Part 8

Another popular school for girls is known generally as the “Suffragette School.” Like so many others, its existence began at the close of the recent revolution, and grew out of it. The exigencies of the revolution brought women into the public arena as they had never thought of figuring before. A few who had studied medicine went to the front as doctors and many more as Red Cross nurses. A large number acted as spies, secreted refugees, carried ammunition to the soldiers, and sacrificed property and life itself for their country. From various quarters there gathered in Shanghai a hundred or so school-girls, most of them runaways, fired with an all-consuming if misguided desire to aid their country, who donned uniforms, shouldered arms, drilled, and begged to be allowed to march at once to the firing-line, which fortunately for them they were not permitted to do. They were known as the “Amazons.” All these events, however, so stirred the patriotism of the women of Shanghai that a numerous company banded together to raise money for the revolution, which they did very successfully. When the fighting ceased, instead of disbanding they formed themselves into a permanent organization under the name of “The Chinese Woman’s Co-operative Association.” Its purpose was to protect the interests of women in general, and in particular to gain for them the right of suffrage.

The society is still in existence, though greatly modified in tone and reduced in numbers by the elimination of the most rabid and troublesome spirits. Occasional meetings are held and men are frequently invited to address them, a woman occupying the chair. The principal work done by this Association since the revolution has been the founding and fostering of the Suffragette School, with the idea of inculcating advanced ideas in the minds of the young. At first the teachers, all of them women, worked without salary, and turned with disdain from men and marriage. While the curriculum includes Western studies, particular emphasis is laid on Chinese subjects, especially the writing of Chinese characters, which the pupils do exceedingly well. They are encouraged to make their clothes of Chinese cloth, use Chinese furnishings in their homes and preserve the old-time customs and the old-time beliefs; in short, to be Chinese to the backbone and independent of the foreigners’ supplies and the foreigners’ religion.

The school has prospered better numerically than financially. An interested missionary was talking one day about the school to Miss C., a recent graduate of Wellesley College and a relative of the principal. “You say the school is poor?” “Not poor in the quality of work done, but, O yes, very poor in money.” “What is the reason of that?” “Well, it hasn’t financial supporters. You see, right after the revolution so many women were enthusiastic about suffrage. But they are not now in the same way, and they don’t take as much interest in keeping up the school.” “What do you think makes them less interested in the question of suffrage?” “They don’t believe the time has come in China to push it. Other things they feel are at present more important and necessary.” “What is your personal opinion?” The bright eyes of the young woman rested an instant thoughtfully on her questioner, then came the decided reply, “I am sure we are not ready to vote yet, and it is a mistake to divert our thoughts from greater needs by thinking of it and working for it.”

More and more as the New Learning is crowding out the old-time impractical methods, the desire grows to relate the work of the schools to the life of the people. Hitherto industrial training has received little attention in China, but the Republic has been gradually awakening to its importance, so that to-day schools of this kind are the ones that appeal most strongly to the popular mind and receive the readiest support from governmental and private sources. In Shanghai, commercial and industrial schools, or schools that have added these departments to their curricula, are constantly on the increase.

The World’s Chinese Students’ Federation, with headquarters at Shanghai, is carrying on both day and evening schools which are largely attended. The teachers give their services free and are young men of independent means, or those who are able and willing to devote a portion of their time to this work. The principal is only twenty-one, a graduate of the Young Men’s Christian Association school and unusually gifted.

The leading institution in Shanghai under Chinese auspices is the Government Institute of Technology. As in the case of so many other educational enterprises, this one received its initial impulse from an individual, a man high in government employ. It began in 1897 as a Normal School, then added Preparatory and Grammar School departments, and finally, under the skillful leadership of Dr. John C. Ferguson, developed into Nanyang College, still later adding courses in civil and electrical engineering, and changing its name to “The Government School of Technology.” The handsome buildings in the midst of spacious well-kept grounds, the complete equipment, fine corps of teachers, eight of whom are Americans, the standard of work maintained, and the character of the large student body, all combine to make this a school Shanghai may well be proud of. A few of the best students are sent each year to Europe and America for a period of practical training.

The Mining and Railway College is not so large nor so old an institution, but in its way quite as remarkable. Its founder, who is also its president, is a young man in his early thirties, with a finely chiselled, scholarly face and gracious manner. When travelling abroad after finishing his education at Queen’s College in Hongkong, he became convinced that what China required more than almost anything else was trained engineers. So four years ago (many things happened in Shanghai four years ago), unaided, he started this school, giving himself and his money without reserve to the work. Already the students number two hundred and sixty, as promising a body of young men as one would wish to see. They come from nearly every province in the country and a few from Java. Five of the fifteen teachers have studied abroad, but only one is a foreigner, a Belgian who teaches mining and mineralogy. The entering students are put at once into English classes and it is remarkable what they accomplish in a single year. A specialty is made of chirography, “for,” says the president, “unless the boys learn to form their letters carefully, they will not draw well, and as engineers they must do that.”

The School of Medicine and of Engineering, carried on by the Germans for Chinese students, is unique in its way. An eminent physicist in Shanghai has said that in his opinion it is the greatest institution in China. The school, its two departments being entirely distinct, is not missionary nor even philanthropic in character. This is simply a business enterprise fostered by the German government for business purposes. They give the best training in return for what, to the Chinese, are heavy fees, in order that these men may be prepared later to work in their employ. The teaching force is of the highest grade and the scientific equipment as perfect as the means provided can make it.

Perhaps of all the schools in Shanghai, the little day-schools appeal to one most because of their unfailing human interest and the possibilities stored up in them. They are of every kind and degree of excellence, or badness, according to the way they are looked at. On the whole, most of them seem to be doing good and even the poorest keep the children off the street. Often there are amusing features. In the Chinese city, on a signboard over a doorway appears the rather unusual announcement, “English taught from A. to L.” Just what is done with the remaining letters of the alphabet is not explained. On a side street the passerby reads again in large English letters, “Daily Progressive School.” In two poorly lighted, none too clean rooms of an old Chinese house, thirty or forty children bend over their roughly made desks, studying aloud in vociferous tones. The head teacher quiets them while he greets the chance visitor and points with pride to his foreign textbooks in geography and English. He too has ideals, and when reference is made to the name of the school, answers, “Yes, that is what I want to make it, ‘Daily Progressive.’” He adds that he has started two branches of his “Daily Progressive School” in other parts of Shanghai. Then comes the unexpected question, “Are you a Christian?” “I am a Christian,” naming the mission school where he received his education.

Sometimes a little day-school is hidden away in the back room of a rambling old house, or in an inner apartment of a Buddhist temple, where the unsophisticated easily loses himself amid its labyrinthine windings. During the stormy iconoclastic days of the revolution, temples and ancestral halls were turned over wholesale by the provisional government to be used as schools, and though many have reverted to their original purposes, others, like Li Hung Chang’s Temple in Shanghai, are still kept as seats of learning. This memorial to the great statesman, built by public funds, was taken possession of five years ago by the trustees of Fuh-tan College, and now the bronze statue of the famous Li from its pedestal in the garden looks down each day on three hundred and fifty students hurrying to and fro through the numberless courts and passageways. Commencement exercises are held in the Hall of Ancestral Worship, where, on a raised platform against an ornate background, sits the Chinese President, an alumnus of Yale, surrounded by his faculty, all in collegiate cap and gown, making one of the curious anomalies common in these days of transition.

From the Provincial Normal School, located in the Chinese city, thirty young men graduated last year and more than five hundred have gone out from its doors during the eleven years since it was opened. Such is the demand for teachers that long before the school-year closes every member of the graduating class has been spoken for. The alumni are scattered far and wide over the country. Near the Normal School is a large practice school of four hundred pupils. The students of the Normal School are taught music, clay-modelling, wood-carving, painting, drawing. They are ardent patriots and keenly resent any real or supposed indignity offered to their native land. Sometimes they express their patriotism in original ways, as they did not long ago, when feeling ran high because of the unreasonable demands made on China by Japan. The boys’ sleeping and study rooms open onto courts in the rambling structure, or rather a series of Chinese buildings which constitute the school plant. These rooms were cleared out and each one made the scene of some pictorial or material representation of the current political issue. Many of the exhibits were exceedingly clever, a few were most amusing, but all were strikingly illustrative of the animus of the student body and showed the kind of teachers that are being sent forth over China to instill their principles into the minds of the rising generation.

It is significant of the spirit of the times that a young man in Shanghai a few months ago went to his father and begged to be given his portion of the family gambling money. With it he opened a school which has now one hundred and fifty pupils. The secretary of the Provincial Educational Association, recently back from an extended tour in America, requested a resident missionary to give him lessons in English. He was so impressed with the excellence of the American system that he decided to introduce the same methods into his own schools as rapidly as possible, and wanted a better knowledge of English that he might be qualified to select text-books and arrange courses of study.

Last summer for the first time the Shanghai prefect fixed a uniform vacation period for the elementary schools extending through five weeks, from July 22d to August 25th. In sending out the notice the prefect added a clause to the effect that during two weeks of the vacation three hours a day must be spent by the pupils in reviewing their lessons.

There are two flourishing Japanese schools in Shanghai. One is a large public school that is growing so rapidly a new building has been added to the group which suffices for six or seven hundred pupils. Boys and girls of all ages are accommodated under the same roof, but with the exception of the very little children in the kindergarten, they occupy separate rooms and have their recess at different hours. They make a pretty sight in their gay coloured garments flitting about in the sunshine like radiant butterflies during play hours, or pouring joyously out on the street at the close of school, some going off in ricshas accompanied by nurses, more on foot, while a lot of youngsters scramble onto the street cars, clutching their coppers in dirty little paws, each one carrying a school bag or books tied up in a square of cloth, and a little lunch box, while on every urchin’s head rests a smart military cap.

The other school is a Japanese College with nearly three hundred students, strong of body, alert in mind, picked men all of them. They are sent from Japan by their respective prefectures to study in Shanghai for three years, every expense being met. The course includes commerce, engineering, and agriculture. During the fourteen years since the school opened, eight hundred have graduated, seventy receiving certificates last June. At the end of the second year’s work, seventy or eighty of the most promising students at the expense of the school, are sent far and wide over China to study the country and its condition, agricultural, mining, social, political. “When the men graduate from the college they return to Japan, do they not?” was asked of the president. “Oh, no,” came the emphatic reply, “they are expected to stay in China and help the Chinese develop their resources.”

A group of schools in Shanghai which are not for the study of books, but, in their line, of great value, the public generally knows little about. These are the six Singer Sewing-Machine Schools for women and girls. The Singer Sewing-Machine made its advent in China a decade ago, and thus far it is without a rival. It “took” almost at once with the Chinese and is now found everywhere, even in the most unlooked for and absurdly out-of-the-way places. In 1910 Singer Sewing-Machine schools were started in Shanghai. At first they met with small success. Those for men were a signal failure and soon closed their doors. The few who ventured to enter the schools for women and girls had to be paid for coming, but the old conservatism seemed to die out with the revolution. The leading school now numbers fifty pupils. The period of training covers three, six, or twelve months according to the kind of work taken up, whether plain tailoring or fancy embroidery. The pupils come from widely scattered districts and it is the intention when they return to their village or town that they shall open a school of their own, and in this way introduce the machines throughout the country. There are already more than four hundred selling stations in China, each in charge of a Chinese agent. The machines are sold on the installment plan. “We consider ourselves missionaries in our way,” said the foreign representative of the company in Shanghai, “for is it not a charity to lighten the labour of these poor hard-working people by selling them our sewing-machines on easy terms?” The Singer Company subscribes liberally to all benevolences, and during the revolution, and the rebellion the following year, it loaned its machines free of charge to organizations engaged in making garments for the destitute. One effective way it has of advertising is to send men about the streets of Shanghai dressed fantastically in clothes made in its shops, while offering for sale small articles carried in portable show-cases.

VIII

A WIZARD PUBLISHING HOUSE

“The pen is mightier than the sword” has through the centuries been a working axiom in China, for soldiers stood at the foot of the social ladder, while scholars sat proudly on the top rung. Recent experiences, it is true, have somewhat altered the views of the people, though not reversed them. But the accompanying adage, “The printed page is mightier than the sword,” has not seemed to acquire popularity, despite the fact that printing from movable type was discovered in old China long before Gutenberg saw the light of day. Indeed, the “Peking Gazette,” whose lineal descendant still flourishes in the Capital, claims the honour of being the first newspaper ever published. It was printed from wooden blocks, some of which are still in existence, no one knows just how long ago, though tradition makes it as many as a thousand years. But for centuries the art was little used and even as late as the Chino-Japanese war in 1894 news travelled so slowly that people living only seventy-five miles from the coast had not even heard there was a war. Now, Shanghai alone, which is far in advance of other cities in this respect, publishes more than thirty newspapers and periodicals, twelve of them being dailies. Many of the sheets are illustrated, and as a proof that they are thoroughly abreast of the times, advertisements of well known patent medicines are given a prominent place!

With the dawn of China’s “New Day,” and the increasing thirst for Western learning, an insistent cry was heard, not alone for newspapers, but for books, books, and plenty of them. Then to meet the need arose the Commercial Press. The story of the rapid growth and development of this great publishing house reads like a tale from the Arabian Nights. The idea was born in the minds of three young, wide-awake Chinese, all practical printers, and all of them Christians, the product of a Presbyterian Mission School in Shanghai. Work began in 1897 in a modest way with two small printing presses. The shop was a Chinese house in an alley off one of the main roads. These quarters were speedily outgrown, and after two moves the plant was finally lodged permanently in a group of fine brick buildings covering eight acres in the northern end of the city. To-day sixty modern presses, the very best to be had, are annually, in round figures, using up twenty-five thousand reams of foreign paper and thirty-four hundred reams of Chinese paper, the bulk of which is turned into school books and scattered far and wide over the land, from Manchuria to Thibet. The year after the revolution, although new machinery was bought, additional workmen taken on as fast as they could be found, and the presses kept running night and day, the enormous demand for books could not be met.

From the first, the policy of the Commercial Press has been never to print any books that are antagonistic to the Christian religion, and to this purpose it has faithfully adhered. Indeed, the twenty or more heads of departments are either Christians or in sympathy with Christianity.

The rules of this house governing the treatment of employees may not sound unusual to Western ears, but studied in comparison with conditions as they have been in China, and still are for the most part, their true worth is keenly realized. The Commercial Press employs about fourteen hundred men and four hundred women. Several of the boys are deaf mutes from a missionary institution in the north, and a number are from the Shanghai Reformatory, taken on by the company to give them a fresh start in life, with a hostel built especially for their accommodation. Most of the women work in the bindery, though they are found here and there throughout the establishment and some of the lighter machinery is operated by them. One is a forewoman and a few bright girls are studying to be bookkeepers. None are admitted under fourteen years of age, while the majority are much older. An innovation has lately been introduced, permitting women to work in the same room with men, although at different tables. It has proved a perfect success. All hands attend strictly to business and the new arrangement has distinct advantages over the old, as, in giving employees better light and air, since the rooms can be kept larger. The hours of labour are from 7:30 to 12 and from 1 to 5:30 o’clock. The bell rings for the women to leave five minutes before the men. “Ladies first, you see,” a member of the staff laughingly remarked to a visitor. When a woman expects to become a mother she is given two months off with full pay and five dollars in addition to meet extra expenses. Sundays are holidays. About one-eighth of the force are Christians and two Protestant churches are located in the neighborhood of the Works, which many of them attend. Wages are excellent with the addition of a bonus for special merit. There is a reserve fund for the benefit of the families of the deceased, and old, retired employees. Profit sharing is a part of the system and the head men in each department are shareholders in the company.

A small hospital with accommodation for a score of patients, and with an immaculate dispensary and operating room, is another feature of this remarkable establishment. An attendant is always present, and a Chinese foreign-trained doctor visits the hospital every morning. The clinic is open to outsiders as well as employees and their families. All pay a fee of three Chinese coppers, about one cent, as it has been found necessary to charge something to keep the place from being overrun. Near the Commercial Press the management has built a number of small but comfortable houses, and these are rented, at a nominal rate, to employees who care to occupy them. A school is maintained for the children of employees, and a night-school and reading-room for apprentices. A kindergarten, for which the Commercial Press furnishes the premises and the Presbyterian Mission Press the teachers, is also close by. None of these schools are free, as parents are able to pay a little tuition and feel more self-respecting to do so. A tea garden, made attractive with shrubs, flowers, and seats scattered about on the well-kept lawn, furnishes a delightful resting-place for the clerks when off duty. The fire brigade is a most important factor in the concern. It is composed of twenty-six men, all employees, and is kept at a high grade of efficiency by frequent drills. A stone’s throw from the main building is the fire station, fitted up with bright hose wagons, ladders, buckets, torches for carrying safety oil lamps of brass, besides complete uniforms for the men, the burnished brass helmets being their special pride. The brigade stands ready to respond to a limited number of outside calls.

Visitors to the press works are always cordially welcomed, and courteously shown over the establishment by a competent guide, whenever possible a member of the staff. So extensive is the plant it usually requires several hours for even a cursory tour of inspection. Two of the buildings are used for the printing plant and foundry, one for the Chinese bindery, another is reserved for the editorial department, Chinese and English, two are warehouses, one is a carpentry shop, and one, a long low building somewhat apart from the others, is devoted to photography and its various branches. The rooms are airy, clean, and cheerful, in marked contrast to most of the workshops in China. Each is connected by telephone with the main office, and light tracks are laid for carrying merchandise to and fro. Electric motors supply the motive power, while both gas and electricity are used for lighting purposes.