Chapter I: China’s Place in the World

China is the oldest living member of the family of nations. It is the country in which conditions to-day are most nearly like what they were thousands of years ago. The long journey we are about to make through all parts of it will be like going to a great museum. But this museum, instead of containing the relics of people long dead, will look, for the most part, as if it were being lived in by an ancient race. Here and there, however, we shall see things that make us think of our Western civilization.

It seems hardly necessary to tell anyone where China is, or to say that the Chinese make up nearly one-fifth of the whole human race. You probably know that China occupies most of eastern Asia between Russian Siberia and the Pacific Ocean, or the China Sea, and that its climate ranges all the way from that of Canada to that of Florida.

Doubtless you know, also, that politically China is no longer an empire, as it was for thousands of years. Since 1911 it has been a republic, in name at least. This republic has not quite the same area as the empire had, for after the revolution which changed the form of government, several parts of the vast territory declared their independence. Even in what we may call China proper, different war lords rule in different regions and there is a great deal of confusion. Of course all the most intelligent and patriotic Chinese hope that this condition is only temporary.

Less than half the great territory that was once ruled over by the Chinese Emperor (called the Son of Heaven by his people) is in China proper. The rest of it consists of the great dependencies or colonies of old China, almost all of which have now declared, or at least act as if they had declared, their independence. Of them all Manchuria is the most like China itself. The enormous lands of Mongolia, Sinkiang or Chinese Turkestan, and Tibet are not Chinese any more than are the people who inhabit them, but have very different soil and climate as well as manners and customs. We shall find these former parts of the Chinese Empire very thinly settled, some with hardly two persons to the square mile, while in China proper there are as many as 675 people to the square mile.

During our travels through the eighteen provinces of China proper and most of its former dependencies, we shall see that the Chinese have their own ways, which in many respects are quite different from our ways. Yet if we pause to think as we read, we shall discover that they (and all the rest of mankind for that matter) are at bottom much like us. We shall find that every people’s outward peculiarities are mainly the result of a particular environment, of climate, soil, opportunities, and the like. We shall see how absurd it is to look down upon the Chinese, who have adjusted themselves to their environment more successfully than almost any of us. Is it not proof enough of this that China is still a nation thousands of years after the disappearance of its sister nations, Babylonia and Assyria?

Recent History in China

Chinese ladies of wealth and position, showing examples of the
beautiful embroidery for which this people is famous.
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Yet there are now many people who fear that China also is going to disappear as a nation. In order to understand that point of view, we shall have to look a little into recent Chinese history. For nearly three hundred and fifty years China was under the rule of the Manchus, who were really not Chinese at all, though gradually they came to seem almost the same. It was against the Manchu emperor and the many less powerful Manchu rulers under him that the Chinese revolted in 1911.

But though a republican form of government may seem natural to us, who have been used to one for many generations, it was not a simple thing for the Chinese suddenly to change so completely. Under their Manchu emperors only a small proportion of the Chinese had ever learned to read and write. They had never had the right to vote and had known little of what their central government was doing. They had not had newspapers and magazines to keep them informed. Millions of them, living far from Peking, the capital, and without education, had gained no real idea of what government means. They had had to pay taxes every year or oftener to someone who said he was collecting them for the government, and each one saw the elders of his own village attending to its affairs. Perhaps they were sometimes taken before a mandarin sent out from Peking, to be tried for some crime or misdemeanor. But that was all that the great mass of Chinese knew about government.

We in America are great believers in education. In China there are increasing numbers of men, many of whom have attended American colleges, who realize that until the masses of the people learn to read and write, at least, they cannot be expected to have intelligent ideas about government. One Chinese, who is a graduate of Yale University, is a leader in the movement for education of his countrymen, and he is attempting to do away with illiteracy in one generation by means of a simplified written language. Later on I shall tell more about language difficulties in China, and more about the educational system in that country. We can always be proud that the United States has done much to bring educational advantages to the Chinese through the Boxer Indemnity Fund. This fund consists of money which was due to the United States from China because of lives lost and property damaged in the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. Instead of using the money, our government turned it back to China as a fund to establish Tsing-hwa University near Peking and to bring promising Chinese students to America to be educated in our colleges and universities.

A screen in the palace of the late Empress Dowager in Peking is an
example of the wonderful artistic creations of the Chinese.
]

Naturally enough, the Chinese did not know how to elect a president and a parliament and all the other officials that are needed to run a republican form of government. It was natural also that men who wanted to have important government offices found ways to get them without being elected. One of the favorite ways was to collect a private army and start ruling over a certain city or county or province, whether the people liked it or not. A Chinese who had been one of the chief generals of the Manchu emperor began to send out men of his own choosing to govern the different parts of the country. Although he had been elected president by a parliament or congress (which he had largely chosen himself) even he had only a vague idea of what a republic is, and finally he tried to make himself emperor and establish a new dynasty.

But there were too many other men who wished to obtain good positions for themselves under this new Western form of government. Some of them were subordinates of the president, and they knew that if he made himself emperor their own chances of some day becoming president or anything else of importance would be slight. So they opposed the founding of a new dynasty, and the president who wished to be emperor died in 1917 without having placed his family on the throne.

After he was gone, and there was no strong man left in the central government at Peking, many of the military governors of provinces and even local officials which this president had appointed, became independent. They had their own soldiers, and the people could do nothing against them. For thousands of years the Chinese have been used to being ruled by force, without having anything to say in the matter, so most of them cannot see why they should be expected to take any part in governing their country.

How China Is Governed

This is what makes many people think that perhaps China as a nation, the oldest nation on earth, is going to disappear. Since the revolution of 1911 nearly all its great dependencies have become practically independent. Many men, under the name of _tuchun_, or marshal, or general, and so on, have made themselves dictators over different parts of China proper. Some of them are entirely independent of the central government at Peking. Some only obey the orders of Peking when they wish to do so. China no longer has a genuine central government. There is no Chinese army, though there are millions of Chinese soldiers. Each different ruler of different parts of the country has his own army, which obeys him only. As we travel about this ancient country we shall find that it seems like a collection of independent provinces or still smaller divisions. Sometimes we shall find a single city divided between two different generals.

Many of these rulers with their own armies are very selfish men, who keep for themselves as much as possible of the money they gather in taxes. Some of them are constantly fighting among themselves, trying to drive one another out and take more territory for themselves. Things in China to-day are much as they would be in the United States if each of our generals and colonels took the division or the regiment he has under him and ruled the part of the country he is stationed in, without paying any attention to orders from Washington.

Manchu women decorated for a holiday. Their headdresses are especially
elaborate, but they also use white and bright red paint (rouge) on
their faces when they dress up.
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It will probably be some time before we know whether China is going to break up into a number of small countries or remain the great nation it has been for thousands of years. Some people think one of the marshals or generals will finally conquer all the others and make himself president or emperor of the whole country. Others fear that outside nations may have to step in to establish order in China. Still other people hope that the Chinese people themselves will be able sooner or later to straighten out their own affairs, as they have done several times before during their long existence.

While all this misgoverning goes on in China, the Chinese remain hard-working and cheerful, as they have so long been. The civil wars among the various generals in different parts of the country make life very unpleasant for the people. Before our travels are finished, I am sure you will decide that the Chinese deserve a much better government than they now have. Almost all foreigners who live among them find them very likable, though of course they have their faults, just as Americans and all other peoples have.

One reason why there is not a larger sale for American farm implements
in China is that in many parts of the country the farmers _raise_
their own pitchforks and other tools by binding small growing trees
into the desired shapes.
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You may be surprised, as I was, that we can travel almost anywhere we wish, in all the eighteen provinces, even while many civil wars are going on. A few foreigners have been killed and a number have been robbed in China during the past few years. But when I show you how I traveled in all parts of the country, often entirely alone, and through many out-of-the-way regions, without ever being hurt or robbed, you will probably decide that the Chinese are pretty good people after all. When I tell you also that my mother and my wife, with our two small children, went anywhere they wished, even late at night, in many of the great cities of China, while rival generals were fighting within or outside the walls, you will certainly admit that the Chinese are our brothers under their yellow skins.

A soap factory in Mukden, Manchuria, where the cakes laid out to dry
are all bright yellow in color. It is hardly the sort of soap that
we would care to use on our skin.
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