Four Young Explorers; Or, Sight-Seeing in the Tropics

by Oliver Optic

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  THE CONCLUSION OF THE LECTURE

  At lunch the passengers talked about the lecture that was not yetfinished; and all of them who said anything declared that they were verymuch pleased with it, and they hoped the remainder of it would be givenin the afternoon. Of course all of them had read more or less aboutChina; and while there was much that was new to them, they were glad tohave their knowledge of the country revived.

  "I have been in Hong-Kong, Canton, and Shang-hai, and I have heard nolecture on board that pleased me more than that to which we listenedthis forenoon; and I appoint this afternoon at three o'clock for theconclusion of it," said the commander.

  At this hour all the company, including the passengers from the Blanche,were in their places; and the speaker mounted the rostrum, apparently asfresh as ever. He was received with as much and as earnest applause ashad been given at the end of the second part of his lecture; and withthis pleasant approval of his work, he continued his discourse.

  "According to the accounts of all recent travellers, the roads of Chinaare in a villanously bad condition, and there are no railroads worthmentioning," he began. "And yet the necessity of good common roads wasapparent to the ruler, even before the building of the Great Wall, andtwenty thousand of them have been constructed; but the Chinese, havingfinished a great work, do not meddle with it again. The roads have neverbeen repaired thoroughly, and that accounts for their present condition.The rivers and canals furnish the principal means of communication,though the roads are still used.

  "The dress of the poorer classes is very much the same for both sexes.It is regulated by sumptuary laws for all classes; but it is varied bythe wealthy in the use of costly material, and the ornaments they add toit. You have all seen Chinamen enough in the streets of New York andother cities, and the dress they wear is about the same as that worn intheir native land. The queue is the most notable thing about them. Thiswas not the ancient custom of wearing the hair, but was introduced andenforced by the Manchu rulers over three hundred years ago, when it wasconsidered a degrading edict; though now the Chinaman sticks to hisqueue with as much tenacity as he does to his very life.

  "The small feet of the women, even of the highest class, is quite asnotable as the queues. This species of deformity was not required by theManchus, for they wore their feet as God gave them; and it is not anancient custom, for it has prevailed only from the sixth century of ourera. Nature's growth is checked by tightly bandaging the feet in earlychildhood, subjecting the victim to severe pain and discomfort. But youwill see the women for yourselves, and can judge of the effect uponthem. The very poor and those in menial conditions are not necessarilysubjected to the torture, but fashion carries even many of this classinto the custom. Small but natural feet are the pride of our youngladies, and some of them complain that when the feet were given out theygot more than their share.

  "The sexes are kept apart until marriage; and this has been a socialfeature from the earliest time. Girls and boys in the family did notoccupy the same mat or eat together from the age of seven, and when theformer were ten they ceased to appear outside of the women's apartments.Girls were taught manners therein, to handle the cocoons, to do all thework appertaining to the manufacture of silk and the details of Chinesehousekeeping. This was in the feudal time; and the females were notinstructed in book-learning, and are not now, though they pick upsomething of an education, and learned women are not unknown, even thosewho have written books.

  "In regard to marriage, the parents have entire control, andprofessional match-makers are an institution. It is to a great extent amatter of horoscopes. Usually the bride and groom have not seen eachother till the marriage ceremony, and of course they lose all thatdelightful period which precedes the event. But they appear to take toeach other when brought together, and to be happy as man and wife.Though the man has one legal wife, there is no law or custom to preventhim from taking half a dozen more secondary wives.

  "There are seven lawful grounds for divorcing a wife from herhusband,--disobedience to her husband's parents; failure to give birthto a son; dissolute conduct; jealousy of her man, especially in regardto the _other_ wives; talkativeness; thieving; and leprosy. I will leavethe ladies to make their own comments. There are three considerationswhich may set aside these reasons for divorce,--that her parents are nolonger living; that she has passed with her spouse through the years ofmourning for his parents; and that he has become rich after being poor.The children are often affianced in childhood, and probably this factfurnishes many of the grounds for proceedings in the divorce court.

  "Infanticide is not an uncommon crime in China, female children beingalmost always the victims. Probably its prevalence is somewhatexaggerated. It is among the poorest class that this atrocity prevails,the universal desire for male children, in connection with the ancestralworship of the people, being the root of the evil. Public opinion isagainst the practice, though not as decidedly as might be wished.

  "The complexion of the Chinese is yellowish, as you have seen in ourstreets; and from the extreme north to the Island of Hainan, they allhave long black hair, almond or oblique eyes, high cheek-bones, andround faces. They are greatly addicted to opium and gambling whereveryou find them. Dr. Legge says that the longer one lives among them thebetter he likes them, and the better he thinks of them; but we are notlikely to be able to test the correctness of this remark.

  "The Chinese bury their dead in graves in the form of a horseshoe, andwith an almost infinite variety of ceremonies and sacrifices. Where thefriends are able to pay the expense, the last rites are ostentatious andvery costly. You may chance to see something of them before you leavethe country. When a very rich Chinaman travels, he takes his coffin withhim.

  "They have no day in the week corresponding to our Sunday, but they havean annual universal holiday at New Year's. It is a season of rejoicingand festivity all over the country. Stores are closed for several days,and the government offices are shut up for a month. The people 'dressup,' and the temples are visited, the gambling resorts are in fullblast, and crackers and other fireworks make Fourth of July of theseason.

  "There is some sort of a festival every month, such as the 'Feast ofLanterns,' on the full moon, of the tombs, 'Dragon Boats,' and 'AllSouls,' in honor of departed relatives, when the supposed hungry spiritsfrom the other side of the Styx are fed at the cemeteries. The peopleare extravagantly fond of theatricals; and a kind of bamboo tent iserected for the performance, which is usually of inordinate length.Females, as in India, do not appear on the stage.

  "It would be quite impossible for me to follow the consecutive historyof China from 2637 B.C. down to the present time; it would be aninfliction upon you, and I shall only mention some of the principalevents. Our authority in these remarks numbers the Chinese army at threehundred and fifty thousand; the Year Book makes it double this number.Judged by a European standard, it does not amount to much outside ofmere numbers; though in addition to it there is a sort of militia,camped in the several provinces, more in the nature of police thansoldiers, of twice as many men as the imperial army.

  "The first great war in China was the Tai-Ping rebellion, which theolder of you can remember. It began in 1851, and was continued fornearly twenty years. Its leader was Hung, a poor student, who studied upa new religion, which was certainly an improvement upon those of thepeople, for it recognized the Great God, and Christ as the ElderBrother. A strict morality and the keeping of the Sabbath were requiredof its adherents, and idolatry and the use of opium were forbidden.

  "Hung incited the rebellion; and its object was to overturn the rulingdynasty of the Manchus, and place himself on the throne. It was atfirst very successful in its progress, and it looked as though theimperial cause was doomed. In 1855 the rebels, for the want ofsufficient re-enforcements in an attempt to capture Pekin, werecompelled to retreat to Nanking, and then the decline of theinsurrection began. A body of foreigners under an American by the nameof Ward joined the imperial
ists, and rendered important service; but hewas killed in battle in 1862. He was succeeded by one of thesubordinates, who became General Burgevine; and he was quite assuccessful as General Ward had been. The new general fell out with thegovernment, and retired. By the influence of British residents atShang-hai, who had organized an effective army, General Charles GeorgeGordon, of whom you heard in Egypt, was placed in command. He capturedNanking, and the rebellion was suppressed in 1865.

  "You have been informed of the movements of the Portuguese, English,French, Dutch, and Spaniards to obtain territory in the East from 1497,when Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope. All of themestablished colonies; and in 1516 they began to send their ships toChina, whose people did not receive them kindly. This was in the earlydays of the Manchu rulers, who claimed to be superior to all othermonarchs on the face of the earth; they would not acknowledge thevisitors as their equals, and regarded them as vassals.

  "When the Chinese ruler learned of the conquests of those from the Westhe tried to prevent their approach to his dominions. But trade had beenestablished; and the opium traffic had its birth, and the people werecrazy to procure and smoke it. This was the cause of the wars betweenChina and England and France, with the vassal question. In 1800 an edictof the emperor prohibited the importation of opium into his dominions.

  "England before this had entered upon the task of making a treaty tosettle the relations between the two countries; but no treaty was made,and the smuggling of opium continued for many years. In 1816 anotherembassy went to Pekin; but it was summarily and contemptuously dismissedbecause the ambassador refused to go through the ceremony of repeatedlyprostrating himself before the emperor, and acknowledging his ownsovereign as a vassal of the emperor.

  "The trade went on after India passed to the government of England.China was still obstinate, insisted upon the vassalship of the Westernnation, and was confident in her power to repress the opium trade. Themerchants pressed vigorously for the enlargement of their trade withChina, which did not seem to be aware of its weakness before a Europeanpower. A famous mandarin was appointed governor-general of the Kwangprovinces to bring the barbarians to their senses. He proceeded inearnest, and England declared war against the country in 1840. Theresult was evident from the first, and the war ended with the peace ofNanking in 1842. The items were the ceding of Hong-Kong to the victor,the opening of five ports to the trade and residence of the British.Correspondence was established between the officials of the two nations;but not a word was said about opium, and the smuggling went on asbefore.

  "In 1857, after some troubles in Canton in which the English were atfault, and the refusal of the governor-general to meet an agent of theBritish government, the latter declared war again, with France as anally. Canton was captured the same year; and Yeh, the governor, wastaken prisoner, and sent to Calcutta. There was little fighting in thiswar; and Canton being in possession of the allies, a joint commission,attended by representatives of the United States and Russia, proceededto Pekin to make their demands upon the emperor. A treaty was made atTien-tsin, confirming the former, and with many important articles. Oneprovided for the appointment of ambassadors by each nation, another forthe protection of Christian missionaries, and several others of lessmoment.

  "It looked as though the Chinese emperor had been sufficientlyhumiliated; but the treaty 'slipped up,' for its last clause providedthat the treaty should be ratified at Pekin within one year. The emperorcould not abide the idea of permitting the ambassadors to enter thesacred capital, and he looked about him for the means of escaping theissue. The forts between the capital and the Gulf of Pe-chi-li had beenrebuilt and were well armed. The Chinese officials urged the signing atTien-tsin, and this was done by several of the embassy; but France andEngland insisted that it must be signed in Pekin, as provided in theinstrument itself.

  "They started for the sacred city with several men-of-war, but theyfound the mouth of the river closed to them by the forts. A severeengagement followed, in which the allies were beaten, the only battlegained by the Chinese. At the end of a year another expedition withtwenty thousand men went with the ambassadors, the forts were all taken,and the officials went to Tien-tsin. The force marched on Pekin; and theemperor fled, leaving his brother Prince Kung to meet the embassy. Thenorth-east gate of the city was surrendered, and the treaty was dulysigned at Pekin.

  "In 1861 the emperor died, having named his son, six years old, as hissuccessor. A dozen years later he took possession of the throne, theregency expiring then. He died two years later, and a nephew of PrinceKung was appointed to the succession by the imperial family. He was achild of four years of age then, and reigned under a regency till 1887,when he took possession of the government at the age of sixteen.

  "I should have said before that a change of the tariff in 1842 made theimportation of opium legal in the empire. The country has in recentyears employed foreign officers in its army and navy, and foreignmechanics in its workshops. China is represented at five of theprincipal nations of the world by ambassadors. It has built up a veryrespectable navy, mostly at the shipyards of Great Britain; and foreignofficers have greatly improved the condition of the army.

  "Telegraphic communication has been extensively established, and arailroad eighty-one miles long has been built. Educational institutionshave been founded, and schools opened for the instruction of young menin several foreign languages. The increasing consumption of opium, whichseems to have been placed in the way of the people by the action on thepart of England, is a cause for great regret among the friends of China.I have said too much already, and I know you must be very tired. I thankyou for bearing with me so long; and I will promise not to do so again,at least so far as China is concerned. China is at peace with all theworld, and I leave her so."

  The professor retired with even greater applause than in the forenoon.Since he spoke, China has been engaged in a great war with Japan; andpossibly his account of the country will assist those who are yet toread the history of the conflict.