XVI
THE MANCHU
When the republicans rebelled against the dynasty, the following was the indictment issued to the world’s press, and signed by Foreign Minister Wu Ting Fang and Assistant Foreign Secretary Wen Tsung Yao, at Shanghai. Wu, all the world knows as the Jefferson of the new republican China. Wen is a very able modern lawyer, who made his name as a resourceful amban at Lhasa.
1. Incapacity.
2. Reactionary.
3. Benighted and barbaric.
4. Opposes modern knowledge, science and industry.
5. Favors a closed door; stultified national service.
6. Opposes government by the people; favors Manchus who are only one in about one hundred of the population.
7. Pensions a vast horde of non-working Manchus.
8. Barbaric against life and property, when opposed.
9. Constitutional promise insincere.
10. Manchus hold back world-progress.
11. Gave away Chinese territory.
12. Despised the Chinese and prohibited intermarriage.
13. Taxation without representation.
14. Haughtily refused to adopt Chinese system of three names, thus maintaining a separate society.
15. The Manchu has no literature, and, therefore, is a barbarian.
This Chinese Declaration of Independence first appeared at length in the North China Daily News, of Shanghai, on November 15, 1911. Similar complaints had been brought against the Manchu when the Taiping rebellion opened in 1850. The Manchus were a hunting tribe whose preserves lay along the wooded foothills of the Long White Mountain (Chang Pai Shan) northeast of Mukden. The region is well described by James in his Long White Mountain (1888). The chieftain who whipped the Manchus into shape for conquest was Nurha-Chu. He drilled their cavalrymen from 1559 to 1626. From scattered tribes, dwelling in felt michung-tents, he organized them as a Manchu horde with an ambition. The Great Wall was not erected against the Manchus, but against the ancient ancestors of Tartar cousins of theirs. The Manchus themselves erected a palisade-barricade against their cousins, the Khitans, on the west. It ran from Shan Hai Kwan, on the Pechili Gulf, where the Great Wall meets the sea, northward five hundred miles until it reached the Sungari River and encircled Kirin. I think it is difficult now to find any part of the stockade, but I believe that James and Younghusband found evidences of it in their exploration of Manchuria about 1886. The North China Railway embankment west of Mukden absorbed part of the historic mounds. The Manchus had no script. Nurha-Chu gave them one based upon the Mongolian, which in turn was copied from the vertical Syriac. This showed that Nurha-Chu talked with traveling priests who had come down the Tarim valley. You will note the character on the back of any Chinese cash coin, which has a square hole in the middle. Obtain one of these coins, for they will be minted no more, and they are historic; in fact, the oldest coin known. They are the oldest as far as the Chinese face is concerned; the Manchu merely put the name of the reign in Manchu on one side of the Chinese coin, ten of which exchange for one American cent.
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
A splendid view of the Great Wall, at its most picturesque angle. Note tree-denuded mountains, the cause of the awful floods and consequent famines. To pierce the wall was formerly a religious sacrilege and a political folly.
Copyright, 1913, The Bobbs-Merrill Company.
Mule carts of North China: note serrated wheels, which are a commentary on the muddy or sandy roads.