pair of crickets engaged
in deadly combat. Insects of other sorts or pugnacious birds are
sometimes substituted; and it might be supposed that the people
must be warlike in their disposition, to enjoy such spectacles.
The fact is, they are fond of fighting by proxy. What attracts them
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most, however, is the chance of winning or losing a wager.

A more intellectual entertainment to be seen in many places is the
solving of historical enigmas. Some ancient celebrity is represented
by an animal in a rhyming couplet; and the man who detects the hero
under this disguise wins a considerable sum. Such is the native
passion for gambling that bets are even made on the result of the
metropolitan examinations, particularly on the province to which will
fall the honour of the first prize, that of the scholar-laureateship.

Officials in all parts and benevolent societies take advantage
of this passion for gambling in opening lotteries to raise funds
for worthy objects--a policy which is unwise if not immoral. It
should not be forgotten, however, that our own forefathers sometimes
had recourse to lotteries to build churches.

The foreign settlement now stands on Shamien, a pretty islet in
the river, in splendid contrast with the squalor of the native
streets. The city wall is not conspicuous, if indeed it is visible
beyond the houses of a crowded suburb. Yet one may be sure that it
is there; for every large town must have a wall for protection,
and the whole empire counts no fewer than 1,553 walled cities.
What an index to the insecurity resulting from an ill-regulated
police! The Chinese are surprised to hear that in all the United
States there is nothing which they would call a city, because the
American cities are destitute of walls.

Canton with its suburbs contains over two million people; it is
therefore the most populous city in the empire. In general the
houses are low, dark, and
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dirty, and the streets are for the most part too narrow for anything
broader than a sedan or a "rickshaw" (jinriksha). Yet in city and
suburbs the eye is dazzled by the richness of the shops, especially
of those dealing in silks and embroideries. In strong contrast with
this luxurious profusion may be seen crowds of beggars displaying
their loathsome sores at the doors of the rich in order to extort
thereby a penny from those who might not be disposed to give from
motives of charity. The narrow streets are thronged with coolies
in quality of beasts of burden, having their loads suspended from
each end of an elastic pole balanced on the shoulder, or carrying
their betters in sedan chairs, two bearers for a commoner, four
for a "swell," and six or eight for a magnate. High officials borne
in these luxurious vehicles are accompanied by lictors on horse or
foot. Bridegrooms and brides are allowed to pose for the nonce as
grandees; and the bridal chair, whose drapery blends the rainbow
and the butterfly, is heralded by a band of music, the blowing of
horns, and the clashing of cymbals. The block and jam thus occasioned
are such as no people except the patient Chinese would tolerate.
They bow to custom and smile at inconvenience. Of horse-cars or
carriages there are none except in new streets. Rickshaws and
wheelbarrows push their way in the narrowest alleys, and compete
with sedans for a share of the passenger traffic.

In those blue hills that hang like clouds on the verge of the horizon
and bear the poetical name of White Cloud, there are gardens that
combine in rich variety the fruits of both the torrid and the temperate
zones. Tea and silk are grown in many other
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parts of China; but here they are produced of a superior quality.

Enterprising and intelligent, the people of this province have
overflowed into the islands of the Pacific from Singapore to Honolulu.
Touching at Java in 1850, I found refreshments at the shop of a
Canton man who showed a manifest superiority to the natives of the
island. Is it not to be regretted that the Chinese are excluded
from the Philippines? Would not the future of that archipelago
be brighter if the shiftless native were replaced by the thrifty
Chinaman?

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