Historic China, and other sketches , livre ebook

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pubOne.info present you this new edition. The following Sketches owe their existence chiefly to frequent peregrinations in Chinese cities, with pencil and note-book in hand. Some of them were written for my friend Mr. F. H. Balfour of Shanghai, and by him published in the columns of the Celestial Empire. These have been revised and partly re-written; others appear now for the first time.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	06 novembre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819937883
Langue	English

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CHINESE SKETCHES
by Herbert A. Giles
“The institutions of a despised people cannot bejudged with fairness.”
Spencer's Sociology: The Bias ofPatriotism.
DEDICATION
To Warren William de la Rue,
“As a mark of friendship. ”
PREFACE
The following Sketches owe their existencechiefly to frequent peregrinations in Chinese cities, with penciland note-book in hand. Some of them were written for my friend Mr.F. H. Balfour of Shanghai, and by him published in the columns ofthe Celestial Empire . These have been revised and partlyre-written; others appear now for the first time.
It seems to be generally believed that the Chinese,as a nation, are an immoral, degraded race; that they are utterlydishonest, cruel, and in every way depraved; that opium, a moreterrible scourge than gin, is now working frightful ravages intheir midst; and that only the forcible diffusion of Christianitycan save the Empire from speedy and overwhelming ruin. Anexperience of eight years has taught me that, with all theirfaults, the Chinese are a hardworking, sober, and happy people,occupying an intermediate place between the wealth and culture, thevice and misery of the West.
H. A. G. Sutton, Surrey, 1st November 1875.
CHINESE SKETCHES
THE DEATH OF AN EMPEROR
His Imperial Majesty, Tsai-Shun, deputed by Heavento reign over all within the four seas, expired on the evening ofTuesday the 13th January 1875, aged eighteen years and nine months.He was erroneously known to foreigners as the Emperor T'ung Chih;but T'ung Chih was merely the style of his reign, adopted in orderthat the people should not profane by vulgar utterance a name theyare not even permitted to write. [*] Until the newmonarch, the late Emperor's cousin, had been duly installed, noword of what had taken place was breathed beyond the walls of thepalace; for dangerous thoughts might have arisen had it been knownthat the State was drifting rudderless, a prey to the wild waves ofsedition and lawless outbreak. The accession of a child to reignunder the style of Kuang Hsu was proclaimed before it was publiclymade known that his predecessor had passed away.
[*] Either one or all of thecharacters composing an emperor's name
are altered by the addition or omission of certaincomponent
parts; as if, for instance, we were to write anAlb a rt chain
merely because Alb e rt is the name of theheir-apparent.
Similarly, a child will never utter or write itsfather's name;
and the names of Confucius and Mencius are forbiddento all alike.
Of the personal history of the ill-fated boy who hasthus been prematurely cut off just as he was entering upon manhoodand the actual government of four hundred million souls, we knownext to nothing. His accession as an infant to the dignities of asensual, dissipated father, attracted but little attention eitherin China or elsewhere; and from that date up to the year 1872, allwe heard about His Majesty was, that he was making good progress inManchu, or had hit the target three times out of ten shots at adistance of about twenty-five yards. He was taught to ride onhorseback, though up to the day of his death he never took part inany great hunting expeditions, such as were frequently indulged inby earlier emperors of the present dynasty. He learnt to read andwrite Chinese, though what progress he had made in the study of theClassics was of course only known to his teachers. Painting may ormay not have been an Imperial hobby; but it is quite certain thatthe drama received more perhaps than its full share of patronage.The ladies and eunuchs of the palace are notoriously fond ofwhiling away much of their monotonous existence in watching thegrave antics of professional tragedians and laughing at the broadjokes of the low-comedy man, with his comic voice andfunnily-painted face. Listening to the tunes prescribed by the Bookof Ceremonies, and dining in solemn solitary grandeur off theeight [*] precious kinds of food set apart for thesovereign, his late Majesty passed his boyhood, until in 1872 hemarried the fair A-lu-te, and practically ascended the dragonthrone of his ancestors. Up to that time the Empresses-Dowager,hidden behind a bamboo screen, had transacted business with themembers of the Privy Council, signing all documents of State withthe vermilion pencil for and on behalf of the young Emperor, butprobably without even going through the formality of asking hisassent. The marriage of the Emperor of China seemed to wake peopleup from their normal apathy, so that for a few months European eyeswere actually directed towards the Flowery Land, and the Illustrated London News , with praiseworthy zeal, sent out aspecial correspondent, whose valuable contributions to that journalwill be a record for ever. The ceremony, however, was hardly overbefore a bitter drop rose in the Imperial cup. Barbarians frombeyond the sea came forward to claim the right of personalinterview with the sovereign of all under Heaven. The story of thefirst audience is still fresh in our memories; the trivialdifficulties introduced by obstructive statesmen at every stage ofthe proceedings, questions of etiquette and precedence raised atevery turn, until finally the kotow was triumphantlyrejected and five bows substituted in its stead. Every one saw thecurt paragraph in the Peking Gazette , which notified that onsuch a day and at such an hour the foreign envoys had been admittedto an interview with the Emperor. We all laughed over the sillystory so sedulously spread by the Chinese to every corner of theEmpire, that our Minister's knees had knocked together from terrorwhen Phaeton-like he had obtained his dangerous request; that hefell down flat in the very presence, breaking all over into aprofuse perspiration, and that the haughty prince who had acted ashis conductor chid him for his want of course, bestowing upon himthe contemptuous nickname of “chicken-feather. ”
[*] These are— bears' paws, deers'tail, ducks' tongues, torpedos'
roe, camels' humps, monkeys' lips, carps' tails, andbeef-marrow.
Subsequently, in the spring of 1874, the lateEmperor made his great pilgrimage to worship at the tombs of hisancestors. He had previous to his marriage performed this filialduty once, but the mausoleum containing his father's bones was notthen completed, and the whole thing was conducted in a private,unostentatious manner. But on the last occasion great preparationswere made and vast sums spent (on paper), that nothing might bewanting to render the spectacle as imposing as money could make it.Royalty was to be seen humbly performing the same hallowed riteswhich are demanded of every child, and which can under nocircumstances be delegated to any other person as long as there isa son or a daughter living. The route along which His Majesty wasto proceed was lined with closely-packed crowds of loyal subjects,eager to set eyes for once in their lives upon a being they aretaught to regard as the incarnation of divinity; and when theSacred Person really burst upon their view, the excitement wasbeyond description. Young and old, women and children, fellsimultaneously upon their knees, and tears and sobs mingled withthe blessings showered upon His Majesty by thousands of hissimple-minded, affectionate people.
The next epoch in the life of this youthful monarchoccurred a few months ago. The Son of Heaven [*] hadnot availed himself of western science to secure immunity from themost loathsome in the long category of diseases. He had not beenvaccinated, in spite of the known prevalence of smallpox at Pekingduring the winter season. True, it is but a mild form of smallpoxthat is there common; but it is easy to imagine what a powerlessvictim was found in the person of a young prince enervated byperpetual cooping in the heart of a city, rarely permitted to leavethe palace, and then only in a sedan-chair, called out of his bedat three o'clock every morning summer or winter, to transactbusiness that must have had few charms for a boy, and possessed ofno other means of amusement than such as he could derive from thesociety of his wife or concubines. Occasional bulletins announcedthat the disease was progressing favourably, and latterly it wassignified that His Majesty was rapidly approaching a state ofconvalescence. His death, therefore, came both suddenly andunexpectedly; happily, at a time when China was unfettered by waror rebellion, and when all the energies of her statesmen could beemployed in averting either one catastrophe or the other. For onehundred days the Court went into deep mourning, wearing capes ofwhite fur with the hair outside over long white garments of variousstuffs, lined also with white fur, but of a lighter kind than thatof the capes. Mandarins of high rank use the skin of the white foxfor the latter, but the ordinary official is content with the curlyfleece of the snow-white Mongolian sheep. For one hundred days nomale in the Empire might have his head shaved, and women weresupposed to eschew for the same period all those gaudy headornaments of which they are so inordinately fond. At the expirationof this time the Court mourning was changed to black, which colour,or at any rate something sombre, will be worn till the close of theyear.
[*] Such terms as “Brother of the Sunand Moon” are altogether
imaginary, and are quite unknown in China.
For twelve long months there may be no marrying orgiving in marriage, that is among the official classes; the peopleare let off more easily, one hundred days being fixed upon as theirlimit. For a whole year it is illegal to renew the scrolls of redpaper pasted on every door-post and inscribed with cherished maximsfrom the sacred books; except again for non-officials, whosepenance is once more cut down to one hundred days' duration. Inthese sad times the birth of a son— a Chinaman's dearest wish onearth— elicits no congratulations from thronging friends; no redeggs are sent to the lucky parents, and no joyous feast is providedin return. Merrymaking