The face of China

by E. G. Kemp

Not far from the market, but situated on the outskirts of the town, is the University, a recent institution (1902), and built mainly in European style; the professors’ houses being of two stories and entirely un-Chinese. The entrance, however, is the usual native one with carved and painted woodwork decorations; facing it, and crossing a little bridge over an empty tank, was the guest-room, supposed to be purely Chinese, but full of European lapses, in the shape of lace curtains, wall-papers, European carpet, chairs, clock, electric bells, and, most striking of all, a centre candelabra for the electric light. There are lecture-rooms, libraries, museum, laboratory, and dining-rooms, and thirty-two baths with hot and cold water laid on; these are so popular that their use has had to be limited. Amongst the institutions may be named a fife and drum band, and the latest novelty is a brass band. The University is only open to the students of the province of Shantung, and naturally the standard of Western knowledge is still low; but there are professors of English, German, French, and Japanese, though the respective numbers of their classes are seven, five, five, two. At present Japanese is not so popular as it used to be. Indeed, in the Imperial College in Kaifeng the Educational Board has just cut out Japanese: whether this is an exceptional case I cannot say.

The English section includes a study of European history (Freeman’s) and political economy, but other subjects, such as geography, are popular among students, to judge by their use of the small English library. Curiously enough, the most popular book both here and elsewhere is “Little Lord Fauntleroy.” Half the lectures are devoted to Western knowledge and half to the Chinese classics, and the course of study at present covers three years.

In connection with the scheme of education, and under the same jurisdiction, are normal schools, secondary and primary schools. One of the principal ones has an English headmaster, so that there will soon be a set of students prepared to profit much better by university training, and fitted to go to some European university later. There are no fewer than fifteen schools and colleges, with about two thousand five hundred students. Another interesting feature of the education question is the opening of a girls’ school for the daughters and wives of the officials. It was built three years ago by two Chinese gentlemen, and they have an English teacher there. The school was formally opened by the Literary Chancellor, and on entering he saluted the girls deferentially, and gave them an admirable address. In the south of China many ladies learn reading in private, but in the north this is extremely rare, and so lately as 1902 there was not a single girls’ school in the Empire, except the mission schools; now they are cropping up in all directions, and the Government is taking an active interest in all their concerns. Possibly it may be thought that it shows this in somewhat exaggerated fashion, for a recent order has been issued from the Education Department in Peking prohibiting the wearing of a long fringe of hair, or “bang” as our American friends call it, in any of the girls’ schools throughout the Empire. This fashion had become rather general last year. It would have been of much more practical value if all scholars had been forbidden to paint, as this is one of the most time-wasting processes. At Tsinan the school hours have been obliged to be fixed late because the scholars require some hours for the morning toilette. In the girls’ schools they are now very anxious to learn English, music, and drawing; “accomplishments” are more valued than serious study. It is quite evident that there is no lack of ability to learn, though the girls are called “wooden-heads” sometimes in contempt. In the American Board School at Peking the girls gave an admirable rendering of Wagner’s and Mendelssohn’s music in part-singing. The piano is also very popular among the girls. Like the boys, they have astonishing memories, and think nothing of reciting a whole Gospel; it is even not ranked as a feat by the Chinese to know the whole of the Bible by heart.

Tsinan is a most progressive town: it has a British postmaster, who has organised, not to say revolutionised, the postal system of the province. Letters now go to Peking in four days, and to Tientsin in three and a half days; the runners carrying them reckoning to do fifty or sixty miles at a stretch, with an average speed of three and a half miles per hour. They receive about five shillings a week as wages. Sir Robert Hart is responsible for the selection of postmasters, and even in a remote place we found a very nice one who could speak a little English. Sir Robert Hart was appointed head of the Customs Department in 1862, and the Customs and Post-Office form part of one system.

One of the prettiest places at Tsinan is the lake, the main pleasure resort of the Chinese. After threading our way in chairs through incredibly dirty and narrow lanes, filled with a jostling crowd and traffic, often brought to a standstill by a hopeless-looking impasse of rickshas, barrows, beasts, and chairs, we came to a gateway, and stepped thereout straight on to the edge of the lake, where boats, with graceful latticed-work windows, and a broad couch to lie on in the front, awaited passengers. Tea was ready on the table, and we set off along one of the water highways through the tall reeds and beds of lotus. Gorgeous kingfishers darted to and fro like a flash of light; tiny wild-ducks bobbed up out of the water, and then scuttled into the reeds, as we slowly made our way to the various points of interest. The lake has been chosen as a place for putting up memorial monuments to distinguished people, and they are certainly a singular contrast to ours. They stand like temples on little islands, and to the uninitiated appear to be such, with their tablets of incense and altars. For instance, there is a fairly recent one erected in memory of a former Governor of Shantung. Above the altar, and almost hidden by the inscribed tablet, is a life-size seated figure of the Governor. The head is a photograph, and the rest is a painting, but in the dim light it required close inspection to ascertain this fact. Incense is offered before it by any one, and not only by the members of his family, as in ancestral worship. Opposite this building, and as part of the memorial, is an ornate theatre, where plays are acted on public occasions. Another recent memorial has been put up to Li Hung Chang, and it is extremely strange. It includes a little summer-house and a rock-garden (without rock-plants), a theatre, a house containing a tablet, altar, &c., and a guest-house where distinguished visitors can be lodged. This last building is two-storied, and quite European in style, perched on an elevation with a well-built wall below it, surmounted by barbed wire. Another little group of buildings had corrugated iron walls; on another was a Taoist temple, where we found a travelling showman who was exhibiting a popular cinematograph in the neighbourhood. The Chinese frequent the lake for pleasure parties, and a good deal of drinking goes on, not of tea only. A visit by moonlight is as enchanting as anything that could be imagined. On one of the islands we noticed the most fascinating of all the fascinating birdcages we had yet seen. It was the usual round shape made in bamboo, but the centre of the roof inside was a well-executed portrait of the handsome, black talking bird which inhabited it. The seed- and water-pots were of different colours and shapes, and fastened in with tiny figures of men carved into wooden buttons. I have never been in any country where there were so many caged birds, and where they were so well looked after. Every cage has its well-made night-cover, and often this is fastened down the side with neat little buttons. We continually saw men carrying cages along the streets, taking their birds for walks, as we do dogs. At one place we saw a man take the cage to a stream, and after he had cleaned it out with a sort of tooth-brush, he left it in the stream for the bird to have its bath, after which he hung it up to dry, and whistled to the bird. The fashion of carrying birds about is said to be for the purpose of showing that the owner is a man of leisure; as this is now creating a good deal of ridicule, the custom is likely to go out of fashion.

One of the interesting sights of Tsinan, which is quite up to date, is a large camp, lighted by electricity, about two miles outside the city. It is built like rows of little cottages; the men are well drilled, and have to attend lectures. We found them, when they acted as our military escort through the province, very civil, and in every way pleasant and obliging men. A party of them was brought by an officer to visit the mission museum, and the men were much interested in having the various kinds of natural history and geological specimens, models of architecture, electrical machines, steam-engines, &c., explained to them. Visitors are surprised to see a model of an English cemetery, but it throws a new light on English character when the Chinese receive an explanation of our views with regard to the dead, and the care lavished on their last earthly dwelling-place. Models are of great value when wisely used for dispelling misconceptions, but we are often prevented by our insular pride from taking the trouble to disabuse foreigners of false impressions they may have conceived of us. One of the most attractive models is a dredge worked by electricity, for the province of Shantung suffers terribly from the inundations of the Yellow River, and the means used to cope with this difficulty are wofully inadequate.

This museum was originally started by Mr. Whitewright, of the Baptist Mission at Tsingchowfu, where the prefectural examinations used to take place, attracting to it 10,000 or more students from all parts of the province. When the old examination system was abolished the city of Tsingchowfu was no longer of importance from this point of view, and it was decided to move the Institute to the capital, Tsinan, a treaty port whose importance, on the other hand, was rapidly increasing. The Mission obtained an excellent site, and put up a lecture-hall to seat six hundred persons, reception-rooms for men and for women, a reading-room, and the museum. The first block of buildings was opened in 1905 by the Governor, and ever since then the place has attracted an increasing number of visitors of all kinds. In the second year of its existence there were 187,000 admittances; at the great annual religious festivals it is specially crowded, as thousands of pilgrims pass through Tsinan on their way to the sacred mountain, Tai Shan. From 8.30 A.M. till 6 P.M. preaching goes on without intermission, a specially selected staff of native preachers assisting the missionaries in this work; for the Chinese prove themselves more able than Europeans to win converts to Christianity.

Many of the students from the university and the schools frequent the museum and lecture-hall, the walls of which are hung with charts and diagrams calculated to give the thoughtful Chinaman much food for reflection. After studying the comparative tables of commerce, population, &c., a visitor is said to have exclaimed, “Why! the only thing that China is ahead in is population!” Lectures on history, science, and religion are given in the hall, and are largely attended by university students on Sunday, as, in imitation of our Western custom, they have no classes at the university that day.

One day a week the museum is open to ladies only, and we met the wife of the retiring Governor of the province just leaving the building after an exhaustive examination of its contents. She was accompanied by a considerable retinue on horseback and in chairs, not to mention a motley crowd composed of the rag-tag and bobtail of the town, carrying absurd little flags.

It has now been decided to attach a medical school to the Institute, as there is none in the province, and a church is also to be built. The American Presbyterians and the English Baptists are combining for this medical school. The former society has had medical work here for the last twenty-eight years, and for many years they have had a hospital and dispensary in the eastern suburb. There is also a free dispensary in the city, a Government affair, where the patient is at liberty to choose either Eastern or Western treatment. The majority choose the latter, and are treated by a German naval doctor; they are indebted for his services to the German Government, who have lent him for this purpose. There are already classes for medical students in connection with several of the mission hospitals in the province, who will form an excellent nucleus with which to start the new college. The importance of medical mission work in China is great, not only for its own sake, but also for the purpose of familiarising the Chinese in the most remote corners of the Empire with the benefits of Western science and the goodwill felt towards them by Europeans and Americans, of which this is the practical demonstration. The two continents are about equally represented, and there are over three hundred doctors scattered throughout the Empire: their fame extends far beyond the limits of the neighbourhoods where they happen to be residing. They are training numbers of intelligent young Chinamen to carry on their work, but the establishment of colleges to complete the training of these students is now becoming increasingly necessary.