The already modernized Chinaman is doubtless an interesting figure, and he displays highly intellectual qualities. Life in the harbour towns, where he has free intercourse with foreigners from all parts of the world, has considerably widened his field of vision, and offers him ample opportunity for making comparison between the natives of the various European countries. It enables him also to become more familiar with the achievements of Western culture. The latest products of French industry, Manchester goods, or any of the most recent European inventions, reach these shores within a very short time. There are many wholesale merchants and bankers who have for several years been in direct communication with the city of London, or Wall Street in New York. They are bold and enterprising men, and work their business exclusively on modern principles. Their offices are fitted up in European fashion with telephones and type-writers; only here and there a rare plant, some precious object of art, or a singing bird in a cage, betrays the native instinct of love of nature and art. The national dress is still worn, and the wide silk trousers and traditional pigtail strike one at first as somewhat out of place in these modern surroundings.
At Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Tien-tsin, one has excellent opportunities of seeing the business man at home. During my stay in those towns I thoroughly enjoyed the social intercourse with these people. It is interesting to ponder over what may become of them as they continue to acquire all the advantages of Western accomplishments. What possibilities this nation possesses!
The millionaires generally build their houses in European style. The furniture of their reception-rooms is also of foreign make, and only the beautiful porcelains and other art treasures remind us that we are in China. Honestly speaking, all this modernization in house-building and furnishing is to be regretted, for surely the Chinese yamen is more tasteful than the European house of iron and brick!
Dress has thus far not been touched by the fashion, and anything more beautiful than the richly embroidered silk and velvet mantles of the wealthy classes can hardly be imagined. Neither has Americanism been able to obliterate the old-world manners and rules of courtesy, or to sever the bond of family affection and the inborn respect to parents. A Chinaman protects his home above all that is dear to him. In my intercourse with the Chinese I have noticed that even the most advanced among them, who have lived for years in England or in France, and who have enjoyed all the advantages of our commercial and industrial achievements, scrupulously avoid imitating the private life of the West. All that relates to business is zealously excluded from the home, and it frequently happens that the wife or the child has never entered the office of husband or father, nor does the father ever mention business matters in the home circle. The office is for work, he says, the home for rest.
It has often been remarked to me that with us the wear and whirl of business and of excessive ambition, destroy the joy of living. One of my acquaintances at Hong Kong once said, "The conditions of life in the West nowadays make man his own enemy. He sacrifices his whole life to acquire what is in the main worthless, without giving himself time to enjoy what he already possesses."
A banker expressed himself in a similar manner. "Most people in Europe," he said, "love money for its own sake, but not for what money can do to ennoble their lives."
The more intimately I have become acquainted with Chinese mood and thought, the better have I learned to understand the psychical condition of the people. It has been said that the Chinaman, when first he comes to Europe, is struck by the sad expression on all the faces. They say that the Anglo-Saxon, or perhaps more still the Latin nations, appear to be more upset by some paltry superficial annoyance, a social slight or deception, than the Chinaman is at the sight of death. They say that we prize exorbitantly what is of small real value, while the things which make life worth living and give inward satisfaction are neglected by us. And I must confess that I have not been able to confute this statement. Life in the West—that is to say, the stability of the moral equilibrium of existence—is very precarious. Steam-engines have long since killed all sentimentality in us, and deeper feelings are only too frequently sacrificed to outward appearances and conventionalities. Where even the basis of religious conviction fails, there is nothing left to compensate for the vicissitudes of life.
The Chinese Christian, as the progressive element of the land, desires above all things that his children should lead pure, Christian lives, a point which is frequently neglected with us. I have known many Chinese Christian families. I have been in the houses of simple labourers and in the huts of peasants, as well as in the mansions of the wealthy, and I have found, as a rule, with poor and rich alike, that charity and brotherly affection are not empty terms, but that they find expression in their daily life. Their care for the poor and needy is quite touching. Such at least has been my experience, and I have heard the same from missionaries who have spent their lives amongst them. The charge of insincerity, which is so often brought against the Chinese converts, is greatly exaggerated, at any rate as far as the Catholics are concerned.
We must not forget that the greater portion of the Chinese Catholics have been Christians for many generations, and receive regular religious instruction. The arrival of the first missionaries dates back to the thirteenth century. It was Kublai Khan who invited them first to settle in the country, and in course of time he entrusted the education of his son to them.
More than six hundred years have passed since the foundation of the bishopric at Pekin; Monte Corvino was appointed first bishop by Pope Clement V, and Marco Polo, the famous Italian traveller, accompanied him. Six thousand baptisms took place in the course of the three following years, and the number of Christians soon grew to a hundred thousand. Frequently recurring persecutions hindered the spread of the gospel; however, it is not my object here to trace the history of Christianity in China, a question I deal with in another volume, but rather to point out that the descendants of those early converts have embraced the Catholic faith already as the religion of their fathers. With regard to the so-called forced, or paid conversions, I must mention in the first place that adult conversions very seldom occur, and have seldom brought the person concerned any material advantage, but on the contrary exposed him to injustice and persecution. A Chinaman rarely renounces or changes a once settled conviction, and the greater number of baptisms recorded were administered to the children of Christian parents or to orphans and deserted boys, and especially girls, who, without the intervention of the Church, would have died of starvation or neglect. Such children are put in orphanages under the supervision of nuns, and taught a trade which afterwards enables them to provide for themselves. The more talented among them are educated in the Middle Schools belonging to the Mission, and in the colleges established in the larger towns. The administration of these institutions is in the hands of the clergy, and their popularity is best proved by the fact that a considerable number of their students profess other religions.