"'Are the Manchus capable of regeneration?'
"'I doubt it. They don't want it. In fact, both my mother and myself did all that we really dared to bring the Empress-Dowager around to our viewpoint on the question of reform. The fact of our being able to speak more languages than our own naturally made the people in and out of the Court both jealous and suspicious of us. They were sure that we were trying to influence the old Empress-Dowager to adopt some of the foreign ideas that we had accumulated during our stay abroad, and one particularly good (?) friend of ours, Prince Na Yung, told everybody that my mother was a woman Kang Yu-wei.
"'One thing: they must bring up Manchu babies a different way and send them abroad. Then probably there would be some hope. This younger generation, like the ex-Regent, have common blood in them. The mother of the Prince Regent and the two brothers was a concubine of Prince Chung, the ex-Regent's father. And this woman was a slave-girl. She had no education. Prince Chung died and left the boys very young and they, of course, had no opportunity. They have their mother's blood and they are just like their mother. That generation all descends from concubines.
"My idea is, as long as the Chinese will have concubines they will not progress. It is common blood. My idea is that the first reform should be the abolishment of the concubine business. Let us say some officials have daughters. They do not wish their daughters to be concubines; they must be proper wives, so the concubines must be slaves or bad women. Now how can they bear fine sons? Their blood is common. One thing, however: the Imperial concubines are selected from the Manchu officials' daughters—the daughters from the first and second rank, not lower than that. They consider themselves just like slaves. It is an awful life. The late Empress-Dowager was a concubine. She was selected when she was seventeen years old. She had a son and gained power that way. Her son was Emperor Tung Chih, who died when he was nineteen. I know the girlhood of the old Empress, and some day I will write it. She suffered terribly after she went to the Court.'
"'What are the first things to be done in China to institute real reform?'
"'Starting with the family, the very first reform which should be instituted is to do away with the secondary wives. The next important if not the most important, is an entire regeneration of the official system. It is a well-known fact that the Government loses three-fourths of the revenue it is entitled to through the official system of squeeze, and by diverting the squeeze which now goes into the pockets of officials to that of the Government's pocket will immediately place the Government in the position of having sufficient funds to carry through other reforms they have in mind. The next is the putting of China's finances on either a silver or gold basis, whichever may be thought best for the country, and having an universal coinage system, thereby doing away with the enormous losses to the business people of China by way of continual internal exchange.'
"'Do you think the baby Emperor can be raised to be a capable sovereign for the nation?'
"'That depends upon the way that they bring him up. If they bring him up as they did the old Emperor in the palace and no one to see him, the eunuchs to keep him company, he will be the same as any other Emperor—he will not know anything.'
"'What sort of education and surroundings should he have?'
"'Well, you have to start from childhood to train his mind. They are so narrow-minded, those people at the Court. These eunuchs, to gain favour from the Empress-Dowager, praised the late Emperor, no matter what he did, and spoiled him. Raise this one as an ordinary little boy—a simple education to start with. He has the idea that he will be the Emperor, and praised by these people, he will get conceited, The present Emperor is now five years old; his Chinese age is six. I am very much afraid for this little boy. I will tell you why—his mother is so common. His mother's father was all right; he was a big Manchu official; but his mother's mother was a slave-girl bought from Yangchow, and that gives bad blood to his mother, the ex-Regent's wife. Of course, we talk "blood" a good deal, but if he is brought up among these people—the family do not know anything—he cannot gain very much. They are all so ignorant.'