Doctor C. D. Tenny, an American educator, has been connected with the American Peking legation and has served on many American political missions, such as the inspection in 1912 of Doctor Sun Yat Sen’s government at Nanking. His influence in the northern provinces with Yuan Shi Kai has been great. Pai Yang Technical University at Tientsin, and Paoting Fu College, both Chinese, have known the worth of his guidance, and therefore they stand as models. Doctor W. A. P. Martin, the dean of American Presbyterian missionaries for thirty years, has done almost a similar work in the north in connection with the Chinese Tungwen College and Peking University, and moreover, Doctor Martin is a famous translator of American books into Chinese. Wells Williams, of the American Peking legation, is famous not only because his father wrote that noble basic work, The Middle Kingdom, but for his own work as a diplomat in America’s diplomatic advance in the Far East. The American minister at Peking, Mr. W. Rockhill, carefully and bravely explored Mongolia and Tibet, and wrote a diary of his travels in the debatable lands where Russia, Britain and China face one another.
Doctor H. H. Lowry, for many years president of the Methodist College at the Hata Men gate, Peking, has long exercised a strong influence upon Chinese officials and students. He is a man of great tact, enthusiasm, wisdom and scholarship, and is known both to have enlisted Yuan Shih Kai on the side of religious tolerance, and to have confirmed him in modern educational methods. The American Methodist bishop, J. W. Bashford, of Shanghai, is a mighty militant man with the southern republicans. The students adore him. The patriots of young China worship him. Fiery zeal, idealism, and the courage of a lion are characteristics of this influential, learned and sacrificing man. Doctor F. D. Gamewell, of Peking, is a Methodist missionary who has been in China for thirty years. He is world-famous for his engineering skill in directing the fortification of the legations in the awful siege of 1900. He is a man of great physical courage, calmness of mind, and sanity of judgment, and is a tower of influence among the Chinese officials. He hails from Hackensack, New Jersey.
C. W. Kinder, a Briton, of the Kaiping mines, built the first locomotive, and instituted the successful railway and mining policy of North China. He has done nearly as much in technical education at the Tongshan shops and school. For thirty years he has led the Chinese in mechanical development, and has reconciled officialdom to modernity in utilitarian matters. Mr. Kinder’s assistant has been Mr. Alston. The British engineers who have established China’s great railway development are Messrs. Collinson, Tuckey and Pope. The engineers in charge of the Hanyang smelting and mining development are the Germans, Ruppert and Leinung; and the German, Herr Dorpmuller, constructed the northern section of Tientsin-Pukow railway. Doctor G. E. Morrison, the Australian at Peking who represents the London Times, has long held the world bound to his prompt despatches regarding Chinese politics, of which he is past master. With all the currents which have been dragging and crossing in Manchu Peking, a man who can steer the ship of prophecy must be a master hand, and Doctor Morrison is a master hand, both in acquiring and digesting difficult news. His book, An Australian in China, speaks for itself.
The influential and typical authors who have lived in China for long terms are known by their books and by the prominent positions they have held. The genial and humorous Professor Parker, of Manchester University, was a British consul at Fuchau, Canton, etc. His books reveal his deep knowledge of antiquity, religion and the language. Professor Giles, of the University of Cambridge, was British consul at Ningpo. No man has done more to reveal the East to the West. His books speak for themselves. My old friend, Dyer Ball, with whom I sat for many a year while we questioned Chinese emigrants in the musty old harbor office at Hongkong as to whether “they sold themselves like a pig” (the Chinese idiom for contract slavery), and with whom I have taken many a walk over Hongkong’s noble peaks, was for thirty years in Hongkong’s civil service as registrar, protector of the Chinese, etc. His text-books on the dialects of the language are well known, and among others his book, Things Chinese, is an encyclopedic authority. The late Professor Legge, of Oxford, lived for many years at Hongkong, where he translated the Chinese classics. He opened a window which let the light of Cathay shine out on our surprised Western world. Shanghai, too, has had its many authors. The American, Jernigan, wrote China in Law and Commerce, a most illuminating work in a sadly neglected field which is coming into prominence with the modernized times. Canon Moule wrote brilliantly of his surrounding provinces, and many other Shanghai men have taken up a gifted pen, notably the late Robert Little, who for sixteen years was the scholarly editor of that sapient authority, the North China News and Herald. Mr. Little was succeeded by the eminent editors, Montague Bell and Owen Green. The National Review, a brilliant illustrated weekly, is ably conducted by Mr. Walter Kirton, of Shanghai, and G. B. Rea, M. E., conducts the famous Far Eastern Review, of Shanghai. Professor Hirth, of Columbia University, a German, served in Hart’s Chinese customs service, and has written interesting books on his experiences. Sir Henry Blake, of Hongkong, married into the British court, governor and author, was a ponderous type, once of the stern Irish constabulary, an ideal disciplinary officer, a splendid type of the strong Briton not unlike Lord Cromer in temperament. Up at Mukden, Doctor J. Ross, of the Scotch church, does wonderful things in authorship, medicine, education and theology for the Manchus; and over all the land the scholarly, indefatigable Alexandria Hosie, one time British consul at Newchwang in its strenuous days, wanders, collecting accurate trade data and making maps for the guidance of diplomacy, trade and letters. Two of his books are, Three Years in Western China; Manchuria, Its People and Resources. Chester Holcomb, interpreter and secretary at the American legation, Peking, in the eventful Boxer days, wrote an illuminating book, The Real Chinese Question. I regret that he died while in America in 1912.
Russia has her own scholars and explorers like Prejevalsky, whose works should reach us in greater abundance than they do. Doctor W. M. Hayes, the American Presbyterian, guided Yuan Shih Kai in founding his Provincial College at Paoting Fu. Stewart Lockhart, up at Wei Hai Wei, has been governing that crown colony for Britain for many years and writing books. I knew him at Hongkong as the brilliant colonial secretary, and indefatigable student of the exceedingly difficult language and written character, worthy in his scholarship to bear the name of Scott’s son-in-law. Under Lockhart serves Johnston, author of Lion and Dragon in North China, who was one of our Hongkong cadets, Sir Henry Blake’s secretary, and an Oxford man. All of these men, and scores more whom we knew, have been interesting types of the West in China, all the while they were, in their own way, interpreting China to Europe and America. The Chinese have copied, and will copy, their faults and their virtues. Until lately one has seldom heard of a defalcation by a Chinese. In the rubber panic of 1910 at Shanghai, the Chinese taotai, Tsai Nai Huong, absconded, owing several million dollars, and financial China was shaken to its foundation. Whether the fault was ignorance or cupidity, no one can say. He was given the loan by the government to sustain the Chinese banks which were beginning to fail because of speculation in the rubber estates (and the estates that existed only on paper!) of Malaysia. Would that more Chinese were admitted to Manila, where they might note the methods of the leaders in the splendid paternalism now being developed there in manufacture, building, education, road-making, hygiene, and every department of progress and government.
Doctor C. W. Mateer, who founded the leading American Presbyterian University, situated at Wei Hsien in Shangtung province, is perhaps best known as the translator of the New Testament into northern (Mandarin) Chinese. President A. J. Bowen, an American, of the great Nanking Union University (Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples), wields a vast influence with the rising republicans and officials of Middle China. Doctor Paul W. Bergen is president of the great Presbyterian College at Wei Hsien, Shangtung province. These men have vast power to influence the East in favor of the West, if the western business men were not so parsimonious in providing funds for the colleges and hospitals in China. An endowment of $30,000 is given for a university where at least $100,000 should be given, because the missionary of the educational and medical class is the pioneer of trade. Cure a Chinese, teach him modern methods, and he will in his gratitude favor western trade and intercourse. The debt American and British expansion owes to the missionary educator and medical man is greater than is owed to the man behind the gun, or the diplomat behind the flag and the protocol, who, while they serve, often serve harshly. Doctor J. H. Judson is president of the American Presbyterian College at beautiful cultured Hangchow, and has great influence with the sons of officials and leading merchants of Southern China. The most influential and interesting foreigners in China are the medical missionaries. There are too any names to quote, but all the church boards in America and Britain will furnish scores of names, if the inquirer is interested in the men and women who are doing the forward work of his denomination. Next to these men come the translators and educators, the great college presidents and professors in China, like Doctor Pott, of St. John’s, Shanghai. Missionaries of the old type, diplomats, merchants, travelers, treaty port editors, etc., are also performing their interesting part as types in interpreting the West to the great East, and ten thousand Chinese are gathered around each, eagerly watching every act and listening for every word. As one travels into different sections of China, some foreign name or personality stands there for good or ill, more prominently than the native’s own pailoo arch, before the eyes and in the speech of the awakening people, who are weighing the types of men who, coming among them, have excited their emulation in most and their revulsion in some cases. No course of reading can afford more material for thought than the hundred books devoted in recent years to things Chinese, and written by various types of foreigners during their long sojourn or exile in Cathay. The traveler who goes to Africa generally writes about animals, for they seem to be more interesting than the old races that are there, but the sojourner in China writes, not about monkeys, but about men and women who have been thinking in a continuous civilization which is at least 4,000 years old. As to the Chinese monkeys, there are a few of them in Szechuen and Yunnan provinces but since there are 400,000,000 men and women in China to write about, if one cares for works on monkeys, one must go to the literature on Africa! As for me, I confess to partiality for Cathayan literature because of its absorbing humanities and many types, which distinctly facet interesting differences.
No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming political events and massacres as the Roman Catholic Bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favier, who recently died. This was partially owing to his remarkable judgment, and partially owing to his wide sources of information, as Catholic converts are four times as numerous as Protestant converts. Monsieur Favier, ahead of events, was the best informed foreigner in China regarding the “Boxer” movement of 1900, and if his advice had been followed by the legations, the foreigners would have left Peking for the coast before the siege was instituted. He did not intend to leave himself, as he felt it to be his duty to die if necessary with his converts. Every one has admired his successful defense of the Pei Tang cathedral.
The following prominent American educationalists in China visited America in November, 1912, and spoke for China at the World’s Oriental Congress at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts: Vice-president Williams, of Nanking University; President Edmunds, of Canton Christian College; President Goucher, of the University of Chingtu, and Professor C. W. Young, of Union Medical College, Peking. It was regretted that President Sheffield and Doctor Arthur H. Smith, the eminent author, of the American Congregational College of North China, were not present.
Late advices state that the Chinese government at the close of 1912 has taken into its employ in the administration of the salt gabelle, J. F. Oiesen, a Dane of Tientsin; and as legal adviser, Monsieur Recouse, a prominent Belgian. Wherever Belgians are used, it is generally for the purpose of hiding the hands of France, and sometimes of Russia.