Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

And now in 1899 I hear that already a third school for girls has been started by Mr. King, whose energy in the matter is the more to be admired when it is considered that he is so deaf all communication with him has to be carried on in writing. But, alas for China! Mr. Timothy Richard, the inspiring secretary of the Society for the Diffusion of Christian and General Knowledge, has had to take over the schools and put in a European manager, to save them from the Empress Tze Hsi's grasping fingers.

WÊN TING-SHIH, THE REFORMER, LATE TUTOR TO THE LADIES OF THE IMPERIAL HOUSEHOLD.
Lent by Rev. Gilbert Reid.

But a few days after the ladies' dinner—a very merry one—we were invited by three Chinese gentlemen to meet the Mr. Wên before mentioned as late tutor to the ladies of the Imperial Household. There were only four other Europeans, and a little party of Chinese men, all members of the Reform party. It is perhaps as well not to give their names, two of that little company being at this moment under sentence of death themselves, together with all their relations. When last heard of they were hiding, but some of their relations had been seized. The dinner was a very sad one. They had evidently invited Europeans as a drowning man catches at a straw, to see if they could devise anything to save the Chinese people. But to each suggestion made they said it was impossible. There was nothing—nothing to be done at Peking. Corruption prevailed over everything there. There was nothing—nothing to be done with the various Viceroys. There was nothing to be done by an appeal to the people. The only thing was to go on writing and writing, translating from foreign languages, and thus gradually educating the people in what might be useful to them. The memory of that dinner cannot easily pass from those present. Some of us walked away together too sad for words, and all that evening a great cloud of depression rested over us. For we felt we had witnessed despair; and when a Chinaman, usually so impassive, gives way, it makes the more impression.

But then happened the astonishing, as always occurs in China; and when next heard of, the Emperor of China himself, the youthful Kwang-shü, was at the head of the Progress party. All that has been told of Kwang-shü has always been very interesting and pleasing. Chinese people all speak well of him, and say he wishes for his country's good. But then they shrug their shoulders, for they have always maintained he has no power. At one time he was said to be studying English, at another reading Shakespeare in translation. On the occasion of the Empress Tze Hsi's sixtieth birthday all Christian women in China were invited to subscribe for a handsome copy of the New Testament, which was eventually presented to her in a silver casket beautifully chased with a fine relief of bamboo-trees. The Chinese version was specially revised for this presentation, in which Christian Chinese women took the greatest interest. No sooner had the book been presented than the Emperor sent an eunuch round to ask for a copy of the same volume. There was not as yet any copy of quite the same version, and the one sent was in the course of a few hours returned with several comments, understood to be in the Emperors own handwriting, pointing out the differences, and asking that the same version might be sent to him. He at the same time applied for copies of the other books prepared by Europeans for the instruction of Chinese.

In 1894 he took one of those sudden steps that a little recall some actions of the German Emperor, and signified his intention to look over each essay and poem himself, and place the competitors at the Peking examination according to their excellence. It may be imagined what was the astonishment and consternation of the examining board of high Ministers of State, who had just examined them, and marked out the standing of each man according to their own inclinations. There were two hundred and eight competitors, and it took the Emperor three whole days to look over the papers. At the end of that time the list was turned nearly upside-down, for three men placed amongst the last by the examining board were now marked out by the Emperor as among the six entitled to the highest honours. Amongst the competitors was the lately returned Minister to the United States, Spain, and Peru. He had a brevet button of the second rank; and having lately received the post of Senior Deputy Supervisor of Instruction to the Heir Apparent, he had to present himself as a competitor—notwithstanding his years and previous services abroad. In the list of the examining board he stood amongst the first thirty, and was recommended to a higher post of honour. In the Emperor's list he was placed in the third class; and in the decree classifying the essayists, in which the Emperor stated definitely that he had done so after himself looking over each paper, this ex-Minister was ordered to take off his brevet second-rank button, being degraded from the post of Deputy Supervisor to that of Junior Secretary of the Supervisorate. There were many other changes made of the same nature.

Naturally such an action did not tend to establish the youthful Emperor in the good graces of the more corrupt of his counsellors. But it showed energy and initiative, uncommon in Chinamen, also a desire to do his duty and right wrongs. It is certainly unfortunate for himself that he did not from the outset set to work to make to himself friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. But brought up from his earliest years as an Emperor, it is not unnatural that he should have expected all people to bow down before his will as soon as he asserted it. And it is a little unreasonable to expect from a young man, palace born and bred, who never even once had taken a country walk or ride, or enjoyed liberty of any kind, the character of a Bismarck or a Napoleon. That his advisers were equally unaware of the dangers awaiting him is shown by their having taken no precautions even to save themselves. It was indeed Kwang-shü who advised Kang to fly from Peking, not Kang who advised Kwang-shü to be careful. And that the plot that dethroned the young Emperor was kept carefully secret is also shown by the British Minister, a man of experience, and who has travelled about the world, and is of course amply provided with all the necessary means for obtaining information, being actually absent from Peking at the time, which naturally he never would have been had he known the crisis was imminent. The German and American Ministers were also absent, and, more remarkable still, Sir Robert Hart, Inspector-General of Chinese Imperial Customs. The moment was indeed probably chosen in consequence by the Empress.

Surrounded by temptations—his aunt and adopted mother is openly accused of having tried to teach him to take delight in cards and wine, and it is one of her duties both to select a wife for him and to surround him with concubines—the young man seems to show rather the disposition of an anchorite. All testimonies agree that he is not of a vigorous physique: indeed, bred and nurtured as he has been, how could he be? In health, as in many other ways, he always recalls to me our own Prince Leopold, the late Duke of Albany.

It is greatly to be regretted that when that very amiable, gentle-looking young man, now Czar of Russia, was in China, he and the young Emperor of China did not meet. Both apparently have aspirations, both are weighted by a weight of empire no one man can sustain single-handed, both surrounded by powerful, unscrupulous men, who will not hesitate to wield their well-intentioned and apparently sincere nominal rulers to their own advantage, as also possibly to the destruction of those nominal sovereigns.