The "Middle Kingdom" is, then, a fortunate country, one richly endowed by nature in every respect. In the mountains lies inexhaustible wealth of minerals, and China possesses larger coal-fields than any other land in the world. Its future is, therefore, secured, and China's development may some time surpass that of America.
It is well known that a country which has deeply indented coasts gains an early and extensive development. Thus Greece was in old times the home of learning and art; and thus Europe now dominates the rest of the world. For a people which dwells within such coasts comes sooner and more easily than others into contact with its neighbours, and by commercial intercourse can avail itself of their resources and inventions. But in this, as in so many other respects, China is an exception. The Chinese have never made use of their coast. They have, on the contrary, avoided all contact with foreigners, and their development within their own boundaries has therefore been exceedingly peculiar. Their culture is different from anything else, and yet it is most estimable and refined.
Two thousand years before Christ the Chinese had written characters. Later they invented the hair pencil, which is in use to this day. They grind down a jet-black ink, in which they dip the brush, and hold it vertically when they write. The manufacture of the ink is their secret, and the "Indian ink" which we use in Europe is obtained from them. A hundred years after Christ paper was made in China. In an ancient town at Lop-nor, where wild camels now roam, I found a collection of Chinese letters and documents on paper which had remained buried in the desert since A.D. 265. In A.D. 600 the Chinese had invented the art of printing, which in Europe was not invented until 850 years later. The Chinese were acquainted with the magnetic needle 1100 years before Christ, and made compasses, and they knew of gunpowder long before Europeans. Three thousand years ago the Chinese were proficient in the art of casting bronze. In the interior of the country are still to be found most beautiful objects in bronze—round bowls on feet decorated with lions and dragons, vases, dishes, cups, and jugs, all of dark, heavy bronze executed with the finest and most artistic detail. The porcelain manufacture attained its greatest excellence in the time of Kang Hi and Kien Lung. Then were made vases, bowls, and dishes of such exceeding perfection that neither the Chinese themselves nor any other people at the present time can produce their match. The arrangement of colours and the glaze excite the admiration of all connoisseurs. Porcelain articles of this period are now extremely rare, and fetch enormous prices. In Japan I saw a small green Chinese bowl on three feet, with a cover, which had cost eleven hundred pounds. Compared to the Kang Hi vases, the finest porcelain that can be produced nowadays is mere rubbish.
The Chinese language is as singular as everything else in the great kingdom. Every word is unchangeable. While we say "go, went, gone, will go, should go, going," the Chinese always say simply "go." The precise meaning is shown by the position of the word in a sentence or by the help of certain auxiliary words, as, for example, "I morning go," "We yesterday go," where the future or past tense is indicated by the words "morning" and "yesterday." A single word, li, for instance, may have a number of different significations, and what it denotes in any particular case depends on the tone and pronunciation, on its position in the sentence, and on the word which comes before or after. The language is divided into many different dialects, of which the principal is the mandarin or the dialect of the educated. Every word has its particular written sign, and the Chinese language accordingly possesses 24,000 different written characters; only one man in twenty and one woman in a hundred can read and write it.
Chinese literature is exceedingly rich, almost inexhaustible. At a time when the bronze age still reigned in northern Europe, the Chinese had a highly cultivated literature. From the fifth century B.C. down to our own day it has run an uninterrupted course through centuries and ages. When the northern vikings were executing their plundering raids by sea and setting up their runic stones, a geographical hand-book was published in China called a "Description of all the Provinces" and abundantly illustrated by maps. Thanks to their chronicles we can follow the history of the Chinese for 4000 years back. And the most remarkable feature of these annals is that they are distinguished by the strictest accuracy and reliability. All kinds of subjects are alluded to, even the most insignificant events. Chinese books are very cheap, and every one who can read can provide himself with quite a large library. Of the numbers of books we can have some conception when we hear that the Emperor Kieng Lung had a library so large that the catalogue of his books filled 122 volumes.
The Blue River
The Blue River, or Yang-tse-kiang, the Mekong, and the Salwin all rise in eastern Tibet and flow quite close to one another southwards through deeply excavated parallel valleys. But while the first two continue their southerly course all the way to the sea, the Blue River turns off sharply eastwards in western China and divides the Middle Kingdom in two.
It is only Europeans who sometimes call the largest river of China the "Blue" River. The Chinese themselves call it the "Great" River, or the "Long" River, or, far up the country to the west, the "River of Golden Sand." Only three rivers in the world are longer, namely, the Nile, the Mississippi, and the Amazon. The Obi and Yenisei are about the same length, 3200 miles. The Blue River discharges 244 times the volume of water of the Thames.
In one respect the Blue River is far superior to all the waterways of the world, for on this river and its tributaries, or, in short, in the area of its drainage basin, live not less than 180 millions of human beings, or an eighth of the total population of the world. The parts of China proper situated on the Blue River are called the River Provinces. The viceroy of two of these, namely Hupeh and Hunan, has more subjects than any country in Europe, except Russia. The most westerly province of China, Sze-chuan, traversed by the Blue River, is in area and population equal to France. Europe shrinks up to nothing before such comparisons.
On the Blue River stands a series of famous old towns. Chungking is the capital of Sze-chuan, and thus far European steamers ascend the river. Hankow is the largest commercial town in the interior of China. Nanking, near the mouth, was formerly the capital of China. South-west of Hankow a large lake lies on the southern bank of the Blue River. Hu means lake in Chinese, king is a capital city, pe signifies north, and nan south. Peking, therefore, means the "northern capital," and Nanking the "southern capital"; Hupeh signifies "north of the lake," and Hunan "south of the lake."