I.
INTERCOURSE WITH CHINA BY LAND
Of the nature of that intercourse in its earlier period, there exists a monument that speaks volumes. That is no other than the Great Wall; which, hugest of the works of man, stretches along the northern frontier of China proper for one thousand five hundred miles from the sea to the desert of Gobi. Erected 255 B.C. it shows that even at that early date the enemies most dreaded by the Chinese were on the north. Yet how signally it failed to effect its purpose! For since that epoch the provinces of Northern China have passed no fewer than seven centuries under Tartar sway. Two Tartar dynasties have succeeded in subjugating the whole empire, and they have transmitted beyond the seas a reputation which quite eclipses the fame of China's ancient sovereigns.
In fact, that which first made China known to the western world was its conquest by the Mongols in the thirteenth century. Barbarous nomads, with longing eyes forever directed to the sunny plains of the south, they also conquered India, bringing under their sceptre the two richest regions of the globe. Of Genghis and Kubla, it may be asserted that they realized a more extended dominion than Alexander, Caesar, or Napoleon ever dreamed of. But
"Extended empire, like expanded gold,
Exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor."
Their tenure of China was of short duration,–less than a century. In India, however, their successors, the great Moguls, continued to maintain a semblance of sovereignty even down to our own times, when they were wiped from the blackboard for having taken part in the Sepoy mutiny.
Liberal beyond precedent, Kubla Khan encouraged the establishment of a Christian bishopric, in which John de Monte Corvino was the first representative of the Holy See. He also welcomed those adventurous Italians, the Polos, and sought to make use of them to open communication with Europe. Yet we cannot forbear to express a doubt, whether, aside from the Christian religion, Europe in that age had much in the way of civilization to impart to China.
Three of the native dynasties, which preceded the Mongol conquest, made themselves famous by advancing the interests of civilization. The house of Han (B.C. 202-A.D. 221) restored the sacred books, which the builder of the Great Wall had destroyed in order to obliterate all traces of feudalism and make the people submit to a centralized government. Even down to the present day, the Chinese are proud to describe themselves as "sons of Han." The house of Tang, A.D. 618-908, is noted above all for the literary style of its prose-writers and the genius of its poets. In South China the people are fond of calling themselves "sons of Tang." The house of Sung, A.D. 970-1127, shows a galaxy of philosophers and scholars, whose expositions and speculations are accepted as the standard of orthodoxy. More acute reasoners it would be difficult to find in any country; and in the line of erudition they have never been surpassed.
It is reported that in 643 the Emperor Theodosius sent an envoy to China with presents of rubies and emeralds. Nestorian missionaries also presented themselves at court. The Emperor received them with respect, heard them recite the articles of their creed, and ordered a temple to be erected for them at his capital. This was in the palmy period of the Tangs, when the frontiers of the Empire had been pushed to the borders of the Caspian Sea.
If China in part or in whole was sometimes conquered by Tartars, it is only fair to state that the greatest of the native sovereigns more than once reduced the extramural Tartars to subjection. Between the two races there existed an almost unceasing conflict, which had the effect of civilizing the one and of preventing the other from lapsing into lethargy.
About B.C. 100, Su Wu, one of China's famous diplomatists, was sent on an embassy to the Grand Khan of Tartary. An ode, which he addressed to his wife on the eve of his perilous expedition, speaks alike for the domestic affections of the Chinese and for their ancient literary culture.
"Twin trees whose boughs together twine,
Two birds that guard one nest,
We'll soon be far asunder torn
As sunrise from the west.
"Hearts knit in childhood's innocence,
Long bound in Hymen's ties,
One goes to distant battlefields,
One sits at home and sighs.
"Like carrier dove, though seas divide,
I'll seek my lonely mate;
But if afar I find a grave,
You'll mourn my hapless fate.
"To us the future's all unknown;
In memory seek relief.
Come, touch the chords you know so well,
And let them soothe our grief."
II.
INTERCOURSE BY SEA
In 1388 the Mongols were expelled. The Christian bishopric was swept away, and left no trace; but a book of the younger Polo, describing the wealth of China, gave rise to marvellous results. Together with the magnetic needle, which originated in China, it led to centuries of effort to open a way by sea to that far-off fairyland. It was from Marco Polo that Columbus derived his inspiration to seek a short road to the far East by steering to the West,–finding a new world athwart his pathway. It was the same needle, if not the same book, that impelled Vasco da Gama to push his way across the Indian Ocean, after the Cape of Good Hope had been doubled by Bartholomew Diaz. A century later the same book led Henry Hudson to search for some inlet or strait that might open a way to China, when, instead of it, he discovered the port of New York.
The mariner's compass, which wrought this revolution on the map of the world, is only one of many discoveries made by the ancient Chinese, which, unfruitful in their native land, have, after a change of climate, transformed the face of the globe.
The polarity of the loadstone was observed in China over a thousand years before the Christian era. One of their emperors, it is said, provided certain foreign ambassadors with "south-pointing chariots," so that they might not go astray on their way home. To this day the magnetic needle in China continues to be called by a name which means that it points to the south. It heads a long list of contraries in the notions of the Chinese as compared with our own, such, for example, as beginning to read at the back of a book; placing the seat of honor on the left hand; keeping to the left in passing on the street, with many others, so numerous as to suggest that the same law that placed their feet opposite to ours must have turned their heads the other way. To the Chinese the "south-pointing needle" continued to be a mere plaything to be seen every day in the sedan chair of a mandarin, or in wheeled vehicles. If employed on the water, it was only used in coasting voyages.
So with gunpowder, of which the Arabs were transmitters, not inventors. In other lands it revolutionized the art of war, clothing their people with irresistible might, while in its native home it remained undeveloped and served chiefly for fireworks. Have we not seen, even in this our day, the rank and file of the Chinese army equipped with bows and arrows? The few who were provided with firearms, for want of gunlocks, had to set them off by a slow-match of burning tow; and cannon, meant to guard the mouth of the Peiho, were trained on the channel and fixed on immovable frames.
The art of printing was known in China five centuries before it made its way to Europe. The Confucian classics having been engraved on stone to secure them from being again burned up, as they had been by the builder of the great wall, the rubbings taken from those stones were printing. It required nothing but the substitution of wood for stone and of relievo for intaglio to give that art the form it now has. The smallest scrap of printed paper in the lining of a tea chest, or wrapped about a roll of silk, would suffice to suggest the whole art to a mind like that of Gutenberg. In China it never emerged from the state of wood engraving. The "Peking Gazette," the oldest newspaper in the world, is printed on divisible types, but they are of wood, not metal, more than one attempt to introduce metallic types having proved unsuccessful, for the want of that happy alloy known as type-metal. It is from us that they have learned the art of casting type, especially that splendid achievement, the making of stereotype plates, and, later, electrotype plates, by the aid of electricity and acid solutions. Chemistry, from which this beautiful art takes its rise, carries us back to China, for it was there that alchemy had its birth, as I have elsewhere shown.4
Man's first desire is long life; his second, to be rich. The Taoist philosophy commenced with the former before the Christian era, but it was not long in finding its way to the latter. A powerful impulse was thus given to research in the three departments of science,–chemistry, botany, and geography. As in the case of gunpowder, the Arabs transmitted these discoveries to the West, and along with them the Chinese doctrine as to the twofold objects of alchemic studies,–the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone.
From this double root sprang the chemistry of the West, which in no mean sense has fulfilled its promise by prolonging life and enriching mankind. In all these the West has performed the part of a nursing mother, but she has brought the nursling back full grown, and prepared to repay its obligation to its true parent by effective service.
Portuguese merchants made their way to Canton early in the sixteenth century, but it was not till the latter part of the century that Catholic missionaries entered on their grand crusade. In 1601 the Jesuit pioneer Matteo Ricci and his associates, impelled by religion and armed with science, presented themselves at the court of Peking. The Chinese had been able to reckon the length of the year with remarkable accuracy two thousand years before the time of Christ, but their science had made no headway. The missionaries found their calendar in a state of confusion, vanquished the native astronomers in fair competition, and were formally installed as keepers of the Imperial Observatory; and these missionaries supervised the casting of the bronze instruments which have since been taken to Berlin.
This honor they retained even after the fall of the native dynasty that patronized them. When the Manchus effected their conquest in 1644, not only were the Jesuit missionaries left in charge of the observatory, but the heir apparent was placed under their instruction. Coming to the throne in 1662, under the now illustrious title of Kanghi, the young prince showed himself a generous patron as he had previously been a respectful pupil. He was apparently not averse to the idea of his people's adopting Christianity as their national religion, and allowed the missionaries a free hand to plant churches throughout the vast interior. Rarely if ever has so fine an opportunity offered for making an easy conquest of a pagan empire. It was lost through the jealousy of contending societies, and especially through the blunder of an infallible Pope. The Dominicans denounced the Jesuits for tolerating the practice of pagan rites, such as the worship of ancestors, and for employing for God the name of a pagan deity. The name which they then objected to was Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler, a venerable designation for the Supreme Power found in the earliest of the Chinese canonical books, and at this day accepted by a large proportion of Protestant missionaries.
The question as to its fitness was referred to the Emperor, who decided in favor of the Jesuits. It was then brought before the Papal See, condemned as idolatrous, and Tien Chu, the Lord of Heaven, adopted in its stead. That Shang-ti, however pure in origin, had come to be applied to a whole class of deities was perfectly true, but the name proposed in its stead was not free from a taint of idolatry,–Tien Chu, Lord of Heaven, being one of eight divinities, and worshipped along with Ti Chu, Lord of Earth, Hai Chu, Lord of the Sea, etc.
The manner in which his opinions had been set aside by the Pope had no doubt a repelling influence on the mind of the Emperor, so that if he had ever felt inclined to embrace Christianity, he drew back in his later years. Not only so, but he left behind him a series of Maxims in which he censures the foreign creed and warns his people against it. These Maxims were ordered to be read in public by mandarins, and they continue to be recited and expounded as a sort of religious ritual. Is it surprising that this lost opportunity was followed by a century and a half of open persecution? That most of the churches survived, not only attests the zeal with which the Faith had been propagated, it throws a pleasing light on the force of the Chinese character. At the dawn of our new epoch, there were still some half a million converts,–with here and there a foreign Father hiding in their midst.
In bringing about this change of policy there was indeed another influence at work. Had not the Emperor of China heard some rumors of what was going on in the dominion of his cousin, the Great Mogul–how the French were dispossessing the Portuguese; and how the English later on succeeded in expelling the French? How could they doubt that a large community of native Christians would act as an auxiliary to any foreign invader? A suspicion of this kind had in fact sprung up under the preceding dynasty. In consequence of it not a single seaport except Macao was opened to foreign trade; and when foreigners went to Canton, they were lodged in a suburb and not allowed to penetrate within the walls of the provincial capital. Such misgivings as to the designs of foreigners we find strikingly expressed in a book of that period called "Strange Stories of an Idle Student."
One story is as follows: When Red-Haired Barbarians first appeared on our coast they were not allowed to come ashore. They begged, however, to be permitted to spread a carpet on which to dry their goods, and this being granted, they took the carpet by its corners and stretched it so that it covered several acres. On this, they debarked in great force and, drawing their swords, took possession of the surrounding country.
III.
THE OPIUM WAR
The first great event that woke China from her dream of solitary grandeur was the war with England, which broke out in 1839 and was closed three years later by the Treaty of Nanking. It was not, however, all that was needed to effect that object. It made the giant rub her eyes and give a reluctant assent to terms imposed by superior force. But many a rude lesson was still required before she came to perceive her true position, as on the lower side of an inclined plane. To bring her to this discovery four more foreign wars were to follow before the end of the century, culminating in a siege in Peking and massacres throughout the northern provinces which may be looked on as the fifth act in a long and bloody tragedy.
In the last three wars Li Hung Chang was a prominent actor. In the first two he took no part. Yet was it the shock which they gave to the empire that drove him from a life of literary seclusion to do battle in a more public arena.
The Opium War of 1839 is not improperly so designated, but nothing is more erroneous than to infer that it was waged by England for the purpose of forcing the product of her Indian poppy fields on the markets of China. Opium was the occasion, not the cause. The cause, if we are to put it in a single word, was the overbearing arrogance of an Oriental despotism, which refused to recognize any equal in the family of nations.
In the Straits settlements and in the seaports of India, Chinese merchants had been brought under sway of the bewitching narcotic. It found its way to their southern seaports, and without being recognized as an article of commerce, the trade expanded with startling rapidity. The Emperor, Tao Kwang, one of the most humane of rulers, resolved to take measures for the suppression of the vice. He had come to the throne in 1820; and there is a story that he was moved to action by the untimely fate of his eldest son, who had fallen a victim to the seductive poison.
Commissioner Lin, whom he selected to carry out his prohibitory policy, was a fit instrument for such a master, equally virtuous in his aims and equally tyrannical in his mode of proceeding. Arriving at Canton, his first object was to get possession of the forbidden drug, which was stored on ships outside the harbor. This he thought to accomplish by surrounding the whole foreign community by soldiers and threatening them with death if the opium was not promptly surrendered. While its owners or their agents hesitated, Captain Elliot, the British Superintendent of Trade, came up from Macao, and demanded to share the duress of his nationals. He then called on them to deliver up the drug to him to be used in the service of the Queen for the ransom of the lives of her subjects, assuring them that they would be reimbursed from the public treasury. No fewer than twenty-one thousand chests, valued at nine million dollars, were brought in from the opium ships and formally handed over to Commissioner Lin. The foreign community was set free, and the drug destroyed by being mixed with quicklime.
War was made to punish this outrage on the rights of the foreign community, and to exact indemnity for the seizure of their property. Canton was not captured, but held to ransom, and the haughty Viceroy sent into exile. Other cities were taken and held; and, in 1842, a treaty of peace was signed at Nanking by which five ports were opened to foreign trade. The embargo on opium was not withdrawn; but the defeat of the Chinese resulted in a virtual immunity from seizure together with a growth of the traffic, such as to justify the ill-odored name which that war still bears in history.
Treaties with other powers followed in quick succession. On demand of the French Minister, the Emperor recalled his prohibitory decrees against Christianity and issued an Edict of Toleration. If the opening of the ports gave a stimulus to trade, the decree of toleration opened a door for missionary enterprise. As yet, however, neither merchant nor missionary was allowed to penetrate into the interior; while the capital and the whole of the northern seacoast remained inaccessible. This was obviously a state of things that could not be permanent; yet fifteen years were to pass before another war came to settle the terms of intercourse on a broader basis.
When the war broke out, Li Hung Chang was seventeen years of age, living at Hofei in Anhui. As there were then no newspapers in China it may be doubted whether he heard of it until a British squadron sailed up to Nanking and extorted a treaty at the cannon's mouth. Li was rudely startled by the appearance of a new force, to which there was no allusion in any of his ancient books. Along with the sailing-ships there were two or three small steamers. It struck the Chinese with astonishment to see them make head against wind and tide. Shin Chuan, "ships of the gods," is the name they gave those mysterious vessels. Little could Li foresee the part he was destined to take in creating a steam navy for China.
Descended from a long line of scholars, he was supposed to be born to the pursuit of letters. He did, in fact, devote himself to study with unflagging zeal, because he had as yet no temptation to turn aside. Was there not, moreover, an open door before his face inviting him to win for himself the honors of a mandarinate? In his native town he placed his foot on the first step of the ladder by gaining the degree of A.B., or, in Chinese, "Budding Genius." At the provincial capital he next carried off the laurel of the second degree, which is worth more than our A.M., not merely because it is not conferred in course, but because it falls to the lot of only one in a hundred among some thousands of competitors. These provincial tournaments occur but once in three years; and the successful candidates proceed to Peking to compete for the third degree, or D.C.L.,–Tsin-shi, or, "Fit for Office." Here the chances amount to three per cent.
Li's fortunes were again propitious, and in company with two or three hundred new-made doctors, he was summoned to the palace to contend in presence of the emperor for the honor of a seat in the Imperial Academy,–the Hanlin, or "Forest of Pencils." Here also he met with success, but he was not among the first three whose names are marked by the vermilion pen of majesty, each of whom sheds lustre on his native province. The highest of the three is called Chuang Yuen, "Head of the List" or "Prince of Letters." In the 'fifties it fell to a native of Ningpo, where I then lived. His good luck was announced to his wife by the magistrate in person, who conducted her to the six gates, at each of which she scattered a handful of rice, as an omen of good fortune. In the 'sixties, when I had removed to Peking, this honor was for the first time conferred on a Manchu, a son of the General Saishanga. His daughter was deemed a fit consort for the heir to the throne, wearing for a short time the tiara of empress, and committing suicide on the death of her lord.
In the two previous contests, handwriting goes for nothing, but in this it is not without weight, as the avowed object is to select scribes for the service of the throne. On those occasions extent of erudition and originality of thought are the qualities most esteemed; but this time the order of merit is decided by superficial elegance of style, and by facility in the composition of verse.
However defective the standard of learning, this long course of competition, extending over ten or fifteen years, has the effect of bringing before the throne a body of men each of whom is the survivor of a hundred contests. No country can boast a better system for the selection of talent, and the government guards it with jealous care. I have known more than one examiner put to death for tampering with this ballot-box of the Empire. For ages it has provided the state with able officers; nor is its least merit that of converting a dangerous demagogue into a quiet student.
While waiting for an appointment, Li heard with dismay that Nanking had been taken by a body of rebels, and that his native province was in danger of being overrun by them. A new career opened before him,–one that led more directly to the highest offices within the gift of the sovereign. Asking a commission in the army, he was assigned to a position on the staff of Tsengkofan, father of the Marquis Tseng, who was afterwards Minister to England.
This rebellion, among the strangest of strange things, now claims our attention.