China and the Chinese

by Edmond Plauchut

FIG. 11.—A YOUNG CHINESE POET.
(Univers Pittoresque.)

The weakness and defective organization of Asiatic armies is well known, and is proved afresh at every contact with a European force. The thorough inefficiency of that of China was forcibly brought out in the recent war with Japan, when the latter country showed itself to be so far in advance of its antagonist in every way. Nothing but drilling by European officers, for at least half a century, could make Chinese soldiers at all formidable to white troops. It is just the same with the people of the Corea, Annam, Tonquin, and Siam. It will, of course, be urged: but look at the Japanese, they too belong to the despised yellow races, yet have they not proved themselves able to organize a campaign? are they not full of warlike energy and martial ability? do they not also take high rank as imaginative artists? In what do the white races excel? To all these queries we reply, the assumption that the Japanese belong to the same race as the yellow natives of the continent of Asia has to be proved. The children of the land of chrysanthemums and of the rising sun indignantly repel this hypothesis, and such authorities on ethnology as Kœmpfer, Golownin, Klaproth, and Siebold also reject it. Moreover, in this world everything is relative, and because the Japanese troops, armed with weapons of precision, were able to beat the badly-equipped Chinese forces, it does not follow that they could do the same if pitted against European soldiers. Whether they could or not still remains to be proved.

Before penetrating into the interior of the country, and studying the actual customs of the inhabitants at the present day, it will be well to glance back to the remote times when China first became a nation. Very interesting details of those early days have been preserved in the traditions of the Celestials, and from them we gather that the first dwellers in the land lived, as did so many of the races of Europe, in the forests, or in caves, clothing themselves in the skins of the wild beasts slain in the chase, whose flesh supplied them with food.

The first efforts at civilization appear to have been made in the North-west of the vast country, amongst the tribes camped on the banks of the Hoang-Ho, or Yellow River. The chiefs of these tribes gradually contracted the habit of making regular marriages, and living a home life with their families. To protect their wives and children they built huts; they discovered how to make fire, and with its aid to fashion agricultural implements and weapons. They knew how to distinguish plants good for food from those dangerous to human life; they fixed precise dates for the commencement of each of the four seasons; invented various systems of calligraphy, finally adopting the one still in use; and they acquired the art of weaving silk and cotton, which, according to the eminent sinologist, Leblois of Strasburg, recently deceased, they learnt from watching spiders at work.

THSIN-CHI-HWANG-TI

Until the third century B.C. China was divided into small states, the weaker tributary to the stronger, the latter independent. The too-celebrated Emperor Thsin-Chi-Hwang-Ti, who two hundred years before the Christian era ordered the destruction by fire of all books, united the various little kingdoms into one, and it was only in his time that the Chinese Empire properly so called began. At this period, too, the name of Thsina, or China, originally that of the district governed by the incendiary, came to be given to the whole country.

The most important historical documents are those making up what is called the Shu-King, dating from about B.C. 500, and written by a certain Kwang-Tsen. This valuable book has been translated into French by P. Gaubil and L. Biot, and its history is very romantic. It was supposed that every copy had been burnt by the agents of Thsin-Chi-Hwang-Ti, but an old literate, Fu Chang by name, had learnt it by heart, and later, one copy engraved on pieces of bamboo was found hidden in the wall of an old house which was being pulled down.

This sacred book, which is indeed a literary treasure, is now more than 2300 years old, and it contains extracts from works yet more ancient, so that it is the very best guide in existence to the early history of China.

It begins with a description of a chief named Yao, who, according to official Chinese chronology, flourished some 2350 years before the Christian era. If the portrait is not flattered, Yao must have been a perfect man. He lived in the province now known as Chen-si, and, like some great illumination, he attracted to himself all the barbaric hordes in the neighbourhood. His first care was to teach them to honour the Shang Ti, or Tien, that is to say, the Supreme God. He also employed certain men to watch the course of the heavenly bodies, or rather to continue the study of the stars begun before his time, not from any curiosity as to the science of astronomy strictly so called, but that agriculturists might learn the right seasons for the work they had to perform. According to the Shu-King the year was already divided in China into 366 days, and these days into four very strictly-defined periods, beginning at the times enumerated below: