A luncheon at the Botanical Gardens was given the next day by the Minister of Agriculture, Mr. Chang Chien. This institution, to which a small and rather hungry-looking collection of animals is appended, occupies an extensive area outside of the northwest gate, and was formerly a park or pleasure garden of the Empress Dowager. A modern-style building, erected for her use and composed of large main apartments on each floor, with smaller side-chambers opening out from them, was used for our luncheon party. Its walls were still hung with pictures painted by the hand of the august lady, who loved to vary her busy life by painting flowers. The conversation here was mostly on Chinese art, there being among the guests an antiquarian expert, Chow, who exhibited some fine scrolls of paintings. I noted that the Chinese evinced the same interest in the writing appended to the paintings (colophon) as in the picture itself. They seemed to admire especially the ability, in some famous writers, of executing complicated strokes without hesitation and with perfect control. When we were looking at a page written by a famous Sung poet, Mr. Chow said: "He always finished a stroke lightly, like his poems, still leaving something unsaid."
Chinese handwriting has infinite power to express differences of character and cultivation. It is closely associated with personality. Some writing has the precision of a steel engraving; other examples, again, show the sweep and assurance of a brush wielded by a Franz Hals. It is the latter that the Chinese particularly admire; and even without any knowledge of Chinese script one cannot but be impressed with its artistic quality and its power to reveal personal characteristics. It is still the great ambition of educated Chinese to write well—that is, with force and individual expression. My host on this occasion was one of the most noted calligraphers in China. Many emulated him; among them a northern military governor who had risen from the ranks, but spent laborious hours every day decorating huge scrolls with a few characters he had learned, with which to gladden the hearts of his friends.
The new things cropping out in Chinese life had their detractors. Mr. and Mrs. Rockhill had come to Peking for a visit. Relieved of official duties through a change in the administration, it was quite natural that Mr. Rockhill should return where his principal intellectual interests lay. Throughout our first conversation at dinner Mrs. Rockhill affected a very reactionary view of things in China, praising the Empire and making fun of all attempts at modernization. One would have thought her not only a monarchist, but a believer in absolutism of the old Czarist type. A woman so clever can make any point of view seem reasonable. Mr. Rockhill did not express himself so strongly, but he was evidently also filled with regret for the old days in China which had passed. While we were together receiving guests at a dinner I was giving Mr. Rockhill, some of the young Foreign Office counsellors appeared in the distance, wearing conventional evening clothes. "How horrible," Mr. Rockhill murmured, quite distressed. Not perceiving anything unusual to which his expression of horror could refer, I asked, "What?" "They ought to wear their native costume," he answered; "European dress is intolerable on them, and it is so with all these attempted imitations."
The talk at another dinner, a small gathering including Mr. Rockhill, Doctor Goodnow, and Dr. Henry C. Adams, revolved around conditions in China and took a rather pessimistic tone. Doctor Adams had been elaborating a system of unified accounting for the railways. "At every turn," he said, "we seem to get into a blind alley leading up to a place where some spider of corruption sits, the whole tribe manipulated by a powerful head spider."
This inheritance of corruption from the easy-going past, when the larger portion of official incomes was made up of commissions and fees, was recognized to be a great evil by all the more enlightened Chinese officials. They attempted to combat it in behalf of efficient administration but they could not quite perform the heroic task of lifting the entire system bodily onto a new basis. Because the new methods would require greatly increased salaries, the ideal of strict accountability, honesty, and efficiency, could only be gradually approached. Doctor Goodnow for his part contributed to the conversation a sense of all the difficulties encountered by saying: "Here is a hitherto non-political society which had vegetated along through centuries held together by self-enforced social and moral bonds, without set tribunals or formal sanction. Now it suddenly determines to take over elections, legislatures, and other elements of our more abstract and artificial Western system. I incline to believe that it would be infinitely better if the institutional changes had been more gradual, if the system of representation had been based rather on existing social groupings and interests than on the abstract idea of universal suffrage. These political abstractions as yet mean nothing to the Chinese by way of actual experience."
He also did not approve of the persistent desire of the democratic party to establish something analogous to the English system of cabinet government. He felt that far more political experience was needed for working so delicate a system. "I am inclined to look to concentration of power and responsibility in the hands of the President for more satisfactory results," he said.
Mr. Rockhill's fundamental belief was that it would be far better for the world not to have meddled with China at all. "She should be allowed to continue under her social system," he urged, "a system which has stood the test of thousands of years; and to trust that the gradual influence of example would bring about necessary modifications." He had thorough confidence in the ability of Yuan Shih-kai, if allowed a free hand, to govern China in accordance with her traditional ideas but with a sufficient application of modern methods. He even considered the strict press censorship applied by Yuan Shih-kai's government as proper under the circumstances.
Throughout this conversation, which dwelt mostly on difficulties, shortcomings and corruption, there was, nevertheless, a notable undercurrent of confidence in the Chinese people. These experienced men whose work brought them into contact with specific evils, looked at the Chinese, not from the ordinary viewpoint so usual with foreigners who assume the utter hopelessness of the whole China business, but much as they would consider the shortcomings of their own nation, with an underlying faith in the inherent strength and virtue of the national character. The idea of China being bankrupt was laughed to scorn by Mr. Rockhill. "There are its vast natural and human resources," he exclaimed. "The human resources are not just a quantity of crude physical man power, but there is a very highly trained industrial capacity in the handicrafts." But it is exactly when we realize the stupendous possibilities of the country, her resources of material wealth, her man power, her industrial skill, and her actual capital that the difficulties which obstruct her development seem so deplorable.
Mr. Liang Chi-chao gave a dinner at about this time, at which Doctor Adams, Doctor Goodnow, President Judson of Chicago, and the ladies were present. Mr. Liang had a cook who was a master in his art, able to produce all that infinite variety of savory distinction with which meat, vegetables, and pastry can be prepared by the Chinese. One usually speaks of Chinese dinners as having from one hundred fifty to two hundred courses. It would be more accurate, however, to speak of so many dishes, as at all times there are a great many different dishes on the table from which the guests make selection. The profusion of food supplied at such a dinner is certainly astonishing. The guests will take a taste here and there; but the greater part of it is sent back to the household and retainers. It is a popular mistake to believe that Chinese food is composed of unusual dishes. There are indeed birdsnest soup, shark fins, and ducks' kidneys, but the real excellence of Chinese cooking lies in the ability to prepare one thing, such as chicken, or fish, in innumerable ways, with endless varieties of crispness, consistency, and flavour. It is notable to what extent meat predominates. Although there is always a variety of vegetables and of fruit, the amount of meat consumed by the Chinese is certainly astonishing to one who has classified them, as is usually done, as a vegetarian people.
The show of abundance at a Chinese banquet seems the fare of poverty compared with the cargoes of delicacies served at the Imperial table. It was a rule of the Imperial household that any dish which the Emperor had at any time called for, must be served him at the principal meal every day; as his reign lengthened the numbers of dishes at his table, naturally, constantly increased. It is related that the dinner of the Emperor Chen Lung required one hundred and twenty tables; and the Empress Dowager, at the time of her death, had worked up to about ninety-six tables. It is not to be wondered at that the Emperor's kitchen had an army of three hundred cooks! At one time when the Duke Tsai was discussing with me the financial situation of the Imperial family, he remarked, with a deep sigh: "The Emperor has had to reduce the number of his servants. For instance, at present he has only thirty cooks." Not knowing of the custom described above, I was inclined to consider that number quite adequate. I believe the little Emperor has at the time I write reached the quota of about fifteen tables.