“There are few sights more pleasing,” says Mr Fortune, “than a Chinese family in the interior engaged in gathering the leaves of the tea-plant, or, indeed, in any of their agricultural pursuits. There is the old man—it may be the grandfather, or even the great-grandfather—patriarch-like directing his descendants, many of whom are in their youth and prime, while others are in their childhood, in the labours of the field. He stands in the midst of them, bowed down with age, but—to the honour of the Chinese as a nation—he is always looked up to by all with pride and affection, and his old age and grey hairs are honoured, revered, and loved.” In the tea-districts, every cottager or small farmer has his own little tea-garden, the produce of which supplies the wants of his family, and the surplus brings him in a few dollars, which procure for him the other necessaries of life. “When, after the labours of the day are over,” says Mr Fortune, “they return to their humble and happy homes, their fare consists chiefly of rice, fish [with which their rivers and lakes abound], and vegetables, which they enjoy with great zest, and are happy and contented. I really believe that there is no country in the world where the agricultural population are better off than they are in the north of China. Labour with them is pleasure, for its fruits are eaten by themselves, and the rod of the oppressor is unfelt and unknown.... For a few cash (1000 or 1200 cash = 1 dollar) a Chinese can dine in a sumptuous manner upon his rice, fish, vegetables, and tea; and I fully believe that in no country in the world is there less real misery and want than in China. The very beggars seem a kind of jolly crew, and are kindly treated by the inhabitants.”
Commerce is discouraged by the Chinese Government, chiefly on account of their jealousy of strangers; but it is a pursuit so congenial to the national spirit that no exertions could succeed in putting it down. Wherever money can be made, a Chinaman will brave dangers to gain it, and will fear neither the jungles and marshes of his southern frontier, nor the inhospitable deserts of the north and west. For a thousand years and more, they have trafficked with the isles of the Indian Archipelago, and for nearly twice that time their silks have found their way into Europe. Nevertheless, the geographical situation of the country on the one hand, and the unskilfulness of the Chinese in maritime enterprise on the other, oppose great obstacles to their prosecution of external commerce, so that the carrying-trade is almost entirely in the hands of foreigners. The journey across the inhospitable steppes of Mongolia to the nations of the west, or over the almost insurmountable Himalayas to those of the south, is attended by too much risk and expense, in the present state of the roads, to be prosecuted extensively; but the Chinese eagerly avail themselves of the marts opened in recent times by the Russian traders, and throng with their silks and tea to the grand fairs at Maimatschin. This overland commerce with Russia commenced in the reign of Peter the Great, by a treaty which stipulated for a reciprocal liberty of traffic, and by virtue of which caravans on the part of the Russian Government and individual traders used to visit Peking; but the Muscovites exhibited so much of their native habits of “drinking and roystering,” that, after trying the patience of the Celestials for three-and-thirty years, they were wholly excluded. After a temporary cessation of intercourse, however, a renewal of negotiations took place, by which it was agreed that only Government caravans should proceed to Peking, and Kiachta (distant four thousand miles from Moscow, one thousand from Peking, and close to the Chinese frontier town of Maimatschin) was built for the accommodation of private traders. This market, which has now risen to much importance, is most resorted to in winter. To the chief Russian merchants the trade is a species of monopoly, and a most thriving one,—some of them being millionaires, and living in the most sumptuous style, the “merchant princes” of the wilderness. “At the present day,” says the Hamburg Borsenhalle of 20th July last, “the wholesale trade is in the hands of Russian merchants and commercial companies, while the retail trade is carried on by the Siberian tribe of Burglaetes. The wholesale trade takes place only twice a year, and is a complete interchange of goods, of which black tea forms the staple, and cannot be replaced by any other article. This tea is brought to Kiachta from the northern provinces of China, and is very superior to that exported by the English and Dutch from the southern provinces. The green tea which comes to the market is consumed by the Kalmucks, Tartars, and Siberians. The duty on tea yields a considerable annual revenue, which is the sole advantage the Chinese claim from this important article of commerce. The Chinese will take nothing but cloth in return; and thus the consumers of tea are the persons who are the cloth-manufacturers. The Russians themselves derive no pecuniary advantage from this trade. They might make some profits, and the consumers pay less for their teas, if the trade were not monopolised; and if the tea might be exported from St Petersburg to Odessa on payment of a moderate duty, the northern provinces of China would be obliged to lower the price of their tea, for which they have no other outlet.”
Although Fine Art has made little progress, and is little prized, great works, in which genius is joined to utility, are to be met with in China on a larger scale than anywhere else. Such a work is the Great Wall, raised by the first emperor to repel the inroads of the Nomades, and which guards the northern frontier for the space of fifteen hundred miles, from the shores of the Yellow Sea to Eastern Tartary. It is carried over the highest hills, descends into the deepest valleys, crosses upon arches over rivers, and at important passes is doubled;—being, in fact, by far the largest structure that human labour ever raised. A work more extraordinary still is the Imperial Canal. The Mongol emperor, Kublai Khan, who fixed the seat of government at Peking, constructed (or rather completed) the canal, in order to remedy the sterility of the plain in which that city stands. From the vicinity of Peking, it extends southwards for a distance of six hundred geographical miles,—now tunnelled through heights, now carried through lakes and over marshes and low grounds by means of stupendous embankments,—and exhibiting not merely a gigantic effort of labour, but sound practical skill on the part of its constructors, in availing themselves of every advantage that could be derived from the nature of the ground. Rivers feed it, and ships of good size spread their sails on its bosom. It is along this watery highway that the chief supplies are brought for the immense population of the capital; and another great merit of the work is, that it acts at once as an irrigator and as a drain to the country through which it flows, from Tientsin to the Yang-tse-keang; for while at some parts fertilising the sterile soil by diffusing its waters, at others being carried along the lowest levels, and communicating with the neighbouring tracts by flood-gates, it renders available for agriculture much land that would otherwise be a useless swamp.
Education in China, as we have seen, is directed almost exclusively to the inculcation of moral and constitutional principles; and with such good effect, that nowhere in the East are the social relations so well understood and preserved. Class has never risen against class, and the religious apathy of the people has prevented any war of creeds. This social harmony has had the best effects upon the welfare of the people, by rendering an iron rule unnecessary on the part of the Government. However absolute the administration may be, the great mass of the people live quietly and happily, enjoying the fruits of their industry. The legislation is disfigured by an excessively minute attention to trifles,—an unavoidable result of the system of regulating the mind of the people through the agency of external observances; but the code is, on the whole, a clear and concise series of enactments, savouring throughout of practical judgment and European good sense; and if not always conformable to our liberal notions of legislation, in general approaching them more nearly than the codes of most other nations. The laws are more generally known and equally administered than in the other States of Asia,—wealth, comfort, and cheerful industry more equally diffused; and Mr Ellis pronounces the Celestial Empire superior to them all in the arts of government and the general aspect of society. Sir George Staunton says that the condition of the people is “wholly inconsistent with the hypothesis of a very bad government or a very vicious state of society,” and conceived that he could trace almost everywhere the unequivocal signs of an industrious, thriving, and contented people. But we may go further than this, and fully concur with Mr Davis that “there is a business-like character about the Chinese, which assimilates them in a striking degree to the most intelligent nations of the West; and there is less difference [in this respect?] between them and the British, French, and Americans, than between these and the inhabitants of Spain and Portugal, whose proneness to stolid bigotry and Oriental laziness was perhaps in part imbibed from the Arabs.”
In regard to slaves, the code metes out less equal justice; but a like one-sidedness has defaced the legislation of every country—and slavery, as it exists in China, is infinitely milder than anywhere else either in the East or West. It is not superior humanity and generosity which occasions this difference: it results from the social condition of the nation. Slavery is the apprenticeship which, in one shape or another, uncivilised man has had to undergo in all countries before becoming capable of sustained industry and self-government. In this state he falls under the power of his more civilised fellows, and obtains food and protection in exchange for freedom; and it is only when he has raised himself above the indolence and improvidence of savage life that liberty becomes beneficial even for himself. Resembling the western half of Europe, the whole Chinese nation is industrious, and has acquired that relish for the artificial wants of civilised life which tends so greatly to man’s elevation, and which is so little felt elsewhere (save in some of the highest classes) in the regions of the East and South. No political or social distinctions of rank or caste exist in China, and education is provided by the State for all classes. On these accounts there is no servile class; and those who have lost or bartered their freedom resemble their masters in everything but wealth, and are treated rather as menials than as serfs. Slavery exists in China not as a relic of barbarism, nor from the prevalence of caste or the absence of industry, but simply, it would appear, as the effect of a redundant population: it is a man’s last shift for employment.
We can give a most pleasing anecdote in connection with this point, which recently appeared in the Java Bode newspaper, published at Batavia, where there is a large Chinese population—which shows at once the good feeling of the Chinese in regard to the unfortunate objects of slavery, and the remarkable industry and self-relying spirit of the slaves themselves. In giving an account of a sale of slaves at the Chinese camp, it says:—The slaves, who were twelve in number, having been placed upon the table of exposition, arranged in four lots, rattled some money in their hands, and addressed a few words, timidly and in low tones, to the assembly. A person who acted as their agent here stepped forward, and stated that his clients, having accumulated by long and painful labours some small savings, solicited the favour of being allowed to make a bidding for the purchase of their own persons. No opposition was offered; and the first lot of three, being put up to auction, made an offer, through their agent, of forty francs. No advance being made on this sum, the slaves were knocked down to themselves. The next lot, encouraged by their predecessors’ success, offered only twenty-four francs for themselves. The public preserved the same silence, and they likewise became their own purchasers. The third lot took the hint, and were even more fortunate, picking themselves up, a decided bargain, for the modest sum of ten francs! The Java Bode rightly sees in these facts signs of a great advance in civilisation among the Chinese, who constituted the great majority of the persons present.
Superficial writers on China judge of the whole nation by what they see of the population at Canton; and are profuse in their charges of lying, treachery, and inhumanity,—as if it were even possible for three hundred and sixty millions of human beings to be nothing but one black mass of moral deformity! The monstrousness of the idea ought to have been its own refutation. Such writers might as well conclude that the whole abyss of ocean is a turbid mass, because its fringing waves are “gross with sand.” In truth, their conclusions are as unjust as if one were to judge of our own nation solely by the doings of the wreckers of Cornwall or the mob of London. For the inhabitants of Canton are termed the “Southern boors” by their own countrymen; and it may safely be stated of the people of Fokien and the southern coasts of China, with whom alone foreigners come in contact, that they are all more or less addicted to piracy and smuggling, and have adopted the nefarious habits which commerce invariably engenders when carried on between nations who despise, and whose only desire is to overreach one another. The inadequacy of the ordinary data for judging of Chinese character is at once perceived by the few travellers who have got glimpses of the interior, or of those parts of the country where the manners of the people are unaltered by contact with foreigners. We have already quoted Mr Fortune’s pleasing picture of cottar-life in the interior, and on the general question he says:—“The natives of the southern towns and all along the coast, at least as far north as Chekiang, richly deserve the bad character which every one gives them; being remarkable for their hatred to foreigners and conceited notions of their own importance, besides abounding in characters of the very worst description, who are nothing else than thieves and pirates. But the character of the Chinese as a nation must not suffer from a partial view of this kind; for it must be recollected that, in every country, the most lawless characters are amongst those who inhabit seaport towns, and who come in contact with natives of other countries: and unfortunately we must confess that European nations have contributed their share to make these people what they are. In the north of China, and more particularly inland, the natives are entirely different. There are, doubtless, bad characters and thieves amongst them too: but generally the traveller is not exposed to insult; and the natives are quiet, civil, and obliging.” Lord Jocelyn, who was with our fleet during the late war, and who landed on various points of the coast, states, as the experience of his rambles among the villagers, that a kind word to a child, or any little notice taken of the young, will at once ingratiate a stranger with this humane and simple-minded people. Mr Abel, also, (one of Lord Amherst’s retinue) in like manner testifies to the simple kindness of the country people. The nation at large (thanks to their education) are remarkable for the virtues of sobriety and filial reverence,—instances of noble generosity in individuals are said not to be infrequent,—and we may add that no people in the world, unless it be the French, are so ready to take notice of and applaud the casual utterance of noble sentiments. In fine, Mr Lay says, that “no man can deny the Chinese the honourable character of being good subjects—though, from the venality of their magistrates in general, they must often be exposed to many kinds of usage that tempt them to throw off allegiance.” And he attributes their steady obedience to constituted authority, not to a tameness of disposition that disposes a man to take kicks without feeling the gall of indignation, but to “a habitual sentiment of respect and a share of sterling good sense, that lead him to see and choose what is really best for his own interest.”
We have said that there are no separate castes among the Chinese; but one of the most curious features that strikes a stranger in their social life is the division of the people into clans, somewhat resembling the clanships of the Scottish Highlanders. There are altogether about 454 of these clans, each of which has its peculiar surname; but no jealous line of demarcation is allowed to be kept up between these different septs (some of whom number a million of souls), for, by a wise though somewhat stringent provision, every man is required to seek a bride in a different clan from his own,—thus acquiring two surnames. These clans are results of the Patriarchal or Family system, which forms the basis of the whole political and social arrangements in China. This system may seem a very narrow and illiberal one to us enlightened Westerns, and especially to our Transatlantic brethren, among whom the fifth commandment is but little regarded; but its influence upon the social relations in China has been unquestionably good. A Chinese father is a little emperor in his own household; he is held responsible in some degree for their conduct, and is invested with unlimited power over them, so that even the punishment of death is hardly beyond his prerogative. Yet abuses of power are at least as rare there as here. “I have reason to believe,” says Mr Lay, “that the sway exercised by Chinese parents is seldom burdensome, and that their will and pleasure are enforced, for the most part, with great mildness.” And if we seek to judge of the system by its fruits at large, we find that the duties of mutual love and mutual help are fully recognised, as incumbent upon all who are within the circle of blood or affinity; while the hilarities of family-feasts, or the sorrows of family-mourning, are entered into with a keenness of relish, or an acuteness of feeling, which leaves the Chinese perhaps without a parallel in the world. “Fear God” is a precept of which the modern Chinese know little or nothing; but “Love, honour, and obey your parents,” is the fundamental commandment of their moral system,—and to say or do anything against it, is as shocking and disgusting to their feelings as blasphemy to those of a Christian. “The practice of infanticide,” says Mr Meadows, speaking of Canton, “exists here, as the bodies of infants floating occasionally on the river sufficiently prove; but it may be fairly doubted whether there is much more of it than in England,” where the crime is punished with death, and where, of course, every means is taken to conceal it; “and often having remarked instances of deformed female children being treated with constant and evident affection by their parents, I am inclined to believe that when infants are put to death, it is solely because their parents are altogether unable to support them.” And Mr Lay says, that the rare occurrence of dead bodies of children being found in the Canton river “proves that, among a swarming population of indigent people, such deeds are none of their customary doings.”
The Chinese are a cheerful light-hearted race, well trained to social duties, and with no proclivity to the melancholy of the southern nations of Europe, or to the John-Bull tendency towards reserve and isolation. Social feeling—or good-humour, mildness of disposition, and a good-natured propensity to share in the mirth and hilarity of others, are seen wherever one meets with a company of Chinese. To live in society is a Chinaman’s meat and drink. In a company of his fellows he is something,—by himself, nothing. Men of study and retirement are to be found in China, but by far the greater number seem to have their hearts set upon social delights and the celebration of public festivity. And what most strikes the spectator at such meetings is, the respect which every one is so anxious to pay to all around him,—(another point in which the Chinese nation is most nearly paralleled by the French). Nor are such attentions the frigid offspring of mere formality. “Apart from business,” says Mr Lay, “the intercourse of natives in China is made up of little acts of homage. The rules of relative duty command an individual to regard a neighbour as an elder brother, and thence entitled to the respect belonging to such eldership. These displays of veneration are not occasioned, then, by dread or hope of gain, but are the spontaneous results of a propriety essential to the character of the people,” and strongly developed by their domestic training and the teaching of their schools. In walking abroad, for instance, the stranger may wonder what two gentlemen can have so suddenly found to dispute about; but he soon perceives that each of them is severally refusing to advance a step till the other has set the example, and consented to go ahead!
On the other hand, it must be allowed that most of the loftier qualities of our nature seem to be deficient among the Chinese. The feeling of patriotism, at least nowadays, is almost unknown,—partly, it may be, owing to the immense size of the empire, and the imperfect intercourse kept up between the several provinces. Loyalty, as we understand the feeling, apparently never at any time had much hold upon the Chinese mind. Reason, rather than emotion, is the prominent feature of their mental constitution; and although they have at all times entertained a profound regard for their sovereign, that regard had reference to the office, not the man, and is quite different from that chivalrous devotion to the monarch’s person which plays so prominent a part in the history of European struggles. Self-denial and self-devotion, in fact—that fundamental basis of the noblest of human virtues—rare everywhere, is very rare in China. Even peace has its disadvantages. Virtues, like talents, require congenial circumstances to develop them; and probably the long reign of public tranquillity in China—where for nine centuries it has hardly been broken save at intervals of two hundred years—has helped to numb the courageous and masculine sentiment of self-devotion, and allowed the national mind to “settle on its lees.” Pleasure, money, sensuality,—these are now the objects that most greatly engross a Chinese. “The Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “are lovers of pleasure, from the greatest to the least. They study ease and comfort in a way that leaves them, as a nation, without a rival in the art of ministering to sensual gratification.” This proneness to sensual indulgence is unhappily increased by the narrow spirit in which certain portions of their legislation are conceived,—the rich not being allowed to expend their superfluous wealth in the erection of elegant mansions, (that being looked upon as a misdirection of money from more useful purposes); nor dare they indulge in much public munificence, lest they attract the covetous eyes of the generally extortionate and unscrupulous mandarins. “A Chinese,” says Mr Lay, “is licentious in the general turn of his ideas, and makes a public display of those forbidden pleasures which in many countries are somewhat screened amidst the shades of retirement. The floating abodes for ladies of pleasure are generally of the gayest kind, and are consequently the first thing to attract the traveller’s attention as he draws near the provincial city of Canton.” The auri sacra fames is not less strong in the breast of a Celestial. “At a very early age,” says Mr Lay, “the love of money is implanted in his nature: indeed, one of the first lessons a mother teaches a child is to hold out its hand for a bit of coin.” Money, says Gutzlaff, is the idol of the Chinese. “It is the national spirit, the public sentiment, the chief good of high and low”—the higher classes being as eager to obtain it in order to gratify their sensual inclinations, as the poor to procure food.