As A Chinaman Saw Us: Passages from His Letters to a Friend at Home

by Unknown

I have seen many of the great Western nations and observed their religions. My conclusion is that none make so general and united an attempt to be what they consider "good and moral" as the Americans; but the Americans scatter their efforts like shot fired from a gun, and the result is a multiplicity of religious beliefs beyond belief. I do not forget that America was settled to afford an asylum for religious belief, where men could work out their salvation in peace. If Americans would grant us the same privilege and not send missionaries to fight over us, all would be well. No one can dispute the fact that the Americans are in earnest; the greater number believe they are right, and that they possess true zeal all China knows.

The impression the convert in China obtains is that the United States is a sort of paradise, where Christians live in peace and happiness, loving one another, doing good to those who ill-treat them, turning the cheek to those who strike them, etc.; but the Chinaman soon finds after landing in America that this is often "conspicuous by its absence." These ideas are preached, and doubtless thousands follow them or attempt to do so, but that they are common practises of the people is not true. There is great need of Christian missions in America as well as in China. I told a clergyman that our people believed the Christian religion was very good for the Americans, and we had no fault to find with it, nor had we the temerity to insinuate that our own was superior.

A Roman Catholic young lady whom I met spoke to me about burning our prayers, our joss-houses, and our dragon, which she had seen carried about the streets of San Francisco. "Pure symbolism," I answered, and then told her of the Christian dragon in the Divine Key of the Revelation of Jesus Christ as Given to John, by a Christian writer, William Eugene Brown. This dragon had nine heads, while ours has only one. I believe I had the best of the argument so far as heads went. This young woman, a graduate of a large college, wore an amulet, which she believes protects her from accident. She possessed a bottle of water from a miraculous spring in Canada, which she said would cure any disease, and she told me that one of the Catholic churches there, Ste. Anne de Beaupré, had a small piece of the wrist-bone of the mother of the Virgin, which would heal and had healed thousands. She had a picture of the church, showing piles of crutches thrown aside by cured and grateful patients. Can China produce such credulity? I think not.

All nations may be wrong in their religious beliefs, but certainly "pagan China" is outdone in religious extravaganza by America or any European state. Our joss-houses and our feasts are nothing to the splendors of American churches. An American girl laughed at the bearded figures in a San Francisco joss-house, but looked solemn when I referred to the saints in a Catholic cathedral in the same city. If I were "fancy free" I should like to lecture in America on the inconsistencies of the Caucasian. They really challenge our own. Instead of having one splendid church and devoting themselves to the real ethics of Christianity, these Christians have divided irrevocably, and so lost strength and force. They are in a sense turned against themselves, and their religious colleges are graduating men to perpetuate the differences. No more splendid religion than that expounded by Christ could be imagined if they would join hands and, like the Confucians, devote their attention not to rites and theological differences but to the daily conduct of men.

The Americans have a saying, "Take care of the pennies and the dollars will care for themselves." We believe that in taking care of the morals of the individual the nation will take care of itself. I took the liberty of commending this Confucian doctrine to a Methodist brother, but he had never been allowed to read the books of Confucius. They are classed with those of Mohammed, Voltaire, and others. So what can one do with such people, who have the conceit of the ages and the ignorance of all time? Their great scholars see their idiosyncrasies, and I can not begin to describe them. One sect believes that no one can be saved unless immersed in water; others believe in sprinkling. Others, as the Quakers, denounce all this as mummery. One sect, the Shakers, will have no marriages. Another believes in having as many wives as they can support—the Mormons. The Jews and Quakers oblige members to marry in the society; in the latter instance the society is dying out, and the former from constant intermarriage has resulted in conspicuous and marked facial peculiarities. These different sects, instead of loving, despise one another. Episcopalians look down upon the Methodists, and the latter denounce the former because the priests sometimes smoke and drink. The Unitarians are not regarded well by the others, yet nearly all the other bodies contain Unitarians, who for business and other reasons do not acknowledge the fact. A certain clergyman would not admit a Catholic priest to his platform. All combine against the poor Jew.

So strong is the feeling against this people among the best of American citizens that they are almost completely ostracised, at least socially. In all the years spent in America I do not recall meeting a Jew at dinner in Washington, New York, or Newport. They are disliked, and as a rule associate entirely with themselves, having their own churches, clubs, etc. Yet they in large degree control the finances of America. They have almost complete control of the textile-fabric business, clothing, and many other trades. Why the American Christians dislike the American Jews is difficult to understand, but the invariable reply to this question is that their manners are so offensive that Christians will not associate with them. I doubt if in any of the first circles of any city you would meet a Jew. In the fashionable circles of New York I heard that it would be "easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" than for a Jew to enter these circles. Many hotels will not receive them. In fact, the ban is on the Jew as completely in America as in Russia. I was strongly tempted to ask if this was the brotherly love I heard so much about, but refrained. I heard the following story at a dinner: A Chinese laundryman received a call from a Jew, who brought with him his soiled clothing. The Chinaman, glancing at the Jew, refused to take the package. "But why?" asked the Jew; "here's the money in advance." "No washee," said the Christian Chinaman; "you killed Melican man's Joss," meaning that the Jews crucified the Christ.

The more you delve into the religions of the Americans the more anomalies you find. I asked a New York lady at Newport if she had ever met Miss ——, a prominent Chinese missionary. She had never heard of her, and considered most missionaries very ordinary persons. This same lady, when some one spoke about laxity of morals, replied, "It is not morals but manners that we need"; and I can assure you that this high-church lady, a model of propriety, judged her men acquaintances by that standard. If their manners were correct, she apparently did not care what moral lapses they committed when out of her presence. Briefly, I looked in vain for the religion in everyday life preached by the missionary. Doubtless many possess it, but the meek and humble follower of the head of the Christian Church, the American who turned his cheek for another blow, the one who loved his enemies, or the one who was anxious to do unto others as he would have them do unto him, all these, whom I expected to see everywhere, were not found, at least in any numbers.

In visiting a certain village I dined with several clergymen. One told me he was the Catholic priest, and invited me to visit his chapel. Not long after I met another clergyman. I do not recall his denomination, but his work he told me was undoing that of the Catholic priest. The latter converted the people to Catholicism, while the former tried to reclaim them from Catholicism. I heard much about our joss-houses, but they fade into insignificance when compared with the splendid religious palaces of the Americans, and particularly those of the Catholics and Episcopalians. Their religious customs are beyond belief. As an illustration, their religion teaches them that the dead, if they have led a good life, go at once to heaven, though the Catholics believe in a purgatory, a half-way house, out of which the dead can be bought by the payment of money.

Now the simple Chinaman would naturally believe that the relatives would be pleased at the death of a friend who was immediately transported to paradise and freed from the worries of life, but not at all; at the death of a relative the friends are plunged into such grief that they have been known to hire professional mourners, and instead of putting on clothes indicative of joy and thanksgiving array themselves in somber black, the token of woe, and wear it for years. Everything is black, and the more fashionable the family the deeper the black. The deepest crape is worn by the women. Writing-paper is inscribed with a deep band, also visiting cards. Women use jet as jewelry, and white pearls are replaced by black ones. Even servants are garbed in mourning for the departed, who, they believe, have gone to the most beautiful paradise possible to conceive. Contemplating all these inconsistencies one is amazed, and the amazement is ever increasing as one delves deeper into the ways of the inconsistent American.