02 PEEPS AT THE PEOPLE

Chapter 2 PEEPS AT THE PEOPLE A people of much intelligence and some wisdom. -- DR. GILES. THE most fascinating part of a missionary’s work is that which brings him into contact with the life of the people. No man in China is more happily circumstanced than he for observing the peculiar workings of the native mind. Though the rigid etiquette of the country precludes him from engaging in pastoral work, in the sense in which we under stand it at home, house-to-house visitation, still he has ample opportunity, in the troops of visitors who throng his study from day to day, for observing those more prominent qualities which mark off the Chinese race from the rest of mankind. Not unnaturally he is prepared to think well of the people whose good he seeks.

" Love thinketh no evil." He regards them with a sympathetic, kindly eye, and while not altogether blind to their weaknesses, is prepared to do justice to their many admirable qualities. By a constant effort of intellectual detachment he endeavors to see life from their point of view, and by the growing bond of attachment thus created, is the better able to draw out the best that is in them, and lift them up to higher levels of life. Their perfect charm of manner is perhaps their most attractive characteristic. Their style of dress long flowing robes of blue cotton, with silk vest worn above ; white cotton socks, velvet shoes, and, not least, their plaited queue of jet-black hair with its silk tassel dangling at their heels lends grace to every movement of the body, and a touch of the picturesque to the otherwise monotonous features of the streets. A race of born actors, they have acquired through long practice the faculty of always putting their best foot foremost. In speech and behavior they are careful in their relations with each other not to offend; are perfectly cool and self-possessed, and are never at a loss, under the most trying circumstances, for the right word or the correct attitude. Even a coolie, thrust suddenly into the presence of his superiors, understands perfectly what is expected of him, and acquits himself like a gentleman as though to the manner born. It is not difficult for the foreigner who has just arrived in China to understand why the Chinese should regard him as a barbarian. In spite of his fancied superiority, he soon discovers that in comparison with these people of the East he is a mere child in the art of social etiquette. As Dr. Arthur Smith reminds us : " The Anglo Saxonnn has no doubt many virtues, and among them is to be found a very large percentage of fortiter in re, but a very small percentage of suaviter in modo. When, therefore, we come to the Orient, and find the vast population of the immense Asiatic continent so greatly our superiors in the art of lubricating the friction which is sure to arise in the intercourse of man with man, we are filled with that admiration which is the tribute of those who cannot do a thing to those who can do it easily and well. The most bigoted critic of the Chinese is forced to admit that they have brought the practice of politeness to a pitch of perfection which is not only unknown in Western lands, but previous to experience, is unthought of and almost unimaginable." To some extent, of course, their admirable etiquette has the defects of its qualities. One finds this in the tendency to exaggeration and flattery so common in everyday speech. Their horror of directness, their determination not to offend, has given rise to a wide vocabulary of circumlocutionary phrases that are sometimes positively untrue. But to tell a lie, rather than be offensive, would seem to be the obvious duty of every Chinaman. They address each other continually as the " Honorable Mr. So-and-so." An ugly fact is invariably alluded to under cover of some veiled periphrasis. They never speak of " death " directly, but say that the deceased is " not in," that he has " greeted the age," " ascended to the sky," or returned to the " Heavenly Hall." This " talent for indirection," as it has been called, is carried even further than circumlocutionary phraseology. When the business in hand is of extreme delicacy, such as borrowing money, or negotiating a betrothal, it necessitates the calling in of a middle-man to act as " go-between." Should your " boy " wish an advance in his wages, it is probable that he will not come in person to tell you so. He enlists the services of your " teacher," and even your " teacher " goes about his task in a truly circuitous fashion. He watches his opportunity. Some morning he finds you in an unusually good mood, then he naively asks you if you are aware that millet (the staple food of the peasantry) has risen in price, adding that, of course, fuel has also risen so much. By this time you are aware that somebody’s wages are in question, but whose? Not his own, for he would not talk in this fashion about himself. " There’s So-and-so," he continues, indicating with a nod in the direction of the kitchen; he has so many " mouths " to feed. Then heaving a sigh, he remarks, as he takes himself out of the room, " I wonder how some people live." A certain evangelist who wished a rise in his salary, wrote me letters for some months from his country station. He drew a terrible picture of the famine prices he was paying for the bare necessaries of life; but though he turned up to see me at the end of each month and received his salary, no allusion was ever made to the correspondence by either of us. After a few months the letters ceased. But he knew that if he could do better I was prepared to let him go elsewhere. From this it will be seen that words are not always the index of a Chinaman’s real thoughts. He often purposely uses language to veil his thought, but he expects you to be shrewd enough to divine his meaning. He regards the straight, brusque frankness of the foreigner as a weakness, not as a virtue. And every Chinaman knows that this is the most vulnerable point in the foreigner s coat-of-mail. After one has lived amongst the people for awhile, one begins, of course, to get glimpses beneath the surface, and to see how much of their etiquette is purely superficial. Every Chinese wears a mask, which he calls his " face," but it would be the height of impropriety to pull it aside and look at the real man. High officials have been known to chose death rather than " lose face." It is everything to them. It embraces self-respect, honour, amour propre, nay, even conscience itself. They speak of " losing one’s face " ; of " keeping one’s face " ; of "giving a person face " ; of " taking away a person’s face " ; or, when reparation cannot be made, they say "his face cannot come down." To accuse a person of a fault in the presence of others is to take his face away. If he is your servant, he cannot, of course, remain in your service, and will probably acquaint you next day with the fact that he has had a message from home informing him of his mother’s illness or death, and is profoundly sorry to tell you that he must leave your honorable service for an indefinite period. If you wish to give " face " to one you have insulted, the common custom is to invite him to a feast. In the presence of mutual friends reparation is made, and all enmity ceases. To offer a person a handsome present is to give him " great face." But the acceptance of a gift generally entails on the receiver the return of something of equal value. Missionaries have sometimes to pay dearly for their intimacy with the official classes, because they are expected to make a return in the shape of some foreign article. It is said of the early Jesuit Fathers that they propagated the gospel in Pekin by the liberal distribution of European clocks. And, on one occasion, after persecution had driven them from the capital, they were one day summarily recalled to the court, because all the clocks in the palace had stopped and no one knew how to set them a-going. The Chinese are never in a hurry, and yet they are a most industrious people. To toil so hard and yet remain so poor illustrates the irony of their history. From dawn to sunset they are in harness. They work seven days each week, and have never discovered the art of enjoying a month s holiday. Yet withal they go about their work in a truly artistic fashion. They are Asiatics, and they work as such. They think nothing of resting in the midst of their labours, four or five times between regular meals, to smoke or to sip tea. To have anything to do with Chinese work men is to undergo a severe discipline in patience, so much so that it has been playfully remarked that after a missionary has built for himself a church or a house, he requires a furlough to restore his shattered nerves. Though his working-day is not so long, by several hours, your Occidental can generally pack as much into one hour as your Asiatic does in three, and therein lies the whole factor of race supremacy. The Oriental has not our energy. The sun is in his blood, and he has yielded to the enervating influences of climate for centuries. As a workman he has little mechanical inventiveness. Show him a short cut how to do a piece of work to-day, but do not be surprised if you find him back in the old groove to-morrow. Introduce some labour-saving machines, and spend infinite pains in instructing him in their use, or in demonstrating their utility, but do not be disappointed should you find them erelong rusting in the fields. The claims of habit would seem to be inexorable, and one almost despairs of ever getting the Chinese mind to grasp the meaning of the word progress. The prevalent opinion of the Chinaman in this country is that he is a lying rogue, a cruel and inhuman monster. The misfortune is that we seldom read of him except when he is misbehaving, killing foreigners or attempting a revolution, then his doings are flashed abroad in every newspaper of the western world. He does lie and he is cruel. But these are not attributes of the Chinese alone, but of all Asiatics, of all semicivilised races that have not come under the humanising touch of Christianity. Their cruelty has its roots in their low estimate of the value of human life, and it will not disappear until that is altered. Most of their dark deeds are due to ignorant superstition, or to the mastering passion of fanaticism ; but to dispose of the Chinaman by saying that he is cruel is to take an unbalanced view of his character. In his natural habitat he is hospitably disposed, patient under trial, and only vindictive because of some fancied insult or real injustice. The conservatism of the race is proverbial. Their golden age is in the past. Their minds look backward, not forward. Their educational system, which consists in memorizing their classical books, fosters their conservative instinct. The fever of commercial competition, of international rivalry, has not yet entered their veins, and they may be said to be lacking in ambition. Their ideal is neither commercial though they are good merchants ; nor military though they make excellent soldiers when properly drilled and led ; but literary. The " superior person " or ideal man in China is he who is most deeply versed in classical lore ; who writes the most elegant style. A people possessing many great and good qualities, their civilization yet presents many glaring defects to the critic from the west. Chief of these is their lack of conscience and consequent instability of character. If they are ever to take their place amongst the nations of the West, or make that contribution to the aggregate of human good which their really great qualities entitle us to expect, then they must rise above their narrow isolation, antiquated scholasticism, and tribal conceptions of duty, and advance to a less artificial and less encumbered life, endeavoring to keep pace with the march and progress of the civilised world. Otherwise, they will go down before the pressure of that civilization and pass from the stage of history like the effete civilizations of antiquity. In a recent book, Sir Robert Hart has indicated his belief that the only way to obviate the " yellow peril " which to his mind is a real danger, and one that may at no distant date threaten the peace of Europe lies (1) either in the partition of the Empire, so that the separate parts might be held in check ; or (2) in the gradual Christianising of the people, and the leavening of Chinese society with the restraints of Christian principle. His words are : " Nothing but partition or a miraculous spread of Christianity in its best form, a not impossible but scarcely-to-be-looked-for religious triumph, will avert the result." The alternative is between a policy of Force and a policy of Love. The first means bloodshed, anarchy, chaos ; the second means social order, gradual evolution, ultimate emancipation. There can be no doubt surely into which scale we should throw the weight of our influence. " No social revolution and no intellectual education could so thoroughly advance the moral and material evolution of China as the willing adoption of the Christian faith."