If left to themselves I see no reason why the Chinese should not slumber on as they now are till the crack of doom, but, the world having become so reduced in size through the agencies of steam and electricity, they never will again be left undisturbed, but more and more subjected to the pressure of other nationalities in the feverish struggle for domination and wealth. To this pressure they will surely yield in one way or another. Will they forestall the inevitable by reforming themselves, or will they for a time fall beneath the foreign yoke until they have learnt their lesson, and then reassert their solidarity and independence?
In whatever light we may view these people or animadvert on their numberless contradictory qualities and failings, it is as certain as day and night that they are here to stay, if only by force of numbers, and that no political convulsions will wipe them out. They may be battered and even sundered for a time, but each successive shock will only serve to resuscitate their vitality.
Already possessing an equipment of wealth, numbers, thrift, good physique and high mental power, they only await good government to start them along the rails of progress. Whatever nations may rise or fall, the future is big with promise for the children of Han.
Language.
The Chinese language is like China itself: colossal!
Roughly, the mandarin or official language is spoken by all officials throughout the empire and by all classes in those provinces which lie north of the Yangtse, while south of this line Cantonese is the principal dialect, although the number of others is legion, and so pronounced are the differences between them that countrymen dwelling but a few miles apart are frequently at a loss to understand each other.
On one occasion, when making "a little trip to Japan," I took my Pekingese boy with me. Having missed the fortnightly mail-boat I made the passage from Chefoo in a small German collier, and on arrival at Nagasaki took rickshas to the hotel. In the streets were a goodly number of Chinese, members of a considerable colony of small traders, and the sight of compatriots in a foreign land greatly delighted the boy, who, on my departure after tiffin to make a tour of the town, asked if he meanwhile might go out to drink tea with his countrymen. I gave permission, but on returning some hours later to the hotel found him in a very disappointed frame of mind, which was accounted for by his explanation that the Chinese residents in Nagasaki were all Cantonese, and that not being able to understand a word of mandarin they had perforce been obliged to converse with each other as best they could in pidgin English. He said, "Looksee b'long all same Chinaman, no savez talkee."
The Pekingese are very discriminative and frequently condescendingly refer to all other Chinese as "outside men" or "foreigners."
Pidgin English is a queer jargon composed of a verbatim translation of Chinese sentences together with a slight admixture of Portuguese and French, the frequent wrongful substitution of similar sounding words and a lavish use of the terminals ee and o.