Chapter IV

THE LITERARY AND MANDARIN CLASS—PRINCIPAL CAUSES OF THE DECADENCE OF THE
EMPIRE

The literati or governing class—How it is recruited from the mass of
the people through examinations—Bachelors, Masters of Arts and
Doctors—Enormous number of candidates—The functionaries
exclusively selected from the literati—Most of the posts
sold—The syndicate for the exploitation of public offices—The
gravest defect of the system, the examinations, the subjects
selected being merely exercises in rhetoric and memory about an
immense quantity of nonsensical matter supplied by the Chinese
classics and ancient annals—Abortive attempts to introduce small
doses of Western science into these examinations—Superstitions
of the literati—This stupid system of examination the principal
cause of Chinese isolation—Complete disappearance of the
military spirit resulting from the same fatal cause—Hostility
and contempt entertained by the literati against all European
progress—Difficulty of suppressing or reforming the mandarinate.

The curse of China and the main reason why her remarkable people, who once deserved to be compared with the ancient Romans, have sunk to the degraded condition in which we find them at present, is the mandarinate, which she has the misfortune to consider one of her chief glories. It is this corrupt and antiquated system that is destroying the Celestial Empire. It has often been observed that nations generally have the Government they deserve, and it is undoubtedly true that the administration of China is, in a measure, the logical result of her geographical situation and singular history, to which might be added the peculiar character of her people. On the other hand, there is no question that the worst traits of the national character are accentuated in the mandarin class which governs the country, and saps its activity and energy.

Theoretically, the Chinese Government is based on paternal principles; as a matter of fact, it is entirely in the hands of the class known as ‘literati,’ from whose ranks all the State officials, or mandarins, are recruited; and if we wish to understand the primary causes of the misgovernment of the Celestial Empire, we must become thoroughly acquainted with the origin and manners of the mandarins, who are not hereditary, but recruited from the mass of the people in the most democratic manner in the world by means of public competitive examinations. These examinations confer three honorary degrees, which might be likened to those bestowed by our Universities: Bachelors, Masters of Arts, and Doctors. The degree of Bachelor is competed for in each district (there are sixty districts per province), and that of Master of Arts in the eighteen provincial capitals; that of Doctor, on the other hand, is only to be obtained in Peking. One may imagine the esteem in which these degrees are held by the people when I mention that in 1897, when I was at Shanghai, no less than 14,000 candidates came up for examination at Nanking, with only 150 honours to be distributed amongst them. It is considered a great honour for a family to include a literate amongst its members, and his obtaining his degree is celebrated throughout the entire province which enjoys the privilege of being his birthplace. Should he be fortunate enough to obtain his laureate at Peking, he is welcomed on his return to his native town as a veritable conquering hero. It is quite true that, in order to pass his examination, he has to go through an amount of physical suffering and patient endurance which would deter any but a Chinaman from the attempt. Each candidate is shut up for three whole days in a box-like cell four feet square, in which he cannot even lie down, with no other companions than his brush, paper and stick of Chinese ink; and barely an examination passes without some student or other being found dead in his cell. According to popular rumour, it is said that the all-pervading corruption penetrates even into these cells, and that not a few candidates succeed less through their merits than through the golden gate; and it has even been observed that the sons and near relatives of existing high functionaries are pretty sure to pass; but as a rule, however, it seems that merit generally obtains its reward. It is, however, after the examinations that begin the real difficulties of those who are not rich and are without influential friends. One might naturally expect that after the trouble, fatigue, and expense of the examination were over, some post or other would surely be forthcoming to recompense the efforts of the candidate; but the contrary is the rule, and many a man has had to wait a lifetime before obtaining the reward for which he has striven so hard. Nevertheless, those students who seem to possess exceptional ability generally push themselves forward in the following manner: a syndicate has been formed which advances the funds necessary to assist the aspirant in mounting the first rung on the ladder of fame, and to help him further, until he is in a position to return the money borrowed, either in cash or kind, with a very handsome interest. The idea of exploiting public offices as a sort of commercial concern is, to say the least, ingenious, and, what is more, it seems to be occasionally exceedingly remunerative. On the other hand, the expense and the intrigue that such a pernicious system must necessarily involve can better be imagined than described. As an instance in point, I was assured that the position of Tao-tai or Governor of Shanghai, worth, for not more than three years, a salary of 6,000 taels, or £900, a year, was recently bought for over £30,000.

Even worse than the purchase of public offices, and the favouritism shown at examinations, are the subjects chosen for competition, which are exclusively selected from Chinese classical and scholastic literature. The works of Confucius, those of his disciples, of Mencius and of other philosophers who enlightened the world two thousand years ago, and a mass of quaint lore derived from the ancient Chinese chronicles, form the subject of these extraordinary examinations, and the students have to learn some hundred volumes as nearly as possible by heart, memory being the one thing most highly prized by the Board of Examiners. The student is expected to quote certain extracts word by word as they appear in the books, and his examination papers must, moreover, be embellished by a great quantity of quotations—the more the better. An elegant style is obtained only through acquaintance with as many of the 60,000 Chinese characters as possible, from which the student is expected to make an appropriate selection, and, as each sign means a word, and not a few of these are almost unknown, and only to be found in some hidden corner of an ancient volume, the waste of time is appalling. The preparatory instruction, therefore, simply consists in cramming the wretched candidate with a knowledge of as great a number of signs or characters, and quotations from the Celestial classics, as possible. One of the most curious features of the Chinese is that, although everybody knows how to read and write a little, no one can do so perfectly, for the simple reason that no Chinaman has ever been known to completely master the voluminous alphabet of his country. The most ignorant has acquired some ten or a dozen characters relating to his trade, and sufficient for his purpose. When a man has mastered 6,000 or 8,000 he is considered learned, and, when we come to think of it, there must be very few ideas that cannot be expressed by so many thousands of words. Many of the higher literati manage to acquire even 20,000 words, and the state of the mind of that man may safely be left to the reader’s imagination, especially if we reflect that he must have passed his entire youth studying by rote thousands of signs only distinguishable from one another by the minutest strokes, and in acquiring a prodigious amount of obsolete knowledge from classical books and annals whose authors lived in remote antiquity. Of late years a slight modification has been introduced in the shape of certain concessions to what is officially called the ‘new Western culture.’ To the usual questions selected from the works of Confucius and other philosophers have now been added the identification of names mentioned in modern geography, and since the Chino-Japanese War the examiners at Nanking ask their candidates some very grave and informing queries in astronomy, as: ‘What is the apparent diameter of the sun as seen from the earth? and what would be that of the earth as seen from the sun or from some other planet?’ The following sage question is typical of the intellectual condition of both examiner and examined: ‘Why is the character in writing which represents the moon closed at the bottom, and the one which represents the sun left open?’

In the capital of a province near Shanghai the learned examiners wished to encourage the study of mathematics, and, accordingly, prizes were offered for competition and a solemn circular sent out to encourage young men to take part in the examination. Some young fellows, who had been educated in the missionary schools, solved most of the problems offered fairly well, and in accordance with the rules of modern elementary education. Others, on the other hand, who were better acquainted with the Four Books and the Five Great Classics than with Western geometry, made the remarkable discovery that the problems were explained in an old work written many centuries ago, with the result that they simply copied word by word the fantastical solutions therein formulated, and, of course, carried off the prizes. In the following year one of the professors of a foreign missionary college asked leave for a competent European teacher to be included in the examining committee in order to assist in the preparation of the papers and to pronounce a verdict upon the answers sent in. Needless to say, the demand was refused and the questions were sent out without the least attempt to insure their being loyally answered. Among the questions asked at a competitive scientific examination in Chekiang in 1898 were the following: ‘How are foreign candles made, and in what consists their superiority over those manufactured in China?’ ‘Name the principal ports touched at by the steamers running between Japan and the Mediterranean.’ ‘To which of the new sciences and methods which people are endeavouring to introduce should the greatest importance be attached?’ ‘Write an essay on international law.’ Comment is needless.

These foolish innovations, of course, do not change the fundamental scholastic and rhetorical character of Chinese examinations, and the usual themes for the compositions remain identical. Here are two examples quoted by Mr. Henry Norman: ‘Confucius hath said, “In what majesty did Chun and Yu reign over the Empire, as though the Empire was as nothing unto them!” Confucius hath said, “Yao was verily a great sovereign. How glorious he was! Heaven alone is grand, and Yao only worthy to enter it. How exalted was his virtue! The people could find no words wherewith to qualify it.”‘[22] This was the theme that had to be developed by many a flower of rhetoric. It is only through the study of these books, written twenty centuries ago, and encumbered by parables and affected maxims, and of ancient annals crammed with fantastic legends believed in as absolute facts, that are selected the members of the class who are expected to govern China!

The result of this method of education was exemplified as late as 1897, two years after a war which had brought the Celestial Empire within an inch of ruin, when a censor, one of the highest officials in the Empire, addressed a document to the Emperor, wherein he protested against the concessions made to the inventions of the Western barbarians, which he did not hesitate to qualify as calculated to disturb the peace of the dead. Instead of constructing railways, he gravely insisted, it were wiser to offer a handsome reward to the man who should recover the secret of making flying chariots to be drawn by phœnixes which certainly existed in the good old times. A little time previously a member of the Tsung-li-Yamen had lifted his voice to protest against the various railway embankments and the nails that studded the lines, which, he believed, were likely to inconvenience and wound the sacred dragons who protect the cities of the Empire, and who dwell beneath the soil. The strange superstitions of the _feng-shui_ geomancy dealing with the circulation through the air of good and evil spirits, and with the prescribed height to which buildings may be erected, and the exact positions of doors and other like grave matters, which, it seems, unless they be properly attended to, are apt to upset and offend the flying spirits in their progress through space, exercise a greater empire over the minds of Chinese officials in the very highest places than matters which we should consider of the greatest importance.

The fact that the mandarinate is recruited from the democracy renders it even more pernicious than if it constituted a hereditary aristocracy, for, as it stands, nobody has any interest in overthrowing it. The most intelligent people try to enter it, and it attracts all the most gifted men in the Empire, but only to corrupt them. The literary class enjoys an enormous prestige, and the poorest man lives in the hope of seeing his son one of its learned members. It, therefore, does not excite any of that hatred usually provoked by caste privilege, and thus does not stand the least danger of being upset. On the other hand, the condition to which it has reduced the Celestial Empire is a condemnation of the system of examination for Government office, and many a Western State might do well to study this question and to take its lesson to heart. That its effects have been more accentuated in China than elsewhere is undeniable, being the result of diverse historic and ethnographical circumstances peculiar to that nation. The Chinese reached a high state of civilization long before our era, and being more numerous and intelligent than their neighbours, so soon as they were cemented into one compact nationality they proceeded to subjugate Indo-China and Korea; and so it came to pass that China had no dangerous foes to disturb her, Japan being isolated in her island Empire, and she was separated from India by a formidable mountain barrier and from the West by immense deserts. From that time the Chinese had nothing to trouble them, and had but to live in quiet admiration of the labours of their ancestors, who were the authors of the perfect peace which they enjoyed, and thus little by little they accustomed themselves to look upon them as superior beings and as types of perfection. More advanced than any of their tributary subjects, and having nothing to fear from competition, they became lost in self-admiration, or, rather, in the admiration of those who had made their country what it was, and ended by believing that no further progress was either necessary or possible, and thus are now absolutely non-progressive.

The isolation and the want of emulation in which China has existed for so many centuries have destroyed whatever energy and initiative she might otherwise have possessed. It should be remarked, however, that the Roman Empire was in very much the same condition, and for the same reason, at the time of the invasion of the Barbarians, and that outside the moral revolution effected by Christianity—which, by the way, only obtained its fullest developments by the overthrow of the Empire—no further progress was being made. The sterile admiration of bygone greatness, therefore, is the foundation-stone of the doctrines of Confucius. The Chinese people, who are essentially practical and positive, and less given, perhaps, than any other in the world to study general questions and lofty ideals, soon deteriorated under so retrogressive a system, and eventually lost all sight of the origin of many of their most important institutions. Religion and morals were reduced to mere rites and ceremonies that only conceal the emptiness of Chinese civilization, and so the nation came to the conclusion that the one thing in this world worth the doing was to save appearances, and conceal corruption beneath a flimsy mask.

The isolation of China and her superiority over her neighbours produced another very grave consequence—the ruin of that martial spirit which has obliterated all idea of duty and sacrifice. The military mandarins are despised by their civil colleagues, and their tests consist almost exclusively of physical exercises such as archery and the lifting of heavy weights. ‘One does not use good iron to make nails, nor a good man to make a soldier,’ says the Chinese proverb, and thus it is that the Chinese army is recruited from a horde of blackguards and plunderers, whose only good qualities are their contempt for life and physical endurance, which might under proper management turn this raw material into an excellent army.

The Celestial Empire is quite as incapable of resisting the advance of modern civilization as it is of assimilating it. From the literati who govern the land nothing is to be expected, for they will neither learn nor forget anything. Their prejudices are so strong as to prevent their accepting any great movement of reform, even if it were in their interests, and in the stagnant position in which China is at present, aided by the lack of intercommunication between the provinces, the mandarins do exactly as they please. The _Peking Gazette_, the official paper, described quite recently in the most glowing terms the suppression of a revolt, showing at the same time the expenses incurred and the rewards offered to those who had aided in its suppression. The real truth of the story was that no revolution whatever had taken place in the district mentioned, and the only unusual event which had occurred was the pursuit of a runaway thief by three soldiers. Such an instance could not possibly occur in a well-regulated State, and naturally the men who profited by the lie will not be very desirous of a change in so profitable a system. ‘Those who despair most of China are those who know her best,’ once said a missionary to me; and his words have been confirmed by nearly every traveller in the Far East with whom I have spoken on the subject. No reform can be expected in the country from within, and a proof in point will be found in the history of the Palace Revolution of September 9th, 1898. The question, therefore, which presents itself is whether external pressure can be brought to bear on China with a view to reforming her Government without causing the dislocation of the Empire.