``Nothing strange to Chinamen. Sack Chum, old man, no money, soon die. Every day in China such thing. Chinaman not like white man— not afraid to die. Suppose some one pay his funeral, take care his family. `I die,' he say. Chinaman know Sack Chum, we suppose, sell himself to men who kill Ah Chee. Somebody must die for them. Sack Chum say he do it. All right. Police got him. What for they want more?''
These things appear odd from our view-point and there are many other peculiarities that are equally strange to us. But it may be wholesome for us to remember that some of our customs impress the Chinese no less oddly. The Frankfurter Zeitung, Germany, prints the following from a Chinese who had seen much of the Europeans and Americans in Shanghai:
``We are always told that the countries of the foreign devils are grand and rich; but that cannot be true, else what do they all come here for? It is here that they grow rich. They jump around and kick balls as if they were paid to do it. Again you will find them making long tramps into the country; but that is probably a religious duty, for when they tramp they wave sticks in the air, nobody knows why. They have no sense of dignity, for they may be found walking with women. Yet the women are to be pitied, too. On festive occasions they are dragged around a room to the accompaniment of the most hellish music.''
A Chinese resident in America wrote to his friends at home a letter from which the following extract is taken:
``What is queerer still, men will stroll out in company with their wives in broad daylight without a blush. And will you believe that men and women take hold of each other's hands by way of salutation? Oh, I have seen it myself more than once. After all, what can you expect of folk who have been brought up in barbarous countries on the very verge of the world? They have not been taught the maxims of our sages; they never heard of the Rites; how can they know what good manners mean? We often think them rude and insolent when I'm sure they don't mean it they're ignorant, that's all.''[6]
[6] Smith, ``Rex Christus,'' p. 116.
A call that I made upon a high official in an interior city developed a curious interest. He was a pale, thin man, apparently an opium smoker and a mandarin of the old school. But he was intelligent enough to ask me not only about ``the twenty-story buildings of New York,'' but ``the differences between the various Protestant sects,'' and in particular about ``the Mormons and their strength!'' Who could have imagined that the Latter Day Saints of Utah could be known to a Chinese nobleman of Chih-li? Verily, our own idiosyncrasies are known afar.
It will thus be seen that mutual recriminations regarding national peculiarities are not likely to be convincing to either party. Human nature is much the same the world over. From this view-point at least we may discreetly remember that
``There is so much bad in the best of us,
And so much good in the worst of us,
That it hardly behoves any of us
To talk about the rest of us.''
I do not mean to give an exaggerated impression of the virtues of the Chinese or what Mrs. Isabella Bird Bishop calls ``a milk-and-water idea'' of heathenism. Undoubtedly, they have grave defects. Official corruption is well-nigh universal. A correspondent of the North China Herald reports a well- informed Chinese gentleman of the Province of Chih-li as expressing the conviction that one-half the land tax never reaches the Government. ``But that is not all,'' said he.