Living is very cheap in China, owing to the skill of the agricultural labourers and that of the artisans and mechanics. A whole family can cook its meals with one or two pounds of dried grass, which costs about a penny a pound. Fire-places are very little used, except in the more northern provinces; but warm clothing is worn when the climate makes it necessary. The dwellings have a low pitch, so that with the coal found in many of the provinces, with the prunings of the trees, and with the roots of the mountain shrubs, their inhabitants can cheaply procure the fuel necessary to warm themselves with.7
There is a great scarcity of forests in China, as the country has been entirely denuded to support its teeming population. Grazing fields are equally scarce, so that butcher’s meat, beef or mutton, is dear. The inhabitants however get along without it, thanks to the numerous streams, rivers, lakes, and canals which intersect China, and swarm with fish. Fishing does not take place in the streams of running water alone. Fish are caught in the rice fields, and even in the pools caused by the heavy rains, so rapid is the production of these animals.
125. – THE CUSTOM-HOUSE AT SHANGHAI.
A kind of fish exists in China which multiplies at such an astonishing rate, that it produces two broods in a month, this fish is consequently not more than a penny and the dearest tenpence a pound. All kinds of fisheries are carried on – net, rod, otter and cormorant fishing. It is thus that animal food for four hundred millions of inhabitants is provided.
Pigs, ducks, and chickens are also a great resource. Pork has become such a general article of food, that its cost is higher than that of beef, although the latter is much the scarcest.
The ducks are found in flocks of three or four thousand on the lakes and pieces of water. They are watched by children in a kind of small canoe. Sometimes the drakes bring the ducklings to the water, keeping guard over them from the bank, and recalling them when necessary with a sharp piercing cry which the young ones perfectly understand.
There is a large trade in ducks. They dry them by putting them between a couple of planks like plants; and they are sent in this guise to the most remote parts of the empire. Dogs of a particular breed, reared for the market in the southern provinces, are prepared in the same way, but only for the consumption of the very poorest classes. Goats and sheep are also rather largely made use of for food, but not to such an extent as pigs, ducks and chickens.
It may be seen therefore that the Chinese have learnt how to supply the place of the larger kind of butcher’s meat.
Vegetables however form the staple of their food. This explains how it is possible for four hundred millions of inhabitants to exist in a country whose acreage is not more than four or five times that of France. Chinese horticulture contains eighty different kinds of vegetables, and out of these eighty, at least twenty-five constitute a direct article of food for man. But the most precious of all is rice, and the Chinese spare no pains in perfecting its cultivation. In aid of this cultivation they have sacrificed their forests, dug immense lakes, and even pierced lofty mountains. For its sake they collect the water of both stream and river, and direct its course from the mountain’s foot over the soil they wish to irrigate. Perhaps no greater or more grandiose work exists in the whole world than the gigantic hydraulic system which, throughout the whole of China, from the west to the sea coast, directs the flow of its waters, and pours them over the fields of every tiller of its soil.
This great work was carried out four thousand years ago, but public gratitude has not forgotten its promoter. They still point out not far from Ning-po, the field where the little peasant used to work who after accomplishing his enterprise became the great emperor Yu. All the inhabitants of the canton where he was born are considered as his descendants or as those of his family, and are exempt from taxation; and the anniversary of his birth is celebrated every year in a special temple with as much zeal as if the benefits he has bestowed were things of yesterday.
The Chinese do their best not only for rice, but for every kind of produce, or to put it better, for the earth itself, the earth that brings it forth. Agriculture to the Chinese is more than a calling, it is almost a religion. The Chinaman repeats to himself these words of the old Persian law: “Be thou just to the plant, to the bull, and to the horse; nor be thou unmindful of the dog. The earth has a right to be sown; neglect it and it will curse thee, fertilize it and it will be grateful to thee. It says to him who tills it from the right to the left, and from the left to the right, may thy fields bring forth of all that is good to eat, and may thy countless villages abound with prosperity.” It adds again, “Labour and sow: the sower who sows with purity obeys the whole law.”
When the earth therefore does not produce abundant crops, the Chinese lay the blame on themselves. They purify themselves and fast. Confucius, besides, has said: “If you wish for good agriculture, be of pure morals.”8
The soil in China yields as much as ten thousand pounds of rice to every acre. Such a result says a great deal for their rural morals. While occupied in making the earth yield so plentifully, they have no time for evil thoughts or actions. A moralist has said, “There can be no cultivation without public order. Justice is begotten of the furrow. Ceres, who at Thebes and at Athens brought men together and made the laws, is the reflecting mind of men who till the soil.”9 How could Chinese agriculture be possible without a system of law, when for the success of its rice fields it is so dependent on water, which is so easily cut off, for the very essence of its fruitfulness. The uninterrupted distribution of its waters, in the midst of such an immense rural population, is a symptom of great honesty and fairness among the inhabitants of the Celestial Empire.
Thus we see that patience, gentleness, justice and benevolence are the predominant Chinese qualities. The Chinese have been often reproached with being atheists; but the devotion of labour, the purifications and the atonements to which they submit at the smallest warning from Heaven, free them from this reproach.
The Bonzes, the priests of the Buddhist faith, are treated by the Chinese with great respect. If this nation is not really a very religious one, at least it venerates and respects the ministers of religion.
Fig. 126 shows the usual dress of the Bonzes.
Education is widely spread in China; schools abound there. Chinese literature, without possessing very numerous works worthy of remembrance, has produced a good deal worthy of esteem.
The Theatre is a recreation much sought after by the people and by the educated classes.
P. Sellier, p.t
Imp. Dupuy, 22, R. des Petits Hôtels
G. Regamey, lith.
JAPANESE
CHINESE
YELLOW OR MONGOLIAN RACE
We will make a few extracts on these points from the travels of M. de Bourboulon, edited by M. Poussielgue, which we have already quoted: “Their Book of Rites,” says M. Poussielgue, “directs that the education of the child of wealthy parents shall commence from the hour even of its birth, and bids the mother take great precautions in choosing its nurses, whom it only tolerates. A child is weaned the moment it can lift its hand to its mouth. At six years of age the elementary principles of arithmetic and geography are taught him; at seven he is separated from his mother and sisters, and no longer allowed to take meals with them; at eight the usages of politeness are instilled into him; the following year he is taught the astrological calendar; at ten he is sent to a public school, where the master teaches him to read and write and to calculate; between the ages of thirteen and fifteen he receives music lessons and sings moral maxims instead of his hymns; at fifteen come gymnastics, the use of arms, and riding; finally at twenty years of age, if he is considered worthy of it, he receives the virile cap, and changes his cotton clothing for silk garments and furs; he is also generally married at this age.
126. – CHINESE BONZE.
“The Chinese schoolmasters (fig. 127) are rejected men of letters who have not succeeded in passing the examinations for civil employment. They make their scholars call out their lessons in a loud voice, and seem to have long since appreciated the value of the system of mutual instruction. They chastise culprits with their pigtails and with cat-o’-nine-tails, striking them heavy blows on the hands and on the back. Moral penalties are also inflicted; a writing fastened to his back holds up the idle schoolboy to public contempt. The poorest class of children are taught gratuitously in the schools.
“The importance attached by the Chinese to the writing, the reading, the grammar, and the thorough knowledge of their language, springs from its inherent difficulties.
“The ancient Chinese writing was ideographic, that is to say, it represented objects by drawn characters, similar to the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics, instead of being phonetic, that is, composed of signs corresponding with the sounds of the spoken language. Their primitive characters, two hundred and fourteen in number, were rough figures imperfectly representing material objects. Ideographical writing, the use of which by semi-barbarous peoples is easily explained, must be rather awkward for civilized men desiring to express abstract ideas. The Chinese have ingeniously modified their characters, so as to render them capable of satisfying the wants of their growing civilization. Anger was represented by a heart under a bond, a sign of slavery; friendship by two pearls exactly alike; history, by a hand holding the emblem of equity. As it was soon found that these ingenious figures were no longer sufficient, they were combined in an infinite number of ways; they were altered and multiplied to such an extent, that it takes all the science of an old man of letters to recognize the designs of the primitive writing in the present characters, which are more than forty thousand in number. It is in this way that their modern writing was gradually formed, an emblematic writing which does not correspond with the spoken language, the one solitary exception to the rule among all civilized nations.
“It is therefore easily to be understood that to read and write the Chinese language is a science exacting severe study from natives of the country, as well as from foreigners: besides, even its grammatical rules vary very much. There are three kinds of style: the ancient or sublime style, used in the old canonical books; the academical style, which is adopted for official and literary documents; and the common style.
127. – CHINESE SCHOOLMASTER.
“The Chinese attach much importance to an elegant handwriting, a clever calligrapher, or to use their own expression, a clever brush, is worthy of their admiration. Captain Bouvier and one of the interpreters of the French legation, were one day paying a visit to Tchong-louen, one of the leading officials of Peking; his son, a mandarin with the blue button, a young man of twenty-two, and already father of a child – that is to say of a son, for girls do not count for anything – was present in the reception-room. Tchong-louen, wishing to give an idea of his son’s precocious accomplishments to his visitors, sent for a large cartoon in which the youth had traced in splendid outlines, the word longevity, and showed it to them with as much pride as if it had been the certificate of some noble action or a literary work. The rooms of every house contain similar cartoons, hung upon their walls as we in Europe hang paintings.
“The appearance of Chinese writing is very odd; the characters are placed one under the other in vertical lines, and run from right to left; in a word, on this point as in many others, the Chinese proceed in a manner diametrically opposed to ours. The position in which the characters are placed is besides very important; for instance, the Emperor’s name must be written with two letters higher than the others, to omit this would be to commit treason. Everybody is familiar with Chinese or Indian ink. It is with this substance, diluted in water and used with a brush, that the Chinese trace the letters of their writing, holding their hands perpendicularly, instead of placing them horizontally, on the paper.
“Their spoken language is much less difficult; it is composed of monosyllables, the union of which, in an infinite number of ways, expresses every possible idea. I must not forget the accents which give a difference of tone and expression to the monosyllabic roots. The language of the south differs sufficiently from that of the north to prevent the natives from understanding one another without the assistance of the brush. Moreover, every province has its particular dialect.
“In spite of the difficulties presented by the reading and writing of the Chinese character, China is doubtless the land in which primary instruction is most widely spread. Schools are found even in the smallest hamlets whose rustics deprive themselves of some of their gains, in order to pay a schoolmaster. It is very seldom you meet with an entirely uneducated Chinese. The workmen and the peasants are capable of writing their own letters, reading the government bills and proclamations, and making notes of their daily business. Teaching in the primary schools has for its basis, the San-tse-king, a sacred book attributed to a disciple of Confucius, which sums up in a hundred and sixty-eight lines all acquired knowledge and science. This little encyclopædia, properly explained and commented on by the teacher, suffices to give Chinese children a taste for positive knowledge, and even to give them the desire of acquiring a wider education. There are also colleges in the large towns where the children of the men of letters and of the mandarins receive a complete education. Such among others is the Imperial College at Peking.
128. – CHINESE LOCOMOTION.
“The citizens of the Celestial Empire enjoy thorough liberty of the press, but at their own risk and peril. The government, which has no right to forbid any publication, revenges itself afterwards by inflicting the bastinado on the authors of the pamphlets and the virulent satires that daily appear attacking it. A great quantity of small portable printing-presses exists among private individuals who both use and abuse them. There is no country in the world where the walls are so thickly covered with bills and advertisements.
“The Chinese have practised the typographical art from time immemorial; but as their alphabet is composed of more than forty thousand letters, they could not make use of moveable type; they restricted themselves therefore to carving on a piece of hard board the characters they required, to wetting these characters with ink and to striking off a number of copies, by applying different sheets of paper to the board. Their binders, in opposition to ours, make these leaves up into a volume by fastening them together by their edges. A note in the preface generally mentions the place where the boards that printed the first edition of the work have been deposited.
“There are in Peking several daily papers, amongst others the Official Gazette, a government print, the subscription for which is a piastre quarterly. This print, published in pamphlet shape, is a rectangular publication containing a dozen pages, with a likeness of the philosopher Meng-tsen on the cover. It contains a summary of all public matters, and all leading events, the petitions and memorials addressed to the Emperor, his decrees, the edicts of the viceroys of the provinces, judicial ceremonies and letters of pardon, the custom-house tariffs, the court circular, the news of the day, fires, crimes, &c., and finally the incidents, fortunate or unfortunate, of the war against the rebel Tae-pings. It even acknowledges the Imperial defeats, a piece of frankness worthy of notice by the official organs of Europe and America.
“The Chinese have a traditional and quasi-religious respect for the preservation of all printed and written papers; they are carefully collected and burnt when read, so as to put them beyond the reach of profanation. It is even asserted that societies exist who pay porters to go from street to street with enormous baskets to pick up fragments. These new kind of rag-gatherers are paid for saving the waifs and strays of human thought.
“Art like literature has been carried to some extent in an utilitarian and manufacturing sense. But imaginative art, the ideally beautiful, is a thing a Chinese does not understand.
“While acknowledging the skill with which the Chinese have written on social economy, on philosophy, on history, and on all moral and political science based on experience and logic, we must note the scarcity of their purely literary works. It must not however, be concluded that China, unlike every civilized country, does not possess plenty of poets, novelists and dramatic authors; but their little esteemed and badly remunerated productions are ephemeral. To-day an ode, something appropriate to the moment, is written, it is recited or played in the midst of applause, and to-morrow nothing remains of it.
“Theatrical propensities are nevertheless very strongly developed among the Chinese, and the cause of this forgetfulness, this neglect is that they are ashamed of attaching too much importance to a futile amusement. The managers of the theatres are generally the authors of the pieces they represent, or at any rate they modify them according to the exigencies of the actors and the suitability of the costumes. There are no permanent or authorized theatres in Peking: the government only allows their temporary construction in the open spaces of the town for a limited period during public festivals. Theatrical representations, however, take place in many of the tea-houses, which are analogous to our music-halls, and in nearly all the dwellings of the wealthy, who, every time they hire a company of actors to celebrate a family anniversary, take care, with an eye to popularity, to allow the public free ingress into that part of their house reserved for the auditorium.”
“I have just been present,” relates M. Trèves, “at a theatrical representation given by the secretary of state Tchong-louen in the gardens of his palace in the Tartar town, in honour of the new year. The theatre was something like those constructed in Paris on the esplanade of the Invalides on the occasion of the Emperor’s fête: it was an ample quadrilateral building in the shape of a Greek temple, supported on either side by four columns painted in sky-blue, golden, and scarlet stripes, and with a proscenium covered with carvings and decorations. The stage, much wider than it was deep, was a wooden platform raised about six feet above the level of the rest of the building. An immense screen shuts off the back passages, where the actors dress themselves and get themselves up. There was no scenery, only two or three chairs and a carpet. The circular hall reserved for the audience, very large in proportion to the stage, was paved with white marble; it was not roofed in, and the only shelter for the spectators was the shade cast by the large trees of the garden (fig. 129).
“We took our places on a reserved platform, placed expressly for us in front of the stage; on either side were boxes with bamboo blinds whence the wives of our host and those of his guests looked on at the play: to prevent their being seen, they wore veils of silk net. The guests of lower rank were seated in the first row, on chairs grouped round small tables capable of accommodating four or five people. Behind them I could see a swarm of human heads; these were the public who crowded and pressed together to enjoy the spectacle for which they were indebted to the munificence of the illustrious Tchong-louen. At Peking as in Paris, the common people willingly undergo for the sake of amusement the fatigue of standing, without any means of resting themselves, for hours together. A few indulgent fathers had two or three children perched upon their backs, and upon their shoulders, but I could not see a single woman.
“At a signal given from our dais, the orchestra, placed at one wing of the stage, and consisting of two flutes, a drum and a harp, began a charivari which took the place of an overture; then the screen opened, and the actors all appeared in their ordinary dress, and after bowing so deeply that their foreheads touched the ground, their leader advanced to the edge of the stage and commenced a pompous recital of the dramas they were going to perform.”
Here the writer gives a description of the pieces represented, which were kinds of allegories and historical pageants. Besides these regular theatrical representations, there are in Peking many acrobatic troops, male and female rope-dancers, and itinerant circuses.
129. – A CHINESE PLAY.
Marionettes, absolutely identical with those in Europe, are seen in China. Which nation is their inventor? The name by which they have passed from time immemorial in France, ombres chinoises, seems to prove that their origin is Chinese. Hidden by ample drapery of blue cotton stuff, the man who moves the puppets stands on a stool. A case representing a little stage is placed on his shoulders and rises above his head, while his hands work without revealing the mechanical means he uses to impart the movements of players to these tiny automatons.
We will end our account of the Chinese with a glance at their administration of justice and their judicial forms. We again quote from M. Poussielgue:
“There is a direct relation in China between the penal judicial code and family organization. If the Emperor is the father and the mother of his subjects, the magistrates who represent him are also the father and mother of those they rule over. Every outrage against the law is an outrage upon the family. Impiety, one of the greatest crimes foreseen and punished by the law, is really nothing but a want of respect for parents. This is how the penal code defines impiety. ‘He is impious who insults his nearest relations, or he who brings an action against them, or who does not go into mourning for them, or who does not venerate their memory, or he who is wanting in the attention due to those to whom he owes his existence, by whom he has been educated, or by whom he has been protected and assisted.’ The punishments incurred for the crime of impiety are terrible; we intend to speak of them later.
“In thus carrying the feeling of what is due to family ties into the region of politics, the Chinese legislators have created a governmental machinery of prodigious power, which has lasted for thirty centuries, and which, neither the numerous revolutions and dynastic changes, neither the antagonism of the northern and southern races, neither the immense territorial extent of the empire, neither religious scepticism, nor finally the selfish creed of materialism developed to excess by a decayed and stationary civilization, have been able to destroy, or even seriously to disturb.
130. – A CHINESE JUNK.
“Amongst the supreme courts that sit at Peking, is the Court of Appeal or Cassation (Ta-li-sse). Next to it come the assizes held in the chief towns of each province, and presided over by a special magistrate bearing the title of Commissary of the Court of Offences. A second magistrate of inferior rank exercises the duties of public accuser at these assizes. In towns of second and third importance inferior tribunals exist which have but one judge, the mandarin or the sub-prefect of the department. The punishments that can be awarded by the latter are limited; when the crime deserves a greater chastisement, the prisoner is sent to the assizes held in the chief town of his province: if this tribunal sentences him to death, the proceedings must be sent to the Court of Appeal at Peking, where a final decision is pronounced at the autumn sittings. Thus no provincial tribunal has the power of sentencing a prisoner to death; although in special cases, such as an armed insurrection, a governor can be invested with extreme power, similar to that conferred in Europe by martial law. Finally there are in every part of the empire, courts of information where the sub-prefect, in the course of his quarterly circuit, has to hear what is taking place, decide differences, and deliver moral lectures to the public; but this excellent institution has fallen into disuse in consequence of the relaxation of governmental authority and the carelessness of the mandarins.
“The result of this judicial organization is that the sub-prefect is invested with the entire correctional power within the limits of his civil jurisdiction, a very faulty state of things, which has been the cause of enormous abuses.
“There are no advocates in China, and, as has been seen, very few judges. Consequently the mode of administering justice is very summary, and the guarantees enjoyed by a prisoner amount to nothing. His friends or relations can, it is true, plead in his favour, but it is of no use, unless it happens to suit the mandarin at the head of the tribunal. As for the witnesses, they are liable to be flogged with a rattan, accordingly as their evidence is agreeable or not. Generally speaking, the long-winded witnesses are the most disagreeable to the mandarin who has a mass of matters to settle, and whose time does not allow him to enter into petty details. In point of fact the prisoner’s acquittal or condemnation depends upon the subaltern officers of the court, who prepare the proceedings in a manner favourable to the prisoners or the reverse, accordingly as they have received more or less money from his friends.
“If there is something to be praised in Chinese jurisprudence, the way in which the punishments are carried out is on the contrary shocking. Man is considered as a being sensitive only to physical agony and to death; Chinese legislators have not sought to restrain him by his honour, by his pride in himself, nor even by his self interest. The penal code consists mainly of the bastinado, inflicted with a thick bamboo cane, with the thick end or the thin one, and consisting of from ten up to two hundred blows, as the crime is trifling or serious, or as the object stolen is of little or of great value. The bastinado is given immediately in presence of the tribunal. The most common punishments, are, after the bastinado, the cangue, the pillory, imprisonment and perpetual exile into Tartary for mandarins who have committed political offences. We have mentioned that the High Court of Appeal alone can decide on a death sentence; but the sufferings inflicted by the orders of the inferior tribunals are so horrible, the executioners are so ingenious in varying the tortures without causing death, the management of the prisons is so hateful, and finally a man sentenced to the cangue, the pillory, or the cage is exposed to such horrible anguish, that when the death-warrant arrives from Peking, the unfortunate wretch goes cheerfully to the scaffold, as if his last day were really the day of his deliverance.
131. – CHINESE BEGGARS.
“Capital punishment, horribly varied in bygone days, is now only inflicted in three ways; strangulation, decapitation, and the slow death by stabbing.
“Strangulation is effected by means of a silken cord that two executioners pull at each end, or by an iron collar tightened by a screw, very much like the garote at present used in Spain. Strangulation by the silken cord, is reserved for the princes of the Imperial family; the iron collar is used to destroy, in the silence of the prison, those whose death it is desired to conceal.
“In public, the only mode of execution is decapitation, applied to all vulgar crimes. The preparations for this mode of death are very simple, and its action very rapid, owing to the temper and weight of the swords, and the skill of those who wield them. The guillotine never attained the lightning-like rapidity of the satellites of the dreaded Yeh, the viceroy from whom the Anglo-French delivered the province of Canton; they could strike off a hundred heads in a few moments. Their master used to boast that their skill was derived from a hundred thousand subjects of experiment he had furnished them with in less than two years.
“The slow death of stabbing is inflicted for the crimes of treason, parricide, and incest. The preparation for this mode of punishment must double the miseries of the condemned convict. Securely tied to a post, his feet and hands fastened with ropes, his head is placed in a kind of pillory, while the magistrate delegated to witness the execution of the sentence, draws from a covered basket a knife, on the handle of which is written the part of the body in which it is to be inserted. This horrible torture is continued until chance selects the heart, or some other vital part. We hasten to add, that generally the convict’s friends purchase the connivance of the magistrate, who takes care to draw at the very first venture, the knife intended for the mortal blow.
“It is little wonder that the Chinese accustomed to such penalties, and to the hideous and frequent spectacles they afford, should early become inured to the idea of death, and that even their women and children should possess in the highest degree the passive courage which enables them to meet it with calmness. For many of these poor people, death is only the welcome termination of a miserable and painful existence.
“I had the curiosity to be present at one of the last sittings of the Court, and at my request a place was reserved for me, where I could see without being seen.