The village graduate who knows how to help in lawsuits by preparing complaints, and by assisting in the intricate proceedings ensuing at each stage is often able by means of the prestige thus gained, to get his living at the expense of others more ignorant. No country offers a better field for such an enterprise than China. Unbounded respect for learning coexists with unbounded ignorance, and the experienced literary man knows how to turn each of these elements to the very best account. In all lands and in all ages, the man who is possessed with what is vulgarly termed the “gift of the gab,” is able to make his own way, and in China he carries everything before him.
The range of territory which any aspirant for literary honours in China must expect to traverse, is, as we have seen, continental. In order to have any hope of success, he must be acquainted with every square inch of it, and must be prepared to sink an artesian well from any given point to any given depth. To the uneducated peasant, whose whole being is impregnated with a blind respect for learning, amounting at times to a kind of idolatry, such knowledge as this seems an almost supernatural acquirement, and inspires all the reverence of which he is capable. The thought of the estimate in which they will be held for the whole term of their lives, is thus a powerful stimulus to scholars of ambition, even under the greatest discouragements.
There could scarcely be a better exemplification of what the Chinese saying calls “superiority to those below, and inferiority to those above,” than the position of the hsiu-ts‘ai. While he is looked upon by the vulgar herd in the light we have described, by the educated classes above him he is regarded, as we have so often termed him, as a schoolboy who is not yet even in school. The popular dictum avers that though the whole body of hsiu-ts‘ai should attempt to start a rebellion, and should be left undisturbed in the effort for three years, the result would be failure, albeit this proverb finds no support in the history of the great rebellion, which originated with a discontented undergraduate who was exasperated at his repeated failures to get his talent recognized. Literary examinations, as we have abundantly seen, are like the game of backgammon, an equal mixture of skill and luck, but the young graduate easily comes to regard the luck as due to the skill, and thus becomes filled to the full of that intellectual pride which is one of the greatest barriers to the national progress of China.
Differing by millenniums from the system just described is that recently decreed after successful agitation by a few reformers. During the summer of 1898 His Majesty Kuang Hsü, Emperor of China, issued several Edicts which abolished the “eight-legged examination essay” as an avenue to the attainment of literary degrees, and introduced in their place what was termed Practical Chinese Literature, and Western Learning, which were to be combined in Provincial and County Academies. Existing institutions were to be remodelled after a more or less definite pattern set in Peking. All except official temples (that is, those where offerings or services were required from the Magistrates) were to be surrendered as seats of the New Learning. Reports were demanded from Provincial Governors as to the present status of these temples, and the future prospects for income from them.
These Edicts potentially revolutionized the intellectual life of China. They were received very differently in different parts of the empire, but there is no reason to doubt that they would have been widely welcomed by an influential minority of the literati of China, who had in various ways come to realize the futility of the present instruction for the needs of to-day. The immediate effect was to bring Western Learning into universal demand. Scholars who had never deigned to recognize the existence of foreigners, were now glad to become their pupils and purchasers of their text-books on a large scale. For a few weeks examination themes were strongly tinctured with Western topics, and those who were able to show any familiarity with those branches of learning were almost sure of a degree. Correct answers to simple mathematical, geographical, or astronomical questions are said to have rendered success certain, and it is even alleged that a candidate in one place took his honours by writing out and commenting upon the Ten Commandments, which he represented as The Western Code of Laws.
Toward the close of September, 1898, the Empress Dowager seized the reins, suppressed her nephew, and nearly all reforms, educational and political, were extinguished. A new Imperial University in Peking survived the storm, but almost all of the extended and beneficent program of His Majesty was relegated to the Greek Kalends. It is only a question of time when the pendulum shall swing back, but every well-wisher of China hopes that it may not be delayed until the national existence of the Chinese shall have been lost.