Chapter 39

The efforts of the central government to increase the efficiency of the army and to re-create a navy were continued in 1910. China was credited with the intention of spending £40,000,000 on the rehabilitation of its naval and military forces. It was estimated in March 1910 that there were about 200,000 foreign-trained men, but their independent spirit and disaffection constituted a danger to internal peace. The danger was accentuated by the mutual jealousy of the central and provincial governments. The anti-dynastic agitation, moreover, again seemed to be growing in strength. In April 1910 there was serious rioting at Changsha, Hu-nan, a town whence a few years previously had issued a quantity of anti-foreign literature of a vile kind. The immediate causes of the riots seem to have been many: rumours of the intention of the foreign powers to dismember China, the establishment of foreign firms at Changsha competing with native firms and exporting rice and salt at a time when the province was suffering from famine, and the approach of Halley's comet. Probably famine precipitated the outbreak, which was easily crushed, as was also a rising in May at Yung chow, a town in the south of Hu-nan. Much mission and mercantile property was wrecked at Changsha, but the only loss of life was the accidental drowning of three Roman Catholic priests.

The regent's policy.

An edict of the 17th of August 1910 effected considerable and unexpected changes in the personnel of the central government. Tang Shao-yi, a former lieutenant of Yuan Shih-kai, was appointed president of the Board of Communications, and to him fell the difficult task of reconciling Chinese and foreign interests in the development of the railway system. Sheng Kung-pao regarded as the chief Chinese authority on currency questions, and an advocate of the adoption of a gold standard, was attached to the Board of Finance to help in the reforms decreed by an edict of May of the same year (see ante, _Currency_). The issue of the edict was attributed to the influence with the regent of Prince Tsai-tao, who had recently returned from a tour in Europe, where he had specially studied questions of national defence. The changes made among the high officials tended greatly to strengthen the central administration. The government had viewed with some disquiet the Russo-Japanese agreement of the 4th of July concerning Manchuria (which was generally interpreted as in fact lessening the authority of China in that country); it had become involved in another dispute with Great Britain, which regarded some of the measures taken to suppress opium smoking as a violation of the terms of the Chifu convention, and its action in Tibet had caused alarm in India. Thus the appointment to high office of men of enlightenment, pledged to a reform policy, was calculated to restore confidence in the policy of the Peking authorities. This confidence would have been greater had not the changes indicated a struggle for supreme power between the regent and the dowager empress Lung Yu, widow of Kwang-su.

The strength of the various movements at work throughout China was at this time extremely difficult to gauge; the intensity of the desire for the acquisition of Western knowledge was equalled by the desire to secure the independence of the country from foreign control. The second of these desires gave the force it possessed to the anti-dynastic movement. At the same time some of the firmest supporters of reform were found among the Manchus, nor did there seem to be any reason to doubt the intention of the regent--if he retained power--to guide the nation through the troubled period of transition into an era of constitutional government and the full development of the resources of the empire. (X.)

PLATE I.

Figs. 2, 4, and 5 are reproduced by permission of the Kokka Company, Tokyo.

PLATE II

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.--Knowledge of the ancient history of China is necessarily derived from the native writers on the subject. Fortunately, the Chinese have always regarded the preservation of the national records as a matter of supreme importance. Confucius set an example in this respect, and has preserved for us in the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ and the _Shu-king_, or _Book of History_, records of his country's progress during the past and then present centuries. The celebrated emperor Shih Hwang-ti, in establishing the empire, attempted to strengthen his cause by destroying all works on the national history. But so strongly was the historical sense inculcated in the people that immediately on the death of the tyrant the nation's records were again brought to light, and have been carefully preserved and edited since that time. Prof. Legge's translation of the _Spring and Autumn Annals_ and the _Shu-king, or Book of History_, in the "Sacred Books of the East" series, have opened for students the stores of historical knowledge which were at the command of Confucius, and European writers on Chinese history have found in the dynastic annals a never-failing source of valuable information. It was from these works and epitomes of these that de Maillac gathered the facts for his celebrated _Histoire générale de la Chine_, and it is from similar sources that all other writers on Chinese history have drawn their inspiration.

The following works on ancient and modern Chinese history may be specially mentioned: J.A. de Moyria de Maillac, _Histoire générale de la Chine_ (1777), &c.; J B. du Halde, _General History of China_ (4 vols., 1736); M. de Guignes, _Voyages à Péking ..._ (3 vols., 1808); D. Boulger, _A History of China_ (3 vols., 1881); Valentine Chirol, _The Far Eastern Question_ (1896); E.R. Huc, _The Chinese Empire_ (2 vols., 1855); T.T. Meadows, _The Chinese and their Rebellions_ (1856); G. Pauthier, _Histoire des relations politiques de la Chine avec les puissances occidentales depuis les temps les plus anciens jusqu'à nos jours ..._ (1859); Sir George Staunton, _Notes of Proceedings and Occurrences during the British Embassy to Peking in 1816_ (1824); _Chinese Expansion historically reviewed_, a paper read before the Central Asian Society by Baron Suyematsu on January 11, 1905; F. Hirth, _Ancient History of China_ (New York, 1908); Prof. Herbert A. Giles's _Chinese Biographical Dictionary_ (1897) is a storehouse of biographical detail and anecdote.

For Chinese relations with foreign powers see H. Cordier, _Histoire des relations de la Chine avec les puissances occidentales, 1860-1902_ (3 vols., Paris, 1901-1902); _Hertslet's China Treaties. Treaties, &c., between Great Britain and China, and between China and Foreign Powers, and Orders in Council, &c., affecting British Interests in China_ (3rd ed., revised by G.G.P. Hertslet and E. Parkes, London, 1908); J.O. Bland and E. Backhouse, _China under the Empress Dowager_ (London, 1910). More general works are Sir R.K. Douglas, _China_, history since the time of Marco Polo (London, 1899); E.H. Parker, _China; Her History, Diplomacy and Commerce_ (London, 1901); _China, Past and Present_ (London, 1903); A.J. Sargent, _Anglo-Chinese Commerce and Diplomacy_--mainly in the 19th century (Oxford, 1907). For current affairs see the authorities cited in the footnotes.

VI. CHINESE ART

1. _Painting._--Painting is the pre-eminent art of China, which can boast of a succession of great painters for at least twelve centuries. Though the Chinese have an instinctive gift for harmonious colour, their painting is above all an art of _line_. It is intimately connected with writing, itself a fine art demanding the same skill and supple power in the wielding of the brush. The most typical expression of the Chinese genius in painting is the ink sketch, such as the masters of the Sung dynasty most preferred and the Japanese from the 15th century adopted for an abiding model. Utmost vigour of stroke was here combined with utmost delicacy of modulation. Rich colour and the use of gold are an integral part of the Buddhist pictures, though in the masterpieces of the religious painters a grand rhythm of linear design gives the fundamental character. Exquisite subdued colour is also found in the "flower and bird pieces" and still-life subjects of the Sung artists, and becomes more emphatic and variegated in the decorative artists of the Ming period.

Not to represent facts, but to suggest a poetic idea (often perfumed, so to speak, with reminiscence of some actual poem), has ever been the Chinese artist's aim. "A picture is a voiceless poem" is an old saying in China, where very frequently the artist was a literary man by profession. Oriental critics lay more stress on loftiness of sentiment and tone than on technical qualities. This idealist temper helps to explain the deliberate avoidance of all emphasis on appearances of material solidity by means of chiaroscuro, &c., and the exclusive use of the light medium of water-colour. The Chinese express actual dislike for the representation of relief. Whoever compares the painting of Europe with that of Asia (and Chinese painting is the central type for the one continent, as Italian may claim to be for the other) must first understand this contrast of aim. The limitations of the Chinese are great, but these limitations save them from mistaking advances in science for advances in art, and from petty imitation of fact. Their religious painting has great affinity with the early religious art of Italy (e.g. that of Siena). But the ideas of the Renaissance, its scientific curiosity, its materialism, its glorification of human personality, are wholly missing in China. For Europe, Man is ever the hero and the foreground--hence the dominant study of the nude, and the tendency to thronged compositions, with dramatic motives of effort and conflict. The Chinese artists, weak in the plastic, weak in the architectural sense, paint mostly in a lyric mood, with a contemplative ideal. Hence the value given to space in their designs, the semi-religious passion for nature, and the supremacy of landscape. Beauty is found not only in pleasant prospects, but in wild solitudes, rain, snow and storm. The life of things is contemplated and portrayed for its own sake, not for its uses in the life of men. From this point of view the body of Chinese painting is much more modern in conception than that of Western art. Landscape was a mature and free art in China more than a thousand years ago, and her school of landscape is the loftiest yet known to the world. Nor was man ever dissociated from nature. As early as the 4th century Ku K'ai-chih says that in painting a certain noble character he must give him a fit background of great peaks and deep ravines. Chinese painting, in sum, finely complements rather than poorly supplements that of Europe; where the latter is strong, it is weak; but in certain chosen provinces it long ago found consummate expression for thoughts and feelings scarcely yet expressed with us.

History: Early periods (to A.D. 618).

The origin of Chinese painting is lost in legend, though there is no reason to doubt its great antiquity. References in literature prove that by the 3rd century B.C. it was a developed art. To this period is ascribed the invention of the hair-brush, in the use of which as an instrument both for writing and drawing the Chinese have attained marvellous skill; the usual material for the picture being woven silk, or, less often and since the 1st century A.D., paper. In early times wood panels were employed; and large compositions were painted on walls prepared with white lime. These mural decorations have all disappeared. History and portraiture seem to have been the prevailing subjects; a secular art corresponding to the social ideals of Confucianism. Yet long before the introduction of Buddhism (A.D. 67) with its images and pictures, we find that the two great symbolic figures of the Chinese imagination, the Tiger and the Dragon--typifying the forces of Nature and the power of the Spirit--had been evolved in art; and to imaginative minds the mystic ideas of Lao Tzü and the legends of his hermit followers proved a fruitful field for artistic motives of a kind which Buddhism was still more to enrich and multiply. Early classifications rank Buddhist and Taoist subjects together as one class.

With the 2nd century A.D. we come to individual names of artists and to the beginnings of landscape. Ku K'ai-chih (4th century) ranks as one of the greatest names of Chinese art. A painting by him now in the British Museum (Plate I. fig. 1) shows a maturity which has nothing tentative about it. The dignified and elegant types are rendered with a mastery of sensitive brush-line which is not surpassed in later art. Ku K'ai-chih painted all kinds of subjects, but excelled in portraiture. During the next century the criticism of painting was formulated in six canons by Hsieh Ho. Rhythm, organic or structural beauty, is the supreme quality insisted on.

T'ang dynasty (A.D. 618-907).

During the T'ang dynasty the empire expanded to its utmost limits, stretching as far as the Persian Gulf. India was invaded; Buddhism, taught by numbers of Indian missionaries, became firmly established, and controlled the ideals and imaginations of the time. The vigorous style of a great era was impressed upon the T'ang art, which culminated in Wu Taotzü, universally acknowledged as the greatest of all Chinese painters. It is doubtful if any of his work remains. The picture reproduced (Plate I. fig. 2) was long attributed to him, but is now thought to be of later date, like the two landscapes well known under his name in Japan. Wu Taotzü seems to have given supreme expression to the central subject of Buddhist art, the Nirvana of Buddha, who lies serenely asleep, with all creation, from saints and kings to birds and beasts, passionately bewailing him. The composition is known from Japanese copies; and it is in fact from the early religious schools of Japan that we can best conjecture the grandeur of the T'ang style. Wu Taotzü excelled in all subjects: other masters are best known for some particular one. Han Kan was famous for his horses, the models for succeeding generations of painters, both Chinese and Japanese. A specimen of his brush is in the British Museum; and in the same collection is a long roll which gives a glimpse of the landscape of this age. It is a copy by a great master of the Yuen dynasty, Chao Mêng-fu, from a famous painting by Wang Wei, representing scenes on the Wang Ch'uan, the latter's home (Plate I. fig. 3 shows a fragment). With the T'ang age landscape matured, and two schools arose, one headed by Wang Wei, the other by Li Ssü-hsün. The style of Wang Wei, who was equally famous as a poet, had a romantic idealist character--disdainful of mere fact--which in later developments created the "literary man's picture" of the Southern school, as opposed to the vigorous naturalism of the North.

Five dynasties (A.D. 907-960).

Next come five brief dynasties, memorable less for any corporate style or tradition, than for some fine painters like Hsü Hsi, famous for his flowers, and Huang Ch'uan, a great master in a delicate style. Two pictures by him, fowls and peonies, of extraordinary beauty, are in the British Museum.

Sung dynasty (A.D. 960-1280).

The empire, which had been broken up, was reunited, though shorn of its outer dependencies, under the house of Sung. This was an age of culture in which the freedom of the individual was proclaimed anew; glorious in art as in poetry and philosophy; the period which for Asia stands in history as the Periclean age for Europe.

The religious paintings of Li Lung-mien, the grandest of Sung masters, if less forcible than those of T'ang, were unsurpassed in harmonious rhythm of design and colour. But the most characteristic painting of this period is in landscape and nature-subjects. With a passion unmatched in Europe till Wordsworth's day, the Sung artists portrayed their delight in mountains, mists, plunging torrents, the flight of the wild geese from the reed-beds, the moonlit reveries of sages in forest solitudes, the fisherman in his boat on lake or stream. To them also, steeped in the Zen philosophy of contemplation, a flowering branch was no mere subject for a decorative study, but a symbol of the infinite life of nature. A mere hint to the spectator's imagination is often all that they rely on; proof of the singular fulness and reality of the culture of the time. The art of suggestion has never been carried farther. Such traditional subjects as "Curfew from a Distant Temple" and "The Moon over Raging Waves" indicate the poetic atmosphere of this art. Ma Yuan, Hsia Kuei and the emperor Hwei-tsung are among the greatest landscape artists of this period. They belong to the South Sung school, which loved to paint the gorges and towering rock-pinnacles of the Yangtsze. The sterner, less romantic scenery of the Hwang-Ho inspired the Northern school, of which Kuo Hsi and Li Ch'eng were famous among many others. Muh Ki was one of the greatest masters of the ink sketch; Chao Tan Lin was famed for his tigers; Li Ti for his flowers as for his landscapes; Mao I for still-life: to name a few among a host.

Yuen dynasty (A.D. 1280-1368).

The Mongol dynasty continues in art the Sung tradition. Chao Mêng-fu, the greatest master of his time, belongs to both periods, and ranks with the highest names in Chinese painting. A landscape by him, copied from Wang Wei, has been already mentioned as in the British Museum, which also has two specimens of Yen Hui, a painter less known in his own country than in Japan. He painted especially figures of Taoist legend. The portrait by Ch'ien Shun-chü (Plate I. fig. 5) is a fine example of purity of line and lovely colour, reminding us of Greek art.

Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644).

The simplicity of motive and directness of execution which had been the strength of the Sung art gradually gave way during the Ming era to complicated conceptions and elaborate effects. The high glow of life faded; the lyrical temper and impassioned work of the Sung time were replaced by love of ornament and elegance. In this respect Kiu Ying is typical of the period, with his richly coloured scenes from court life (Plate I. fig. 6). None the less, there were a number of painters who still upheld the grander style of earlier ages. The greatest of these was Lin Liang (Plate I. fig. 7), whose brush work, if somewhat coarser, is as powerful as that of the Sung masters. But though individual painters of the first rank preserved the Ming age from absolute decline, it cannot be said that any new development of importance took place in a vitalizing direction.

Tsing dynasty (from A.D. 1644).

The present dynasty prolongs the history of Ming art. The literary school of the South became more prominent, sending out offshoots in Japan. There has been no movement of national life to be reflected in art, though a great body of admirable painting has been produced, down to the present day. The four landscape masters known as the "four Wangs," Yün Shou-p'ing and Wu Li are pre-eminent names.

SOURCES AND AUTHORITIES.--While the designs on porcelain, screens, &c., have long been admired in the West, the paintings of which these are merely reproductions have been utterly ignored. Ignorance has gained authority with time, till the very existence of a great school of Chinese painting has been denied. Materials for study are scanty. Fires, wars and the recent armed ravages of Western civilization have left but little. The profound indifference of the Chinese to European admiration has prevented their collections from being known. The Japanese, always enthusiastic students and collectors of the continental art, claim (whether justly or not, is hard to ascertain) that the finest specimens are now in their country. Many of these are reproduced in the invaluable Tokyo publications, the _Kokka_, Mr Tajima's _Select Relics_, &c., with Japanese criticisms in English. Of actual paintings the British Museum possesses a fair number, and the Louvre a few, of real importance. Copies and forgeries abound.

See H.A. Giles, _Introduction to the History of Chinese Pictorial Art_ (1905); F. Hirth, _Scraps from a Collector's Note-Book_ (1905), (supplements Giles's work and especially valuable for the art of the Ch'ing dynasty); S.W. Bushell, _Chinese Art_, vol. ii. (1906); K. Okakura, _Ideals of the East_ (1903); M. Paléologue, _L'Art chinois_ (1887); W. Anderson, _Catalogue of Japanese and Chinese Paintings_ (1886); Sei-ichi Taki, "Chinese Landscape Painting," _The Kokka_, Nos. 191, &c. (1906); _Chinesische Malereien aus der Sammlung Hirth_ (Catalogue of an exhibition held at Dresden) (1897); W. von Seidlitz, article in _Kunstchronik_ (1896-1897), No. 16.

2. _Engraving_.--According to native historians, the art of printing from wooden blocks was invented in China in the 6th century A.D., when it was employed for the publication of texts. The earliest evidence we have for the existence of woodcuts made to reproduce pictures or drawings is a passage in a work by Chang Yen-yüan, from which it appears that these were not made before the beginning of the T'ang dynasty, under which that author lived. The method employed was to cut the design with a knife on the plank of the wood, in the manner followed by European artists till the end of the 18th century, when engraving with a burin on boxwood ousted the older process. The Japanese borrowed the art from China; and in Japan a whole school of artists arose who worked specially for the woodcutters and adapted their designs to the limitations of the material employed. In China the art has remained merely reproductive, and its history is therefore of less interest. _Printing in colours_ was known to the Chinese in the 17th century, and probably earlier. In the British Museum is a set of prints brought from the East by Kaempfer in 1693, in which eight colours and elaborate _gauffrage_ are used. Some fine albums of colour prints have been issued in China, but nothing equal in beauty to the prints produced in Japan by the co-operation of woodcutter and designer. _Engraving on copper_ was introduced to China by the Jesuits, and some well-known sets of prints illustrating campaigns in Mongolia were made in the 18th century. But the method has never proved congenial to the artists of the Far East.

See Sir R.K. Douglas, _Guide to the Chinese and Japanese Illustrated Books_ (British Museum, 1887); W. Anderson, _Japanese Wood Engraving_ (1895).