Flash-lights from the Seven Seas

by William L. Stidger

"When you get these facts into your American heads," added a third member of the party, not without some bitterness, "then you will begin to know that the Chinese do not estimate the loss of Shantung in terms of mineral wealth."

At Chufu, the resting-place of Confucius, there is also the spot of his birth, and this too is most sacred to the Chinese nation. We visited both places. I think that I never before quite realized just what the loss of Shantung meant to these Chinese until that day, unless it was the next day, when we climbed the sacred mountain Taishan, which is also in Shantung.

"It is the oldest worshiping-place in the world," said the historian of the party. "There is no other spot on earth where continuous worship has gone on so long. Here for more than twenty centuries before Christ was born men and women were worshiping. Emperors from the oldest history of China down to the present time have all visited this mountain to worship. Confucius himself climbed the more than six thousand steps to worship here."

"Yes," said another missionary historian, "and this mountain is referred to twelve separate times in the Chinese classics, and great pilgrimages were made here as long ago as two centuries before Christ."

That day we climbed the mountain up more than six thousand stone steps, which are in perfect condition and which were engineered thousands of years ago by early worshipers.

The only climb with which I can compare that of Mt. Taishan is that of Mt. Tamalpais overlooking San Francisco. The climb is about equal to that. The mountain itself is about a mile in height, and the climb is a hard one to those who are unaccustomed to mountain-climbing, and yet thousands upon thousands climb it every year after pilgrimages from all over China.

We climbed to the top of Taishan, and saw the "No-Character Stone" erected by Emperor Chin, he who tried to drive learning out of China hundreds of years ago. We saw the spot on which Confucius stood, and glimpsed the Pacific Ocean, ninety miles away, on a clear day. It was a hard climb; but, when one stood on the top of this, the most sacred mountain of all China, he began to understand the spiritual loss that is China's when her worshiping-place is in the hands of aliens.

"And don't forget that Mencius, the first disciple of Confucius, was born and died in Shantung, too, when you are taking census of the spiritual values of Shantung to the Chinese," was a word of caution from the old missionary who was checking up on my facts for me. He had been laboring in China for a quarter of a century.

"And don't forget that the Boxer uprising originated in Shantung, and don't forget that it is called, and has been for centuries, 'the Sacred Province' by the Chinese. It is their 'Holy Land.' And don't forget that, from Shantung, coolies went to South Africa in the early part of this century and that the Chinese from Shantung were the first to get in touch with the western world. And don't forget that nine-tenths of the coolies who went to help in the war in France were from Shantung!" he added with emphasis. This was a thing that I well knew, for I had, only a few weeks before this, seen two thousand coolies unloaded from the Empress of Asia at Tsingtao.

No, Shantung is not an appendix of China, as many Americans suppose; but it is the very heart and soul of China. It is China's "Holy Land." It is the "Cradle of China." It is the "Sacred Province of China." It is the shrine of her greatest sage. It is the home of "the oldest worshiping-place on earth." It is because of its spiritual values that China is unhappy about the loss of Shantung, and not because of its wealth of material things.