New Forces in Old China: an Inevitable Awakening

PART I. Old China and Its People

OLD CHINA AND ITS PEOPLE

I. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 II. DO WE RIGHTLY VIEW THE CHINESE . . . . . . 25 III. ATTITUDE TOWARDS FOREIGNERS-CHARACTER AND ACHIEVEMENTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 IV. A TYPICAL PROVINCE . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 V. A SHENDZA IN SHANTUNG. . . . . . . . . . . 52 VI. AT THE GRAVE OF CONFUCIUS. . . . . . . . . 65 VII. SOME EXPERIENCES OF A TRAVELLER-FEASTS, INNS AND SOLDIERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

PART II. The Commercial Force and the Economic

THE COMMERCIAL FORCE AND THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION

VIII. WORLD CONDITIONS THAT ARE AFFECTING CHINA101 IX. THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION IN ASIA. . . . . .111 X. FOREIGN TRADE AND FOREIGN VICES. . . . . .121 XI. THE BUILDING OF RAILWAYS . . . . . . . . .130

PART III. The Political Force and the National

THE POLITICAL FORCE AND THE NATIONAL PROTEST

XII. THE AGGRESSIONS OF EUROPEAN POWERS . . . .145 XIII. THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA. . . . . . .154 XIV. DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS-TREATIES. . . . . . .165 XV. RENEWED AGGRESSIONS. . . . . . . . . . . .174 XVI. GROWING IRRITATION OF THE CHINESE--THE REFORM PARTY . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184 XVII. THE BOXER UPRISING . . . . . . . . . . .193

PART IV. The Missionary Force and the Chinese

THE MISSIONARY FORCE AND THE CHINESE CHURCH

XVIII. BEGINNINGS OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE--THE TAI-PING REBELLION AND THE LATER DEVELOPMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217 XIX. MISSIONARIES AND NATIVE LAWSUITS . . . . .228 XX. MISSIONARIES AND THEIR OWN GOVERNMENTS . .236 XXI. RESPONSIBILITY OF MISSIONARIES FOR THE BOXER UPRISING . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .249 XXII. THE CHINESE CHRISTIANS . . . . . . . . .268 XXIII. THE STRAIN OF READJUSTMENT TO CHANGED ECONOMIC CONDITIONS. . . . . . . . . . . .280 XXIV. COMITY AND COOPERATION . . . . . . . . .290

PART V. The Future of China and Our Relation

THE FUTURE OF CHINA AND OUR RELATION TO IT

XXV. IS THERE A YELLOW PERIL. . . . . . . . . .305 XXVI. FRESH REASON TO HATE THE FOREIGNER . . .320 XXVII. HOPEFUL SIGNS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .333 XXVIII. THE PARAMOUNT DUTY OF CHRISTENDOM. . . . .351 INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .371

List of Illustrations Facing Page Railway Station, Paoting-fu. . . . . . . . . .Title View of Canton, Showing House Boats. . . . . . . . 22 H. I. H. Prince Su and Attendants. . . . . . . . . 32 A Rut in the Loess Region. . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Germans Building Railway Bridge in Shantung. . . . 56 A Shendza in Shantung. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 Climbing Tai-shan, the Sacred Mountain . . . . . . 70 The Grave of Confucius . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Part of the Author's Escort of Chinese Cavalrymen. 92 Watching the Author writing in his Diary at a noon stop A Snap Shot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 The Bund, Shanghai . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .112 American Cigarette Posters on a Chinese Bridge . .112 The Chinese Cart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 The Old and The New. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .130 French Military Post, Saigon . . . . . . . . . . .150 German Soldiers on the Bund, Tien-tsin . . . . . .150 The British Legation Guard, Peking . . . . . . . .174 The Temple of Heaven, Peking . . . . . . . . . . .198 Memorial Arch, Hall of the Classics, Peking. . . .228 Graduating Class, Presbyterian Theological Seminary, Canton, 1904. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268 Approach to the Imperial Palace in the Forbidden City, Peking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .320 Two of China's Great Men Yuan Shih Kai and Chang Chih-tung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .344 Map. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .370

PART I. Old China and Its People

Old China and its People

THE ANCIENT EMPIRE

HE must be dead to all noble thoughts who can tread the venerable continent of Asia without profound emotion. Beyond any other part of the earth, its soil teems with historic associations. Here was the birthplace of the human race. Here first appeared civilization. Here were born art and science, learning and philosophy. Here man first engaged in commerce and manufacture. And here emerged all the religious teachers who have most powerfully influenced mankind, for it was in Asia in an unknown antiquity that the Persian Zoroaster taught the dualism of good and evil; that the Indian Gautama 600 years before Christ declared that self-abnegation was the path to a dreamless Nirvana; that less than a century later the Chinese Lao-tse enunciated the mysteries of Taoism and Confucius uttered his maxims regarding the five earthly relations of man, to be followed within another century by the bold teaching of Mencius that kings should rule in righteousness. In Asia it was 1,000 years afterwards that the Arabian Mohammed proclaimed himself as the authoritative prophet. There the God and Father of us all revealed Himself to Hebrew sage and prophet in the night vision and the angelic form and the still, small voice; and in Asia are the village in which was cradled and the great altar of the world on which was crucified the Son of God.

We of the West boast of our national history. But how brief is our day compared with the succession of world powers which Asia has seen.

Chaldea began the march of kingdoms 2,200 years before Christ. Its proud king, Chedor-laomer, ruled from the Persian Gulf to the sources of the Euphrates, and from the Zagros Mountains to the Mediterranean. Then Egypt arose to rule not only over the northeastern part of Africa, but over half of Arabia and all of the preceding territory of Chaldea. Assyria followed, stretching from the Black Sea nearly half-way down the Persian Gulf and from the Mediterranean to the eastern boundary of modern Persia. Babylon, too, was once a world power whose monarch sat

``High on a throne of royal state, which far Outshone the wealth of Ormus or of Ind.''

Milton, ``Paradise Lost,'' Book II.

Persia was mightier still. Two thousand years before America was heard of, while France and Germany, England and Spain, were savage wildernesses, Persia was the abode of civilization and culture, of learning and eloquence. Her empire extended from the Indus to the Danube and from the Oxus to the Nile, embracing twenty satrapies each one of whose governors was well-nigh a king. Alexander the Great, too, at the head of his invincible army, swept over vast areas of Asia, capturing cities, unseating rulers, and bringing well-nigh all the civilized world under his dominion. And was not Rome also an Asiatic power, for it stretched not only from the firths of Scotland on the north to the deserts of Africa on the south, but from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the River Euphrates on the east.

Altogether it is a majestic but awful procession, overwhelming us by its grandeur and yet no less by its horror. It is a kaleidoscope on a colossal scale, whose pieces appear like fragments of a broken universe. Empires rise and fall. Thrones are erected and overturned. The mightiest creations of man vanish. Yea, they have all waxed ``old as doth a garment,'' and ``as a vesture'' are they ``changed.''

But were these ancient nations the last of Asia? Has that mighty continent nothing more to contribute to the world than the memories of a mighty past? It is impossible to believe that this is all. The historic review gives a momentum which the mind cannot easily overcome. As we look towards the Far East, we can plainly see that the evolution is incomplete. Whatever purpose the Creator had in mind has certainly not yet been accomplished. More than two-thirds of those innumerable myriads have as yet never heard of those high ideals of life and destiny which God Himself revealed to men. It is incredible that a wise God should have made such a large part of the world only to arrest its development at its present unfinished stage, inconceivable that He should have made and preserved so large a part of the human race for no other and higher purpose than has yet been achieved.

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