It is otherwise with the greater number of the temples scattered over the hills, which stand amidst groups of magnificent trees, whose green foliage contrasts so pleasantly with the gray, barren hills which the Chinese, like all other peoples of the Far East, never cultivate. Visitors are pleasantly received in the temples near Peking, some of which are used as summer residences by European diplomatists tired of being shut up in the city, whose pestilential miasmas occasionally reach even their houses, although they are surrounded by parks. Some of them are only wooden structures, with dwellings for the bonzes surrounding courtyards on to which open the various sanctuaries. The use of wood in the Far East for building purposes does not prevent a certain display of magnificence and art, and the Japanese temples at Nikko and many other places are marvels of richness and beauty, although they are entirely built of wood. Unfortunately, unless they are very carefully looked after, they are naturally apt to deteriorate much quicker than stone buildings. Needless to say, the Chinese temples are in a very dilapidated condition. I cannot say that I was impressed by the amazing collection of Buddhas, some life-size, others colossal, some gilded and others painted, no two of which are said to be exactly alike; or by the crowd of horrible monsters with ferocious faces and abominable gestures who guard the entrances to these temples. They one and all filled me rather with disgust than with the slightest impression of awe. This degenerate Buddhism is very different from that which exists in Ceylon, and among certain Japanese sects. The only traces of the original character of the religion, or at any rate of the land from which it sprang, are to be found in the lovely stone pagoda of the Pi-Yuen-Sse, whose style is pure Hindu, and contains some exquisite bas-reliefs representing scenes in the lives of Sakyamuni and his saints, or, again, in the even more beautiful sculpture to be admired in the Temple of the Yellow Tower.

The Summer Palace, which, by the way, was not a genuine Chinese building, but erected under the direction of the Jesuits in the eighteenth century in the style of Versailles, has not been rebuilt since its destruction by the Allies in 1860, and all access to its ruins has been prohibited. Not far distant is the summer residence of the Empress Dowager, surrounded by magnificent gardens. The road which leads to it is well kept. For the matter of that, as the Empress was about to make a pilgrimage to a neighbouring shrine at the time I passed that way, all the roads were being tinkered up for her advent. Hundreds of coolies were working under the direction of mandarins of the second or inferior rank, with the white or gold button, who were dashing on horseback hither and thither, giving orders and generally superintending so that all irregularities were rapidly disappearing under cartloads of sand. These costly repairs were, however, only ephemeral.

The Chinese Government never hesitates about wasting money on trivialities. On one occasion, a river happening to upset certain arrangements in one of the Imperial gardens, it was, at enormous cost, drained from its bed, and allowed to inundate and ruin hundreds of farms belonging to the unfortunate peasants. On another occasion, with a view to worthily celebrating the sixtieth birthday of the Dowager Empress, the money intended for the reorganization of the army in Pe-chi-li was squandered on processions, illuminations, and fireworks. Whenever money is needed for anything but the gratification of the greed and vanity of the Court officials, it is never forthcoming; and every traveller who has been to China will corroborate what I have said concerning not only the neighbourhood of Peking, but also of Canton and Shanghai. The highroads have practically ceased to exist, and the bridges are rapidly crumbling to ruin. The Imperial canal, one of the most magnificent works of past generations, which goes from Hang-Chow to Tien-tsin, a distance of over 940 miles, and unites the Blue, the Yellow, and the Pei-ho Rivers, and also the capitals of the middle provinces, whence are obtained the best provisions, is now at many points choked up with sand and stones, and in others it is only a few inches deep, and can only be used for local traffic. China of to-day is but a shadow of what she has been, for her sole object in existence is to deceive, and her administration is rotten to the core. This decadence dates centuries back, but it culminated five years ago, when an Empire of 400,000,000 inhabitants was obliged to humble itself to a nation ten times its inferior in population and resources.

CHAPTER IV
THE LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS—PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE

The literati or governing class—How it is recruited from the mass of the people through examinations—Bachelors, Masters of Arts and Doctors—Enormous number of candidates—The functionaries exclusively selected from the literati—Most of the posts sold—The syndicate for the exploitation of public offices—The gravest defect of the system, the examinations, the subjects selected being merely exercises in rhetoric and memory about an immense quantity of nonsensical matter supplied by the Chinese classics and ancient annals—Abortive attempts to introduce small doses of Western science into these examinations—Superstitions of the literati—This stupid system of examination the principal cause of Chinese isolation—Complete disappearance of the military spirit resulting from the same fatal cause—Hostility and contempt entertained by the literati against all European progress—Difficulty of suppressing or reforming the mandarinate.

The curse of China and the main reason why her remarkable people, who once deserved to be compared with the ancient Romans, have sunk to the degraded condition in which we find them at present, is the mandarinate, which she has the misfortune to consider one of her chief glories. It is this corrupt and antiquated system that is destroying the Celestial Empire. It has often been observed that nations generally have the Government they deserve, and it is undoubtedly true that the administration of China is, in a measure, the logical result of her geographical situation and singular history, to which might be added the peculiar character of her people. On the other hand, there is no question that the worst traits of the national character are accentuated in the mandarin class which governs the country, and saps its activity and energy.

Theoretically, the Chinese Government is based on paternal principles; as a matter of fact, it is entirely in the hands of the class known as ‘literati,’ from whose ranks all the State officials, or mandarins, are recruited; and if we wish to understand the primary causes of the misgovernment of the Celestial Empire, we must become thoroughly acquainted with the origin and manners of the mandarins, who are not hereditary, but recruited from the mass of the people in the most democratic manner in the world by means of public competitive examinations. These examinations confer three honorary degrees, which might be likened to those bestowed by our Universities: Bachelors, Masters of Arts, and Doctors. The degree of Bachelor is competed for in each district (there are sixty districts per province), and that of Master of Arts in the eighteen provincial capitals; that of Doctor, on the other hand, is only to be obtained in Peking. One may imagine the esteem in which these degrees are held by the people when I mention that in 1897, when I was at Shanghai, no less than 14,000 candidates came up for examination at Nanking, with only 150 honours to be distributed amongst them. It is considered a great honour for a family to include a literate amongst its members, and his obtaining his degree is celebrated throughout the entire province which enjoys the privilege of being his birthplace. Should he be fortunate enough to obtain his laureate at Peking, he is welcomed on his return to his native town as a veritable conquering hero. It is quite true that, in order to pass his examination, he has to go through an amount of physical suffering and patient endurance which would deter any but a Chinaman from the attempt. Each candidate is shut up for three whole days in a box-like cell four feet square, in which he cannot even lie down, with no other companions than his brush, paper and stick of Chinese ink; and barely an examination passes without some student or other being found dead in his cell. According to popular rumour, it is said that the all-pervading corruption penetrates even into these cells, and that not a few candidates succeed less through their merits than through the golden gate; and it has even been observed that the sons and near relatives of existing high functionaries are pretty sure to pass; but as a rule, however, it seems that merit generally obtains its reward. It is, however, after the examinations that begin the real difficulties of those who are not rich and are without influential friends. One might naturally expect that after the trouble, fatigue, and expense of the examination were over, some post or other would surely be forthcoming to recompense the efforts of the candidate; but the contrary is the rule, and many a man has had to wait a lifetime before obtaining the reward for which he has striven so hard. Nevertheless, those students who seem to possess exceptional ability generally push themselves forward in the following manner: a syndicate has been formed which advances the funds necessary to assist the aspirant in mounting the first rung on the ladder of fame, and to help him further, until he is in a position to return the money borrowed, either in cash or kind, with a very handsome interest. The idea of exploiting public offices as a sort of commercial concern is, to say the least, ingenious, and, what is more, it seems to be occasionally exceedingly remunerative. On the other hand, the expense and the intrigue that such a pernicious system must necessarily involve can better be imagined than described. As an instance in point, I was assured that the position of Tao-tai or Governor of Shanghai, worth, for not more than three years, a salary of 6,000 taels, or £900, a year, was recently bought for over £30,000.

Even worse than the purchase of public offices, and the favouritism shown at examinations, are the subjects chosen for competition, which are exclusively selected from Chinese classical and scholastic literature. The works of Confucius, those of his disciples, of Mencius and of other philosophers who enlightened the world two thousand years ago, and a mass of quaint lore derived from the ancient Chinese chronicles, form the subject of these extraordinary examinations, and the students have to learn some hundred volumes as nearly as possible by heart, memory being the one thing most highly prized by the Board of Examiners. The student is expected to quote certain extracts word by word as they appear in the books, and his examination papers must, moreover, be embellished by a great quantity of quotations—the more the better. An elegant style is obtained only through acquaintance with as many of the 60,000 Chinese characters as possible, from which the student is expected to make an appropriate selection, and, as each sign means a word, and not a few of these are almost unknown, and only to be found in some hidden corner of an ancient volume, the waste of time is appalling. The preparatory instruction, therefore, simply consists in cramming the wretched candidate with a knowledge of as great a number of signs or characters, and quotations from the Celestial classics, as possible. One of the most curious features of the Chinese is that, although everybody knows how to read and write a little, no one can do so perfectly, for the simple reason that no Chinaman has ever been known to completely master the voluminous alphabet of his country. The most ignorant has acquired some ten or a dozen characters relating to his trade, and sufficient for his purpose. When a man has mastered 6,000 or 8,000 he is considered learned, and, when we come to think of it, there must be very few ideas that cannot be expressed by so many thousands of words. Many of the higher literati manage to acquire even 20,000 words, and the state of the mind of that man may safely be left to the reader’s imagination, especially if we reflect that he must have passed his entire youth studying by rote thousands of signs only distinguishable from one another by the minutest strokes, and in acquiring a prodigious amount of obsolete knowledge from classical books and annals whose authors lived in remote antiquity. Of late years a slight modification has been introduced in the shape of certain concessions to what is officially called the ‘new Western culture.’ To the usual questions selected from the works of Confucius and other philosophers have now been added the identification of names mentioned in modern geography, and since the Chino-Japanese War the examiners at Nanking ask their candidates some very grave and informing queries in astronomy, as: ‘What is the apparent diameter of the sun as seen from the earth? and what would be that of the earth as seen from the sun or from some other planet?’ The following sage question is typical of the intellectual condition of both examiner and examined: ‘Why is the character in writing which represents the moon closed at the bottom, and the one which represents the sun left open?’

In the capital of a province near Shanghai the learned examiners wished to encourage the study of mathematics, and, accordingly, prizes were offered for competition and a solemn circular sent out to encourage young men to take part in the examination. Some young fellows, who had been educated in the missionary schools, solved most of the problems offered fairly well, and in accordance with the rules of modern elementary education. Others, on the other hand, who were better acquainted with the Four Books and the Five Great Classics than with Western geometry, made the remarkable discovery that the problems were explained in an old work written many centuries ago, with the result that they simply copied word by word the fantastical solutions therein formulated, and, of course, carried off the prizes. In the following year one of the professors of a foreign missionary college asked leave for a competent European teacher to be included in the examining committee in order to assist in the preparation of the papers and to pronounce a verdict upon the answers sent in. Needless to say, the demand was refused and the questions were sent out without the least attempt to insure their being loyally answered. Among the questions asked at a competitive scientific examination in Chekiang in 1898 were the following: ‘How are foreign candles made, and in what consists their superiority over those manufactured in China?’ ‘Name the principal ports touched at by the steamers running between Japan and the Mediterranean.’ ‘To which of the new sciences and methods which people are endeavouring to introduce should the greatest importance be attached?’ ‘Write an essay on international law.’ Comment is needless.

These foolish innovations, of course, do not change the fundamental scholastic and rhetorical character of Chinese examinations, and the usual themes for the compositions remain identical. Here are two examples quoted by Mr. Henry Norman: ‘Confucius hath said, “In what majesty did Chun and Yu reign over the Empire, as though the Empire was as nothing unto them!” Confucius hath said, “Yao was verily a great sovereign. How glorious he was! Heaven alone is grand, and Yao only worthy to enter it. How exalted was his virtue! The people could find no words wherewith to qualify it.”‘[[22]] This was the theme that had to be developed by many a flower of rhetoric. It is only through the study of these books, written twenty centuries ago, and encumbered by parables and affected maxims, and of ancient annals crammed with fantastic legends believed in as absolute facts, that are selected the members of the class who are expected to govern China!