Part 23

For two decades the name of Mr. Rumor (I shall call him that for the purposes of this sketch), of Hongkong, was synonymous with the rocket which seemed to have become a fixed star. He was a Canadian, born in the little riverine town of Belleville on the St. Lawrence. Adventure found him in Hongkong, a clerk in the Public Works Department of the Colonial Government, at a child’s salary in a land costly for the foreigner. The Chinese were beginning to use wheat flour in place of rice, which had become valuable for export. Rumor acted as their adviser during lunch hours, when the fervid sun of the Orient burned up the tamarind’s shade and fried the papaw’s thick leaves. In time he himself quietly imported consignments of Oregon flour. His Chinese compradore was honest and divided the profits, though the compradore did all the work. Rumor grew richer, and became an agent for Northern Pacific American mills. As the years passed, the able and honest Chinese compradore brought him orders sufficient to load many full ships that breasted the slow waves of the Pacific. The Chinese compradore lived plainly, and saved enough money to become a financial power in the great imperial colony. Rumor then went into military, naval and diplomatic society, built one of the finest aerie mansions in the Far East on Hongkong’s peak of palaces near the unique tram on Barker Road, where a thousand feet of picturesque cliff fell from its foundation. He imported Kentucky saddle horses and racers, and at great expense put Canadian sheep on the foothills of old China to see if they could conquer the bamboo grass. He owned a steam yacht and a sailing yacht, gave musicales to the military of the garrison station at both his down-town chambers on the Praya and at his mountain château, and entertained an American governor of the East who became a president. He was a handsome man, the mirror of fashion and manners in the cosmopolitan colony. His was the easy bearing of those who associate with princes and know their standing. Like Beau Brummel, of Piccadilly, he could make a griffin’s social fortune by being seen walking with him down the Praya. Stories were told of his recklessness in hours of play. He was a dashing character, altogether. He made annual trips to the great cities that line the equatorial belt of the world and to capitals of the North. He seemed to have tapped the mines of Eldorado.

At last, he would add fame to riches. Hongkong was about to enter the great educational arena in the awakening of the Far East with a splendid university. Hormusjee Mody, the Prince of Parsees, gave the land. Who would give the endowment and thus perhaps secure a knighthood? Why, Rumor, who at last was truly popular and not envied alone, for he was now about to do something for others than himself. In the meantime he had started a Chinese flour mill at Junk Bay, Hongkong. He would startle the whole economic world, as Harbin did, by grinding Chinese grain on the spot, and he would import less Australian and Oregon flour. There seemed to be no end to Rumor’s extension or the glamour which he cast over his compradore and the Chinese bankers, as well as the American mills. Many tried to emulate him and steal his trade, or imitate his “chops” on the flour bags; but the Chinese, “olo custom”, clung to Rumor, who alone expanded, came, saw and conquered. San Francisco was shaken by an earthquake, and New York by a financial panic. The twin waves went round the world, and met in Hongkong harbor one dark night, just as Rumor, purposely unaccompanied by a white man, was returning in his yacht _Canada_ from his flour mill at Junk Bay, all the long miles of the famous harbor to the landing under his mountain palace and the university site. No one knows much about it, except that the crew at last missed him overboard. The tidal financial wave had swamped him. He could ride its crest no more in splendor. The great university will bear many names, but probably not the name of Rumor as its endower when the accounts of the estate are balanced. Three Chinese, of Singapore, stepped forward and endowed the university with nearly $500,000 gold, although they were at the same time holding up the hands of the exhausted Chinese republican revolution.

Sir Matthew Nathan came to Hongkong as governor from hot and feverish Nigeria. Hongkong is a moist hot place, very near the direct sun of the equator, and men who wish to live long go slow in the luxuries of work, liquor, etc. It is a good place to send your victim, as David disposed of Uriah “in the forefront of the hottest battle”. Sir Matthew’s enthusiasm was to be every inch a “knower” (mandarin) of the people, and a governor. He wore his staff out. He was up at unseasonable hours in addition to his regular duties. He worked as hard on the hot Praya as another man would on cool Piccadilly in March. Every emergency and occasion found him at hand, whether an awful fire, a new railway, or the launching of a great ship. The memorable typhoon of September, 1906, struck the unprepared colony which has been visited so often with these circular hurricanes. Sir Matthew seemed to superintend the rescuers at every spot of the long beach and harbor. When the steamboat _Hankow_ holocaust occurred in October he worked, axe and arm, with the firemen. Little wonder that he died, really of exhaustion. He was a typical example of the grand old British civil service in China. He was heroic, unselfish, tireless, sympathetic, a man whose example lives to fire China with zeal and altruism.

Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the American Peking legation and has served on many American political missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin, and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin, the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father wrote that noble basic work, _The Middle Kingdom_, but for his own work as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.

Doctor H. H. Lowry, for many years president of the Methodist College at the Hata Men gate, Peking, has long exercised a strong influence upon Chinese officials and students. He is a man of great tact, enthusiasm, wisdom and scholarship, and is known both to have enlisted Yuan Shih Kai on the side of religious tolerance, and to have confirmed him in modern educational methods. The American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, is a mighty militant man with the southern republicans. The students adore him. The patriots of young China worship him. Fiery zeal, idealism, and the courage of a lion are characteristics of this influential, learned and sacrificing man. Doctor F. D. Gamewell, of Peking, is a Methodist missionary who has been in China for thirty years. He is world-famous for his engineering skill in directing the fortification of the legations in the awful siege of 1900. He is a man of great physical courage, calmness of mind, and sanity of judgment, and is a tower of influence among the Chinese officials. He hails from Hackensack, New Jersey.

C. W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston. The British engineers who have established China’s great railway development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans, Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the Australian at Peking who represents the London _Times_, has long held the world bound to his prompt despatches regarding Chinese politics, of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, _An Australian in China_, speaks for itself.

The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language. Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc. His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and among others his book, _Things Chinese_, is an encyclopedic authority. The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong, where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai, too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote _China in Law and Commerce_, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon Moule wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority, the _North China News and Herald_. Mr. Little was succeeded by the eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The _National Review_, a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous _Far Eastern Review_, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University, a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong, married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church, does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, _Three Years in Western China_; _Manchuria, Its People and Resources_. Chester Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, _The Real Chinese Question_. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.

Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M. Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of _Lion and Dragon in North China_, who was one of our Hongkong cadets, Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy, their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai, the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture, building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of progress and government.

Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern (Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials of Middle China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese, teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H. Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination. Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St. John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants, travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East, and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo arch, before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least 4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.

No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming political events and massacres as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, who recently died. This was partially owing to his remarkable judgment, and partially owing to his wide sources of information, as Catholic converts are four times as numerous as Protestant converts. Monsieur Favier, ahead of events, was the best informed foreigner in China regarding the “Boxer” movement of 1900, and if his advice had been followed by the legations, the foreigners would have left Peking for the coast before the siege was instituted. He did not intend to leave himself, as he felt it to be his duty to die if necessary with his converts. Every one has admired his successful defense of the Pei Tang cathedral.

The following prominent American educationalists in China visited America in November, 1912, and spoke for China at the World’s Oriental Congress at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts: Vice-president Williams, of Nanking University; President Edmunds, of Canton Christian College; President Goucher, of the University of Chingtu, and Professor C. W. Young, of Union Medical College, Peking. It was regretted that President Sheffield and Doctor Arthur H. Smith, the eminent author, of the American Congregational College of North China, were not present.

Late advices state that the Chinese government at the close of 1912 has taken into its employ in the administration of the salt gabelle, J. F. Oiesen, a Dane of Tientsin; and as legal adviser, Monsieur Recouse, a prominent Belgian. Wherever Belgians are used, it is generally for the purpose of hiding the hands of France, and sometimes of Russia.

XVI

THE MANCHU

When the republicans rebelled against the dynasty, the following was the indictment issued to the world’s press, and signed by Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang and Assistant Foreign Secretary Wen Tsung Yao, at Shanghai. Wu, all the world knows as the Jefferson of the new republican China. Wen is a very able modern lawyer, who made his name as a resourceful amban at Lhasa.

1. Incapacity.

2. Reactionary.

3. Benighted and barbaric.

4. Opposes modern knowledge, science and industry.

5. Favors a closed door; stultified national service.

6. Opposes government by the people; favors Manchus who are only one in about one hundred of the population.

7. Pensions a vast horde of non-working Manchus.

8. Barbaric against life and property, when opposed.

9. Constitutional promise insincere.

10. Manchus hold back world-progress.

11. Gave away Chinese territory.

12. Despised the Chinese and prohibited intermarriage.

13. Taxation without representation.

14. Haughtily refused to adopt Chinese system of three names, thus maintaining a separate society.

15. The Manchu has no literature, and, therefore, is a barbarian.

This Chinese Declaration of Independence first appeared at length in the _North China Daily News_, of Shanghai, on November 15, 1911. Similar complaints had been brought against the Manchu when the Taiping rebellion opened in 1850. The Manchus were a hunting tribe whose preserves lay along the wooded foothills of the Long White Mountain (Chang Pai Shan) northeast of Mukden. The region is well described by James in his _Long White Mountain_ (1888). The chieftain who whipped the Manchus into shape for conquest was Nurha-Chu. He drilled their cavalrymen from 1559 to 1626. From scattered tribes, dwelling in felt michung-tents, he organized them as a Manchu horde with an ambition. The Great Wall was not erected against the Manchus, but against the ancient ancestors of Tartar cousins of theirs. The Manchus themselves erected a palisade-barricade against their cousins, the Khitans, on the west. It ran from Shan Hai Kwan, on the Pechili Gulf, where the Great Wall meets the sea, northward five hundred miles until it reached the Sungari River and encircled Kirin. I think it is difficult now to find any part of the stockade, but I believe that James and Younghusband found evidences of it in their exploration of Manchuria about 1886. The North China Railway embankment west of Mukden absorbed part of the historic mounds. The Manchus had no script. Nurha-Chu gave them one based upon the Mongolian, which in turn was copied from the vertical Syriac. This showed that Nurha-Chu talked with traveling priests who had come down the Tarim valley. You will note the character on the back of any Chinese cash coin, which has a square hole in the middle. Obtain one of these coins, for they will be minted no more, and they are historic; in fact, the oldest coin known. They are the oldest as far as the Chinese face is concerned; the Manchu merely put the name of the reign in Manchu on one side of the Chinese coin, ten of which exchange for one American cent.

The Manchus had learned that the host of Chinese people, one hundred to his one, had no transport service (ponies); that they, therefore, were not cohesive or mobile; that their capital could be held by any bold clan which would at the beginning not exact too heavy a tribute, and which would allow the people practically to rule themselves by the classical examination and democratic civil service. The Manchus informed this civil service that they could hold their places if they adopted the Manchu style of hair-dressing, which was done, and in time Manchu yellow instead of Chinese blue became the official dress of honor. The Chinese women were unconquerable. They never adopted the Manchu style of dressing the hair over the ears, or of not compressing the feet. The Manchus refused to adopt the Chinese system of using family names first, making a three-named system, as Li Hung-Chang. The Manchus used merely their double names, as Na-Tung, but their family names were entered on the roster of one of the eight military banners. Gradually the Manchu garrisons bullied the Chinese out of their walled cities, and the Chinese had to build a second wall around the suburbs. The events and dates of Manchu history, as it affects their own Ta Ching (Great Pure) and foreign (Fung Kwei) civilizations, are told shortly, as follows: