Lion and Dragon in Northern China

This being translated means:

"Happiness is the reward of virtue; misery is the reward of wickedness.If virtue and wickedness have not brought their due recompense it is only because the time has not yet come."

This man, whose name was Yang, is said to have been so upright and clean-handed an official that when he was relieved of office he found himself without funds sufficient to take him home to his native place, which was a long way off.However, being connected by marriage with the Li family of Ai-shan-ch'ien,[37] he took up his residence with them and there spent the remainder of his life. He was buried in the graveyard of the Li family, where his tomb is still to be seen.

The abolition of the Wei necessitated military changes of some importance, but the descendants of the old military colonists remained where they were and kept possession of their lands. The only difference to them was that their names as land-holders were now enrolled in the ordinary civil registers instead of in separate military registers. The chün ti (military lands) became min ti (civilian lands) and the payment of land-tax was substituted for military service.

The country appears to have remained unmolested by external foes until 1798, when a fleet of pirate-junks made its appearance with the usual disagreeable results.The years 1810-11 were also bad years for the people, as the eastern part of the province was infested with bands of roving brigands—probably poor peasants who, having been starved out of house and home by floods and droughts and having sold all their property, were asserting their last inalienable right, that of living.Whatever their provocation may have been, it appears from the local records that during the two years just mentioned their daring robberies caused the temporary closing of some of the country-markets.The robbers went about in armed bands, each consisting of seventy or eighty men, and complaints were openly made that the officials would take no active steps to check these disorderly proceedings because the yamên-runners—the ill-paid or unpaid rabble of official underlings by whom Chinese yamêns are infested—were in league with the robbers and received a percentage of the booty as "hush-money."The usual method of attack adopted by the miscreants was to lurk in the graveyards—where in this region there is always good cover—and lie in wait for unprotected travellers.Unlike the Robin Hoods and Dick Turpins of England they shrank not from robbing the poor, and they spared neither old woman nor young child.

Human enemies were not the only adverse forces with which the much-harried peasant of Weihaiwei had to contend.Famine, drought, earthquake, pestilence, all had their share in adding to his sorrows.Sometimes his crops were destroyed by locusts; sometimes his domestic animals became the prey of wild beasts. We find from the Annals that the first visit of British war-vessels to Weihaiwei, which occurred in 1816,[38] synchronised with a period of great misery: famines and epidemics in 1811 and 1812 had been followed by several years of agricultural distress; and during the years from 1813 to 1818 a new scourge visited the people in the shape of packs of ravenous wolves. The officers and men of the Alceste and Lyra might have had the pleasure, had they only known it, of joining in the wolf-hunts organised by the local officials.

The published chronicles do not carry us further than the middle of the nineteenth century, though the yamêns of Wên-têng and Jung-ch'êng possess all the information necessary for the production of new up-to-date editions of their local histories as soon as the higher provincial authorities issue the necessary orders. A new edition of the T'ung Chih, the general Annals and Topography of the whole Province of Shantung, is at present in course of preparation at the capital; and to this work each of the magistracies will be required to contribute its quota of information.If the work is brought up to recent times it will be interesting to read its account of the war with Japan in 1894-5, and of the capture of Weihaiwei.Before the outbreak of that war the fortifications of Weihaiwei had been entirely reconstructed under the direction of European engineers.It was not, however, so strong a fortress as Port Arthur, upon which six millions sterling had been spent by the Government, and which was regarded by the Chinese as impregnable.Yet Port Arthur fell to the victorious Japanese after a single day's fighting, whereas Weihaiwei, vigorously attacked by land and sea, did not capitulate till three weeks after the Japanese troops had landed (on January 20, 1895) at the Shantung Promontory.

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CHAPTER IV
CHINESE CHRONICLES AND LOCAL CELEBRITIES

Since February 1895 Weihaiwei has never been out of the hands of a foreign Power.At the conclusion of the war the place was retained in the hands of the Japanese as security for the due fulfilment of the conditions of peace.Then followed the concerted action of the three States of Germany, Russia and France to rob Japan of some of the fruits of her victory.The moving spirit in this coalition was Russia, who ousted Japan from Port Arthur and took possession of it herself.As a result of this manœuvre Great Britain demanded that Weihaiwei should be "leased" to her "for as long a period as Port Arthur remains in the occupation of Russia."It may be noted that the original "lease" of Port Arthur by China to Russia was for twenty-five years, which period will not elapse till 1923.Another almost simultaneous attack on Chinese integrity was made by Germany, whose long-sought opportunity of establishing herself on the coast of China was thrust in her way by the murder of two of her missionaries in Shantung.(Is it to be wondered at that the Chinese have at times regarded European missionaries as the forerunners of foreign armies and warships, in spite of the missionary's assertion that he is the apostle of universal love and has come to preach the Golden Rule?)

The Chinese in Shantung have a strange tale to tell of the murder of those German missionaries.They say the outrage had its origin in the kidnapping of a woman by an employee in a certain Chinese yamên.She had influential connexions, who promptly demanded her restitution.The kidnapper had the ear of the magistrate, who, turning a deaf ear to his petitioners, or professing to know nothing about the matter, took no action.The woman's relations then devoted their energy to bringing ruin upon the magistrate; and after long consultations decided that the surest and quickest method of doing so would be by killing the two local missionaries.This, they knew, would infallibly be followed by a demand from the foreign Government concerned for the magistrate's degradation and punishment.They had no grudge whatever against the missionaries, and merely regarded their slaughter as a simple means to a much-desired end.They carried out their plan with complete success, and the magistrate's ruin was the immediate result; but a further consequence, unforeseen by the murderers, was that "His Majesty the Emperor of China, being desirous of promoting an increase of German power and influence in the Far East," leased to His Majesty the German Emperor the territory of Kiaochou.Needless to say, an increase of the power and influence of any great European Power in the eastern hemisphere was, very naturally, the last thing to be desired by the Chinese Emperor and his people.It seems a pity that modern civilised States have not yet devised some means of putting an end to the ignoble warfare that is continually waged by the language of diplomacy against the language of simple truth.

The reader may be interested in some illustrations of the manner in which the Chinese official chronicler arranges, in chronological order, his statements of conspicuous local events.The following lists of occurrences with their dates (which are merely selections from the available material) are translated direct from the Chinese Annals of Weihaiwei, Wên-têng, Jung-ch'êng, and Ning-hai. A few of the meteorological and astronomical details are of some interest, if their meaning is not always obvious. With regard to the comets, I have made no attempt at exact verification, though the comet of 1682 was evidently Halley's, which is occupying a good deal of public and scientific attention at the present time. That of 1741 may have been either Olbers's or Pons's, and that of 1801 was perhaps Stephan's. But these are points which are best left to the man of science. The Chinese dates are in all cases converted into the corresponding dates of the Christian era.

Han Dynasty.

40 B.C. A singularly successful year in the wild-silk industry, owing to the abundance of silk produced by the silk-worms at Mou-p'ing Shan.

Chin Dynasty.

353 A.D. (about January). The planet Venus crossed the orbit (?) of the planet Mars and passed over to the west. [This appears to be unintelligible.]

386 (about July).The planet Jupiter was seen in the daytime in the west.

T'ang Dynasty.

841.In the autumn, hailstorms destroyed houses and ruined crops.

Sung Dynasty.

990.Great famine.

Yüan Dynasty.

1295-6.Floods.

1297. Seventh moon. Great famine. [The Chinese year begins a month or more later than the European year.The word "moon" is used as an indication that the month is the lunar month, which alone is recognised in China.]

1330.Great famine.

1355.Locusts destroyed crops.

Ming Dynasty.

1408.Earthquake, with a noise like thunder.

1506.Seventh moon, sixth day.Great floods, both from sky and ocean.Crops destroyed and soil impregnated with salt.

1511.Wandering brigands entered the district.Hearing the sound of artillery, they fled.

1512.Third moon, thirteenth day.The bell and the drum in the temple of Ch'in Shih Huang-ti on Ch'êng-shan[39] sounded of their own accord. Immediately afterwards, the temple was destroyed by fire, but the images remained intact. On the same day a band of roving robbers entered Wên-têng city.

1513.A flight of locusts darkened the sun.

1516.Drought and floods.No harvest.

1518.Famine and starvation.

1546.Floods.Ninth moon, second day: a hailstorm and an earthquake, with a noise like thunder.

1548.Great earthquake.Countless dwelling-houses overthrown.

1556.Between five and six in the morning of the twenty-ninth day of the twelfth moon (early in 1556) the sun produced four parhelia (mock-suns) of great brilliance.The northern one was especially dazzling.[The appearance of four parhelia was regarded as unusual enough to merit special mention, but old inhabitants of Weihaiwei say that two "sun's ears," as they are called, are comparatively often seen at sunrise.According to the local folk-lore, a single "ear" on the left side of the sun betokens high winds, while a single "ear" on the right foretells rain.If "ears" appear on both left and right, splendid weather for the farmers is to be expected.]

1570.Floods.All crops destroyed and houses flooded.

1576.Third moon, twenty-seventh day.Tremendous storm of wind and rain, and ruin of young crops.

1580.Landslips on the hills.

1585.Great famine.

1597.Earthquake and rumbling noise.From this year to 1609 there were no good harvests.

1613.Seventh moon, seventh day.At noon a black vapour came up from the north-east.There was a fierce wind and a great fall of rain.In the autumn there was a drought.

1615.A plague of locusts, resulting in the destruction of the crops.

1616. In spring, a great famine. Men ate human flesh. Free breakfasts were provided by the district-magistrate of Wên-têng, Chang Chiu-ching, and by the chih-hui of Weihaiwei, T'ao Chi-tsu, whereby thousands of lives were saved.

1620.Seventh moon, eighth day.A great storm, which tore up trees and destroyed houses.Many people crushed to death.Ninety-six junks wrecked on the coast and over one hundred men drowned.

1621. Fourth moon, eighteenth day. A rumour was spread that pirates had landed on the coast. Many people were so terrified that they fled to a distance of 800 li, and trampled each other under foot in their efforts to escape.It was a false rumour.In the autumn there was an earthquake.

1622.Locusts.

1623-5.Three years of excellent harvests.

1626. Fifth moon: storm with hailstones as big as hens' eggs.Intercalary sixth moon: floods and destruction of crops.Seventh moon: great storm that uprooted trees.

1639.Locusts darkened the sky.Famine.

1640.Drought.Famine.

1641.Great famine.More than half the people perished.Men ate human flesh.Six hundred taels of money were given by the officials of Ning-hai to relieve the people of that district.

1642-3.No harvests.Country pillaged by robbers.

Ch'ing Dynasty.

1650.Spring and summer: drought.Autumn: floods and crops inundated.

1656.Great harvest.

1659.Comet in the Northern Dipper [the stars α β γ δ in Ursa Major].

1662. At Weihaiwei the tide threw up a monstrous fish which was five chang high [over fifty-eight English feet], several tens of chang long [at least three hundred and sixty feet], with a black body and white flesh. The people of the place all went down and spent a couple of months or so in cutting up the great beast but did not come to the end of it. Those of the people who liked a bit of fun cut out its bones and piled them into a mound; the large bones were about twelve feet in circumference, the small ones about six feet. The small ones were his tail bones. [Stories of monstrous fishes are not rare along the Shantung coast, and—allowing for exaggerations with reference to dimensions—they are based on a substratum of fact. We have seen (see p. 27) that the bones of a vast fish were presented to the Kuan Ti temple in Weihaiwei city, where they may still be seen; and another set of fishbones adorn the canopy of a theatrical stage in the same city. For other references to great fishes, see pp. 24 and 26.]

1664.Drought.Seventh moon: a comet with a tail twelve feet in length.

1665.Earthquake.Great drought.Land taxes remitted.A comet.

1668.First moon.The sun produced four parhelia.On the twenty-fifth day a white vapour came from the south-west.On the seventeenth day of the sixth moon there was a great earthquake, and there were three noises like thunder.Parts of the city walls of Ch'êng-shan-wei and Wên-têng collapsed, and many houses.A devastating wind for three days spoiled the crops.

1670.Great snowstorm.Snow lay twelve feet deep.Intensely cold weather.Men were frozen to death on the roads and even inside their own houses.

1671.Great landslips on the hills.Sixth moon, rain and floods for three days, followed by ruin of crops and partial remission of land-tax.

1679.First moon: four halos appeared round the sun.Sixth moon, first day, and seventh moon, twenty-eighth day: earthquakes.

1682.Fifth moon, sixth day: earthquake destroyed two portions of the yamên of the district-magistrate, Wên-têng.Eighth moon, first day: a comet [Halley's?]was seen in daytime, and did not pass away till the eleventh day.In the same moon a violent storm occurred in one locality, spoiling the crops.

1685.Third moon, twelfth day.A violent wind.

1686.Earthquake.Sixth moon, twenty-eighth day, a comet came from the south-east as big as a peck-measure and as bright as the sun.It threaded the Southern Dipper and entered the Milky Way, where it became invisible.The sound of "heaven's drum" was heard four or five times.

1688.Twelfth moon, seventh day.Earthquake.

1689.Spring: famine.Sixth moon, first day: earthquake.

1691.Seventh moon, tenth day.Locusts.

1696.Floods and famine.In winter the district-magistrate provided free breakfasts.

1697.Government grain issued to save the people from starvation.Some however died of hunger.

1703.Floods and drought and a great famine in 1703 were followed in 1704 by deadly epidemics.More than half the population perished.The condition of the survivors was pitiful.They lived by eating the thatch that roofed their houses and they also ate human flesh.Land-tax remitted for three years.

1706.Great harvest.

1709.Rains injured crops.Famine.

1717.A great snowstorm at Weihaiwei on the twenty-sixth day of the first moon.People frozen to death.Eighth moon, rain and hail.

1719.Seventh moon.Great floods.Houses destroyed and crops ruined; the district-magistrate gave free breakfasts and issued grain for planting.

1723.Great harvest.

1724.Remission of three-tenths of land-tax for three years.Great snowfall in winter.

1725.In the second moon (about March) occurred the phenomenon of the coalescence of sun and moon and the junction of the jewels of the five planets.[40] [This has nothing to do with an eclipse. It is a phenomenon which is believed to indicate great happiness and prosperity, and good harvests. It is said to consist in the apparent simultaneous rising of sun and moon accompanied by peculiar atmospheric conditions. Some of the planets are supposed to go through a similar process.]

1730.Twelfth moon, twenty-eighth day (about January or February 1730), at nine in the evening, some beautiful parti-coloured clouds appeared in the north.They were resplendent with many tints intricately interwoven, and several hours passed before they faded away.Every one declared that the phenomenon betokened unexampled prosperity.

1736.First year of the reign of Ch'ien Lung.Three-tenths of the land-tax remitted.Eleventh moon, twenty-fourth and twenty-sixth days, earthquakes.

1739.Drought and floods.

1740.Land-tax remitted and public granaries opened.

1741.Seventh moon.A comet came from the west and did not fade till the twelfth moon.Great harvests.

1743. On the festival of the Ninth of the Ninth Moon a strange fish came ashore near Weihaiwei. Its head was like a dog's, its belly like a sea-turtle's. Its tail was six ch'ih long [say seven English feet] and at the end were three pointed prongs. On its back was a smaller fish, about ten inches long, which seemed to be made of nothing but spikes and bones. No one knew the name of either fish. It was suggested that perhaps the smaller one had fastened itself to the big one, and that the latter, unable to bear the pain of the small one's spikes, had dashed for the shore.

1747.Seventh moon, fifteenth day.Great storm: crops ruined.

1748.Locusts hid the sun and demolished the crops.

1749.Tenth moon, twenty-second day.Great storm and many drowned.

1751-2.Floods.Crops damaged by water and a hailstorm.Many died of starvation.Assistance given by Government, by the importation of grain from Manchuria.

1753.Good harvests.

1761.Great snowfall.Many geese and ducks frozen to death.

1765.Second moon, eleventh day: earthquake.Sixth moon: great floods, land flooded, houses destroyed, people injured.

1766.Great drought.

1767.Third moon, twenty-first day: great storm, trees uprooted and houses destroyed.Sixth moon, twentieth day: earthquake.

1769.Autumn, a comet.

1770.Seventh moon, twenty-ninth day.In the evening the north quarter of the sky became red as if on fire.

1771.Sixth moon.Continuous rain from second to ninth days.Crops ruined; famine.

1774.Second moon, second day: great storm which made the sands fly and the rocks roll, burst open houses and uprooted trees.Heaven and earth became black.Eighth moon: locusts.

1775.Summer, great drought.Eighth moon, seventeenth day: earthquake.

1783.From first to sixth moon, no rain; food excessively dear.

1785.Eighth moon, tenth day.Earthquake.

1790.Tenth moon, sixth day.Earthquake.

1791.Tenth moon, ninth day.Earthquake.

1796.First moon, second day.A sound like thunder rolled from north-east to south-west.

1797.Eleventh moon, second day."Heaven's drum" was heard.

1801.Fourth moon.A star was seen in the north, of fiery red colour; it went westward, and was like a dragon.Summer and autumn, great drought: all grass and trees withered.Famine in winter.

1802.Tenth moon.Wheat eaten by locusts.

1803.Great snowfall.

1807.Seventh moon.Comet seen in the west, dying away in the tenth moon.Good harvests.

1810.Floods.In spring, devastation was caused by wolves.

1811.Eighth moon.A comet was seen, more than forty feet long.There was a great famine.During this year there were seventeen earthquakes, the first occurring on the ninth day of the fourth moon, the last on the sixteenth day of the ninth moon.[41]

1812.Famine in spring.The people lived on willow-leaves and the bark of trees.Multitudes died of disease.The district-magistrate opened the public granaries.The famine continued till the wheat was ripe.

1813.Wolves caused devastation from this year onwards until 1818.The year 1816 was the worst, and the officials organised expeditions to hunt the wolves with dogs.

1815.A comet was seen in the west.

1817.Fourth moon, eighth day.Earthquake and loud noise.

1818.Sixth moon, floods.People drowned.A kind of temporary lifeboat service was organised by the officials.

1821.Famine.Locusts.A deadly pestilence in autumn.Fourth moon, a repetition of the celestial phenomenon mentioned under the date 1725.

1823.Earthquake.

1835.Sixth and seventh moons.More than forty days of rain.Government help given to the people.

1836.Famine.Food and seed provided by the officials.Abnormally high tides this year.

1838.Fourth moon.A plague of locusts.The district-magistrate collected the people of the country, and went out at their head to catch and slay the insects.After a few days they utterly vanished.Excellent harvest thereafter.

1839.From fourth to seventh moon, crops spoiled by excessive rain.Tenth moon, twelfth day, a noisy earthquake.From the sixteenth to the twenty-third of the same month rain fell unceasingly.

1840.Eclipse of the sun.

1842.Sixth moon, first day, an eclipse of the sun, during which the stars were visible.

1844.Eighth moon, twenty-fifth day, at midnight, a great earthquake.

1846.Sixth moon, thirteenth day, at night, a great earthquake.

1847.Seventh moon.The planet Venus was seen in daytime.

1848.Drought and locusts.

1850.First day of the New Year, an eclipse of the sun.

1852.Eleventh moon, first day, an eclipse of the sun.

1856.Seventh moon, locusts.Great pestilence.On the first of the ninth moon, an eclipse of the sun.

1861.Eighth moon, first day, same phenomenon as witnessed in 1725 and 1821.

1862.Seventh and eighth moons, great pestilence.

These extracts from the local chronicles are perhaps enough to prove that the Weihaiwei peasant has not always lain on a bed of roses.When we know him in his native village, and have learned to appreciate his powers of endurance, his patience, courage, physical strength and manly independence, and remember at the same time how toilfully and amid what perils his ancestors have waged the battle of life, we shall probably feel inclined either to dissociate ourselves forthwith from the biological theory that denies the inheritance of acquired qualities or to recognise that the principle of natural selection has been at work here with conspicuous success.

The chief boast of the Promontory district, including Weihaiwei, is or should be its sturdy peasantry, yet it is not without its little list, also, of wise men and heroes. Weihaiwei, like other places, has its local shrine for the reverential commemoration of those of its men and women who have distinguished themselves for hsien, chieh, hsiao—virtue, wifely devotion and filial piety; and the accounts given us in the official annals of the lives and meritorious actions of these persons are not without interest as showing the nature of the deeds that the Chinese consider worthy of special honour and official recognition.[42]

On the northern slope of Wên-têng Shan, near the city of that name, is the tomb of Hsien Hsien Shên Tzŭ—the Ancient Worthy Shên. He was a noted scholar of the Chou dynasty (1122-293 B.C.). The T'ang dynasty honoured him (about one thousand years or more after his death) with the posthumous title of Earl of Lu (Lu Pai). The Sung dynasty about the year 1012 A.D. created the deceased philosopher Marquess of Wên-têng (Wên-têng Hou). His descendants—no longer of noble rank—are said to be still living in the ancestral village of Shên-chia-chuang (the village of the Shên family), his native place. In 1723 a new monument was erected at his grave by the district-magistrate of that time, and the custom was established for the local officials to offer sacrifices at the marquess's tomb three days before the Ch'ing-ming festival.[43]

Close to Wên-ch'üan-t'ang (the headquarters of the South Division of Weihaiwei under British rule) is to be seen the grave of one Yü P'êng-lun, who during the terrible period 1639-43 honourably distinguished himself by opening soup-kitchens along the roadsides.He also presented a free burial-ground for the reception of the bones of the unknown or destitute poor who had starved to death.Free schools, moreover, and village granaries were founded by this enlightened philanthropist.After his death the Board of Rites in 1681 sanctioned his admission into the Temple of Local Worthies.

In 1446 were buried close to Weihaiwei the remains of a great general named Wei (Wei chiang-chün) who had done good service against the Japanese.

Ch'i Ch'ung-chin, a native of Weihaiwei, is stated in the Chronicle to have been by nature sincere and filial, and a good friend.He was also zealously devoted to study.In 1648 he became an official and occupied many posts in Yünnan and other distant provinces.He governed the people virtuously, and conferred a great benefit on them during an inundation by constructing dykes.He died at his post through overwork.

Pi Kao was a chih-hui of Weihaiwei, and first took office in 1543. He was afterwards promoted to a higher military post in Fuhkien, and in 1547 died fighting against the "Dwarfs" who had landed on the coast of that province. He was canonised as one of the Patriot-servants of the Empire (chung-ch'ên).

Ku Shêng-yen from his earliest years showed exceptional zeal in the study of military tactics, and accustomed himself to horseback-riding and archery. In 1757 he became a military chin shih (graduate of high rank) and was selected for a post in Ssŭch'uan.

Subsequently in Yünnan he took part in fourteen actions against the Burmese.At Man-hua during a siege he was wounded in the head and had a severe fall, from which he nearly died.He took part in the operations against the Sung-p'an principality (in Ssŭch'uan), and in 1773 the general commanding the imperial troops against the Chin-ch'uan rebels in the west of Ssŭch'uan ordered him to lead the attack.This he did with conspicuous success, capturing numerous strongholds, bridges and outposts, and slaughtering enormous numbers of the enemy.He was honoured by the Emperor with the Peacock Feather and the Bat'uru.[44] Later on he received a wound from which he died. Further marks of imperial favour were bestowed upon him on the occasion of his funeral.

Wang Yüeh of the Ming dynasty passed a very good examination and was appointed a district-magistrate.For nine years he received no promotion, so he threw up his official post and came home whistling and singing with delight at having got his freedom.Among his writings are "Records of Southern Travel" and a description of Weihaiwei.The latter takes the form of an imaginary dialogue between a stranger from Honan and a Weihaiwei native.[45] It is too long to translate in full, but it begins thus: "From the far west came a stranger. Here at Weihai he rested awhile, and as he gazed at the limitless expanse of hills and ocean his feelings expressed themselves now in deep sighs, now in smiles of happiness. Summoning to his side a native of Weihai he introduced himself thus: 'I come from the province of Honan. No rich man am I, yet I love to wander hither and hither, wherever there are wonderful places or beautiful scenery to be visited. I have seen the sacred hills of Hêng, Sung, Hua and T'ai;[46] the famous rivers and lakes of the Empire, the Yangtse and the Han, the Tung-t'ing lake, the Hsiang river, have all been visited by me, all their points of interest examined and all their beauties seized. But methought that the great ocean I had not yet seen, for it lay far to the east.' " He goes on to describe by what route and under what difficulties he travelled, and "I don't know how many thousand li I haven't come," he said plaintively; "my horse is weary and his hoofs are worn, my servant is in pain with swollen ankles, and just see what a pitiable sight I am with my tortured bones and muscles! However, here we are at last, and all I want to do is to gain new experiences and behold new scenes, and so remove all cause of future regret for things not seen."

The Weihai man points out to the stranger the various features of interest of the place and gives a sketch of its history, and the narration ends up with his loyal wishes for the eternal preservation of his country and the long life of the Emperor.

Yüan Shu-fang took his degree in 1648 and received an appointment in Yang-chou,[47] where he fulfilled his official functions with wisdom and single-mindedness. He was fond of travelling about in the south-eastern provinces and attracted round him numbers of people of artistic temperament. After many years, continues his biographer, he retired from the civil service and went home to Weihaiwei. There he gave himself up with the greatest enthusiasm to the luxury of poetic composition. Among his poems are "Songs of the South." He edited and annotated the Kan Ying P'ien [the Taoist "Book of Rewards and Punishments"] and other works of that nature. A little poem of his on the view of Liukungtao from the city wall is given a place in the Weihaiwei Chih

The number of Chinese officials who, like Wang Yüeh or Yüan Shu-fang, have been glad to divest themselves of the cares and honours of office under Government is surprisingly large.Disappointed ambition; constitutional dislike of routine employment, official conventionalities and "red tape"; a passion for the tranquil life of a student; a love of beauty in art or nature: these, or some of them, are the causes that have impelled multitudes of Chinese officials to resign office, often early in their careers, and seek a quiet life of scholarly seclusion either in their own homes or in some lonely hermitage or some mountain retreat.Even at the present day retired magistrates may be met with in the most unexpected places.I found one in 1908 living in a little temple at the edge of the stupendous precipice of Hua Shan in Shensi, eight thousand feet above the sea-level.He was a lover of poetry and a worshipper of Nature.

Ting Pai-yün was for some time a resident in but not a native of Weihaiwei.His personal name and native place are unknown.It is said that he obtained the doctorate of letters towards the end of the Ming period.His first official post was at Wei Hsien in Shantung.Subsequently he took to a roving life and travelled far and wide.When he came to Li Shan near Weihaiwei he was glad to find a kindred spirit in one Tung Tso-ch'ang, with whom he exchanged poems and essays.He devoted himself with the utmost persistence to the occult arts, and succeeded in foretelling the date of his own death.He practised his wizardry in the Lao mountains,[48] and people called him Mr. White-clouds.

Wang Ching, Ting Shih-chü, Kuo Hêng, Pi Ch'ing and some others receive honourable mention among the Weihaiwei worthies for their kindness and benevolence towards the poor during various periods of famine.Some writers are apt to assume that pity and charity are only to be met with among Christian peoples.The mistake is serious, but perhaps it is not an unnatural one, for we do not in Oriental countries see anything comparable with the vast charitable organisations, the "missions" to the poor and vicious, the free hospitals, infirmaries and almshouses, that we see in Western countries.As a partial explanation of this we should remember that in countries where individualism is supreme there are more people who "fall by the wayside," lonely and helpless, than there are in countries where the family ties are indissoluble.The people of Weihaiwei consist of peasant-farmers—very poor from the Western point of view: yet there is not a beggar in the Territory, and if an almshouse or an infirmary were established there to-morrow it would probably remain untenanted.

Ch'i Yen-yün was a graduate and a devoted student of the art of poetry.He put his books in a bundle and trudged away to look for a Master.He wandered great distances, and made a pilgrimage to the Five Sacred Mountains.He was joined by a number of disciples, who came from all directions and travelled about with him.A pilgrimage to the Wu Yüeh or Five Sacred Mountains,[49] it may be mentioned, is regarded as a performance of no mean merit, through which the pilgrim will infallibly evolve mystical or spiritual powers of marvellous efficacy. These valuable powers have not yet shown themselves in a foreigner from distant Europe who performed this little feat in 1908-9.

Wang Ch'i-jui was famous among all the literates of the district for his exemplary character.When he was only thirteen he and his whole family were bought by a certain official as domestic servants.Wang paid the greatest attention to his studies, and his master, seeing this, put out his tongue in astonishment and said, "this boy is much too good to be wasted."So he cancelled the deed of purchase and set the boy free.In after-years he distinguished himself as a friend of the down-trodden and oppressed, and during the troublous times that marked the end of the Ming and the rise of the Ch'ing dynasty he strenuously advocated the cause of the poor.Once he passed a certain ruffian who was waiting by the roadside to waylay travellers.This man was the most truculent swashbuckler in the whole countryside; but when he saw Wang Ch'i-jui, and recognised him, he lowered his sword.Subsequently through Wang's clemency this robber received a pardon for his crimes.

The name of the patriot Huang Ch'êng-tsung of the Ming dynasty is enrolled among both the Hsiang Hsien (Local Worthies) and the Chung Ch'ên (Loyal Officials). The records say that though he came of a poor family in Weihaiwei he showed a zealous and ambitious temperament even from the days of childhood. Having taken his degree, he was appointed to a post at Ch'ing-tu, where he distinguished himself as an able official. In 1638, when rebel troops were approaching the city, he placed himself at the head of the local troops and fought with great heroism for ten days. Unfortunately a certain military graduate entered into traitorous communication with the enemy and let them into the city. When Huang was told the bad news he decided that, though defeat and death were now certain, he was bound in honour to fight to the last. He had a brave young son of eighteen years of age, named Huang Chao-hsüan, who, learning what had happened, addressed his father thus: "An official can prove his loyalty by dying for his sovereign, a son his filial devotion by dying with his father." The two went out to meet the enemy together. Huang Ch'êng-tsung was shot dead by an arrow while he was fighting in the streets, and the son was slain at his father's side.

This was not the end of the tragedy.Of Huang's wife, Liu Shih, the story is told that as soon as news was brought her of her husband's death she immediately turned towards the north and made an obeisance in the direction of the Emperor.Then she took her little daughter and strangled her, and immediately afterwards died by her own hand.[50] Her dying wish was that her little girl should be placed beside her in her coffin. Finally, a faithful servant of the family, named Huang Lu, seized a dagger and killed himself. And so, says the local chronicle, were brought about the pitiful deaths of a patriotic official, a filial son, a devoted wife, a loyal servant.[51] No one who heard the story but shed tears. The dead bodies were brought back to Weihaiwei and buried at Nai-ku Shan, to the north of Weihai City.

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CHAPTER V
BRITISH RULE

When negotiations were being carried on seventy years ago for the cession of Hongkong to the British Crown the only interests that were properly consulted were those of commerce.Military and naval requirements were so far overlooked that one side of the harbour, with its dominating range of mountains, was allowed to remain in the hands of China, the small island of Hongkong alone passing into the hands of Great Britain.The strategic weakness of the position was soon recognised; it was obvious that the Chinese, or any hostile Power allied with China, could hold the island and the harbour, with its immense shipping, entirely at its mercy by the simple expedient of mounting guns on the Kowloon hills.The first favourable opportunity was taken by the British Government to obtain a cession of a few square miles of the Kowloon peninsula, but from the strategic point of view this step was of very little use; and it was not till 1898 that the Hongkong "New Territory"—a patch of country which, including the mountain ranges and some considerable islands, has an area of several hundred square miles—was "leased" to Great Britain "for a period of ninety-nine years."

When, in the same year, arrangements were being made for the "lease" of Weihaiwei, no decision had been come to as to whether the place was to be made into a fortress, like Hongkong, or merely retained as a flying base for the fleet or as a depôt of commerce: but to make quite sure that there would be enough territory for all possible or probable purposes the British Government asked for and obtained a lease not only of the island of Liukung but also of a strip of land measuring ten miles round the entire bay. The bay itself, with its various inlets, is so extensive that this strip of land comprises an area of nearly three hundred square miles, with a coast-line of over seventy miles; while the beeline frontier from the village of Ta-lan-t'ou in the extreme east to Hai Chuang in the extreme west measures about forty miles.

This land-frontier is purely artificial: in one or two cases, while it includes one portion of a village it leaves the rest in Chinese territory.This considerable area is under direct British rule, and within it no Chinese official has any jurisdiction whatever except, as we have seen,[52] within the walls of the little city from which the Territory derives its name. Beyond the British frontier lies a country in which the British Government may, if it sees fit, "erect fortifications, station troops, or take any other measures necessary for defensive purposes at any points on or near the coast of the region east of the meridian 121° 40' E. of Greenwich." The British "sphere of influence" may thus be said to extend from about half-way to Chefoo on the west to the Shantung Promontory on the east: but Great Britain has had no necessity for the practical exercise of her rights in that wide region.

Of the general appearance of the Territory and its neighbourhood something has been said in the second chapter.Hills are very numerous though not of great altitude, the loftiest being only about 1,700 feet high.A short distance beyond the frontier one or two of the mountains are more imposing, especially the temple-crowned Ku-yü hills to the south-west, which are over 3,000 feet in height.[53] There are about three hundred and fifteen villages in the leased Territory under direct British rule; of these none would be described as a large village in England, and many are mere hamlets, but they have been estimated to contain an aggregate population of 150,000. Considering that agriculture is the occupation of all but a small portion of the people, and that large areas in the Territory are wholly unfit for cultivation, this population must be regarded as very large, and its size can only be explained by the extreme frugality of the people and the almost total absence of a leisured or parasitic class.

The Weihaiwei Convention was signed in July 1898.For the first few years the place was controlled by various naval and military authorities, of whom one was Major-General Sir A.Dorward, K.C.B., but it can hardly be said to have been administered during that time, for the whole Territory beyond Liukungtao and the little mainland settlement of Ma-t'ou (now Port Edward) was almost entirely left to its own devices.The temporary appointment of civil officers lent by the Foreign and Colonial Offices led to the gradual extension and consolidation of civil government throughout the Territory.One of these officers was the late Mr. G.T.Hare of the Straits Settlements Government, and another—whose excellent work is still held in remembrance by the people—was Mr. S.Barton, of the British Consular Service in China.The appointment of Mr. R.Walter[54] as Secretary to Government shortly preceded that of Mr. (now Sir) J. H. Stewart Lockhart, Colonial Secretary of Hongkong, as first civil Commissioner.

By this year (1902) Weihaiwei had been placed under the direct control of the Colonial Office, since which time it has occupied a position practically identical with that of a British Crown Colony, though (owing to technical considerations) its official designation is not Colony but Territory.The Commissioner is the head of the Local Government, and is therefore subject only to the control of His Majesty exercised through the Secretary of State for the Colonies.His official rank corresponds with that of a Lieutenant-Governor: that is to say, he receives (while in office at Weihaiwei) a salute of fifteen guns as compared with the seventeen of a first-class Crown-colony Governor (such as the Governors of Hongkong, the Straits Settlements, Ceylon and Jamaica), or the nine accorded to a British Consul in office.His actual powers, though exercised in a more limited sphere, are greater than those of most Crown-colony Governors, for he is not controlled by a Council.

As in Gibraltar and St. Helena, laws in Weihaiwei are enacted by the head of the executive alone, not—as the phrase usually runs elsewhere—"with the advice and consent of the Legislative Council." The Order-in-Council indicates, of course, on what lines legislation may take place, and all laws (called Ordinances) must receive the Royal assent, or rather, to put it more accurately, His Majesty is advised by the Secretary of State "not to exercise his powers of disallowance." This is in accordance with the usual Colonial procedure. In practice, as we saw in the first chapter, it has been found unnecessary to enact more than a very small number of Ordinances for Weihaiwei. The people are governed in accordance with their own immemorial customs, and it is only when the fact of British occupation introduces some new set of conditions for which local custom does not provide, that legislation becomes necessary. The legal adviser to the local Government is ex officio the Crown Advocate at Shanghai, and he it is who, when necessary, drafts the legal measures to be promulgated in the name of the Commissioner. Such measures are generally copied from or closely modelled on laws already in force in England or in the Colony of Hongkong.

The China Squadron of the British Fleet visits the port every summer.The fact that Weihaiwei is under British rule gives the Naval commander-in-chief perfect freedom to carry out target-practice or other exercises ashore and afloat under highly favourable conditions.But the greatest advantage that Weihaiwei possesses—from the naval as from the civilian point of view—is its good climate.It is perhaps not so superlatively excellent as some writers, official and other, have made out: but none will deny that the climate is "a white man's," and most will agree that it is, on the whole, the finest on the coast of China.

The rainfall is not, on the average, much greater or much less than that of England, though it is much less evenly distributed than in our own country.This is perhaps an advantage; there is no doubt that the average year in Weihaiwei contains a greater number of "fine days"—that is, days when the sun shines and no rain falls—than the average year in England.The other side of the shield shows us droughts and floods; how frequent and how destructive are these calamities may have been gathered from statements made in the last chapter.The winter is much colder and the summer much warmer than is usually the case in England: in addition to which both cold and heat are more steady and continuous.But there are not the same extremes that are met with in Peking and other inland places.The temperature in winter has been known to fall to zero, but the average minimum may be put at about 6° (F.)The snowfall is not great and the roads are rarely blocked.Skating, owing to the lack of rivers and lakes, can only be indulged in to a minute extent.

The winter north winds are intensely cold: even the Chinese go about muffled up to the ears in furs. The autumn months—September to November—are the most delightful of the year. The heat and rains of summer have passed away and the weather at this period is equal to that of a superb English summer and early autumn. The spring months are often delightful: but this is the season of those almost incessant high winds that constitute one of the chief blemishes of the Weihaiwei climate. Yet they are as nothing compared with the terrible dust-storms of the Chihli plains, such as make the European resident in Peking wish himself anywhere else. July and August are the months of rain, damp, and heat: yet the temperature rarely goes higher than 94° (F.) , and the summer climate is much less trying than that of Hongkong or of Shanghai. It is during those two months, indeed, that Weihaiwei receives most of its European summer visitors from the southern ports.

When the British Squadron and the European visitors leave Weihaiwei in or about the month of September, the place is left to its own resources until the month of May or June in the following year.From the social point of view Weihaiwei suffered severely from the disbandment of the well-known Chinese Regiment, the British officers of which did much to cheer the monotony of the winter months.A pack of harriers was kept by the Regiment, and hunting was indulged in two days a week during that period.From November, when the last crops were taken off the fields, and cross-country riding became possible, until the end of March, when the new crops began to come up and confined equestrians to the roads, hunting the hare was the favourite recreation of the British community.The Regiment itself, after undergoing many vicissitudes, was disbanded in 1906.During its short career of about seven years it proved—if indeed a proof were needed, after the achievements of General Gordon—that the Chinese, properly treated and well trained and led, could make first-rate soldiers.

The appearance of the rank and file of the Chinese Regiment on parade was exceptionally good, and never failed to excite admiration on the part of European visitors; but their soldierly qualities were not tested only in the piping times of peace.They did good service in promptly suppressing an attempted rising in the leased Territory, and on being sent to the front to take part in the operations against the Boxers in 1900 they behaved exceedingly well both during the attack on Tientsin, and on the march to Peking.Among the officers who led them on those occasions were Colonel Bower, Major Bruce, Captain Watson and Captain Barnes.[55]

At its greatest strength the Regiment numbered thirteen hundred officers and men, but before the order for disbandment went forth the numbers had been reduced to about six hundred.With the Chinese Regiment disappeared Weihaiwei's only garrison.A few picked men were retained as a permanent police force, and three European non-commissioned officers were provided with appointments on the civil establishment as police inspectors.These men, in addition to an already-existing body of eight Chinese on Liukungtao and twelve in the European settlement at Port Edward, constitute the present (1910) Police Force of the Territory, which now numbers altogether fifty-five Chinese constables and three inspectors.

Weihaiwei, then, is entirely destitute of troops and of fortifications, and in the long months of winter—when there is not so much as a torpedo-boat in the harbour—the place is practically at the mercy of any band of robbers that happened to regard it with a covetous eye.This state of things cannot be regarded as ideally good: yet—to touch upon a matter that might once have been regarded as bearing on politics, but is now a mere matter of history—it may be admitted that from the imperial point of view the abolition of the Chinese Regiment was a wise step.This view is not shared by most Englishmen in China: and as for the British officers, who had given several of the best years of their lives to the training of that regiment, and had learned to take in it a most justifiable pride, one can easily understand how bitter must have been their feelings of dismay and disappointment when they heard of the War Office's decision.Similar feelings, perhaps, may have agitated the mind of the "First Emperor" when the beautiful bridge to Fairyland, on which he had spent so much time and energy, began to crumble away before his sorrowing eyes.The position of the Chinese Regiment was not analogous to that of the native troops in India and in our other large imperial possessions.Its very existence was anomalous.The great majority of its men were recruited not in British but in Chinese territory,[56] and as their employment against a European enemy of Great Britain was scarcely conceivable, their only function could have been to fight against their own countrymen or other Orientals.

To persuade them to fight against China would necessarily have become more and more difficult as the Chinese Empire proceeded in the direction of reform and enlightenment.The Boxers, indeed, were theoretically regarded as rebels against China, so that Chinese troops in British pay could fight them with a clear conscience, believing or pretending to believe that they were fighting for the cause of their own Emperor as well as (incidentally) that of Great Britain.But the Regiment outlived the Boxer movement by several years, and the maintenance of a considerable body of troops (at an annual cost to the British taxpayer of something like £30,000) with a sole view to the possibility of a similar rising at some uncertain date in the future was hardly consistent with British common sense.Moreover, its position in the event of an outbreak of regular warfare between England and China would have been peculiar in the extreme, inasmuch as the men had never been required, under the recruiting system, to abjure their allegiance to the Chinese Emperor.They were, in fact, Chinese subjects, not British.Even over the inhabitants of Weihaiwei, from whom a small proportion of the men was drawn, the Emperor of China retains theoretical sovereignty.This has been expressly admitted by the British Government, which has declared that as Weihaiwei is only a "leased territory," its people, though under direct British rule, are not in the strictly legal sense "British subjects."[57]

The officers of the Regiment would no doubt have denied that the loyalty of the men to their British leaders was ever likely to fall under suspicion, but the fact remains that in the event of an outbreak of regular warfare between China and Great Britain the Chinese authorities might, and probably would, have done their utmost to induce the men of the Regiment to desert their colours and take service with their own countrymen.Many methods of inducement could have been employed, over and above the obvious one of bribery.It is only necessary to mention one that would have been terribly forcible—the imprisonment of the fathers or other senior relatives of the men who refused to leave the British service, and the confiscation of their ancestral lands.The men who deserted, in these circumstances, would not, perhaps, feel that they had much to reproach themselves with.They had taken service under the British flag: but did that entitle them to become traitors to their own country, and to violate the sacred bonds of filial piety?Even if the Chinese soldier in British employment had been formally absolved from all allegiance to his own sovereign it would have been unreasonable to expect him to evolve a spirit of loyalty to a European monarch of whose existence he had but the vaguest idea, and to whom he was bound by no ties of sentiment.

But it may be urged that new conditions of service might have been devised, under which the men of the Chinese Regiment would have been exempted from the obligation of fighting against their own countrymen.Against whom, then, could they have fought?They might possibly have been led against the Japanese, but no one ever supposed for a moment that they were being trained with a view to action against a Power with whom Great Britain will probably be the last to quarrel: and in any case they would have been too few in number to be of effective service on the field, and by their inability to take an appropriate place among the other units they might even have been a source of embarrassment.As for the assistance they might have rendered in the event of an attack on Weihaiwei by any European Power, it is only necessary to point out that an infantry regiment would have been totally powerless to prevent the shelling of Weihaiwei by a naval force, and that if the British fleet had lost command of the sea, not only the entire Chinese regiment (or what remained of it after desertions had taken place), but Weihaiwei itself and all that it contained would have speedily become prizes of war to the first hostile cruiser that entered the harbour.

It may be said, in conclusion of this topic, that if the British Government had taken the cynical view that China was doomed to remain in a chronic state of administrative inefficiency and national helplessness, it would no doubt have been fully justified, from its own standpoint, in maintaining the Regiment.That it decided on disbandment may be regarded as welcome evidence that Great Britain did not, in 1906, take an entirely pessimistic view of China's future.

That the complete withdrawal of all troops was followed by no shadow of disorder among the people and no increase of crime, strikingly refutes the argument, sometimes advanced, that the real justification of the existence of the Regiment was the necessity of relying on a local armed force for the maintenance of British rule and prestige, which would otherwise have been outraged or treated with open contempt.No doubt the Regiment fulfilled a most useful function in suppressing or preventing disorder and in helping to consolidate British rule during the eventful year of 1900: and it may very well be that the people of the Territory then learned the futility of resistance to the British occupation.But it may be stated with emphasis that since the disbandment of the Regiment the people—perhaps from a knowledge of the fact that British troops and warships though not stationed at Weihaiwei are never very far away—have given no sign whatever of insubordination or restlessness.[58]

So far from crime and lawlessness having increased since that time, they have shown a distinct tendency to diminish, while no trouble whatever has arisen with the Chinese beyond our frontier.The significance of this will be realised by those who know how easily the official classes in China can, by secret and powerful means, foster or stir up a general feeling of antagonism to foreigners.

Perhaps it may not be out of place to mention here that the relations between the British officials of Weihaiwei and the Chinese officials of the neighbourhood have always been intimate and friendly: much more intimate, indeed, than those normally existing between the Government of Hongkong and the magistrates and prefects of the neighbouring regions of Kuangtung.The result is that through the medium of informal or semi-official correspondence, and by personal visits, a great deal of business is satisfactorily carried through without "fuss" or waste of time, and that frontier-matters which might conceivably grow into difficult international questions requiring diplomatic intervention, are quickly and easily settled on the spot.

But it must be remembered that these friendly relations might at any time be interrupted by the Chinese officials if they were to receive a hint from the provincial capital or from Peking that the position of Great Britain was to be made difficult and unpleasant. One important reason why the people of Weihaiwei acquiesce with a good grace in British rule is their vague belief that we are in Weihaiwei at the request and with the thorough goodwill of the Chinese Government, and are in some way carrying out the august wishes of the Emperor. They still speak of us as the foreigners or "ocean men," and of China as Ta Kuo, the Great Country. When they erect stone monuments, after the well-known Chinese practice, to the memory of virtuous widows and other good women, they still surmount the tablet with the words Shêng Chih, "By decree of the Emperor."There is not the faintest vestige of a feeling of loyalty to the British sovereign, even among those who would be sorry to see us go away.Most of the people have but the haziest idea of where England is; some think it is "in Shanghai" or "somewhere near Hongkong"; others, perhaps from some confused recollection of the dark-skinned British troops who took part in the operations of 1900, suppose that Great Britain and India are interchangeable terms.

I have been asked by one of our village headmen (in perfect good faith) whether England were governed by a tsung-tu (governor-general) or by a kuo-wang (king of a minor state)—the implication in either case being that England was far inferior in status to China. Thus arises among the people the notion that their own Emperor has for some mysterious reason, best known to himself, temporarily entrusted the administration of Weihaiwei to some English officials, and will doubtless decide in his own good time when this arrangement is to be rescinded. The notion does not, indeed, attain this definiteness, and the majority of the people well know from actual experience that no Chinese official, however exalted, has a shadow of direct authority in Weihaiwei at the present time; but any attempt to persuade them that the Emperor could not, if he willed, cause the immediate departure of the foreigners would probably be a miserable failure. The long and short of the matter is that the Chinese of Weihaiwei acquiesce in British rule because their sovereign, as represented by the Governor of Shantung, shows them the example of acquiescence; but if diplomatic troubles were to arise between Great Britain and China, and the command, direct or indirect, were to go forth from the Governor that the British in Weihaiwei were no longer to be treated with respect, a few days or weeks would be sufficient to bring about a startling change in the direction of anti-foreign feeling among the inhabitants of the leased Territory.

Incessant troubles, also, would suddenly and mysteriously arise on the frontier; the magistrates of the neighbouring districts, notwithstanding all their past friendliness, would become distant and unsympathetic; difficulties internal and external would become so serious and incessant that it would be no longer possible to administer the Territory without the presence of an armed force.In the absence of a local garrison the Government would be compelled to requisition the services of the ever-ready British marines and bluejackets; and His Excellency the Vice-Admiral, obliged to detach some of the vessels of his squadron for special service at Weihaiwei, might begin ruefully to wonder whether, after all, Weihaiwei was worth the trouble of maintenance.

This is a picture of gloomy possibilities which, it is to be hoped, will never be realised so long as the British occupation of Weihaiwei subsists.Unfortunately, diplomatic difficulties are not the only possible causes of trouble.If eastern Shantung were afflicted with long-continued drought and consequent famine—not an uncommon event—or if it were visited by some of those lawless bands of ruffians, too numerous in China, who combine the business of robbery and murder with that of preaching the gospel of revolution, the position of Weihaiwei would not be enviable.And parts of China, be it remembered, are in such a condition at present that almost any day may witness the outbreak of violent disorder.A small band of hungry and desperate armed men with a daring leader, a carefully-prepared plan and a good system of espionage—were it not for the Boy Scouts of the Weihaiwei School, who are fortunately still with us!—descend upon Port Edward, glut themselves with booty, and be in a safe hiding-place beyond the British frontier before noon the next day.Much more easily could any village or group of villages be ransacked and looted, and its inhabitants killed or dispersed: and the local Government, except by summoning extra assistance, would be powerless under present conditions to take any vigorous action.

Trouble of this kind is much more likely to come from the Chinese of some distant locality than from the people of the Territory itself.In one very important respect the British have been highly favoured by fortune.It happens that harvests in Weihaiwei for several years past have been on the whole very good, and the people are correspondingly prosperous.There has not been a really bad year since British rule began; moreover certain agricultural developments (especially the cultivation on a large scale of ground-nuts intended for export) have been beneficial to the soil itself, and are a steadily-increasing source of wealth to the farmers. With the loose conceptions of cause and effect common to most peasant-folk, many of the villagers believe that the good harvests and general prosperity are somehow due to the "luck" of their alien rulers, of which they derive the benefit. The gods and spirits of the land, they imagine, must be satisfied with the presence of the British: is it not obvious that they would otherwise show their discontent by bringing a blight on the fields or sending a plague of insects?

Such is the popular argument, indefinitely felt rather than definitely expressed; and there is no doubt that it has had some effect in inducing a feeling of contentment with British rule.I have also heard it remarked by the people that since the coming of the English the villages have ceased to be decimated by the deadly epidemics that once visited them.A sage old farmer whom I asked for an explanation of the recent remarkable increase in the value of agricultural land explained it as due to the fact that the British Government had vaccinated all the children.This prevented half the members of each family from dying of smallpox, as had formerly been the case, and there was naturally an increased demand for land to supply food for a greater number of mouths!The medical work carried out by Government is doubtless of great value; but the reduced mortality among the people is probably chiefly due to the succession of good harvests, the increased facilities for trade, and the consequent improvement in the general conditions of life.A few successive years of bad crops may, it is to be feared, not only reduce the people to extreme poverty—for as a rule the land represents their only capital—but will also produce the epidemics that inevitably follow in the wake of famine.That such disasters may be expected from time to time in the natural course of events the reader will have gathered from the lists of notable local events given in the last chapter.When they come, the people's faith in the fortune-controlling capacities of the foreigners may then suffer a painful shock, and the results may not be unattended by something like disaffection towards their alien rulers.

At the beginning of British rule in Weihaiwei many wild rumours passed current among certain sections of the people with reference to the intentions and practices of the foreigners.One such rumour was to the effect that the English wanted all the land for settlers of their own race and were going to remove the existing population by the simple expedient of poisoning all the village wells.In a few cases it was believed that the Government had actually succeeded in hiring natives to carry out this systematic murder; whereupon the villagers principally affected, growing wild with panic, seized and tortured the unhappy men whom they suspected of having taken British pay for this nefarious purpose.One man at least was buried alive and another was drowned.These cases did not come to the knowledge of the British authorities for some years afterwards, long after the well-poisoning story had ceased to be credited even by the most ignorant.One of them I discovered by chance as lately as the summer of 1909, though the incident occurred nine years earlier.An unlucky man who for some unknown reason was understood to be a secret emissary of the foreigners was seized by the infuriated villagers and drowned in the well which he was said to have poisoned.The well was then filled up with earth and stones and abandoned.The poor man's wife was sold by the ringleaders to some one who wanted a concubine, for a sum equivalent to about ten pounds.

No doubt the many horrible stories that were circulated about the foreigners were deliberately invented by people who, whether from some feeling akin to patriotism or from more selfish motives, were intensely anxious to arouse popular feeling against their alien rulers.Their plan failed, for popular fury was directed less against the English than against those of their own countrymen whom the English were supposed to have bribed.

It may be said that on the whole the chief fear of the people in the early days of British administration was not that they or their families would be slaughtered or dispossessed of their property, or personally ill-treated, but that they would be overtaxed; and the disturbances which arose at the time of the delimitation of the frontier in 1899 and 1900 were in part traceable to wild rumours as to the means to be adopted by the foreigners for the raising of revenue.It was thought, for example, that taxes were to be imposed on farmyard fowls.Taxation has been increased, as a matter of fact, under British rule.The land-tax (the principal source of revenue) has been doubled, and licence-fees and dues of various kinds have had the natural result of raising the price of certain commodities.But these unattractive features of British rule are on the whole counterbalanced, in the opinion of the majority of the people, by comparative (though by no means absolute) freedom from the petty extortions practised by official underlings in China, by the gradual development of a fairly brisk local trade, by the influx of money spent in the port by British sailors, by the facilities given by British merchant ships for the cheap and safe export of local produce, and by the useful public works undertaken by Government for direct public benefit.

The amount spent on public improvements is indeed minute compared with the enormous sums devoted to these purposes in Hongkong, Singapore, and Kiaochou, yet it forms a respectable proportion of the small local revenue.That the construction of metalled roads, in particular, is heartily welcomed throughout the Territory is proved by three significant facts: in the first place the owners of arable land through which the new roads pass hardly ever make any demand for pecuniary compensation, unless they happen to be almost desperately poor; in the second place, wheeled traffic, which a few years ago would have been a ludicrous impossibility in any part of the Territory, is rapidly becoming common; and in the third place the people, on their own initiative, are extending the road-system in various localities at their own expense. It may seem almost incredible that, in one case at least, certain houses that obstructed traffic in a new village road were voluntarily pulled down by their owners and built further back: yet not only did they receive no compensation from Government, but they did not even trouble to report what they had done. Very recently a petition was received praying the Weihaiwei Government to urge the Government of Shantung to extend the Weihaiwei road-system into Chinese territory, especially to the extent of enabling cart traffic to be opened up between the port of Weihaiwei and the neighbouring district-cities of Jung-ch'êng, Wên-têng and Ning-hai. The Shantung Government has been addressed on the subject by the Commissioner of Weihaiwei, and the Governor has smiled upon the project; though as he has since been transferred to another province it is doubtful whether anything will be done in the matter at present. So long as Weihaiwei remains in British hands the Provincial Government, naturally enough, has no desire to extend the trade facilities of that port to the possible disadvantage of the Chinese port of Chefoo.

On the whole, the more intelligent members of the native community in Weihaiwei may be said to be fully conscious of the advantages directly and indirectly conferred upon them by British rule, though this is far from implying that they wish that rule to be continued indefinitely.Some of them are even aware of the fact that they owe many of those advantages to a philanthropist whom they have never seen—the uncomplaining (or complaining) British taxpayer.The Territory is, in fact, so far from being self-supporting that a subsidy of several thousands of pounds from the British Exchequer is required to meet the annual deficit in the local budget.[59] The Government is conducted on extremely economical lines, indeed expenditure has been cut down to the point of parsimony, yet it is as well to remember that from the point of view of local resources the administration is costly in the extreme. A large increase of trade would no doubt soon enable the local Government to balance its books without assistance from England, but there are no indications at present that such an expansion is likely to take place.

British colonial methods do not, as a rule, tolerate a lavish expenditure on salaries or on needless multiplication of official posts.In these respects Weihaiwei is not exceptional.There are less than a dozen Europeans of all grades on the civil establishment, and of these only four exercise executive or magisterial authority.Since 1906 the whole Territory has been divided for administrative purposes into twenty-six districts: over each district, which contains on the average about a dozen villages, presides a native District Headman (Tsung-tung) whose chief duties are to supervise the collection of the land-tax, to distribute to the separate Village Headmen copies of all notices and proclamations issued by Government, to distribute deed-forms to purchasers and sellers of real property, and to use his influence generally in the interests of peace and good order and in the discouragement of litigation.For these services he is granted only five (Mexican) dollars a month from Government, but he is also allowed a small percentage on the sale of Government deed-forms (for which a fee is charged) and receives in less regular ways occasional presents, consisting chiefly of food-stuffs, of which the Government takes no notice unless it appears that he is using his position as a means of livelihood or for purposes of extortion.

The land-tax is based on the old land-registers handed over by the Chinese magistrates of Wên-têng and Jung-ch'êng, and as they had been badly kept up, or rather not kept up at all, for some scores of years previously, the present relations between the land under cultivation and the land subject to taxation are extremely indefinite.It is but very rarely that a man can point to his land-tax receipts as proof that he owns or has long cultivated any disputed area.Only by making a cadastral survey of the whole Territory would it be possible to place the land-tax system on a proper basis.At present the tax is in practice (with certain exceptions) levied on each village as a whole rather than on individual families.For many years past every village has paid through its headman or committee of headmen a certain sum of money which by courtesy is called land-tax.How that amount is assessed among the various families is a matter which the people decide for themselves, on the general understanding that no one should be called upon to pay more than his ancestors paid before him unless the family property has been considerably increased.

The Chinese Government did not and the British Government does not make any close enquiries as to whether each cultivator pays his proper proportion or whether a certain man is paying too much or is paying nothing at all.It is undoubtedly true that a great deal of new land has been brought under cultivation since the Chinese land-tax registers were last revised, and that the cultivators are guilty of technical offences in not reporting such land to Government and getting it duly measured and valued for the assessment of land-tax: but these are offences which have been condoned by the Chinese authorities in this part of China for many years past, and it would be unjust or at least inexpedient for the British Government to show greater severity in such matters than is shown on the Chinese side of the frontier. The British Government has, indeed, by a stroke of the pen doubled the land-tax, that is, it takes twice as much from each village as it did six years ago, so it may at least congratulate itself on deriving a larger revenue from this source than used to come to the net of Chinese officialdom. The total amount of the doubled tax only amounts to about $24,000 (Mex.) a year, which is equivalent to not much more than £2,000 sterling. The whole of this is brought to the coffers of the Government without the aid of a single tax-collector and without the expenditure of a dollar. In the autumn of each year proclamations are issued stating the current rate of exchange as between the local currency and the Mexican dollar and announcing that the land-tax will be received, calculated according to that rate, upon certain specified days. The money is brought to the Government offices at Port Edward by the headmen, receipts are issued, and the matter is at an end until the following year. Litigation regarding land-tax payments is exceedingly rare and the whole system works without a hitch.

For administrative and magisterial purposes the Territory is divided into two Divisions, a North and a South.The North Division contains only nine of the twenty-six Districts, and is much smaller in both area and population than the South, but it includes the island of Liukung and the settlement of Port Edward.Its southern limits[60] extend from a point south of the village of Shuang-tao on the west to a short distance south of Ch'ang-fêng on the east. A glance at the map will show that it comprises the narrower or peninsular portion of the Territory. The headquarters of this Division are at Port Edward, where is also situated the office of the Commissioner. The North Division is under the charge of the North Division Magistrate, who is also Secretary to Government and holds a dormant commission to administer the government of the Territory in the Commissioner's absence. The South Division comprises all the rest of the leased Territory, including seventeen out of the twenty-six Districts, and is presided over by the South Division Magistrate, who is also District Officer. His headquarters are at Wen-ch'üan-t'ang[61] or Hot Springs, a picturesque locality near the old boundary-line between the Jung-ch'êng and Wên-têng districts and centrally situated with regard to the southern portion of the leased Territory. Separate courts, independent of one another and co-ordinate in powers, are held by the North and South Division Magistrates at their respective headquarters.

The District Officer controls a diminutive police force of a sergeant and seven men, all Chinese.His clerks, detectives and other persons connected with his staff, are also Chinese.Besides the District Officer himself there is no European Government servant resident in the South Division, which contains 231 out of the 315 villages of the Territory and a population estimated at 100,000.The whole of the land frontier, nearly forty miles long, lies within this Division.

Under the Commissioner, the Secretary to Government and Magistrate (North Division), and the District Officer and Magistrate (South Division), are the executive and judicial officers of the Government.There is also an Assistant Magistrate, who has temporarily acted as District Officer, and who, besides discharging magisterial work from time to time, carries out various departmental duties in the North Division.The functions of the North and South Division Magistrates are quite as miscellaneous as are those of the prefects and district-magistrates—the "father-and-mother" officials—of China.There are no posts in the civil services of the sister-colonies of Hongkong and Singapore which are in all respects analogous to those held by these officers; but on the whole a Weihaiwei magistrate may be regarded as combining the duties of Registrar-General (Protector of Chinese), Puisne Judge, Police Magistrate and Captain-Superintendent of Police. Most of the time of the Magistrates is, unfortunately, spent in the courts. Serious crime, indeed, is rare in Weihaiwei. There has not been a single case of murder in the Territory for seven years or more, and most of the piracies and burglaries have been committed by unwelcome visitors from the Chinese side of the frontier. But the Weihaiwei magistrates do not deal merely with criminal and police cases. They also exercise unlimited civil jurisdiction; and as litigation in Weihaiwei has shown a steady increase with every year of British administration, their duties in this respect are by no means light.

Beyond the Magisterial courts there are no other courts regularly sitting. There is indeed a nebulous body named in the Order-in-Council "His Majesty's High Court of Weihaiwei," but this Court very rarely sits. It consists of the Commissioner and a Judge, or of either Commissioner or Judge sitting separately. The Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court at Shanghai is ex officio Judge of the High Court of Weihaiwei; but the total number of occasions on which his services have been requisitioned in connection with both civil and criminal cases during the last five or six years—that is, since his appointment—is less than ten. The Commissioner, sitting alone as High Court, has in a few instances imposed sentences in the case of offences "punishable with penal servitude for seven years or upwards,"[62] and the Judge has on three or four occasions visited Weihaiwei for the purpose of trying cases of manslaughter. The civil cases tried by the High Court—whether represented by Commissioner or by Judge—number only two, though the civil cases on which judgment is given in Weihaiwei (by the magistrates acting judicially) number from one thousand upwards in a year.

This curious state of things is primarily due to the fact that Weihaiwei, with its slender resources, cannot afford to support a resident judge, and has therefore to content itself with the help, in very exceptional circumstances, of one of the judges of a court situated hundreds of miles away; but the existing conditions, whereby the magistrates perform the work of judges, are legally sanctioned by a clause in the Order-in-Council, which lays it down that "the whole or any part of the jurisdiction and authority of the High Court for or in respect of any district may, subject to the provisions of this Order, and of any Ordinance made thereunder, be exercised by the magistrate (if any) appointed to act for that district and being therein."[63] The rights of the High Court are safeguarded by the declaration that it "shall have concurrent jurisdiction in every such district, and may order any case, civil or criminal, pending before a magistrate, to be removed into the High Court."[64] In practice, it may be said, all criminal cases except the most serious, and all civil cases of any and every kind, are tried in Weihaiwei by the magistrates of the North and South Divisions, acting either as magistrates merely, or as judges with the delegated powers of the High Court.

The Court of Appeal from the High Court of Weihaiwei (and therefore from the magistrates acting as High Court) is the Supreme Court of Hongkong.This arrangement has been in force since the promulgation of the Weihaiwei Order-in-Council in July 1901; yet during nine subsequent years not a single appeal has been made.This is due to three main causes: firstly, there are in Weihaiwei neither barristers nor solicitors by whom litigants might be advised to appeal.Every party to a suit appears in court in his own person, and states his case either orally or by means of written pleadings called Petitions.If he loses his case the matter is at an end unless he can show just cause why a re-hearing should be granted.Secondly, the legal costs of an appeal to a Hongkong court would be prohibitive for all but a minute fraction of the people of Weihaiwei.It is questionable whether, outside Liukungtao and Port Edward, there are more than a dozen families that would not be totally ruined if called upon to pay the costs of such an appeal.Thirdly, there are probably not twenty Chinese in the Territory who are aware that an appeal is possible.

Apart from the magistrates, there are very few Europeans employed under the Government of Weihaiwei.There is a Financial Assistant, who also (somewhat incongruously) supervises the construction of roads and other public works and the planting of trees; and there are, as already mentioned, three Inspectors of Police.These officers (with the exception of one Inspector stationed at Liukungtao) all reside at Port Edward.Finally there are two Medical Officers, of whom one resides on the Island, the other on the Mainland.Such is the European section of the Civil Service of Weihaiwei,—a little body of sober and industrious persons who, like the members of similar services elsewhere, are frequent grumblers, who always consider themselves ill-used and their services under-estimated, but who will generally admit, if pressed, that the British flag floats over many corners of the earth less attractive and less desirable than Weihaiwei.

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CHAPTER VI
LITIGATION

The entire absence of both branches of the legal profession is perhaps (be it said without disrespect to the majesty of the law) a matter on which the people of Weihaiwei are to be congratulated, for it enables them to enjoy their favourite pastime of litigation at a minimum of cost.The cheapness of litigation in Weihaiwei is indeed in the eyes of many of the people one of the most attractive features of British rule: though, if only they could be brought to realise the fact, it is also one of the most dangerous, for it tends to diminish the authority of village elders and clan-patriarchs and so to weaken the whole social structure upon which village life in China is based.The people have discovered that even their most trifling disputes are more easily, quickly and cheaply settled by going to law than by resorting to the traditional Chinese plan of invoking the assistance of "peace-talkers"; for these peace-talkers are usually elderly relatives, village headmen or friendly neighbours, who must at least be hospitably entertained, during their lengthy deliberations, with pork and vegetables and sundry pots of wine, whereas the British magistrate is understood to hanker after no such delicacies.Thus while the people recognise, with more or less gratitude, the purity of the British courts and the readiness of the officials to listen to all complaints, some of the wiser among them contemplate with some anxiety a system which is almost necessarily productive of excessive litigation and of protracted family feuds. There can be no part of the British Empire where litigation costs less than it does here, and indeed there is probably no part where it costs so little. There are no court fees, and the magistrate himself not only takes the place of counsel for both plaintiff and defendant, thereby saving the parties all legal costs, but also assumes the troublesome burden of the collection and investigation of evidence.

Until recently there existed a class of licensed petition-writers who charged litigants a small fee for drawing up petitions addressed to the court.After several of these petition-writers had been convicted of bribery and extortion and other malpractices, it was found necessary to withdraw all their licences and abolish the system.At present every litigant who cannot write and has no literary relative who will oblige him by drawing up a petition for him, simply comes into the court when and how he likes and makes his statement by word of mouth.Unlettered peasant-folk are garrulous and inconsequential all the world over, and those of Weihaiwei are not exceptional: so it may be easily understood that the necessity of taking down long rambling statements made in rustic Chinese by deaf old men and noisy and unreasonable women adds no slight burden to the labours of an English magistrate.Unnecessary litigation is indeed becoming so common a feature of daily life that the Government is at present contemplating the introduction of a system of court fees which, while not preventing the people from making just complaints before the magistrates, will tend to discourage them from running to the courts before they have made the least attempt to settle their quarrels in a manner more consistent with the traditional usages of their country.That something of this kind must be done to check the present rush of litigants to the courts is daily becoming more apparent.

In the South Division court[65] the proceedings are carried on entirely in the Chinese language. The speech of the people, it may be said, is a form of Mandarin (so called) which after a little practice is easily intelligible to a speaker of Pekingese. Colloquialisms are naturally numerous among so remote and isolated a community as the inhabitants of north-eastern Shantung, and in some respects the dialect approximates to that of Nanking rather than to the soft speech of the northern capital.

The absence of Counsel is no hardship to the people, for in China professional lawyers—as we understand the term—are unknown."A man who attempted to appear for another in a Court of Justice," as Sir Robert Douglas says, "would probably render himself liable to a penalty under the clause in the Penal Code which orders a flogging for any person who excites or promotes litigation."[66] In Weihaiwei only once has a native—in this case a Christian convert—made the least attempt to conduct a case for and on behalf of another individual, and he, though it was impossible under British methods to have him flogged, was duly punished for this as well as for other offences. In the courts of Weihaiwei, then, as in those of China, each of the parties to a suit argues out his own case in his own way, though it is upon the magistrate himself that the duty devolves of separating the wheat from the chaff and selecting such parts of the litigant's argument as appear to have a real bearing on the points at issue. In all essentials, therefore, cases are heard and dealt with in Weihaiwei very much as they are heard and dealt with in China; thus a man from the Chinese side of the frontier who comes into court as plaintiff in Weihaiwei finds himself—especially if he is used to litigation in his own country—quite at home. As may be easily imagined, lawsuits are not conducted with the frigid decorum that usually marks the hearing of a civil case in England; the facts that plaintiff and defendant appear in person, each to conduct his own case, and that each enjoys practically unlimited freedom to say what he likes about his opponent and about things in general, introduce a dramatic element which is lacking in the more stately procedure of Western law-courts. Instead of the patient discussion of minute points of law and the careful citation of precedents and authorities, there are clamorous recitals of real or imaginary woes, bitter denunciations, passionate appeals for justice. A rather remarkable feature of all this, however, is the absence of gesturing. Hands are not clasped or raised to heaven, the movements of the body show no signs of deep feeling, even the features—though their owner is inwardly seething with emotion—seem to remain almost passive. Is this a sign of remoteness from savagery? The people of England have been singled out as examples of those who make a minimum use of gesture: but Englishmen cannot be compared in this respect with the Chinese.

The side-lights that legal proceedings throw upon the moral and intellectual qualities of the people are inexhaustible in their variety.Under the stress of a burning sense of wrong or dread of disaster, or in the intensity of his anxiety to win a lawsuit on which he has staked his happiness, the Chinese, though he still refrains from what he considers the vulgarity of gesturing, casts to the winds the reserve and ceremonious decorum of speech that on more placid occasions often seem to be part of his personality.He can tell lies with audacity, though his lies indeed are not always rightly so called, and he has the most extraordinary aptitude for simulating strong emotions with the object of enlisting judicial sympathy; but, in spite of these drawbacks, it is during the prosecution of a lawsuit that the strong and weak elements in his character stand out in strongest relief.

If the litigant can write (though comparatively few of the people of Weihaiwei can do so) he is allowed to state his case in the form of a written petition.A typical Chinese petition may be said to be divided into three parts: firstly, the "case" of the petitioner is stated in full, strong emphasis being laid on his innate love of right and his horror of people who disobey the law; secondly, his opponent, the defendant, is held up to obloquy as a rogue and a hatcher of villainies; thirdly, the magistrate himself, to whom the petition is addressed, is cunningly described as having a marvellous faculty for separating right from wrong, a highly developed sense of justice, and a peculiarly strong love for law-abiding people.The defendant, when summoned, will of course adopt similar tactics.If his case is weak and he has nothing very definite to urge in his own favour, he will try to prejudice the magistrate against the plaintiff by describing him as quarrelsome and fond of lawsuits—no small offence in China.His petition may then run somewhat in these words, which I translate from a petition recently received: "Plaintiff is an audacious fellow and cares not how often he goes to law.He is not afraid of officials and loves litigation.When he comes home from the courts he uses boastful words and says, 'What fun it is to go to law.'"[67]

Both plaintiff and defendant consider it a good plan to assume an attitude of weakness, docility, and a constitutional inability to contend with the woes thrust upon them by a wicked world."For several years," says one, "I bore my miseries in silence and dared not take action, but now things are different, for I have heard the glad news that the Great Man[68] settles cases as if he were a Spirit."[69] One of the commonest expressions in a Chinese petition has an odd look when it is literally translated: "I the Little Man am the Great Man's baby."

When a lawsuit arises out of complicated family disputes, such as those concerned with inheritance and adoption, there are sometimes representatives of four generations in the court at the same time. Babes and small children, if their rights or interests are in any way involved, are brought into court by their mothers, not with any idea that the evidence of infants would be accepted, even if it could be intelligibly given, but merely in order that the magistrate may see that the children really exist and have not been invented for the occasion. Sometimes they appear in the court for the practical reason that all the adults of the family have come to prosecute their lawsuit and that no one is left at home to take care of them. The presence of young boys of twelve or fourteen is very useful, as they are often able to express themselves and even to state the material points of a case far more briefly and intelligibly than their garrulous elders. If the case is an important one the court is often filled by cousins and aunts and interested neighbours of the litigants, and these people are all ready to swear that plaintiff or defendant, as the case may be, is a man of pre-eminent virtue who has never committed a wrong action or entertained an unrighteous thought in his life, while his opponent is a noted scoundrel who is the terror and bully of the whole countryside. These exaggerations are merely resorted to as a method of emphasising one view of the matter in dispute, and are not, as a rule, seriously intended to mislead the magistrate so much as to give a gentle bias to his mind. If, as very frequently happens, the magistrate has occasion to ask a witness why he has made a number of obvious and unnecessary misstatements, he merely replies with childlike blandness: Ta jên mien-ch'ien hsiao-ti pu kan sa huang—"In the Great Man's presence the Little One would not dare to tell a lie."

When arguing out their cases in court litigants seldom lose their temper—always a sign of very "bad form" in China—but they often assail each other in very vigorous language.Men of some education often make a show of leaving it to the magistrate to unmask the evil nature of their opponent."If the magistrate will only look at that man's face," they say, "he will see that the fellow is a rogue."The remark of course implies, and is intended to imply, that the magistrate is a man of consummate perspicacity who cannot be deceived.

What constitutes one of the gravest difficulties from a European point of view in settling civil disputes between Chinese is that the plain unvarnished truth is seldom presented, even when a recital of the bare facts would be strong enough to ensure a favourable judgment.Yet I am far from wishing to imply that the Chinese are naturally liars.An inaccurate statement unaccompanied by an intention to deceive does not constitute a lie; and many such statements habitually made by Chinese do not and are not intended to deceive other Chinese to whom they are addressed.That they often deceive a European is no doubt a fact; but the fault lies with the European's want of knowledge and experience of the Chinese character, not with the Chinese, who are merely using forms of speech customary in their country.Why should a Chinese be expected to alter his traditional way of saying things merely because it differs from the foreign way?I am not convinced that a Chinese intentionally deceives or tries to deceive his own countrymen—that is, lies to them—much oftener than the average European deceives or tells a lie to his neighbour.Before we say of a Chinese, "This man has told me a lie," it would perhaps be well to ask ourselves, "Is the statement made by this man intended to deceive me? Is it such that it would deceive one of his own people?"

Perhaps it should not be necessary to labour this point, but there is no doubt that missionaries and others who feel irresistibly impelled to emphasise the darker sides of the Chinese character are apt to make the most of the supposed national predisposition to falsehood. For instance, the Rev. J. Macgowan in Sidelights on Chinese Life[70] says, much too strongly, "It may be laid down as a general and axiomatic truth, that it is impossible from hearing what a Chinaman says to be quite certain of what he actually means." On the other hand, I have known missionaries accept the word of their own Chinese converts, as against that of non-Christians, with a most astonishing and sometimes unjustifiable readiness. Some go so far as to imply that a non-Christian Chinese who speaks the truth is a person to be marvelled at. "Albeit he is a Confucianist," wrote a missionary to me, "this man may be relied on to speak the truth."

The foreigner who wished to prove that the Chinese are liars might find abundant proof ready to his hand in the false evidence that is given every day in the Weihaiwei courts.Yet the longer and oftener he watched and listened to Chinese litigants and witnesses, the less satisfied would he become as to the reliability of his "proof."The English magistrate finds that as time goes on he becomes less and less likely to be deceived or led astray about any material point owing to the direct misstatements of witnesses.It is not so much that he "sees through" them as that he understands their points of view.To say that in due time he will be totally free from any liability to be misled would, of course, be to claim for him infallibility or omniscience; but there is no doubt that as his knowledge and experience of Chinese character grows, the less ready will he be to label the Chinese crudely as "liars."For the native magistrate, who knows without special training his countrymen's character and their peculiarities of thought and speech, it is, of course, much easier than it is for the European to detect the element of truth that lies embedded in the absurd and inaccurate statements made before him in court.To say that even a Chinese magistrate can always be sure when a man is speaking the truth would certainly be ridiculous; there are accomplished liars in China as in Europe, just as there are forgers so skilful that they can deceive experts in handwriting; but he is at least able to make allowances for inaccuracy and hyperbole which, though they may deceive the foreigner, will not deceive the native, and should not therefore be condemned as deliberate falsehood.

Instances of these exaggerations and misstatements occur every day throughout China and in Weihaiwei.If A wants redress against B, who has removed a landmark and encroached upon his land, he will probably add, in his petition, that B is the author of deep villainies, a truculent and masterful dare-devil, and a plotter of conspiracies against the public welfare.One such petition contained remarks which I translate almost word for word."After I had discovered that he had stolen some of my land I went to his house and tried to reason with him in a persuasive manner.He refused to listen, and reviled me in the most shocking terms. He then seized my mother and my children and beat them too.They are covered with wounds and unable to stand; in fact, they are barely alive.So I had no resort but to approach the magistrate and ask him to enquire into the matter so that the water may fall and the rocks appear (that is, the truth will be made manifest), justice will be done to the afflicted and the cause of the humble vindicated, and the gratitude of your petitioner and his descendants will be without limit."The real point at issue was the disputed ownership of the land.No physical wounds had been inflicted upon any member of the family, and no fighting had taken place; but hard words had been freely bandied about, and the female members of the family, as so very frequently occurs in China, had shrieked themselves into a paroxysm of rage which had left them exhausted and voiceless. To have taken the good man at his word with regard to the assault, and to have called upon him to produce evidence thereof, would have caused him pain and astonishment. All he wanted to do was to make out that his opponent was a rascal, and was therefore the kind of person who might naturally be expected to filch people's land.

But how, it may be asked, is the magistrate to know which is the true accusation and which is the false one?There are many indications to guide him, and a short cross-examination should elicit the true facts very quickly, even if the wording of the petition itself were not sufficient.In this particular instance it need only be pointed out that had a murderous assault really taken place, the victims would certainly have been brought to the court for a magisterial inspection of their wounds.Had they been unable to move they would have been carried in litters.That the wounds in an assault case should be shown to the magistrate as soon as possible after the occurrence is regarded as very necessary—and naturally so, considering how little value could be attached, in the present state of medical and surgical knowledge in China, to the evidence of a native doctor.Sometimes the court is invaded by a wild-looking creature with torn clothes and matted hair, who, judging from the blood on his face and head, must be covered with hideous gashes and gaping wounds.He begins to blurt out accusations of brutal assault against his neighbour; but before allowing him to pour forth his tale of woe, a wise magistrate will require him to be removed and well combed and washed.In all probability he will come back a new man, the picture of good health, and free from stain or bruise; and if he is asked to show his wounds, he will point to a long-healed scar, or a birth-mark, or some slight scratch that might have been, and quite possibly was, inflicted by his neighbour's wife's finger-nails. Then, not in the least degree abashed, he will proceed to tell the tale of his real woes, and will make no further reference to the little matter of his physical ill-treatment.

The causes of litigation in Weihaiwei are endless, but a large proportion of the cases are the results of more or less trivial family quarrels.When a father has resigned the family property into his sons' hands and becomes dependent on them for support, he ceases to be the active head of the family.He must of course continue to be treated with obedience and respect, and very few fathers in China have any real cause to accuse a son of unfilial behaviour.But very old men, in China and elsewhere, often become petulant and hard to please, and it is they who, perhaps in a fit of temper, are the most likely to bring actions against their sons and daughters-in-law.An apparently crazy old man came to me with this story."I am ninety-two years old.My son Li Kuei is undutiful.He won't feed me.I have no teeth, and therefore have to eat soft things, and his wife won't cook them for me."The facts (easily ascertained by the court) were that the old man's digestive powers were failing, and that being unable to assimilate even the softest of food, he erroneously fancied himself to be ill-treated.Having discovered that he had several nephews who were ready to protect him in the case of any real grievance, I informed him that out of consideration for extreme old age the court could not allow people of over ninety years old to prosecute their suits in person when they had relatives to do it for them.But if the poor man had lost his teeth, it was clear that the court had erred in supposing that he had also lost his wits; for after acquiescing in the ninety-year rule and going away without a murmur, he reappeared two days later and explained that he had made a stupid mistake about his age: he was not ninety-two, but only eighty-eight.

The next case chosen as typical of Weihaiwei deals with a quarrel between a woman and her male cousin."I have two houses," said the man."I mortgaged one of them to my cousin (a woman), but subsequently redeemed it.Then I went to sea for several years.On coming home this year I found that she had treated the house as if it were her own, though I had long since redeemed it.She had also annexed some of my furniture.I told the headman.The headman said I had better let my cousin have her own way for the sake of keeping the peace.I agreed.But I have a nephew to whom I want to give the house.My cousin refuses to let him take possession."The difficulty about the house was duly settled by the court, but a few days later the plaintiff returned with further complaints."I have now nothing to say against my cousin," he said, "except that she has stolen some more of my furniture—my cooking-pot, to be precise—and has torn down some of the thatch of my roof to light her fire with.She also reviles me in public and in private.I do not want her to be severely punished, but I should like her to be admonished by the magistrate."

Serious cases very frequently arise out of the most trumpery quarrels and differences of opinion between one villager and another.If men only are concerned in such a quarrel their own good sense, or that of their neighbours, usually prevents the matter from going to extremes, but if women are concerned, cases of homicide or suicide are sometimes the outcome.The question of the ownership of a few blocks of stone was the origin of a quarrel that might easily have had a tragic ending.The plaintiff's statement in court was as follows: "I accuse Chiang Tê-jang of beating my wife and myself.At sunset I went home and found that defendant had beaten my wife.I went to his house, and he met me at the door.I reasoned with him, and said that if my wife had given any cause of complaint he should have told me about it. He replied that my wife deserved a beating. I asked him why he didn't beat me instead, whereupon he at once took me at my word and thrashed me soundly." In reply to questions he went on: "I did not strike him back, as I would not be guilty of a breach of the peace, and thereby appear to be holding the law in contempt. After I had been beaten I went home. My wife told me the defendant had beaten her because she refused to let him take away some stone from our backyard. The stone belonged to me." In answer to this the defendant stated: "I never struck plaintiff or his wife. The stone is my own. Plaintiff's wife was fighting with my mother, and my mother scratched her face. My mother got the worst of the fight. She is lying in a basket outside the court, as she is unable to move. I brought her here to have her wounds inspected by the magistrate."

The more intelligent members of the Chinese community of Weihaiwei soon discovered, after the arrival of the foreigners, that the British system of administration and of dealing with civil suits in the Courts differed from that of China in nothing so conspicuously as in the absence of "squeezes" and the ease with which the magistrate could be directly approached by the poorest litigant.There are always large numbers, however, who are afraid to bring their plaints direct to the court, either from a fear that they will be prevented by the police or other native employees of the Government from gaining the foreign magistrate's ear, or because they dare not openly bring a lawsuit or make accusations against some influential person or family in their own village.For the benefit of such timid individuals I long ago set up, on the roadside in the neighbourhood of the South Division court, a locked letter-box for the reception of any and every description of petition or memorial which the writers for some reason or other preferred not to bring openly to the court. Into this box, the contents of which are examined by myself alone, petitions of various kinds are dropped almost daily: and though a large majority are anonymous denunciations of the private enemies of the writers, and are immediately destroyed, a considerable number have led to some discoveries of great value from the administrative point of view, and have sometimes greatly facilitated the labours of the court in ascertaining the rights and wrongs of pending cases.

If the petition-box served no other good purpose it would still be useful as throwing interesting lights on certain aspects of the character of the people.The petitions received through this medium are so heterogeneous that it is difficult to select a typical specimen for purposes of illustration; but the following translation of a document recently found in the petition-box may give some idea of the characteristic features of a large class.

"Your Honour's nameless petitioner humbly exposes the evil deeds of a brutal robber who is headman of the village of ——. He and his son ill-treat the people shamelessly. At ploughing time he continually encroaches upon his neighbours' lands, and if they question him on the matter his mouth pours forth a torrent of evil words and he reviles them without ceasing. He says, 'I am the headman of this village and a person of importance. As for this trifling matter of your boundaries, I will treat you exactly as I please, for you are all my inferiors.' On other occasions he says, 'My family is wealthy; I have one hundred and thirty odd mu of land. In my house I have silver heaped up like a mountain.' In our village there is a right-of-way to the well, which is situated on a slope at the edge of his land; but he has forbidden us to use this path any longer. In our village there is also an old temple called the T'ai-p'ing An, and there is an ancient right-of-way to it for the use of people who wish to burn incense at the shrines.This path also he has blocked up.He declares that the spirits of the dead may use this road, but he will not allow living men to use it.Further, he says, 'If any one in the village refuses to obey me, let him beware!I am headman and have great influence, and if I were to fall upon you it would be as though the sacred mountain of T'ai were to fall and crush you.'

"Sometimes, also, he tells us that he will have us taken to the Magistrate's yamên for punishment.Thus we poor petitioners are afraid to put our names to this memorial.But we earnestly beg the Clear-as-Heaven Magistrate to enquire into this man's conduct and have him severely punished.Degrade him from the position of headman; lock him up in gaol for several years; inflict a fine of several thousand dollars upon him—he has plenty of money in his house.Thus will the people be made happy at last, and your petitioners' gratitude will endure through all ages to come.We implore the Clear-as-Heaven venerable Magistrate quickly to make investigations and to inflict punishment, and thus save the people and release them from their woes.Then not only through Weihaiwei will his fame roll like thunder, but the people who live in Chinese territory will all come to know how god-like are his judgments, and his reputation will shine with the combined brilliance of sun, moon and stars."

The magistrate is supposed to be a kind of living embodiment of all the Confucian virtues, and therefore to look with extreme favour on any one whose words or conduct show him to be dutiful to his father, punctilious in serving the spirits of the dead, respectful to old age, a wise and good parent, industrious, honest in his dealings with his neighbours, and law-abiding.No litigant neglects an opportunity of showing that he possesses each and all of these qualities; and sometimes it is done cleverly and with an appearance of artlessness.A man brought an action against another for debt.In the course of his statement he said: "Whenever I demand the money from him he reviles me. (Cross-examined). I never reviled him in return. I didn't dare to do so because he had a beard and I had none. How could I dare to revile a man with a beard?" This of course means in plain language, "He was my elder, and therefore I with my well-known regard for the proprieties could not presume to answer him back." It is not usual in China for a man to grow a beard or moustache until he has reached middle age.

A litigant also tries to ingratiate himself with the magistrate by an affectation of extreme humility.A villager is asked if he can write.He says no.When it is subsequently discovered that he can read and write with fluency and he is taxed with his falsehood, he merely explains that he did not dare to boast of his accomplishments in the presence of the magistrate.The meaning is that the magistrate's scholarly attainments are (theoretically) so overwhelmingly brilliant that the litigant's own poor scraps of learning sink into utter nothingness by comparison.In other words, it is politeness and humility that impel the man to say he cannot write.

Among the cases that cause the greatest difficulty and sometimes embarrassment to an English magistrate are those that turn on some foolish old custom or deeply-rooted superstition.Sometimes it happens that by deciding the case one way the magistrate may be upholding a popular view at the cost of doing violence to his own feelings of what is right and proper; by deciding it in another way he may provoke a strong local feeling of resentment against the ignorant judgments of foreigners who do not understand the ways of the people.As a rule it is best to ascertain the views of the oldest and most respectable members of the village or district concerned, and give judgment accordingly.It is interesting to observe that the old folks will not in all cases give their vote for the pro-superstition view.A lawsuit of the kind referred to arose recently out of a dispute in a village as to the digging of a well. The plaintiffs petition ran as follows:

"Near our village there is a well which supplies good water.As it was a long way to this well from the further end of the village it was decided some years ago to sink a new well opposite the house of Wang Lien-tsêng.This was done, and unfortunately soon afterwards a man was drowned in the new well.Then the elders discussed the matter and agreed that as the spot was evidently an unpropitious one for a well it must be abandoned.A new well was sunk near my house.Soon after this well was opened for public use my eldest boy took ill.He spat blood for seven months and then died.This was not the only piece of bad luck that befell me: I got into trouble somehow and was sent to gaol.This second well was then also filled up and abandoned.No more well-boring was undertaken for a long time, but recently there has been a fresh agitation among some of the villagers who say they must have a second well.I and the best people in the village think matters had much better be left as they are, as well-boring has been proved to be highly dangerous in our village.Wang Ming-hu is the principal agitator, and he declares that the well which started my misfortunes may be safely reopened, as three years have passed since the last time it caused death."

In this case the agitator—perhaps a trifle less superstitious than his neighbours—got his way, and the results do not seem to have caused any rise in the local death-rate.

No one who has lived in China requires to be reminded of the strange pseudo-science of fêng-shui, which includes among its various branches and subdivisions a method of divination whereby lucky sites are chosen for buildings of all kinds and especially for graves. A master-in-fêng-shui, as one might render the term fêng-shui hsien-shêng, is one who gives his services, not gratuitously, to persons who wish to find a propitious spot for the erection of a new dwelling-house or (as in the case just quoted) the boring of a well or the burial of a deceased relative. The richer and more patient the client, the longer, as a rule, will the hsien-shêng take to complete his calculations, and the larger will be his fee.

A very important point to remember with regard to the selection of lucky sites for graves is that the solicitude is not only for the deceased but for the present generation and its descendants as well.[71] A carefully-selected burial-ground brings, it is believed, peace to the ancestors down in the Yellow Springs of the Underworld and also ensures an endless progeny of descendants who will enjoy wealth, distinction and longevity. The two words fêng-shui mean nothing more than "wind and water," but their esoteric connotation, if we were to do it justice, could hardly be elucidated in a whole chapter. Fêng-shui that was originally good may be ruined through a change in the course of a river, the erection of new buildings in the immediate neighbourhood, the opening-up of virgin soil, and through an endless variety of other causes.

The well-known Chinese dragon often plays a conspicuous part in matters relating to fêng-shui.To the true believer, indeed, the hills and rocks are not dead things, but animated with a mysterious kind of life which is apart from and yet has strange influences over the lives of men.Threatened disturbances of fêng-shui have frequently been the real or pretended cause of Chinese opposition to the opening of mines and the building of railways: and the popular feelings in the matter are so strong (though they are gradually weakening) that the official classes are obliged to treat the superstition with an outward respect which it is fair to say is on their part generally simulated.Yet it is by no means ignored by the highest in the land: the tombs of the Chinese imperial family are always selected after a most careful scrutiny of the spots favoured by the best fêng-shui.The case to which I am about to allude arose out of a quarrel concerning the proposed opening of a stone-quarry in the vicinity of an ancestral graveyard.The dialogue that took place in court proceeded somewhat as follows, though the speeches are much abbreviated.

Plaintiffs.—We object to the quarry.The land is defendants' own and we do not claim any rights over it, but it is close to our ancestors' graves, and is certain to injure the fêng-shui.We should not object to a quarry on the far side of the hill, which cannot be seen from the graveyard.Our ancestors left word that if a quarry were opened on the far side it would not matter.Why don't the defendants go to that side?

Defendants.—The land belongs to us and our deeds are in order.We assert that plaintiffs have no right to interfere with our quarry, and we do not see how the fêng-shui of their graves can be affected.We don't go to the other side of the hill because there is no stone there.

Plaintiffs.—There is a dragon in the hill and it lives under the graveyard, and it extends to the place where the defendants have wickedly started to quarry.If the hill is cut into, the dragon will be hurt.

The Magistrate.—I do not think the dragon would raise any objections to the quarry.In fact he would no doubt feel much more comfortable if the stone were moved away.He probably finds it very heavy.In that case your fêng-shui would be immensely improved by the opening of the quarry.

Plaintiffs (with perhaps the least suspicion of scorn at the foreign magistrate's ignorance).—The stones in the quarry are the dragon's bones.

Hardly less important than the choice of a well-situated grave is the ante-mortem provision for a becoming funeral. It is well known that among the poorest classes the most acceptable present a dutiful son can give his father is a handsome coffin; and it is a real satisfaction to a humble labourer or farmer to know that, however poor he and his family may be, there will be no doubt about his being laid to rest in a thoroughly respectable manner. The coffin—a large and most cumbersome article—is sometimes deposited during the owner's lifetime in a Buddhist temple, but this costs money; so it is frequently allowed to occupy an honourable corner in the family living-room, where it becomes the pride of the household and the envy of less fortunate neighbours. The presentation of a coffin to the head of a family by his dutiful and affectionate sons is sometimes made the occasion of an "At Home," to which are invited all relatives and friends who live in the neighbourhood. The visitors are expected to congratulate the proud father on his new piece of furniture and on his good fortune in possessing exemplary sons, to express unbounded admiration for the coffin, and to compliment the sons on the filial devotion of which they have just given so admirable a proof.

In Weihaiwei, litigation arising directly or indirectly out of disputes concerning coffins is fairly common, owing to the fact that timber is scarce and good coffins correspondingly expensive.The rights of ownership over a single tree or a group of trees are for this reason hotly contested, though the intention of using the timber for coffin-making is not always mentioned in the pleadings.One T'sung P'ei-yü made his complaint thus: "I was one of three sons.When the family property was divided between the three of us by our father's instructions, my eldest brother was given the house in which we had been brought up.But in the garden there was a fir-tree, and our father, before he died, specially declared that this tree was to be regarded as mine, in order that I might make myself a coffin out of it.The village headman can bear witness to this, and all the neighbours know that what 1 say is true.This happened seven years ago, and no one contested my claim to the tree until the tenth day of this moon, when I went to the garden to cut it down. To my surprise I was stopped by my elder brother's wife, Ts'ung Liu Shih, who refused to let me touch it. I am a man of peace and dared not take the law into my own hands, so I appeal to the court for help." The end of the case was that some of the neighbours—doubtless sympathising with the plaintiff in his laudable and natural longing for a good coffin—offered to "talk peace," and there was an amicable settlement out of court. The plaintiff got his tree but had to spend the amount that a good coffin would have cost in entertaining his genial neighbours at a feast. What became of the elder brother's wife did not transpire.

From coffins to ancestral worship the transition is easy.Very numerous cases might be cited in which the magistrate is called upon to decide subtle questions—such as could seldom arise outside China—connected with adoption, inheritance, the guardianship of lands devoted to sacrificial purposes, and the custody of ancestral tablets.During a journey in western China I had some conversation with a missionary on this and allied topics.When I mentioned that the ancestral tablets were frequently produced in court as part of the evidence in a lawsuit and sometimes remained in the magistrate's custody for several days, the missionary remarked that he presumed I took advantage of such occasions to talk seriously to the "heathen" on the wickedness and folly of "idolatry."The fact that the people of Weihaiwei are still in the habit of appealing to the British courts for judgments in cases of this kind, is sufficient to show that the missionary's assumption was incorrect.

The Chinese magistrate being in theory the father of his district, he must not merely hold the balance between his people when they come to him with their quarrels; he must not merely punish the offender and vindicate the cause of the oppressed: he must also instil into the minds of his "children," by word and example, a submissive reverence for the doctrines of the ancient sages, which include proper respect for tradition, a dutiful obedience to all properly-constituted authority, whether in family or in State, and the practice of courtesy and forbearance in all dealings with neighbours and strangers. Some of the most valuable of the Confucian maxims are summed up in the "Sacred Edict," which, though it only dates from the time of K'ang Hsi (seventeenth century), is entirely based on the Confucian teachings and is very well known—by name if not by its contents—to the vast majority of the Chinese people. Whether Chinese magistrates always fulfil their functions either as models or as teachers of virtue is a matter which does not concern us.

In Weihaiwei, where the King's Order-in-Council justifies a magistrate in giving effect to Chinese customs and practices, I have frequently, in delivering judgments in both civil and criminal cases, used appropriate texts taken either from the Confucian classics themselves or from the Sacred Edict, for the purpose of giving my hearers little moral discourses on points suggested by the cases before me.If, for example, two neighbours have quarrelled over some trifling matter I tell them of the wise words used by K'ang Hsi and his commentators with reference to the observance of harmonious relations among people who inhabit the same village.I remind them, perhaps, that "if fellow-villagers quarrel with one another and neither is willing to forgive, then the result will be a state of enmity which may not only last all their own lives, but may embitter the lives of their sons and grandsons, and even then peace may not ensue."

On one occasion on which I had quoted a passage from the Sacred Edict a local missionary pointed out to me that I could have found a far more appropriate text for my purpose by turning to a certain passage in the Bible to which he referred me.He was very probably quite right, though I did not verify his Biblical reference: but it would no more occur to me, in addressing a crowd of Chinese from the magisterial bench in Weihaiwei, to read them passages from the Bible than it would occur to a judge in England to entertain the jury or the prisoner at the bar with quotations from the Zend Avesta or the Institutes of Vishnu. Is it not probable that an ordinary Chinese peasant will think more of his magistrate's ethical views and be more likely to profit by them if the magistrate bases his discourses on teachings which the Chinese and his ancestors have always been taught to hold sacred, rather than on strange-sounding quotations from a book he has never heard of?

From the examples given of some of the questions that come up for decision in the courts of Weihaiwei it may be seen that in this outlying part of the British Empire, no less than in India and the rest of our Asiatic possessions, the chief qualifications necessary for a judge or magistrate are not so much a knowledge of law and legal procedure as a ready acquaintance with the language, customs, religious ideas and ordinary mode of life of the people and an ability to sympathise with or at least to understand their prejudices and points of view.Perhaps no Englishman, no European or American, can hope to administer justice or exercise executive functions among Asiatics in a manner that will win universal approval.If he becomes too fond of the natives he runs the risk of becoming de-occidentalised.Morally and intellectually he becomes a Eurasian.He is distrusted by his own countrymen, he is not respected—perhaps regarded as rather a bore—by the natives over whom he is placed.But let the European who applies to another the epithet of "pro-native" enquire rigorously of himself whether his real ground of complaint is not this: that the person whom he criticises does not in all cases support the European against the Asiatic when the interests of the two are at variance, that he does not necessarily accept the European point of view as the only possible or the only just one.

"How is it that you Government officials, as soon as you have learned the language and studied the customs of the country, become either mad or hopelessly pro-Chinese?"This is a question which in one form or another is frequently asked by unofficial European residents in China.It may be that there is something in the nature of Chinese studies that makes men mad, and indeed I have heard this soberly maintained by persons who themselves are careful to avoid all risk of contagion.But it never seems to occur to such questioners that there may be some solid reasons for the apparently pro-Chinese tendencies (they are generally only apparent) of their official friends: reasons based on the fact that the latter have discovered—perhaps much to their own astonishment—how much there is truly admirable and worthy of preservation not only in Chinese art and literature and even religion, but also in the social organisation of the Chinese people.If there is one statement about China that can be made with perfect assurance it is this: that if in the long process of reform she learns to despise and throw aside all the supports she has leaned upon for thousands of years, if she exchanges for Western substitutes all her ideals, her philosophy of life, her ethics, her social system, she may indeed become rich, progressive, powerful in peace and war, perhaps a terror to the nations, but she will have left behind her very much that was good and great, she will have parted with much that was essential to her happiness and even to her self-respect, she will be a stranger to herself.And what will be the outward aspect of the China of those days?Great industrial cities there may be; harbours thronged with ocean-liners and with great battleships flying the Dragon flag; miles of factories, barracks, arsenals and shipping-yards; railway trains, motor-cars and airships coming and going incessantly from province to province; warehouses, banks and stock-exchanges full of myriads of buyers and sellers, each straining every nerve to excel his neighbour in the race for wealth. And where, in this picture of China's possible future, are the thousands of ancestral temples where to-day the members of every family meet to do homage to their honoured dead and to renew the bonds of kinship one with another? They are to be seen no more. In their place stand thousands of village police-stations.