THE GRAVE OF "JIM," WEIHAIWEI.
WEIHAIWEI
During more than two years in Weihaiwei I have tried Englishmen and Japanese for being "drunk and disorderly," but never a single Chinese. I must hasten to explain that the absence of crime and disorder in Weihaiwei is not in the least degree due to any reforms introduced by the British Government: the neighbouring districts under Chinese rule are just as well behaved, if not, indeed, rather more so. Perhaps I should add that civil lawsuits in Weihaiwei are exceptionally numerous. Such cases are decided by the two British magistrates in accordance with Chinese law and are conducted in the Chinese language. The only expense which a litigant incurs is a shilling or two for hiring a petition-writer to state his case, and even this outlay he can avoid if he happens to be an educated man and can write out an intelligible statement for himself, or get a friend to do it for him. There are no court fees, no "squeezes," and solicitors and barristers are unknown. I am not quite satisfied that the facilities offered to litigants in our courts in Weihaiwei are altogether beneficial in their results. Litigation has become so cheap and easy that it is often resorted to before the least serious attempt has been made by the parties to come to an amicable settlement out of court. The British magistrates are called upon to decide such trumpery questions that if a litigant were to submit them to a Chinese tribunal the magistrate would probably order him to be flogged for needlessly stirring up litigious strife. By taking cognisance of the simplest village disputes it may be that we are gradually weakening the solidarity of the village organisation, which, if once destroyed, can never be restored; and we are possibly storing up a good deal of trouble for the Chinese officials who will resume their functions in Weihaiwei on the expiry of our lease.
CHINESE ART AND MUSIC
If the high development of literary and artistic tastes is to be taken as a criterion of civilisation it is not likely that even in this respect Europe has much cause to throw contemptuous glances at China. But many of those European collectors who admire and are willing to pay enormous prices for specimens of Chinese porcelain[404]—much of it stolen from private houses in Peking and elsewhere—are perhaps not aware of the high standard which Chinese artists have reached in other directions. Fine examples of their pictorial art are still not very numerous in Europe, or at least are not easily accessible to the public, though the British Museum contains, among other Chinese drawings and paintings, characteristic sketches by such famous artists as Lin Liang of the Ming dynasty. But the rapidity with which the art of Japan has gained the admiration of Europe is proof enough that Chinese art—to which that of Japan owes its most characteristic qualities and nearly all its inspiration—will some day arouse no less enthusiasm among the art critics of Europe. An English critic, who is also a poet—Mr Laurence Binyon—says of the landscape painting of the Sung dynasty (the tenth to the thirteenth centuries of our era) that "not till the nineteenth century in Europe do we find anything like the landscape art of China in the Sung period,—a disinterested love of beauty in nature for its own sake, regardless of associations imposed by the struggles of existence.... To the Sung artists and poets, mountains were a passion, as to Wordsworth. The landscape art thus founded, and continued by the Japanese in the fifteenth century, must rank as the greatest school of landscape which the world has seen."[405] In art, as in literature and politics, the great days of China lie in the past, but there are probably more artists at work at the present day in China than anywhere else, and the zeal and enthusiasm with which they execute their best work—generally without any expectation of material reward—is a sure indication that the artistic sense of the Chinese is still full of vigorous vitality, and may lead to great results in the future.
In music it must be admitted that China lags as yet far behind Europe. It has been reported of one of the foremost pianists and composers of the present day that when he visited California and heard Chinese music for the first time, he volunteered the opinion that "it really was music," a truth which some of us perhaps might be inclined to doubt. If an intelligent Chinese who had never before been outside his own country were taken without previous instruction to the performance of an Italian opera, or had the privilege of hearing the Agnus Dei of Mozart's 1st Mass or Meyerbeer's Qui in manu Dei requiescit as sung, for example, in Magdalen College Chapel, he would be merely puzzled. The music would be devoid of meaning to him, and he would probably regard it as unintelligible noise. Yet, after all, a musical ear—apart from the almost universal liking for simple melody—is by no means too common even in Europe, and an average Englishman would repudiate the idea that he was less civilised or less highly evolved than a German because he had less appreciation of the wonders of harmony. Time was—not so very long ago—when Wagner's music was regarded in England as a kind of joke; and few people are really able to understand and appreciate the grandest music of the nineteenth century—though they often think they do—without some previous training. Some are even frank enough to confess that it bores them, much as it would bore a man who did not understand Greek to listen to a reading from Sophocles. But are the Chinese capable of being musically trained? Judging from a few cases within my own knowledge, I am inclined to think they are. But in any case we should remember that music as we understand it is the youngest of the arts, and time only can show whether all the great music of the future is to be exclusively a Western product.
LITERATURE
As regards literature, the difficulty of the Chinese written language has no doubt stood in the way of spreading a knowledge of the Chinese masterpieces in Europe, and most of the translations that exist are—even when verbally exact—far from reproducing the spirit of the original. The probability is that in future the best translations will come from the pens of native scholars. Mr Ku Hung-Ming,[406] graduate of a Scottish university, has rendered good service to Europe in giving us what are perhaps the best existing English translations of a portion of the Confucian classics. Yet the ignorance still shown even by European residents in China of the extent and richness of Chinese literature is very remarkable. Some time ago, in conversation with an Englishman who had lived many years in China, I happened to allude to the works of one of the most famous of Chinese poets. My friend had never heard his name, and was surprised to learn that China had any poets at all. Professor Giles, with his happy gift of apt translation and paraphrase, has turned into good English verse[407] a few short specimens of the beautiful poetry of the T'ang and Sung dynasties, and the contents of his little volume must have surprised some Western readers who had little idea that while the Mercians and West Saxons were still struggling for supremacy in England under their Ecgberhts and Beorhtrics, such exquisite flowers of poesy were springing up on the soil of distant China. Yet the translations that have already appeared in foreign languages are but a trifle compared with the wealth of poetry that still remains unknown to Europe; and Chinese poetry, like that of all other languages, loses half its beauty when clothed in the words of an alien tongue. A Chinese gentleman's education is not regarded as complete if he cannot clothe his ideas in graceful verse; nor does he, like the English schoolboy who seldom meddles with Latin hexameters and Greek iambics when his education is "finished," neglect this pleasant accomplishment when he has left the halls of learning. Such poetry, naturally, is rarely of a high order; but though the published poetry of the present day is poor compared with that of the past—even in England we have not always with us singers of the Elizabethan standard—the great poets of China are still quoted and read with the same appreciation as of old. That real poetic feeling is far from extinct may be seen by any English reader who peruses Mr C. Clementi's translation of the Cantonese Love-songs,[408] which are quite modern. The genius of Chinese poetry tends to be elegiac and idyllic. It is seldom or never intensely lyrical, even when it is intended for a musical accompaniment, like the love-songs just referred to. But if Chinese literature can boast of no Shelleys or Swinburnes, there are many writers whose poems may well be compared with the best work of our English elegiac and descriptive poets, such as Gray. It must, I think, be admitted that the Chinese language is not the most perfect existing vehicle for poetical expression. We need only take a single test-line from Homer—say line 198 of Odyssey xi.,—or a couplet from Shelley—say lines 5 and 6 of the third stanza of The Question,—to realise a rhythmical music and movement of which the Chinese language is, I fear, incapable; yet the words used by Lafcadio Hearn to describe the best Japanese poetry may with equal justice be applied to the idyllic poetry of China: "compositions which, with a few chosen syllables only, can either create a perfect coloured picture in the mind, or bestir the finest sensations of memory with marvellous penetrative delicacy."[409]