Being introduced to Archdeacon Gray, he very kindly went with us two afternoons among the temples and many remarkable places. We saw the temple in which are five hundred bronzed images of gods or deified men, each in a posture or holding an emblem representing some action or attribute. We saw the water-clock made by tubs of water placed one above another, each dripping into the one below it, and the lowest holding a graduated stick which rose through a hole in the lid, and as each hour-mark on the stick appears through the hole, a man goes up to the roof with a painted sign announcing to the people the time of day. This seems to be an heirloom from past ages when the “Clepsydra” was in use, of which this is a specimen. Adherence to this useless thing is one illustration of the Chinese attachment to antiquity. As you go about the city, you see things which carry you back two thousand years, oxen treading clay, men sifting wheat in sieves fastened on the ends of planks laid on rolling stones, and a man standing on each and keeping up a motion on the planks like “tilting,” or “seesaw,” a laborious process of doing a simple thing. Then you see works of art surpassing modern western skill; as, for example, an elephant’s tusk undergoing three years of carving; price, one hundred and fifty dollars. Then you visit an eating-house, which Archdeacon Gray begs you to endure, to know that some things related of the Chinese are not fictions. He goes to a man who is eating, and courteously taking up his plate, says, “What is this?” The man laughs and says, “Rat.” He goes to another, and, taking his plate, says, “What is this?” The man cheerfully replies, “Black cat.” Another man says, “Dog.” Around the room, on hooks, are evident signs that the men were truthful. You make swift retreat, but are constrained by your guide to look into an opium shop, where the customer, as he comes in, mounts a table, lies at full length, with his head on a wicker pillow hollowed in the middle to fit the neck, then is furnished with a pipe and lamp and box of opium, which he smokes till he is stupefied. Emerging from such scenes of degradation into the narrow street, ten feet wide, you may see a woman at a door with a child three years old, with whom she is playing “pease porridge hot,” going through the motions as we learned them in childhood; and you wonder whether Mother Goose derived her knowledge from the disciples of Confucius, or whether she did actually live and die, as is now asserted, in Rowe Street, Boston. This Chinese woman and her child playing at “pease porridge hot,” is one of those touches of nature which make “all the world akin.” You next reach a place where intellectual competition throws some of our university feats into the shade.
OPIUM SMOKERS. [Page 200].
HALL OF COMPETITIVE EXAMINATION.
One is in each of the eighteen provincial cities of China. Though familiar by description, perhaps, to the reader, I venture to repeat that it is a large open ground,—the one in Canton measuring 689,250 square feet. On one hand, there are seventy-five lanes containing 4,767 cells; on the other, sixty-eight lanes with 3,886 cells, making a total of 8,653 cells. Once in three years men of every age, from the youth to the aged, assemble to write prize essays for a literary degree. A candidate is fastened into each cell for three days and nights, with rice and water, planks being fixed in grooves in the sides of the cell, serving for a sleeping place, and for a writing-table by day. The strictest search is made to see that no book or paper is secreted in any dress. The essays are received by three officers, who seal up the outside page of each essay on which is written the name, age, residence, ancestors, &c., of the writer. They are passed to another officer who sees that they are copied in red ink, the object of the copying being that the original handwriting may not be recognized by the judges. Nearly two thousand writers are employed in copying. They have rooms fitted up for them in the “Hall of Perfect Honesty.” The governor of the province is ex-officio chief superintendent. Imperial commissioners from Pekin assist in the examinations. They meet in the “Hall of Auspicious Stars.” This hall is looked upon with feelings of awe. Success in these examinations is followed by fame, wealth, and honor; and failure, by years of toil and possibly of repeated disappointment. Messengers wait to carry the names of the successful candidates to every part of the province. The governor gives them a feast; after which they go in state dress to worship the tablets of their ancestors. Odes as well as essays are presented. The following are specimens of the themes at the last examination previous to 1870:—
“If the will be set on virtue, there will be no practice of wickedness.”
“It is only the individual possessed of the most entire sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can adjust the great, invariable interests of mankind.”
“There are ministers who seek the tranquillity of the state, and find their pleasure in securing that tranquillity.”
What can be more abstruse? Few among us would attempt to be original on such themes.
This system of competitive literary examinations here described has been maintained more than a thousand years. There are records proving this. On the first day three essays and one piece of poetry are required; each essay must have seven hundred words, the poetry must consist of seven hundred and sixteen lines, with five words in each. The pieces required on the other two days vary from this. The successful competitors are immortalized in fame; their triumph goes down to posterity on the family tablets, is noted on their tombs, secures honor to their children.